Picket Fence Post

Saturday Night Live fans may remember this TV Funhouse video from a while back, the one where they lampooned Dora the Explorer and her side-kick Boots with a new character, Maraka and her side-kick Mittens. This video features wildly inappropriate questions interspersed with those gratingly long pauses you frequently see on Dora where the toddlers are given more than sufficient time to answer Dora’s leading questions.

It’s NOT for kids, though parents who’ve watched their fill of Dora will likely find Maraka’s question about “free will” and use of bleeped-out profanity at least a little bit amusing.

Friday Funnies . . . because parents need to laugh. At least once a week.

I was unable to stay awake long enough to see High School Musicaltween heart-throb Zac Efron on Saturday Night Livelast weekend (was tired after having hosted a belated Passover seder dinner for 14, then had Easter bunny stuff for which to prepare for the following morning), but I caught up with some clips of the twentysomething actor’s SNL appearance online.

Included among the SNL clips was his introductory monologue, where he thanked his tweenaged fans, and, specifically, their parents, who shelled out the big bucks for their daughters to see the HSM movie in the theater, to buy all the DVDs, songs, T-shirts and related merchandise, such as *cough* all the mountains of Efron/HSM stuff that resides in my house. (The link to the video is here):

After we layered blankets across our laps and fluffed the sofa pillows, the kids and I snuggled together in the family room to watched two Christmas specials last night. Actually, The Eldest Boy didn’t snuggle on the couch with his two siblings and me. Instead, he sat on the floor, in his special video game chair (the one he hated when we first gave it to him for his birthday but now loves . . . good thing I didn’t return it).

First, we watched the Charlie Brown Christmas show I’d DVRed. We were then treated to a steady stream of snarky comments from The Eldest Boy. The reason for the snarkiness? Lots of things in the cartoon were “unreal,” the 10-year-old said. (In the spirit of Christmas, I didn’t respond by saying that The Clone Wars cartoons he regularly watches as well as the tween sitcoms he loves on Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel are likewise “unreal.” But I held my tongue.)

Chief among his complaints: He didn’t like how characters would be hit or startled in such a manner that their bodies would rise up into the air and execute several 360 degree turns. He thought it preposterous that Lucy would’ve set up a psychologist table in the snow “in the middle of nowhere.” He also hated with the passion of a thousand suns the fact that the tiny tree Charlie Brown selected at the Christmas tree lot had a varying numbers of branches depending on which scene we were watching, something I’d never noticed.

“See, there! It grew branches. It has five now. The first time we saw it, it had three,” he said, snorting when the Peanuts gang later waved their arms and whipped Charlie’s tree into something special with the sheer force of Yuletide good will.

His remarks reminded me of that Saturday Night Live TV Funhouse cartoon which parodied the Charlie Brown special “magic” trick involving the waving of arms. I tracked down the satirical and distinctly politically incorrect video. It was first aired in 2002, so some of the topical references are dated (Tom Brokaw is still shown as the anchor of NBC’s Nightly News), but it’s still amusing and definitely NOT FOR KIDS! Repeat, the video is NOT FOR KIDS. (Link to the video is here.)

After Charlie Brown, we watched The Year Without a Santa Claus. Per usual, I teared up at the scene where Santa sits in the kid with the overbite’s kitchen and sings about believing in Santa Claus. We also decided that the two boys remind us of the Miser brothers, with The Eldest Boy being the Snow Miser and The Youngest Boy being the Heat Miser.

During commercial breaks — we went old school and were watching it live on ABC Family – we saw promos for a new Miser brothers special that airs on Saturday. Judging by the commercials, I don’t have high hopes, but maybe the kids will like it. (Link to the promo here.)

Fresh from a razor-sharp election season on Saturday Night Live, new mom Amy Poehler (she of the awesome “Palin Rap” skit about which I still chuckle) has a new project: Videos promoting the virtues of smart girls.

Webisodes for Poehler’s “Smart Girls at the Party” feature real gals talking about things that they love and things at which they excel. The video below (link here) features a 7-year-old named Ruby, who’s too sassy for words.

For some reason, the video won’t upload. You can find the Ruby video here.