Strollerderby : pokemon

Five Nonsense Kids Character Names Explained

JeanneSager — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 20:27:00 GMT

Sometimes the names they give to our kids’ favorite characters sound like they had a kid in on production. I mean, Pikachu? I say Gesundheit.

But listening to Mike Myers explain the Yiddish origins of everyone’s favorite ogre on NPR’s Fresh Air last week made me wonder – are all characters like onions? Do they all have layers? Thanks to my anal retentive side and too much time to spend in front of my computer, I offer up the first edition of children’s character names explained.

Shrek: According to his creator, his name came not from the swamp but the Yiddish word for “scary.” We’ll trust the former Linda Richman on that one – after all, if we ask too much she might get a little ferklempt.

Pikachu: I always thought the yellow Pokemon had a rodent-look to him, and no wonder. Pikachu loosely translates to “Electric Sparkling Mouse” in Japanese. Known for storing electric in his puffy cheeks and a tail that looks more like a bolt of lighting shooting out of his rodent rear, we could boogie woogie woogie with that description.

Lightning McQueen: Since we’re on the subject, lightning is an obvious name for a fast car. But the source of Cars’ sexy red racer’s surname is often mistaken. He was dubbed “McQueen” not for bad boy actor Steve who spent many a movie shifting gears but for Pixar animator Glenn McQueen, who died in 2002 from skin cancer.

Nemo: The movie that proved even a scaredy clownfish can take on the big bad ocean, Finding Nemo is technically named for “no one.” At least that’s the Latin translation of “Nemo.” We’ll take it from the seagulls – he might be no one, but our kids wish he was “mine, mine, mine.”

Winnie the Pooh: A secondhand name is just fine for a bear of very little brain. Winnie is short for Winnipeg, the hometown of a Canadian soldier who gave his black bear of the same name to the London Zoo. That’s where author A.A. Milne and son Christopher Robin (natch) met the friendly female who Milne later immortalized in print. Pooh, by the way, is also secondhand – it was the moniker of the real Christopher Robin’s pet swan.

More to come . . .

Image: Dan-Dare

5 reasons it's a good thing I had boys

Brett Singer — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 17:05:00 GMT

I was going to say, "I'm glad I have boys" but that didn't sound quite right. That is, I would love girl-children just as much as I love my guys. But there are a few ways that having boys has made my life – mine, specifically – a little bit easier.

1. No pink ponies: It doesn't seem like having a Y chromosome should automatically mean that one is interested in superheroes, videogames, and action figures inspired by superheroes and videogames. But experience says otherwise. While there are definitely girls who love trucks and boys who follow the Frasier and Niles Crane path – a love of opera, Broadway and snappy clothing – my guys are way into Spider-Man, Batman, Superman, Pokémon, Wii, Playstation 2, and so on. If I had to learn whatever there is to know about My Little Pony, I think my brain would crawl out of my ear.

2. Miley-free zone: Thus far Things 1 and 2 have shown zero interest in Billy Ray Cyrus' little ~~meal ticket~~ girl, which means I can continue to go through life knowing almost nothing about her. Maybe this will change when they get older, but hopefully by then Miley Ray Hannah Montana Stewart Cyrus will have either pulled a Britney Spears and had a meltdown, grown up and started singing jazz standards, or retired to spend her days sitting on a giant pile of cash gazing longingly at Nick Jonas. OK, I guess I sort of know something about her, but that's just from trying to keep up with pop culture. I have nothing against Miley or the Jonases, but not having to listen to their music or attend their concerts is something I will never, ever complain about.

3. No batting of eyelashes: My wife has pointed out many times that if we had had girls, odds are I would be putty in their hands. I wish I could say I disagree but I think she's probably right. Little girls are so cute, and seeing them cry is much more painful than seeing boys cry. I know that's stupid, sexist, and stupid (did I say that one already?). But I've seen, more than once, little girls who lead their dads around by the nose. It's probably best if we never find out whether or not I would join their ranks.

4. Less irrational over-protectiveness: Again, I am fully aware that this is unfair, stupid and sexist. But if I had girl-children, I would be very tempted not to let them leave the house until they were 30. I guess going to school would be OK, as long as they dressed like those Mormon sect people.

