PBN Review: The Zula Patrol DVD

A few weeks ago, the fine women at Parent Bloggers Network sent me a DVD of the PBS kids' show, The Zula Patrol, and asked that I give it a watch, and then give it to my kids to watch, and then let everyone, oh just everyone, know what we all thunk about it.

I am very glad to do this.

First, reviewing The Zula Patrol gives me something to blog about other than my adorable husband and my crotchety kids.

Second, it gives me some practice writing reviews for things and stuff and flotsam and jetsam, and practice is what I need since I intend to soon begin working on unveil my super-duper review blog. Aaaaaaannnnny day now.

Third, it gives me something to blog about other than my crotchety husband and my adorable kids.

(There's only so much crotchety any readership should have to endure.)

Fourth, I do so enjoy and treasure my own opinions and, really, don't get enough opportunity to state them out loud over and over and over again. This is a great tragedy for all humanity, as far as I'm concerned, and - in my further opinion - this tragedy should be the main topic of either one of the Democratic nominee's next nationally televised speeches: Why More People Should Listen to Madame Jozet's Opinion On Just About Everything (I will admit to not having a opinion on "shopping cart" versus "buggy", but that's about it.)

And so, without further ado...

The Zula Patrol: Explore Space! DVD

Let's not reinvent the wheel here. Instead of telling you the gist of the series in my own words, i.e. plagiarizing the back of the DVD box, let's move right on to direct quotes:

Blast off with The Zula Patrol as they travel the galaxies in a quest for universal knowledge, scientific discovery and pizza, all the while exploring the wonders of science and astronomy. Join our wacky crew on a series of space exploration missions as Multo sends a probe to a far away Planet, Bula's replacement, a robot, goes through Astronaut training at The Zula Academy, Dark Truder attempts to put his own nefarious spin on all of the Solar System's Moons and Gorga and the Moon reflect on their past days moonlighting as circus performers.

My first opinion: "Planet" and "Astronaut" probably don't need to be capitalized. Sorry. I'm just a hard ass that way.

This particular DVD runs a total of 57 minutes and is comprised of four different episodes each with the theme of exploring space. Uh...thus the title. That isn't too obvious, eh?

The topics covered were astronauts, moons, space probes, and another one about the moon. Two episodes about moons. But what kid doesn't love moons? You really just can't hear enough about moons. Did you know that one of the planets has two potato-shaped moons? I learned that on The Zula Patrol.

And that's what The Zula Patrol is about: learning stuff. It's another in PBS' long line of children's programming that's more than just mindless entertainment and kooky-colored brain candy that will rot your cerebral cortex; it's boob tube with an objective beyond "I've seen the show and now I want the lunch box and the t-shirt and the plush character doll and a weekend at the animated-television-show-based theme park in Orlando where I'll buy more lunch boxes and t-shirts and plush character dolls!"

Uh-oh. I'm not sounding like one of those "television is the work of the Beelzebub " types, am I?

Before I go any further, let me stand up right here and place my hand over my heart and pledge my undying love and dedication and allegiance to television and its important sanity-saving role as 30-minute-interval babysitter. Without television, dinner would never get prepped. Without television, this blog would never get written. Without television, I'd have to drink enormous pots of caffeinated coffee each day so that all my bathroom visits would be more...expedient. It is true that up until a few weeks ago, our family had no cable or broadcast television, but that was mostly a matter of finances; in this interim, however, I went four years without using the bathroom. It's true.

Now, back to the review...


From The Zula Patrol website:

The only 3D/CG animated children's show that focuses on the important curriculum of science and astronomy, The Zula Patrol is an entertaining and educational TV series that combines zesty family entertainment with proven educational elements. With a secondary goal of encouraging core values of non-violence and tolerance, the show encourages whole-family participation and interest in learning about science and astronomy, in a fun, comic style. American Public Television will begin distribution of the TV series to its Public Broadcasting Station affiliates starting in fall 2005.

