No, Seriously. Really?? Naaaaah...You MEAN It??

Those of you who've been around for a while know my fondness for PBS cartoons. They're the televised equivalent of comfort food to me, escapism to simpler days. And so, from time to time, if nothing else is on or I want something to half-watch while I work on other projects, I'll turn to "PBS Kids Sprout", a 24-hour cartoon channel.

Until last week, they had something in the evenings called "The Good Night Show", which was hosted by a character named Melanie--kind of a surrogate big-sister/preschool-teacher/really-great-babysitter character, who did crafts and recited poems and played games, with the viewers encouraged to participate. Frankly, I found her unbearably perky and annoying, but I'm 36; I can see how she would have been charming to a three-year-old. A couple of weeks ago they started a new season, adding this little muppet-like character called Star, who just annoyed my socks off.

So imagine my surprise, last Thursday, to turn on Sprout and find: no Melanie, no Star. There was just the usual male announcer-voice telling what show was coming next, and songs from "Sesame Street" or "Dragon Tales" in the interstices, where Melanie's segments normally would have been. I wasn't sure what had happened, if the ratings had just plummeted with the introduction of "Star" and they had to retool, or what.

Curious, when I got to work this morning I Googled "PBS kids sprout melanie". And here's what I was led to: (From the PBS Kids Sprout website):



Okay, first of all: she was canned for something she did SEVEN YEARS AGO??? Damn, thought I; that must have been soooome video! I mean, generally you don't get taken off the air until they find the video where you're showing boobies; she had to have been completely nakers, at the VERY least, to get FIRED. This has got to be something big, I thought; I wonder if I can find it? I've gotta see what was so bad they'd fire her over it!

Fortunately, metafilter had a link to the video. It's technically NSFW, if you work for a pack of Puritans and/or the sort of people who were scandalized by Janet Jackson's nipple. So if you work for those kind of people, let me cut to the chase: it's a spoof of those abstinence commercials, the ones with a virginal-looking girl talking about her future, and how she doesn't plan to get pregnant. Only instead of leaving it there, she finishes with "...And THAT's why I choose anal sex!" Nowhere in this video (about 20 seconds) is there any suggestion of nudity, or of the act being described; the only content that could be considered REMOTELY offensive is the mention of anal sex. But the PBS execs decided that, because of this video, keeping Melanie as a host would damage their credibility with their audience.

Let's think about that, shall we? Who is Sprout's audience? Predominantly preschool children, if the website is to be believed. Except preschool kids don't know about this story, so that's obviously not the issue--it's the parents PBS is worried about.

Why would their parents be concerned? Parents are generally worried about things that will harm their children somehow. But the only way this video could "harm" their children is if they found it, viewed it, and knew the significance of what it was discussing. (And if they were the sort of parents who considered such knowledge "harmful".)

How would preschoolers find this video? Only someone who knew about the controversy would know there was any reason to look for something; and I don't know too many preschoolers who are well-versed in Google. Simply typing "Sprout melanie" does lead to Metafilter, which links to the video--but how many kids of 4 or 5 would be able to discern which of the 123 results for "sprout melanie" would lead them to the controversial stuff? I mean, I know kids today are internet-savvy, but c'mon! Furthermore, the only reason it's on Metafilter is because of the story: she was fired for this video. If she hadn't been fired, there'd be no story, and no need for a Metafilter link.

Now the parents, of course, would know to find the video. But how does the mere existence of the video hurt their children if they don't see it? Is Melanie suddenly going to start demonstrating anal sex as she recites the Sprout Stretch Poem? Is she going to, one evening after "Barney", suddenly bust out with "You know, Star, sometimes friends have a SPECIAL way of getting closer?" Highly unlikely, I'd say. So really, the only thing that "compromises" her "credibility" is the fact that, somewhere out in the ether, there exists this video in which, many years ago, she mentioned buttsex.

