Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Yo, Lance!

One of my favorite children's television shows is Nick Jr's (formerly Noggin, which was a much better name) Yo Gabba Gabba. It is sometimes unconventional in its approach to the pre-school lessons in life it offers, but it is always bright, upbeat and very peppy. The human star of the show is a fellow named Lance Robertson, who plays the orange jumpsuit-clad DJ Lance Rock. If you have seen him, you'll know where I'm coming from here; if you haven't seen him, you really ought to in order to understand this post better.

When I first heard the name, "DJ Lance Rock," it rang a bell somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind. I couldn't place precisely where I'd heard the name before; it bothered me to know I knew it but didn't know how. I had the good fortune a few months ago to have some television time to myself. While checking out the movie guide, I came across what sounded like a very interesting film on IFC, "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls." It was a flick from 1970 that involved sex and drugs and rock-n-roll; I had seen a scene or two from it a month or so prior, but because it had already been on a while, I ended up tuning it out.

I won't go into too much detail here, but I will say that Lance Rock is the name of one of the characters in that film. Lance Rock was a gigolo who seduces the heroine of the story; ultimately he pays a high price for his ways. You may need to watch at least the climactic scene from the film to comprehend this post fully (I will not play spoiler here).

What I wonder is: Who came up with DJ Lance Rock? Did he/she/they know about the movie? If not, why not? Names are very important because of all they convey; I would not want my children's show's star's name at all associated with that sort of character from that sort of movie. Someone really dropped the ball on that one. If the conceiver of the name did know about it, what a brazen thumbing of one's nose at convention that was!

If anyone out there has Lance Robertson's ear, please inform him of this situation at once; his life may depend on it.

2 comments:

Lieutenant Ilia said...

More importantly, who came up with Muno, and why is he a French tickler? And why are Ticklers French anyway? My brain hurts from all this thinking.

Peter said...

My apologies, Lieutenant, for the strain and pain on your brain. I had noticed that Muno looked like some kind of sex toy with limbs; I had no idea he was French. Sacre bleu!

[There ought to be an accent over the e in sacre, but I'll be damned if I will take the time to figure out how to do that here!]