Weinerville

Sure, to children of the 70s and 80s, the Talking Heads may be a new wave rock band responsible for Burning Down the House, but to children of the 90s the phrase conjures up a far puppetier image. Namely that of Marc Weiner's Weinerville, a 90s Nickelodeon show featuring the children's entertainment stylings of Herr puppetmeister himself, Marc Weiner. Weinerville's trademark human head/tiny puppet body combo was both moderately frightening to small children and infinitely entertaining to those old enough to get a kick out of it. I still have an unrealized ambition to be Weinerized (e.g. for my full-size head to appear on a tiny puppet body), but I may just have to write that one off. Damn.

Marc Weiner was nothing if not imaginative. Weinerville and its innumerable puppet citizens were the sum of the no doubt many fragments of creativity floating around in Marc Weiner's head. The whole thing has a feel of every time you ever said, "You know, I have this crazy idea...", only in this case it translated into following through with that zany impulse rather than burying it deep into your repressive creative subconscious.

I don't know what it takes to become a pupeteer, but I do certainly find it admirable as a career goal. To think, while the rest of us are morphing more and more daily into The Man with our corporate suits and attache cases, there are actual adults who earn a sizable living off of controlling the marionetted limbs of fanciful puppets. Indeed, it's a pretty enviable career path. I'm not talking about those struggling pupeteers a la John Cusack in Being John Malkovich. I'm talking being paid to create a full-scale imaginary universe of puppets for which you get to add the suffix "ville" to your own last name. Just imagine, you, a ville. We can only dream.



Like many Nickelodeon shows of its time, Weinerville featured a live-action audience participation element, leaving those of us at home immeasurably covetous of the lucky so-and-sos who got to interact with the puppets themselves. Despite the incessant begging, my parents never caved to let me be a veritable member of the live studio audience at Nickelodeon Studios in Universal Studios, Florida. I even learned to recite that phrase via constant exposure to the informative ending of every live-action Nickelodeon show, but to no avail. I was going to have to settle for being part of a live at-home television audience, and that was that.

Weinerville was home to many, many puppet pals, most of whom were played by Marc Weiner himself. Played by his head, that is. In the above intro, you can see Marc as Baby Jeffery, an infant famous for creating outrageous messes. Two of the other more familiar characters were Dottie and Zip, the trusty mayor of Weinerville and her injury-prone assistant Zip. Marc played Dottie, donning makeup, a curly blonde wig, and falsetto with conviction. Zip was pure puppet through and through, allowing him to be more easily placed in dangerous and potentially painful situations. Observe, a montage of Zip and Dottie introducing the show:



Another favorite puppet was Boney, a dinosaur skeleton and a sort of anti-Barney. He's pretty much awesome because he hates everything and everyone, as evidenced in his trademark song, "I'm Boney, I'm Boney, leave me alone-y!" I don't know what it says about me as a child that I found this Boney fellow so hilarious, but I'm guessing it's in some way correlated to my angsty 90s cynicism.



The show also featured a slew of animated shorts, generally unrelated to the puppet action onstage. The cartoons featured the likes of such animated personalities as Batfink, Mighty Mouse, and Mr. Magoo. Cartoon stars from decades past were once again entertaining children, albeit only in short inter-sketch segments. Regardless of value, the cartoon shorts kept the show moving and maintained its quick pace during scene changes.

The interactive element of the show allowed for Weinerizing, the puppetization of real live audience members. Weinerized children often got to participate in all sorts of fun on-camera shenanigans, vying for gold and silver hot dog statuettes. In some cases, they were even lucky enough to experience the tour de fource of Nickelodeon audience participatory experiences: the sliming:



Admittedly, the show wasn't for everyone. To say the acting and execution was over-the-top would be a pretty forgiving understatement. Regardless, the show certainly had its charms in a whimsical-puppet-world type of way. As Daria's trusty sidekick Jane once said, everything is funnier with puppets*. I suppose I'll let you be the judge:




*The many, many Daria references recently peppering these posts are largely contingent on my finishing all 5 seasons while going stir-crazy in my current state of apartment-bound ankle breakage. Consider it a gift.