5. No High School Musical: When this monstrosity first started airing on the Disney Channel and the CD went to number one, I tried to watch it out of curiosity. I made it through about 15 minutes before I realized that it would probably be more fun to chew glass. The songs are lame, the characters are dull, the story is… Feh. Anyway, the boys seem immune to whatever charms that thing has, and for that, I am grateful.

image: Amazon.com

They say: Sarah Palin should step down

Sarah Silverman says: make granny vote for Obama

Palin should read Internet for Dummies

Stuff my 3 year old broke

More stuff my 3 year old broke

Dad arrested for leaving son at McDonald's

Red eye? Nope, eye cancer

Creepiest spam message ever: "we have hijacked your baby"

Lego Metallica

11 months old, 62 pounds

Babies R Us tells breastfeeding mother to get out

Volleyball hasn’t come a long way, baby

Shawn Johnson more mature than her coach

Shawn Johnson, Democrat? (UPDATE: Now with video)

Top 10 Urban Legends About Kids

Amy S.F. Lutz — Tue, 13 May 2008 18:28:00 GMT

Urban legends are a lot less scary now, thanks to websites like Snopes, MythBusters, and Urban Legends & Superstition. It takes only a few seconds to find out whether forwarding emails will raise money for the Red Cross (it did, but not anymore), or whether kids ever died from falling on knives sticking out of open dishwasher doors (they have), or whether a serial killer ever lured female victims from their homes by playing a recording of a crying baby (nope).

But I'm sure many of us remember urban legends about kids that we found completely believable and utterly terrifying. Here are my top 10:

10. A drawbridge keeper had to choose between saving his young son or a train full of passengers.

False. OK, I'm guessing not too many people have ever found this Jesus parable - which has been circulating since the late 1960s - completely believable. In it, a man decides to let a train run over his son rather than derail the train and save his son by sacrificing all the passengers - just like God sacrificed his son to save mankind. Still, it gets credit for the gut-wrenching way it asks us to imagine the absolutely worst thing that could ever happen.

9. Parents late for a vacation left their baby in the crib knowing the babysitter was only a few minutes away; the baby starved to death when the sitter was in a car accident rushing over to the house and no one ever came to care for the baby.

False. I half-suspect this legend is responsible for the backlash against parents who leave their kids in the car for a few minutes while they pick up a prescription or drop off their dry-cleaning. Still, according to the website Urban Legends & Superstitions, this sad story is a complete hoax.

8. Webkinz are being murdered online.

False. I included this one because even in our enlightened, post-Snopes era, young kids are still vulnerable to the power of urban legends, and this was the first time I experienced that for myself. My first grader, Erika, reported that Webkinz were getting "their heads cut off" and refused to believe any arguments to the contrary, even when I assured her that I checked online for myself, and it just wasn't true.

7. Pokemon episode gave Japanese kids seizures.

True, but only a "handful." Although over 600 Japanese kids were reportedly rushed to the hospital with epileptic seizures induced from watching a particular 1997 Pokemon episode, only a few were actually diagnosed with photosensitive epilepsy. But even if you're one of those over-protective parents who think a few seizures from watching TV is a few seizures too many, Americans have nothing to worry about. According to Snopes, the offending scenes were removed from the episode, which anyway was never translated into English and will never air on American TV.

6. Saboteurs tamper with Halloween candy.

True, but rarely. Although I don't know a single parent who lets their kids eat the fruit or loose candy that inevitably finds its way into kids' loot bags every Halloween, the risk of actual tampering is very low. Snopes says there's never been a documented case of an actual razor blade being pushed into an apple, although several pins and needles have been found - most pranks perpetrated by friends or siblings of the victims. The worst injury reported was a few stitches.

5. Fake "tattoos" and stamps for kids are laced with LSD.

False. Although parents today are just as afraid as our parents were about kids falling under the prey of drug dealers, this famous tale from the 1970s has yet to be supplanted by a more modern version.

4. Drug dealers smuggle cocaine into the U.S. stuffed into the bodies of dead babies.

False. This gruesome story has been around for more than 20 years, and has been reported as fact in respected publications such as The Washington Post and The New Republic, but there is no record of this ever having occurred. Versions keep popping up with each shift in the war on drugs, with dead children allegedly being used to smuggle narcotics into the Middle East or over the Mexican-American border.

3. Kidnappers snatch young kids and disguise them to get past security.

False. No urban legend has ever gotten hold of my imagination like this one. According to Urban Legends and Superstitions, most versions of the tale take place in amusement parks or supermarkets, and they all involve a panicked parent who, desperately searching for his or her baby, happens to notice that the shoes on a sleeping child are the same shoes the missing child was wearing! It turns out that the clever kidnapper dyed the child's hair, changed the clothes, and drugged the child so s/he couldn't cry, but forgot to change the shoes.

As a teen, I just couldn't get over how fortunate it was that the mom noticed the shoes, and how narrowly disaster was averted. I vowed to always remember what shoes my kids were wearing, just in case.

2. Poor orphans are being adopted for use as organ donors.

False. This is a really new urban legend, dating to the beginning of this year. It spread so quickly because it was promoted by an actual website, medicaladoptions.com, which claims to offer thousands of orphans that can be adopted for "non-essential" organ transplants - complete with testimonials from satisfied customers. But the site is just a hoax, capitalizing on very modern fears about the current shortage of organ donors and the plight of children in some poverty-stricken areas of the world.

