January 20, 2009
Yes, according, I guess, to the NY Times' Gen X correspondent, the new version of The Electric Company is as boring and educational as you feared. Back From the '70s, Without the Zaniness [nyt]...
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5:42 PM
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Comments (0)
January 15, 2009
I guess I didn't grow up in an Anglophilic enough house, because I didn't know about Roger Hargreaves' Mr. Men and Little Miss series until the kid was born. [The wife, on the other hand, had them at school....
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10:05 AM
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Comments (7)
December 28, 2008
The wife didn't watch the show that much, so she doesn't understand the sharpness of my pain when she says K2 needs a haircut because she looks "like that kid on The Simpsons."...
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Posted by greg at
12:52 AM
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Comments (5)
December 23, 2008
Anyone who has ever seen the 1978 variety showsploitation travesty that was the Star Wars Holiday Special cannot pretend to have been betrayed by the treacly offenses of baby Annakin and Jar Jar Binks. We knew Lucas had it...
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4:27 PM
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Comments (1)
I am not a Thomas fan, and thankfully, neither kid is either, so I'm happy to ignore them. I always considered it to be a giant toy- and merchandise racket, and that was even before a hundred million lead-tainted trains...
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3:04 PM
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Comments (4)
December 17, 2008
From that other Muppet Christmas Special. If you're in the crowd shots at the end, I hope you'll give us a heads up in the comments: Search YouTube for John Denver Muppets Christmas [youtube, thanks to jason for the idea]...
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Posted by greg at
7:54 PM
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Comments (0)
It didn't take a hollow Christmas special full of pointless celebrity cameos to turn me off of Disney's massive, orchestrated Muppet revival remonetization. Kermit's ridiculous faux-edgy poseur publicity stunts with skate rat brand Supreme, skank photographer Terry Richardson, and fashion...
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Posted by greg at
5:00 PM
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Comments (3)
December 12, 2008
From the New York Times comes [sic] word that next month ABC's 20/20 will air Orgasmic Birth, a documentary by Debra Pascali-Bonaro, who is a birth educator, doula and, it's safe to assume, orgasm advocate. Finally, someone who will stand...
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Posted by greg at
9:44 AM
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Comments (1)
December 11, 2008
Wow. I wanna go to the crocheting party in etsy seller Crafty Is Cool's tummy, too. Sure, she's created plans and kits for making your own amigurumi versions of Yo Gabba Gabba! characters. Which is great. But if you...
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Posted by greg at
11:13 PM
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Comments (0)
December 7, 2008
Though it seems to be from the same era as the 4-armed swami, I have a feeling the backgrounds in this Sesame Street alphabet were not inspired by artfully printed, 19th century design pattern sourcebooks. Sesame Street - Psychedelic...
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Posted by greg at
10:27 AM
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Comments (3)
December 1, 2008
At the peak of his Home Improvement fame, when he also had a best-selling book and was the voice of Buzz Lightyear, Tim Allen was consumed by one all-important question: ""If a man was to drive a minivan, what...
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Posted by greg at
4:49 PM
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Comments (4)
November 28, 2008
Some alarming news and way-too-preliminary research to be thankful for this week: Thanks a lot, FDA, for the giant hit to your credibility about this whole melanine-in-baby-formula thing. I was all prepared to be all, "Bah, melamine-tainted formula is a...
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Posted by greg at
12:12 PM
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Comments (0)
November 13, 2008
A few months back, I felt like a heretic even asking the question, whether some slightly expanded, thoughtful licensed merchandise from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood might not be a nice alternative to parents facing down the Sesame Street juggernaut. Now...
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Posted by greg at
6:03 PM
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Comments (1)
November 11, 2008
Hi-ho, Kermit the Frog here: Sesame Workshop announced that clips from Sesame Street will be uploaded to YouTube. Seriously. While you're processing that stunning development, they also announced that clips would be available on NBC's YouTube competitor Hulu.com. And...
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Posted by greg at
9:10 AM
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Comments (4)
October 29, 2008
Uh, wow. I can understand how tough it must be to sell a rebranded Chrysler Town & Country minivan as an actual, German car. " But if I were in Volkswagen's marketing department, I probably would have gone the, "Technically,...
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Posted by greg at
1:41 PM
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Comments (7)
It's funny, The Wiggles used to really bug me--and then we stopped letting the kid watch them, and they dropped off her radar. Problem solved. Awesome how that works. If your kid isn't so easily weaned from his Wiggles obsession,...
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Posted by greg at
12:04 AM
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Comments (0)
October 28, 2008
In order to issue someone a speed camera ticket in Germany, it's necessary to have an identifiable photo of the driver, not just the car's license plate. Which, because of the sensitive camera calibrations, means all you need to...
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Posted by greg at
1:41 PM
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Comments (1)
October 25, 2008
Jim found a 1983 coloring book, On The Road With Mr. T in a thrift store. "The captions were incredibly boring," he says, "so I rewrote some of them." And how. I cannot, for the life of me, imagine...
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Posted by greg at
8:47 AM
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Comments (2)
October 23, 2008
So after posting about the Orbit Baby System's appearance on The Office last week--and the ensuing discussion of the suckage of product placement, I got an email from Joseph Hei, the co-founder of Orbit. As you can see from...
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Posted by greg at
11:06 PM
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Comments (4)
October 21, 2008
Old School Sesame Street fans--and readers of DT and The Onion AV Club--will recall that of the three classic songs he recorded in 1970, composer/performer Steve Zuckerman liked "Imagination Rain," the ode to mind expansion, even more than his...
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Posted by greg at
10:28 AM
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Comments (0)
October 18, 2008
In this week's episode of The Office, Michael's throwing a baby shower for Jan's anonymous sperm donor baby. It's pretty hilarious front to back, but Dwight's test drive of the Orbit Baby System just might be the best stroller...
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Posted by greg at
10:45 PM
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Comments (8)
October 17, 2008
Here, let me ruin your parenting weekend with worry and annoyances torn from the headlines and the annals of way-too-preliminary research: "HEY MOMS!" Holy crap, Similac's new pack could be the greatest thing since Nabisco Double Stuff Oreo-flavored formula, but...
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Posted by greg at
10:16 PM
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Comments (7)
Alright, so I'm a little obsessed with what is admittedly my favorite old school Sesame Street animation ever: the four-armed swami counting to 20. But what can I do? To this day, I don't say "Once, doce, trece, catorce"...
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Posted by greg at
1:10 AM
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Comments (6)
October 14, 2008
I have a feeling tough guy/chef Anthony Bourdain dictates into a digital recorder, then has some lackey at the Travel Channel to type them up. His blog posts read like a stroll through the Umbrian market in his head, which...
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Posted by greg at
8:56 AM
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Comments (6)
October 7, 2008
Did you know James Earl Jones not only had a stutter, he was functionally mute for like eight years? And that his counting to ten segment tested the best of all the clips in the Sesame Street pilot they...
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Posted by greg at
10:17 AM
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Comments (3)
October 5, 2008
[via daring fireball] "Where the hell are the singin' cats?" is burned into my brain, but hearing David Letterman story about Paul Newman and their matching Volvo 960 station wagons which Newman's racing goons outfitted with Ford 302 V8 racing...
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Posted by greg at
8:48 AM
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Comments (6)
October 4, 2008
PBS has been advertising on Daddy Types lately, for which I am grateful. But Sesame Workshop's media office has not responded to several requests for production information about the classic "How Crayons Are Made" movie. The Muppet Wiki information is...
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Posted by greg at
7:45 PM
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Comments (4)
September 27, 2008
To our surprise, the kid said she wanted to skip story time last night to watch a few minutes of the presidential debate with us. She ended up watching intently for almost an hour on our bed before she finally...
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Posted by greg at
7:10 PM
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Comments (4)
September 26, 2008
When the kid wakes up with a dry bed, she gets to watch some of her favorite Japanese Underpants Videos, aka, Pantsu Pankuro, an animated short on NHK every morning about the big kid joys of using the toilet....
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Posted by greg at
10:26 AM
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Comments (9)
September 10, 2008
9/17 update: Whoops, not so funny anymore, is it, AIG? Yeah, I lost count of laughing baby videos on YouTube, to the point that I didn't know AIG had licensed a few of them to use for an ad campaign....
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Posted by greg at
11:12 AM
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Comments (0)
September 9, 2008
DT reader Caitlin wonders "how I feel about Domo shilling for Target." I feel it's all going perfectly according to the merchandising and TV plan that Big Tent Entertainment crafted 2.5 years ago when they licensed the character from...
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Posted by greg at
11:21 AM
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Comments (2)
August 26, 2008
So when we went to Los Angeles in the Spring, I tried to meet up with the Yo Gabba Gabba folks, introduce the kid, etc. They were really cool about it, but they were also in the last, frantic stages...
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Posted by greg at
11:12 PM
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Comments (1)
August 22, 2008
I had so much fun poring through the months-long buildup to the recent decision by the French government to ban television channels and programming that targets 0-3 year-olds--or as they're adorably called in French officialdom, "les tous petits." I mean,...
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Posted by greg at
7:30 PM
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Comments (1)
August 21, 2008
The High Audiovisual Council of France has banned television programs targeting kids under 3 years of age because of the developmental risks posed by exposure of babies to screen media. The ban was precipitated by the 24-hr baby TV networks,...
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Posted by greg at
11:24 AM
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Comments (1)
August 16, 2008
Holy smokes, I get it now! The gratuitous pop culture references, the fawning cameos by celebrities no child has ever heard of, it all makes sense! Sesame Street is created by aging theater people and puppeteers who are righttheresoclose to...
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Posted by greg at
10:47 PM
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Comments (0)
August 8, 2008
The Mall: The kids and I went to Hot Topic yesterday at the mall. [Actually, at the second mall; the first mall we went to on Wednesday didn't even have a Hot Topic. What the point of our country's...
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Posted by greg at
8:26 AM
August 5, 2008
And so it starts. Yo Gabba Gabba! toys have been spotted at Target. Noisy ones, too. Also: Borat-style swimsuits for boys. Or so it would appear. Yo Gabba Gabba Toys at Target [nontoxicreviews]...
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Posted by greg at
10:23 AM
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Comments (7)
August 2, 2008
So PBS can build some glitzy, new kiddie mall. See the details here and get on the horn to PBS....
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Posted by greg at
7:58 AM
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Comments (0)
August 1, 2008
Feist can't help you now; there are way more than 1,2,3,4 celebrities stuffed into this trailer [sic] for the new season of Sesame Street. Which is nothing new. This 35th anniversary montage is full of celebrity cameos over the...
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Posted by greg at
12:26 AM
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Comments (6)
July 31, 2008
Turns out not all the Elmo Era Sesame Street is a writeoff. Who knew?...
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Posted by greg at
10:56 AM
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Comments (6)
July 29, 2008
Is this true?? PBS is dropping Mister Rogers' Neighborhood from its daily syndicated feed to its local affiliate stations in September, and instead sending out a single episode on weekends?? How in the world are local affiliates supposed to air...
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Posted by greg at
12:09 AM
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Comments (7)
July 27, 2008
I don't know what NBC's Olympic routine includes, but they already receive an automatic 0.5 point deduction for not having Jamie Hewlett and Damon Alborn create a Gorillaz-style Monkey from a Chinese fable as a mascot. Here's an embeddable...
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Posted by greg at
1:38 AM
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Comments (1)
July 26, 2008
Who knew, Francesco Messeri is the Florentine master of stop-action animation, and he has been for at least a generation. Messeri's Mio Mao is a series of short adventures of a pair of claymation kittens. Quaq Quao is a...
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Posted by greg at
1:02 PM
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Comments (1)
July 24, 2008
So maybe Target was just testing the waters when they steamrolled Like-A-Bike last year with their own $50 made-in-China knockoff. Because not only are they back, they're expecting you to pay ten bucks more for the Elmo version and...
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Posted by greg at
5:57 PM
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Comments (16)
July 20, 2008
When you've been sewing for 50 years like Gramma Ruth, you don't "knock off" anything, least of all the so-far unlicensed, unmonetized characters of some media conglomerate-come-lately like Nickelodeon. No, when you make your own homebrew plush versions of...
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Posted by greg at
8:39 PM
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Comments (1)
The girls and I went to the Jim Henson Legacy exhibition that just opened in some basement gallery at the Smithsonian, so you don't have to. Seriously, just put it in a book. Or a file folder, what a...
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Posted by greg at
12:04 AM
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Comments (7)
July 16, 2008
While he was still getting the whole Muppet thing off the ground, Jim Henson also created some seriously serious, experimental films. His 1964 short, Time Piece, is eight-and-a-half minutes of surreal stop-action animation and what not--including a 60's-style stripper, heads...
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Posted by greg at
6:44 PM
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Comments (3)
According to the dutiful Times article, the new & improved Sesame Street website will be previewed at BlogHer this weekend. Seeing as how I'm not going, I will just wait patiently to hear the reviews. But judging from the...
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Posted by greg at
12:46 AM
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Comments (1)
July 15, 2008
Was just scrolling through the YouTube with the kid for a minute and found this. It looks like the work of Fred Calvert's studio, which also did the animation for Steve Zuckerman's "I in the Sky." Did I mention...
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Posted by greg at
11:29 AM
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Comments (1)
July 9, 2008
Holy smokes, do they pay in free bedding sets and melamine dishware?? Nick Jr. is looking RIGHT NOW for a new voice of Diego, to record "ASAP!" Does your kid fit the bill? If you're anywhere near the demo for...
