"Annie"

image via

The news that they're making a new film version of the musical Annie dredged up memories of watching the original 1982 film while hiding under an afghan, covering my eyes. 

Now, for all intents and purposes, I really should like Annie.  Heck, I should love it-- I'm a big fan of musicals, Carol Burnett, Bernadette Peters, and Tim Curry--heck, who doesn't love Tim Curry?--but oh, Annie terrified me.

Annie tells the story of the tiny orphan victim of an abusive alcoholic sadist.  Cheery, right?  Along the way, there's animal abuse (the threat of Sandy getting sent off to the sausage factory?), pervasive Orientalist racism (his name is "Punjab?"  Really?), a terrorist bomb plot (drat those Bolsheviks!), and the revelation that Annie's parents were killed in a fire (Aaugh!  Fire!).

I remember when I cowered during the "Little Girls" musical number, as Miss Hannigan vowed to "step on their freckles," my mother comforted me by assuring me that "in real life, Carol Burnett was actually a very nice, very funny lady."  This led to my (erroneous) years-long belief that my mother was somehow BFFs with the Queen of Television Comedy.

I will say, in Annie's defense, that I'm sure it's hard to make an uplifting musical comedy about the Great Depression.  That, and I'm eternally grateful that the eponymous little red-mopped ragamuffin on film didn't have the same soulless, blank-eyed stare as her comic strip counterpart.

image via

Shudder.

Lesson Learned:
No one cares for you a smidge when you're in an orphanage.


Annie.  Dir. John Huston.  Perf. Carol Burnett, Albert Finney, Ann Reinking.  Columbia, 1982.

Annie (Special Anniversary Edition)

"Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory"

image via

Let's get the obvious out of the way: the infamous boat ride from the 1971 movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory might be one of the single most disturbing scenes in all of children's filmdom.  It just comes out of nowhere--first you're in a magical candyland where the river is chocolate and the daffodils are edible teacups, and next thing you know, you're thrust into some acid-dropping film student's homage to Un Chien Andalou. 

What just slithered across that dude's face?  Wait--what just happened to that chicken?  Did it just get its head cut off?  There's no decapitation in kids' movies!

When the 2005 film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory came out, it sparked a wave of nostalgia among people who'd watched the original version as kids.  The boat scene was seen as a rite of passage, something that scared us all senseless as kids but which was almost laughable now: a kind of trippy cinematic non sequitur.

But no one really seemed to talk about the actual message of the 1971 movie-- a movie that, it's worth noting, changed the title of the original book (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which suggests that it is the eponymous chocolatier, not the Dickensian pauper boy with a heart of gold, who is the film's protagonist.

And what does Willy Wonka do?  He metes out justice as he sees fit, punishing those whom he deems unworthy and rewarding (after berating and terrifying) the worthy.  Yes, he's a bug-eyed, nougat-making, Old Testament-style Santa Claus.

So theoretically he humiliates/disfigures/maims/kills(?[!]) only the "bad" kids, right?  Which is how most people remember the movie: bad eggs who had it coming to them get their just des(s)erts.

My problem was that I was all of those kids.  I loved chocolate!  I would uncurl the outer layer of a Little Debbie Swiss Cake Roll and eat it as a sheet before unrolling the cake part and licking off the frosting (heaven!).  I loved to chew gum!  I would buy pack after pack of Freshen Up Gum, with its burst of minty juice inside that lasted all of five sweet seconds.  I loved TV!  I mean, just look at this ridiculous blog.  And, while I hope I wasn't half as demanding as Veruca Salt, I did spend a lot of time loudly lobbying to get a pet--maybe not a golden goose, but still.

So you can imagine the paranoia I felt during my first trip to Hershey Park.  Any old sadistic cane-toting curmudgeon who hated the way that kids today liked gum and chocolate and television and things could do terrible things to you with no repercussions and probably even get his own movie named after him provided he sang some catchy tunes.

