Did You Know About This?

As you may know I have a love/hate relationship with children’s TV programming. My daughter watches the “valuable lesson”-type shows on Sprout, Noggin, and Nick Jr. and she seems to enjoy most of them. And as I think that everyone needs a little harmless, mindless diversion occasionally, I put Boomerang on at least once a day. She likes some of the cartoons I grew up with, like Scooby Doo, Where Are You, Yogi Bear, and Popeye, and Tom and Jerry and Pink Panther are so loved that we bought them on DVD so we can watch them whenever we want. And by we I mean Pumpkin. Just yesterday, during a game of involuntary Ring Around the Rosy instigated by her brother, I heard her yell, “Jane! Get me off this crazy thing!” I’m so proud that my 3-year old can quote the classics!

But before school and in the evenings, we watch some shows that my son prefers. We are a Pokemon family and watch Pokemon: Battle Dimension before school. In the evenings, we watch iCarly which I highly recommend as truly funny and well-written and… I have sat here for several minutes trying to figure how to admit that I watch this show and find it both ridiculous and hilarious, much to my chagrin, so I’ll just quit hemming and hawing and spit it out, I’ll just own up to it, I’ll cop to it, I’ll bite the bullet, I’ll…. Oh for heaven’s sake, it’s Spongebob Squarepants. There, I said it.

We sing the song to each other, do our impressions of the characters, and try to guess who does the various voices. Mermaid Man is voiced by Ernest Borgnine and Barnacle Boy is done by Tim Conway. Patrick Star is voiced by exactly the actor I thought, Bill Fagerbakke from Coach and The Stand. M-O-O-N, that spells Patrick! The one voice that threw me for a loop was that for Mr. Krabs. Mr. Krabs is The Kurgan, from Highlander. Clancy Brown has quite an impressive list of rolls on IMDB, including a lot of voice-over work. But when you think about him, isn’t The Kurgan the first thing that springs to mind? Now, on top of hearing Mr. Krabs say, “I’ll save you, money!” and laugh, “Ack, ack, ack, ack, ack, ack, ack,” I’ll also picture The Kurgan ripping the top off a car and saying, “Mom.”

Now there’s some cognitive dissonance for ya!