E’s loves to watch the Nick Jr. show “Yo Yo Gabba!” As kids’ shows go it’s pretty good. It emphasizes moving around to music and they have a lot of good bands on the show.
One of the reoccurring segments features kids exclaiming “My name is ___, and I like to dance!” and then boogieing down in front of a green screen. As you can imagine, some of the dances are pretty awesome.
The show “The Soup” has been featuring some of the dance segments and the exposure has let to people creating remix videos like this one.
N is pretty much my own personal cool hunter. I don’t know how he finds these things, but he does. Last night he showed me this great collaborative music/spoken word piece, In Bb 2.0.
Give it a try. Select a few or several videos and see how they mix together. If you want to include it the spoken word piece is included in the video on the far left, third from the top.
For more details about the project check out the FAQ.
I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned it before, but N’s family lived overseas while he was growing up. They lived in Seoul during the eighties and then moved to Singapore where N graduated from high school.
We spent a few summers in Korea together during college but haven’t managed to get over to Singapore yet. But I’d really like to visit. Because Singapore is a mixture of different ethnic groups: Chinese, Malay, Indian, etc… there’s an incredible variety of cultures (and food!). And English is widely-spoken so it’s easy to get around and such.
A lot of people lament the rise of singers using auto-tune. It’s becoming popular in hip-hop music and with rappers-turned-singers. Basically, auto-tune corrects your voice so it’s on key but distorts it in the process so it sounds robotic.
In general I’m not that fond of auto-tune but I love this use of it:
Thanks to those who weighed in on the Great Business Card Debate of Aught-Nine. I still haven’t decided yet: I saw a fewmore options on Etsy and N’s cousin offered to use his mad design skillz to whip up something for me so we’ll see what happens.
Shopping for cards reminded me of this video N showed me a while ago. This guy is everything I hate about salesmen but he’s pretty entertaining.
(Hmm…it seems like the video is having some trouble. If you can’t get it to work, try this version. It’s worth it.)
Even though he might not look it, E is one-quarter Korean. I try to expose him to Korean culture when the opportunity arises but I’m not hardcore about it, mostly because I’m not fluent in the language myself so there’s only so much I can do. Elements of Korean culture like food and movies are found in our home and I think E will naturally absorb information about this part of his heritage as he grows.
A while ago my friend Carol (second row from the bottom, third from the right in this photo) sent me links to some Korean kids videos online. E fell in love with this video about the importance of eating vegetables (to view it full screen, click on the magnifying glass on the upper right). E loves, loves, LOVES this video. It’s actually led to a bit of trouble because if you sit down to use the computer he expects you to play it for him and if you don’t he unleashes his wrath as only a 17 month-old can.
I think the animation is really cute. I didn’t know who the characters are but I asked around on Kimchi Mamas and people told me the penguin’s name is Pororo and that it’s a very popular kids show in Korea.
When he watches the video E gets excited and babbles and bounces around. It can be pretty cute. I taped him watching the video with our webcam. The quality’s not that good and it might be pretty boring to non-grandparents, but here you go.