Lesson learned:
Oompa loompa doompadee dare
It doesn't really seem very fair
Oompa loompa doompadee drat
To incinerate a kid for being a brat

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  Dir. Mel Stuart.  Perf. Gene Wilder, Jack Albertson, Peter Ostrum.  Paramount, 1971.

Buy Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory DVD

Lefty from "Sesame Street"

image via

"Sesame Street" has a lot to answer for, from the creepy visuals of "Twin Beaks" to the heartbreak of "Follow That Bird."  But one of the strangest things about "Sesame Street," bar none, has to be its inclusion of a kiddie-friendly flasher.

OK, maybe now I realize he wasn't necessarily supposed to be a flasher--perhaps he was meant to be more akin to... an inept drug dealer? an unsavory knockoff Rolex salesman?

But really, a shady character luring you over just so he can open his trenchcoat to show you something?  You can see how I remembered him as a flasher.

Apparently his name was "Lefty," and he's absent from the current incarnation of the show, and for good reason.  He was always approaching the other characters and trying to get them to buy whatever letter happened to be under his coat at the time.  Would you like to see his D?  Maybe a little T and A?  Fancy a nice F?  It's easy to see how Lefty could be rated X.

Lesson learned:
When Lefty asks you "Would you like to buy an O?," it's best to remember that that's only legal in the state of Nevada.

Buy Sesame Street: The Muppet Alphabet Album, Vol. 2

"Psalty"

image via

I still was listening to LPs as a kid.  There wasn't a large selection for me to choose from (that interested me, anyway--I wasn't one much for Dionne Warwick or Roger Whittaker), so there were a select few we kept in constant rotation. Chief among these was the Psalty series, which followed the adventures of a "big... blue... singing... songbook!"  While an anthropomorphized hymnal might not seem like the most appealing--or marketable--of children's characters, Psalty and his retinue of spunky children sang a lot of catchy tunes and it was always fun to sing along.

I never knew until recently that there were videos to go with the audio of the Kids' Praise albums-- and it's a darn good thing, too.  Psalty appears as a man in gold facepaint with blue Bob Ross-like facial hair, and Charity Churchmouse has flesh-colored prosthetic Dumbo ears and a '50s-style circle skirt and looks like she just ducked out of a low-rent Furry Convention. 

The album featuring Charity had one profoundly scary moment for me, when she has a nightmare that the conman Risky Rat is trying to lure her into signing a "con-trap"--I mean "contract," and make her his "slave"--er, that is--his "star."  Without being able to see Risky Rat, I was able to conjure up an image of him that was truly terrifying: a kind of cross between Ratigan from The Great Mouse Detective and Warren T. Rat from An American Tail, with a little Jenner from The Secret of NIMH thrown in. 

Still, nothing would have been quite as scary as the way Risky Rat is depicted in the video Psalty's Salvation Celebration, in which the whiskers-twirling villain actually tries to prevent children from saving their immortal souls (!!!). 

Lesson learned:
Always take a talent agent's promises with a grain of Psalt.

Kid's Praise! 4: Singsational Servants.  Perf. Ernie Rettino.  Maranatha Music, 1984.

Watch Kids' Praise 4 on YouTube here (Risky Rat appears around 32:00).
Buy Psalty Kid's Praise! 4 Singsational Servants CD

"Pecos Bill"

image via

Where I live, it's been over 100°F lately, and as I walk across parking lots in oven-like conditions, seeing the horizon line itself writhe with the heat, I've found myself thinking of "Pecos Bill."

Then, once I started thinking about it, I found I couldn't stop.  I was trying to decide if all my memories of the cartoon could possibly be real, or if I'd embellished them in my nightmares.  Did it truly feature interspecies suckling, à la Romulus and Remus? Was there actually a scene where the hero rides a cyclone, rolls a cigarette on his tongue, and lights it with a lightning bolt?  Did he really take potshots at Indians donning warpaint until he'd created the Painted Desert?  And were Roy Rogers and Trigger somehow involved?

