I was quite shocked the other day when I played a new DVD I bought for Pittsburgh. You just don’t expect to find anything remotely intelligent in the world of Dora The Explorer, but there it was: an attempt to teach the alphabet to little ones.
I was just about to ring up the DVD company and complain: I mean, my daughter could easily have learned something.
Mercifully, the lazy stupidity that is the hallmark of Dora kicked in rapidly, so Pittsburgh wasn’t traumatised by being momentarily exposed to something educational and instructive.
The story goes like this: all the animals and birds have mysteriously disappeared from a book the little pest is reading and have been replaced by blank cut-out shapes – silhouettes, if you like. Dora and Boots and an armadillo (of course) have to go looking for the missing creatures.
As usual, Dora wants the viewers to scream at the television when they see something blindingly obvious. In this case, for instance, you see the shape of a floppy-eared animal with a tail and you scream out “Dog!!” Or how about a squiggly creature with forked tongue? “Snake!”
Unfortunately, the programme-makers had not thought the idea through fully: matching a creature with a letter of the alphabet is not as easy as it first seems.
So when Pittsburgh and I got to the missing “N” shape, which clearly looked like a bird, she understandably cried out “Bird!” Imagine her disappointment when it turned out that the missing “N” was not simply a bird, but that stock of daily conversation: a nightingale.
Now, to be honest – and I don’t think I’m doing the local area a disservice by saying this – you don’t get a lot of nightingales in these parts of Dublin. Pigeons are more likely, or even vultures.
If the “N” confused Pittsburgh, well God love her when she came to “Q”. For that matter, God love me, because even though I consider myself a well-read Zombie, I don’t ever remember coming across this word before: Quetzal.
Wikipedia reliably informs me that this is also a bird. The species is almost entirely limited to Mexico and Guatemala. No mention of it being spotted in Dublin, even during the school holidays.
Then came “U”, shortly afterwards. This was the third opportunity for an increasingly-confused Pittsburgh to cry out “Bird!”. But at least she got it half right: it turned out to be an Umbrella Bird.
(Honestly, it’s a real bird – and, no, I’ve never heard of it, either.)
So, all-in-all, another successful stupid half-hour spent in the company of the world’s most irritating adventurer.
One day, Dora, I and every other parent who has ever had to sit through one of your mind-numbingly inane adventures is going to get you. And you know where we’re going to stick that Quetzal.
Just another fowl adventure with Dora The Explorer
I was quite shocked the other day when I played a new DVD I bought for Pittsburgh. You just don’t expect to find anything remotely intelligent in the world of Dora The Explorer, but there it was: an attempt to teach the alphabet to little ones.
I was just about to ring up the DVD company and complain: I mean, my daughter could easily have learned something.
Mercifully, the lazy stupidity that is the hallmark of Dora kicked in rapidly, so Pittsburgh wasn’t traumatised by being momentarily exposed to something educational and instructive.
The story goes like this: all the animals and birds have mysteriously disappeared from a book the little pest is reading and have been replaced by blank cut-out shapes – silhouettes, if you like. Dora and Boots and an armadillo (of course) have to go looking for the missing creatures.
As usual, Dora wants the viewers to scream at the television when they see something blindingly obvious. In this case, for instance, you see the shape of a floppy-eared animal with a tail and you scream out “Dog!!” Or how about a squiggly creature with forked tongue? “Snake!”
Unfortunately, the programme-makers had not thought the idea through fully: matching a creature with a letter of the alphabet is not as easy as it first seems.
So when Pittsburgh and I got to the missing “N” shape, which clearly looked like a bird, she understandably cried out “Bird!” Imagine her disappointment when it turned out that the missing “N” was not simply a bird, but that stock of daily conversation: a nightingale.
Now, to be honest – and I don’t think I’m doing the local area a disservice by saying this – you don’t get a lot of nightingales in these parts of Dublin. Pigeons are more likely, or even vultures.
If the “N” confused Pittsburgh, well God love her when she came to “Q”. For that matter, God love me, because even though I consider myself a well-read Zombie, I don’t ever remember coming across this word before: Quetzal.
Wikipedia reliably informs me that this is also a bird. The species is almost entirely limited to Mexico and Guatemala. No mention of it being spotted in Dublin, even during the school holidays.
Then came “U”, shortly afterwards. This was the third opportunity for an increasingly-confused Pittsburgh to cry out “Bird!”. But at least she got it half right: it turned out to be an Umbrella Bird.
(Honestly, it’s a real bird – and, no, I’ve never heard of it, either.)
So, all-in-all, another successful stupid half-hour spent in the company of the world’s most irritating adventurer.
One day, Dora, I and every other parent who has ever had to sit through one of your mind-numbingly inane adventures is going to get you. And you know where we’re going to stick that Quetzal.