a day late and a $600 man-bag short

i know this ran in Sunday's NYTimes and i know it's been rippling through the various blogtubes of the interwebular cyberway. i also know that i am supposed to be offended because David Brooks presumably had my cohort in mind when he wrote the following screed. but he so utterly failed to adequately grasp--much less even begin to accurately describe--anyone i know that i just can't get all too riled up about it. if anything, he makes me sad. a clueless old codger howling in his Upper West Side wilderness. still, it'll be fun to deconstruct his playa hating one paragraph at time, dontcha think? here we go, with my responses in italics:

Mosh Pit Meets Sandbox
Published: February 25, 2007

Can we stop hearing about downtown parents who dress their babies in black skull slippers, Punky Monkey T-shirts and camo toddler ponchos until the little ones end up looking like sad-parody club clones of mom and dad? Can we finally stop reading about the musical Antoinettes who would get the vapors if their tykes were caught listening to Disney tunes, and who instead force-feed Brian Eno, Radiohead and Sufjan Stevens into their little babies' iPods?

hmm, yes. i just love wearing black skull slippers and camo ponchos, which is why i put them on my daughter. always! she will be just like daddy in his slippers and poncho. someone got me a gift certificate to the baby gap last year and i SPAT IN HER FACE (for the record: i still feel bad about that, grandma). and, sorry bro, but Eno and Sufjan Stevens so don't have the indie street cred required to win airtime on my boombox, dig? my child only listens to cambodian garage rock and the sound of dolphins mating. but never on an ipod -- the first lesson daddy ever taught her is that DRM is for suckas!

I mean, don't today's much-discussed hipster parents notice that their claims to rebellious individuality are undercut by the fact that they are fascistically turning their children into miniature reproductions of their hipper-than-thou selves? Don't they observe that with their inevitable hummus snacks, their pastel-free wardrobes, their unearned sense of superiority and their abusively pretentious children's names like Anouschka and Elijah, they are displaying a degree of conformity that makes your average suburban cul-de-sac look like Renaissance Florence?

if my child doesn't grow up to be exactly as rebellious as me, i will be sorely disappointed. i am so rebellious that i took time away from my career (fuck the Man!) to feed her, care for her, play with her, share things i love with her, explore the world with her, let her discover new things safely on her own and establish as deep a bond as i could with her in the first year of her life. how PUNK ROCK am i? and you're also wrong about the inevitable hummus snacks -- she only eats kale pancakes. i take it you would rather parents emulate the neglecteriffic uptown twats who make sure their tots get to the 92nd Street Y Nursery School in chauffeured SUV's? PS: readers take note that brooks lists Elijah as an "abusively pretentious" name--interesting, last i heard he was a biblical prophet, but whatever. you say "pretention," i say "acknowledgment of heritage." but we'll come back to that later.

Enough already. The hipster parent trend has been going on too long and it's got to stop. It's been nearly three years since reporters for sociologically attuned publications like The New York Observer began noticing oversophisticated infants in "Anarchy in the Pre-K" shirts. Since then, the trend has exhausted its life cycle.

ah, yes, sociologically attuned publication indeed. me, i come for the fake hillary clinton dialogue, but stay for the 900,000-word articles on made-up trends like how assholes from one part of brooklyn dislike assholes from another part of brooklyn. and actually, it gets even better than "Anarchy in the Pre-K," brooksie (which is FUNNY although i suspect you wouldn't recognize a joke if your column turned into one ... oops!). hey, have you seen the "Future Porn Star" t-shirts for toddlers? we're talking about irony-cubed, homeslice. be prepared to have your panties twisted in a whole new kind of knot.

A witty essay by Adam Sternbergh announced the phenomenon in an April 2006 New York magazine. Sternbergh described 40-year-old men and women with $200 bedhead haircuts and $600 messenger bags, who "look, talk, act and dress like people who are 22 years old," and dress their infants as if they're 16. He called these pseudo-adults "Grups," observing that they smashed any remaining semblance of a generation gap.

the last thing i spent $600 on in one place was to pay the monthly utility bills in my new money-pit house which we scrimped till we bled to buy--so our child could have a nice place in which to grow up that was in a decent school disctrict. oh, and my new kitchsy belt buckle. that was $600. but it was $600 of ironic hipsterness well spent. and as for my daughter, we do dress her like she's 16, it's true. the belly button ring is so cute and she begged for that tattoo for like two whole months. too bad she's not potty trained yet -- it's quite messy without those diapers. but diapers are just so, well, uncool. feel me?

