Purple Reign

Purple Reign

I lost count of all the sleepless nights I lay awake, remembering his voice. I couldn’t get him out of my head. He said that he loved me and that I loved him. He said that we were a happy family. He wanted to give me a great big hug and a “kiss from me to you”. He asked me “Won’t you say you love me too?” I never wanted to see him again but I stayed for my daughter’s sake. The things we do for love! I tried my best to stay away - haunted by the songs that he sang to me and I finally reached my breaking point. I Just. Couldn’t. Take. It. Any. More!

His online profile sounded pretty cool and he told the truth: Tall, successful TV personality, cheerful, sunny optimist, loves children, kind, easy-going, enjoys singing and dancing. He seemed like a pretty good catch! But unlike other one-name celebrities like RuPaul, Ringo or Prince, this guy isn’t human and he’s old as fuck.

When my daughter was in preschool she was exposed to a seemingly innocuous TV show on PBS - a station I trusted and believed to be a safe haven for educational children's programming. (Keyword: programming). My first impression of the star, billed as The Dinosaur Sensation, was that he was a bit of a dimwit but he seemed good natured and upbeat so I wasn’t really paying much attention. The moment when the Barney Doodle Dandy theme song began my daughter danced around the living room and sang along: “Barney is a dinosaur from our imagination”. It was like Christmas morning, a birthday puppy and all the cake she could eat rolled into one big package of joy. I assumed that any show that made her so happy was a good thing but by the time we had amassed a dozen videos it was too late. Repeated exposure to Barney got her hooked. It had a hypnotic effect on her - rendering her temporarily transfixed but harmless. But it hit me like a bad narcotic and fucked me up big time. His dopey voice, loathsome laugh and obnoxious friends were intolerable and I was ready to smash his head in like a big purple pinata. Everything in Barney’s world is Super Dee-Duper!

Barney pals around with children but they’re not just any children - the Barney kids are special! There’s something off about them. Something isn't right. They’re so damn agreeable. Real kids aren’t perky, interchangeable Pollyannas. Real kids laugh about things like doody and boogers and butts. The Barney bunch have no words for genitals because they don’t have any. These kids never talk back. They eat all their vegetables and ask for more liver. They go to bed early without being told and do their homework with gusto. They dress like shit and smile incessantly - seemingly bewitched by Barney’s moronic presence and nodding emphatically at everything he says. Their exhilaration for colors, shapes and counting to five is chilling.

I can just imagine them sequestered and isolated from their euphoric parents immediately after eagerly signing the contracts and NDA forms (neglecting to read the fine print) and delighted at the prospect of scoring the coveted SAG-AFTRA card for their offspring. I picture the children promptly whisked away to the Hall of Enunciation to be drilled on the proper diction and pronunciation of every word in the English language, spending long hours in the Consonant Corner and Vowel Room. Next they’re taken to the Chamber of Mirrors where they must practice maintaining a smile while speaking to their reflections until their faces are numb. Once firmly nestled into the fold of Barney’s world, they’ll be carted off to Wardrobe, stripped of their Tamagotchis and crop tops, and fitted with a pair of goody two shoes, dowdy sister wife jumpers in joyless florals, lackluster plaids, shapeless shorts, ill-fitting pants, boxy vests and bows as big as their heads.

Barney’s repertoire of inane songs and anemic choreography feature his clan all gussied up for special occasions. In one such episode they are beyond delighted to meet Old King Cole. Barney dons a jaunty beret and the kids form groups of three engulfed in cringe-worthy tent-like getups emblazoned with trumpets, drums and fiddles in a pathetic attempt to imply that they’re actual musicians. They step woefully out of time while singing “dance with the trumpeters” as their fingers move with astonishing disregard for the rhythm.

The Mother of them all wasn’t a goose, but a cloying tacky spinster wearing white gloves and wire-rimmed spectacles, decked out in a chaste puritan frock and floppy polka dot bonnet. Barney is thrilled to see her and jumps up and down with glee. One of the children looks up at her and asks, “You’re mother goose?” as if there could be any doubt! She greets each of them by name, her voice climbing successively higher and higher and then she breaks out into a nauseatingly euphoric rendition of her namesake song: “Oh I’m Mother Goose and I’m here to say that I like to talk in rhymes! I’ve been around for many many years for a very very very long time.” The children gather around her, seemingly mesmerized. “Words that rhyme will sound the same like fiddle and diddle - name and game. Like Farmer in the Dell - Pussy in the Well - I like to talk in rhymes!” Her cheesy song hits me like a saccharine bomb that could be used to weaponize an entire population. I just want to smack the fakeass phoney shit out of her. Barney and Mother Goose dance a chaste little number and the children are enthralled by the hokey wholesome duo. It’s quite obvious that her pussy’s been in the well for “many many years” and nobody’s diddled her fiddle for a “very very very long time.”

Barney and his culty cohorts hacked my mind like a computer virus, erasing my tolerance and well-being and threatening to hijack my sanity. The “Please and Thank You” song wreaked havoc with my sleep. It embedded itself into my psyche like an infected hard-drive, repeatedly flashing images of Barney’s jazz hands and deleting my peace of mind. “You Are Special” repeated over and over in an endless loop with images of the kids swaying off the beat and high-fiving Barney. I wondered how a song with such a seemingly positive message could be so fucked up. Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay lurked in the dark - waiting to ambush me and strike like an alien life form - its sugary tentacles embedding themselves into my head when my defenses were down. My good intentions led me straight to my own private hell. I felt cursed! I was plagued with insomnia and consumed with a seething hatred that led me to compose 3am haikus to purge the hokey halfwit devil from my soul. Of all the dinosaurs to defy extinction, why did it have to be this one?