I SPY Books

It's a parents dream: for the low low price of $9.95, you can guarantee your attention span-less child will stay put in a single spot for an uncharacteristically extended period of time. Heck, parents would probably pay upwards of $100 for results like these, so those Scholastic people are really cutting them a deal on this one. Writer Jean Marzollo and photographer Walter Wick are probably laughing all the way to their interestingly cluttered homes full of cleverly arranged tough-to-spot ornamental and thematic objects.

Following in the well-hidden footsteps of Where's Waldo, Scholastic's series of I SPY books offered a handily portable search game certain to provide children with endless hours of contemplation and entertainment. Each page was its own magical little world of plentiful well-placed objects, usually within some sort of thematic framework. The pages themselves were visually impressive enough to enthrall children of any age, while the clever written riddlers were at times enough to stump any parents reading along.



These books were full of imagination and wonder, which generally translated into them being simultaneously mesmerizing and frustrating. Sure, the pictures were hypnotizing in their high level of visual interest, but they also gave our poor little eyes stare-at-an-eclipse level strain. It's a wonder we weren't all marveling over these books stooped over with Quasimodo-esque posture donning granny glasses dangling from a chain. If anything had the power to age us prematurely, it was these damn visual puzzlers.

We all started off pretty cocky. They'd throw a few easy search assignments at you to build your confidence in typical 90s rah-rah self-esteem style. Some of the clues were completely straightforward, as least in theory. In practice, we were required to actually locate these objects amidst a sea of unimportant junk. Just when we thought we'd finally conquered these perplexing puzzles, we'd get to one that had some sort of riddle. Oh, great, so now we have to think, too? What is this, The Eleventh Hour? And no secret solution in the back? For shame.

The pictures themselves were an impressive feat alone. Where exactly were they getting all of this stuff? I've been to plenty of garage sales and swap meets, but I've never managed to accumulate this volume of junk. How could they possibly track down so many button, marbles, manacala beads, and checkers to artfully arrange in a chaotically ordered manner?

And what sort of mixed messages were these sending children? Our parents say "Clean your room," and then offer us a book full of vast quantities of object in complete disarray? I tried writing a poem to go with my messy room, but my parents weren't taken in by my I SPY-like effort. If only they'd solved that riddle, I'd perhaps have had the confidence to pursue my then-chosen career as a search picture book stanza composer. Plus, they could have found my stuffed manatee.

Despite these personal setbacks, I can still admire these books' intricacies. While most parents tired of reading the same books to their children over and over, the I SPY series provided both parents and their offspring with hundreds of new items to discover with each read. You even have the opportunity at some healthy competition in your race to locate all the listed objects. Just be prepared for the inevitable resultant tears when your overly competitive father shouts, "In your face!" repeatedly to celebrate his obviously unfair victory. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Parents also had the advantage of softening the blow of defeat on their younger, more fragile children (read: the illiterate. Well, they can't. But you get the point.) Many of them quickly realized that especially in a family where multiple ages of children played with this book, you could, ahem, adapt it for younger non-reading kids. In other words: lie. Lie, lie, lie. "Oh, what does all that writing say? It says, look for the big happy clown in the middle of the page! What's that? Found it already! What a smart little boy!"

Try as I might, I was never able to recreate this scene with my own Tinker Toys. Perhaps it's because I didn't have a proper protractor and rainbow xylophone on hand.

In Scholastic's infinite wisdom (evidenced by their glorious, glorious book orders), they fashioned these books to be lightweight and highly portable. Translation: bring it in the car and maybe your children will shut the hell up on a long road trip. Without this type of legitimate distraction, who knows what dire lengths you'd have to go to to satiate your restless and irritable children. In my family, we were reduced to stopping off at a cemetery so us kids could run around. Unfortunately for my parents, from then on whenever my sister and I spotted a cemetery from the car, we would eagerly implore, "Play, play!" Honestly, we wouldv'e been much better off with an I SPY book. After all, it's far more difficult to disrespect the dead with one of those babies.

