Stay Cool Dad

Japanese culture has arrived in our home.

I’ve read a few manga over the years (I’m still struggling to get over the end of Lone Wolf and Cub) but anime have hardly made a dent.

It won;t be long, though. The boy caught a glimpse of Pokemon on the telly over the weekend and was instantly rapt. No matter that the episode in question featured a giant, ice-snorting walrus battling a midget dinosaur. He lapped it up.

Then there was our Saturday night excursion to Eminence, a symphony orchestra that plays music  from anime and games. A largely Japanese-Australian crowd just about filled Sydney Town Hall and greeted the composers of the music being played with awed applause.

And I kind of understand why. The footage of the games screened was very, very cool. I wanna play. No wonder the kids do too.

With some other hats on, I often find myself reading Telstra’s Now We Are Talking web site and wondering how they get away with such brazen propaganda.

But today there is actually a post there that I find useful, credible and interesting.

Here it is.

It’s about a child’s adventures with digital media – maybe that is why I am so interested in it!

The boy’s been at school about six weeks now and we’re almost getting the hang of the new rhythm it has given our lives.

But today it hit me that his new friends and new interactions are yet to produce any notable new interests in new media, either forms or content.

What’s up with that? Why hasn’t his brain been colonised by someone that’s into stuff he doesn’t know yet?

Our son has become very interested in nature. Or at least Space, Volcanoes, Dinosaurs and fierce animals.

So on Sunday afternoon when the conversation turned to Mars I suddenly thought to myself ‘Why don’t we look for some stuff about Mars online?’

So we did. And there was a lot to see, even if the main attraction was some really lame games on NASA’s site.

We probably played with them for half an hour or so.

As we played I had this moment where I thought to myself ‘Wow! Anything my child needs to know, I can now find.’ The huge possibilities of the Net rushed in at me like never before.

Best of all,  we played together. It was as if everything I have ever read about how to make sure your kids have a good online experience was being acted out in front of me. I was the lead player. And I was doing the right thing!

I’m not sure I have had that feeling before when introducing the kids to media.

Suppose I better do it again now … and we never did get to Google Maps, Mars edition …

It’s not often that you read news about kids entertainers in the newspaper, but The Australian covers The Hooley Dooleys’ rancourous split with the ABC today here: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21264720-421,00.html .

Some excerpts …

” … the Hooleys were seen largely as a hokey act compared with the slick Wiggles operation.”

“The ABC committed to another 12 months with the group due to the new management but asked for them to rush a new DVD into production … Then, two days before delivering their master of the DVD, the ABC told [manager] Colebourn they and Roadshow Home Entertainment no longer wanted the DVD.”

It all ends in tears as the Hooleys feel the ABC has betrayed them and defect to Warner Bros, who score them a massive US deal (I’d use more excerpts except the online story mysteriously ends before the juicy bits).

This is much more interesting than whatever Angelina Jolie did last week. The kids couldn’t give a toss, of course. They just thought it was cool that I talked about the Hooley Dooleys.

They were also quite interested in this  which is about a big wave rider in West Australia who happens to be an old mate of my Cousin D.

In my never ending quest to find Cool Music The Kids of Today Like That I Might Like Too, in order to stay cool, I sought out The Gossip’s Standing in the Way of Control after reading about it in the weekend paper.

The band’s main schtick seems to be that the lead singer Beth Ditto is somewhat unusual

As Wikipedia puts it, Beth Ditto is ” … she is a lesbian, an outspoken advocate of gay rights, weighs around 95 kg (210 lbs. or 15 stone)^[3], and is also in a relationship with a transgendered man. ^{[4] [5]}“

She’s also been named the coolest person in rock by NME, which let us not forget also alerted the world to the virtual charms of Lara Croft too …

Anyway, the music is alright. It’s competently punky. But lyrically I am finding it harder and harder to deal with 25 year olds attempting to express their rough-edged emotions. Half way into the Album I found myself thinking that a quick listen to disco classic ‘I will survive’ would probably communicate all that The Gossip have to offer in a funner, funkier, friendlier package.

Which confirms the fact I’ll be a shocker when my kids bring home whatever the future equivalent of The Gossip becomes.

But perhaps understanding the paucity of emotional quality as the source of my dislike is at least a good start in not being a total prat.

We’re back. We’ve been busy. But hopefully there’ll be a lot to post about in the near future given that my son starts school in a day or three.

But it has been a very busy time, media-wise, since the last post.

But let’s start at the end, or at least at last night at the Marrickville Council Australia Day celebrations.

I was keen to go because it has been fun in the past, but also because a band I loved as a teenager called Spy vs. Spy was playing (turns out they’re big in Brazil, according to their site). When I was a teenager some mates of mine were in a band that were very heavily influenced by the Spys (the spelling still grates with me) and I saw them a few times in very sweaty dives.

I even own a weird artefact of theirs, a 3-inch CD of their single Hard Times. I’ve lugged that little disk around for years because I am a sucker for weird formats. Average song though …

Things went a bit pear-shaped with the kids, but the Spys were in form. They played tight recreations of their best-known stuff including what was probably their biggest hit ‘Don’t tear it down’ . It was odd hearing songs written by angry 20-somethings belted out by 40-somethings who said they only made it on stage with the aid of wheelchairs. It was odder still that I remembered almost every note. Gee you waste some synapses over a lifetime …

Anyway, I always feel weird  revisitng the past like this. I feel like I am wallowing and holding myself back. But this was FUN.

Or at least fun once. I don’t think I will be chasing them around or anything. And I’ll let my kids discover their own stuff rather than drag them off to hear the old stuff I liked.

Mind you, I already feel more distanced than ever from the music the kids like. Triple J’s Hot 100 was on yesterday. I heard a few minutes of it in the car and didn’t know any of the songs. Then I forgot to mention it at home – it means nothing to me any more. Between the fact I have little time in which to listen to radio and the fact I can no longer stand whiney dj-ing aimed at ‘youf’ I think I’m close to being cut off from pop. Which is sad. Now I have to work on keeping myself from trying to impose future versions of Billy Joel , or other artists that cross over from pop into adult rock, on my kids.

Perhaps that $10 copy of Ramones Mania I picked up over the holidays will help. Or perhaps the kids will think even the Ramones are passe …

But that’s a digression, because an experience or two over Christmas made me think that maybe mainstream pap that The Whole Family Can Enjoy is not 100% bad.

We generally prefer Pixar movies to other kids entertainment because the characters learn their lessons and grow instead of spouting finding themselves in moral conflic in which the superior set of beliefs is espoused early and often and triumphs over selfish nasty people.

But on Christmas Day the family watched the Disney animation Dinosaur.It’s full of sickly Disney sentimentality and loaded to the gills with Family Values. We’ve also watched a fair bit of LazyTown which is far from subtle and plenty of Charlie and Lola.

The latter is far closer to my taste than the other two. It has a beautiful aesthetic and a delightful storytelling style.

Funny thing is, the kids took good stuff away from the Disney stuff. Maybe more than from the other stuff we’ve shown them.

Their absolute favorite, though, remains PlaySchool, for which they clamour.

And I love it too, even if it has been around for even longer than Spy vs. Spy