So I watched it again to find out.

The cartoon starts with Bill as a toddler heading west with his family, until the wagon hits a bump and baby Bill goes flying out and lands in the mud.  Since he's one of 16 children, nobody notices or cares.  (As a member of a large family myself--my name was often confused with a brother's, or another brother's, or a sister's, or, more often, the dog's--this was a particular childhood fear of mine realized.)

He's then raised by coyotes (a childhood dream of mine realized, though yanking a coyote pup off its mother's teat to feed was perhaps a bit too visceral for me).

One day, young Bill sees a young colt near death and being attacked by buzzards.  Bill jumps into the fray and pummels the birds so hard their feathers fly off.  In the aftermath, when Bill and the colt gaze at each other through matching blackened eyes, it is, as the narrator says, "the beginning of a bee-yoo-tiful friendship."  They seal the deal with an Eskimo kiss.

In fact, "Pecos Bill" is a love story in the same vein as Passion In The Desert.  Sure, later on Bill enters a more conventional romantic relationship with Slue-Foot Sue, but his partner for life is surely Widowmaker, his horse.  They laugh alike, they walk alike, at times they even talk alike-- well, yodel, anyway.  When Bill begins to woo Sue, we see Widowmaker looking on and weeping.  Then when Bill and Sue decide to get married, Sue wants two things: a bustle and a chance to ride Widowmaker.  In a jealous rage, Widowmaker bucks so hard that Sue's bustle bounces off his hide and sends her sailing off "like a Roman candle."  (The fact that a rootin'-tootin' catfish-ridin' cowgirl like Sue is undone by such a frivolous a symbol of womanly vanity seems uncharacteristic, but oh well.)

Bill tries to lasso Sue to bring her back down, but Widowmaker sabotages the attempt, and Sue winds up landing on the moon.  Bill goes back to living with the coyotes, and he and Widowmaker live out their days together.

Lesson learned:
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him like your girlfriend.


"Pecos Bill."  Melody Time.  Perf. Roy Rogers, Bob Nolan.  Disney, 1948.
Buy Melody Time (Disney Gold Classic Collection) DVD

"Fuzzy Bee and Friends"

A Smother Goose literature review

First off, the title is misleading (beyond the fact that you'll need to avoid calling it "Busy Bee" by mistake).  Like Godot, Fuzzy Bee never actually appears.  His likeness graces the cover but is nowhere to be found inside.

Anyway, Fuzzy Bee has a posse.  It seems implausible that a bee would have allies as diverse as a snail or a worm--given that it spends most of its time in a hive full of other bees--so if your child is well-versed in apiology, he or she might have some questions about this.  (For the less informed child, you might also wish to explain that not every part of a bee is "fuzzy.")

An omniscient narrator introduces each of Fuzzy Bee's friends in turn, alternately ridiculing them ("Keep moving snail, you're really slow") or making spurious claims about their temperament ("This dragonfly is really tame").  The last page contains the soliloquy of a megalomaniac butterfly fishing for validation: "Oh me, Oh my!  I wonder why / I'm such a splendid butterfly!"

Fuzzy Bee is also a text mired in scandal; two characters have been excised from the most recent version without explanation.  Rumors that this move was spurred by an affair between Sally Spider and Mr. Fly are still mere allegations at this point, however.

Then there's Squishy Turtle and Friends which, like a Whit Stillman film, continues the thematic elements of Fuzzy Bee while introducing a new cast of characters.  Oddly, the narrator seems to be sadly misinformed about blue whales, suggesting that they could potentially live in a freshwater lake given that it's large enough, and that they eat "little fish with shiny scales."  To divert the savvy reader from questioning the veracity of these claims, the narrator threatens you with a crab who "knows / just how to pinch your tiny toes," and then ends the tale with the threatening spectre of a "hungry shark" (see above).

