My two-year-old son is hopelessly addicted to music videos. It stems from my extreme distaste for most music written for children, which I usually find saccharine and mind-numbing. Instead, my husband and I play music that we like and hope he gets used to it. This post reminded me of how much I like One eskimO, and the band’s eponymous album was a big hit with the kiddo. All of the songs have animated videos that go along with them, and so one day I decided to show him the one for “Kandi,” one of my own favorites. I think I’ve now seen it roughly seventeen hundred times. To say that he likes it would be a massive understatement.
Since then, there have been others added to the hit parade. Right now he’s going through a big india.arie phase, and asks to watch this one by name several times a day. It’s gotten to the point that he will start climbing up my leg if he sees me using my laptop. No matter how much I love any of these songs, by the thousandth time watching the video I’m ready to put my head in the oven. Thus, I am always thinking of other songs that I like that may have toddler-friendly music videos.
One song that occurred to me was “Kiss Them for Me” by Souxsie and the Banshees. I love that song. I used to play it really loudly in my car on my way to go out dancing, back when I still went to dance clubs. (I’m sure all you straight guys did the same thing, right? RIGHT?!?!?) I figured it probably had a cool, fun video, and maybe might meet with the little guy’s approval.
Wrong. Friends, that video sucks. That video sucks bad. They must have spent literally dozens of dollars on the set, and the action consists mainly of Souxsie Sioux dancing awkwardly while her bandmates stand around doing nothing. (That woman really cannot dance.) The song is all about Jayne Mansfield, and the band deserves to be haunted by her wraith for making such a chintzy video about someone so glamorous in real life. Even if I weren’t hopelessly inept at embedding video (which, seriously, I cannot seem to figure out) I wouldn’t show that one. It’s here for the curious.
Which leads to this week’s question — what were you really excited about that ended up sucking in real life? What experience did you eagerly anticipate that was lackluster, lousy or pathetic when it occurred? What failed to live up to your hopes? The more spectacular the failure, the better.
The MA program from Tisch School of the Arts was pretty thrilling to get into, and completely aggravating and ultimately near-useless actually to pursue. The one thing it gives me is an unwarranted aura of legitimacy to film snobs when I express my hopelessly middlebrow film and television tastes.
My first marriage and a dinner at Komi are up there, too.
I’m not one for high expectations, so I have to go with a rather ho-hum – Episode I, which probably needs no explanation.
Your post reminds me why I endure children’s’ music for our toddler, I really don’t want to have what music I love ruined for me by a zillion enthusiastic repeats. We have tried exposing her to the Beatles but she seems, like her dad, to prefer interactive or multimedia entertainment and just plain old music she seems to ignore if not paired with moving pictures or buttons, dials and levers to play with to control it.
When I composed this post, I wondered “How many people are going to say ‘Episode 1’?”
I almost did and then deleted the comment.
For what that’s worth.
> I think I’ve now seen it roughly seventeen
> hundred times. To say that he likes it
> would be a massive understatement.
I’m convinced that the attribution of “preference” to children does not map in any wise to the attribution of “preference” in non-children.
Basically, we should stop saying, “My kids like/love this thing”. Because how they feel about this thing bears no resemblance whatsoever in any way shape or form to an adult preference.
We need a child-preference verb. Contest?
> What were you really excited about that ended up
> sucking in real life?
Criminey, Doc. This is post-worthy material. The hard part will be ranking them in order of suck, it’ll take me days to figure out.
The Matrix: Revolutions – more suck than The Phantom Menace? I certainly expected more from one than the other.
Come to think of it, on a non-media related frame, the first time I got drunk was something of a letdown.
Criminey, Doc. This is post-worthy material. The hard part will be ranking them in order of suck, it’ll take me days to figure out.
Please consider this my polite request for same.
By Your Command.
I hadn’t even considered the movie angle until I started to read the comments. For me, the biggest disappointment was Batman & Robin. Not only was it a Batman movie, I had read in advance it was going to feature Bane as a villain. (My favorite Batman to this day remains Knightfall.) After the previous Jim Carey vehicle, did I expect it to be what Dark Night eventually ended up being? No, but I was excited about it nonetheless. I’m not sure that I have ever hated a movie I chose to watch in the theatre more than Batman and Robin.
In real life, though? No question. That would have been in high school, when I finally got Vivian Probetts to agree to go on a date with me. Oh, that I could turn back the hands of time and prevent that wretched evening of one cringe-worthy humiliation after another.
You didn’t at least feel something at overcoming the asking of the question and getting an affirmative answer?
I remember my “first asked actual date”. The date itself was fairly cringe-worthy for both of us, but the asking part and the getting the yes was still a pretty “up” moment.
True, getting to hear “yes” from those lips (good lord, those lips…) was pretty great. But it made the hell that followed just that much more excruciating. (Seriously, it wasn’t just that it was a bad first date. It was that it was the worst date ever in the entire history on mankind. Victims of the Spanish Inquisition can still say “Yeah, that was pretty awful, but at least I didn’t have to go on *that* date.” It was that bad.)
I’m not sure that I have ever hated a movie I chose to watch in the theatre more than Batman and Robin.
Hear, hear. I remember leaving the theater genuinely angry at having spent the time on it.
The Michael Keaton Batman — the original one — was not what I had been waiting for. I felt let down by it. Keaton as Batman I just plain never could buy; Nicholson was too silly and not evil enough. It could have been great; instead, it was only slightly better-than-average.
Lots of hype leading to lots of suck? Tourism in San Francisco.
Cold, too foggy to enjoy the good views, dirty and crowded, dangerous-feeling even when it isn’t, and expensive. Lots of Chinese food in Chinatown kind of sucks. Alcatraz is interesting, yes, but the bother of making reservations months in advance makes the whole thing not worth it. You can get good sourdough bread pretty much anywhere these days and the clam chowder is better on the east coast. Ghiradelli chocolate is not as good as imported stuff from Belgium.
Yes, there are good restaraunts and good pubs; yes, when the sky clears it’s beautiful. But I don’t particularly want to live there and I frankly don’t need to stay longer than I need to in order to visit a specific attraction. Sorry, San Franciscans, but your city is not the nirvanic navel of civilization you want it to be; I do not experience happy little orgasms of culture when I am asked to go there.