The “Chatty Chicken”

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I’m Posting This for Fun.

Kirk Cameron Bringing The God Back To ‘Goddamn, This Is A Weird Children’s TV Show’ by Rebecca Schoenkopf

Next stop: anyplace but the Emmys. Read on Substack

Just the weirdest-looking creature. Also there’s a puppet.

Good news for all you people still disappointed that “Growing Pains” went off the air: Kirk Cameron is coming back to TV!

Sort of. By TV we mean more likely streaming services, and by streaming services we mean probably Christian-themed services like Minno and YippeeTV. But if you are someone still reeling from Cameron being denied his rightful Oscar nod for one of the “Left Behind” movies, here is your chance to ease some of your pain.

Cameron is teaming up with Brave Books, presumably to do to children’s television what they have tried to do to children’s literature and book fairs. Namely, they want to make it suck.

Cameron stars in and produces a new show called “Adventures with Iggy and Mr. Kirk,” which had its premiere in Nashville recently. He promises the show will “bring God into the forefront of children’s entertainment,” and will be a “tool” that can be used to “reach millions of children across America and spread the Gospel.” Just as soon as it finds distribution.

“Adventures with Iggy and Mr. Kirk” is set in a treehouse inhabited by Mr. Kirk and Iggy the Iguana, where they do stuff like read the anti-abortion book “Little Lives Matter” (subtle!) and listen to Kirk explain that Iggy is perfect the way God made him. No cross-dressing iguanas in this treehouse!

Possibly not coincidentally, Iggy looks like a cross between Pepe the Frog and the alien-human hybrid baby from the original “V” miniseries. Seriously, look at this thing. What is this abomination? Did they Island of Dr. Moreau him out of discarded Muppets?

We mean the one on the right, in case there’s any confusion.

Right Wing Watch captured a clip of Cameron explaining himself to “FlashPoint,” a right-wing themed show on the Victory Channel:

“For a couple of years I’ve been reading wholesome Christian children’s books, contra the drag queen story hours, and hearing from parents that they don’t want woke indoctrination for their kids. They don’t want gay dinosaurs and trans ducks teaching their children morality.”

Trans ducks? We haven’t been forced by a tiny person to watch “Daniel the Tiger” in a while but it sounds as if its makers might have been busy introducing some cool new characters.

“They want kids books and TV shows that are going to reinforce the stuff that parents are trying to teach their kids at home about the sanctity of life, about forgiveness, about family, about the dangers of socialism.”

Our experience is that most parents would like kids’ shows they can sit through without wanting to claw out their eyeballs and pour molten lead into their ears. They wouldn’t give a shit if Peppa Pig showed up dressed like Mao and hollering about the good of the collective so long as it shuts their kids up for half an hour.

Cameron and Iggy are joined on their adventures by a mailman, a vulture named Culture (again, subtle!), and Leigh-Allyn Baker, an actress with a legit career who became one of those anti-vax right-wingers who stands up at school board meetings to scream her opposition to mask mandates because … well, we’ll let her tell you:

“I would never put them in a mask because their brain needs oxygen to grow, which the neurologists can confirm.”

We’re not neurologists, but we’re pretty sure that’s … what’s the term? … batshit stupid.

The trailer makes “Adventures with Iggy and Mr. Kirk” sound like some sort of Bizarro Mr. Rogers that teaches about “wholesome values,” but Christianly. Cameron prefers to call it a “modernized Mr. Rogers,” which we take exception to. Mr. Rogers in this or any other era would preach tolerance and respect for everyone. He would reject demonizing anyone. Yes, even drag queens and liberals.

But what would Mr. Rogers know about Christianity, he was only an ordained Presbyterian minister.

The show is based off of Brave Books’ Freedom Island series. Like the company’s main catalogue, the Freedom Island books are written by such conservative luminaries as Ashley St. Clair, Dana Loesch, and Nazi Jack Posobiec. Loesch’s book is titled “Paws Off My Cannon,” and it not surprisingly preaches that everyone has the right to shoot things:

[F]ollow Bongo, a daring and hungry gorilla, who loves eating food, especially mushroom-shaped cupcakes. But one day, a villainous hyena shoots a coconut at Bongo and his friend Bonnie. Bonnie is so upset at this misuse of coconut cannons that she suggests the village ban all coconut cannons. Bongo thinks that the hyenas are the problem, not the coconut cannons.

