Avery-Davis Vs. Attenborough: The Nature Show Narrator Smackdown

[dr_pretentious]

We've officially ended Gareth's television embargo, and not just for urgent situations like the ten hour road trip to Rochester or my bout of pneumonia last year. Netflix sent us some episodes of Planet Earth, and when Dan and I tried to watch it after the boy went to bed, we kept saying to each other every few minutes, "Gareth would love this!" And he did love it the next evening, though of course we have done a little strategic fast-forwarding past some of the eat-or-be-eaten scenes.

David Attenborough's commentary is dramatic and informative and scientifically correct and stuff, but Gareth's commentary is much more exciting. The little guy stares in rapt silence at the animals until something happens that is so cool he can't contain himself anymore, at which point he tries to make up in exclamation points what he lacks in vocabulary and syntax. A version of Planet Earth narrated by Gareth would be mostly uninformative and full of scientific errors, but it would be pretty entertaining. (As entertaining as the "Untamed World" episode of Ren and Stimpy, with its herd of feral nature show hosts? Maybe just to Dan and me.)

So, for your amusement and delectation, some loose paraphrases of Attenborough, with matching verbatim quotations from my fifteen-month-old:


ATTENBOROUGH:
Here in the canopy, the engine room of the Amazon rain forest, these mature hardwood trees may live another two hundred years.

AVERY-DAVIS:
T(r)ee! Up up up! High! G(r)een!
*

ATTENBOROUGH:
These red-billed quelea form the largest bird flocks on earth, some flocks so large that it can take five hours for them to pass overhead.

AVERY-DAVIS:
Bird! Two! Two bird!
*

ATTENBOROUGH:
The fig tree feeds a multitude of primate species. These capuchin monkeys are the bully boys of the forest. These golden tamarinds have to rely on speed and numbers to snatch enough figs to sustain their troupe.

AVERY-DAVIS:
Mondey! Mongey? Money! Mummy! Eat! Up up up high!
*

ATTENBOROUGH:
If the ants find one of their number infested with this parasitic fungus, a worker will carry the afflicted member as far as possible from the colony and dump it. This may seem brutal, but once the fungus releases its spores, any ant that comes in contact with them is in grave danger. Like some horror out of science fiction, the fruiting body of the fungus emerges from the ant's head.

AVERY-DAVIS:
Owie!

ATTENBOROUGH:
You got that right, kid. Owie, indeed.

Comments

[evaelisabeth.livejournal.com]

David Attenborough has one of the most beautiful voices on TV and a magic touch with animals, great shows.

[vgnwtch.livejournal.com]

I wonder what Gareth will make of Attenborough's programme on Darwin? He clearly has a bright future as some form of commentator :)

[louiseroho.livejournal.com]

Morning LOL: Better than coffee.

[thunderpigeon.livejournal.com]

That was hilarious, thanks!

Andrew still says "two" for "many," although he seems to have at least some concept of the other numbers.

[violet-moon25.livejournal.com]

Isn't it fun when your kid gets to the point where his conversation is entertaining? In addition to asking "why" all the time A. now makes up all kinds of imaginative things (some days he pretends to be a robot, etc).

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Yesterday, Gareth kept trying to get UPaul the Transvestite Unicorn to drink from a sippy cup. I think he was inspired by seeing all the animals in the Great Plains episode having to walk long distances for a drink of water.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

I can't tell what Gareth's number sense is like. I thought I knew, but the counting-to-two thing seems now to have been just a singular/plural distinction. Or maybe it's something completely different, and by the time he can tell me, it will have changed anyway.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

It may be a while before our Netlfix queue makes it down that far, since it typically takes us a month to get through a single DVD. Then again, that's the pace we've kept through Gareth's television embargo. Now that we'll allow him to watch the Planet Earth episodes, it'll only be the episodes of Heroes and House that slow us down quite that much for the foreseeable...well, that'll still be a while. It'll be at least a decade before he's allowed to watch Battlestar Galactica, and most of two decades before he's allowed to watch Deadwood. Hell, I'm not sure I'm old enough to watch Deadwood.

Time to revise the queue, clearly.

[puckmls.livejournal.com]

Thanks for a sweet dose of laughter at the start of a long day ...

And have another critter! (the spider icon)

Owie

[laradionne.livejournal.com]

Truer words were never said. It was a wonderful bit of cheeriness for the mid-morning to read this post. I have always loved those shows, and the extra kid-commentary was the best part (not unlike my younger brothers' commentary from the Days of Yore, watching Nova).

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't mind having another critter, too. We'll see how that goes.

Your spider looks so...cuddly. This must be how Rubeus Hagrid feels.

Re: Owie

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

I grew up on Nova, Cosmos, Nature, National Geographic Whatever, all those shows. Considering how much the television was on in my parents' house, we did pretty well on quality. I don't remember any of us being as entertaining as Gareth is, though. He so completely enacts his enthusiasm.