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Posted by greg at
5:04 PM
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Comments (3)
July 4, 2008
Well, we're off to Grandma's house for a patriotic dip in the pool and some patriotic meat. I'll wish you all the same. Meanwhile, if you're looking for a Friday Freakout, try this on for size: evil communists touting...
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Posted by greg at
12:05 PM
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Comments (0)
June 19, 2008
My wife saved the free newspaper from the subway the other day, which contains a fluffy but interesting AP profile by Ellen Simon of Caroll Spinney, who has played Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch since the first season of...
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Posted by greg at
12:05 PM
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Comments (4)
June 18, 2008
Here's a hypothetical for you: Let's say you're a producer for ABC/NBC/same diff, and you perpetrate what is hands-down, the cringingly worstest celebrity interview ever with, I don't know, pick a name--Holly Hunter. And though only like a thousand...
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Posted by greg at
1:14 PM
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Comments (2)
June 17, 2008
The kid likes the one-legged jump roping. Me, it's this one here, with the stilts and the glazed donut. That's my favorite video of Japan's own Steve-O-in-a-balloon, Fusen-taro. [風船太郎, Balloon Boy. The last two characters, -taro, are used in...
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Posted by greg at
3:03 PM
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Comments (1)
Sheesh, NonToxicReviews makes me feel so unproductive. I don't know what you did last weekend, but Mr. Stinkhead created PDF's and howto's for two awesome DIY kid's books in the course of just three days--and the one day he...
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Posted by greg at
10:25 AM
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Comments (2)
June 13, 2008
David Mitton, the children's TV producer who brought The Rev. Wilbert Vere Awdry's bedtime stories of Thomas the Tank Engine to lucrative, oddly animated life, has died. But Thomas Schmomas, the guy also did The Thunderbirds! That means Thomas...
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Posted by greg at
12:09 AM
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Comments (1)
June 12, 2008
So there was a big licensing expo in New York this week, which apparently resulted in a phony trend story in the NY Times about companies redesigning their old licensed character properties to milk a new generation of nostalgic parents:...
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Posted by greg at
9:52 PM
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Comments (8)
A study in the works at Harvard shows that Brazilian telenovelas have an impact--in Brazil, anyway--on lowering fertility rates and on baby name choices. From the abstract:We focus on fertility choices in Brazil, a country where soap operas (novelas) portray...
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Posted by greg at
11:18 AM
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Comments (2)
June 11, 2008
Over the weekend, two major comic artists, Art Spiegelman and Gary Panter, discussed their inspiration at a symposium organized by NYU and The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. Via Artforum's report:The letters L, S, and D rolled off their...
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Posted by greg at
12:41 AM
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Comments (0)
May 30, 2008
What the hell are you doing in there, tickling? Get OUT of my kid's diaper before I wring your little red neck!...
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Posted by greg at
6:14 PM
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Comments (2)
May 20, 2008
From the Boston Globe's profile of early childhood development researcher Nancy Carlsson-Paige, all I can figure about her new book, Taking Back Childhood: Helping Your Kids Thrive in a Fast-Paced, Media-Saturated, Violence-Filled World, is that kids should cut back...
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Posted by greg at
8:05 AM
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Comments (4)
May 19, 2008
This Similac Sucrose thing has got me going, so I'm off to investigate the scientific and regulatory background of the Baby Formula Industrial Complex. As soon as I watch this original [1] 1969 version of The Muppets singing Mah-Na Mah-Na...
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Posted by greg at
1:55 PM
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Comments (1)
May 16, 2008
Let's all come and play with DJ Bill Gates today! What Gates showed on Wednesday was a 4-foot-by-6-foot prototype called TouchWall. Among the things that appealed to me was the idea that presentations might shift away from the sort of...
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Posted by greg at
12:42 AM
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Comments (2)
May 15, 2008
So Harvard Law professor Lawrence Tribe tells the graduating class at NYU that on this, the biggest day of their lives, they should think about their parents having sex:Think about it — if your mother and father had watched...
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Posted by greg at
9:45 AM
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Comments (0)
May 12, 2008
Let's be realistic; with it's third-generation Laugh-In format, cheesy acting, and random-at-best pedagogy, the original Electric Company was not great television to begin with, and it definitely has not aged well. So any OG purist objections to the recent...
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Posted by greg at
5:19 PM
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Comments (0)
May 10, 2008
Wow, just wow. Better put the kids down for a nap before watching Sad Kermit do his cover versions of Elliot Smith's "Needle in the Hay" (The Royal Tenenbaums mix) or NIN's "Hurt." Funny thing is, I've watched the...
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Posted by greg at
2:24 PM
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Comments (4)
May 7, 2008
This just in: ABC News reports that college students smoke pot. And watch Yo Gabba Gabba. Which is funny, because I remember when it was launched, some raver described it as the Teletubbies with the Ecstasy baked right in. But...
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Posted by greg at
12:15 PM
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Comments (1)
So a family from Northern Ireland goes to Portugal for a little vacation, by the evening, the parents are puking, the kids [ages 6, 2, and 1] are in protective custody, and there's a court appearance set for drunken...
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Posted by greg at
7:43 AM
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Comments (0)
April 30, 2008
I know The 'Street was edgier back in the day, but still. The synopsis list on our DVR fakes me out every. single. time:Rosita finds other uses for her wings. Gabi and Big Bird baby-sit for Natasha. Baby Bear...
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Posted by greg at
5:15 PM
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Comments (0)
April 21, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Keith Haring, originally uploaded by mario.mc. So obviously, I found this photo of Keith Haring...
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Posted by greg at
3:14 PM
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Comments (0)
April 13, 2008
Huh. No. The show hasn't started shooting the live segments yet, but it looks like some of--at least one of--the new animated songs for Yo Gabba Gabba's second season is already online. [At least it looks like that if...
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Posted by greg at
6:01 PM
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Comments (2)
I've grown a bit skeptical of the origins of most every sudden Japanese trend. With the Oshiri Kajiri Mushi, aka Bottom Biting Bug, cartoon that washed over Japan last summer, it wasn't until the late fall/Christmas season before Japan's...
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Posted by greg at
9:41 AM
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Comments (1)
April 5, 2008
"It's time for bed now. Goodnight, from Aquafresh." As so-called "researchers, pediatricians, cognitive development scientists, and neurologists" stoke the fires of outrage and goad their non-profit lackeys, the heartless, joykilling communistic social activists to attack, where can a worn out...
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Posted by greg at
1:59 PM
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Comments (2)
Do not adjust your screen. You are not dreaming. NAFTA is real, and it is working hard for Canadian children every. single. minute. That IS a photo of an American minivan [the Chevrolet Uplander, made in Doraville, Georgia! Until...
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Posted by greg at
10:40 AM
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Comments (0)
March 27, 2008
ProWrestling.com Imagery: Bombshells (1252) Female Celebrities (495) Male Celebrities (3) Shane McMahon, WWE Wrestling's EVP of Global Media/professional son, announced WWE Kids, a pro wrestling magazine aimed at 6-14 year-olds, which is part of the bigger WWE Youth Initiative:Every...
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Posted by greg at
11:35 AM
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Comments (2)
Hot Dog was a children's television series that ran for one season (1970) on NBC's Saturday morning. Called "The Show About Stuff," it was basically the network version of the "How do they make _____?" segments from Mister Rogers...
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Posted by greg at
8:58 AM
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Comments (3)
March 26, 2008
Kermit the attention-whoring frog was last seen trying to reclaim the irreparably lost cool of his youth by doing a photoshoot for skate emperors Supreme with noted downtown skanktographer Terry Richardson. Then he resurfaced a couple of weeks later,...
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Posted by greg at
3:28 PM
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Comments (1)
March 24, 2008
So the kid went to a theater for her first, actual movie over the weekend: Horton Hears A Who. It totally freaked her out. Technically, her first movie ever was John Cassavetes' Shadows, which she watched with me when...
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Posted by greg at
11:02 AM
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Comments (26)
March 20, 2008
In honor of Won't You Be My Neighbor Day [Did you all remember to wear your sweaters? Good, I knew you could.], achingly adorable writer/filmmaker/hipster moll Miranda July takes us on a trip to a button factory. A button...
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Posted by greg at
3:42 PM
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Comments (1)
March 19, 2008
These things are like Pringles; once you open the can and have one, you just can't stop. The kid was really withdrawn and bummin' when she came home from pre-school this afternoon, so we sat down to an episode...
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Posted by greg at
11:34 PM
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Comments (0)
Seriously, that DJ Food remix and The Family Guy are just the tip of the iceberg. At his music blog Fong Song, blogger Fongolia has tallied up at least 17 cover versions of "Pinball Number Count," the classic Sesame...
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Posted by greg at
5:46 PM
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Comments (1)
So I pointed out yesterday that Nickelodeon's executives described "moms" and kids "on mom's lap" as two prime targets for their new $100 million, 600+ games, online marketing push. Which is a little lame, but mostly, it's fine, and not...
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Posted by greg at
11:17 AM
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Comments (0)
March 18, 2008
NickJr.com with Delta/AmEx ad, for when you're feeling not so fresh, I guess Viacom division Nickelodeon unveiled the first of 600 new online games designed to strengthen "the brand affiliation" and to deliver young eyeballs to advertisers, including the...
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Posted by greg at
1:32 PM
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Comments (6)
March 17, 2008
This morning I wrote a bit about the origins of the phrase, "the rabbit died," which was a common, if inaccurate, euphemism for a positive result on a pregnancy test, which in post-WWII America was called the rabbit test....
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Posted by greg at
1:27 PM
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Comments (3)
1978 is the 30th anniversary of the home pregnancy test, which was developed by pioneering researchers in reproductive endocrinology at the National Institutes of Health. "A Thin Blue Line" is the NIH's online history of the project, and it makes...
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Posted by greg at
7:41 AM
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Comments (1)
March 14, 2008
If your name's James, that is. This poster by Ben Hribar was made for some hippie dippie, peace love & understanding exhibition in 2006. It "addresses the disconnect and apathy of the general public towords [sic] their fellow brothers...
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Posted by greg at
11:16 AM
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Comments (0)
March 10, 2008
I swear, I didn't know about this. Next week, Thursday, March 20th, would be Fred Rogers' 80th birthday. The standardbearers at Family Communications, Inc., Rogers' production company, are encouraging everyone to wear a sweater--I repeat, to wear a sweater--on...
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Posted by greg at
9:36 PM
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Comments (1)
March 8, 2008
When Google Video first launched, it seemed like no matter what you searched for, the results were always 9-part interviews with public television pioneers by the Archive of American Television. Joan Ganz Cooney can keep waiting, but I picked and...
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Posted by greg at
11:01 PM
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Comments (6)
March 5, 2008
Lost in the over-earnest debate about the supposed educational value of Baby Einstein videos is any sense of the innocent, dewy-eyed days before the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended no screen-based media for kids under 2-yo. before those damn...
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Posted by greg at
10:17 AM
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Comments (0)
from the Baby Einstein website circa 2004 VICTORY! [Cue crickets] From the tree falling in a forest department, we learn that "The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood is claiming victory after Baby Einstein quietly changed its website to remove...
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Posted by greg at
8:22 AM
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Comments (0)
March 2, 2008
It's not that easy being green Having to spend each day with total skank photographer Terry Richardson in the shop window of Colette, propped behind something Nylon Magazine calls a "Supreme skate desk," which could be cool, only I...
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Posted by greg at
4:51 PM
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Comments (1)
March 1, 2008
With the news that J. Lo and M. An [doesn't work?] have named their twins Max and Emme, I think it behooves those who already have kids to list up the names of current children's TV show characters, just so...
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Posted by greg at
9:11 AM
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Comments (12)
February 29, 2008
Baby names can come at you in the most unlikely places:Nina Foch married James Lipton, eesh, and also long ago played the woman who found baby Moses in "The Ten Commandments." The kid, Taliesin Jaffe (!!!), went on to be...
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Posted by greg at
9:07 PM
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Comments (3)
Someone emailed me recently asking if there were any cool fold-down changing tables. The Man On The Television says you should just make one yourself. [Frankly, after seeing the results, I'm not convinced. "Wasted Spaces"?? You could dock an aircraft...
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Posted by greg at
8:34 AM
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Comments (7)
February 27, 2008
Ho-ly smokes. Take hidden footage from The Electric Company's off-the-hook Christmas parties, where Rita Moreno turns her skirt-shaking Anita from West Side Story into a streetwalker. Combine it with bits from Laugh-in, and intersperse animation copied straight off the...
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Posted by greg at
7:32 AM
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Comments (4)
February 23, 2008
At least it's not shaped like a pineapple. Musical SpongeBob™ Digital Thermometer [bd.com via cartoonbrew]...
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Posted by greg at
11:08 PM
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Comments (2)
February 22, 2008
Gosh, how much I love Kidscreen, the trade magazine of the children's television industry [tagline: "About reaching children through entertainment"]? I'd love it even if my boys from Yo Gabba Gabba! weren't on the cover [:)] of the big, fat...
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Posted by greg at
10:30 AM
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Comments (1)
February 21, 2008
I didn't make the NY Toy Fair this year, and it's probably just as well; the sheer volume of plastic, beeping, exploitative crap would likely send me into a new baby funk, and then I'd only be posting angry takedowns...
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Posted by greg at
7:00 AM
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Comments (0)
February 13, 2008
I'm sure these extra-lifelike infant dolls--which are all over eBay--have been mentioned on DT before; I'm just too creeped and/or bummed out by the whole concept to look them up. Didn't stop the UK's Channel 4 from doing a...