The Zula Patrol is designed to appeal to:

• Children (Pre-Kindergarten-2nd Grade), the target audience for the comical denizens of Zula who, during the course of a typical show, will learn interesting and critical facts about the universe, galaxy, and solar system in which they live;
• Teachers, who will be provided with an interactive educational tool to help introduce science and astronomy concepts to young children; and,
• Beleaguered parents, who are desperate for nonviolent family entertainment and a way to explore the world of science and astronomy with their children.

Oh, I'm beleagured, alright.

My middle child, Seconda, is six years old and is The Zula Patrol target audience.

She was thrilled to sit and watch a cartoon in the middle of the day, even moreso because Mommy was going to sit and watch with her instead of stand in the kitchen and curse the carrots for not chopping themselves. So, right off the bat, she was an easy sell.

She immediately fell in love with the character Gorga.

Gorga is a space...pet...animal...creature...thing. I'm getting a little hung up here already. All the characters are sentient outer space beings of some sort - not human, that's for sure - and Gorga is an alien creature, too...but obviously Gorga is of some lower "pet caste", even though he communicates with his own language and can make flashlights and fish nets appear from the end of his snout. This hierarchy of species makes me very uncomfortable, my coming from a generation and liberal mindset that coined the term "animal companions" in an attempt to deal with our guilt over evolving toward an opposable thumb and the ability to really relax into a shampoo and a pedicure. I mean, the other characters and Gorga communicate with each other through spoken language, and Captain Bula and Molto empathize with Gorga's emotions, but I kept sensing a bipedal versus quadrupedal dichotomy of validated experience that suggested that two-footed upright aliens were somehow the dominant species in this imaginary world even in spite of immediate objective evidence favoring of the actuality of all the show's aliens having comparable levels of higher consciousness, a similar capacity for social interaction established by ritual, ethics and norms, and equal ability to use technology. It was both uncomfortable and discomfiting to consider.

My daughter just thought Gorga was very, very cute.

See, this is why the target audience is six year olds and not middle-aged pseudo-intellectuals.

Other areas where Seconda and I differed in our opinion on The Zula Patrol:

• I thought that the computer animation looked a little AutoCAD 101. Seconda didn't mind the un-finessed motion and clunky, glaring backdrops. Looks like one of us has been watching "too much" Pixar and has become a bit of a snob connoisseur.
  
  
• I got freaked by the evil robot space clowns in the Three Ringed Gorga episode and had to sleep with the lights on for three nights. The six-year-old thought the clowns were hilarious and noted "evil robot space clown" in her journal of potential future Halloween costumes.
  
  
• I rolled my eyes at the obvious and over-the-top deus ex machina ending to the first episode. Seconda recommended that I get over myself and stop trying to ruin her childhood and rhetorically wondered whether I didn't I have carrots to go scream at in the kitchen?

We did agree on the following:

• The villain, Dark Truder, was derivative (my word, not hers) of some of Tim Burton's more ghoulish Nightmare Before Christmas characters; however, as we are both big fans of Tim Burton, this likeness was added on the plus side.
  
  
• Dark Truder's talking hairpiece was inspired comedy hearkening back to the very best Sid and Marty Krofft Lidsville episodes.
  
  
• The new found knowledge that there are moons shaped like potatoes makes for some kick-ass (her word, not mine) "In your face, Einstein!" trivia.
  
  
• The factual scientific tidbits interspersed within a narrative that utilized imaginary talking planets and evil robot space clowns was not jarring or confusing. By 6 years old, most kids are developmentally able to separate fact from fiction, and by 41 years old most adults no longer have a psychological hair-trigger when it comes to experiencing flashbacks from their college undergrad days experimenting with "herbal" brownies and freaking out at Dead shows. In other words, I was - after all - able to enjoy the whimsy.

Seconda watched the entire 57 minutes in rapt enjoyment. And then she asked to watch it again.

I asked her if she "learned anything" and she did, in fact, quote information about astronauts and space probes and actually remembered the names of the potato-shaped moons.

Now, I don't know whether she needed a 57-minute animated show to teach her that information, but I ask you - since when is watching television about needing anything other than some fun down time for kids and some coveted solo bathroom time for parents? If the kid is happening to learn a little science trivia at the same time - as well as honing their comedy chops via a talking wig - then that's the vegetable-laced icing on the brain dessert.