He noticed that the music of the parental generation sounds exactly like the music of the kids' generation. They have the same rock star fashion sense, and share the same taste for distressed denim. He found a music video director, Adam Levite, who had a guitar collection propped up in his TriBeCa loft, and then similar miniature versions of the same guitars for his 6-year-old son, Asa.

ok, you score one point here david: adam sounds kinda douche-tastic. too bad you had to rely on a year-old article that someone else reported and wrote to score it though.

Then came the hipster parents' own online magazine, Babble.com. Babble is a normal parental advice magazine submerged under geological layers of attitudinizing. There are articles about products from the alternative industrial complex (early '60s retro baby food organizers). There's a blog from a rock star mom (it's lonely on the road). There's a column by L.A.'s Rebecca Woolf, a sort of Silver Lake Erma Bombeck. ("Who says becoming a mom means succumbing to laser tattoo removal and moving to the suburbs?")

wait, wait! did you just brush right by your one concession, which totally undermines the whole house of cards that is this column? babble is, you say, "a normal parental advice magazine." it is, in otherwords, reflective of what every involved parent is concerned about: child proofing the house, the amount of TV an infant should watch, and how freaky those "future porn star" t-shirts are. (dang, i guess we can't all be hip can we?) hmm, sounds like we're all vain and narcissistic and obsessed with image, doesn't it? wait, it doesn't?

On top of that there's been a flourishing of the movement's official gathering site? the message board complex UrbanBaby.com. Here, highly educated parents trade tips about the toxic dangers of aluminum foil. Stay-at-home Martyr Mommies trade gibes with their working mom frenemies. High-achieving types try to restrain their judgmental, perfectionist tendencies with self-mockery: "I horrified myself the other day when I found myself being surprised that Angelina [Jolie] would let Zahara eat Ms. Vickie's chips. Shoot me before I turn into a sanctimommy!"

i can't speak to this because i have never been on urbanbaby.com in my life. but it sounds AWESOME. i do love me some milf catfights. is there a sign-up fee?

Finally, in a sign that the hip parenting thing has jumped the shark, the movement got its own book, the indescribably dull "Alternadad," about a self-described whiny narcissist who tries not to let his son's birth get in the way of his rock festival lifestyle. Surely a trend has hit absurdity when you have a book in which the most memorable moment comes when the writer succumbs to the corporate temptations of Toys "R" Us.

methinks brooks blew his "jumped the shark" wad a bit too early: in april the singer of Pennywise will publish his book "Punk Rock Dad" (barf) and in July a book about becoming a dad without giving up manhood called (shudder) "Dadditude" will hit shelves. but here is where Brooks shows his hand and proves to us all what a sad little man he is. he mentions "Alternadad." i've read "Alternadad." i'll be honest: the title makes my skin crawl and i hated neal pollack's smarmy one-joke writing back when he was just a smug mini-Eggers. but i was charmed by this book for all the reasons that slate was. pollack comes off as annoying at times, but he'll acknowledge it -- he admits to caring about whether his 2-year-old is "cool" or has "fun" tastes in pop culture. you kind of want to punch him when he gets a lump in his throat because his son requests a johnny cash song. but then you realize johnny cash is awesome and pollack will at least have that fond memory when his son is 16 and hates everything dear to him. brooks misses the whole point of this book -- that it's about letting go of who you think you are as you learn how to become a parent. it's a self-discovery process, and, true, not a unique or even especially interesting one if you're not in the middle of it yourself. so brooks picks on "Alternadad." fine. but notice how he never mentions Neal Pollack's name? no credit to the author. he DOES mention pollack's son's name, though, in the second paragraph: it's the "abusively pretentious" Elijah. now we all know that brooks is shriveled and rotten on the inside.

Let me be clear: I'm not against the indie/alternative lifestyle. There is nothing more reassuringly traditionalist than the counterculture. For 30 years, the music, the fashions, the poses and the urban weeklies have all been the same. Everything in this society changes except nonconformity.

and what's even more traditionalist than the "counterculture?" parenting. so what's brooks' point? i have no idea.