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Posted by greg at
4:13 PM
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Comments (6)
February 12, 2008
Times sure have changed since the good old days, when the Disney Channel didn't get uptight about rerunning the Muppets and Johnny Cash rallying 'round the Confederate Flag and singing a song about running off to Jackson when the...
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Posted by greg at
11:03 AM
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Comments (2)
I'm no expert, but I think if you have the Brother NC-7340 printer/scanner/fax/crocheter set up on your network, you just load whatever color of yarn you need--in this case, red-- and cut & paste this crocheting code from Craftster,...
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Posted by greg at
6:54 AM
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Comments (1)
February 6, 2008
Kottke links to a collection of timelapse videos of people playing Wii, including this one of a guy golfing while holding a baby the whole time: Time Lapse Wii Videos [oobject.com, which is related to yokiddo.com]...
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Posted by greg at
12:32 PM
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Comments (2)
February 3, 2008
Just came across these commercials for the great-looking, full-sized Peugeot 407 SW [Station Wagon?], which I've never driven, but I'm predisposed to like because it looks sort of like one of my favorite cars, the Mercedes A-Class, all growed up....
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Posted by greg at
11:00 AM
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Comments (0)
January 30, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Crafting 365 Day 010, originally uploaded by jackrabbit.etsy.com. Holy smokes, It's like I'm eight years...
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Posted by greg at
1:28 AM
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Comments (3)
January 29, 2008
My old company used to create TV identity spots and animations, so I may be a little more attuned to them than the average guy, but DAY-UM, Nickelodeon's Noggin channel has some of the greatest animations and interstitial programming of...
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Posted by greg at
5:00 PM
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Comments (3)
January 24, 2008
So I'm looking at Dwell's new baby zebraskin rug [coming to Target next month, just $180!] and wondering "Seriously, is that somehow not supposed to be a reference to the skin of a baby zebra?" I worried if I...
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Posted by greg at
9:58 AM
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Comments (1)
January 17, 2008
Metafilter dad Matt Haughey asked the hive to recommend some non-dark, non-scary movies suitable for a movie-loving 2-3yo kid like his daughter. So far, Curious George and My Neighbor Totoro are it:I've tried all the pixar films and they all...
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Posted by greg at
11:14 AM
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Comments (29)
January 15, 2008
Yeah, no one's paying too close attention, right? So if I've been posting about vintage Sesame Street for years without actually sitting down to watch the Old School episodes on DVD, no one'd notice, right? BECAUSE HOLY CRAP, WHAT...
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Posted by greg at
11:46 PM
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Comments (14)
January 2, 2008
Alright lactivists, you may now drop your placards along with your tops. The vintage Sesame Street breastfeeding clips that disappeared for a while are back on YouTube. The one above was from the mid-1970's and featured American Indian folk...
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Posted by greg at
4:00 PM
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Comments (1)
The quality's higher, the selection is much lower, there's no way to link directly, and you'll have to wait a few days for some hacker to devise a way to download them to your own computer or iPod. But...
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Posted by greg at
3:38 PM
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Comments (1)
And somewhere in The San Fernando Valley, a high school float committee chairman weeps, knowing that he will never again win The Crown Seal For Best Use Of Imagination And Innovation To Advance The Art Of Float Design. This...
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Posted by greg at
1:46 PM
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Comments (0)
December 29, 2007
Hannah Rocks! You rock! I rock! I rock? Hmmm.... In order to win the Club Libby Lu Hannah Montana Rock Your Holidays Essay Contest and get a free trip to Albany to attend a Hannah Montana concert, a 6-year-old...
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Posted by greg at
10:12 PM
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Comments (3)
December 28, 2007
Archinect did a pretty fanboyish interview with Mark Mothersbaugh on the occasion of his rug exhibition at the Scion Gallery, and though there's no mention his Yo Gabba Gabba! appearances, Mothersbaugh shared this profound insight on the preference for subversion...
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Posted by greg at
1:11 AM
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Comments (1)
December 24, 2007
A few weeks ago, the kid turned to me and goes, "Daddy, dogs are hunters by nature." I'm like, "wha wha wha??" Turns out she heard it on Zooboomafoo. So as we grapple with this idea that the kid's learning...
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Posted by greg at
4:26 PM
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Comments (5)
December 21, 2007
Some things spotted around the web: Even though they're tacky and kind of insipid--well, the World Wildlife Federation was, the one for bigger kids, from National Geographic, is not that bad--the kid absolutely loves getting her magazines. It's mail! For...
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Posted by greg at
1:37 PM
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Comments (0)
December 19, 2007
Mike Schneider, a self-proclaimed dadblogging media whore [he writes for Variety] and huge Yo Gabba Gabba! fan, reports that the show has been picked up for a second, full season. The 20 new episodes are already in pre-production.For season two,...
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Posted by greg at
1:18 PM
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Comments (4)
December 7, 2007
It's Daddy Types editorial policy that there's no quid pro quo for advertising on the site. So when I saw the ad appear on Daddy Types for John F. Mooney's play, "A Million Little Diapers," my interest was piqued. So...
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Posted by greg at
5:50 PM
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Comments (0)
December 6, 2007
Wow, LA Weekly's got a 150,000-word [give or take] article about Mark Mothersbaugh, one of the members of Devo, who has continued his creative pursuits by 1) opening a music studio that composes like every song on TV, film,...
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Posted by greg at
6:11 PM
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Comments (2)
Except for the theatrical release of The Last Emperor and the Iran-Contra hearings, I didn't think I missed anything culture-wise while I was a missionary in Japan in 1988. I didn't realize how wrong I was. The intro to Pee...
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Posted by greg at
1:30 PM
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Comments (1)
Seriously, Philip Glass? And all this time I thought his first project for children's television was the South Park Christmas Special. Now it turns out he did at a trippy composition for a set of animated color wheels. Did anyone...
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Posted by greg at
10:04 AM
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Comments (7)
So the kid's sitting on the floor, breaking all her crayons, and I'm all, "Dude." And she's all, "I want to see what's inside." And I'm all, "Do you remember how they make crayons? Has YouTube taught you nothing?" [OK,...
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Posted by greg at
9:22 AM
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Comments (1)
November 26, 2007
When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And when you're an Irwin, everything looks like an awareness-building merchandising opportunity, I guess. Eight-year-old Bindi Irwin, who grew up on camera the family's televised zoo/set, mourns her late father...
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Posted by greg at
4:01 PM
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Comments (0)
November 21, 2007
I know, I know, throw a rock in Brooklyn these days, and you'll hit an organic t-shirt printer or a vinyl toy designer. Still, only a couple of them are on Supermarket, the flyover-free etsy alternative for the borough's...
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Posted by greg at
7:58 AM
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Comments (0)
November 19, 2007
To the eye-rolling amusement of the parents who grew up on the stuff, NY Times TV critic Virginia Heffernan writes about the ironic warning label on the just-released Volume 2 of Sesame Street: Old School:These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are...
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Posted by greg at
9:40 AM
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Comments (3)
November 16, 2007
Clearing the browser tabs before a weekend with the grandparents: Chick-Fil-A manages to bum out yet another family with their freebie toys. I didn't call a company spokesman, but I expect they'd point out that, for us sinners, no meal...
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Posted by greg at
10:20 AM
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Comments (3)
November 15, 2007
How classic is this Saturday Night Live circumcision sketch? I get a little verklempt just thinking about it. Royal Deluxe II TV commercial [youtube]...
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Posted by greg at
7:39 AM
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Comments (0)
November 9, 2007
Well, I guess one single 1970's mention of breastfeeding on Sesame Street is one too many for today's merch-pushing execs, at least when it turns back up on YouTube. After receiving over 50,000 views in the last few weeks,...
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Posted by greg at
9:57 AM
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Comments (5)
November 6, 2007
It was looking grim for a while there, but Metrodad totally redeemed himself when he took his daughter to a freakin' Laurie Berkner concert. And that's despite, not because of, scoring front row seats at Carnegie Hall. Shakin' Down The...
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Posted by greg at
11:31 PM
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Comments (0)
November 5, 2007
So far, the most chilling words to come out of the kid's mouth are "No, I learned it on [insert TV show name here]," as in:"And Daddy, dogs are hunters by nature." "REALLY. Did you talk about that at school?"...
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Posted by greg at
11:24 PM
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Comments (3)
That Mr. T mention got me itching to see Nizlopi's JCB Song video again, which still makes me cry, 2.5 years later. It also reminds me that Michael Bay is not worthy to scrub the road grime off of...
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Posted by greg at
9:26 AM
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Comments (4)
November 1, 2007
The only Muno & Plex face painting I did at the kid's preschool pumpkin party was on myself. Lumpyhead's mom makes his DJ Lance Rock costume. And above, DT reader Jonathan and his East Village dadfriend were both rocking...
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Posted by greg at
5:53 PM
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Comments (20)
October 31, 2007
Orange fuzzy hats off to DJ Lance Rock Lumpyhead. Very niice. [lumpyhead via jason]...
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Posted by greg at
6:44 PM
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Comments (6)
October 27, 2007
Obviously, a brilliant design, though I gotta say, I think it works better as a t-shirt. From the Kidrobot November Releases announcement [kidrobot.com via boingboing, thanks jason] Previously: Winner of the DT DIY Muno Lisa t-shirt...
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Posted by greg at
12:30 AM
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Comments (2)
October 26, 2007
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Yo Gabba Gabba Muno Shirt, originally uploaded by super-structure. ...and that winner's dad has a...
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Posted by greg at
12:07 AM
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Comments (0)
October 24, 2007
Yeah, like 30 years ago. That's when Big Bird gets a lesson in breastfeeding from the folk singer Buffy Sainte-Marie and her infant son Cody. Of course, Big Bird also has a personality, and Buffy carefully anunciates, "ve-ge-tuh-bles," so...
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Posted by greg at
11:35 PM
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Comments (5)
October 23, 2007
One day I may figure out the art world appeal that William Wegman holds. But for now, all I can see is an endless array of amusing, pose-y, and ultimately pointless photographs involving his incredibly patient Weimaraners. I stopped wondering...
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Posted by greg at
9:27 PM
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Comments (3)
October 10, 2007
My mom gave the kid Maurice Sendak's Nutshell Library for Christmas last year, and at some point, it totally clicked with her. Not just because of the stories, but because of the scale. They're a box set of tiny little,...
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Posted by greg at
7:53 PM
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Comments (4)
News from around the browser tabs: The Washington Post has a nice takedown of the "educational" baby TV racket. Frankly, after soloing for most of last week, I have a newfound sympathy for any parent who decides to use a...
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Posted by greg at
12:27 AM
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Comments (3)
October 4, 2007
I give up. If you need me, I'll be eating Veggie Booty out of a lead bowl, drinking high fructose corn syrup out of a BPA-laced sippy cup, and watching the Hoobs until I've forgotten every multisyllabic word I...
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Posted by greg at
6:44 PM
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Comments (10)
According to the people who follow such things, 2,000 child-sized Chairry chairs from Pee-Wee's Playhouse were made by Herman Toys in 1988. They're about 32 inches high. Like many a child star--not to mention her show's eponymous host--Chairry seems...
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Posted by greg at
4:59 PM
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Comments (2)
From the Aug. 2006 DT review of political consultant Jeremy Zilber's children's book, Why Mommy Is A Democrat: Zilber's only consolation--though it's one that won't help Why Mommy's sales--is that the "competition," Help, Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed...
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Posted by greg at
1:22 PM
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Comments (1)
October 3, 2007
So what better prize for the unofficial YGG! contest than an unofficial YGG! T-shirt? Basically, it's made with a stencil cut from the iron-on transfer images on the Nick Jr. site. If you make one yourself--possibly because you don't...
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Posted by greg at
1:43 PM
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Comments (3)
October 2, 2007
This just in from the Circle of Life Department: From his research linking Baby Einstein videos [by name] to decreased vocabulary development in toddlers to his earlier findings of a link between toddler TV-watching and ADHD, to his book,...
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Posted by greg at
5:32 PM
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Comments (3)
"Lead researcher Dr. Dimitri Christakis works with study blocks. Photo courtesy of Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Institute" In a recently published study commissioned by a Canadian block company [above foreground], Dr. Dimitri Christakis [above, left] and his colleagues at Seattle...
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Posted by greg at
2:34 PM
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Comments (4)
BoingBoing linked to video of an appearance by Run DMC on a mid-1980's episode of Reading Rainbow. Well, I'll see your book-rapping Run DMC, Xeni, and raise you one circa 1992 hip-hopping Levar Burton, dressed in an apparent homage...
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Posted by greg at
8:33 AM
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Comments (3)
September 28, 2007
Did you know it was Go Healthy Month? Yeah, me neither:Go Healthy Month will culminate with Nickelodeon’s 4th annual Worldwide Day of Play on September 29th when the Alliance and Nickelodeon are encouraging kids and families across the country to...
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Posted by greg at
11:09 PM
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Comments (4)
September 24, 2007
I've been looking for a way to honor the awesomest member so far in the Yo Gabba Gabba! Dance Club ["My name is Nathaniel! I like to dance!"], and John gave me the perfect idea in the My name...
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Posted by greg at
5:12 PM
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Comments (43)
September 23, 2007
IF I downloaded the first few episodes of Yo Gabba Gabba! for the plane, this is how I did it: Bit Torrent. Of course, IF I did it, it'd probably be going since last night, and it still wouldn't be...