Okay. So somehow, having said the words "anal sex" while in film school in 1999 makes you an unfit role-model forever. They've handled this controversy by sweeping Melanie under the rug, pretending she never existed, and thinking they've protected the kids by doing so. In fact, by firing Melanie, PBS has actually made it MORE likely that kids will see this video. I can easily see a five-year-old, curious as to why their nighttime TV routine was disrupted, asking an older sibling to look up Melanie on the internet and see what they find. Whereas, if Melanie were still doing crafts and playing games every night, there'd be no reason for curiosity, no reason to look Melanie up, and no story to find even if they did look her up.

On our kids' shows, thirty-plus years ago? We had Bill Cosby, Rita Moreno, Richard Pryor. We had adults who had been in movies which we were not allowed to watch, who had made records we were not allowed to hear. There were adult shows, and there were kid shows, and if a kids'-show actor made an adult show...well, that was what actors DID. As long as they didn't bring that adult persona over to the kids side of the fence, nobody was harmed by it.

Fast-forward thirty years. Welcome to Paranoid America, where children must be protected from ideas they wouldn't otherwise comprehend; protected from books and movies and all the other things they wouldn't otherwise encounter, if we weren't drawing their attention to exactly these things in the hopeless quest to "protect" them forever.

Child Abuse

I'm a horrible mother, guys.

Last night, around 2 AM, I woke up. And after MONTHS of being super-cautious and watching for underfoot kittens at all times, I let my guard down. I didn't know Snickers was in the room, and he came out from under the bed...just as I put my big feet down and stood up.

I didn't step on a paw or a tail; I stepped on the ENTIRE CAT.

He hissed, I think, and took off at top speed for the safety of under-the-dresser. It took me five minutes to coax him out, and another fifteen before he would even let me near enough to touch him. All the time he was giving me this LOOK.

You STEPPED on me, it said. And I TRUSTED you.

Finally he let me pick him up, long enough that I was able to give him a few cautious prods, mercifully ignored, to see if anything was hurting. And then he was off again, glaring at my pink slippers, the instruments of his torture.

We watched each other, Snickers and I, for a good half-hour--me, watching for signs that we needed a trip to the emergency vet; him, watching to make sure I wasn't going to stomp him again. I just kept whispering: I am so, so sorry, kitty. I am so sorry. Over and over.

I stretched out on the bed and waited. And maybe ten minutes after that, I felt the little "thump" of a small body leaping onto the bed. Then: paws on my chest, and a furry little backside in my face. He turned around twice, and then all I could hear was a low rumbly purrrrr and the familiar smacking sound, the sound of Snick sucking on the tip of his tail. A few minutes later he was asleep.

Forgiveness is a wonderful thing.

Reasons To Go Back To School, Vol. 4,877

(From a Chicago Tribune article about a lawsuit against one of the members of the Walgreens family; her Lake Forest neighbors are demanding that she get rid of her three Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs.)



Man, I hope he or she is well-paid, at least. Because "full-time executive pig-bather"? Is NOT a high-status job, I'm thinking. Also, can you imagine being on a first date with someone and the inevitable question gets asked: "What do YOU do for a living?"... "Well, see, I work for the Walgreen family...I'm part of their mansion staff. No, not a butler, exactly....no, not a concierge...Actually I'm more of a...Poopsmith."

I'm thinking that date would end poorly.

Seriously, though. If you found yourself even CONSIDERING a position where your two main duties involved bathing and pooper-scooping a rich socialite's pet pigs, wouldn't you think twice about the path your life was taking?? I know I would...I mean, damn.

He's Gone (and I Don't Mean LJ)

(The first few lines of this post, to truly appreciate their intent and mood, need to be singsonged in that kind of "nanny nanny boo boo" voice commonly used by a six-year-old who has gotten her way. What this says about me, I will leave you to infer.)

