I don't have a great deal to say about "SuperBot," an animated short that is also serving as a pilot from Argentina's Trexel Animation. Well, other than it's cute and it's short, and it's 3 minutes of magnifying-glass fun. Seems to me it would make a nice interstitial series.
Monday Morning Smile: Jimmy Fallon, The Roots, and Sesame Street
I'm not posting this because I think you haven't seen this -- if you're a semi-regular reader of this site, this appeared probably a dozen times or more in your social media feeds last week.
No, I'm posting this clip of Jimmy Fallon, The Roots, and a bunch of Sesame Street muppets singing the Sesame Street theme song on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon because I want to make sure I have easy reference to it.
Oh, and because it's awesome.
Jimmy Fallon, The Roots, and cast of Sesame Street - "Theme from Sesame Street" [YouTube]
Monday Morning Smile: Lemony Snicket on Non-Kids Poems for Kids
Just as some songs not written for kids are perfect for kids (hi, Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child; hi, Greasy Kid Stuff!), some poetry not written for kids is perfect for kids.
Or that's the assertion of Lemony Snicket (occasionally known as Daniel Handler), who wrote a wonderful article for Poetry Magazine. His article, All Good Slides Are Slippery, features illustrations by Chris Raschka that are every bit as vibrant as Snicket is droll ("Poetry is like a curvy slide in a playground — an odd object, available to the public — and, as I keep explaining to my local police force, everyone should be able to use it...").
The article is definitely worth a read, and, I agree - those are some excellent poems to read to your kids, regardless of your stance on slides.
Monday Morning Smile: "1000 Cones"
I'm featuring this video this morning because the idea that a bunch of people on the internet would pool their money together just to buy a thousand strangers in Denver ice cream cones amused me. (Amused me enough that I threw in a few ducats for the Kickstarter campaign for the project.)
So, yeah, it's pretty much Jordan Morris and Jesse Thorn from the Jordan, Jesse, Go! show just being silly as they help distribute a thousand ice cream cones. But it's still fun.
Plus: ice cream. No feature about ice cream can ever be bad.
Note: I'm not a comedy podcast person, so I can't say that I'm a Jordan, Jesse, Go! listener (yet), but I am a big fan of Thorn's Bullseye show, which I recommend tracking down via podcast if it's not on your local public radio station.
Monday Morning Smile: "Chairman Meow" - Sarah Lee and Johnny
I have a history with Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion -- AKA Sarah Lee and Johnny -- I wrote some liner notes to Sarah Lee Guthrie & Family's Go Waggaloo album for Smithsonian Folkways. So: soft spot, heart.
In any case, they have a new album out, Wassaic Way , produced by Jeff Tweedy, and the video for the first single "Chairman Meow" is so goofy and all over the map (puppets! animation! garishly bright colors!) that your kids will probably dig it (and the groovy safe-for-kids melody). Not quite a LOLcat, but some sort of funny feline. (Via DidiPop.)
Sarah Lee and Johnny - "Chairman Meow" [YouTube]
Monday Morning Smile: "Delaware" - Perry Como
It's not often that someone in my "day job" suggests something that makes it onto this site. OK, I'm not sure it's ever happened, but there's always a first time.
I'm not sure that Perry Como is the first person to come to mind in terms of whose voice is best-suited for a novelty song -- it's Perry freakin' Como, after all, But this song, introduced to me by a co-worker and more than a half-century old, made me smile, and it might make your local 9-year-old geography-obsessed kid smile, too. (Why the changing languages and the martial step? Who. Knows.)
Perry Como - "Delaware" [YouTube]