Thursday, January 28, 2010

My Torrid Romance With Yo Gabba Gabba

There's this kid's show called Yo Gabba Gabba, and if you're around my house for any length of time you'll hear high-pitched whining. "Please, can we watch Yo Gabba Gabba? Come on! Pleeeeease!"

The whining comes not from my 3-year-old son Luke to me, but from me to Luke. Because the show is awesome and he can't seem to realize it, instead being obsessed with watching Howl's Moving Castle over and over, sprinkled in with inferior half-hour dramas such as Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Special Agent Oso, Jungle Junction and Dinosaur Train.

I should be grateful that he's not into Barney or Telletubbies, I guess, but I want to watch Yo Gabba Gabba more often and I have no excuse to do so unless it's with Luke. I guess I'll have another shot with soon-to-be 1-year-old Emma.

Yo Gabba Gabba has it all. Celebrity guests, random sketches in which John Waters does drawrings on white boards, and original music from popular bands.

The show is an acid trip that begins with a jumpsuited, ever-peppy dandy named DJ Lance Rock opening up a briefcase in which four toys emerge and become giant, talking costumed freaks. I will leave the character descriptions to Wikipedia:

# Muno - A male red one-eyed cyclops who's friendly and first appeared in "Play". He's the tallest and is somewhat clumsy (which in one case, was much to Toodee's chagrin) and he has a close bond with Foofa. He is also the band's guitarist. In 'Family' his family makes an appearance.

# Foofa - A female pink flower bubble character who's thinking happy and first appeared in "Play". She loves rainbows and unicorns and can play the tambourine.

# Brobee - A little male green monster character who first appeared in "Play". He is curious and in one episode, he is tired of being short. Plex accidentally makes Brobee DJ Lance-size and Brobee soon finds that being big isn't very fun for him. He is the drummer for the Gabba band. He is also, apart from Gooble, the only character who is able to frown.

# Toodee - A blue female cat-dragon character who likes to have fun; she first appeared in "Play". She has a close bond with Brobee and plays the bass guitar for the Gabba band.

# Plex - A yellow male robot fellow who first appeared in "Play". He is really smart and usually gives the lessons to his friends and is a fatherly-figure to the gang. He can play the keytar.

# Gooble - An unhappy creature similar to Muno who first appeared in "Happy" for the Super Music Friends Show. He cries all of the time.


The best thing of all about this show is its music. Anyone who's known me for any length of time knows that I pretty much hate music as a whole, given that of every song ever created, I only like 195 of them. But I adore almost every song that appears in Yo Gabba Gabba, especially the recurring theme that the cast harmonizes whenever someone's having trouble.

The lyrics go "Keep trying! Keep trying! You'll get it right! You'll get it right! Keep trying! Keep Trying! Don't give up! Never give up!' followed by "You did it! You did it! You got it right! You got it right!"

I can't tell you how often I've played this song on my mental MP3 player to encourage me in my struggles.

Other spectacular musical selections include "March March Robots," a song about marching robots, "Electricity," a song about electricity, and "You Are My Robot Friend," a song about friendship between man and robot.

I guess I need to just break down, go it alone and start mainlining Yo Gabba Gabba DVDs like a crackwhore on a crack binge. But I lack the strength and determination to try such a thing, and thus I wait for Emma.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

You're not the only one, Yo Gabba Gabba is like a train wreck or a car accident, you can't help but watch. My favorite song is "There's a Party in my Tummy (So Yummy)", and I think it's hilarious how the carrots cry because they didn't go to the party. We grew up watching HR Puffinstuff so I guess our kids could be watching worse.

Anonymous said...

I am so glad my kids are too old for Yo Gabba Gabba. :D

But I hear about it all the time in our little Filipino group of moms. Just as bad as Teletubbies?

Phil Villarreal said...

No I'm not being sarcastic. Great show.

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