President Me (35 page)

THE VAST WASTELAND OF KIDS' TV

When it comes to modern children and TV, I think another problem is that the entertainment bar is too high. When we were kids we'd watch an episode of some Claymation crap like
Gumby and Pokey
or
Davey and Goliath
and that would be enough. Or remember the circus? When we were kids the circus was just a guy standing on a horse or a formerly hot chick who is now a little bit thick in the thighs holding a hoop for some poodles to jump through. Kids today cannot possibly be entertained by that. It's going to be crazy when I have to explain to my twins that when I was their age we thought shadow puppets were entertaining. Someone would hang a sheet, take the shade off the lamp, and make something that looked approximately like an ostrich head, and that was our fun. Now kids need to see Travis Pastrana jump a Ski-Doo over a pool of nuns on fire.

As a dad, I've obviously had an assful of kids' cartoons. It's really sad. I'll be sitting around with ESPN sports guy and fellow father Bill Simmons having a spirited discussion about
Ni Hao, Kai-Lan
and
Handy Manny
. We're adult males, shouldn't we be talking about the line on the Pats game and the latest edition of the
Fast and Furious
franchise? As a parent, you actually end up watching more of this crap than your kids. They only know when it's not on. They're usually not paying attention at all, but the second you turn off the
Sponge-Bob
to put on a little TMZ, they start wailing like stuck pigs. So you just surrender, and eventually you find yourself, again a grown-ass adult, picking the show apart and getting into it. You'll be watching it, complaining quietly to yourself, “There's no way a cat could bounce on its tail. This is such bullshit.” And then you spend your whole day with the stupid educational songs in your head: “If you have to go potty, stop, and go right away. Flush and wash and be on your way.” Oh good. I, a forty-eight-year-old man, definitely needed a refresher course on not shitting myself and then smearing it all over my hands.

And those are the kids' shows that piss me off most: the ones that purport to be educational. When Mitt Romney talked about ending the subsidy to PBS and everyone went apeshit, I was completely on board.

This is a plan I will enact in the Carolla administration. Why should my tax dollars pay for this? Shouldn't
Sesame Street
make enough off Elmo merchandise alone to fund PBS for the next sixty years? No kid can get through childhood in America without getting an Elmo bedspread, a Cookie Monster lunch box, and a Big Bird backpack. Where's all that money going? Half of those episodes of
Sesame Street
are recycled shit from years past anyway. And how much writing really needs to go into one of those episodes? Do you need a team of people coming up with new ways to count to ten? “It's taken us all night but I think we finally cracked it. We'll count the oranges on a tree.”

The part where they say “this is educational” is such a cop-out. I've seen my kids watching these shows. They're learning nothing. Mr. Moose is like, “Can you tell me which one of these is different?” Then he pauses for a 5 Mississippi and says, “Excellent. You're so smart.” Meanwhile my kid hasn't said a fucking word. He just sits there like one of the heads from Easter Island.

In fact I think most of this crap is making our kids dumber.
Dora the Explorer
is an attack on our intelligence. It's for stupid people, made by stupider people. First off, she's obviously a lesbian. Just look at the shorts and the haircut. Second, she has a sidekick that's a monkey. That shit was fucked up in the sixties when Speed Racer hooked up with Chim Chim. Her other cohort is a Fox named Swiper. And guess what Swiper does? He steals stuff. How fucking clever. I didn't want my kids watching this crap, so I forced them to watch
The Simpsons
. Their nanny took me to task and told me it was too dirty. I said fuck that, I'd rather they be exposed to quality than some Hispanic bitch with a bob saying, “Can you find the apple?” and then pausing while they stare blankly.

There's a couple other offenders too.
Caillou
is awful. The color palette is completely off and doesn't make any sense until you realize it's coming out of Canada. And why the fuck is he bald? Am I making my kids watch a show about a Canadian boy with cancer?

