What's really going on here

As a doting uncle, I’ve probably been exposed to more children’s television than is healthy for a normal adult brain. Of course, in my case it is also probably true that I have less to lose in that regard than most people do.

Be that as it may, some of these TV shows, innocuous though they may seem, raise some perplexing and even disturbing questions…


SpongeBob SquarePants: Ok, I get it, he lives in a pineapple under the sea…but does he own or rent? Also, despite being surrounded by fish, the main characters on this show are a sponge, a starfish and a squid…so, is this program being used to push the invertebrate agenda? Just what do they have against backbones?




Dora the Explorer: Exactly who is funding all this “exploring” anyway? Is it the oil companies? Is she part of some kind of covert CIA operation? Or is this show some kind of allegory about the evils of colonialism and if so, what the hell does the blue monkey symbolize?






Teletubbies: The most obvious question here is…what the hell are these things? Are they mentally challenged aliens? Or are they someone’s idea of what human beings will be like after another million years or so of sitting on the couch watching television? In either case, why does the sun have a laughing baby’s head in the middle of it? And did anyone remember to put sunscreen on the baby?



I posed these questions to my youngest niece, a sharp-witted little lass of five, who I think knows more than she lets on. Her only response was to smile at me and turn back to her program. Oh, she’s crafty all right.


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It's a family affair...

From time to time on this blog I’ve offered up a glimpse at some of the blossoms that can be found on my family tree.

Today I take a fond look back at an uncle of mine who was a “beatnik poet” back in the 1950’s. His real name was Willard, but he always insisted on being called “Turk”. My siblings and I just referred to him as “Uncle Ashy”, because he was constantly chain smoking contraband Canadian cigarettes.

Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg called him "Captain Oregano" because of the really crappy marijuana he was always trying to sell them. In an interview many years later, Ginsberg would say of my uncle: “Turk who?”

To give you just an idea of my uncle's work here are just a few titles from his “oeuvre”…

Atomic Bongos

Straight Out of Squaresville

You Couldn’t Dig Me with A Shovel, Daddy-O

Black Beret Blues

Love Poems, For Like…Real Gone Chicks

Thumb and Thumber: A Hipster’s Guide to Hitchhiking

The Smoldering Goatee

Unfortunately, uncle Ashy never got around to actually writing those books…or any others for that matter. His entire literary output consists of this single poem...

Coffeehouse Lament

The sax is blowin’ hot
Cups and saucers rattle around
Like old arthritic bones
Clickity Clack…Clickity Clack!

Even “Mary Jane” is making the scene
When in busts the fuzz to douse her fiery kiss
Like an ice water enema
Splish, Splash…Splish, Splash!


Well, the fifties gave way to the sixties and my uncle tried to keep pace with the changing times. Sadly, before he cold find his place in this new counter culture, he was killed in a tie-dying accident in Jerry Garcia’s basement.

Uncle Ashy was of course, cremated. It just seemed so fitting that his earthly remains should be transformed into the very substance we most associated him with…it’s like, almost poetic, daddy-o.

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