A Ginger & Mary Ann for Our Time

One way to help children learn is to relate their lessons to things they understand. So you give them math problems like, “Davey’s waist is 32 inches. He’s wearing jeans with a 36-inch waist. How long should his belt be?” (Answer: Ask General Larry Platt.) Or you ask them to rewrite the Bill of Rights as a hip-hop song. So I’m always on the lookout for modern equivalents of pop culture classics.

I have pointed out before that every young boy should be able to answer the question, “Ginger or Mary Ann?” And the celebrity gossip about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s possible split raises a similar question involving Pitt’s past two love interests:

Angelina or Jennifer?

Angelina Jolie is the exotic, glamorous movie star. Jennifer Aniston is the beautiful, down-to-earth girl next door. The parallels are uncanny. Except, in this case, Mary Ann has been dumped by the Professor in favor of Ginger, and the new couple has adopted approximately 43 of the native children who lived on the island before the shipwreck.

Come to think of it, that plot line would have made Gilligan’s Island a lot more interesting.

Why Inspire Your Kids when Pop Literate Will Do It For You?

An old friend wonders how he is supposed to motivate a 13-year-old, when he himself is “stuck somewhere between my ambition and inertia.”

I think we all know how he feels. After a long day of feeling unmotivated to get out of bed, unmotivated to work, unmotivated to stop working long enough to eat lunch, and unmovitated to finish the day strong, most of us hardly have any energy left at all to motivate someone else.

The good news is that I’ve found a simple tool that will do the motivating for you, while helping make your kids more pop literate. It’s 40 Inspirational Speeches in 2 Minutes. If you don’t come away from this video ready to paint your face, grab a spear, stick your head out the window, and rush onto the football field to bring the state championship home to little Hickory, there’s something seriously wrong with you.

Who’s on first?

It does my heart good to see kids appreciating the finer things in life.  Like Abbott and Costello.  They’re not just the stars of a bunch of silly monster movies. They’re the creators of the single greatest comedy routine of all time: Who’s on First?

If you don’t know Who’s On First, watch it in the YouTube player below.  It’s a miracle of comedic timing. Your kids should know it. (I think they should actually memorize it, but I don’t want to be overbearing.)

When you’ve finished watching the original, take a look at a great parody from some young players of the online game, World of Warcraft. They take all the baseball references from the original, and replace them with geeky references from role-playing games. It’s like a kid appreciating Shakespeare or Bach — only better, because Abbott and Costello ROCK!