For Kid's Sake
Saturday morning. I didn't even go out last night and it feels like a small
animal crawled up into my body to die. Homemade chili: the yin & yang of my
existence. If we say that yin is positive and yang is negative, then I yinned out
last night and I may yang on the deck any minute now.
What am I doing here?? I wouldn't normally be up before 9:30 on a
Saturday morning unless it was at gunpoint. That's right, I'm doing it for the kids.
What kind of programming are the children being exposed to on Saturday
mornings now? Is it really as bad as the Action For Children's TV and other
groups say it is? Can it possibly be any worse than the crap I grew up with?
Turn the set on and there's Heathcliff on 27. This should be fun. I hate
the strip in the paper, and now it moves. In the first cartoon, Heathcliff has a
problem with hair. All the long-hairs are winning the male beauty contests. After
some comments against long hair that sound suspiciously like my dad talking
fifteen years ago, Heathcliff gets some super plant nutrient dumped on his head
and goes through the trials and tribulations of flowing locks and then turns into
The Jaded Eye: Movie & Television Reviews
By C.W. Heiser
a hairball. There must be a moral here someplace, but I can't find it. Some fakey
violence. Over on 29 it's Jimmy Swaggart. ACT should really do something
about Swaggart on Saturday mornings; this man is venomous. Enough being
yelled at, on 21 is Abra Kadabra. I guess this host guy must be Mr. Kadabra. He's
kind of a young Fred Rogers with magic. In between alphabet and word lessons,
he does some pretty neat tricks.
7:30
On 27 it's Kidsongs. In this deal some kids find an abandoned television
station. They clean it up, fix the wiring, and start broadcasting their own kind of
M-TV, all without being electrocuted or nabbed by the FCC. This one video,
called "I Wanna Be A Fireman," is about how it's all right for little girls to be
firemen. I think these kids were all cloned from Marlo Thomas. On 8 it's the
Muppets and on 33 it's Sesame Street, which is the Muppets without the Muppets.
27 has something called Kids are People Too. The host, Michael Young, has got
to be the most unctious human being alive. I don't trust people that are this sweet,
and I certainly wouldn't trust him with my kids.
mfr .
. -.-.- PI
o Speed or Not : Why Must We Move So Fast?
By Kathleen Riley-King
In this age of fast-paced tech
nology, people seem to be moving faster
too--at least on the roads.
From what I have observed
during eight years as a driver, many
people drive at least 10 m.p.h. over the
speed limit. Most of the time, I drive the
speed limit or 5 m.p.h. over, but I am
passed as if I am driving 15 m.p.h. under
the speed limit.
Personally, I do not understand
why everyone is in such a hurry. Have
we as a society placed so many demands
on ourselves that we must race with wild
abandon everywhere we go?
Actually, traveling faster does
not always get people to their desti
nations any faster. Many times, people
have passed me only to find themselves
behind another car, further up the road,
that is going slower than I was. Or, I get
to the next red light, and the car that just
had to pass me is waiting there.
If another person's destination
is 10 miles away, and he or she drives
70 m.p.h., and I drive 55 m.p.h., that
person will get there only 2-3 minutes
before I will. But, that person will have
broken the law, risked a sizeable fine,
and increased the stopping distance on
dry pavement by between 50 and 100
feet, at least
Not only are people speeding in
dry weather, but many do not adjust their
speeds in wet weather. According to the
1977 Pennsylvania Manual for Drivers,
stopping distance increases from 305 feet
(19 car lengths) on dry concrete to 506
feet (31 car lengths) on wet pavement
when driving 55 m.p.h. Furthermore,
the faster a car is traveling, the better
chance it has of hydroplaning.
Besides speeding in wet and dry
weather, impatience causes some people
to become reckless and pass in no
passing zones. Recently, three times in
three weeks I witnessed people doing
this. Perhaps it would not have been so
bad if other people had not been coming
toward those who were passing . . . Two
of those three times I came within
seconds of being hit head-on. I had done
nothing to cause the situations. I had
done nothing illegal. In fact, I was just
driving in my proper lane, and I could
have died--because of impatient people.
After those two near-misses, I
wondered: Do people not care if they live
or die? Do they not care if others live or
die? Why don't they respect my wish to
live past 25 years of age? And, what was
so important that they must risk
smashing into me?
I do not see much sense in this
I'm starting to get confused. On 33 it's still Sesame Street, but on 21
there's Hello Kitty's Furry Tale, 27 has Care Bears, and over on 8 it's Gummi
Bears, or is it 27? These all look the same: a bunch of cloyingly cute little cartoon
animals that talk in a squeaky voices, all with matching toys the kiddies can get
their significant adults to spring for. Even the other commercials are all the same:
Sega, Pound Puppies, and Rice Krispies. For a minute there I thought my remote
was broken when I kept getting the same Toys 12' Us commercial on two
different channels. I give up. I'm going to make some coffee.
8:30-9:50
I fell asleep sometime after 8:30. I know there was something called
Little Clowns on 27 and there was Muppet Babies on 21. I switched over to check
out the Smurfs on g and dozed off. When I first woke up I thought that now my
watch is running fast. The Smurfs were still on, but I checked the listings and this
is planned. The Smurfs run for an hour and a half, that's as long as a feature length
movie, and it's a wonder these kids don't go into sugar coma.
I'm mesmerized. I'm watching Pee Wee's Playhouse on 21 and I've
never seen anything like this. Has Nancy Reagan seen this show? This is like
acid without the bother of chemicals. I'm sure that at least some of the people
involved with this production did some recreational consciousness melting in the
Sixties. It's like a surreal pantheist got into the control room at CBS: everything
looks like something out of Zap comics and talks. Dinosaurs play baseball and
lobsters do chorus numbers. The one intersection with outside reality comes
when the secret word is announced, it's "begin" today, and Pee Wee instructs the
children of America in guerrilla anarchy. For the rest of the day, whenever
anyone makes the foolish mistake of saying the word, "begin", the kids are
supposed to scream at the top of their voices. This must be a real joy for young
working mothers trying to recuperate from the week. If you don't know who Pee
Wee Herman is, just imagine that Ernie Kovacs married Soupy Sales and raised
Pee Wee with his brother Gilligan. I may be overreacting, or it might be the chili
talking, but either this generation of kids is on the verge of a great evolutionary
leap and Pee Wee's Playhouse is the trigger to cosmic conscienceness, or this is
the end of civilization as we know it.
I'm going back to bed. Wake me on Monday
madness on the roads, but I think I
understand a little of it. I do not believe
that we as a society want to harm
ourselves or others. Instead, I think we
are all too wrapped up in our own lives
and often have too many demands. Also,
I believe that, to most of us, driving
becomes so routine that we just do not
think about it. But, just because we all
do it does not mean it is right--or
I think we need to consider why
we are going so fast, why we cannot
even pause to enjoy life, to savor what
short time we have--instead of racing
through it.
I, too, used to feel rushed. But
after traveling to Barbados and seeing the
Barabadians' laid-back lifestyle, I decided
that they know something we Americans
don't--how to take their time. No one on
that island seemed to worry about time.
What a relief it was not to rush.
Barbados changed my life. Now, if I feel
rushed, I close my eyes and think,
"Barbados, Barbados," and life comes
back into perspective.
I doubt that others will slow
down, but I have developed a
philosophy: Let them rush; I'll get there
too--but I am going to enjoy myself in
the process.
a ■an uawu
AMAMI 111111110r1
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