Yesterday in the editorial office a few of us got to talking about the trippy stuff that passes for today's children's TV shows. Not that I'm in much of a position to wax geriatric about "kids these days," but I find myself regularly stunned into a mildly disturbed silence by the programming out there meant to educate our impressionable, sponge-minded little future.
A lot of what passes for entertainment these days has taken a downslide, having about all of the collective beneficial worth of a "Jersey Shore" marathon, but kids' shows have really embraced the shock and awe.
As I usually end up doing for most things in life, I blame the Teletubbies for this.
It's because of the creepy babbling alien babies that we now have things like the giant warty orange thumb creature on "Yo Gabba Gabba" and whatever the blue hell "Boohbahs" are.
Yes, I know there are still some perfectly reasonable alternatives, and kids probably turn out just fine (hopefully) thanks to good old-fashioned parenting hours logged far away from the Boohbah tube. Even "Yo Gabba Gabba" teaches things like social skills in between freaky hallucination sequences.
As much as I'd love to see the 'toons to take it down a notch, I'm not really one to talk. If I had my way, our country's future would grow up on a steady diet of subversive cartoons like "Animaniacs" and "Looney Tunes." Today's youth needs more direction on how to properly mouth off.
Kidding. But only a little. If it makes you feel better, I'm not opposed to throwing in a "Magic School Bus" to science things up a bit.
Contrary to her natural state of being, Renee Lorenz is a total optimist when it comes to Milwaukee. Since beginning her career with OnMilwaukee.com, her occasional forays into the awesomeness that is the Brew City have turned into an overwhelming desire to discover anything and everything that's new, fun or just ... "different."
Expect her random musings to cover both the new and "new-to-her" aspects of Miltown goings-on, in addition to periodically straying completely off-topic, which usually manifests itself in the form of an obscure movie reference.