He's gone, he's gone, he's gone he's gone he's gone :::wiggly happy dance:::
They fired Mancow and now he's GONE gone gone :::cabbage patch::::
because he su-u-uu-uu-uuuu-uucks
so now he's FI-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-IRED
and I don't have to listen to his bullshit anymore :::twirls around the cubicle:::
(not that I ever listened after 1999 or so--oh, wait, that wasn't just ME, that was EVERYONE, which is why he's FIRED)
Good riddance, ignorant pig
If they taped your mouth shut years ago the world would have been a better place...
:::big finishing twirl and pose:::
HE'S GONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, yes, that was childish. Yes, it was immature and fairly stupid. No, I'm not sorry.

I have hated Mancow since about 1998, when I lost the last vestiges of my tolerance for idiocy, xenophobia, and sexism disguised as "political incorrectness". Everyone has run into the little kid who keeps yelling out "POO-POO! BOOGER! FARTS!!!" The first time it's kinda cute, a little; the thirty-eighth time, you're ready to tear off your own ears so you don't have to hear it anymore. To me, Mancow was like that kid. And he could play it off with the "oh, it's just a CHARACTER" explanation all he wanted; CR was one of his greatest defenders, and he swore up and down that the "real" Mancow didn't hate women, or Muslims, or liberals, or gays, or... Well, you know what? The problem is, when you play a "character" like that, you're going to validate the people who actually DO think like that--who actually DO think women are just a collection of orifices, or who actually WOULD take a baseball bat to a gay couple. And when, in the wake of September 11th, a radio host--no matter what kind of "character" he's supposedly "playing"--says something like "Let's take back Devon Avenue!!" (a street in Chicago frequented by Indian and Arabic residents)--well, to say something like that is just negligent and irresponsible.

He wasn't fired for anything he did, either, and I'm glad. Had he been fired for saying something outrageous, he would have used it to play himself off as a martyr for free speech. He can't do that now; he was fired, according to the station, because they had discovered a large disparity between the audience Mancow was attracting and the audience for the rest of the day. His ratings weren't awful, but they weren't stellar, either--and the advertisers were scared, as well. If you were an advertiser, would YOU want YOUR after Jello-Wrestling Nekkid Bimbos? So in effect, he was fired because his negatives finally outweighed his positives.

As for me, I couldn't be happier. Finally I can listen to music in the morning, played by James Van Osdol, no less--someone listeners can respect, someone with an actual passion for radio and for alternative music, who was with Q101 in the heyday of alternative. They're replacing Mancow with music, for the moment--and I hope it stays that way for a good long while, since Q101 is known for its legendarily-bad and -short-lived morning-show experiments (can anyone say "Lance and Stoley"?)

This moment was about seven years too late in coming, but better late than never.

Good News and Bad News

As usual, I have good news and bad news.

The good news: LJ left for an extended trip last night. I can't begin to tell you how amazingly happy that makes me. For the past two weeks, two of his friends have been staying with us, and they are the worst-mannered, messiest, most disgusting and ignorant jackasses I have ever encountered. I will leave to your imaginations the types and varieties of messes that they created, as I'm not interested in making myself sick. But let me tell you: it was GROSS. And as if that wasn't enough, they absolutely made themselves at home--to the point that one of them felt comfortable enough to raid my change jar for cigarette money!! I explained to LJ before he left last night that a)this individual is no longer welcome in this house, and b)when I say "what's mine is ours", that does NOT mean "...and by extension, belongs to all your friends as well."

Also, the rotten bastards ate my ice cream, which is a killing offense at Chez Gladys.

So--good news: LJ and his pet rats are gone.
The bad news: So is my computer.

No, it's not PHYSICALLY gone. In fact, it's sitting here with me at work, where I've taken it in a so-far futile attempt to fix it. But it has taken the Crap to End All Craps, and I am utterly at a loss as to what to do about it. None of the usual methods of handling something like this are working: I can't copy my files to an external drive because it refuses to recognize any drive I've tried. I can't copy them to the network because I'm afraid to plug it in to the work network, lest it have a virus. I can't scan for viruses because it quits in mid-scan. I can't even delete all the temporary files because it keeps finding data errors during "cyclical redundancy checks", which (according to Google) seems to indicate that my hard drive is on its way to Hard Drive Heaven.

