Archive for September, 2008

The Man With the Yellow Hat is a Very Peculiar Man

by Glenn Vance on September 12, 2008 in Kids, Television with 10 Comments
Man-With-the-Yellow-Hat

My old­est son loves him some Curi­ous George. The books, the show (on PBS) and even the toys, but he wouldn’t buy one of those toys because it’s not a super­hero or a Planet Hero, but if those didn’t exist he prob­a­bly would buy some Curi­ous George toys.

He and I read Curi­ous George books prob­a­bly twice a week thanks to the library. Curi­ous George Goes to a Restau­rant. Curi­ous George Plays Base­ball. Curi­ous George Flies a Kite. Curi­ous George is Bored. Things like that. You know the drill.

And no one in this coun­try or world would know about Curi­ous George if it wasn’t for his ubiq­ui­tous friend, the Man With the Yel­low Hat (MYWH for those in the know). He has no name, no his­tory, he just exists as the Man With the Yel­low Hat. We do know a few things about him though. He is an explorer, as we know from the first Curi­ous George book. He also appears to be wealthy, hav­ing an apart­ment in “the city” and a house in “the coun­try” and because if this he is a man of leisure. There are no real world loca­tions in Curi­ous George, but one can assume that given the his­tory of his cre­ators, the hus­band and wife team of H.A. and Mar­gret Rey, who fled Nazi Ger­many to even­tu­ally live in New York City, that New York is “the city”, but I’m com­pletely and totally get­ting off topic.

The Man With the Yel­low Hat is ALWAYS wear­ing yel­low. He never wears blue. He never wears red. He never wears black. Only yel­low. And it can only be yel­low or else part of his per­sona and psy­che is gone, like a war vet­eran who lost a limb that can still feel it itch­ing when he gets back to “the world”. This weird char­ac­ter trait would make it dif­fi­cult for a nor­mal per­son to shop for clothes, but he does live in “the city”, so he prob­a­bly gets his clothes tailor-made at some hab­er­dasher, being a wealthy gen­tle­men and all.

And for the love of all that is holy, don’t lose his hat. Few things are worse than this sce­nario. As he said in one of the episodes of the Curi­ous George show, which I watch with my old­est, “With­out my hat, I’m just not…me.” No kid­ding, Man With the Yel­low Hat. Then you’re just “The Man”. A generic plot point in a children’s book. He. Is. Nothing.

The Man With the Yel­low Hat also seems strange just for the fact that he’s a strap­ping young guy in a city full of avail­able ogling females who lives with a mon­key. Not that there’s any­thing wrong with that! And he’s always leav­ing George by him­self, say­ing things like, “Now I’ve got to con­ve­niently go over here. Don’t get into trou­ble!” What does this moron think is going to hap­pen, George is going to just sit there? Every­body in the books calls the mon­key CURIOUS George. There is no “Mild-Mannered George” or “Dullard George”.

But all in all the Man With the Yel­low Hat seems to live a pretty cool life. He’s an explorer, he dri­ves a con­vert­ible, he flies a plane, he has a pet mon­key. My old­est would kill for that life.

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Who Are All These People on Facebook and Why do They Want to be My Friend?

by Glenn Vance on September 1, 2008 in The Internet with 2 Comments
facebook

Kim kept bug­ging me. “You should join Face­book. Everybody’s get­ting on Face­book. You’ll find peo­ple on Face­book that you haven’t talked to in years. You should join Facebook.”

Face­book is a social net­work­ing site, mean­ing that peo­ple that you talk to already on a reg­u­lar basis can now have another way of talk­ing to you on a reg­u­lar basis. You can chat, email, do lit­tle appli­ca­tions (I have book reviews for books I’ve read/am read­ing on there) and other stuff. It’s pretty easy to con­nect with peo­ple but not so easy to always find peo­ple you’re look­ing for. Say you have a friend named “Bill Smith”. Good luck find­ing the cor­rect Bill Smith, espe­cially if he didn’t include a pic­ture of him­self in his profile.

And peo­ple who are friends with other peo­ple that you’re already friends with will then try to add you as their friend (yes, it sounds com­pli­cated). Some­one will want to add you to their “friend list” and then they’ll email you ask­ing your per­mis­sion. You can ignore, deny or approve their request. If you approve it you get added to their friend list, and then you two are “friends” in the vir­tual sense.

It only gets weird when some­one that you don’t know sud­denly emails you ask­ing to be friends. I got a request the other day from some­one that I lit­er­ally had no idea who they were. Some girl. Sup­pos­edly we went to high school together. Did I rec­og­nize her? Nope.

So what do you do then? Be a jerk and not add her? Deny her? Or just ignore her? Or do you say, “Okay, let’s take the plunge and see where this goes.” I more often than not ignore these peo­ple. I don’t think of myself as a jerk; I just don’t want to be friends with every­one. I’m pretty selec­tive. If I like you and I have some idea of who you are, then sure, I’ll add you, but if you’re like this girl that I’ve never met before, for­get it sis­ter, ain’t gonna hap­pen no mat­ter what tan­gen­tial link we share. It’s like some­one walks up to you on the street or in a bus and just starts talk­ing to you. “Hey, you look famil­iar.” Can’t place them to save your life. Then they say, “Let’s be friends.”

I like to know who my friends are and those who aren’t my friends. What’s so wrong with that? So if I don’t know you and you want to be my friend on Face­book, think twice.

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