Mom's Rating: 3 Bleenies out of 5
Kid's Rating: 5 Bleenies out of 5

(I'll explain the Bleenies later.)

Blog, Interrupted

So, for the past two days, there have been men running around in my backyard with large, loud, jackhammering things....

I suppose those would be, uh, jackhammers....

and they are digging holes all over the durn place.

No, they are not hunting gophers, nor are they just a bunch of nice guys putting a swimming pool in my backyard just because they think I'm swell and they can't think of anyone more deserving of a free swimming pool.

No, they are digging up the old phone lines and putting in new phone lines.

In theory, this will be a good thing. I am imagining crystal clear conversations with my friend in Des Moines during which I will not only be able to more fully enjoy her dulcet tones, but also be able to pinpoint from 1,500 miles exactly which molar she is picking at in an attempt to remove the remains of her morning's breakfast. That's clarity the phone companies just don't advertise often enough.

On the downside, my Internet has been splotchy. I'm hoping that when all this tinkering and jackhammering is over with, I'll have whiz-bang, lightning speed downloads and that I'll be able to upload blog posts just by thinking about them.

In the meantime, I'm typing quickly and crossing my fingers that the connection stays connected until I hit the "Publish Post" button.

-----------------------

In other news, I live in Pennsylvania.

Well, that's not the news.

What is the news is that Pennsylvania - in spite of scheduling its Democratic primary so that we'd be more or less left out of the undesirable position of having to actually get out of our comfy chairs and go vote, trusting instead that the good folks of California and New Hampshire would know what's best for us because, hey, they weren't wrong about Die Hard 4 or Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream -

in spite of all that, I'm going to have to get out of my comfy chair in April and go vote in the primary.

And now I have to pay attention to what's going on in the campaigns because my vote might possibly mean something.

And now that I've been paying attention to the campaigns for the past few days, I'm just thoroughly confused.

I thought that - if I had to vote in the primary - it was going to be an easy choice between the uppity chick and the hunky guy, and that depending on where I was in my menstrual cycle, my vote would be made for me: ovulation = hunky guy; PMS = uppity chick.

Heh...just kidding. If only it were that easy.

However, from the looks of things on the news and The Internets, the decision is going to take even more deciding on my part than I had originally planned, and I'm going to have to wipe the drool and oatmeal off my face, turn down the Backyardigans soundtrack, and fire up the old brain, don the old thinking cap...uh....some other metaphor for having to exercise my mind.

Geraldine Ferraro is roosting chickens in her home? Obama's preacher is driving down the stock market? Bill wants me to send him $5.00 to bail out hookers? What?

See what happens when your Internet is down?

It's all so confusing.

You wake up one day and the world has gone nutty, and all of a sudden your vote counts and counts big, but instead of a clear view of the individual issues, you're hit full-force with a whole lot of campaign pie in the face, and the next thing you know you're making the trek down to the polling place where you end up buying quarts of bean soup and pans of church lady brownies and between the pie and the brownies, you've put back on the 10 pounds you lost during Lent, and you still have eight months to go before the general elections.

Ah well. At least I haven't had to field any phone calls from pollsters, yet.

And no canvassers.

There was a young man with a clipboard at our front door this morning, but it was just someone from Chem-Lawn letting us know that our neighbors had sent him to our house for a landscaping intervention. I let him know that we liked our front dirt just fine and that, no, I wouldn't be voting for Martha Stewart, so just back the hell off.


nataliedee.com

-------------------------

Well, that's the quick report from Chateau Halushki.

Hopefully, the new phone lines will be up and whirring very soon, and I can rejoin civilization.

In the meantime, someone get the candidates all sorted out on this messy chicken roosting thing so that I can do my critical thinking all in one afternoon and get back to my comfy chair.

Thanks!

Mommy Gets Pwned

Mommy: (driving minivan on way to gymnastics, pounding on steering wheel)

'Cause I'm TNT, I'm dynamite!
TNT and blah buh mumble mumba FIGHT!
TNT I'm a power bluh mumba!
TNT WATCH ME EXPLODE!

Child 1: Mommy, would you turn that music down?

