I suck

After having read New York Magazine's article about Grups recently, and mocking them along with Anya (especially Neal Pollack telling his son that the TV shows he watches suck - though he did post a rebuttal here) - I did the exact same thing this afternoon. Totally unintentionally, too.

The family Easter meal was over, and my nephews (the three-year-old twins and the four-year-old) insisted on watching, for the second time, the videotape they'd brought from home: a truly cringeworthy collection of Mary-Kate and Ashley birthday party shorts. The stories show the Olsens somewhere between the ages of 8 and 10, singing insipid songs at various themed birthday parties with their fake friends. As Mary-Kate and Ashley clutched their faces in "horror" while their slumber party guests chirped about scary monsters, I was driven to comment, "Okay, you guys really need watch Mary-Kate and Ashley at home."

"Why?" demanded Nate, the four-year-old.

"Because this is the worst video ever made in the history of the world," I replied.

"No it's not!"

"Yes, it is."

"Why?"

"Because it's incredibly cheesy, poorly acted, predictable, and extremely uncreative."

"What does that mean? 'Uncreative?'"

"It means ... you know exactly what's going to happen. They didn't think very hard when they made this movie. They didn't come up with any new ideas." I was already starting to regret this conversation.

"Yeah they did!" Nate exclaimed.

"Not really," I replied. "They're just at a sleepover. They want to stay up all night, but soon they'll all fall asleep. Now if they all turned into dragons or something, that would be awesome."

"Well, yeah," Nate conceded, climbing onto the couch. "But they had to think of all the words to all those songs!"

"Yeah, but I'll bet they rehearsed them earlier! They didn't just think of them on the spot!" was my lame-ass reply. That was when the "oh my God, I'm actually arguing with a four-year-old who just wants to watch the little girls sing songs about birthday parties" realization fully kicked in. So I didn't bother pointing out that they were actually not singing at all, or to explain the meaning of the word "trite." In my (weak) defense, it wasn't like I wanted to turn on Adult Swim instead or anything. I wanted to watch Old Yeller.