The worst, the one that sent me over the edge, the one that caused me to lay down the law with my kids and say no more was
Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!
There was a song on that show that epitomized everything that is wrong with kids today, and how we are ruining them. It's called “Mr. Cool” and here are some of the lyrics:

You don't have to talk a certain way

There's nothing special you have to say

Just be yourself every day

And everyone will know you're the coolest

You don't have to be like everyone

Be yourself, you'll be number one

And you'll feel like the coolest

Don't forget the golden rule

Be yourself and you'll be cool

This is a horrific message to send to kids. “Don't try to excel at anything. Don't try to be special. Don't do anything. You'll still be the coolest! Whatever you do, you're the coolest! Fail out of school! You're the coolest! Live in your parents' basement until you are fifty. You're the coolest. Eat until you're morbidly obese and your liver shuts down. You're the coolest. Set a bum on fire. You're the coolest. Slaughter nineteen nursing students. You're the coolest!!!”

And that's not the golden rule. The golden rule is to treat other people how you want to be treated, not “Fuck what other people think. You're the best.”

You condescending pricks think this is a positive message? Everyone is number one. Doesn't that mean someone else who's listening to this song is number two? What about their feelings? I'd like to knock you out with a frying pan and take a number one and a number two on your face.

It's the same message the pop chicks like Katy Perry sing. You're the best, don't change anything. Don't ever attempt to improve yourself at all. Anyone who says you should do something different is just a hater (more on this disturbing trend coming up). Fuck that. Beat yourself up a little bit. Be better. That's the message from a couple old white guys who founded this fucking country. Benjamin Franklin said the Constitution only guarantees the right to
pursue
happiness; you have to catch it yourself. If
Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!
and One Direction founded this country with their “you're beautiful the way you are” and “you don't have to do anything to be the coolest” message, we'd all still be riding horses and dying from preventable diseases and the scourge of winter. Life is about improvement, the pursuit of better whether it's your body, your home, or your career.

MODERN MUSIC MAKES ME SICK

I was not educated in high school. I was educated by listening to talk radio on construction sites, and not only because there were no stations that would touch the good music of the eighties—John Hiatt, Joe Jackson, the Pretenders, etc. When I was digging ditches, I sought out talk radio because I wanted to hear alternative voices and ideas. I had plenty of time to hear the crap rattling around in my bean as I humped a wheelbarrow around. I needed new ideas and opinions to think about. Now radio is like beating off into a fan, it's just more of you splashing back in your face. We've decided we need to give everybody what they want, not expose them to new concepts. So what you end up with is a bunch of computers playing Rihanna records. There are no more DJs, no more talk radio, no more opinions, no more news. Just thumping techno with Auto-Tuned vocals about “You know you want me, boy, but you can't have me, boy.”

But before I go off on another vitriolic rant about kids and how the music they're listening to is ruining them and consequently our country, let me start with a couple of palate-cleansing annoyances related to music and take the time to name John Hiatt as my director of the FCC. I feel like it's the only way I'm going to get to hear his music on the radio.

I was watching the Grammys a few years back and saw a nice tribute to the Beach Boys. Of course they showed Mike Love, one of the founding members. I'm always driven nuts when I see him because he's constantly wearing a hat that says
BEACH
BOYS
on it. You were introduced as the Beach Boys on the Grammys. Should we have thought, “What group is this, the Delfonics?” We get it, you're bald and you were in the Beach Boys. I understand you get a lot of swag in show business. I have some
Man Show
shirts, but I would never leave the house in one. Also, and this goes for Jimmy Buffett too, we need a moratorium on the Hawaiian shirt. Once you get past fifty-one it's time to hang those up, Jimbo.

This was at the 2012 Grammys, hosted by LL Cool J. Is there a federal law that LL Cool J must present or host every award show? If so, as president, I'm going to repeal it. I feel like I've seen him and his Kangol hat at every awards show in the last fifty years. If I watched the Oscars in black and white from 1959 with Bob Hope hosting, I'd see LL digitally inserted. I understand that's he's charismatic and charming but it's starting to feel required. Like having Jeff Ross at a roast. I bet when the Klan puts on the “Klannys,” LL still gets a call. Don't get me wrong, I like the guy. I just feel like when my son gets his next participation trophy for t-ball, LL is going to be there to give it to him. But in addition to calling Bob Marley a genius (which I
strongly
disagree with), he did something that struck me as odd that night. He introduced Paul McCartney and called him his “homie.” Normally I don't want to mess with guys built like brick houses, but no one, if you think about the word “homie,” could be further from LL than a guy who was born in Liverpool while it was being bombed by the Germans.