I hate it when stuff doesn't work.

Needless to say, a large crimp has been put in my life by the absence of a home computer--although I must say, it will be nice to have that time (the computer time) back for the other things that need doing...who knows? maybe I could get used to this.

Blogging, though, will be sporadic and from work. Which means I won't be able to rhapsodize quite so easily about how UTTERLY THRILLED I am that LJ is gone and I have the house to myself, in blissful peace for me and the kitties. So for the moment, I leave you with a resounding WOO-HOOOO!

Oh My God

I believe in art.

When JP was alive, the two of us saw our lives as art, a classic example of what NOT to do. We were two creative people, both with subversive streaks. He loved my poetry--the angrier and more confrontational, the better; I loved his music, especially the defiant, transgressive feedback and noise. The writers and artists we admired most were the ones who crossed the lines: Nan Goldin, William Burroughs, Robert Mapplethorpe, and their ilk.

So I am not an uptight, anti-free-expression sort of person. There is very little I will not tolerate for the sake of art, very little in the way of artistic expression that I cannot accept. I was okay with the guy who painted Harold Washington in negligee, okay with the guy who had people walking on the flag, okay with the crucifix-in-urine exhibit. None of them were really great, I thought, but I supported the artists' right to create those things, even if I thought they were controversy for the sake of controversy, and as such, kinda stupid. I didn't like them, but I didn't find them objectionable either.

But I have finally found something that crosses my line.

Background: I came across this because I was trying to fix someone's Windows Media Player here at work. When he played a clip, it came out in pink and green and all sorts of weird colors. So I went back to my desk and typed "windows media distorted image" into my handy-dandy Googlebar.

A few items down the list was a link to a blog. I clicked to read the article because from the little blurb in the Google listing, it seemed to me like some Puritannical right-winger was getting his undies in a bundle about somebody else's artistic expressions again, and I was curious to see what he was foaming at the mouth about.

I followed the link on Mr. Owen's blog, which took me to another blog and another article which told me more about what Mr. Owen was talking about. By this time I'd concluded that neither Mr. Owen nor Mr. Hawk are Puritannical or foaming at the mouth; I can't speak for their politics because frankly, politics don't matter in this situation, though I'm sure there are those who will say they matter a great deal. And from Mr. Hawk's blog post, I found a link to the topic of all this controversy.

Click this link, if you wish. It is "safe for work" in the traditional sense, but the subject matter may disturb you and those around you. The link connects to the work of Jill Greenberg, a photographer; this exhibit, called "End Times", is being featured at a New York gallery.

"End Times" consists of head-and-shoulders photos of children--maybe three or four years old at the most--expressing extreme sadness, anger, distress, and frustration. Each photo is titled with a phrase evoking images of the Bush administration ("Four More Years") or fundamentalist theology ("Tribulation", "Intelligent Design"). To create these photos, Ms. Greenberg provoked the children into by giving each child a lollipop, then taking it away and photographing the resulting outburst.

Both Mr. Hawk and Mr. Owen make much more well-reasoned points about the photos than I could make; my reaction is purely emotional, and so I make no claim to being unbiased in regards to the theory, the artistic value, or the means of obtaining these photos.

