DadCentric

High on the Rabbits

Cheeky's obsession with "Land of the Lost" revisited.  Or, more specifically, "Yand of the Yost."

Richard Dreyfus Would Have Stood His Ground

"It smells like piss in here," I said as I eyed the cat, waiting to see if he'd flinch with guilt.

No flinch.  He was close to getting two.

I glared at him anyway.  Damn cat.  Regardless of what he thinks, spending your nights licking your stuff while sitting in the bathroom sink is not acceptable behavior.  Or so I've been told.

Besides, he nearly scared the bejesus out of me and if anyone needs their bejesus intact it's me.  I ain't livin' right.

So it stunk in the bathroom and I questioned my wife about it. 

"I live with three boys.  Of course it smells like pee."

"A) I'm a man, baby.  And 2) I didn't say pee.  Pee is a light tinkle. Pee is an April shower.  Pee is cute.  Statues pee in birdbaths."

She had already left the room.

"Jon & Kate Plus 8" Must Die

Rooting for divorce, especially when children are involved, is not something I would normally advocate. But frankly, that has long been my position regarding Jon and Kate Gosselin, stars of the Jon & Kate Plus 8, the "reality" show that follows to these parents of twins (now 8) who then had sextuplets (now 5).

My opinion, formed on the occasional episode I'd catch my daughter watching or tidbit I'd find online, was based on a simple premise:

Kate is a bossy, overbearing shrew of legendary proportion (updated with fancier clothes and a revised version of Posh Spice's old 'do) and Jon, no matter how wimpy you may think he is, didn't deserve to put up with her constant verbal abuse and on-camera humiliation. I'd have felt the same way if the roles were reversed.

After watching the premiere of Jon & Kate Plus Eight's new season Monday night, in which the two are definitely estranged and hinting at a permanent split amid a party to celebrate the sextuplets' birthday, my opinion has changed.

A Belated Happy Mother's Day From Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg

Why not give Mom the gift that keeps on giving?

Let The Good Folks at The Red House Furniture Store Teach Your Kids About Racism

Before you ask, yes, it's an actual commercial.

Is Scrubs Over (the Rainbow)?

This may or may not be the last season of Scrubs.  It depends on ratings, money and solar wind.  It's complicated. 

The show is also complicated.  It's a sitcom full of overly silly antics and terrible jokes and it is also incredibly funny.  It is superficial and surprisingly deep. It has heart.  Sacred.

The main character of J.D., played by Zach Braff, is leaving for sure.  That much is certain.  Even if Scrubs returns for its 9th season it will be Braffless.  This could wreck havoc on the appletini business- easy on the tini.

He'll throw up! We'll all throw up! It'll be anarchy!

It was bound to happen at some point, and happen it did. These words stand before you  as my personal representative to testify that this particular happening did indeed happen. It occurred, even. You are about to stop reading because I’m not getting to the point. Or maybe you’re not interested. Or maybe your boss just walked by and caught you on DadCentric yet again.

You know how in Battlestar Galactica -- and yes, this will contain a bit of spoilage, but only from season 1 which, if you haven’t watched yet, well then I can’t help you -- but you remember how basically the entire government was wiped out in a massive nuclear attack carried out by self-righteous monotheistic robots, which left the human race with almost no governance until it was determined that some mid-level administrator was next in line to take over the presidency, and even then there was only the barest of bare bones leadership structures in place to lead the remains of the human race through the galaxy with no tangible future in sight?

Well that’s basically what happened at my house last weekend.

Nightmare at 34,000 Feet

Portrait of a frightened man: Jason Avant, thirty-nine, husband, father, and writer on vacation. Mr. Avant is what they call a "nervous flyer", which is a polite way of saying "flyer who requires several glasses of something strong and several handfuls of something stronger to prevent himself from having a nervous breakdown every time the plane shakes or makes a course". Tonight, his flight home will be like something out of an old episode of a TV series known as...The Twilight Zone.

Let me just say this about flying with 17 month old toddlers...oh, that's right. Zoe is now a toddler. As in "one who toddles". As in "one who started walking on her own the day before our flight to Florida, and who discovered that she really enjoys walking on her own, and getting her to sit still on a 5+ hour plane flight after she's discovered that walking is fun HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA that's a good one, God or Whatever Name One Choses To Give To The Force That Runs The Way That The Universe Unfolds; you're an asshole, you know that?" Anyway, flying with 17 month old toddlers is something that should never be done ever. In fact, I'd recommend not flying with a kid under 5; it will be a cold day in Hell before we do it again. I discovered this as soon as we took our seats on that flight home from Florida; a flight that became a voyage of nightmarish discoveries.

