Dave Barry: Bring Back Captain Video :) :)

Okay, you've read all of Haruki Murakami. All of Bill Bryson. All of Milan Kundera. Practically all of J.M.Coetzee. You cringe each time you go to the bookshops. And here, today, you're almost done with all of Dave Barry. What will you do for your laughter dose the rest of your life? Slow Down. Sloooow Dowwwn. What If the world does not end in 2012?

"...We're also going to have to do something about children's television. Today's children watch shows like "Sesame Street", which teaches them that the world is full of friendly interracial adults and cute puppets and letters that form recognizable patterns. This is, of course, a pack of lies. When I was a kid, in New York, my friends and I watched shows like "Captain Video", which taught us that the world was full of evil forces trying to destroy the earth, which turns out to be absolutely correct.

"Captain Video" consisted of five episodes a week, no one of which cost more than eleven dollars to produce. The episodes always took place in Captain Video's spaceship. It was an extremely low budget spaceship. For example, Captain Video's radio was a regular telephone handset, except he held it as if it were a microphone and talked into the listening end.

..They also don't get Meaningful Social Lessons, the kind we got from shows about cowboys and Indians. These shows taught us that not all Indians were savage killers. For example, Tonto was a good Indian. As I recall, all the others were savage killers."

Page 67, 'Bring Back Captain Video', from 'Bad Habits' by Dave Barry, author of 'Babies and Other Hazards of Sex' and 'Claw Your Way to the Top'.