"Students at Jabalia Prep C Boys School participate in calisthenics on the first day back to school since the cease-fire with Israel January 24, 2009 in Jabalia, Gaza Strip. Schools in Gaza were closed for over 20 days as fighting between Hamas and the Israeli army made school attendance too dangerous. On the first day back, area counselors spent the day evaluating students and creating a light-hearted atmosphere for children to relax." via Getty
With its eighth season—begins in January!—lumbering towards us like old Randy, American Idol remains so big that it's hard to quite figure out the size and shape of it. What makes up the pop corn 'n bubblegum singing competition? And, more importantly, who's watching? Well lots of people are, but we suspect a smaller number are doing the rabid voting, making the signs, and wearing the t-shirts than ever before. It's become clear that the obsessed Idol fan demographic has, over the years, been distilled into two core groups: scary/crazy adults with lots of problems and, you know, little kids who are allowed to be a little nutty because, well, they're kids. As a visual example of a mix of the cute kid and the borderline crazy, we present you, after the jump, with a video of The Worst Idol Day Ever, as witnessed by some of its most devoted fans. We just think it's really funny. In particular the girl in the middle.
The new Billy Elliot Broadway musical is a sad, soaring little British tart of an evening at the theatre. Well, the content is sad, yes, but the play also ripples with the inherent melancholia of children on stage, specifically young master Elliot. You see, three distinct lads play the north English son of a coal miner who dreams of ballet, but they're protected (and profiled) almost as one. They're the Billy Elliot Borg. But, really, because the world works the lonely way that it does, only one can truly shine. The boy we saw this past week (and the boy who chief New York Times critic Ben Brantley saw) was a fellow named David Alvarez, a beguilingly accented young son of Cuban defectors raised in Québec. He's a revelation in the ballet bits, an angry smear of slight imperfections in his tap, and a multi-culti trilingual 13-year-old trying his best in the show's more dialogue-heavy stretches. We mean to say he's terrific and pure and now well-reviewed by the biggest newspaper in the land and... what about the other two? Will they be forced to forever play catch up? Essentially they're all fighting to become... what? The next Andrea McArdle? What's sad for the fey American boy and the sternly pretty Soviet bloc chap who play Billy in rotation with Alvarez, is that their Cuba-fro'd counterpart has actually already won. They'll all be nominated for Tonys together if they're nominated at all (as is what happened in London and Sydney when the show opened in those cities), they share interview time, and a thick veil of secrecy is kept under which Billy will be going on what night. But still, man. Alvarez bled into his shoes for all the critics, for the all the glory (and the big, pretty Times Arts page photo). The American kid tappa-tappa-tappa'd for the big Opening Night and the blonde comrade performed on The View, but you'll only get that one critics' night. And the rightful son took the mantle that evening. Which makes the show uplifting. And makes the show really, really sad.
I don't think kids need to be as coddled and protected from the ills of the world as they are today (Janet Jackson's three-millisecond tit flash = the Rapture, apparently), but some stuff is just not for little ones. Which is why it's always funny/disturbing when someone unearths a clip from a children's television show that really should be anything but. A site called Uncoached has compiled a video listicle of some of the more inappropriate kiddie show disasters (though, one of the ones they claim is real is an obvious parody). I've put my two favorite after the jump. Poo poo! This song is about fucking:
We've long wondered about the fascination behind television shows featuring huge-ass families. And uh oh, here comes another one - tonight, TLC debuts 17 Kids and Counting, a reality show about the Duggars, a 19-member family from Arkansas. Former high school sweethearts Michelle and Jim Bob (yes, really) are — huge shocker here — super religious (a.k.a. they clearly don't use condoms) and believe "that every child is a gift to be cherished." They have ten boys and seven girls with number 18 on the way, so they obviously need some camera crews to come in and liven things up. Michelle has been pregnant for nearly 12 years of her life. Excuse us while we die for a moment. Anyway, this will mark TLC's second foray into the overgrown-clan genre. Jon and Kate Plus 8, another show about two parents with way too many babes, has proved successful for the network - even stirring up some controversy from those who believe "raising children is not theater." But why do audiences tune in to see screaming parents and whining tots?It's the "how the fuck do they do it — and why?" quotient. I mean, these people have got to be straight-up clinically insane, right? How do they pay for all of the spit-up rags and dollies and bottles? How do the husband and wife not kill each other after bickering constantly? (Lots of make-up sex, perhaps?) Why do they want so many kids - are they weird and religious or just super charitable and giving? And most importantly: how the hell did that woman pop so many out? Oy. Be the answers what they may, the best part about watching these shows has to be that when those sweet 30 minutes are up, you've got to feel so much better about your own spoiled brats. For your sake, we hope there are only a few of them.
