People I Want To Groin Punch

I’m not really a violent person, but I think this list really needs to be made.

1. Hanna-Barbera – these are the guys who are responsible for Scooby Doo and all the bad (and by bad, I mean ‘I want to stick something blunt through my ear drums so I don’t have to listen to the terrible dialogue anymore’ bad) character acting. Now, grand scheme of things, I appreciate the original premise of the cartoon: they wanted to create a cartoon that wasn’t as violent as the super hero shows that were all the rage in the 1960s. But really, does the dialogue have to be so terrible? Do they have to make bad puns with every single character exchange? (I like a bad pun more than lots of things—e.g., What’s the loneliest bayou in the world? Bayou Self! But come on! Every other line a bad pun?!?) And do they have to use the most obnoxious phrasing? Like, hey! It’s, like, a bad guy! [Insert bad pun—I’m too exhausted to make one up right now…]
2. Casey Kasem – speaking of bad character acting… This guy has been in more crappy kid cartoons than anyone else on the planet. Voltron? Check. Josie and the Pussycats? Check. Super Friends? Check. Transformers? Check. Scooby-freakin’-Doo? I blame him for perpetuating the craptastic character of Shaggy all these years. I mean, yeah, guy’s just trying to earn a paycheck, but good glory! I can’t take it anymore! Did the writers actually put the word ‘Like’ at the beginning of every one of his lines in the script or was that his own personal addition to the character?
3. Whoever runs the evil conglomerate known as Wal-Mart. I can’t stand going in the place—haven’t been in since Thanksgiving of last year, which I brandish as a point of pride. We decided around that time that we weren’t going in there any more because of the crowds of people (don’t get me started on my agoraphobia…), the ridiculous wait to get your groceries checked out (they have, what? thirty or forty checkout lanes but only operate five or six of them at the busiest time of the year—the rest of the year, you’re lucky if there are two lanes open at each end of the store) and the general cheapness of the whole place (how much crap have I had to take back over the years because they bought the crappiest crap that they could find?). My parents, on the other hand, don’t have any other options in their hometown, so they still go in. With my son. And buy him movies there. Like Scooby Doo and the Stupid, Idiotic, Really Bad Piece of Crap DVD that’s playing in the living room right now. I feel my brain cells leaking out of my ears right now. Harrison, on the other hand, is riveted.
4. All the people who are reliving their childhoods by watching any new offering of the “classic” shows they watched as kids – if it weren’t for the people who buy crap like this as a knee-jerk reaction to ‘Oh, man, I used to love this show when I was a kid,’ crap like this wouldn’t exist. (Circular logic, I know…) The thing is, kids love crap TV. Heck, kids love any TV. So the fact that you loved something as a kid doesn’t mean it was good—it just means that your parents plunked you down in front of the TV to get some Mommy or Daddy Time. What do you think I’m doing right now? (Actually, I’m letting the boy watch the DVD so that I can tell them in all honesty that yes, I let him watch the movie they bought him. Once.  I hate wasted money almost as much as I hate bad TV.)

I only hope that when Harrison is older, he will resist the knee-jerk reaction that everyone else has and refuse to buy the drivel that they are making at that time. If it was bad back in the ‘70s, and it’s baaaaaad now, I can only imagine the awful-osity it will be then.