And since I'm on this topic I have a quick message for Sir Paul. You're a legend and I'm a big Beatles fan, so I say this with love: it's time to put down the Just For Men and walk away. We know you don't have the same hair color you did when you played on
Ed Sullivan
. And you're a fucking Beatle. You can still get laid anytime you want. You don't need to attempt and fail to trick us into thinking you're still rocking the auburn locks. Take your own advice and “Let It Be.”

While I'm attacking legends, let me dig into Bob Dylan. This hack is completely overrated. He came along at the right time and carved his initials on the psyche of America. He can't play the harmonica, his guitar playing is pedestrian, and his voice is bad. I could get a bunch of cats, fill their stomachs with varying amounts of nitrous oxide, and then back over them with a car and produce something more pleasing to the ear than Bob Dylan's voice. I've argued with a lot of people who love Dylan and this is always my knockout punch: People doing Aretha Franklin impersonations don't sound better than the Queen of Soul. When someone does a Bob Dylan impersonation it always sounds better.

And my friend John Popper, king of the harmonica, thinks Dylan is shit on the mouth harp, so that's that.

I saw them wheel out Dylan on the Grammys a couple years ago to do “Maggie's Farm.” Of course he had the Avett Brothers, Mumford & Sons, and about ten other guys whaling away on banjos behind him. When there is a wall of banjos propping you up and covering up your weasel-scratch voice, it's probably time to hang it up. And about the twenty-fifth time I heard him croak about not working on Maggie's farm no more, I thought, “Bullet dodged. That must be a relief for Maggie.” Can you imagine what a shitty farmhand Bob Dylan would be? He'd end up passing out at the wheel of a combine and driving it into the living room.

The only thing he has to hang his hat on is lyrics, and I think people pretend to understand them but secretly have no idea what the fuck he's talking about. I listened to “All I Really Want to Do” and was struck at just how awful that song is. Dr. Seuss would think it was amateur hour. “I ain't looking to drag you down or drain you down, chain you down or bring you down.” Awesome, Bob, you rhymed down with down. Twice. Genius.

Okay. On to the music of today. The shitty, shitty music of today. The teenage-girl garbage fest that passes itself off as music that has infected our culture. This shit is insidious. It has spread quicker and farther than AIDS in Africa. There's no escaping it. Traditional bastions of male-dom are being invaded by this teen chick music. I was in the chair at the aforementioned Mexican barbershop and they were pumping Miley Cyrus. Worse, I was at a sports bar in the San Antonio airport at nine
A
.
M
. trying to enjoy a preflight Bloody Mary and Lady Gaga was blasting from the speakers. Because there's nothing guys who frequent sports bars in Texas during prime hangover hours enjoy more than the music of Lady Gaga. My travel companion, Mike August, asked the bartender to turn it down. The bartender replied that he wasn't allowed to.

I can't even escape this crap in my own house. Natalia is nuts for this shit. She followed me around one day holding an iPad that was cranking out some Rihanna while I was trying to do the work that paid for that iPad. This is ruining my daughter. I read her a story two years ago about penguins and how baby penguins have a special song that they call out when they get lost and need to find their parents among the swarm of penguins on the glacier. I asked her what her special song would be if she got lost so Daddy could find her. Without thinking for a second, she said “Nicki Minaj.” My soul died.

Do we have to hear Katy Perry at every moment of our lives? The whole world is not a twelve-year-old girl. It sounds inspirational but if you really listen it's “Fuck him, you're better than him, you're totally awesome just the way you are.” The “anyone can be sexy, all women are beautiful” message is bullshit, and coming from Katy Perry it's completely hypocritical. She's literally shooting whipped cream from her D-cups in slow motion at Snoop Dogg while preaching girl power.