The Aggrolites Want You to Have a Banana

It's good for you. So are The Aggrolites.


The Aggrolites - Banana (Yo Gabba Gabba!)

It's 'Electric' and 'Lame' -- A DadCentric Educational TV Review

How big of an influence was The Electric Company on my life as a child of the '70s?

To this day, regardless of what Academy Award-worthy drama he appears in, I can't look at Morgan Freeman without mentally finger-snapping "Easy Reader, that's my name -- uh,uh, uhhhhhhh."

My Twitter avatar is The Boy from "Love of Chair," for Jennifer of the Jungle's sake!

Needless to say, no one was quite as stoked for a new version of this classic PBS show than me. Unless it was my daughter.

For all her wisdom in the ways of Hanna Montana and Pokemon, her reading skills have never been overwhelming. She needed summer school after first grade and barely escaped it after second. But weekly tutoring and the 4 DVD Best of the Electric Company helped quite a bit in the past year. One of my prouder accomplishments is that I can say aloud "T-I-O-N" and she'll follow with "shun-shun-shun-shun" before you can click the close button.

On Jan. 19, the 2009 version of The Electric Companydebuted four episodes. I TiVo'd the suckers, popped up some microwave kettle corn and sat down with Thing 1 to watch and learn. After a little more than two episodes, she gave up. Her most repeated comment, which I scribbled down three times during the shows, was "lame." Those were interspersed with the periodic "hate it."

Obviously, the show has been radically updated for the modern moro- ... I mean, child. The promos and reviews I read all mentioned how it's geared toward today's video game addicted, CGI-dazzled, hip-hop loving 6- to 9-year-olds. That's fine. I'm all for letting children dip their broccoli in ranch dressing to make it go down easier. But this new version may be more like drowning it in butter, Cheez Whiz and maple syrup.

Rather than wall-to-wall skits and jingles, the new show focuses mostly on a group of neighborhood "kids" (one of whom looks like he's busting to get to a frat kegger) with super powers that let them produce "word balls" from their fingertips and throw them up on walls. Some other kids called the Pranksters (the two guys here look like Pee-Wee's Playhouse rejects) want to steal these powers. Why anyone has these powers to begin with and what they use them for other than killing time between songs is a mystery.

Thing 1 greeted these sections with a yawn. To me, these plots -- all of which required voiceover explanations at the start of the show -- moved like snails carrying anvils across flypaper. Maybe my Power Ranger-loving son would have dug it, but I couldn't pull him away from his Nintendo DS to watch. 

The show has lots of flash: Wachowski-wannabe graphics, quick cuts, musical blare and lots of beatboxing. Lots and lots of beatboxing. Sooooo much beatboxing. Pffft, pp, pffft -- shut up already, annoying pasty guy who looks like the city-raised cousin of Kenny the Page from 30 Rock!

Frankly, I'm not a fan of most rap but I can see how its rhyme schemes and repetition lend itself to teaching language. And if it's what the new breed digs, so be it. However, many of the songs on the new Electric Company are just loud, muddy and hurried. They leave no breathing room between lyric and lesson. Generally, I found the few nonhyper tunes, such as a recurring reggae cartoon character and the songs leaning more on R&B than urban stylings, generally more catchy to my aged, suburban white boy ears.

The problem may be that where the original show relied on ad-men who wrote insanely catchy jingles for soap flakes and canned pork-and-beans for its songs, the new show depends on help from the musical team who wrote Broadway's "In the Heights." I live a commuter-train ride from the Great White Way and I've yet to encountered an 8-year-old humming something from that score.

I know I'm stuck in the past and Thing 1 is tainted by the viewing classic series, but I'm sure the new show will have its fans -- just don't count us among them. I truly hope it is as successful as its predecessor. But a word of advice to the people behind the 2009 version: either drop the token homages to the original Electric Company you are awkwardly throwing in or at least take them up a few notches?

For example,if you are going to have the two people in silhouette put words together could you, as Thing 1 pointed out, stop making it sound so random and choppy. The words should flow seamlessly with the rhythm and melody as such:

Why is Paul the Gorilla randomly roaming the streets of today's inner-city? In a costume that's even cheesier than the 1972 version, no less?

Finally, if the new kids must scream out Rita Moreno's "Hey, you guuuuuys!" catchphrase, have them put some heart and soul in to it! Belt it from the loins, children, from the loins!

Enough bitchin'. Someone please cue the wah-wah pedal: