Anthony Martin’s Weblog

First of all, what is LazyTown?  It's a TV show for preschoolers on Nick Jr.  But it is also quite a bit of a meme, too.  The show is for kids, but the meme genre is composed of 50% perverts, 33% high school kids, and the rest probably just like the music.  This is a quintessential example video for LazyTown:


"Cooking By the Book," source: YouTube
 
The girl with pink hair is the character named Stephanie (played by Julianna Rose Mauriello).  She's usually the moral authority in the show.  When some of the other characters get the idea to do something ill-advised (like playing video games all day, for example), she has advise to give them (like going outside and playing).  I think it's great to instruct kids with absolute words like "always," "never," and "ought."

Ok, I over-analyze everything.  I think over-analysis is one of my spiritual gifts, along with the gift of discouragement.  That's how I roll.  But this show is easy to over-analyze.  Like most stuff for kids, the parents either love it or hate it.

The first time I heard the song, "Cooking By the Book" was when we were returning from a trip to Auburn.  We were up there for Thanks Giving and we had a long drive ahead of us.  So we popped in a CD that was given to us by a friend of a family member.  The CD was actually a huge collection of tracks originally given as a party favors (yes, that's probably still illegal distribution).  Most of the tracks were of The Wiggles.  But before The Wiggles, there were several songs from shows I'd never heard of.  One of the songs was "Cooking By the Book," but I had still not heard of LazyTown.  At the time, I had only heard the meme, "the cake is a lie!"

When I first heard it, my impression was that it was a Britney Spears style preschool song.  Of course you sing about cake with kids instead of whatever it is Britney sings.  Anyway, I didn't like the song, then, and whenever we played the CD after that, I'd skip it.

So, one day I got a Digg: This is SOOOOO WRONG.  Basically, there are 1,000s of diggs that point to the music video.  But the video was pulled by the copyright holders, which happens a lot.  So people are freaking out about this video.  That happens a lot too.  Sometimes this herd behavior leads to the formation of a meme.  I think in this case, it most certainly did.

It is obviously designed by people who study child development.  Barney, Teletubbies, The Wiggles, LazyTown, and a lot of other stuff just get misunderstood.  Granted, there are good reasons to be critical of all media input, but I can't find anything about LazyTown that's amiss.  I think it's great.

As good as LazyTown is, it should not be a substitute for instruction from the parents.  But one thing this show does better than me is promoting physical activity.  So if I plan on being a good role model, I need to get on the ball.  I'm already sunk because the show always ends with Stephanie performing a song and dance routine to Bing Bang, the show's ending theme:

(download)

"LazyTown Bing Bang - The Single Version!," source: YouTube

I guess the bottom line is, do Hannah and Benjamin like it?  Yes they do.  Hannah asks to see Stephanie every day and loves to dance with me.  Benjamin is even responding verbally to it, which I would have never expected.  While a big purple dinosaur won't get him to talk, a girl with pink hair jumping around like a cheer leader does.  Actually, come to think of it, that makes sense.

It's one of those things that if you listen to it enough, you have to either like it or you get a Glock 17 and shoot yourself.  But that dance routine will probably kill me anyway!

This is one of the few times I felt it nessisary to explain a tag on my blog.  In this case, the tag is called "meme."  But first, a little bit of Lewis Carroll to set the mood:

The word "meme" is pronounced like the word "team," not "me-me."  An example of a meme is any well known catch-phrase.  If you've heard the phrase, "Give a hoot, don't pollute," and you thought of Hootie the Owl, that's a successful meme.  If you had not heard that phrase before, now you have.  A meme is successful if it propigates widely.

There is the Wikipedia article, but it's a little academic.

Basically, a meme is a popular thought.  An Internet meme is a meme that propagates primarily over the Internet.  I think calling it an Internet meme is unnecessary.  An Internet meme is really just a meme.  Calling it an Internet meme is like calling a fish a water fish.  Sure, in theory there might be other kinds of fish, but usually, just saying fish if you mean water fish is quite sufficient.

It's also like saying "computer illiterate."  Pretty soon, one will just assume a person who is referred to as illiterate is computer illiterate.

This post is not a meme even though it was originally tagged with meme.  If this post were to become popular for some reason (unlikely), it might become a meme, which would in turn make it a meta-meme.  A meta-meme is a rare meme about meme.  One example of an existing meta-meme is: meme itself.  It's the idea of ideas and it got popular mention back in 2004, from what I can tell.