I have a 5 year-old son and, because I do, I end up watching plenty of children’s programming. Programming I would otherwise be very unlikely to ever watch. Now, I know it’s for kids. And I know anything is possible in cartoonland, but some of this stuff really drives me crazy. My wife and I have our son watch the kids’ programming that can be found on PBS and a few of the shows are pretty good. I like ‘Fetch’, ‘Arthur’, and, especially, ‘Word Girl’. ‘Word Girl’ is particularly good because the producers realize that adults may be watching so why not entertain them too? There is one program, however, that consistently gets under my skin. It’s ‘Curious George’. What world does this monkey live in? Believe me, I try to suspend my disbelief, but it gets so difficult when George causes so much damage. He floods the apartment building he lives in, he steals the other tenants’ recyclable goods before the items have been used, he splashes paint all over an empty apartment. He never gets in trouble! The Man in the Yellow Hat must be worth millions or have quite the insurance policy to cover all the damage this monkey does. In George’s world, people don’t realize he’s a monkey. Well, they do, but they treat him as though he’s human. In one rather excruciating episode, George finds himself in a department store that has a candy counter run by an incredibly stupid woman. Naturally, she and George hit it off. By the way, Mr. Yellow Hat is constantly leaving George on his own, even though he should know that any time George is left alone, mayhem ensues.
The candy counter lady realizes that she’s running low on supplies so she leaves George (a monkey!) in charge and traipses off, in the middle of the day, to get supplies. Supplies she should have realized she needed earlier. Doesn’t she ever do inventory? Can’t she temporarily close the candy counter? Can’t she have the supplies delivered? Nope, she leaves the monkey in charge. What had been a slow day at the candy counter suddenly becomes very busy, now that the human has left. Do any of the customers find it unusual that there is a monkey waiting on them? Do any of them consider that the monkey, being a monkey, may have difficulty comprehending their orders? Of course not! George makes a huge mess of the candy counter and ends up giving away almost all the candy. Somehow the moronic humans thought he was giving away free samples. But what was George to do? He’s a monkey!! The numbskull gal finally returns. She sees her station in shambles and realizes that George (the monkey!) had given away so many free samples that, even if she sells all that is left, she won’t be able to afford new inventory. She’ll have to go out of business. George is sorry and says something in monkey language. I think it translates to something like, “What did you expect, dumbass? You left your business in the care of a monkey!” This is PBS cartoonland after all, so nothing really bad happens. Somehow, despite her certainty of bankruptcy, she gets so many customers because of George’s samples give away, she stays in business. I don’t know how she managed that. Talk about voodoo economics. Seriously, one of the biggest problems with the PBS kids’ shows is the fact that no one ever really gets in trouble. With the exception of ‘Arthur’ on which the kids get grounded or some other consequence for carelessness or bad behavior, PBS cartoon characters are always just forgiven when they say they’re sorry. “Oh, that’s ok. It was an accident.” My wife has said that she thinks PBS is more concerned that kids understand they should apologize for mistakes or bad behavior. I agree that is important, but it’s also important that kids learn that careless or bad behavior may result in loss of privileges or trust. Why adjust your behavior if all you have to do is say, “Sorry” and all is forgiven?
But, in Curious George’s case, what can you do? He’s a monkey.
Remember mix tapes? Sure you do, cassette tape technology isn’t completely dead yet. Like so many of those who grew up through the 70s and 80s, I made quite a few mix tapes. I started making mix tapes (I usually refer to them as compilation tapes) while in my second year of art school, 1984/85. A fellow student, Tim, then in his first year, introduced me to the concept of making a cassette tape filled with your favorite music. Since then I’ve made more than a hundred tapes with some way cool music. At first, I would simply number them, but later I’d come up with titles for the tapes. Titles such as: “Uganda, what?”; “Much Too Much Eric Clapton” (featuring not a single song by Clapton); “Public Highway, Baby”; and, my favorite title, “A Constant Bombardment of Frenzied, Heathen Discord”. I took that title for a pamphlet I found somewhere. The pamphlet was put out by a couple Evangelist Christian brothers warning of the dangers of rock ‘n’ roll. Sometime in 1994, while watching some late night TV, I saw a commercial advertising a CD series called “Awesome 80s”. The ad featured a couple of dudes all 80s’d out, speaking of the virtues of all the awesome 80s music. Awesome? The collection these two dorks were hawking was as mainstream as anything could be. While in art school, I discovered truly awesome music. I was into the indie scene. Punk, post-punk, ska, new wave, etc. The TV collection consisted of Journey, Lisa Lisa & the whatever the hell they were called, Kim Carnes, Air Supply, Foreigner, blah, blah, blah, yuck!