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Sproutrage

August 31st, 2010 § 0

Sprout is a cable channel aimed at preschoolers and young kids. This line from its Wikipedia entry will tell you all you really need to know:

Sprout is co-owned by Comcast, Sesame Workshop, HIT Entertainment and PBS.

Sprout originally hit the cable pipes a few weeks before our oldest was born. In our bleary early days we may have leaned on the TV a bit much, but it didn’t seem so bad when you had low-commercial options like Noggin, Disney Channel¹, and to a great extent, Sprout. Back around 2005, Sprout subsidized their rerun-recycling with about one commercial every half hour, usually for the Honda Odyssey, laundry detergent, or Quicken Loans². I was disappointed to see them go when we rolled back to analog cable to save money.

We decided to budget a few extra bucks for glorious HD this year — it was easy because I waited so long to buy a new TV, it basically cost half of what I was originally expecting to spend — and we were delighted to see Sprout back on our channel guide. However, they’ve gotten an aggressive new sales staff and dramatically increased the commercial content. Every ten minutes or so it’s commercials with Montel Williams hawking easy loans, and those terrible Huggies ads for those terrible Huggies that look like jeans³, and in my personal circle of commercial hell — Pillow Pets. IT’S A PILLOW! IT’S A PET!

Our oldest has two to three quality pillows on her big-girl bed, and a lovely unicorn that she got for her birthday from Build-a-Bear Workshop, but right now she is convinced her life is not complete without a shabby looking hybrid of the twain. I don’t understand it myself, but hating Pillow Pets is like hating Soulja Boy. Neither of them are made for someone like me. I accept this and try to understand them⁴.

I am hearing these tipped as the hot holiday toy item, so if you get stuck between a rock and a soft toy as I am: save those stupid coupons Bed Bath and Beyond sends you. Steal them out of your neighbors’ recycling if you have to. There are two funny things about Bed Bath and Beyond coupons:

The expiration date on each coupon is moot. Clerks will accept any Bed Bath and Beyond coupon no matter when it expired.
If you have a bunch with different values, the helpful BBB clerks will often select the ones that save you the most money.

I know you don’t want to go to Bed Bath and Beyond because it’s just such a cliche, but they actually have these Pillow Pets, though you may have to ask for them at the counter right now [a lot of the toys are off the sales floor during college move-in]. At least save a few bucks.

Back to grinding my main axe: Sprout. There are a few things you can do to protect yourself.

Watch [and DVR] real PBS. A lot of your local PBS stations have a second and a third channel now with the conversion to digital TV; sometimes these channels are a time-shifted version of the “prime” channel, so you may be able to watch PBS Kids shows at odd hours [in Detroit, WTVS 56.2 does this]. Some PBS stations use the second channel as a “Family” channel with an expanded kids lineup [in Toledo, WGTE 30.2 does this]. Either way, these are real PBS stations with the standard sponsorship rules. Sprout happens to carry shows that also air on PBS, and sometimes refers to themselves as “PBS Kids Sprout,” but most of their on-air graphics actually omit the PBS Kids branding in the flower, and you get the feeling that if PBS complained enough, they could quickly rebrand as, oh, I don’t know. NBC Sprout.

Watch the Sprout shows other ways. Last I checked there was quite a bit of Dragon Tales on Netflix Watch Instantly. Or you can get DVDs of the shows. My local library is a terrific resource for so many of the shows we also watch on Sprout.

Can you reason with kids? I can’t. Avoid my fate.

BONUS: If you watched Sprout back in the day and liked Kevin reading cards on the Birthday Show, you will love him as a grown-up Ryu on the webseries “Street Fighter: The Later Years.”

I bit the apple years before my children were born. 90% of the stuff that is pushed on Playhouse Disney viewers, like trips to Walt Disney World? This life, I lead, is the stuff that happens between trips to Walt Disney World. [↩]
See? Advertising works. Especially when there’s less of it. [↩]
I want to take a moment to say here that there are few things cuter than real, small, baby-sized blue jean trousers. Which makes these jean-colored Huggies even more bullshit. [↩]
On a related note, can someone teach me how to dougie? Teach-me-teach-me how to dougie? [↩]

IDF? IDK.

August 19th, 2009 § 1

Whether you agree with the future of health care in the US or not, you have to agree that the woman shouting “Heil Hitler” at the Israeli man speaking highly of Israeli healthcare, taken at face value, is very, very wrong:

But it reminded me of a short film that hit the net a couple of years ago, which starts out as a harmless shill for a forgotten Judd Apatow comedy but quickly goes “off the rails” in a meticulously crafted “spontaneous” manner.

Compare the lady’s shirt to Craig Robinson’s shirt. Craig Robinson, I assume, wore the shirt to be ironic. What’s this lady’s story?

About the Kmart Photos

August 8th, 2009 § 0

[For a little background on this place, read the Wikipedia article on Kmart or google "prototype kmart" for the first few sentences of one of the old articles from Detroit newspapers when it opened in '02.]

I read about the White Lake Kmart in the Freep, years before we moved to the area, and actually got lost on two separate occasions stopping in to see it on the way home from support clients in Detroit’s northern suburbs. After we moved to Oakland county, I was delighted to discover that it was not that far from our place.

I started shopping here because… well, I’ve always had a soft spot for Kmart.
I guess that’s because I grew up going to Kmart stores all over downriver, and even a couple of the locations of their predecessor, S.S. Kresge & Co. They were based in the area. Walmart hadn’t become Walmart yet. Heck, there were a small handful of Meijer stores in the area and they closed at, like, 11pm.