My reaction comes straight from the gut: These photos sicken me. These are little children, and they are obviously in pain--no matter how fleeting, no matter how minor. For an adult to intentionally inflict any emotional trauma on a small child, for any reason other than to ensure their continued safety, is cruel and unnecessary. When I see these pictures I want to comfort those children, because their pain has been inflicted upon them in the service of something they don't understand. These babies--for that's what they are--don't understand "art". They don't understand "protest". They don't know or care who George Bush is or what he's done; they only know that someone took something away from them and they want it back. And yes, it's a minor pain, and yes, they will forget it; that's not the point. The point is that someone who should know better used these children--one of whom was her own daughter, according to Mr. Hawk's post--to make a point. No matter how insignificant the pain, no matter how quickly the memory fades, that's still exploitation. These are babies, and they're hurting, and Jill Greenberg made them hurt on purpose as a way to express her own opinion, and to me that's wrong.

Those of you who have read me for a while know: I am a rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth left-wing liberal pinko. I make no apologies for this. But I am sickened that an opinion which I happen to share has been expressed this way. Far from speaking for me and strengthening my dislike of the current administration, these pictures just make me ashamed to share an opinion--ANY opinion--with the "artist". If I was just making up my mind about Bush, I'd seriously have to consider whether I wanted to hold an opinion that would be shared by people who would express themselves this way; in fact, seeing these pictures would be more likely to drive me to the OTHER side. Just as I'm ashamed of animal-rights advocates who destroy scientific equipment to express their views; just as I'm sure the majority of pro-lifers are ashamed of clinic bombers; when I see something like this I'm almost ashamed to loathe Bush as much as I do. Fortunately, he's so loathe-able that even this travesty against art can't shake my antipathy for him.

But I'm sure these pictures will serve as further fuel for the neocon's summary dismissal of any opinions from the left--"Look at this big-city lib'rul nutcase feminazi, torturing babies for pictures! but yet they'll tell us WE'RE wrong for taking those pictures at Abu Ghraib!" These pictures will serve as convenient shorthand for everything that average people fear about artists.

And they'll also feature prominently in my nightmares, I expect, for at least a day or two.

Rock Myth, Twelve Years Later

Had this article ever appeared while JP was alive, we would have spoken of nothing else for days and days. Kurt and Courtney were our rock myth, our role models, the all-consuming story into which we submerged ourselves as only art-struck twentysomethings can.

Reading this now just seems like a cruel joke. Frances Bean has been raised listening to crap bands (her favorite, according to one article, is Good Charlotte--a cheap ripoff of early Green Day); Courtney is a punch-line for every late-night comic and morning-drive radio zoo; and Billy is widely seen as being in the throes of a nostalgic delusion that the Pumpkins will rise again.

I miss the early 90's. I miss our innocent cynicism, our naive conviction that we'd seen and done everything, the feeling of been-there-done-that as a new and exciting sensation. Twelve years later I feel like we -have- been there, we -have- done that, the novelty is completely worn off and there's no fun to it anymore. The game of I've-seen-it-all,I-was-there-first has become deadly serious; the excitement of being the first one to find a new band or a new book has become the drudgery of being the ten-trillionth person to view "The Evolution of Dance" on YouTube. Happy accidents have become "viral marketing", and anything new is immediately pounced on by the media--both old and new; fed to us on a hundred different spoons, and then stamped out as inferior copies. "Lazy Sunday", a moderately-funny SNL skit, would have spawned a few imitations, maybe a couple of t-shirts in the early 90's; the people who had seen it could feel like they were part of a secret little club, the kind of pop-culture virtuosos who pride themselves on catching obscure references to hipster in-jokes. But now every Joe Schmuckboy and his great-aunt Maude can go around yelling "Chronic-WHAT?-cles of Narnia"; half of them have their own version of it on their MySpace page. Things that would have been outrageously hip in 1994 now become memes in a couple of days. And I guess that's natural; I guess it's just the evolution of the media...

...but I miss the old ways. I miss the secret clubs; I miss the feeling of belonging to things that not everyone knew about. And even if everyone knew about it--like Nirvana--there were still little details that only the true devotees knew. Mostly I miss the feeling of being relevant, of feeling that the things that mattered to me also mattered to the people who mattered to me. I miss 1994. I miss JP.

It really sucks, this getting-older thing.