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Posted by greg at
8:01 AM
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Comments (7)
September 20, 2007
Yo Gabba Gabba! definitely wants to be invited to the Christmas party in your wallet. Kid Robot, the vinyl toy subsidiary of YGG! production company WildBrain just announced to retailers that Yo Gabba Gabba vinyl and plush dolls will...
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Posted by greg at
4:54 PM
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Comments (12)
September 18, 2007
Richard Pryor improv'ing the ABC's on Sesame Street is brought to you by the letter P and the number 1, P as in prudes, and 1 as in the number of PBS Sprout hosts they've booted so far for...
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Posted by greg at
12:06 PM
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Comments (1)
September 14, 2007
The other day as we were walking out of a friend's birthday party, another dad asked me what the Wonderpets' names actually were, because his daughter thought they were something different. I'm like, "I have no idea, but I can...
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Posted by greg at
9:48 AM
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Comments (7)
September 12, 2007
Un. Be. Lievable. What a train wreck. The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee which oversees the Consumer Products Safety Commission is holding a hearing on toy safety, toy recalls, and the utter shambles that is the CPSC and the Toy Industrial Complex's...
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Posted by greg at
1:19 PM
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Comments (1)
September 10, 2007
It seems I've wandered into the web's Knerdish Knitting Knook. Samantha made a little snuggly/baby washcloth thing with the Starfleet insignia on it for some pregnant Star Trek fan/friends. [with Trek-themed music, but no Starfleet uniforms or Klingon cake...
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Posted by greg at
6:58 AM
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Comments (0)
September 5, 2007
The student is now the master. Hector Jimenez, aka Esqueleto from Nacho Libre, was doing the Dancy Dance Time on Yo Gabba Gabba! this morning. I swear, one of these days, we're gonna wake up and find out Jared...
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Posted by greg at
11:38 AM
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Comments (2)
August 31, 2007
Andy bought this dvd on Amazon. Another reason to hate "Parenting" magazine [storkbitesman]...
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Posted by greg at
6:07 PM
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Comments (2)
August 28, 2007
Giant corporations exploiting adorable, emotionally manipulative fictional characters to suck every last dollar out of our wallets, while making outlandish PR claims that are totally at odds with accepted science and the dismal reality on the ground got you...
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Posted by greg at
9:41 AM
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Comments (6)
August 22, 2007
A little while back, CBS's Early Show called, looking for one of the "new breed of dads" they could put on TV. He had to be: hip hands-on in the NY Metro area, and willing to let CBS show his...
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Posted by greg at
8:20 AM
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Comments (7)
August 20, 2007
It's freezing outside [in DC. In August. They call this global warming? Feh.] so the kid and I will be liveblogging the premiere of The Most Important Children's Television Program Of Our Generation, Yo Gabba Gabba!. Stay tuned for...
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Posted by greg at
10:16 AM
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Comments (12)
August 14, 2007
Tom Junod profiled Mister Rogers for Esquire in November 1998. The result is something of a tour de force of "Hold my hand, Tom" journalism, which the magazine for some reason deleted from its website:The old navy-blue sport jacket comes...
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Posted by greg at
9:35 PM
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Comments (1)
August 13, 2007
And that posse wants to meet the University of Washington behind the Magic Kingdom after school. Or Else. Let it be a lesson to you, junior publicists of academia: if you call out a marquee product of a major corporation...
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Posted by greg at
6:05 PM
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Comments (12)
August 12, 2007
Superflat Monogram [2003], Murakami Takashi's magical, animated tale of an adorable little girl named Aya and her keitai phone teaches us one of life's most important lessons: Louis Vuitton is a lovable, selfless panda with a heart of gold...
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Posted by greg at
3:56 PM
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Comments (0)
Yo Gabba Gabba debuts on Nick Jr and Noggin next week [August 20, set your playdates to stun], and David Itzkoff, the NY Times' man on the weird kiddish TV beat, has an abbreviated preview/profile of the OC/LA dads...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:38 AM
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Comments (2)
August 7, 2007
University of Washington pediatric researcher Dr. Dimitri Christakis made news today when a study he co-authored revealed that 1yo kids fall behind on their vocabulary development by almost 10% for every hour of Baby Einstein videos they watch each...
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Posted by greg at
11:22 PM
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Comments (2)
Whoa. These Elmogrified Air Force Ones are made to order by the Bronx-based airbrush artists of Airmagination. You may know their work from Vibe, The Source, or the collaborative mural in Fitty's crib. Personally, I'd get Elmo painted on the...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:11 PM
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Comments (3)
When most of the headlines about the latest results from University of Washington research into babies and TV focus on the endumbening effect Baby Einstein videos have on babies' vocabulary, are they missing the larger point? [Each hour kids...
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Posted by greg at
4:29 PM
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Comments (6)
August 3, 2007
Good L-rd, people, PLEASE tell me you are not out there choosing your mohels based on which celebrity offspring penises he's circumcised?! Just check out what happened to Babble contributor Sam Apple when he went chop-shopping at the JCC:Thirteen circumcisions...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
1:04 PM
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Comments (2)
August 1, 2007
Maybe it would be easier if all the companies left who don't sell hyper-popular licensed character toys contaminated with lead paint could please raise your hand? Anyone? Fisher-Price, whose Made in America toys we all gnawed on as children, has...
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Posted by greg at
9:27 PM
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Comments (9)
July 30, 2007
Old blogger/new dad Jason answers the burning question, "iPhone, Wiimote, or newborn baby: which has the best built-in accelerometer?" [here's a hint: it's the one with the Moro Reflex plug-in installed]. Surprisingly, he doesn't make the next leap of logic:...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
5:16 PM
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Comments (0)
July 26, 2007
Ah, summer, when we head to the beach and the pool and spend our days frolick--Holy crap, check out that dude's shoulder hair! It looks like he's wearing a freakin' sweater! And that's just the baby. The Carl (ATHF)...
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Posted by greg at
12:24 PM
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Comments (2)
July 24, 2007
Over the weekend, DT's Asian Culture Correspondent Haniel and I headed to Otakon 2007, the giant Anime and Japanese culture fan convention in Baltimore, to scout out anime artists [stay tuned for a roundup of the sweet finds]. We...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:03 AM
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Comments (3)
July 23, 2007
You know how sugared cereal manufacturers are hyping their voluntary advertising restrictions, where they say they won't market food with more than 200 calories or 12 grams of sugar per serving to kids under 6? And how they claim they're...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:07 PM
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Comments (1)
July 20, 2007
One for the old folks out there. Franklin Roosevelt was the jive-talking black Muppet on the early seasons of Sesame Street. Here he is doing a call-and-response alphabet with his mother to with a funk bassline and a voice...
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Posted by greg at
6:26 PM
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Comments (1)
OK, if I ever go to prison, my only hope is that I'll be able to do my time wisely. Perhaps learn a trade, a skill, a talent. Maybe there'll be a choreographer with a varied repertoire of numbers...
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Posted by greg at
3:39 PM
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Comments (3)
July 18, 2007
If only there hadn't been an earthquake and hundreds of injuries and several deaths and a fire in a nuclear power plant and a release of some sort of radiation cloud, my 15-second, on-the-phone interview about discovering the wooden...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
4:02 PM
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Comments (1)
July 8, 2007
Another random find from what's feeling more and more like the smartest kid's TV show in the world, Japanese publish broadcaster NHK's Pythagoras Switch. With 5,000 kanji and 102 phonetic syllables, it's no surprise that spoken Japanese has a...
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Posted by greg at
1:14 PM
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Comments (1)
July 4, 2007
I guess it's the Philippine equivalent of prison rodeo: 967 inmates doing a skit from a Japanese kid's TV show. Previously: Japanese TV silliness: Algorithm March (with ninjas)...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:54 AM
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Comments (2)
June 15, 2007
Spectacular. Morrinho ['little hill' in Portuguese] began in 1997 as the plaything of a 14-year-old boy in Pereirão, a hillside favela of Rio de Janiero. It's a toy model of the favela itself, constructed on an abandoned hill out...
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Posted by greg at
9:17 AM
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Comments (0)
June 14, 2007
Brand recall: Holy smokes, 1.5 million Thomas The Tank Engine toys are being recalled for lead paint. Wooden railway stuff sold over the last two years. See the CPSC for details [cpsc.gov, via dt reader john] And the Salary.com...
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Posted by greg at
10:12 AM
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Comments (0)
June 11, 2007
First off, let me just say what this is: Johnny Depp appeared on a Japanese TV show, where he was serenaded--no, ambushed and stunned into submission--by four little stage-managed girls, ages 4-8, dressed in Pirates of the Caribbean 3...
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Posted by greg at
10:24 PM
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Comments (6)
June 9, 2007
image: haring.com I generally like my Keith Haring on a wall, preferably loadbearing. [Did you know the Boy's Club of NY building which had that Keith Haring mural, the one in that Sesame Street segment, was just torn down?...
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Posted by greg at
11:26 AM
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Comments (0)
June 6, 2007
A reader called me out for harshing on Maisy, and she's right; though the particular book the kid and I read was lame, it's far from the worst example of brand-brainwashing crap that the Baby Industrial Complex foists on our...
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Posted by greg at
10:46 AM
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Comments (24)
June 4, 2007
You ever have one of those parenting moments that stops you dead in your tracks, and you break out in a cold sweat? Like when you find yourself agreeing with New York Magazine sex-makes-babies columnist Amy Sohn about something? Sohn...
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Posted by greg at
6:27 PM
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Comments (10)
June 3, 2007
Except that his creation hasn't come back to slaughter him--yet--Hobey Ford is Dr. Hannibal Chew to Oobi's Roy. The North Carolina puppeteer was issued a design patent in 1996 for Finger Puppets, the bulging eyes-on-ring device that turns a...
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Posted by greg at
10:01 PM
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Comments (3)
June 2, 2007
What month was it that I said the kid watches Japanese TV shows so that we can break the TV character - licensed merchandise - store aisle feedback loop? Way back in February? Yeah, well. I just ordered a...
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Posted by greg at
12:11 AM
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Comments (1)
May 30, 2007
So yesterday, while setting up for the kid's pre-school year-end pajama picnic [where the kid ate sushi and edamame with chopsticks, btw, a bit show offy, I admit], I moved a fellow parent's Volvo XC70. Smooth. And such a tiny...
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Posted by greg at
9:16 AM
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Comments (2)
May 29, 2007
I don't know much, but I know what I like, and I don't care what you think, which, when it comes to kids, really makes a mess of the whole idea of transmitting musical taste. Still, Roger Moore's excellent...
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Posted by greg at
9:26 AM
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Comments (0)
May 24, 2007
NOW I remember why I had this Maurice Sendak interview sitting open in my browser tabs for three days. I guess when I said Sendak was weird, I meant perceptive, while simultaneously making me realize how weird I am. Because...
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Posted by greg at
10:12 PM
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Comments (0)
May 23, 2007
I knew I'd seen that trippy rubber band mouth guy somewhere before. He was counting archaic, computer animated blobs on Sesame Street. Also, his name is Nobody. whoa. A Count of 10 [youtube] Also: 4 Related: Scanimate [scanimate.net]...
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Posted by greg at
10:52 AM
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Comments (1)
No word on whether he was vegan, but the evidence is incontrovertible: Jim Henson was crazy. A crazy genius. Who else would go on The Johnny Carson show with three rubber bands, a roll of Saranwrap, a slide projector, and...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:22 AM
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Comments (1)
May 22, 2007
Before anyone else falls for that handmaiden of the Farmer's Market Industrial Complex, Nina Planck claptrap about how vegan is no way to have a baby or raise a kid, have a watch of this documentary from Current TV....
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Posted by greg at
9:58 AM
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Comments (13)
May 16, 2007
Let me lift the burden of uncertainty from your lives right now: you will never need to wonder, as Kerrie did in an email yesterday, "Did you see Ellen on [DAY OF WEEK OR REALLY, ANY MOMENT IN TIME BETWEEN...
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Posted by greg at
7:34 AM
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Comments (2)
May 15, 2007
Holy Moses, what message are we sending to our kids when Tupac's dead, 50 Cent has been shot five dozen times, and yet Hip Hop Harry walks the streets unmolested? I won't be satisfied until this annoying, money-grubbing, toddler-brainwashing...
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Posted by greg at
11:46 PM
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Comments (6)
May 10, 2007
Allan Stone Gallery is an old school, but low key institution on Upper East Side, which began showing works by such emerging New York artists as Willem deKooning, Andy Warhol, and Eva Hesse. One of the gallery program's unifying...
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Posted by greg at
11:17 AM
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Comments (1)
If you're planning an old school Sesame Street disco pinball machine/Pointer Sisters theme for the kid's nursery--and who isn't? look at all the possibilities down there--brother, has Thydzik got the DIY clock tutorial for you. [There are even cleaned...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:12 AM
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Comments (1)
May 9, 2007
Your pervasive merchandising drives me crazy, and deep down, I really suspect one of your meta-missions is to help kids develop the skills required to have a deep, personal, lifelong relationship with television itself. But when Oscar makes totally...
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Posted by greg at
6:02 PM
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Comments (2)
Now normally, I got no truck with Errol Morris. Just the opposite, I'm one of his more ardent admirers. Thin Blue Line made me want to become a filmmaker. I've interviewed him and learned at his knee. And when his...
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Posted by greg at
1:54 PM
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Comments (3)
Before you even ask, the answer is, "No, there IS no ominous Philip Glass score that filmmaker Godfrey Reggio won't lay on top of a wordless montage of over-extended, over-aestheticized, over-seductive pseudo-critiques of our over-industrialized, over-mediated, over-networked society." For...