We will very much look forward to the Very Special Episode of “Adventures with Iggy and Mr. Kirk” in which Iggy kills Culture the Vulture with a coconut cannon and Mr. Kirk explains that God wrote the Second Amendment to give all iguanas the right to self-defense.

Enjoy the show!

I dare somebody to watch, but I haven’t watched it. The bit above looks as if it’s just creepy. To me. – A

Lunchtime Reading

The links are priceless to read on their own, but there is fine info when we click.

Saturday Poem

I was built by inherited hungers. This is not a poem that names them.

Kimberly Blaeser

                                        i.
As a body politic we take up space in their ledgers.
Yes, my relatives are the salvage bodies of history.

We have ways they do not approve of.
How we feed ourselves for one:

           I have been taught where to find the winter cache of squirrels—
                                                                                                and how to walk away.

            As we walk, my brother quiets me:
           you cannot tell stories until you visit the places where they make their homes
.

           Father said the garden song calls the pollinators—
                                                               and we must sing in tune.

           Nimaamaa said leave some for the spirits and the little people
            (and what she meant was we are small in the green frayed body of belonging).
   

           We learn from makwa, from maa’ingan—sometimes, even from Nanaboozhoo.

By this I mean not everything tattered is ruined.

                                      ii.
They believe I was built of equations for gain.
(This poem is not an anthem.)

We still follow picto-spirits,
animal tracks, and seed paths:

           Not all of our tools have price tags.

           Not all of our safeguards are weapons

           You will not find wild game in our lexicon.

Ask yourself—are we the meat they covet?

Copyright © 2024 by Kimberly Blaeser. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 22, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

Find out more about this poem, and this poet.

Reblog from Ten Bears

All the links are worthy; today I’m partial to both the one about a Trump-proof climate action Pres. Biden could take that would benefit the entire world, and the story about the “Indian peach”.

“Grassland Secret” American Bird Conservancy

(WP isn’t allowing Tags, except the provided suggested tags. So, Bird Conservancy, Habitat Conservation, Bird Song.)

Let’s talk about Trump’s picks, 3 spots, and foreign policy….

Reblog from Ten Bears

There is a link within: Laugh Out Loud ~ Hurricane Season May Not Be Over Yet for Florida, (I’m not laughing because Scottie, Ron, and likely readers are in FL, but this is some info for preparation.) The linked page uses Accuweather, who I personally disdain because when they’re timely is when they borrow the info from the National Weather Service, in this case, here. This is no disparagement of Ten Bears, who gives superlative information, especially on the subject of climate, environment, and weather. Anyway, because it’s about FL, there are those links, and below is the blog entry, which is its usual excellence. Recall I mentioned a while back that many links are “Easter eggs”; there are some of those within.

The Warrior’s Plume

Bertrand N. O. Walker 1870 – 1927

On the plains and in the vales of Oklahoma,
     Grew a flower of the Tyrian hue,
The color that is loved by the Redman,
      That tells him light and life,
               And love are true.

Long ago it flamed in beauty on the prairies,
      Lighting reaching vistas with its glow;
Ere advent of the whiteman and his fences,
      Told the care-free, roving hunter
               He must go.

The throng, the herd, and greed have madly trampled
      Prairie, woodland, valley, and the height;
Crushed the feath’ry flower and rudely blighted
      Its pride and life and beauty,
              And its light.

Today ’tis found in silent glades and meadows
      Where by twos and threes it greets the May.
Like the scattered braves who loved its color,
      It has passed, been trodden out
               Along the way.

As the oriflamme it flaunted through past ages
      Went to gladden the fairness of the earth;
So the greatness of the Indian will linger
      In the land that loves them both
               And gave them birth.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on November 10, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

More from and about this poet on the page.