Mommy: Why? Is it too EXCELLENT for you, little dudette?

Child 1: No.

Mommy: Is Mommy ROCKIN' too hard for ya?!

Child 1: No.

Mommy: Is ACDC blowing your mind?! Oi! Oi! Oi!

Child 1: No, Mommy.

Mommy: Well?

Child1: It's just really annoying.

Child 2: (piping up from far back of van) Yeah, annoying.

Mommy:

Child 1: And you sing kinda loud.

Child 2: Yeah. Kinda loud...and bad.

Mommy: But...but it's..rock and...roll.

Child 1: (explaining patiently) Yeah. But old people rock and roll.

Child 2: Yeah. Not like kids listen to.

Mommy: Hmm.



Child 2: (brightly) Maybe you could listen to it while we're at school!

Mommy: Hmmmmmmmm.

This Is A Test

I'm going to say a word or phrase, and you say the first thing that pops into your mind.

Ready?

Let's go!

"One hundred pre-teen girls together in one room"


Okay, what was your immediate response? Be honest now.

Did your response include any of the following:

a) Oy with the giggling already.
b) Oy with the whining already.
c) Hannah Montana Concert. Has to be.
d) AHHHHHHHHHH!


Let's try another.

"One hundred pre-teen girls altogether in one room, and wearing fancy costume dresses and make-up."

How about this time? Did you say

a) Oy with the giggling and whining
b) I'm a little afraid
c) Club Libby Lu convention. Has to be.
d) At no time should I reveal my credit card; they might pounce.


How about another? Don't worry. All will be revealed shortly.

"One hundred pre-teen girls wearing fancy costume dresses and make-up, all getting ready to compete against each other."

a) Little Miss Sunshine competition. Has to be.
b) Uh oh...that means that the stage moms must be near-by.
c) I am very afraid.
d) Oy with the attitudes and whining. I liked them better when they were giggling.


Last one! You're almost done!

"One hundred pre-teen girls wearing fancy costume dresses and make-up, all getting ready to compete against each other by lacing-up white boots with 4 mm wide blades on the bottom and then proceeding to propel their pre-pubescent bodies at literally breakneck speeds across a sheet of ice on just those thin blades and sometimes leaping into the air, twirling blindly, landing backwards onto one foot, onto that 4 mm wide blade, with other leg extended and arms outstretched like swallows' wings, still speeding along on the frozen rink, and doing it all with grace and style and in time to thrilling excerpts from Sound of Music. Or to a tarantella. Or to any of the hundreds of Disney songs.

a) Uhhhhh... What now?
b) Oh! I get it! Figure Skating.
c) Oy with the steel pipes to the knees!
d) Hey...I've always meant to ask this to someone in the know: What the hell is a salchow, anyway?


Well, before I became an insider to the fabulous world of local figure skating competitions, I too was a little nervous at the prospect of being in close quarters with large numbers of young girls who were all getting ready to compete individually against each other in just about anything: figure skating, gymnastics, Tiddly-Winks...you name it.

Add costumes, hairspray, glittery eyeshadow, and a whole bunch of anxious moms, and I'd have guessed that the potential for comedy, tragedy, and a whole bunch of bitching would be just about 101%

I was wrong.

Very happily wrong.

Evidently, I shouldn't get all my information from movies and after school specials.

One hundred young ladies got glitzed-up and glammed-up and then put months of hard work, heart - and a little bit of chutzpah - on display in front of a darn big crowd of family and friends and let's not forget the judges.

I don't know about you, but when I was nine years old, if anyone asked me whether I wanted to perform solo Cirque De Soleil-like tricks in front of an audience and then receive scores on my artistic performance and athletic ability, I would have crawled into my closet and hid there until I turned fifteen. Which is what I did anyway, come to think of it.

But at last Saturday's competition, there were no abrasive stage moms. No whining ice princesses. No rush and holler from the grown-ups in the attempt to get all those girls on and off the ice and stick to a very exact schedule.