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Posted by greg at
1:30 PM
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Comments (2)
May 3, 2007
Gen-X dads in Orange County flee the mainstream TV industry and team up to make trip hoppy indie kid's show? DJ Lance Rock looking like he left Fat Albert for Dee-Lite? Clips and trailers pop on the YouTube? It's...
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Posted by greg at
10:54 PM
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Comments (5)
April 24, 2007
Detail: Katamari turtle, baby, and keyholder Day-um, it's as if Namco rolled a giant ball across the art world, and every cool artist stuck to it. Back in the day, Namco apparently published 82 Katamari Damacy wallpapers [for your...
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Posted by greg at
10:03 PM
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Comments (0)
Sure, they're awesome, you say, but what exactly are the colors of these plush Ultraman dolls trying to tell us? The official story from Japanese toy manufacturer MegaHouse is that the Pattern Doll Series are made this way to...
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Posted by greg at
9:12 PM
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Comments (0)
April 20, 2007
From now on, I pity the fool who tries to tell me pop craftiness is a 21st century trend. In 1984, "Miss Martha Originals, through a license with Big T Enterprises, (Mr. T’s licensing company) created a pattern book,...
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Posted by greg at
11:39 AM
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Comments (1)
April 17, 2007
We've expended an enormous amount of energy keeping the kid from touchscreening our laptops, so we're already doomed on this one, but maybe it's not too late for you. A dad named John loaded Firefox onto a surplus point-of-sale...
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Posted by greg at
11:52 AM
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Comments (0)
April 12, 2007
While you're listening to it, this thrasher teenager-in-living room cover version of Laurie Berkner Band's "We Are The Dinosaurs" is easily 10-15% less annoying than the original, but it also goes on almost a minute longer, a full 50%...
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Posted by greg at
2:37 PM
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Comments (0)
April 11, 2007
Does it explain a lot to know that Baby Boomers were apparently raised on a steady diet of lead paint, motor oil, and My Three Sons? According to Popular Mechanics [45 years, or in product safety testing and liability...
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Posted by greg at
4:06 PM
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Comments (0)
April 7, 2007
This hilarious mashup of Do The Right Thing using Sesame Street Little People from Fisher-Price is by filmmaker-bartender-madman-Canadian Brent Pike-Nurse [damn, I'm gonna run out of hyphens on the first line] and his comedic crew. In case you can't...
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Posted by greg at
4:18 PM
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Comments (1)
April 4, 2007
When we last heard from mompower newsletter publisher Veronika Robinson, she was writing articles about with titles like " Why I still breastfeed my eight-year-old girl." Now a segment of the Channel 4 documentary from 2006 about Veronika's extraordinary...
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Posted by greg at
10:11 PM
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Comments (6)
March 30, 2007
Whatryagonnado? Here's a quote from Emily Bazelon's article about what the results of the latest NICHD day care study really do and don't mean[study author Margaret] Burchinal points out that on average, day care for infants and toddlers is worse...
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Posted by greg at
11:15 AM
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Comments (8)
March 29, 2007
This is the story of ten vaguely familiar-looking-but-unplaceable and desperate-for-attention strangers with undiagnosed narcissist personality disorder picked to visit a pop-up store in a limply decorated loft, have their picture taken with four even more obscure and desperate NPD's...
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Posted by greg at
6:17 PM
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Comments (0)
You want to throw down over TV in the backseat, Chrysler? Time and place, baby, time and place. What, you think I'm not Sirius? How about right now on eBay. When it comes to backseat entertainment, the Scion xB is...
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Posted by greg at
4:22 PM
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Comments (1)
So this is how it's gonna be? Well, bring it on. Sirius and Chrysler will offer live Backseat TV programming from Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, and Cartoon Network for $20/month. Non-stop corporate merchotainment in a minivan. Holy crap, people, it's...
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Posted by greg at
11:52 AM
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Comments (11)
March 21, 2007
Growing up Mormon, we knew an above-average number of large families, up to the "Hey, now you can field your own football team!" variety. On a completely unrelated note, here's a candy bar commercial from England. [youtube via neatorama]...
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Posted by greg at
9:21 AM
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Comments (3)
March 20, 2007
Oops. I made the mistake of inviting the kid over to watch this Chris Ware animation, which was released as a preview to the new This American Life TV show that starts Thursday on Showtime. I figured, cartoons, cute...
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Posted by greg at
3:19 PM
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Comments (3)
March 19, 2007
Holy Shel Silverstein! The kid picked The Giving Tree for the first time this morning. After I stopped crying, I went online to see what the hell is up with that boy, who was miserable his whole life, despite everything...
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Posted by greg at
1:45 PM
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Comments (12)
First, TMX Elmo, now the Teletubbies. One day after the revolution, citizen parents will recognize the late 1990's as the beginning of the New Dark Ages of kidsploitation. But for now, the marketing and licensing overlords cling tight to power...
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Posted by greg at
10:47 AM
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Comments (7)
March 13, 2007
Dr Terence Tao, 31, is a fast-rising star in the mathematics world. He did some of his groundbreaking work on compressed sensing with a colleague, Dr. Emmanuel Candès, while dropping their respective kids off at the same preschool. He...
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Posted by greg at
11:17 AM
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Comments (3)
March 10, 2007
You kind of forget the multitude of clips that have been retired from the 'Street for one reason or another. Kermit, for example, was set free from CTW's nominally non-profit pen as part The Muppet Show spinoff [Did you know...
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Posted by greg at
6:43 PM
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Comments (3)
For a long time, the version of this classic clip floating around YouTube of the transmogrifying, four-armed, counting Swami from Sesame Street was missing the first part; it started counting at four. But thanks to the efforts of a...
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Posted by greg at
5:11 PM
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Comments (0)
March 5, 2007
Time was, having a kid meant you could only sing along to your gangsta rap when you were driving alone. But after seeing comedian Adam Buxton's real-time-edited rendition of NWA's "F**k the Police", I'd say the times are a'changing....
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Posted by greg at
10:04 PM
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Comments (6)
So we're watching a few vintage Sesame Street clips the YouTube this weekend, when we see a seriously vintage version of "Mah Na Mah Na" under the end credits of this 35th Anniversary montage. Apparently, it dates from 1969,...
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Posted by greg at
2:06 PM
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Comments (1)
March 3, 2007
Saw this the other night; it's pretty damn funny. Thanks to DT reader John, who just forwarded the online version. The Colbert Report has uncovered the latest threat to The American Way of Life--AND The Laws of Nature [and...
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Posted by greg at
12:07 AM
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Comments (0)
March 2, 2007
I first learned about the existence of Glenn Beck when Turner Broadcasting bought an adspot on Daddy Types, then ran a promo for Beck's hard, deep probe of online porn addiction on CNN. From the amazing awkward silence in this...
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Posted by greg at
10:11 AM
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Comments (0)
February 21, 2007
Artist Christine Domanic made this sweet, sweet crocheted TV with Pitfall playing on it under her etsy handle, JackRabbit. Which does not, unfortunately, mean it is for sale. Of course, it doesn't matter for you, because if it had...
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Posted by greg at
11:51 PM
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Comments (1)
February 20, 2007
If you're ever in need of a five-minute music video to mellow the kid out a bit, there's always DJ Klock's "Theme." Klock is a hard-to-classify turntablist with a slight jazz overtone and an appreciation for the offbeat and...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:21 AM
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Comments (1)
February 19, 2007
This just in from the Show You Can't See and Stuff You Can't Buy Department: In a long interview with Crown Dozen in 2005 about the explosion of the Ugly Dolls phenomenon [which is only continuing, of course. There were...
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Posted by greg at
9:16 AM
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Comments (3)
February 17, 2007
On the bright side, when Lazytown comes on TV, you can turn it off. If you worked for Magnus Scheving--or if you set one single foot in Iceland, which he apparently rules with a rubber-gloved fist--there's no escape. At...
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Posted by greg at
12:55 PM
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Comments (0)
February 16, 2007
I stopped by Katsucon 13 this morning, the big anime convention that happens to be down the street from our joint in DC. [Yes, I just called our house a joint. But after chilling at the con, my nerdmeter is...
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Posted by greg at
6:36 PM
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Comments (0)
February 13, 2007
Dutch has taken a stab at it by assembling a rather long and esoteric list of video clips. Daddy Types has gone about it piecemeal, just throwing a NatGeo African watering hole cam up here, a Patt Smith there, a...
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Posted by greg at
1:18 AM
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Comments (0)
February 12, 2007
"The Lutherans had Davey & Goliath and I wondered what we Baptists could do for children's television," said Dr. Paul Stevens, President of the Southern Baptist Radio & Television Commission. He was talking about Jot, a series of mod,...
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Posted by greg at
8:15 AM
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Comments (0)
February 11, 2007
I gotta say, I don't know where to start with this McDonald's commercial. First off, they got rid of the damn pies in several key European countries, so no French, Dutch, or German dad in his right mind would...
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Posted by greg at
9:17 PM
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Comments (8)
Wow. When she appeared on Kids Are People, Too! [!!] in 1980, punk powerhouse Patti Smith namechecked Maria Callas and Mick Jagger as her favorite singers, and then she took a run at Debbie Boone's "You Light Up My...
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Posted by greg at
3:01 PM
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Comments (4)
February 5, 2007
Welcome to the Hotel Nickelodeon. You can check out any time you want, but you can. never. le-e-eave. After making a mad and credible--hey, it had me fooled--break with children's television in order to launch his indie rock career,...
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Posted by greg at
12:14 PM
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Comments (2)
February 4, 2007
"They have such high self-esteem, they can't wait to be born!" Mr. Show - Prenatal Pageant [youtube via mefi]...
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Posted by greg at
5:17 PM
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Comments (1)
February 2, 2007
Well this is five kinds of cool right here. Designer Richard Hutten gave Dutch TV station KRO a tour of his house in Rotterdam, where he lives with his two sons. The creator of such kid-friendly classics as the...
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Posted by greg at
4:15 PM
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Comments (0)
January 30, 2007
I'll just say that if this ad were for sale at Ikea, you would not find it in the Kids department. Ikea Commercial :: Tidy Up [youtube via dt reader grant]...
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Posted by greg at
7:26 PM
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Comments (10)
January 26, 2007
I've been trying to cut down on my GWB:WTF?? Moments for '07, so I didn't know until just now that the State of the Union address included this giant WTF, a salute to Our American Hero, Julie Aigner-Clark--the founder of...
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Posted by greg at
10:11 PM
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Comments (2)
January 11, 2007
Child Friendly Australia is an advocacy initiative launched last year by National Association for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (NAPCAN). Their first advertisement, titled "Children See, Children Do," is aimed at getting parents--and all adults, according to the...
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Posted by greg at
1:00 PM
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Comments (2)
January 9, 2007
Anyone besides me have an idea what the lead time is for a 26-episode television show? Four months after the death of her "Crocodile Hunter" father, eight-year-old Bindi Irwin is poised to step into his shoes, embarking on a high-profile...
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Posted by greg at
12:22 PM
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Comments (1)
January 8, 2007
If the phrase "guitar-strumming earth mother" doesn't make you fling your remote, full-on Wii-style, at your TV screen, then you may read this NYT article about Laurie Berkner and the debut of the second season of Jack's Big Music Show...
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Posted by greg at
7:40 PM
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Comments (2)
January 2, 2007
Unpacking the diaper bag today for the first time in over a month, and I realized we had Pampers from three countries: the US, France, and Japan. The Japanese ones [lower left] are far softer than either of the...
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Posted by greg at
2:54 PM
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Comments (4)
January 1, 2007
In the Sesame Beginnings DVD's, Elmo's The Dude-like dad Louie stays at home to take care of him, gives him baths, even schedules his playgroups. [Clearly, that last one is a fantasy.] Now, in a new Sesame Street special...
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Posted by greg at
8:03 AM
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Comments (2)
December 20, 2006
They make TV with the comedians they have, not the comedians we want. Of the few I've seen all the way through, Mad TV's gags seem about 10% funny [i.e., they go on 10x too long]. Tickle Me Emo...
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Posted by greg at
2:56 PM
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Comments (2)
December 19, 2006
If it's true, then the apparently child-free Liam just didn't spin it right. Because if there's one thing a baby's good for, it's taking the blame for farts. RAISING A STINK AT THE OFFICE XMAS PARTY... [...
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Posted by greg at
4:59 PM
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Comments (0)
Chad Pennington and some of his fellow NY Jets taped a segment on Sesame Street last week. In grand "leave no metaphor unturned" sportswriting tradition, the NY Times' Karen Crouse basically tries to credit Elmo for helping the Jets recover...
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Posted by greg at
2:05 PM
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Comments (2)
December 15, 2006
Last summer photoblogger extraordinaire David F. Gallagher snapped a picture of an abandoned amusement park car in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. If the carbon dating tests come back positive, the photo is definitive proof that The Wiggles are descended from those...
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Posted by greg at
9:25 PM
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Comments (0)
December 14, 2006
OK, I swear, I'll stop for a while. It's just that the third day of jet lag is the toughest, and I've got the last, daybreak shift with the kid, and it turns out the National Geographic watering hole...
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Posted by greg at
6:14 AM
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Comments (1)
December 12, 2006
This will be the last post about ye random Japanese kid's TV program for at least several hours. If you're fed up, I'm sorry, but it's the ninjas' fault. Pitagora Suicchi's Algorithm March, solo, then together with ninjas [youtube]...
