April 08, 2005
Cool Kidz
filed under: DadditudesThey Might Be Giants have confused me.
Not their discursive, abstract lyrics (I'm your only friend I'm not your only friend but I'm your little glowing friend but really I'm not actually your friend but I am), nor the puzzle of how two guys can write so many catchy goddamned songs, nor which one is Flansburg and which one is Linnel.
No, TMBG has now confused me about the future of our children. And I believe the children are the future.
See, when we were growing up we watched some terrible crap on tv. Think Hanna-Barbera terrible. Romper Room terrible. When we grew up, destined to fetishize our own childhoods, we went back and re-perceived all that terrible crap as cool. It was cool because it was terrible, and dated, and awkward, and because it was ours from our childhood.
This morning Max and I sat and watched Here Come the ABCs.
"Here Come..." is a TMBG dvd featuring songs and animations about the alphabet. It's great. The songs are great. The animations are great. I may have enjoyed it more than Max did, and he was pretty rapt.
Problem is: it's cool.
A lot of the stuff we've found for Max is cool, and he's not even 2 yet. They Might Be Giants has an extensive selection of kids' music, which is cool. Dan Zanes is way cool.
If the stuff we're feeding our kids is already cool when we feed it to them at sub-2-years-old, how the christ are they supposed to transform it into coolness through kitschy self-fetishizing retrospect? How will their pop eat itself?
Posted by rjt at April 8, 2005 10:37 AMAh, but their pop already has eaten itself...the reason they have so much "cool" stuff is because you are the one who pays for it. Naturally, you are not going to buy your kid something that you would not yourself watch, so...voila, we have an entire universe of entertainment that did not exist for us. Just wait. When our kids hit 15 or 20, you'll see them wallowing in Tiny Tim records, just to spite their parents.
Posted by: Scotso the Lawbot at April 8, 2005 01:36 PMSo you're saying their pop can't eat itself because we've already eaten it. I think you're right.
This may lead to some awkward smalltalk among our children's generation:
"Kid 1: What's the matter?
Kid 2: My pop just ate himself."
Posted by: rjt at April 8, 2005 02:10 PM