1. Mikey died from eating pop rocks and Coke.

False. This story defined the urban legend for most of us. We all heard it growing up, and we all believed it. But John Gilchrist, the actor who played Mikey in the ubiquitous Life commercials, is alive and well and working as an advertising-account manager for a radio station in New York. Too bad he can't collect a nickel for every time this legend was repeated, or he wouldn't have to work at all!

Video: Banned Pokémon Episodes

Brett Singer — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:00:00 GMT

We've established that the whole Pokémon thing is a little weird. But we didn't know just how weird. Some episodes of the popular TV show were deemed too bizarre or offensive to be shown outside of Japan. The episode that actually induced seizures is the most famous but there are others. And thanks to YouTube, you can see them without traveling overseas. I'm including explanations for the uninitiated.

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Episode: "Miniryu no Densetsu"
First up is an episode where everyone appears to have a gun. Not futuristic Pokéguns. Real guns. With bullets. Which they threaten each other with constantly.

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Episode: "Some Enchanted Sweetening"
Next we have Meowth, a member of the bumbling bad guys Team Rocket. Meowth is the only Pokémon that speaks like a human (that is, he can say words that aren't variations on his own name.) In the show he periodically tells bizarre stories about "The Boss" of his team. This particular story involves "The Boss" running in the desert while slathered with honey, wearing nothing but a Speedo. Then a bunch of Pokémon, um, show their affection for him. In a very physical way. This time it was just the scene that was removed.

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Episode: "Beauty and the Beach"
The last, and by far the strangest, is one where, James, also of Team Rocket, suddenly appears in a bikini. With breasts. The context seems to be some sort of beauty contest. The subtitles read: "Aren't you a boy?" "What does it matter when I'm this beautiful? ... Wait until you're older and have these." There was no way to save this one; the entire episode was banned.

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BONUS: Pikachu gets busy

This isn't a banned scene (yet), and it appears to have been captured by someone pointed a cell-phone camera at the TV, but it's kinda funny anyway.

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Next time your little one plops down to watch the latest episode of his or her favorite show, maybe it wouldn't hurt to take a peek and see what's going on. You know, just in case.

Yu-Gi-Oh No, Please, Stop Talking

Brett Singer — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 20:00:00 GMT

ParentsConnect has an essay called "I Hate Yu-Gi-Oh!" which, if you have a kid who is into a similarly bizarre pastime, should remind miserable you that you have company. We've established here that some kids' games are cult-like in their strangeness. As for the writer asking, "To be a good mom, do I need to learn to duel?" I'm going to say no. Smiling and nodding works pretty well, and eventually the kid will either find people his own age to battle with, and/or get into something else. Like, you know, beer and girls, at which point you will probably be wishing that he would pull out his old trading cards and return to more innocent times.

image: 4KidsTV

11 year old saves mom from message board-created seizure

Brett Singer — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:00:00 GMT

As weird as this story is, I was surprised that it was the first time it happened.

Here's the deal: some nasty pranksters used computer code to put up posts containing numerous animated gifs (you know, those annoying flashing things). The thing is, they did this on the Epilepsy Foundation's message board, the idea being to, you know, cause visitors to the site to have seizures. The next day the same group of "Internet griefers" used another coding trick to redirect people who clicked on certain posts to a page with an image "designed to trigger seizures in both photosensitive and pattern-sensitive epileptics," according to Wired.

RyAnne Fultz, 33, saw the page and then, "couldn't move and couldn't speak." Her 11-year-old son saw her, figured out what was happening, moved her eyes away from the screen and "killed the browser process" (translation: closed the offending window).

I am slightly surprised that this is the first time someone tried this, since, for a sick mind, it would seem obvious. If this sort of thing that happened in a novel it might be funny. In real life, not so much. Props to the kid who helped his mom, though.

Aside: Something similar happened in 1997, when an episode of Pokemon caused seizures in several hundred Japanese children. Unlike the Epilepsy Foundation prank, this was an accident. You can read about that here; if you are not seizure-prone and want to see the offending video clip, search YouTube for "Electric Soldier Porygon" (which, sadly, is not a typo). I'm not linking to it so no one sees it inadvertently. I, however, just watched it and now have a headache.

image: Living With Epilepsy

Scientology vs Pokémon

Brett Singer — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 13:15:00 GMT

Scientology is everywhere these days, from Tom Cruise's wacky video to actors claiming that the religion is responsible for their success in television. The general consensus is that (a) Tom is a kook, and (b) Scientology is weird. The same day I first saw Tom laugh maniacally and claim that he was "the only one who can help," I also listened to my son tell me, in great detail, about his current obsession, Pokémon. So I started thinking: what's weirder, Pokémon or Scientology?