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Posted by greg at
10:46 PM
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Comments (2)
And here I thought traveling 28 hours straight would be enough for a clean break with Japan, and yet here we are, slogging through jet lag by watching episodes of Pitagora Suitchi online all afternoon. Visiting Masahiko Sato's website,...
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Posted by greg at
5:47 PM
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Comments (0)
One discovery last week was a pair of really beautiful, smart, and funny animated segments on an NHK kid's TV show called Pitagora Suicchi [Pythagoras Switch]. Juppon Anime [10 Stick Anime] is a story or game told by 10 animated...
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Posted by greg at
12:42 PM
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Comments (3)
December 4, 2006
At Salon.com, King Kaufman pays tribute to The Wiggas on the occasion of Greg Wigga's retirement:The four men, who are white, affect the personas and speech of black American hip-hop stars. Each wears a distinctive, solid-colored shirt onstage and in...
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Posted by greg at
7:39 PM
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Comments (1)
November 30, 2006
Welllll, actually, it is pretty funny. Check out Brian's 2003 report of the rock 'n roll world's stunned reaction to news that The Wiggles were breaking up. The reason: not illness, not Yoko, not drugs--though Jeff's 'lude problem was...
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Posted by greg at
11:29 PM
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Comments (1)
November 29, 2006
Whoa. The Wiggles have called a press conference to make a 'major announcement.' I need a drink. update: Well, that didn't take long:Page's departure will not make any difference to the power of Brand Wiggles, the company's breakfast cereals group...
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Posted by greg at
10:40 AM
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Comments (1)
November 28, 2006
Remember how Barney's lawyers had been hounding a guy for years, trying to make him take his clearly legal parody offline? Well, they won't be bothering him anymore. The EFF sued them, and they agreed to back down and pay...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:53 PM
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Comments (0)
November 24, 2006
Yes, it's true. Cry-it-out doesn't work as well past age six. This Belgian commercial suggests an alternative way to avoid this scenario, but if you're reading Daddy Types, it's probably already too late for you. Note: If you have...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:46 PM
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Comments (1)
So I'm supposed to tell the kid that San Francisco is the headquarters of Starfleet, the capital of the whole Alpha Quadrant, but that somehow "Zed" overtakes "Zee" in the alphabet of the 24th century? Not on this side...
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Posted by greg at
7:13 AM
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Comments (2)
November 13, 2006
Sure, you're sick of Elmo now, but maybe the problem's not Elmo, but you? Maybe if you had a better attitude... Maybe fighting the Elmo juggernaut is the wrong approach, a needless waste of parental energy. Maybe we need...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:26 AM
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Comments (3)
November 12, 2006
The newly redesigned VW Touran is a Golf-based 5- or 7-seat mini-MPV that's been getting great reviews in Europe. But since no one in Malibu drives such a thing, VW's execs know there's no market in the US, so don't...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
2:58 PM
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Comments (6)
November 11, 2006
Richard McGuire is not the only fan of Oskar Fischinger's animated films, but as with McGuire's own influence, there's much more I didn't know. Fischinger was singularly focused on integrating music and visual art. And he created the abstract masterpiece...
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Posted by greg at
12:32 PM
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Comments (0)
Maybe it's a problem of overfamiliarity causing design blindness, but if I relax a bit and just watch, some of the graphic design on the kids' TV channels is actually pretty nice. The Noggin graphic identity, for example, with the...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:02 AM
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Comments (1)
November 10, 2006
Now Modern Day Dad's the real expert on this, but I do know that the kid will, from time to time, ask for Jack's Big Music Show by name. And since it's about 99% less annoying than The Wiggles,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:26 PM
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Comments (2)
November 7, 2006
First Bert & Ernie, now Oscar's 'roommate'. You don't need to see a dozen beautifully restored brownstones and a coffee bar to know that Sesame Street is gentrifying, but fast. [image via tvnewser, who's got the story, too]...
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Posted by greg at
1:05 AM
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Comments (1)
October 31, 2006
So I was thinking that Mr. Howell's name didn't sound right, so I started Googling around a bit. I was right, after I was wrong, that is: it wasn't P. Was it J.? Thurston J. Howell III.? Or just Thurston...
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Posted by greg at
7:01 PM
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Comments (0)
I am absolutely slammed at work, with a deadline for today. The kid's off to Grandma's for Halloween, but here is what she did yesterday: Sesame Street Sesame Street Looked for the Wiggles, weren't on. Read a dozen little...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:14 AM
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Comments (8)
October 29, 2006
If you're like me, you were despairing over how you could ever properly convey to your newborn child the important, formative influence Saved By The Bell played in your life. Without, you know, bringing up Showgirls or the Screech sex...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
1:59 PM
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Comments (4)
Seems that Greg Page, aka Greg Wiggle, is fairly sick. Let's hope he's actually just holding out for more creative control. But just in case, don't send those 2000 season tapes to the Goodwill just yet. You're my backup...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:47 AM
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Comments (6)
October 24, 2006
Was it something in the air? Which came first? Because this psychedelic little Creative Playthings puppet theater, with walls full of little puppet openings, is dated 1968, the same year that Laugh-in, with its joke wall full of little...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:26 AM
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Comments (1)
October 23, 2006
As the creator of the greatest crass animation since Beavis & Butthead, John Kricfalusi knows a thing or two about precipitating the decline of civilization. Since by his count, it happened sometime in the late Sixties or early Seventies,...
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Posted by greg at
5:53 PM
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Comments (2)
October 21, 2006
Though it is neither Swedish nor a kitten [nor a penetrating (sic) expose' into America's addiction to porn], the flesh-toned latex pregnancy belly and bust worn by Julia Louis-Dreyfus during season 2 of Arrested Development has attracted considerable interest...
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Posted by greg at
12:01 PM
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Comments (1)
October 20, 2006
Friend of DT Matt Haber did a sit-down with the Wonder Showzen folks for Radar:Chatman: But you know, the other thing is, like, we'd have to clean it off every time. It would react and cry. It's a production problem,...
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Posted by greg at
10:34 PM
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Comments (0)
October 10, 2006
While there seems to be no solution as yet for the awkwardness that is a first birthday party [1], Big Daddy Drew does have some suggestions for saving the talking-with-dads-you-don't-know situation--by turning the conversation to the NFL:Bring up a game...
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Posted by greg at
6:12 PM
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Comments (2)
October 5, 2006
Not sure why Morgan Freeman is doing the voiceover for this, but it's pretty damn funny. Watch it when the kids are asleep, though, unless you really want them to hear Elmo talking like that to the fish. Sesame Streets...
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Posted by greg at
10:51 PM
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Comments (1)
October 1, 2006
LOT 191: AUGMENT EMBRYO INCUBATOR MODULE, [est. $300-350] If you didn't already know Paramount was throwing a massive, EVERYTHING MUST GO! auction of Star Trek props, costumes and memorabilia at Christie's this week [Oct. 5, 6 &7], you probably...
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Posted by greg at
10:03 AM
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Comments (2)
September 29, 2006
Just what it sounds like. Apparently, there's this guy--he's a carpenter, so he has this hammer--who's trying to save this girl? Mister Rogers Playing Donkey Kong [youtube via kotaku]...
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Posted by greg at
9:38 PM
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Comments (1)
September 26, 2006
Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, provides a sweet lid to the weak through the valley of hairlessness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the savior of bald children. And I...
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Posted by greg at
9:50 PM
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Comments (4)
September 25, 2006
The kid's been on a ballet kick [sic] lately. However they emerge, it's interesting how gender coded interests are probably reinforced and encouraged by parents almost without thinking. Would she stay as interested in ballet if we didn't respond so...
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Posted by greg at
10:32 AM
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Comments (8)
September 23, 2006
More news from the front in the global war on cartoon vegetables, who threaten our children and our American Way of Life: Spinach: The Other Deadly Leaf Even though his spinach grower, Boskovich Farms, is in as-yet e.coli-free Ventura...
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Posted by greg at
10:25 AM
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Comments (2)
September 18, 2006
I guess Melanie Martinez's problem wasn't that she made a sex joke seven years ago; it's just that she wasn't famous. Completely unrelated: Cho's routine about Ass-Master. [youtube, you might want headphones at work]...
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Posted by greg at
5:06 PM
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Comments (0)
Who'da thought? Nickelodeon not only bought GoCityKids.com last winter [$1 million, if you're keeping score at home], they've launched what the NY Times all but calls a MySpace For Parents, but what the rest of us might call a hosted...
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Posted by greg at
3:09 PM
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Comments (4)
September 13, 2006
Big news for the 2006 Holiday licensing season:In the new Holly Hobbie & Friends series, Holly herself is the great-granddaughter of the "original" Holly Hobbie and feels a deep sense of connection to her personality, creativity and warmth. Holly...
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Posted by greg at
9:12 AM
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Comments (4)
September 6, 2006
Gee, all these posts about Mercedeses and I have to read about this in the blogs?We are developing a new docu-drama program for a major network about Manhattan's most glamorous parents and the issues they face living in the "Capital...
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Posted by greg at
11:05 AM
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Comments (1)
September 5, 2006
We've only watched Jack's Big Music Show on Noggin a few times, but I had a call today, so...[click], there it was. As I watched the first few minutes with the kid, though, [who loves it, by the way]...
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Posted by greg at
3:49 PM
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Comments (1)
This YouTube clip only shows it's been watched 4,890 times, but I swear, we've watched it that many times this week. And it's only Tuesday. "Taba Naba" has consistently been the kid's most requested video clip when she wants...
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Posted by greg at
10:27 AM
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Comments (4)
Researchers at Vanderbilt University have shown that by the age of two, most kids have already developed important life skills like webcamming, but are just beginning to learn how to yell at a TV screen. The study sat kids...
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Posted by greg at
8:43 AM
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Comments (1)
September 1, 2006
Over at BoingBoing, Xeni's all freaked out. You'd think she'd never seen a fully illustrated, nothing-left-out, 1971 Danish sex-ed book for preschoolers by Per Holm Knudsen before. [attention t-workers: that first link starts with an illustration from the book;...
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Posted by greg at
12:02 PM
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Comments (2)
August 31, 2006
She's no Grace Slick, and there's enough show business insider dialogue to make me wonder when Griffin Mill is going to show up, but here's Amy Sedaris playing Snow White with seven defecting dwarves on The 'Street. Part one...
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Posted by greg at
10:17 AM
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Comments (0)
August 30, 2006
A decade before there was Pointer Sisters pinball, there was "Jazzy Spies." Named after the ten spies who opened their coats to reveal numbers 1-10 at the end, "Jazzy Spies," or "Jazz Numbers," was the trippy animated counting series...
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Posted by greg at
2:21 PM
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Comments (0)
In 1978, Stephen Jay Gould theorized that Walt Disney and his animators gradually discovered what it took evolutionary psychologists decades to prove: that baby-like features and proportions elicit an "automatic surge of disarming tenderness" in adults: The brain grows...
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Posted by greg at
11:21 AM
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Comments (1)
August 26, 2006
The kid at dinner last night: "Mommy, I want to lick you." Mommy: "No, thank you." Kid [incredulous]: "No! You are not ice cream or a lollipop!" [image of Shatner's roast via bolt]...
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Posted by greg at
12:15 AM
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Comments (0)
August 25, 2006
No, not that Mickey. Maurice Sendak's In The Night Kitchen has become one of the kid's favorite books to read on our trips to the library. At first, I was worried that the kid might be traumatized by a story...
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Posted by greg at
7:52 AM
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Comments (9)
August 24, 2006
Damn you, Bloglines. I've been poking around for a couple of months, trying to find a slick way to compile all the video links we use into a single, ready-in-one-click spot, so you can--or I, frankly--can find just the video...
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Posted by greg at
10:34 PM
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Comments (2)
The EFF filed a suit against Barney's lawyers, who have spent almost five knuckleheaded years threatening a guy named Justin Frankel [Dr. Justin Frankel, thank you very much], making dubious claims that his online parody about "The Enemy's" true nature...
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Posted by greg at
11:37 AM
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Comments (0)
August 19, 2006
Honestly, I don't see an educational crisis looming in the US of A. So what if 70% of kids can't pick Iraq out on a map? The 5% whose National Guard parents just shipped out for their third tour...
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Posted by greg at
3:22 PM
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Comments (1)
August 18, 2006
"Thugaboo" is Marlon, Shawn, and Keenen Wayans' licensing company, MSK Merchandising LLC's..."...very first children's lifestyle property...It's our goal to create toys, books and videos that kids will love and parents can feel good about buying," remarked Keenen Ivory Wayans....
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Posted by greg at
9:22 PM
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Comments (0)
August 15, 2006
The Wide Elmo's World of Shorts. The Weekly Elmo's World News. Elmo's World According To Garp. It's An Elmo's World After All. OK, I'll stop now: They're not loving Elmo on the West Coast. In the LA Times, Joel...
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Posted by greg at
3:40 PM
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Comments (2)
August 11, 2006
The New York Observer's Rebecca Dana hangs out in Tompkins Square Park with toddler mom/Girls Club volunteer/one-time anal sex advocate--and ex-Sprout host--Melanie Martinez, who trots out her cheery greetings to the neighborhood homeless dudes. Even Mister Rogers Had a Past...
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Posted by greg at
2:14 PM
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Comments (0)
August 9, 2006
How would the shorties of this world get around if it weren't for New Zealand? Think about it: Mountain Buggies, Phil & Ted's, Ents, TV Karts... The TV Kart is the most popular television-equipped, mini-car/grocery cart in New Zealand, and...