Instead, at last Saturday's competition I heard tween-age girls cheering and clapping for their friends, the friends of their friends, and even for the girls they didn't know very well. I saw parents and coaches give hugs and high-fives and enthusiastic pre-ice words of "Good luck!" and "You'll do great!" and, possibly most importantly, "Just go have fun!" I saw girls skate and spin and twirl and leap across the ice with strong bodies and nerves of steel, and if you've never seen a kid fall on her kiester in front of the whole world only to get back up again, pretend it didn't happen, and continue skating to the end of her program, then you don't know what chutzpah looks like, let me tell you.

And just so that I'm not one-sided - and to be honest and fair - I must also tell you that there were a few boys in the mix at this particular Basic Skills Competition. And although it might seem like a middle school-aged boy's fantasy to be one of the few guys in a room full of middle school-aged girls, I'm guessing that it actually takes much bravery of a different sort just step foot into the sparkle-diva sanctum sanctorum with your black figure skates standing out against all that spit-shined white.

However, a grand time was had by all, at least from where I sat. If there were any sulky or sad moments, the sulking was done out of the spotlight. Although, who could blame a kid for getting a little sulky or sad? Our local competition was, I assume, comparatively low key compared to the anxiety build-up before and melt-down after a bigger competition. But still...they're just kids. It's not often that people do the hard work of finding out what they're made of and who they are, and frankly, if I had half the chance, I'd tell each and every kid who competed - even the sulky ones - that just saying, "I'm going to give it a try" is a very strong first sentence in the story of themselves.


At the end of the competition, all the children skated onto the ice together one more time. They were tired, hungry, and beginning to get cold. Some of the kids huddled around their friends, keeping each other warm. Other girls skated along the far side of the rink, jumping and twirling and spinning in pirouettes...just because. Just because it was fun.

And then, one by one, every skater who competed that day was called by name to come forward and don their individual medals, while other gracious gals and guys also received their first-place trophies. Then they got in a big group and smiled and waved to their parents' flashing cameras - and on the count of three, they all shouted a boisterous victory hurrah.

The competition was officially over.

A few skaters took once last twirl, and finally, everyone skated off the ice together.

Some of them giggling like a bunch of little girls.

I may look cute,
but if you try to take my medal,
I'll beat you with these tea roses.

Killing Fairies

One of the most important responsibilities - nay, obligations - of any parent is, I think, to encourage our children's daily awareness of all that is magical and mysterious in our great, big fantastical world.

And, yes, I am a hippie.

To point our children toward a sly glimpse of the crystalline fairies in a drop of dew....

To wonder in awe at Titan voices booming across the evening sky during a summer thunderstorm....

To marvel at orchestras captured on silver discs, musicians trapped like microscopic genies to be released in song only at the listener's wish and command....

Ah bliss! Ah joy!

To support and stimulate their creative selves and thusly nourish their hearts and souls with the food of poets and saints!

(And I'm not talking cigarettes and day-old baguettes.)

But, as a bittersweet fact of life, every day my children grow a bit older and, so too, a bit too wise for the world's magic.

Mostly, I blame science.

(That honeymoon was over quickly.)

One golden-hued afternoon, my girls are sitting on their bed happily naming the angels they insist they can see dancing on the head of a pin. The following week, they're discussing the atomic force microscope and how the sharp point of the carbon nanotube would determine once and for all whether and how many angels were actually boogying down, even though the super sharp point would probably poke the bejeezus out of most of the angels such that from thence forward, angels would stay the hell off pinheads altogether and begin dancing on clouds, where they belong. Although, then they'd remind me that in their lesson on the weather, they learned that clouds were made mostly of condensed water droplets and could probably support the weight of a few very small celestial beings, but not an entire host of seraphim because, c'mon, six wings each? The whole shebang is becoming suspect.

It doesn't matter when I point out that no one actually knows how heavy a seraphim is: my kids are on a quest to figure it out.

And somewhere, someplace, a fairy sheds a tear.

I could tell them, warn them, implore them - Don't look at the man behind the curtain! Don't figure how Santa gets to every house in the world in one evening, even after adjusting the formula for Jewish kids and cranky anti-consumerists! Don't stay up late and try to catch the "Tooth Fairy" in her bathrobe and Pond's facial cream masque! Don't question the lack of causation and faulty correlation between mommy's big tummy and large white birds with messenger caps! Keep the magic! Vive le mystery!