There are some basic similarities:

Both words are made up, and were formed by combining two other real words (“Science+Technology” and “Pocket+Monsters”.)
Both have rabid followers (talk to a six year old about it sometime, and see if you don't consider, just for a second, having them deprogrammed.)

Here are some more comparisons between the religion and the kids' game:

	Scientology	Pokémon
Example of beliefs	The thetan (spirit) is described in Scientology as having no mass, no wavelength, no energy and no time or location in space except by consideration or postulate. The spirit, then, is not a thing. It is the creator of things —1956, Professional Auditor's Bulletin 85 (source: Wikipedia)	Players of the [Pokémon] games are designated as Pokémon Trainers, and the two general goals (in most Pokémon games) for such Trainers are: to complete the Pokédex by collecting all of the available Pokémon species found in the fictional region where that game takes place; and to train a team of powerful Pokémon from those they have caught to compete against teams owned by other Trainers, and eventually become the strongest Trainer, the Pokémon Master. (source: Wikipedia)
Sacred text	Dianetics	Pokédex
Sacred item	Deluxe Planetary Dissemination Edition E-Meter ($5500) (source: The New Yorker)	Trading cards, video games ($5 - $50)
Patron saint	L. Ron Hubbard	Professor Oak
Controversy	Some believe it to be more of a cult than a religion; outlawed in some countries	Episode of cartoon series caused seizures in children; has been attacked by religious groups for various reasons, including taking offense at the concept of “Pokémon evolution” (FYI, there is no “Pokémon intelligent design”)
South Park episode making fun of it	“Trapped in the Closet”	“Chinpokomon”

Bottom line: both are an obsession, both sound whack-a-doodle to the uninitiated, and both want your money. But Pokémon wants less of your money, and most kids grow out of it and/or move on to something else.
Maybe someone should buy Tom Cruise a Pikachu doll. Couldn't hurt, right?

The Harrrd, Harrd Life of a Kids-Show Writer

Karen Murphy — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 21:27:00 GMT

When I moved back to Pennsylvania a year and a half ago from warmer/drier/higher climes, there was an online acquaintance in the area who expressed an interest in meeting me face-to-face sometime. Great! It was nice feeling a bit welcomed here. But a year and a half later we've still yet to meet. I will blame it on the fact that he's the writer for the Pokemon TV show (and does some of the voices), and that, combined with being a single full-time dad of two, means He Has No Personal Life.

Which is completely consistent with last week's American Public Media Marketplace report on the hard hard life of children's TV writers. Seriously! And this is why it's hard (one, two, three: awww!):

1. Writers must avoid writing conflict. Uh, any writer knows that it's pretty much conflict (or, if you blog for Strollerderby, it's witticisms and snark, hopefully combined) that drives good writing. But kid's shows can't have conflict! Or, the idea of "conflict" is something like "Clifford's dog-friend was shy about being seen in an unflattering pose/making a mistake/having white-lied about something," but it's all handily resolved within the 8-minute time window for each low-attention-span-friendly story.

2. Deadlines. Ugh, the pressure! My Pokemon-friend said he wrote an entire movie over 6 days on the Christmas break (how does he do it with the kids???), and that sounds "normal."

3. Kid's Shows are Serious Busines. Really! Writer Doug Cordell talks about puppeteers who stayed in character during lunch (they're PUPPETS, not method actors!!) and disputes over thngs like the improbabilities of a rabbit puppet wearing running shoes (though he habitually wore a vest).

All of which makes blogging sooo much more appealing, doesn't it?

Image: www.sfondideldesktop.com

Pretty Horsey Trading Cards For Boys (Yeah Right, For Girls, Natch)

Kelly Mills — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 13:33:00 GMT

Some of the folks behind the extra-popular Magic: The Gathering and Pokemon cards are hoping to lure girls with Bella Sara cards. Instead of featuring monsters and bizarre little creatures, these cards have pictures of horses. Gawd, always the girls and the horses. I've read that the prepubescent girl obsession with horses has links to, um, psycho-sexual development (don't even get me started on the unicorns with one big horn.) Anyhow the cards have girl power sayings on them like, "Use your love to bring peace to the world." Maybe they could also do one that says, "Your thing with horses is totally normal."

Because these cards are for girls, there's a little twist: theres no competitive element, unlike Pokemon and Magic. Because, as designer Gitte Odder Braendgaard says, "Girls like something beautiful, something nice to look at." Well, great, we don't want girls getting all competitive and stuff. So let's just review the card gender differences. Cards for boys: active, competitive, cards assigned strengths and powers. Cards for girls: pretty, passive, non-competitive. Yep, I just love when they make special toys for girls. Hey, math is hard! Shopping is fun! Get your mean old boy cards away from me!