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Posted by greg at
9:15 PM
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Comments (6)
August 5, 2006
Honestly, at what point do we consider Sesame Street right alongside every other company who, under the pretense of early education, uses a television show to sell your kid toys and books and videos and gear? The Times has an...
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Posted by greg at
9:03 PM
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Comments (10)
August 3, 2006
How do you know if the journalism career isn't working out? When you interview Elmo for TV Guide and he comes off sounding like the sane one. Still, Elmo throws the guy a bone, telling him when the world might...
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Posted by greg at
11:14 AM
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Comments (0)
July 25, 2006
First off, let me apologize if any of your kids have been affected by that Shimajiro the Tiger toilet training video I posted last week. We have banned it in our house, starting today. Both the animated tiger and the...
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Posted by greg at
9:48 PM
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Comments (3)
Executives at PBS Sprout fired host Melanie Martinez immediately after they learned--from her--that she had made a totally-safe-for-work PSA spoof called "Technical Virgin" seven years ago. PBS management want you to remember this important lesson, Sproutlets: your life can...
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Posted by greg at
9:56 AM
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Comments (7)
July 20, 2006
Whoa, YouTube has apparently updated their terms of use to give the company and its successors a perpetual, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use the content you upload to it anyway they see fit. Just so you know. BoingBoing's got a...
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Posted by greg at
12:50 PM
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Comments (0)
July 19, 2006
A little Ren & Stimpy chaser for your Punky Brewster DVD cocktail, perhaps? John Kricfalusi is releasing a new double DVD set, Ren & Stimpy: The Lost Episodes., lost from Spike TV, that is. Among the many tantalizing features...
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Posted by greg at
8:24 AM
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Comments (1)
After the baby comes, it can feel like a full house. You try to adapt, but in a small space, everyone's just too close for comfort. You may fight over who's the boss, but it's just one of those facts...
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Posted by greg at
12:08 AM
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Comments (1)
July 18, 2006
And apparently, his wife has giant black spongy nipples. [youtube via cbb]...
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Posted by greg at
8:20 PM
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Comments (1)
From an interview Jim O'Kane did with Johnny Whitaker of Family Affair--and The Dr. Zod & Johnny Show: Of course, the fact that there were twins - - I mean, Buffy and Jody made Family Affair - I mean,...
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Posted by greg at
9:55 AM
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Comments (2)
As if intent on proving that Japan doesn't have a lock on Asian Video Weirdness, some egg loving Koreans created this Flash animated song about, well, loving eggs. If your kid has a problem eating eggs, this cutey cute...
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Posted by greg at
1:06 AM
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Comments (2)
July 17, 2006
Let your kid watch whatever you want, but just make sure the TV is anchored to the wall. According to a single Houston-area hospital's statistics, front-heavy TV's have fallen on toddlers 11 times in the last year, causing five deaths...
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Posted by greg at
1:40 PM
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Comments (1)
July 13, 2006
We're right in the middle of toilet training--so far so good, and the only bribes we've been using are the underpants themselves, and the shopping for them, and the opening the package, and the special underwear box to put...
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Posted by greg at
4:13 PM
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Comments (1)
July 12, 2006
More empirical proof that baby-parading doesn't work if: you're on national television. you're talking to Chris Berman. you're at the Home Run Derby. you wrap your kid's head like a Japanese gift melon. you're a total tool. "Dad, I'm...
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Posted by greg at
3:14 PM
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Comments (7)
July 10, 2006
1) All the babies in this early 80's Huggies commercial got the kid pretty psyched. 2) All the Transoformers in this commercial might have a similar effect--on you. 3) This Grape Nuts ["The Energy Flakes!"] ad is stunning. Can...
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Posted by greg at
4:01 PM
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Comments (3)
Safety Can Be Fun, you say? Safety can also be a scary acid trip. And for those who saw this Mr. Yuk poison control center PSA in the early 1970's, it can be a nasty flashback. Sorry. Mr. Yuk...
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Posted by greg at
8:44 AM
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Comments (4)
July 5, 2006
The kid's buzzing around the house, asking to watch The Street, which of course, doesn't start for another 15 minutes. So I suggest to her, "How about if we let Elmer count down for us, and when it's fifteen minutes,...
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Posted by greg at
10:20 AM
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Comments (2)
June 30, 2006
Andrea Bocelli, the Great Ruiner Of Weddings himself, was just on Sesame Street, singing a goodnight duet version of his one stinkin' song with Elmo. By the second verse of "Time to. Close your eyes," the kid's lip was...
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Posted by greg at
11:26 AM
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Comments (6)
June 27, 2006
As you school the kid in the finer points of early 80's synth hits like Ebn Ozn ["AEIOU and sometimes Y"], The Buggles, and "Shock The Monkey," you'll need to teach him about the Fairlight, the first digital sampling...
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Posted by greg at
8:57 PM
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Comments (1)
June 26, 2006
ex-Disney CEO Michael Eisner's investment company just announced it has acquired Team Baby Entertainment, which makes college sports-themed educational [sic] DVD's for infants and toddlers. Among the officially licensed videos in the series so far:Baby Irish (Notre Dame), Baby...
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Posted by greg at
11:37 AM
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Comments (7)
June 25, 2006
This extended funk mix of "Superstition" by a young Stevie Wonder ends with a shout out to Sesame Street. Dig the little cat shakin' it on the fire escape, man. And then there's the Stevie Wonder remix of the...
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Posted by greg at
9:00 PM
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Comments (0)
June 15, 2006
"Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." - Proverbs 22:6 [via robotwisdom, the vid, not the scripture, that is]...
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Posted by greg at
8:47 AM
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Comments (4)
June 13, 2006
I don't know at what age it's appropriate to start teaching your kid about verbs ["Verb! That's what's happening!"] or adverbs ["Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, get your adverbs here"], or whether it's right to even pretend that the legislative process...
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Posted by greg at
10:45 AM
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Comments (1)
May 31, 2006
I don't remember this song, "Daddy Dear," from my own days on The Street--or should I say from my first days on The Street--but 10 years ago, when a Toronto mom couldn't remember the words to sing it to...
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Posted by greg at
11:33 PM
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Comments (3)
May 30, 2006
If you can get past the story of an STD surge at Florida retirement communities, the last Human Nature column in Slate before a two-month hiatus is a fertile field of pregnancy- and kid-related science findings from all over. Guess...
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Posted by greg at
8:07 PM
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Comments (0)
May 24, 2006
"Cuz the TV teaches us what our parents don't have time to sayyyy" In yet another confirmation of the depressingly awesome prophetic accuracy of South Park: The Movie, a mother participating in the latest Kaiser Family Foundation study on infants...
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Posted by greg at
9:43 PM
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Comments (5)
May 23, 2006
Then you'll be having some audio-induced flashbacks when you watch these toy commercials from the 70's. Can't say I've ever played--or even heard of--The Masterpiece Game before--that's the one where you buy the world's great art at auction for $100,000....
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Posted by greg at
1:30 PM
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Comments (2)
May 22, 2006
Look, I can't pretend I'm automatically and irrevocably opposed to babies watching television. I mean, the kid watched her first movie from my lap when she was not even 4 weeks old. [Granted, it was John Cassavetes' Shadows, and she...
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Posted by greg at
10:57 PM
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Comments (3)
May 19, 2006
My daughter doesn't realize it yet, of course, but she's very lucky. Lucky to have been born into a household where there is no desire to film shamelessly contrived scenes of scatalogical slapstick in the feeble hope of securing...
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Posted by greg at
8:22 AM
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Comments (1)
So there's an early 19th century poem by William Roscoe called "The Butterfly Ball and The Grasshopper Feast." An illustrated children's book version came out in 1973, which was accompanied/followed by a legendary [if esoterically so] album of future British...
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Posted by greg at
12:41 AM
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Comments (1)
May 15, 2006
Maybe the real reason only 26% of babies don't have TV's in their nurseries is because there hasn't been enough infant-targeted media to justify it. That, my friends, is about to change, thanks to the magnanimous spirit of News...
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Posted by greg at
10:08 AM
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Comments (0)
May 5, 2006
Very interesting. It's a veritable boomtown in the preschool video and tv market these days, what with all the Baby Einstein, Brainy Baby educational schmeducational stuff, and the new Sesame Beginnings DVD's, and a host of independently produced options which...
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Posted by greg at
10:34 PM
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Comments (1)
May 3, 2006
A group with a lot of work ahead of it, The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, has filed a complaint with the FTC which seeks to stop Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby from making any actual educational or developmental claims...
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Posted by greg at
10:27 AM
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Comments (5)
April 24, 2006
Two words: Wai Lana?? I didn't even know about this PBS yoga show until this morning, when a random Noggin story about a lost puppy sent the kid into inconsolably weepy convulsions. We'd just decided last night that her language...
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Posted by greg at
12:54 PM
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Comments (2)
The price of liberty from primary colored tyranny is eternal vigilance. The battle over pink or blue pastels was nothing; that ends at the layette. The assault of bright red/yellow/blue plastic toys and gear and furniture goes on forever, usually...
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Posted by greg at
7:16 AM
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Comments (3)
April 22, 2006
I have no idea. April 12th. That puts them one degree of separation from both Sarah Silverman and Adam Carolla [who by now should be starring in a reality show about building a crib, no?] In unrelated but equally...
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Posted by greg at
10:57 AM
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Comments (1)
April 20, 2006
The kid's got a cold, so we've been dosing her lethargic self up on television, including The Wiggles this morning. Where my jaw dropped at a segment from the live show: Captain Feathersword cutting loose with a rock anthem...
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Posted by greg at
5:25 PM
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Comments (1)
April 19, 2006
In a thread on Metafilter, a bunch of people compiled a massive list of classic Sesame Street clips on YouTube. In a serious good karma move, J.D. has organized all the links into a single blog post. Clear the calendar....
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Posted by greg at
11:48 PM
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Comments (3)
April 13, 2006
Words like "evil," "losers" "plopping" and "Luddites" fill NY Times TV critic Virginia Heffernan's review of Sesame Beginnings, the 0-2 DVD series that has T. Berry Brazelton looking for a touchpoint alright, right on da kisser. Heffernan plops down [sic]...
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Posted by greg at
10:51 PM
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Comments (0)
April 8, 2006
So Make Magazine's blog has another recap of ABC's American Inventor series. The episode this week featured a dad who invented an egg-shaped car seat that allows the baby to rotate inside it in the event of an accident. Not...
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Posted by greg at
3:17 PM
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Comments (3)
April 2, 2006
Taking me out . Originally uploaded by My Ultraman Daddy. When we were in Japan last summer, I tried to find some books from Tatsuya Miyanishi's Otousan wa Ultraman/ Daddy is Ultraman series, but only ended up with Daddy's...
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Posted by greg at
5:13 PM
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Comments (1)
Here's a quick recap of the NY Times Magazine's love letter to The Wiggles: The Wiggles is like one big family--did you know they carry their own luggage?--who really do it all for the kids, who love them. Which means...
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Posted by greg at
11:44 AM
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Comments (1)
April 1, 2006
David Itzkoff [who, judging from his MySpace page, is the ur-Grup] writes about Wonder Showzen in the NY Times. There's a lot of background for the 95% of Times readers who have no idea was Showzen is, and then there's...
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Posted by greg at
11:55 AM
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Comments (1)
March 30, 2006
Seems like the promoting they did for the Mercedes R-Class minivan is not such a stretch after all. Here is a link to the Stones' commercial for Rice Krispies from 1963. [They were working before you were even born!!] Rolling...
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Posted by greg at
12:19 PM
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Comments (1)
March 22, 2006
Friend Of DT Matt Haber interviewed the creators of Wonder Showzen for an article on Salon.com. Co-creator John Lee explains how, when it's in the context of shooting, the fragile-little-mind-warping things the show's child actors say are totally harmless. The...
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Posted by greg at
8:45 AM
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Comments (3)
March 21, 2006
You know that barebones, built-in commercial overkill and child media saturation filter that most parents have, the one that goes, "Well, if it's Sesame Street, it must be OK, right?" Somehow, after years of Elmosploitation merchandising and the Children's Television...
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Posted by greg at
5:25 PM
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Comments (4)
March 19, 2006
You can see the logic, right? That it just wouldn't be right to separate a 3-year-old from her mother for the duration of her stay in the Big Brother house? Even if the mother's an ex-Playboy Playmate and former Miss...
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Posted by greg at
3:11 PM
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Comments (0)
It's like HR Puffinstuff-san. Or Wonder Showzen but actually for kids. In the early 1970's, there was a children's TV series in Japan called Kure Kure Takora [koo-reh, koo-reh, tah-koh-rah, for those trying to talk the talk], which translates to...
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Posted by greg at
2:13 PM
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Comments (1)
March 17, 2006
The blog for Make magazine has a recap of ABC's American Inventor, yet another reality TV show. Except for the edible snow globe (made of jelly beans and, what, coconut flakes?), it's all pretty embarassing. And then there's the Tizzy...
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Posted by greg at
10:50 PM
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Comments (2)
March 12, 2006
The whole flatscreen revolution means companies are sticking TV's in all kinds of places. Since only 26% of kids ages 0-2 have TV's in their rooms, the nursery is a prime growth market. Which is why the Taiwanese manufacturer Hannspree...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:59 PM
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Comments (2)
March 6, 2006
Another installment in an ongoing exercise in futility: trying to wrap my adult head around The Wiggles and what the hell's going on with their show. Here's what I understand: 1) Wiggles getting older [yet still dancing around in the...