So for those of you with children who prefer not to engage in any type of sacrilege sure to anger someone upstairs, I'd highly recommend investing in one of these. And for those of you without children, my advice stands. Alright, so you may get some questionable looks when you whip out I SPY: Spooky Night on your subway trip home from your hours of enslavement to the man, but just imagine how excited you'll be when you finally locate that cross-eyed jack-o-latern.

Suggested public transit reading to ward off unwanted conversation. I'm warning you though, finding that jack-o-latern is a real bitch.

Billy Madison

As much as I want to believe my sense of humor mature along with my progression in chronological age, I always always find myself laughing with equal fervor when confronted with a movie that so entertained in my youth. While I wish I could say that I can no longer recite by heart those movies that cracked me up in my childhood, that is simply not the case. If anything, the quotations get further ingrained into my brain with each passing year. I think it's some sort of late-developing side effect from the original branding process.

Such is the case with Billy Madison, which I happened to catch a 30-minute chunk of on TV this weekend while waiting for some friends to arrive. When I selected the film from the innumerable channel offerings on my boyfriend's digital cable listing, I assumed I'd have outgrown the movie's juvenile humor that so delighted my fifth-grade self. Unfortunately for my ego's sense of wisdom and sophistication, I was dead wrong. Within minutes, I was laughing out loud and had completely abandoned any previous pretension about maturity and humor. How could I uphold such a standard when confronted with an image of Miss Lippy eating paste? How, I ask you?

Oh, and speaking of Miss Lippy, her car is green. Did you know? You can buy this nostalgia-rich tee shirt at Look at Me Shirts

It would take a man of steel with a heart of lead to avoid snorting with laughter at a scene like that. Or at least a far less childish sense of humor. I haven't decided which one. For the sake of what's left of my so-called adult pride, I'm going to go with the first one.

Sure, it's a stupid movie. That's probably why it appealed to so many of us as children. As an alleged grown-up, I'm often shocked at the tepid or even straight-up poor critical reception that greeted some of my favorite childhood films. Than again, critics have a habit of being self-important snobs, so it makes all the more sense that whatever they pan would be greedily consumed by unquestioning children. Right? I'm glad you're coming with me on that one.

For those of us who grew up during Sandler's Saturday Night Live days, we had come to expect a certain level of child-friendly humor from him. That's not to say it was appropriate, but more that he was, let's say, in touch with his inner child and it frequently manifested itself in his outwardly childish portrayals of his characters. It was this quality that made him so well-matched to the role of the eponymous overgrown spoiled-rotten under-educated child in Billy Madison.

Billy Madison is certainly not for everyone, I'll give you that. The plot is not only far-fetched but teeters on the edge of completely ridiculous. It's not really meant to make any sort of sense, though; it's meant to be fun. You certainly can't deny that everyone involved in this film seems to be having a grand old time. If you still have yet to comprehend the juvenile nature of the film, here's the theatrical trailer to help you out. Hint: it begins with a loud farting noise. Classy, no?



Like I said, it's not for everyone, but it certainly still makes me laugh. It was the perfect film for children and teens largely on the basis of its incredible quotability. Nearly everything out of everyone's mouth is so ridiculous most of us were certain it bore repeating. Our parents may not have cracked a smile after the first or second time, but you could bet our buddies on the playground would still be rolling in the sandbox after our forty-second go.

At the beginning of the movie, we meet Billy Madison, the errant son of a wealthy hotel chain owner. He spends his reckless yet undeniably enjoyable days wreaking havoc with his deadbeat friends all over the sprawling Madison estate. We get a good sense of his intellectual capacity in this little bath time exchange, during which he contemplates the relative merits of shampoo versus conditioner. No doubt a highly taxing debate:

I can't even begin to count how many times I heard my classmates say, "Stop looking at me, SWAN!" I'm willing to bet it registers in the quadruple digits, far outstripping the counting abilities of Mr. Madison himself. Either way, I still think the answer to this age-old debate is conditioner.

