Random Thoughts From Cartoon Watching

It was Saturday morning. I'm kickin it with my daughter. And we're watching Barbie Mariposa for the 1000th time. I'm telling you... it gets better every time I see it... but it had me thinking...

When I was little, I was a fan of G.I. Joe and Transformers. My favorite character was Roadblock. He was the big black guy that only spoke in rhyme. He carried an M2 machine gun over his shoulder and loved barbequeing. He looked and acted like Charles Barkly before Charles Barkley was Charles Barkley. Now that I think about it, his character could be a little offensive today... but that's not the point.

When it came to Transformers, my favorites were the Aerobots. Those were the good guy robot/air force airplanes. I think there were five of them, and they could combine to become one super-robot. Pretty cool stuff back in the day.

Watching Mariposa actually isn't much different from the cartoons I watched when I was a kid... outside of the pink horses and rainbows and flowers. In nearly every cartoon series, there is a good guy and a bad guy. Most of the time (at least to me), the bad guy is more fun to watch. And it's not just on cartoons... it's in movies too. They lead more interesting lives. They have cooler gadgets. And every now and then, a good guy would join with the bad guy... only to turn back later, but still. And at the end of every cartoon, the good guy always wins. Optimus Prime leads the Autobots to victory. G.I. Joe defeats Cobra every time. Bruce Leroy gives Sho Nuff the beatdown. Rocky takes Clubber Lang to school. Cartoons are already unrealistic as it is, but does life really work that way? Is it always so cut and dry when deciding who the good guys and bad guys are? Good people do bad things a lot, because they have to... because there is always a gray area... and since when does the good guy always win? In my experience, the bad guy has more fun, has cooler toys, gets more girls, and wins MOST of the time... cartoons would be pretty depressing if they mirrored real life...

Here's another random thought... watching Barbie movies makes me sick to my stomache. All of that girly stuff makes me feel like I should be on the couch eating Yoplait while I have my special time of the month. It's just not manly enough. But my daughter loves them... especially the Fairytopia movies. She has all of the fairies, and she pretends to recreate the movie with them. Since my daughter is multi-racial, I tried to find the black version of the Fairytopia characters... and they actually exist! But did you know that while the white female version of the dolls look like Heidi Klum, the black female version looks more like Cleopatra Jones? While the white male version looks like Brad Pitt, the black male version looks like Bryant Gumbel? Honestly, I'd rather play with Bryant Gumbel and Cleopatra Jones. Neither of them are Barbie-type supermodels, but I bet those dolls could make one hell of a sex scene. (Don't front... you know you made your Barbies hump when you were little. I had Snake Eyes humping Scarlet all the time when I played with GI Joes) My daughter would rather play with anything that looks like it was in the movie. Oh well... maybe I'll get them for myself.

Oh well... here's to Mariposa for the 1001st time.