Heroes of Mediocrity

I have a near fourteen month old daughter and it’s my obligation as a father to endure mind-numbing programs once in a while for the sake of her education. Obviously, watching an entire program that centers around, say, counting… won’t exactly entertain me, but I do it for my daughter’s benefit (…and at my wife’s behest).

And since pretty much everything I enjoy on television is violent or otherwise inappropriate for my little princess, TV pretty much sucks these days. As it stands now, football is my only refuge… and with Super Bowl XLII coming up in just a couple of days, TV’s gearing up to suck even more once the season is officially over.

So, my weekday mornings are all about the Disney Channel. My daughter sits mesmerized and I silently criticize everything in my mind. Here’s what I’ve figured out so far.

Winnie the Pooh and Tigger are absolute retards, the Wiggles are gay, the Doodlebops are gayer, Handy Manny never pays for anything, Mickey Mouse is narcissistic, the Little Einsteins need my help with everything... and every ass-clown over the age of nine in Higglytown is a f**king hero.

Things like echos, whistling, melting snow, loose teeth and growing flowers really baffle the sh*t out of Tigger and Pooh and, if not for the little girl (who’s always the one to figure sh*t out first), these retards would probably be dead by now. And yet, no show annoys me more than Higglytown Heroes.

Holy sh*t! Mediocrity is celebrated no more fervently than in Higglytown Heroes; a computer animated show. Imagine a city full of living Matryoshka nesting dolls with the plotlines centering around four kids and a talking squirrel (…all of whom can nest into whoever the next largest kid happens to be). Now, when I think about heroes, I imagine Superman saving Metropolis from Doomsday or, for real-life heroes, I think of the rescue workers of 9/11.

What I don’t think of are hall monitors, mechanics, physical therapists, plumbers, gardeners, artists, waitresses, librarians, window washers, museum curators and cows.

I sh*t you not, I said “cows.” I mean, holy sh*t, EVERYBODY’S a f**king hero on this show!

Then again, I figure that everybody is a hero in these kids’ eyes because all four of them are f**king stupid. Seriously, they can’t figure anything out for themselves and it’s truly pathetic. The girl of the group comes up with all of these crazy-ass ideas you'd swear she could only get from a seriously f**ked up acid trip. The best part is that, in every episode, her theory of the day is shot to hell by a f**king squirrel. And this squirrel delivers an even bigger "f**k you" when she winks at the camera before cutting "Twinkle" down because even a primate knows how ridiculous this girl's ideas are.

And not everything that they fret over is even a big deal. Remember the “cow hero” I alluded to a second ago? Care to know how a cow could possibly be a hero? Well, the disaster for this particular episode was a farmer’s inability to make ice cream because he didn’t have any cream. One kid (in a stroke of pure brilliance) suggested that they could use ketchup in place of cream to make their ice cream. As you can imagine, they’re not exactly setting the bar very high.

Based on how easily these kids are stumped, I can only conclude that they’re borderline retarded. The cow provides the cream necessary to make the ice cream and the day is saved. If I were a nesting doll on this show and the four-eyed kid started fretting “What are we gonna do?” like he always does, I’d probably smack him upside his head and tell him to stop sniffing markers in class.