What I object to is people who make their children ludicrous. Innocent infants should not be compelled to sport "My Mom's Blog Is Better Than Your Mom's Blog" infant wear. They should not be turned into deceptive edginess badges by parents who refuse to face that their days of chaotic, unscheduled moshing are over.

ah, so this would be his point: he doesn't like the way the kids are dressing today. my that's a reassuringly traditionalist pose for a curmudgeonly columnist to adopt. that's much more exciting than exploring the fact that parents today are spending more time caring for, teaching and playing with their children than they have in a generation. what's the matter, brooksie? nothing else happening in the news last week worth columnizing upon? no? you sure about that?

For God's sake, let's respect the dignity of youth.

oh, don't be such a sanctimommy!

bob schneider, i salute you

so mrs nice guy recently took a quick business trip to austin. she returned with a gift for our daughter (and none for me ... even though i had dropped plenty of hints that i had my eye on this). she bought the kid a CD, a compilation of children's music by local sensitive singer songwriters. great, i thought. just what we need: a bunch of aspiring dan zanes types who have somehow convinced themselves that living in texas is a good idea. i eyed the title and cringed: "songs to howl at the moon by." ugh. reluctantly, i popped it in.

any misgiving i had vanished before the first bar was over. it's good stuff. i had the early morning shift the other day, so i played it for the kid. she approved. specifically, she and i both approved of the fifth track: "Jump, Shake Your Booty" by Bob Schneider. the song is--well, how does one describe music to those who haven't heard it?--awesome. we put the song on repeat and jumped and shook our booties at 7 in the morning about 300 times. here's the absolute best part, and this is why the CD wins a very official Mr Nice Guy Recommendation: when my wife made her bleary-eyed way to the kitchen, the kid looked up at her, jumped and shouted: "SHAKE BOODY." mrs nice guy was so proud i think i saw a single tear trickle down her cheek.

do you have any idea how transcendently awesome it is to have a toddler, not yet two even, who complies instantly with the command: "honey, shake your booty now!"? do you? she pumps her fist, squinches her face into the classic Rock-Out Grimace and shouts SHAKE BOODY! the best part? when she actually requests to hear the song. she waddles over to the boom box, points at it and whimpers "shake boody? shake boody, yes?"

check it out for yourself, then go buy the CD: Jump, Shake Your Booty (MP3).

(oh, and the correct answer to friday's Mr. Nice Guy Homeless Challenge was D. for now. he was gone when i came home and hasn't come back. we'll probably revisit this strategy if he continues to revisit my property.)

further adventures in homeownership

so this morning the sitter arrives, hands me the paper, picks up the kid and says "there is a homeless man sleeping in front of your house."

whaaa?

we have a big ol' tree on the sidewalk directly in front of the house in a big ol' concrete planter thingie. so i peek out the window and, sure enough, there he is. he was leaning up against it, dozing under its branches as if he were some dipsomaniacal huck finn on the riverfront. yes. this is where i am raising my child. since i own the house, i own the sidewalk in front of the house. therefore, i own the problem of the derelict. these, i reckon, were my options:

A) nudge him awake with my foot and tell him to take a hike
B) call the cops
C) alert department of homeless services and tell them to escort him to the nearest shelter
D) do nothing -- he's not hurting anyone (just potentially my property value, which my neighbors have already taken care of anyway) and it probably sucks to be him, so let him be.

which would you have chosen?

baby slut

once i was in the brooklyn target looking for something cheap which i don't think i ever found because, surprise surprise, the brooklyn target is a little tiny slice of hell on earth. anyway, i was walking around the kids' clothing section. there were miniscule lohan-style beav-flashing skirts and paris hilton easy-string slut-armor dripping off every hanger. tiny, flimsy, floss-sized clothing ... for TODDLERS. i thought i was repulsed. but then i saw some disgusting specimen of motherhood pick up an itsy g-string and announce to her friend: OOOOH MY BABY'S GONNA LOOK SO FINE IN THIS!

oh, sure i passed a little judgment. but maybe i shouldn't be such a prude. when i saw the following clip, for some reason it all began to make sense. you know, just as long as she doesn't shave her head or anything weird like that, it's all good:

apply liberally

so it recently was brought to my attention that if i wanted to get my toddler into a part-time day care program SEVEN MONTHS FROM NOW, i needed to apply, like, last year. my kid would, at this late date, be automatically placed on the waiting list.

that's right: if i wanted to get my child into a face-painting drum-circle finger-puppet virus-swapping two-day-a-week junior-statesman toddler-scrum in september, i needed to pay FIFTY DOLLARS to APPLY for the privilege ... two months ago.

so i stopped by my local nursery school that my local listserv lionizes and i said "i know i'm a bit late, but can i get an application for september's part-time two-year-old day care?" and the lady looked at me with withering scorn and said "yes. we know your kind. you are late. here is the application. we will waive the fee." not spoken: "we will waive the fee because once your child's name is known to us you will be DEAD TO THE ENTIRE CHILD-CARE COMMUNITY IN THE TRI-STATE AREA. never will your little girl find professional teaching. may she rot in hell for having you as a parent."

i took the application and thanked her. i folded it in half, flinching at the knowledge that the crease-mark in the paper would even further dampen my child's chance at landing a bottom-feeder's shot at the last slot on the waiting b-list. and then i went on my merry way.

tonight mrs. nice guy and i had a nice laugh together filling out our child's day care application, the humiliating form we submitted in search of adequate care FOR A TWO-YEAR-OLD just TWO HALF-DAYS A WEEK. here is what we would have preferred to have answered. i swear to you these are the actual questions (but, for the more-literal minded among you, not the actual answers) on the application for day care we just filled out for an ALMOST-TWO YEAR OLD:

• What do you enjoy most about your child? The way she looks in fishnets. Also: the fact that she now knows how to operate a bottle-opener. HIGH FIVE!
• What concerns you most about your child? Where to begin! She's so short, it's totally weird. I mean she looks like a tiny little grown-up, but she's kind of a spaz. Like, enough with the pants-crapping already! She's had two years to figure out that poop stinks. Right? Also ... this is between you and me, but I am not entirely convinced she's mine. Like, you should see the way she dances whenever Hall & Oates is on the box. I mean, come on, "Private eyes are watching you?!?!?" Two words: Not My Kid.
• What preschool program or group experience (if any) has your child previously attended? I bring her to all my Crank Anonymous sessions. Does that count?
• Preferences of classmates you would have in your child's class for September? Oh that's easy: No Jews.
• Is your child toilet trained? She's trained to sit quietly and watch daddy conduct his affairs, if that's what you mean!
• Does your child dress independently? This is an interesting question. Independently of what? Of the current mode? I'd say she does! This was Fashion Week in NYC, in case you hadn't noticed, and NOT ONCE did she demand a little more Marc Jacobs in her style section. Like, WTF? OK, fine, she exhibited a little preference for Prouenza Schouler, but I mean, how common! They have a line at Target, for Christ's sake! And I like Alice Temperley as much as the next Babyshambles douche, but FUCK!, this is my child we're talking about, after all! All I'm saying is, don't be surprised if you see her in some Isabel Toledo "couture haberdashery" Anne Klein shit come autumn, bitches!
• Does your child receive any special services, i.e., occupational therapy? Oh yes, thank you for asking! The "job of living" requires so much for our child. Like, for example, making sure you feel sorry enough for her to accept her into your program despite the lateness of this application. There's an extra C-spot in it for you!
• Toys or books your child enjoys: Hmm, do the toys she finds under mommy's side of the bed that make a buzzing noise and wiggle all funny count?
• Other comments: Have you ever had that dream where you really have to go to the bathroom and you're in this public space and all your high-school classmates are there and you're naked and running late for your math final (for which you are totally unprepared), so you sprint to the nearest toilet but it's clogged with shit and everyone's looking at you and you start shrinking and they all become laughing giants and you realize that one of them is your own daughter and suddenly you're the one who's wearing a diaper? Man, I have that dream all the time. Any idea what it means?

oh who am i kidding? i love "private eyes." come here, oates, snuggle up and tickle me with that gorgeous 'stache.

yes, dear reader, it is true

so. i felt i owed it to you to tell you, just, you know, to keep you in the loop, that i am pretty sure i might be anna nicole's baby daddy. that is all.



farewell, sweet princess ...

please won't you beat my neighbor?

so one of the minor, tangential perks to owning a home is that you have no neighbors stomping around above you ... or complaining about your stomping from below. sweet. we've shared balconies with neighbors who smoked and found a way to exhale through walls and directly into our faces. we've had neighbors who needed to be told repeatedly not to blast music at 11 pm because our baby was sleeping directly on the other side of the wall and also their taste in music was crap.

so imagine our delight upon moving into a new home: no one upstairs! no one downstairs! no one directly on the other side of the wall! we could stomp and we could play music all the livelong day ... no one would bother us and we wouldn't bother anyone else.

such naive children we were.

from the first night in our new house, we could hear the couple next door SCREAMING at each other. every night. all the time.

on the second or third night in the house, i came home from work to find a boy, no older than 5, standing on the stoop, in the freezing cold in only his pyjamas. he looked at me, a total stranger, and said, "have you seen my mommy?" i said, "well, no, but i bet she's on her way home." he said, "i'm going to look for her." i said, "maybe you should go inside where it's warm, i bet she'll be home soon." and so he did.

a couple days after that, the boy's mother came by at 4 pm, still in her pyjamas. she creeped my wife's ass out, looking around our house, acting all high, wondering out loud how much she could sell her own place for--hell, i'll personally be their broker if they're considering a move. mrs nice guy thought she detected a little bruise above neighborlady's eye. oh for christ's sake.

a day or two after that they were fighting again and mrs nice guy distinctly heard the woman say/shout to her husband "WELL YOU'RE THE ONE WHO'S FUCKING HER!"

oh it gets more awesome. i was leaving the house a day or two later, with my kid. it was our monday together. i ran into adulterous wife-beating neighborman. he was standing outside having a little cigarette. it was 9 am. he looked at me and said, "man, i can't wait till my kids get out of the house, go to school, so i can smoke my head off. know what i mean?" i am pretty sure he didn't mean cigarettes. so i was all, umm, do you have most mondays off? he was like, "nah man, i'm a foreman and i don't have any fuckin' days off. except thursdays. no. tuesdays. yeah. wednesdays too." um, ok, i said. have a nice day smoking your head off even though you don't have mondays off and please don't ever talk to me again. then he asked me if i knew where he could get bootleg Xbox games because his "boy thinks they're fuckin' $60 frisbees." i said, alas, i did not but i would ask around. then as i started walking away he said something which i couldn't quite make out, but sounded like: "hey, want to get charged up?" i smiled, played deaf and waved, gesturing vaguely with the stroller that had my TODDLER in it. when i returned at around 12:30, he was still home -- he came to his door grumbling in his boxers as i was opening mine. oh crap! suddenly, i found myself frantically fumbling my keys and sobbing like some fleeing topless co-ed camp counselor about to be killed by jason voorhees in one of the friday the 13th movies.

the the very next day i returned from work only to find all of adulterous wife-beating druggie neighborman's clothes strewn across the sidewalk, his wife standing defiantly atop the heap with her hands on her hip. some hapless passerby cracked a joke: "throwing him out, eh?" she shot red laser beams out of her eyes and shouted "DAMN RIGHT I AM THROWING HIS ASS OUT. WE GOT THREE KIDS TOO. FUCK HIM!" the passerby was all, "oh. i was joking ... this is awkward ... guess i'll be on my way." and what did i do? i ducked my head and pretended like nothing unusual was happening all over my stoop-area--that where i come from people throw their adulterous wife-beating druggie spouses out by dumping the contents of their closet on the street in broad daylight while screaming obscenities all the time--and i went into my house desperately hoping that i wouldn't be caught on tape for next week's episode of "COPS: Your Classy Brooklyn Neighbor Edition." i snuck inside and listened as he came home, found his clothes on the sidewalk, and yelled at her. she yelled back. no audible evidence of violence going down, but i definitely found myself looking up the NYC domestic abuse hotline and calling a friend of mine with ties to Child Protective Services ... and carefully charting the rapid decline in the value of my once very expensive home.

the next day, we got the coup de grace: i came home from work just as some skinny teenager in a hoodie was slinking out my neighbor's house. nothing suspicious about that. i walked into my living room and picked up my child. the sitter says: "hi. your neighbor is dealing drugs out of his house." apparently several times throughout the day, cars had pulled up in front of the building and idled for just a few minutes as a shady-looking occupant darted in and then out.

ah, precisely what we were looking for in a place to raise our child. it's a wonderful day in the neighborhood, y'all. come visit. bring housewarming gifts. something homey like, you know, pepper spray.

just curious

a little late, but anyone else loving ego trip's "The (White) Rapper Show" on VH1 like i am?



for the record: my money's on persia.

"i lost my ear horn the other day"

happy birthday to me. i'm 32 today.

in my honor, you should listen to this MP3: This Old Man by nerdcore rapper extraordinaire, MC Frontalot. (i have a little birthday boy man-crush on him, i think.) smack it, flip it, rub it and love it.

wasting my time over you

so i've spent an inappropriate amount of time now watching Sesame Street's superlative Old School three-DVD set and i have drawn me some conclusions. i thought i knew a little something about Sesame Street. well, let me tell you -- i didn't know jack about Sesame Street (other than the fact that it's the most awesome thing ever invented, including even penicillin, the iPod and internet porn). allow me to present you with my thoughts on the subject:

1. did you know there has been not one -- not two -- but three gordons. three! who knew? the first gordon was played by a guy named matt robinson. also, he was kind of a prick. seriously weird guy that gordon. he's a teacher i guess and in the very first episode of sesame street ever, he brings a little girl home with him, a new student, and shows her around sesame street. it feels a little like he's abducted her into his weird muppet cult. anyway, they got rid of him in 1971 and hired a much more handsome, strapping gordon. susan definitely seemed much more into him, anyway. the gordon i most fondly remember is still the gordon on the air. he's played by roscoe orman -- who's been rocking that bald pate of his on public television since 1973. my question: were kids not supposed to notice that gordon was all of a sudden a totally different dude? everyone around him acted as if nothing changed -- like in bewitched when they swapped Darrin. this must have been truly distressing to young sesame street fans.
2. did you know that oscar was originally orange? ain't natural, i tell you.
3. snuffleupagus seems to have been on some seriously elaborate drugs. "His stare is so intense I can feel him looking into my soul." ... also the adults on sesame street are all a bunch of jerks.
4. which probably explains the disclaimer at the beginning of the first DVD which says, essentially, these discs are intended for entertainment purposes only -- they're not necessarily meant for today's children. how awesome is that? the TV that was good enough for us is no longer good enough for our kids. thank god they won't turn out as damaged as we did. (provided the earth doesn't burst into a big flaming fireball of fiery flames and greenhouse deathgas before they get old enough to procreate.)
5. it's a tired old joke to say that bert and ernie were gay. yes, there are indeed some excellent homoerotic moments on these dvds, but i feel the need to address a much more important point. every one loves ernie. everyone is always down on bert for being a tight-ass. ernie is the cool kid. bert is the geek. ernie is mac; bert is the PC. well, you know what? you'd be uptight and irritable too if you shared a room with ernie. ernie was a total asshole! he eats bert's cookies, taunting him in the process, and then laughs about it! he's a complete sociopath who runs the vaccum cleaner and blasts the stereo in the dead of night when bert (and presumably all the neighbors) are trying to sleep. what a dick! finally, for a geek, bert was pretty swingin'. nice moves.
6. man, back in the day maria was very subtly insanely hot.
7. as you get older you realize that all those incredible songs don't just write themselves. someone has to write "bein' green" and "C is for cookie" and "doin' the pigeon" (see: bert's nice moves) and "everybody sleeps" and "J jump" and "bein' a pig." the person who wrote all of those songs was joe raposo. wow.
8. has anyone else noticed how whenever multiple muppets get together to sing a song, at the end of the scene they all scatter, but never seem to know where they're going? they do double takes and retrace their steps and look generally bewildered as they search for the exit. is it really that disorienting to be a muppet after having burst into spontaneous song?
9. we want roosevelt! seriously, what's with the whitewashing of roosevelt franklin out of the show's history?! he was by far the most exciting, fun and funky muppet of all time and he appears exactly two times as a fleeting minor character on the DVDs. but in the early '70s he was so important to the show there was a Roosevelt Franklin Elementary School for chrissakes! i mean, do you know any other kid who has a school named after him (a school where he is a student who apparently also teaches)? AND who has his own theme song!? but alas today, roosevelt franklin is nowhere to be found. he disappeared completely from the show after like two seasons and he's given no love on this compilation. what gives? after a little research, i found a sesame street newsletter from 2000 which says "Roosevelt and his classmates were known for their wise-cracking comments and rowdy behavior, which is one reason they were so funny and the same reason they were taken off the show. Sure, the lessons they were learning were good examples, but their behavior wasn't!" so a muppet got written off the show for his behavior? wtf? that would be like J.D. Salinger being pissed off at holden caulfield for getting thrown out of prep school. but that's beside the point. the real point is ... a world with less of this in it is a sadder, less groovy place indeed:

another shadow SOTU

genius speaks for itself.