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My Hero Has Feet of Clay

At age two-and-a-half, Emma's latest conquered territory is the corner video store. In no-nonsense fashion, she strides to the children's section and scrutinizes the inventory for a brief hour or so before making a carefully considered, emotionally charged selection.

Track record factors heavily in her decisions, with the unfortunate result that, thanks to repetition, I now see Teletubbies videos replayed on the insides of my eyelids as I try to fall asleep. Even so, I have learned from experience that overt attempts to influence her decisions are disastrous. You cannot mess with the forces of nature.

I keep to a neutral corner and avoid eye contact, having found that indifference is the best bet to diffuse a budding interest in saccharine corporate pap. An overtly negative reaction usually backfires, and besides, rolling your eyes and muttering "Aw, cripes" at a toddler is bad form.

Yet, every now and then, you hit pay dirt. This week, when Emma selected a Gumby video, my chest swelled with pride. Down with over-marketed pastel trash! Gumby's the real deal, strictly Old School. Compared to his pandering, shallow modern-day counterparts, he's in a class by himself. It's like comparing Oscar Robertson to Allen Iverson, Redd Foxx to Eddie Murphy, or Paul Newman to Keanu Reeves.

To my initial disappointment, this video turned out to be a full-length movie featuring Gumby in his "modern" incarnation. I watched with apprehension as the title sequence ran with a modern score in place of the original Gumby theme song. I was denied the rush of emotion from hearing those words "He was once a little green slab of clay ð GUMBY!" This was all wrong!

(A SLIGHT DIGRESSION: The original Gumby theme song was written in 1966 by pedal steel guitar legend "Sneaky Pete" Kleinow, later a founding member of The Flying Burrito Brothers and highly sought-after session man who recorded with dozens of artists from John Lennon to Sandy Dennis to Frank Zappa. No wonder that song stuck in your head all these years. Just thought you'd like to know.)

The storyline got off to a bad start, depicting Gumby and his pals in a rock and roll band, of all things. I thought it was out of character, even though Emma thought it was great. Bah, kids, what do they know.

The concert scene, featuring Gumby on lead guitar, was actually pretty good. "Wow," I said to Emma, "Gumby really wails. You know ð shreds." She nodded in agreement, or perhaps to get me to shut up during the movie. Then one thing led to another, and I got drawn in by the plot. I decided that the modern touches were merely window dressing, and as the movie progressed, it felt more and more like old times. The dialogue, in particular, with its trademark stilted geekiness, was loyal to the original feel of those early episodes.

We watched it twice more in its entirety before returning it. By the last time, I was calling to Julia in the other room: "Sweetie, hurry up ð here comes the part where the Blockheads try and capture Pokey!"

See, real quality never goes out of style.

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© Todd Pinsky 1998-2002. All rights reserved.