Lesson learned:
In truth, blue whales eat only krill / (and "squishy" turtle means roadkill)

Priddy, Roger.  Fuzzy Bee and Friends.  New York: St. Martin's (Priddy Books), 2003.
Buy Fuzzy Bee and Squishy Turtle 2-Book Pack

Lies Your Parents Told You

image via

Whenever April Fool's Day rolls around, I think about a particularly gullible relative of mine who believed that spaghetti grew on trees.  He had been duped by a 1957 spoof broadcast of a "Spaghetti Harvest" and for years believed in the existence of Swiss spaghetti orchards.

I've always thought April Fool's Day was pretty lame, and now with the advent of social media, it's close to unbearable ("ZOMG Im pregnant!" "Lulz, j/k!").  And then I realized that if you're a parent, you get to perform April Fool's Day-style trickery all year round.  A kid is going to learn about the world through his parents ("This is a doggie.  We pet the doggie verrry gently."  "That is a lion.  We back away from the lion verrry slowly."), and so there's a certain trust in place there, and parents have always used this to their advantage.  They will tell you that if you make that face again it will freeze that way, or if you swallow a watermelon seed, a vine will grow in your stomach, or that if you suck your thumb again, a tailor will materialize and cut it off.

The idea behind most of these parent-isms is that the ends justify the means.  You don't want your kid making that face, or sucking his thumb, or whatever, and saying "watermelon seeds aren't nutritive and could present a potential choking hazard" is less tangible an idea than the image of growing a watermelon vine in one's gut.  Of course, the tricky part is when the kid stops believing you-- he tried it, and his face won't freeze after all-- or, conversely, when he won't stop believing (with apologies to Journey), and therefore refuses to eat noodles for fear of growing an internal spaghetti forest.

Parents also tell kids lies just because it's fun for them sometimes, with the same motivation, I imagine, that compels your older relatives and clueless coworkers to send you email forwards with animated gifs that tell lame, dubiously inspiring stories and then promise at the end that if you don't forward it to fifty other people you'll die, possibly from a watermelon seed.  

Some of the lies even seem beneficial-- the Tooth Fairy, for example, is a useful tool to help kids get over the fear that's a natural result when parts of your body suddenly start falling off, leaving gaping, bloody holes in your face.  The idea that a mythical being will visit you and leave you money when this happens seems like a pretty fair trade, then (accounting for inflation, of course-- if the Tooth Fairy leaves you a quarter but gave that girl in your math class a ten-spot, that's pretty cold comfort).

As I began reading parenting manuals, I wondered what they might have to say about the acceptability of parental white lies.  So far, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and his ilk haven't made an appearance, but I did come across a particularly unexpected bit of advice in that venerated staple What to Expect the First Year.  In describing how to help your child "reach his or her maximum potential," it suggests: "[try] talking about people you see ('That lady is very old,' 'That man has to ride around in a chair because he has a boo-boo on his leg,' 'Those children are going to school')" (384).

So... I'm supposed to foster his genius by teaching him to talk about the handicapped and the elderly like they're not there?

Or maybe the lesson is to construct plausible fictions aloud about everyone you see around you, like you're taking an oral exam for a freshman creative writing class. ("That girl's pants are too tight because she eats her feelings," "That man is driving that car because he's insecure about his masculinity," "That woman is using coupons and paying with a personal check because she doesn't realize that some of us have places to be right now.")

While not exactly a lie, the statement that a stranger you see who uses a wheelchair "has to ride around in a chair because he has a boo-boo on his leg" is obtuse at best.  This strikes me as one of the more pernicious and ignorant "tales for children" that I've come across yet.

Lesson learned: 
...And stop cracking your knuckles; it will give you arthritis!


Murkoff, Heidi, Arlene Eisenberg, and Sandee E. Hathaway.  What to Expect the First Year.  New York: Workman, 2009.