It's a Chicago media tussle—hardball style! Yes, well. The Chicago Sun-Times threatened to sue the Chicago Tribune for job discussions the Tribune had with Jay Mariotti, the sports columnist who quit the Sun-Times just last month. But, um, hey Jay: didn't you quit your LUCRATIVE NEW contract at the Sun-Times out of the blue because you were inspired by all the other sports journalists you saw "writing for web sites?" Where's your "web site" now, you idiot man-child? Ahahaha!
Our visit to the multiplex last weekend went well enough for the most part; we liked The House Bunny just fine, and the Babylon A.D. trailer looked suitably career-ending for our tastes. It wasn't until we exited the theater that our nerves deadened and our hearts sank: There, in a lobby dotted with orphaned popcorn kernels and bereft souls, we had a closer look at a poster for the upcoming Al Pacino/Robert De Niro cop flick Righteous Kill. And while it might seem too easy to write the film off as a gimmicky genre exercise at first blush, it would hardly be fair to do so without seeing it. That said, we noticed five things off the bat that not only implied an alarming sloppiness, but seemed to actively discourage our viewership. After the jump, our essential wake-up call for studios, poster designers and casual fans alike.1. Shave your leading men. We've seen this before on offending posters, most recently when My Best Friend's Girl co-star Dane Cook compared his own mug to "Britney Spears's vagina." But that's Dane Cook, and this is Robert De Niro, and the best Bobby can hope for is maybe "bus driver at 5 o'clock." It's conspicuous and really kind of repellent.
Friday is usually a pretty inoffensive day for the Times op-ed page. (Dowd saves her punny schlockicisms for Wednesdays and Sundays, Kristol gets Mondays, and the worst administration actually made honest men out of the formerly-predictable ideologues [Krugman and Brooks!] who run the Friday shift.) But today right underneath Paul Krugman's column about how the plutocracy's geometric accumulation of wealth has caused the merely superrich to consider themselves and their own warped senses of reality somehow normal we have an advertisement posing an intriguing ethical dilemma! "You see a nanny at the park seemingly mistreating her charge," it reads. Then it lists some possible responses.None of them are "Presume that if I am an adult in the sort of park where I can safely assume such a woman is a nanny, than I too am a nanny, and thus inclined to believe any nanny with the audacity to 'mistreat' her 'charge' in public is probably acting in self-defense." But that's not the point. The point is, yes, there is actually a blog dedicated to nanny snitching, and yes, it contains actual photos of black women being, for instance, not "abusive, per se, but neglectful for sure" in the presence of white children, which yes raises many ethical questions I'd rather just sum up as "WTF." So who do we have to thank for this? It's the same classy insurance company that bought the name of that adman who committed suicide after being called a dick by lots of people on the internet as a Google Adwords search term to promote another installation in the same stupid "Responsibility Project" campaign! The whole point of that campaign is allegedly to get people to think about tough ethical dilemmas. The genius of it is that the tough ethical dilemmas are the types experienced exclusively by very wealthy people whose sense of ethics have already no doubt been warped by their sizeable wealth, because those are the types of people who are most likely to think, "Oh fuck, you know what? If all my bad rich person karma isn't already in the park beating my kid I am going to need some INSURANCE." Now That's Rich [NYT]
God help us all. Warner Bros. has decided to bring back the single most frightening children's show that was ever made-The Banana Splits. That's the Hanna-Barbera psychedelic Saturday morning mind-fuck that scrambled the brains of innocent youngsters starting in the late 1960s and continued to terrorize for more than a decade before some angel of mercy finally pulled its evil plug. It was created by hippie Satanists with the aim of building an army of plushy zombie warriors and it damned well nearly accomplished its task. And now some madman is bent on bringing it back? Stop them! Won't someone please, please think of the children?!