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Posted by greg at
10:18 AM
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Comments (1)
February 22, 2006
Just because I complain about exploitative astroturf publicity campaigns for ineffective children's safety products being outsourced to India doesn't mean I don't like India. Or outsourcing, for that matter. Why just this morning, I happily outsourced my kid's entertainment for...
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Posted by greg at
1:49 PM
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Comments (2)
And by "TV" they mean "Milton Berle," and by "fine," they mean "didn't lower their performance on standardized high school tests forty years ago." In order to get a control group of kids who actually didn't watch television, two University...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:12 AM
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Comments (2)
February 19, 2006
I've posted before how the kid's in love with Blueberry Boy, this little animated kid who lives on Pancake Mountain. dot com. So yesterday morning, she's all asking for Blueberry Boy, Blueberry Boy, when I notice on PM's website that...
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Posted by greg at
3:20 PM
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Comments (1)
February 17, 2006
I've been planning to devote my copious spare time to a season-by-season critical analysis of The Wiggles. Partly, it boggles my filmmaking mind sometimes how poorly produced some of the shows are, but if the kid's happy, I'm willing to...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
1:58 PM
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Comments (2)
February 10, 2006
Apparently the whole "extended breastfeeding" thing has been around for years in Little Britain, as this clip from a BBC documentary explains: Little Britain, Series 2: "Bitty" [google video] Hmm, I assumed that it was a documentary; everyone had...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
7:57 AM
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Comments (2)
January 30, 2006
Now, I'm a believer, and I can totally respect a conscientious businessman closing his chicken restaurant chain on the Sabbath. The Chick-Fil-A folks are more religious than most corporate types, but they also have some great product, their people...
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Posted by greg at
11:58 AM
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Comments (5)
January 27, 2006
Weird timing, huh? A 4-disc box set of complete episodes of The Electric Company is coming out February 7th. I know that this was/is/has been [?] on Noggin in the last few years, so it's not like renovating the rumpus...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:17 AM
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Comments (4)
January 26, 2006
After the Miss USA pageant, the flamers at Fark.com Googled up an old DT post about baby beauty pageants and creeped out, retouched glamour photos of innocent Southern children whose mothers won't face the reality that Designing Women is off...
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Posted by greg at
1:50 PM
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Comments (3)
January 25, 2006
This visit of the Sesame Street gang to the Metropolitan Museum was a little after my time, frankly, but it's got rocking reviews from people who were in the demo when it was shown on TV in the mid-80's. Fortunately,...
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Posted by greg at
11:43 AM
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Comments (1)
So what if it's too fast to really teach a kid to count to twelve? Maybe she'll learn some of the groove and rhythm that she did NOT inherit from her father. Either way, watching The Pointer Sisters' "Pinball...
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Posted by greg at
11:13 AM
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Comments (10)
January 24, 2006
So I'm reading Gothamist's interview with Josh Selig, where he talks about how being on Sesame Street [or "The Street," as the show's alumni call it. No, I kid. I have no idea.] as a child warped him forever. Actually,...
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Posted by greg at
1:32 PM
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Comments (2)
January 21, 2006
So that reality series that ABC cancelled before it ever aired, where gay dads won a house on a Texas cul de sac after The Blacks and The Asians and The Tattooed Ones got voted off by the neighbors? The...
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Posted by greg at
12:57 AM
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Comments (0)
January 20, 2006
Found myself home and with the TV on on a Friday night, and so I finally caught a full episode of Wonder Showzen on MTV2. The disclaimer at the beginning says, in part: "If you allow a child to watch...
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Posted by greg at
11:30 PM
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Comments (0)
January 17, 2006
I don't know where the line is when it comes to naming a baby after a tv character, but my gut tells me that "Labia Majora" is waayy on the other side of it. That's a/the baby's name on The...
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Posted by greg at
1:55 PM
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Comments (6)
January 10, 2006
Saw this posted at the Manhattan Buy Buy Baby today. Queer Eye is looking for dads-to-be who are expecting a baby in Feb. and Spring 2006 and who live within 25 miles of the NYC area. "Let Queer Eye...
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Posted by greg at
10:25 PM
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Comments (0)
January 9, 2006
I probably should've written about these guys before mentioning Wonder Showzen [and that's assuming I should mention Wonder Showzen at all around here]. Pancake Mountain is an independent kids music TV show produced in Washington, DC by some rockers [yeah,...
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Posted by greg at
2:55 PM
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Comments (1)
January 7, 2006
"This. Is A Child. Children. Sit. In These Things." This. Is A Dad. Making A Cheesy Stroller Dealer Commercial. In A Home Movie. In The Seventies. Big Joe's Strollers, 1m19s, posted by MD Davis [google video]...
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Posted by greg at
11:25 AM
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Comments (0)
December 15, 2005
The Kaiser Family Foundation has just released the a hugely important study, "Zero to Six: Electronic media in the lives of Infants, Toddlers, and Preschoolers." It's the first ever study of electronic media that looks at kids under the...
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Posted by greg at
12:11 PM
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Comments (4)
December 13, 2005
Until Shayna Richardson of Siloam Springs, Arka. took her first solo jump out of an airplane--and crash-landed on her face in a parking lot when her chutes didn't open, and survived, only to learn that she was two months pregnant...
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Posted by greg at
9:52 PM
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Comments (0)
November 19, 2005
I once knew a head writer for Melrose Place, and the loopier and more brazenly superficial the show's plot and character contortions became, the closer they got to how this crazywoman really saw the world. It's a realization that's stuck...
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Posted by greg at
9:30 PM
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Comments (1)
November 15, 2005
Seeing her on The Daily Show last night and reading about how her Apprentice got cancelled--sure am glad I didn't skip the birth of my child to be on a tv show no one watched--I realized I never heard boo...
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Posted by greg at
1:21 PM
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Comments (2)
October 28, 2005
Well, I thought they'd be on the Disney Channel, since it's where they are every other day. But no. The one day I decide to talk them up, build up a little excitement with the kid, the programming geniuses at...
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Posted by greg at
10:05 AM
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Comments (4)
October 22, 2005
"Every sperm is...a chance for you to be on British TV!" Producers for the BBC apparently want to watch your attempts to make a baby:NEW BBC SERIES Thinking about having a baby? We are looking for couples to take part...
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Posted by greg at
1:46 PM
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Comments (2)
October 19, 2005
Where DO these kids get these wacky ideas? Variety and the LA Times report that Ashton Kutcher has sold Fox on the pilot for his new sitcom, "30-year-old Grandpa," about a guy who becomes the stepfather to "a brood...
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Posted by greg at
11:09 AM
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Comments (1)
October 10, 2005
Here's the scenario: You run a small ad agency in Philadelphia. Your kid's 5. You're wife's pregnant. You apply to be on The Apprentice with the recently-released-from-prison Martha Stewart. Then you audition. Then you audition again. Then you make the...
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Posted by greg at
2:28 PM
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Comments (6)
October 8, 2005
Until today, Martha Stewart bugged the crap out of me only primarily for destroying one of my favorite houses [which also happened to be an important modernist masterpiece] through an arrogant, botched remodel. Now, though, I can get annoyed at...
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Posted by greg at
10:00 PM
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Comments (7)
In an effort to raise money for Unicef's rehabilitation programs for ex-child soldiers, IMPS, the Belgian company controlled by the Smurf heirs, has authorized the creation of what amounts to a Smurf snuff film, which will start airing on Belgian...
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Posted by greg at
7:22 AM
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Comments (3)
The baby hurls grenades and sets traps that keep missing the target. "Damn you, vile woman" has become his signature cry, and a T-shirt slogan for the series. The running joke plays on the idea of babies as mini-despots, awaiting...
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Posted by greg at
6:26 AM
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Comments (0)
October 5, 2005
Not a fan of the reality TV, but apparently ABC shot and canned a show called Welcome To The Neighborhood last year. The plot: Give a free McMansion to whoever pissed off the whitey white neighbors of an Austin, TX...
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Posted by greg at
1:07 PM
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Comments (0)
October 4, 2005
Sure, I was asked to submit some writing samples like everyone else, and I'm glad to see that one of the funniest, smartest dad-bloggers out there got the gig instead. But Oxygen TV's new Oh Baby! Opinionated Parenting blog...
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Posted by greg at
11:40 AM
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Comments (4)
September 30, 2005
The BBC documentary Child Prodigies: Too Much Too Young? looks at the concept of "gifted" children and the other "G-word," Genius. You probably don't have to watch the show to answer the question in its title [which is good, because...
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Posted by greg at
9:13 PM
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Comments (0)
September 20, 2005
Nick Jr. may be all sugar cereal and Transformers here in the States, but over in England, it sponsors dark, serious nursery rhyme contests which are won by songs of Tony Blair lying his way into the Iraq war. Other...
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Posted by greg at
11:00 PM
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Comments (1)
September 15, 2005
There's so much good stuff out there, I might have to pick up the pace on this daddy blog roundup thing: It's cheating, I know, but I gotta start with a little meta. Metrodad gives Props For The Pops,...
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Posted by greg at
9:48 PM
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Comments (3)
September 7, 2005
Nothing's more important than developing a deep, personal relationship with characters on television, and that goes double for children. Which is why the opening of Wiggles World this weekend at Dreamworld, the Australian theme park which already hosts Nick Jr-land...
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Posted by greg at
9:26 AM
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Comments (0)
August 27, 2005
They make the best strollers, some jamming architecture--and the most blatantly sensationalist TV shows in the world. What is up with Holland? The upcoming version of Dutch Big Brother will apparently have one of the house residents giving birth six...
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Posted by greg at
9:55 PM
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Comments (2)
August 24, 2005
Remember, there are 873 people lined up to be the king/queen of this country:Bring Your Husband to Heel Mon 22 Aug, 7:00 pm - 7:30 pm 30mins Brand new series where top dog trainer Annie Clayton helps the desperate housewives...
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Posted by greg at
9:25 AM
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Comments (2)
August 12, 2005
"It" being a reality show about men competing to be some random woman's sperm donor. This time, it's a Dutch TV channel, and it's being called the Spermshow. [Actually, they're calling it the Spermashow, but hey.] If it sounds familiar,...
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Posted by greg at
12:03 AM
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Comments (0)
August 4, 2005
Looks like I picked the right time to be beyond the reach of insipid network television. If Meet Mr. Mom teaches us anything, it's that TV execs can think of nothing worst than spending time with kids. Charming. Rebel Dad...
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Posted by greg at
7:55 AM
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Comments (1)
August 2, 2005
If so, then you're in luck, you lazy, beer-drinkin' bum. The social engineers of network television have created a cultural paradigm disguised as a TV series, called Meet Mr. Mom, And they hope it sticks. Just from this cliche-ridden article,...
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Posted by greg at
10:12 AM
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Comments (1)
I sure hope you didn't get up in the middle of the night to read this. Pediatricians, child therapists, and some of the stodgier flavors of child development experts think that those nannies on reality TV are sometimes not that...
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Posted by greg at
4:49 AM
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Comments (5)
June 16, 2005
One thing the family vacation afforded us was a few minutes of Supernanny, a show about paralyzed parents standing in doorways while their children are disciplined by a surly-burly British woman. It's enough to make you want to scream at...
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Posted by greg at
8:13 AM
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Comments (1)
June 10, 2005
Those Australians are such dreamers, always pursuing some wacky, creative idea. Take these four friends [I believe they're called "mates" down there] who were studying to become preschool teachers when they decided to make something for kids, maybe a CD...
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Posted by greg at
1:19 PM
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Comments (21)
May 24, 2005
Manhattan Neighborhood Network, MNN, aka the public access channels that don't fill up with porn, is doing a roundtable discussion Tuesday at 2pm where bloggers "talk shop on the next wave of internet community building." According to the program guide,...
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Posted by greg at
12:36 AM
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Comments (0)
May 8, 2005
Sound like a fair trade? Have your baby at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas over the Mother's Day weekend, and TiVo will give you a free box and lifetime service. All they apparently ask in return is to just put...
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Posted by greg at
8:03 AM
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Comments (0)
May 7, 2005
This just in a from a DT reader who's apparently unfamiliar with the ways of wooing:Just saw Jon Stewart leaving Whole Foods Union Square with a bouquet of flowers as big as he is, and a case of wine, which...
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Posted by greg at
2:35 PM
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Comments (0)
April 14, 2005
This one's for those who hold this truth to be self-evident, who don't even think of why you'd ever ask why: If TV is like the air you breathe, you're in luck. Oxygen, the TV network for the ladies, wants...
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Posted by greg at
10:38 AM
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Comments (1)
April 5, 2005
Did I mishear the opening song, or were we actually about to watch a show with characters named Kegel and Boobie on Noggin on a Sunday morning? No, no, no, it's Oobi, and the website says his best friend...
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Posted by greg at
4:46 PM
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Comments (26)
March 18, 2005
Kelly A. Frank, a 43-year old painter in Montana was arrested for plotting to kidnap David Letterman's son and the kid's nanny. Apparently, Frank kept a key to Letterman's ranch after doing some work for him, and he planned to...
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Posted by greg at
12:11 AM
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Comments (1)
March 7, 2005
The opening paragraph of Virginia Heffernan's NY Times review:Full-frontal images of a vagina are available on cable Sunday night, but they come at a price. You have to watch a bloody, hairy baby burst through that vagina, and before...
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Posted by greg at
11:16 AM
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Comments (5)
