Cartoons (Part I)

My son is eighteen months old and his tastes in his morning feeding viewing material have evolved significantly. Here is a list of his favorite shows since the time he was born, in approximate order.

Anything He Was Pointed At – Before three months or so, he was most interested in the human feeding him, the ceiling, the door, or what have you. Same thing anyone with 20/800 vision and no attention span would look at, I guess.

DirecTV Screen Saver – Yep. Just happily riveted by the corporate logo lazily caroming off the sides of the TV set. Pretty advanced for his age, I'd say. You would expect that behavior more from college kids doing chemical experimentation...

Third Rock From the Sun Opening Credits – I put these shows on my Netflix list. Shut up. Whenever he would hear the intro, he would whip his head around from whatever he was doing (usually eating) and watch the spheres bounce around to the heavy guitar music until the very last note of the opening faded away (baroooowww-owwww!) and then resume whatever it was he was doing. He had no interest in the show whatsoever.

Star Trek Voyager Opening Credits – Again, shut up. He actually enjoys the music for this and called some toy rockets “bah-bum-bums” for a while (listen to the music and you will hear why), and would say “Bye-Bye spaceship” when it zipped away at the end of the credits. That was pretty neat. On the down side he calls all photos of fire (like a firetruck battling a blaze) “spaceship”. Again, you would have to watch the first few seconds of the opening to see why that makes sense.

Shaun the Sheep – He (and I) love this show, although for some reason he was terrified of one episode that had a stuffed bear in it. Also he did not like the episode where the sheep dress up like a person and go out for pizza. That stunk, because that is my favorite one, and I couldn't watch it without him getting visibly upset. BTW, he no longer fears those episodes.

Mickey Mouse Clubhouse – Dear Disney. Congratulations on putting out a terrific program. It is colorful and well done and I highly recommend it for its teaching capacity. Please put out more of them. Dear Everyone Else: You will watch these episodes scores of times. To maintain your sanity, you might want to try these approaches 1) Treat the shows like MST3K audience members would or 2) Treat the shows like Rocky Horror Picture Show audience members would (messier and crazier).

Go Diego Go – This used to get my vote for “Least Hangover Friendly Cartoon”. “Hey, Diego, how about taking it down 6 or 7 notches, woudja? It's 5:30 in the morning, dude... Maybe Rescue Pack could turn into some aspirin and a cup of coffee and just go away for a while...”

Phineas and Ferb – He likes the music the most, especially the opening credits and the two songs “I Ain't Got Rhythm” and “Gitchie-Gitchie-Goo”. I like the Christmas special, myself.

Spongebob Squarepants – I am not sure what he likes about the show other than the opening credits. I think he just like saying “Shunpop Skeerpans”. FWIW, I don't like the current season very much.

(To Be Continued...)