Hunk Friday: In which 20 year olds are already nostalgic

Mr. Rogers: loved by humans and primates alike

Joaquin Phoenix of The Village and Ladder 49 fame has recently announced his retirement from the acting world. Oh, what will we do with one less former alcoholic actor in Hollywood (Editor's Note: Depend on Robert Downey Jr.)? Although Joaquin is a great talent and I think I speak for the entire movie industry when I say that he will be missed (Editor's Note: She doesn't), what concerns me is not the fact that he is leaving to pursue a musical career (we all know how that one goes; I'm looking at you Scarlett/Lindsay/Keanu) but rather that with his departure we will instead have to contend with Zac Efron.

For those who have been living in a cave with the Taliban for the last couple of years, Zac Efron is the current Disney poster boy and the star of the previously #1 movie in America, High School Musical 3: Senior Year. The thought of a young generation of movie-goers obsessing over the overacted and thinly-plotted (but somehow not trite) franchise that is High School Musical is scarier than seeing a fully grown and extremely hairy man wearing a diaper and a bonnet while sucking on an enormous pacifier as a Halloween costume on the chilly streets of New York City. You would think that no fully-grown adult male would perform such a disturbing act. You would be wrong.

But really, what I want to know is where in the world has quality educational programming gone? I find it hard to believe that TV execs can't find someone up to the task of substituting for Mr. Rogers, the immovable monolith of children's television. Blue's Clues may have been close, but that mushroom-induced Technicolor dreamscape was, at times, a little creepy. Pee Wee had a shot too, but then he had to go all stuff-shaking in a porn theater.

Mr. Rogers was a legend. He and his neighborhood made me so happy growing up because he was the only white guy I knew who changed his shoes when he went inside his house, something all of my friends perceived as freakishly obsessive and Asian. Other great shows, especially early-era Nickelodeon cartoons like Doug and Hey Arnold! made my childhood. These shows made dinner enjoyable for everyone; we could take endlessly about the seeming scientific impossibility of a football shaped head, or whether Patty really was the mayonnaise (I don't think she was, even after Disney took over).

Loved by tween girls (several steps below primates on the evolutionary scale)

Compare that to today, when I dread going home because, thanks to my nine-year-old sister, I know that my rice will undoubtedly be served with either the big-eyed future scandal machine Miley Cyrus, or the strangely so-good-looking-he's-prettier-than-most-of-my-girl-friends, Zac Efron. And this is after my list-topping most awkward moment of my life list, when I had to explain to my sister why the show starring Jamie Lynn Spears on Nickelodeon was cancelled. Damn those birds and bees and frisky teenagers.

My summer job working at Borders Bookstores was a horrendous experience, based solely on the fact that I was stuck in the children’s section, which I wouldn’t have minded if more people asked me where the new Mo Willem’s book was and not whether I was already sold out of the Camp Rock sticker book. And imagine how horrified I was to find out that, after selling it to twelve year olds all summer, the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer contains some very graphic sex scenes (to be clear, I never recommended the books, thank God. I only commented that they seem to be very popular when anyone asked about them—as if that helps my conscience). Plus, you know, undead vampire romances really don't make good literature, but they sure do sell real good.

So here is my plea to Disney and Nickelodeon: please stop obsessing about making money and do your job, which you used to do so well not so many years ago.

And with that, I proclaim Mr. Rogers, Doug Funny, and Arnold our Hunks this Friday. May the three glorious and educational shows rest in peace in TV heaven.

(Editor's Note - If PBS played nothing but Mr. Rogers re-runs from now until the end of time, I don't think anyone would be mad. The marketing practiced by these two children's television networks has transmogrified into a terrifying mashup of sex, pop-culture and bubblegum. It's like a Girl Talk record for children, only in visual form and without being any good. This, ladies and gentleman, is why I won't let my children watch anything but Nova.)