Billy's father has decided he can tolerate no more after Billy's ridiculously inappropriate outburst of gibberish at a critical business dinner. It's no wonder he opts not to make Billy the future proprietor of his business after these certifiable antics:



Needless to say, Billy is pissed. His dad's choice is Eric, a conniving, weaselish little man who is admittedly less than virtuous. Billy swears he handle the responsibility, but his dear old dad lets it slip that he bribed Billy's teachers into passing him, thus making his whole education a sham. After some questionable compromising, they agree that if Billy can pass every grade from kindergarten to 12th in two weeks apiece, he can earn his birthright.

Billy was unsurprisingly at ease in kindergarten with the aforementioned Miss Lippy, finally feeling at home with his intellectual equals. Unfortunately for them, he's a tad profane for their milk-cookies-and-naptime lifestyles.



Billy scoots through his first few grades, naturally throwing a huge unwarranted party after each grade advancement. It's in second grade that we meet our heroine, the lovely Miss Veronica Vaughn played by Brigitte Wilson. She also totally played bimbo Ginger in Saved by the Bell. Neat, right?:



At least Billy finally makes a friend, nerdy third grader Ernie. On a field trip to some sort of colonial farm, Ernie pees his pants. In Billy's first real moment of good-heartedness, he pretends he too peed his pants, passing it off as cool. It's all pretty sweet until the elderly colonial field trip guide says, "If peeing your pants is cool, consider me Miles Davis!" Yech. Oh, this scene also features an overblown Chris Farley with a sweet comb-over. Can you beat that?

Billy's progressing nicely, much to the chagrin of the villainous Eric. Unfortunately, he's not quite as popular in high school as he was in elementary school. While his lame jokes easily earned him the respect of third graders, they failed to have the same effect on his teenage peers. His crack during biology, "Chlorophyll? More like borophyll!" didn't do much to bolster his status. He even fails to escape the long line of O'Doyle family bullies, who seem to have enough kids to opress Billy every step of the way. Observe, a montage:



Eric conveniently knows some blackmail-worthy dirt on the elementary school principal and forces him to publicly state that Billy bribed him into passing him. Unnerved and outraged by this serious setback, Billy eventually gives in and reverts to his former slacker self. Despite numerous pleas from those who have seen him better himself through his educational exploits, Billy remains unmoved. Veronica eventually throws his drunk ass in the pool and tries to literally knock some sense into him via physical violence. This seems to jar Billy back to his motivation, and they all do a lovely little musical number. Sandler gets to showcase his Operaman chops and Wilson (Veronica) gets to dress like the St. Pauli Girl. Hey, everyone wins!



Billy keeps studying and agrees to face off with Eric in an academic decathlon. In a moment of pure ridiculousness, Billy offers an answer to a question about the Industrial Revolution by citing his kindergarten story of the puppy who lost his way. This tongue-in-cheek allusion to a convenient full circle feel-good ending is met with a big fat zero points, and a pretty serious verbal chastisement from the distressed host.

Billy Madison - Industrial Revolution Puppy


Eric is just about to clinch the whole thing when he flips out and brandishes a gun at the crowd. Fortunately for Billy, an unexpected guest arrives also wiedling a gun: his ex-classmate (played by Steve Buscemi) whom Billy had called earlier in the film to apologize to for his teasing. Everyone loves a movie with Steve Buscemi, right? It means you get to like a whole lot of movies. Stevie shoots a non-fatal shot at Eric, and we can all rejoice. Hooray!

At his graduation, Billy decides not to take over the company after all but to hand over the reins to his father's more subdued and ethical colleague Carl. Billy announces that inspired by his experience, he will now be heading to college to become a teacher. All together now: awww.

Okay, okay, I'll concede it's not the most brilliant comedic masterpiece to ever pass through theaters. Sure, it's not earth-shattering in any way. It didn't create peace in the middle east or bring high-speed internet connections to the shantytowns of undeveloped countries. But hey, you have to admit, you'd rather watch this than Click or Bedtime Stories any day. Am I right?