The Rugrats Cartoon, Responsible TV Viewing and Bitchy Barbara

I remember watching TV with my granddaughter back when The Rugrats were very popular. You remember...that was the TV show with the darling babies that lived in a playpen, a self-centered girl named Angelica that messed with their life and a dozing oblivious grandpa that was in charge a lot of time. I thought at the time that Angelica was seen by my granddaughter as a bad little girl that made life miserable for everyone around her. But as I watched my granddaughter more, I came to realize that Angelica was becoming a heroine of sorts. Angelica always got her own way and never took any sas from anyone. We quit watching The Rugrats and my granddaughter moved on.

Flash forward 13 years to 2014. Now it is me that needs to be careful what I watch on TV. One of my friends was describing a show she liked that had a very strong woman lead...a little edgy and very in your face kind of show. I had to stop and think about whether that was a good idea for me...probably not. The spill over from watching certain shows will inspire me to be more opinionated that I already am. I am not even a good TV news viewer. My inner feminist will emerge immediately.

See being an angry feminist is not a good thing and when I watch a show that stars a woman that is being challenged because she is female or hear about a women's issue on the news, I get very ticked at the world. Where is the justice in that? The feeling will take a while to go away and in the mean time, the people in my world have to put up with a Bitchy Barbara.

So I try to be a responsible TV viewer. The world does not need another Angelica of any age. Especially mine.

Just a thought.

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Children Speak: When the cartoon "sucks their brains out"!

Illustration of Peter Rabbit eating radishes, from The Tale of Peter Rabbit (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was going to let my grandsons watch a cartoon when they visited last week. We had set up the iPad on their bed with the Zooka speaker. What did they want they want to watch? Well, it turns out there are rules. They take them very seriously and even obey them when their mother and father are not watching. Here is what I learned.

• Sponge Bob Square Pants sucks their brains out so they cannot watch that.
• Anything with policemen or guns is banned unless it is on the Learning Channel so their sister can find out about being a policeman. Guns are a very bad thing they tell me.
• Peter Rabbit Christmas Show is scary and they don't watch it because they cannot sleep.
• Grown up TV is not allowed because it is about bad stuff.
• They love Dino Dan...it is not a rule but if they had their way the rule would be that it is on 24/7.

They had me at "sucks my brains out".  Wow!

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p.s. The two year old is having a Scooby Doo party for his third birthday. Doesn't that have ghosts and dark closets? It even scares me a little bit. I really don't know how that fits in the plan!

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TV Commercials: Who are those people anyway?

I would go see Rodolph Valentine

See, I never do this. I am not a person that wishes for the old days or even thinks about them.  But I want the old movie posters back. I have begun to notice that I don't know what name belongs to what famous people. I used to know everyone. Now I remember the face but have not name to go with it.  Has that happened to you?  Remember when the poster for a new movie appeared in theaters, the names of the stars and co-stars were featured at the top. Starring Jimmy Stewart and Sophia Loren it would way. I liked that...I decided to see the movie or not based on the star power of the people on the poster because I knew who they were.  Now, I cannot even figure out who is in the movie and suspect that the company releasing the film is hiding something.  I guess I am just suspicious.   Please, just tell me their name, preferably in large print.

Being of an age (70 years old) that young people would call old is bad enough.  But now I don't know who that guy is in the McDonald's commercial...the one standing behind the young man telling him to buy the nugget basket to share with the pretty girl across the room.   If I were getting the right information I would know who everyone was.   It could be that I should be focusing on the young man and the girl and the chicken nuggets but all I can think about is the older guy giving the advice.  Is he famous?  Do I know him?

Really, people, I do realize that face recognition is important but should it be a test?  Please don't make me guess about who is who and why I should know them. Make them wear name tags or something.

While we're on it, if you are going to play a beautiful song with a commercial, one I recognize but cannot name, tell me that too.  It is getting so I need to do an internet search to even watch car commercials.

So there you have it...let me recap:

• List the stars in movies on the advertising in large print.
• Tell me who the famous people are in the commercials...I missed the memo and need to know.
• Put the name of the song and the person performing it in small large print at the bottom of the commercial.

Have a wonderful day.

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