Have you gotten your toddler into a top pre-K program yet? Have you started touring elementary schools? Have you at least enrolled him/her in French lessons yet? No? Little Max/Emma is never getting into Harvard now! Yep, he's totally doomed and you're to blame. According to the Times, private schools are in a "crisis mode in terms of capacity." It doesn't matter that the country is in an economic downturn and that your banker husband may have already lost his job. Mandell School director Gabriella Rowe says the school received 100 applications within 48 hours of announcing a new 25-student kindergarten class. So what are you supposed to do if you still haven't started bulking up your unborn child's extracurriculars?
Children under 12 are the targets of almost $1 billion in marketing spending from food companies every year. What are they being sold? Pop-tarts, fast food, crackers, gum, sugary cereals, and the other things that good moms don't let their kids eat. But! The food industry has graciously decided that they will get their rampant advertising to kids under control, to ensure that the kids aren't, you know, encouraged to buy the carbtastic products that these companies make. And who is determining just what the standards will be for protecting kids? These very same food companies! In related news, kids are all fat. Let's break it down: A bunch of big huge evil food companies got together and formed a group and promised to either not advertise to kids, or only advertise products to kids that are "good" for them. Then these companies individually decided for themselves what it means to advertise to kids, and what food is "good." With predictable results! Here are some products you should be aware are good for your babies: Apple Jacks, Froot Loops, Corn Pops, Burger King's macaroni and cheese. Mmm! Plus, some companies say an ad only "targets children" if more than half of its audience is made up of kids under age 12. So 51% 13-year-olds and 49% toddlers, go right ahead with that bacon double cheeseburger ad! Mmm! And if it proves to be too much of a hassle for the companies, they just sell to the terrible parents of America:
Public Access TV was once a haven of seedy underground art, bizarre comedy, and wild television experimentation limited only by crappy equipment. Also it was home to insane displays of the utter, irredeemable weirdness of mankind, like the attached clip of two children being forced to sing a song from The Sound of Music that the younger, lumberjack-shirted fellow refers to, with anger and confusion, as "Doedeer." Click! Shudder!
"Now demographers say Manhattan is increasingly a borough of babies, and more and more of them are white and well-off." We've been saying that for years! But these demographers are talking about the actual kind of babies, ones that drool, whine, and live in expensive apartments, but are not the full grown adult versions. The Washington Post, in the cute way that it always hops on NYC trend coverage several months or years after it becomes passé up here, finds that Manhattan is no longer "an island of adult vices," home to "hustlers, runaways, addicts, murderers." No, today this gritty island enclave is being overrun by wealthy Caucasian toddlers!
Miley Cyrus, who plays (is? What?) Hannah Montana, is harming children. No, not with her music! (But, yes with her music.) She's actually hurting them through her branded toys and accessories, which, like every other fun thing in the world, are becoming increasingly deadly. You see, various items in the Hannah Montana line of products, specifically those with vinyl in them, were found by the Center for Environmental Health to contain high levels of lead. (Though, really what item meant for children doesn't, these days.) The CEH called it a "poison plastic," deftly summing up every celebrity currently idolized by the tweenagers. So parents! That Hannah Montana purse or knapsack or full-body fetish suit that your ten-year-old child has should not be ingested or touched or anything. Oh, and while you're at it, please tell her (or him) to stop licking that Zac Efron doll. Because, you know. [CNNMoney via OhNoTheyDidn't] If the lead poisoning has not yet killed your child, the video after the jump just might do the trick.
Last year, the Times canceled take your daughter (or son, both genders enjoy a day off from school) to work day. But they had an excuse: Children are annoying. Just kidding, the company was moving. This year, the Times is once again pretending that children are the future. Full memo from one of the first beneficiaries of the program, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., after the jump.
A breakthrough study from the Society of Medical Researchers Who Didn't Think Up a Study Topic Until the Very Last Minute has found that limiting the amount of time your fattie kids sit on their ass watching TV or playing on the internet could help them lose weight! Kids tended to eat less junk food when they were forced to get off their ass and do something else, the study determined [WSJ]. One doctor is recommending parents get some kind of electronic device that limits brain-numbing time per week for children. We wholeheartedly support this effort to whip these no-account kids today into shape. Junk food and TV are not the way to go. There is only one safe and effective way to gain weight:
Upper East Side children's store Bonpoint held a children's fashion show for their reopening. And yes the little kids are so cute. But what is the psychological cost of this adorable event? Body dysmorphic disorder before elementary school? Drinking diet juice boxes? Whatever, this city is savage. No sense in waiting until middle school for these insecurities to start. [New York Social Diary]
