So I realize I am grumpy because the progress on our moving has been postponed, and, quite frankly, it’s raining and probably will all day which is no good with two small kids, especially when most of the toys are ALREADY at the apartment.

HOWEVER, most of the children’s programming on the Disney channel is so utterly annoying I felt the need to blog

Let me say that the Mickey Mouse clubhouse is fake-educational. And I could go on, but let;s not be too negative. I just feel that my child loses brain cells when he watches it. Even though today he learned that if you have a GIANT candy cane you can rescue a dog from flying around holding onto balloons. I am not sure where he will gain such educational insights once we no longer have fancy cable.

You see I called the evil cable empire that we have in Maine, and they offer  3 tiers of cable.

1. you get the networks and shopping channels for $13

2. you get 75 channels for $52 (including NESN for red sox viewing)

3. You get a universe of digital cable for $60

for additional fun, if you want a handy dandy dvr you HAVE to have fancy digital cable AND pay a monthly dvr fee.

so the super duper cable with dvr and high speed internet (the only part we really have to have for Luke’s employment) is $114. HA

So since my darling Lily was SCREAMING in the other room and it didn’t seem like a big deal to pay $8 more for super douper cable…blah blah blah initially I sign up for the outrageous cable.

then I thought, hmmmm that is a LOT of freaking money for tv service.

We were thinking we would just cut off the dvr and super douper digital blah blah blah, so we could have NESN and watch our beloved Red sox. For $52 a month. Yeah, seems steep to pay $52 largely for the sake of our baseball watching.

SO after hemming and hawing and trying to decide how much debt we are willing to accumulate for cable, we decided, HA, down with you evil silly cable company, we’re getting $13 cable. so there.

Which happily means no Disney channel. Oh thank goodness.

Back to this channel.

As if most of the shows weren’t superficial and annoying and fake-educational enough, they have these in between segments that are terrible. Either, filled with men in their mid 30’s-40’s singing bad kiddie tunes (today’s group were wearing shirts that spelled out RALPH, which is what I felt like doing when they were done singing) or the awful “Choo-choo soul” segment where they sing terrible little diddy’s which only sometimes have anything to do with trains and there is usually someone poorly rapping and that sort of thing. shudder

However I will give props to Handy Manny. This show lacks a real theme song, they just sing Handy Manny over and over, but otherwise it is cute, not very annoying, and not fake-educational. There is no screaming-at-the-tv -articipation required (yes I am glaring at your Dora/Diego), they don’t try to solve problems with candy canes and baby elephants (cause apparently based on Mickey mouse’s show, there is almost always a baby elephant around to help you solve your problems) and it is generally not spazzy.

Plus they have this character that is stinkin hilarious. It’s this middle aged white guy with a bad comb over who is a serious mama’s boy and it is just hilarious. Sometimes his comb over blows up in the air with the breeze, and, oh I could go on. It’s great.

Anyway. I will be sorry to not have Nesn. But I will NOT miss the Disney Channel.sigh of relief.