But enough about that. An issue far more important to all parents of small children, is what to watch/listen to while the kid’s awake. Such listening material must adhere to the following criteria: 1) it must not give the child nightmares (no Smoke Monster during the daylight hours); 2) it must not make it preferable for you to sever your own optical nerve/ reach into your ears to crush your own eardrums rather than experience that again. Here’s what we’ve tried so far:

The Wiggles: When young Fussypants became old enough to become a consumer of popular culture, I had to draw upon my very limited knowledge of current childrens’ shows to find something for her, and recalled a weird video I once happened to catch. Since Netflix had some instant-view Wiggles videos available, I tried Sing a Song of Wiggles first. It was…excruciating. Adults can’t watch this, at least this one can’t. But, anything for Fussypants, so I persevered. I don’t know if You Make Me Feel Like Dancing and Wiggle Bay are actually entertaining or if I’m just desensitized, but either way, I don’t mind sitting through them.

Barney & Friends: No. No. Just…no. (But she loves it of course.)

Thomas the Tank Engine: Oh, to be an anthropomorphic piece of machinery on an imaginary island, what a blissful life it would be! It creeps me out when George Carlin is the narrator, and I’m not sure why a small island needs such an overdeveloped infrastructure, but otherwise this is good stuff. It also reminds me of my trip to England in the year 11 BF.

Clifford, the Big Red Dog: You might recognize the voice of Clifford as John Ritter, of Three’s Company. You might also recognize the voice of Cleo as Freddiefrom A Different World. Or, alternatively, you might not be as old as I am. Regardless, I like that big red freak of nature.

Speaking of being old, now seems like a good time for an Old Lady Rant: I had exactly one children’s album growing up, an 8-track of Sesame Street Fever (and wish I still had it), and VCRs hadn’t even been invented yet. I watched whatever show happened to be on PBS when I got leave to watch television, and that’s the way we liked it! I’m a Grumpy Old Woman!

And now, turning to music:

They Might Be Giants goes without saying of course. You don’t even need the kids’ albums, if I can ever find Flood, I expect that to become Fussy’s new favorite.

Mr. Froggy’s Friends’ ABCs: The title pretty much says it all really. But I am impressed by their not onlygetting the apostrophe in the right place for both possessives, but also didn’t put an apostrophe between ABC and s. Now that’s genius.

Byz found this album more sinister. He wondered why the singer purported to converse with Mr. Froggy, although Mr. Froggy himself never speaks. Who is this Mr. Froggy, he wondered?

Well, I can’t think of any other kid media we’ve experienced around here right now, but that’s because a two-year-old is about to collapse into tears because I’m not making a plush bear give a check-up to a plush monkey. So I can’t really think at all.

Contact is made and he works to earn respect from the populace and from the chief / chief’s wife in particular. Fortunately the chief’s daughter speaks some English and he hangs with her a lot, eventually boning her and falling in love. By pulling off a few daring feats of courage he wins respect from all but the primary warrior guy, who is jealous, protective, and angry.

Eventually he embraces their ways and makes the emotional jump to favoring them over his old allegiance. This becomes significant when his previous people begin pushing the new people out of their territory. He fights hard with his new friends. They love him and accept him fully. He becomes one of them.

… oh wait, that’s Dances with Wolves, sorry about that.

Contains some fairly minor spoilers for the series. via.

1) the gratuitous use of the word “yeah.” (Seriously. Lazy Friday afternoon activity: count the number of times “yeah” occurs in, say, this song.)
2) Nobody else can make their guitars sound like they’re… slouching from riff to riff like that.

And sure enough, it’s Alice in Chains, sans the late Layne Staley. Give it a listen:

I’ll let the critics decide whether they’re jumping the shark or making a killer comeback. As for me, I’ll just kick back and pretend it’s 1992 and I’m hiding my Dirt cassette tape behind my AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide. (I was never sure exactly what was being depicted on that album cover, but it seemed like something my parents didn’t need to see.) Sing it with me: aww yeah.

Fight about which Jennifer is better begins… now!

Nerds seem to have an affinity for Holmes. Two immediate examples that come to mind: TNG’s Holmes episodes, and Jon Bellairs’ Lewis Barnavelt, who dons his own deerstalker to solve mysteries. Anyone know of more nerdy tie-ins?

Extra credit: this post contains some blatant fanboy-bait; I assume any true Holmes fan is frothing at the mouth to point out my error. Find it!

All that being said, I still have a fascination with some of the things people can convince their bodies to do, sometimes with the aid of equipments (skateboards, bikes, etc.) and sometimes without any assistance but their own agility.

Take, for instance, Parkour, which you could call “extreme urban running”. The idea is to get from point A to point B in as fluid and efficient manner as is possible. The result is the sort of thing you see Jackie Chan doing all the time in his movies:

Some more here. These aren’t Jackass guys running into walls at top speed (amusing as that may be): these are people with a plan, whose goal is to not get hurt.

But there’s more than just Parkour.

Check out Danny MacAskill’s street biking:

What I love is the (appearance of, at least) precision he’s able to achieve with his moves. It’s not enough that he jumped over a wall or did a flip off a tree—he meant to do it exactly the way it happened, and you can tell.

Similarly, Rodney Mullen is a skateboarder who can do some amazing things with the board:

I’m particularly a fan of the move you see around 2:56 (I believe it’s called a “darkslide”)—it’s looks so effortless, but I also can’t imagine what it takes to get your feet into a position to make it happen, let alone being able to flip things back to continue on to the next thing. It’s the continuation of motion, accented by flourishes, that I really like when watching this kind of stuff.

Of course, all of that, cool as it is, is not nearly so jaw-dropping as wingsuit basejumping, something that breaks my brain:

I’m not sure what there is to say about wingsuit basejumping except that the people that do it are insane, and that it makes for some incredible video.

I’m not sure if this counts as pop culture or not, so I’ll bring it back around.

There’s a game for the PS3 that I’ve played (the demo) called “Mirror’s Edge”, which is essentially Parkour in video game form. The parts of it that I’ve played are extremely fun, but I think I need to upgrade the TV to an HD widescreen to get the full effect. Check out the actual gameplay footage:

As I’m sure you’re hoping, there is a point in time where you need to leap from a building and catch a helicopter’s landing skid. Awesome.

Finally, there’s a really good documentary about the origins of skateboarding called Dogtown and Z-Boys. Here’s a trailer:

It’s interesting to see the evolution of current street skateboarding from the surfing-inspired twisting moves the Z-Boys made as their trademark.

Now I must go back to programming computers. wistful sigh