Noggin'-a get this crap outta your head

This, my friends, is Ooby. At least one of them is. The other one is Uma, his sister. Both of them are pure baby crack in our house, capable of holding Molly's attention longer than all of her expensive battery/solar/plutonium-powered walking/talking/hokeypokeying toys put together.

Ooby is one of the programs regularly enjoyed by toddlers and stared blankly at by parents on the lovely invention called Noggin -- "It's Like Preschool on TV!" In our house, it's like free babysitting, albeit babysitting by an alarming concoction of uppity British animals, claymation thingies and hands with eyeballs stuck on them.

I don't know what I thought I was planning to do with our child when I brought her home from the hospital before I discovered Noggin. I thought we would be doomed to old standards like Sesame Street and...er...Sesame Street -- let's face it, cartoons and kids shows have gone downhill fast since the days of the Banana Splits, The Great Space Coaster, Captain Kangaroo, the Smurfs, Shirt Tales, JEM...OK, maybe that last one wasn't so great but it didn't stop me from wishing I had long pink hair and could get any 7 year old hottie I wanted with my wicked guitar playing.

Baby Einstein videos were a good start, but nothing prepared us for the pure rapture of discovering Noggin and its seemingly endless parade of strangely named animal characters, brain-rotting between-show snippets that you CANNOT GET OUT OF YOUR HEAD, no matter what you try, and commercials clearly aimed at grownups that make me laugh like a maniac.

I do, however, have some concerns about some of the Noggin shows and the mere fact that these bother me so much means that the evil gamma rays of mind domination emitting from channel 110 in our house have already taken hold of my brain cells. These are brain cells that were so full of useless 80s song lyrics and statistics about the 1968 Detroit Tigers that it must be a hell of a battle going on in there for the few remaining snippets of sanity.

Let me start with "64 Zoo Lane," a show about a bunch of zoo animals who frequently reminisce about their lives in Africa, despite all having Her Majesty's perfect British pronounciation, and who cavort at night with their little friend Lucy who a) has no discernible accent whatsoever and b) apparently cannot afford more than one pair of pajamas which probably smell pretty rank considering she runs around all night with hippos and such. The problem with this show is its theme song, which now runs through my head at extremely inopportune moments such as during conference calls, merging into 6 lanes of traffic or during sex. And I can't remember half the words, so my lovely inner voice sings "there's one with....ermefffff...and one who can...mmfffhf...and one who is...WELL A LITTLE BIT PLUMP (I always remember that one). I could go in the car and crank Audioslave at full volume and still be muttering WELL A LITTLE BIT PLUMP as I get out of the car.

Another show that causes me far too much stress is "Franklin," about a kid turtle who happens to be the only one on the show with an actual name. I guess you don't worry about having a wuss name like that if you're a turtle - not like someone can punch you without breaking a hand on your shell. But his friends are cleverly named...Rabbit, Beaver, Bear...well alrighty, let's just succumb to stereotypes here and assume Rabbit is not the only child of Mr. and Mrs...Rabbit. What are the other kids' names? Rabit? Rah-byt? Is it like that group Tony Toni Tone and they just spell them all differently? And the adults are all named Mr. or Mrs. (species,) so that makes his friends Bear Bear, Rabbit Rabbit and Beaver Beaver. This bothers me to no end.

Onto Oswald the octopus, voiced by where-has-my-career-gone Fred Savage. Oswald has a dog named Weenie, which is appropriate because she actually is a hot dog with a tail. I always wonder if Fred couldn't have had a bit more influence and have her named Winnie instead? That would set up a great inter-species junior high hormone fest. Oswald's best friend is an insanely effeminate, uppity penguin named Henry, voiced, as one would clearly expect, by SQUIGGY from Laverne and Shirley. ???? I keep hoping that Henry meets a horrible death but so far, no such luck.

Thank GOD Molly has not yet discovered Dora the Explorer, who, while I'm sure she provides wonderful education to children, makes me want to hurl her off a cliff while screaming both See Ya Sucka and HASTA LA VISTA, BEEYATCH!! See? I learned some Espanol from her.

First of all, where the HELL are this kid's parents??? At this rate Dora's going to become Dori or Candi or Trixi and be a streetwalker by the time she's 15. The other thing that drives me BATTY is when Dora asks her friends at home a question, and then they stand there and stare at you for what seems like 25 minutes while the little characters blink a couple of times and then yell "That's RIGHT!!" How long do they think kids need to answer them?? And HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT'S RIGHT?!?! When Dora asks me if I see her backpack on the screen, I usually yell back something like "SHOULDN'T YOU BE IN SCHOOL!?!?" and am answered, pleasantly, with "That's RIGHT!!!!" ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHH.

We love to watch Connie the Cow (also inexplicably British), Miffy the weird emotionless claymation bunny thing, and especially the antics of the cleverly named "Moose A. Moose," Noggin's official mascot. I just love saying it. I plan to name my next child Hearsch A. Hearsch. We are also strangely obsessed with the creepy sing-along songs led by Lori Berkner, and now randomly featuring where-did-my-career-go-too-by-the-way Lisa Loeb. My hope is that they branch out soon -- I would love to see the White Stripes going at it with "When You're Happy And You Know it (smoke some weed)" and some very frightened looking children staring blankly at them.

If any of my readers here can explain to me why Hedgie the Hedgehog in Connie the Cow's neighborhood wears a striped sock on his nose, looking very much like a cross between bad hosiery and a candycane prophylactic, please enlighten me at once.

For now, I have to go. These earnings charts aren't gonna sort themselves, you know.

WELL A LITTLE BIT PLUMP -- arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!!!!! damage done, already stuck for the day. Rassin' frassin'.....