The World Of Jeff!: September 2015

Saturday, September 26, 2015

WhatTheHellTube

My daughter Rosie has recently turned three years old, and she is one smart cookie. Anything technological represents no obstacle to Rosie, and on many an occasion we have remarked with wonderment and amazement at her ability to elicit unusual results from the TV or Sky remote simply by touching or throwing it. She'll pick up the remote or even just move it to one side and suddenly we're watching something on the Nigerian channel. She has also mastered Mum's phone upon which she regularly plays with My Talking Angela, a more recent sequel to the games My Talking Ben and My Talking Tom. Not familiar with these games? Look them up, download them, install them on your phone and become hopelessly addicted to feeding, petting washing and putting to bed an animated anthropomorphic cat. You can't do that with Ben, but he's my favourite because of what he does when you ring his phone for him.

However, Rosie has graduated from such things and is now more interested in using Mum's tablet, a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2.

Initially, she was able to play some kid-friendly games and she was happy with that. Recently, however, she has become au fait with the vagaries of YouTube, and has discovered some truly bizarro channels in which grown adults will play with kids' toys on a regular basis while talking in a chirpy annoying Midwestern accent.

What's that ya say? Surely they cannot all be weird? Oh, believe me, once you see them, you will have some headscratching moments of gobsmackedness to come.
Give you an example or two? How did I know you were going to ask that?

Let's start you off gently. Here's an example from the Epic Toy Channel...

Then there's the Engineering Family, who apparently have 500,000 subscribers and over 500m monthly views. And tell me I'm wrong but Mr. Engineer (the dad) sounds a bit like Seth Rogen to me. Like Seth Rogen if he was a strange childcare provider.

The Engineering Family also do quite a lot of videos in which they open Kinder Surprise eggs and find out what toys are in them (impending sarcasm warning!!). And yes, that IS as fascinating as it sounds. However, they are not the only ones that do this.

To me, these things are like watching those awful 'unboxing' videos...

*stifles yawn*

Then Rosie seems to have stumbled upon another weird YouTube phenomenon, the proliferation of "Finger Family" videos. You remember the song from preschool, "Peter Pointer, Peter Pointer, where are you?", which is a knockoff in itself of the old nursery rhyme "Where is Thumbkin?".

Well, these people seem to have taken the concept and made it into Finger Family. Mummy Finger, Daddy Finger, Brother Finger etc. and so on and so forth. There are a bunch of those out there, which is odd, since most kids know where their fingers are and don't need to be told a bunch of times. But some have taken it a step further by adding little finger puppets and/or animations into the videos and turning it into something else entirely. For example, I saw one that was a 'superhero' themed video, so there was Hulk Finger alongside Wolverine Finger and Batman Finger. Here is an example, but proceed with caution - what has been seen cannot be unseen.

She's also become a fan of Teletubbies through YouTube, but seems to enjoy watching foreign versions of it.

Indonesian...

and Polish.

Then there is the utterly strange Booya channel. These videos are in a league of their own. They take kids' nursery rhymes and create Halloween-related versions of them.

Yep.

The problem is, especially in the case above, the rhymes are not there. What I mean by that is that Five Little Monkeys Jumping On The Bed works because 'bed' rhymes with 'bumped his head'. Seriously, does five little zombies jumping on the grave work for you? Because I have a major problem with this sort of thing. America, I am sad to say, does that a lot. There used to be a phenomenon in the 90s when I was working in childcare called Piggyback Songs, where in order to teach the concept you were trying to teach, you'd turn it into a song by writing new lyrics to an older song such as Wheels On The Bus or Old MacDonald and using the theory that kids learn better to music to hope that it works. Trouble is, if a kid hears a tune he is familiar with, he only knows the old words, so putting new words to old tunes does not work.

Sometimes these videos blend together...

..this is all kinds of messed up.

However, with my help, Rosie has become a fan of Veggie Tales. Not the story parts, just Silly Songs With Larry. Here's her favourite...

Larry Rules, OK?

Friday, September 11, 2015

A Spicy Rant

I just want to take a moment to address all those British folks that like chorizo. You know, the spicy Spanish sausage. Now that we are multiculturally aware and have seen a few episodes of Jamie Oliver and other top TV chefs at work we feel we are well versed in diverse culinary delights. Well versed enough to actually pronounce the word "chorizo". Well, I'm here to tell you, British people, you can't. Oh, you think you can, don't you? You confidently attempt it, savouring the syllables as they roll off your Anglo-Saxon tongue. "CHO-RITZ-O", you say, trying to appear worldly and cosmopolitan. You actually are looking like a bit of a prat.

It's not CHO-RITZ-O. Not by a long shot. Sorry to have to burst your bubble and all, but I think you need to know. If you don't stop saying it that way, I might go out of my mind. Some folks think I am already at that point, but I don't actually care about anyone else's opinion.

The correct pronunciation? Well, in Spanish, the letter Z is pronounced as an S. Even more so in Mexico, where it is practically hissed. CHO-REESS-O.

Only in Italian does a Z do that 'there's an invisible T in there somewhere' thing, and only if there's two of them. Think PIZZA, PIAZZA, MEZZOFORTE, etc.

So are we clear now? Chorizo is pronounced CHO-REESS-O. Not CHO-RITZ-O. Got it?

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Charly Says...

Last time on the Puzzler I asked you all what The Prodigy's first big hit was, in 1991. Well, so as not to keep you all in suspenders any longer...

Of course it was Charly!

Peaking at number three after entering the UK chart at number 9, Charly re-entered the chart again in 1996 (after Firestarter became a hit), and then again in 2004 (when the song was made available for digital download).

Next question...

One of the samples contained within Charly is part of the intro from James Brown's 1988 effort "Godfather Runnin' The Joint".

One of the most frequently sampled rhythmic breaks is from a James Brown tune from 1970. The drum break is performed by Clyde Stubblefield on the track. Can you name the track?