A Wisconsin Yankee in Walt Disney's Court

The whole “distressed” t-shirt thing is puzzling enough– why buy a shirt that already looks old? So you can claim you’ve had it for years, and fool your friends who’ve never seen the giant display of them at Kohl’s? Even more alarming, perhaps, is that they sell them in sizes for 2-year-olds now. Do they expect that my kid will be at the playground taunting the poseur toddlers with her distressed Charlie Brown shirt, claiming “Hey, I was into Peanuts before you were even born!"? We bought it because we never see t-shirts in her size with anything much besides Dora the Explorer on them, and it was on the clearance rack at Target, but I’d rather it just looked new.
The 2-year-old just turned 3 recently, celebrated with a Dora cake that didn’t turn out too badly, but it was like painting with toothpaste to get the frosting to cover the faint outline from the cake pan.

We went to a Build-a-Bear place on her birthday, where she built a puppy she unhesitatingly named ‘Hearty.’ They place a satin heart inside the yet-unstitched animal in an anointing ceremony that’s like a strange cross between Voodoo and Catholicism. It turns out those ritualized things really stick with little kids, which must be how the Pope ropes ‘em in at a young age.
It’s funny how she coins words and names. It’s hard to say how she decided that adding -Y to anything made a descriptive name, like Hearty, or Planty and Orchidy who’ve eaten dinner with her. I remember being fascinated that at barely one she called money “bank” without ever hearing slang from 1970s cop TV shows. I imagine our chimp-like ancestors running around giving everything a name in the same way as soon as they invented language.

She also got this tortoise, another of her favorite animals (actually it’s sea turtles, but we only have one bathtub). They’re a pretty common pet down here, and this kind grows to a couple hundred pounds and people keep them in their yards. Wild gopher tortoises live around here too; we just saw a pretty big one next to the road yesterday. Presumably she’ll be able to ride this one someday, depending whose growth ouraces the other’s.

I mentioned Yo Gabba Gabba last post, which probably isn’t familiar to anyone without a two-year-old running around the house. It’s probably the equivalent of what The Electric Company was to the ’70s, a “hip” learning show for kids with trendy design and a nod to pop culture.
The main part of the show features the guy in orange bringing out his boom-box case that holds little art-vinyl toy versions of the monster characters which he places in a miniature table-top environment where they come to life in Banana Splits fashion and have little sing-song adventures with some sort of moral or social lesson attached. Other segments are cartoons (with one by Evan Dorkin of Milk & Cheese fame), visits by rappers, indie bands, or hipster movie stars, and a guy from Devo teaches kids to draw.
It’s all pretty fun and the kid loves it, but mainly just the costumed monster parts. I liked the design of the sets and the characters with the urban pop-art kind of feel to it, and thought that they had something pretty original and strange until I came across this video from a 1960s or early ’70s Japanese kid’s show, translated as “Gimme Gimme Octopus.” Take a look:

Holy Christmas! Yo Gabba Gabba is lifted from this pretty much wholesale, albeit in a watered-down sense. But all the design elements are there. This particular episode is said to be one of the strangest– where did the baby octopus come from? Why does the walrus have it? Why are they fighting over it and abusing it? What happens to it at the end? Apparently the only weirder episode is an infamous lost reel where the rest of the animals beat the adult octopus to the point of brain damage.
Like anything else obscure, infantile, and/or Japanese, there’s plenty of info on the web if you search for Kure Kure Takora, including nerdish rundowns on the characters and what they represent, and plenty of video of other episodes.

Most of the playgrounds down here (and probably everywhere now) have these plastic slides that act like Van de Graaff generators, building up a static charge that will give small shocks and make a few strands of hair stand up. This particular park has an astro-turf surface that intensifies the whole experience, making audible pops and crackles every time a kid (or adult) touches something. And on this relatively cold and dry day, in combination with the nylon jacket, the effect was in full force. You can feel the charge pull all your body hair when you walk within a foot of the slides on days like this, like they were made of balloons that a thousand clowns rubbed in their wigs.
It looks like she’s sliding down (nonchalantly) at high speed, but actually I made her pose on the end of the slide before she stepped off and grounded herself, ruining the effect…

At our new favorite park this afternoon, the little one’s potty training failed yet again so I went to the van to get our bag and herded her into the men’s room. I noticed that the padlock on the iron gate, which is usually fastened to a chain on the wall holding the door open all day, was hanging unlocked on the clasp. I would’ve have fastened it, but between the bag and water bottle and corralling the kid I didn’t have a free hand, and thought “What are the odds some kid will fasten it behind us while we’re in here? I must be paranoid today!”
Well you know where this is heading. A mom was waiting for a little boy inside, who dawdled while the she kept yelling in for him as I wrestled with the changing table and butt-wipes. Somehow, before I got the pants back on, the mom who had been hovering in and out of the doorway took her eyes off her kid long enough to let him close the gate and replace the lock, and turned around just in time for me to hear the inevitable “Oh, no, what did you do?!” that part of me just knew was coming. I didn’t even react.
So, with no need to hurry, I got us both cleaned up and out of the stall with the changing table and stood in the doorway clutching a crap-filled diaper (the only trash cans are outside the bathrooms) waiting to see what rescue efforts were underway. The woman whose kid did it was on the cell phone with the parks department pressing numbers to get through a menu that probably ended with an operator in India, and when that didn’t work she tried 911 but they couldn’t figure out what county we were in, and the woman’s battery died before they could. My phone was running out too (I used the last of my juice on a photo for evidence) so another guy (my kid had befriended his kid) called the parks department number on a sign and got a hold of an actual person.
An employee turned up in another 10 minutes or so, the kind of 60-something-year-old developmentally disabled guy who works for every parks department in the country, hunched over and leaning in two different directions that doesn’t seem quite possible or remotely comfortable. His teeth shared the same freakish geometry, but neither problem seemed able to wipe the ever-present grin off his face. “Hey, what’re you doing in there?” was the best wise-crack he could muster as he paused in front of the door, pleased with his effort. Then there was a slight scare when he didn’t go for keys right away, but fondled the lock for a few seconds like he had to figure out how to break it off. But the keys came out soon enough and we were released from the sauna.
Orlando’s Finest came by another 10 minutes later and high-tailed it to the bathroom, but didn’t pause at the door and went in to take a leak. I think it was just a coincidence.

It’s today or thereabouts, depending on your timezone. Here’s the 2-year-old practicing.