Yes I’m Complaining about a Cartoon

I’ve had to endure the normal amount of children’s programming, maybe a little more than average. I don’t think that there is anything detrimental to watching educational programming, and Treehouse Tv doesn’t show commercials (well, almost. They sneak ‘sponsors’ in at the start of a show, but before the show actually starts, and only once every half hour) so no harm done. I even like some of the shows. I’m officially a fan of the Wiggles, for example.

But to the point, there is one show that irritates me with its lack of logical cohesion. That show is Little Bear, a Canadian cartoon that stopped production years ago. The main character, Little Bear, capers happily around the forest with his diminished-capacity friends. Sure, his friends could be all children themselves, but then why do they have adult voices? Anyway, they all frolic without any clothes on, yet Little Bear’s parents are always wearing clothes. What?

The first reasonable excuse you could use is that the need for clothes is a symptom of growing up, and youthful innocence is represented by the nudity. I don’t like that explanation, but I went with it until there was an episode that displayed a picture of Mother Bear when she was a child AND SHE WAS WEARING CLOTHES! So, the nudity is not an established tradition in their culture, it’s just the wierd, hippy decision of this bear’s parents to let him run around with his business in the breeze.

One other facet that bothers me, is using a character’s species as their name. What happens when the new ducklings grow up-are they all named ‘Duck’? Is ‘Duck’ now ‘Old Duck’? Are they numbered ducks 1 through 9? Way to confuse children, Little Bear.

Album Review-“Heaven is Whenever” by The Hold Steady

I would have never thought that the absence of a keyboard player would be so sorely felt, especially from a rock band. When a vocalist leaves, the voice of the band is altered and the strangeness puts an awkward distance between the audience and the band, until the audience reconnects with the old songs in a new way. Instrumentalists are more easily replaced, but their contribution to the songwriting and overall chemistry of the band can be just as identifiable. The Hold Steady has just released their fifth album, and it’s the first without keyboardist Franz Nicolay. The songs on Heaven Is Whenever are missing an element of strangeness, an almost out-of-place oddness that somehow fit nicely in with a given song and brought it to an interesting new presentation, and that strangeness was Nicolay’s contribution. He is as varied an artist as you can get, making music with gypsy punks and klezmer aficionados, as well as playing in The Hold Steady, so whenever a weird sound popped up in a Hold Steady song, I attributed it to him. A great example would be the song ‘This One’s For The Cutters’ off of the last album, Stay Positive, a rock song that prominently features a harpsichord.

The best moments of Heaven Is Whenever escape the history and expectations of the band’s previous work, but more often than not, the good parts of the new songs remind you of older, better Hold Steady songs. It’s growing on me, but it will take a lot to match its predecessors. 6 out of 10.

Where does the week go?

It’s been a dismaying unsuccessful blogging week. It’s not as if I don’t have material, but life has conspired to sap me of energy, motivation, and vital health essences. As an example, my plans to shower my wife with a myriad of wonderful activities and actions for Mother’s Day has been waylaid by my flourishing throat infection. Stupid throat.

Between Max’s short bout of illness this week (which of course threw his entire sleep schedule into disarray) and the stressful events demanding my attention (driving test, moving the sister-in-law out of my house, doing  an interview for a magazine article), I’ve been too sapped to muster up any work ethic for my ongoing concerns.  I’ll try to catch up later.