But the little stinkers are like curious cats batting Tinker Bell's tiny body across the kitchen floor - a soft, sad jingle barely audible as she rolls under the refrigerator and her limp little arms and legs come to rest against a dust bunny and a dry noodle.

The shame of it all is that I was just getting good at being their Field Director of Whimsy. Prima would write a two page letter to the Tooth Fairy asking what she looked like, what she did on her days off, and most importantly, what the heck did she do with all those teeth? And the Tooth Fairy would reply with photos and gilded pages and purple prose printouts explaining in detail all the magical happenings in Fairyland - how Prima's first lost tooth would be used to crown the newest fairy princess baby; how other teeth would be polished and fashioned into lanterns and bells for the autumn harvest festival; and, how in Fairyland, Prima and her sister were known each by their own fanciful fairy names - Juniper Icedancer and Feather Elfdancer.

One night, the Tooth Fairy forgot to make her visit and a tooth was unexpectedly found the next morning still under the pillow. A note later appeared explaining that because the family cat was reclining on Prima's bed, the Tooth Fairy couldn't retrieve the wee lower incisor. And the reason she couldn't go into the room to grab the tooth was because, evidently, when a cat sees a fairy, the cat begins to sing. Loudly. And because waking the entire house with a singing cat just wouldn't do, the Tooth Fairy had to abort attempts to retrieve the package and try again another night.

My daughters believed.

And the next night, the cat was locked in the basement.

And the Tooth Fairy arrived as originally planned and finished the job at hand.


That's not to say that as they wield their microscopes and telescopes and National Geographic Kids and It's So Amazing to debunk their own childhood illusions and denude one apple tree after another, that they aren't at the same time beginning to occasionally take a glance backward with - if not quite regret - then their own bittersweet understanding that they are propelling themselves through realms of reality, barely slamming one door closed as they race through the next. That they can't stop themselves. That they shouldn't stop themselves, but that at the same time, when they do now go searching for fairies and even monsters under the bed, the sightings are becoming a little more infrequent. Not impossible to track and stalk...but...tricky.


I do my best to manufacture a little magic in my own way. Keep them guessing. Keep them on their toes when they get a bit too sure that they know what's around every corner, what's through the next door. Just to keep their poetic toes a dancing. Just to help put a drag on once in a while least they suddenly find themselves too soon too grown-up with a job and a mortgage and not a whole lot of free time left to track fairies.

Sometimes I need to get creative.

"Mommy, how do you spell parallel?"

"P-a-r-a-l-l-e-l. Hey! Did you know that double l's in parallel are parallel. They could go on forever and never touch!"

"Yeah. I knew that."

"Did you know that parallel can refer to two actions happening at the same time?"

"Roll eyes. Yeah. I knew that, too."

"Did you know that the German for parallel is parallel?

"Yea...uh...well...."

"Oh no!"

"What?"

"Oh no oh no!"

"What? What?"

"I completely forgot."

"What?!"

"Sigh. That part about the German for parallel being parallel...that was the last thing I was supposed to teach you before you turned 18 and were ready to leave for college. Drat."

"Nuh-uh."

"Uh-huh. That was the last thing on the list. I guess you'll have to skip middle school and high school and go right to U. Penn next fall."

"Nuh-uh. There's no such thing as a list."

"Oh sure. When you were born in the hospital, they gave me a list of things I was supposed to tell you and that the teachers wouldn't cover in school. I was supposed to refer to list and go in order. They were very specific in telling me I had to go in order. Oh well. You'll figure out canasta and how to separate reds and whites when doing laundry on your own."

"Really? Did they really give you a list?"

"Absolutely. The last thing I checked off was 'Teach your child how to make toast.' Remember? We did that last week."

"Really?"

"Oh. Sure.

"Really, really?"

"Sure. Now just don't tell your sister about parallel. You're going to love college. Eh-hem."

"I'm going to ask Daddy. That doesn't sound right."


And somewhere, someplace, a fairy heaves herself off the floor, brushes the cat slobber off her skirt, and flitters away with a sly smile...and a jingly jangly flip of the bird.