Although “societal mores” made it difficult to wear the clothes to middle school, the Toy department was epic. So was the electronics area, with its Nintendo Entertainment System, right there on the counter, that you could totally play. I bought my first hip-hop album at Kmart. It was “He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper” by Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. [My second one was "Raising Hell" by Run-DMC. Had to go to Discount Records for that -- you know, because of the language.]

When we started to consider moving back to the Ann Arbor area, I realized that I was going to need to document this store to show it to my friends. I had occasionally mentioned it in conversation — “oh yeah, I’m on my way home from the PROTOTYPE KMART near my house,” to — to what? Impress them? Make them think I lived in Tomorrowland, only with pontoon boats? When pressed I would invariably describe it as “actually, quite like a Target, only green,” but I knew that didn’t really do it justice.

My other reason is that the retail world has changed so much since this store was developed. Kmart has entered and emerged from bankruptcy and is now headquartered with its parent company in Illinois, far away from Troy — so this store will probably not get another makeover the one it got, in its time. Most of the green accents in temporary signage have been replaced with the usual Kmart red, and this will probably continue until it is remodeled.

I spend far too much casual time on blogs like Labelscar and Malls of America, looking for pictures of the old days. I didn’t grow up hanging out at the mall, exactly, but at the same time I have very vivid memories of them. It is why, when we found out the child was coming, I told my wife it would always have a camera. She has a nearly indestructible camera, and as much room as she needs to store her photographs. Pictures are memories. Mundane things are still memories. Want proof? Look at all the people mourning Livonia Mall.

I hope this store doesn’t get knocked down to accomodate a Home Depot, or anything else, in my lifetime. But if that should happen, I think of this small set as a few handfuls of earth, ready to help fill the memory hole.

One thing I’ve never worked out was, how the hell did the stuck-up kids knew what discount store your clothes had come from, anyway, if they spent all their time at Jacobson’s?

WordPress.

March 26th, 2009 § 1

Awesome, no comments and no archives for… days. It was a missing .htaccess file.

Bundle of Joy

March 25th, 2009 § 0

A couple of things I noticed about the MacHeist 3 bundle [affiliate link] this morning:

Realmac’s Little Snapper is included. Last year’s bundle included Snapz Pro, a similar product from Ambrosia [though the annotation and web storage puts Little Snapper closer in spirit to a product like plasq's Skitch].

Espresso is a competitor of Macromates‘ TextMate [MH1].

Features in Acorn [and Picturesque to a lesser extent] sound a lot like Pixelmator, from last year’s bundle.

I am curious how developers from previous bundles feel about this. Not enough to ask them or anything — this isn’t Waxy — but it’s easy to see who isn’t bothered.

Ambrosia is apparently still on board, because WireTap Studio is included this year. Likewise for MacRabbit [CSSEdit] and Espresso. Boinx is a three-time MacHeist star, first with FotoMagico, then with iStopMotion, and this year with BoinxTV. And I just realized, RealMac is the maker of RapidWeaver from MH1, which could be considered a competitor of Espresso. [You could also note that FreeVerse (last year's WingNuts 2) is back with Big Bang Board Games, but it's not like you only need one game to do your job the same way you might only need one text or photo editor.]

Maybe I’m making a tempest out of a teapot?

Bless You Boys

March 22nd, 2009 § 0

Good show Wolverines. Shame about Oklahoma but they were number two after all. See you next year!

GET A BRAIN MORANS

March 21st, 2009 § 0

SUSAN TUSA/Detroit Free Press

I would daresay the gallon of pickles in the trunk [not pictured] is as much of an economic challenge as my decade-old Japanese sedan, but this makes for a better sign, right?

If I ever see her at a light, I’m going to encourage her to find a union sign shop to make her a nicer sign. Even the Westboro Baptist folks have prettier signs than this.

46 State Strategy

December 15th, 2008 § 1

Mike Duncan, the RNC chairman, told Steve Inskeep last week that he had visited forty-six states.

Inskeep didn’t ask, but what I want to know is, which four did Duncan skip over?

[EDIT: fixed html and reworded link]

Josie Parker is Hardcore

December 13th, 2008 § 0

“].”]

“He tripped in front of her and she shoved him to keep from falling into him, and twisted her knee trying to recover,” said Prue Rosenthal, a library board member.

This reminded me of the first time I ever met Josie, as an AADL employee [years ago -- please note that I do not speak for the AADL in any official capacity].

It was August 2004, and the Great Blackout of the Eastern Seaboard had just started about an hour or two prior.Â We had finally come to the realization that the power was not about to be restored and cleared the Northeast Branch of patrons [yeah, the branch in the Plymouth Road Mall - this was 2004].

The librarians were up front closing up for the day and I was in the back of the library tidying the computer area.Â Josie entered through the rear [from the parking lot], saw me, and exclaimed — politely, but authoritatively — “WHO ARE YOU, AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY LIBRARY?”

Once we were properly introduced by other staff, she was nothing but sweet, but I’ve always known she had the eye of the tiger.

Feel better soon, Josie!Â Now, who wants to hear a Fred Maxwell story?Â [Again, I do not speak for the AADL.]

Turning leftovers into “left-OH!-overs.”

December 4th, 2008 § 0

1.) Heat pan on stove until water droplets tossed on sizzle and evaporate instantly
2.) Add oil [I used "wok oil" because it's already got the ginger and garlic in it]
3.) Add some of your previously-cooked pasta
4.) Reach up and silence overly-eager smoke alarm
5.) Start trying to stir-fry it with a heat-resistant plastic spoon
6.) Add more pasta and oil as oil disappears and/or pasta is fried
7.) Serve — with whatever seasoning you like.Â Me, I just nuked the leftover pasta sauce that was also in the fridge and poured it over.

PREP TIME: Two listenings to “Lolli Lolli” by Three 6 Mafia [about nine minutes].

Three 6 Mafia, \”Lolli Lolli\”