“How lame!” I thought to myself. (The picture above pretty much demonstrates how lousy it was, although I'm not sure it is the actual CD that I saw offered.) So, I got right to work putting together my own “Awesome 80s” compilation tape series. Initially, I did two 110 minute long cassettes back in 1994, then, just this year; I did two more 90 minutes cassettes worth of music. I had rules that I followed in choosing what artists and which of their songs to include. The first rule is obvious – all songs had to have been released in the 80s. Second, only one song per artist could be included. However, if a performer was part of a band and also released solo material in the 80s, one song could be included from each (e.g. Peter Murphy & Bauhaus). Or if one band became another band and both released music in the 80s (e.g. XTC & The Dukes of Stratosphear). The third rule was – all songs must be cool. A couple songs may be considered mainstream, but they are still good enough to be included. If you are the kind of person who thinks the TV version of “Awesome 80s” sounds good, you probably won’t know most of the songs I put in my four volume set. I will list each volume’s songlist without further comment. Rest assured, though, each song is great and worthy of a listen. Worthy of a thousand listens!! Volume I ‘Eighties’ - Killing Joke ‘I Will Dare’ - The Replacements ‘To Hell with Poverty’ - Gang of Four ‘Death of a European’ – The Three Johns ‘In Between Days’ – The Cure ‘Spinning Round’ – Red Lorry Yellow Lorry ‘Apeman Hop’ – Ramones ‘This Damn Nation’ – The Godfathers ‘She’s In Parties’ – Bauhaus ‘Alice’s House’ – The Psychedelic Furs ‘Rise’ – Public Image Ltd. ‘One Day in Your Life’ – 54-40 ‘Give Me Back My Man’ – The B-52’s ‘Uncertain Smile’ – The The ‘Come To Milton Keyes’ – The Style Council ‘Into My Hands’ – The Church ‘So. Central Rain’ – REM ‘Smooth Operator’ – Sade ‘Respectable Street’ – XTC ‘Like Wow, Wipe Out’ – Hoodoo Gurus ‘How Soon Is Now’ – The Smiths ‘Cities in Dust’ – Siouxsie & the Banshees ‘Ahead’ – Wire ‘Through Being Cool’ – Devo ‘Vamos’ – Pixies ‘Newest Industry’ – Husker Du ‘Jordan, MN’ – Big Black ‘Envoye’ – The Young Gods ‘Those Who Move’ – Naked Raygun ‘No Time to Cry’ – Sisters of Mercy Volume II ‘Once in a Lifetime’ – Talking Heads ‘Telephone Operator’ – Pete Shelley ‘Driving the Dynamite Truck’ – Breaking Circus ‘The High Road’ – The Feelies ‘Rescue’ – Echo & the Bunnymen ‘Mandinka’ – Sinead O’Connor ‘Swamp Thing’ – The Chameleons UK ‘Ceremony’ – New Order ‘Never Before, Never Again’ – The dB’s ‘Wild Blue Yonder’ – The Screaming Blue Messiahs ‘Message of Love’ – The Pretenders ‘Precious’ – The Jam ‘Cruiser’s Creek’ – The Fall ‘Marlene on the Wall’ – Suzanne Vega ‘Ivo’ – Cocteau Twins ‘Another Bubble’ – Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians ‘A Song from Under the Floorboards’ – Magazine ‘Big Decision’ – That Petrol Emotion ‘Marimba’ – Red Guitars ‘A Pagan Place’ – The Waterboys ‘Say Goodbye’ – Hunters & Collectors ‘Love is the Law’ – The Suburbs ‘Snake Dance’ – The March Violets ‘Emmarita’ – The Whole Lotta Loves ‘Let’s Get Married’ – The Celibate Rifles ‘Here Comes the Rain’ – The Cult ‘Independence Day’ – Urban Guerrillas Volume III ‘Final Solution’ – Peter Murphy ‘Canary in a Coalmine’ – The Police ‘24’ – Game Theory ‘Scorpio Rising’ – 10,000 Maniacs ‘Free Yourself’ – The Untouchables ‘True Men Don’t Kill Coyotes’ – Red Hot Chili Peppers ‘Garbageman’ – The Cramps ‘Let’s See the Sun’ – The Fleshtones ‘We’re So Cool’ – Au Pairs ‘Nothing Means Nothing Anymore’ – The Alley Cats ‘Games without Frontiers’ – Peter Gabriel ‘E = mc2 ’ – Big Audio Dynamite ‘What Do You Know?’ – Buzzcocks ‘Here Comes the Rain Again’ – Eurythmics ‘Gone Daddy Gone’ – The Violent Femmes ‘Units’ – Man-Sized Action ‘Beatle Boots’ – Love Tractor ‘Above It Now’ – Figures ‘Motorcrash’ – The Sugarcubes ‘Go!’ – Tones on Tail ‘Everything Counts’ – Depeche Mode ‘Sour Grapes’ – The Descendents ‘Police on My Back’ – The Clash ‘Shut Out the Light’ – Steve Diggle ‘Insanely Jealous’ – The Soft Boys ‘Cloudbusting’ – Kate Bush Volume IV ‘Well, Well, Well’ – The Woodentops ‘The Metro’ – Berlin ’Jean’s Not Happening’ – The Pale Fountains ‘Carpathia Girl’ – Laughing Stock ‘Party at Ground Zero’ – Fishbone ‘Sensoria’ – Cabaret Voltaire ‘Ball of Confusion’ – Love & Rockets ‘Let My Love Open the Door’ – Pete Townshend ‘Love Kills’ – Joe Strummer ‘Levitation’ – The Mighty Mofos ‘Certain Things are Likely’ – KTP ‘Poplife’ – Prince & the Revolution ‘Ashes to Ashes’ – David Bowie ‘World Destruction’ – Time Zone ‘Nemesis’ – Shreikback ‘(Kind of) True’ – Golden Palominos ‘Date with a Vampyre’ – The Screaming Tribesmen ‘Some Candy Talking’ – The Jesus & Mary Chain ‘Just for the Moment’ – Get Smart ‘TV Party!’ – Black Flag That’s more than one hundred kick ass, crazy good songs. Certainly better than most of the stuff you could get in that TV offer. A lot of these songs can be found on iTunes. Look for them. Enjoy!
I have a 5 year-old son and, because I do, I end up watching plenty of children’s programming. Programming I would otherwise be very unlikely to ever watch. Now, I know it’s for kids. And I know anything is possible in cartoonland, but some of this stuff really drives me crazy. 
The candy counter lady realizes that she’s running low on supplies so she leaves George (a monkey!) in charge and traipses off, in the middle of the day, to get supplies. Supplies she should have realized she needed earlier. Doesn’t she ever do inventory? Can’t she temporarily close the candy counter? Can’t she have the supplies delivered? 
