SUNDAY MORNING VALUES, SATURDAY MORNING FUN:

'Veggie Tales' soup it up with silly humor (Leslie Gray Streeter, March 27, 2003, Palm Beach Post)

The way Phil Vischer sees it, the key to making children's entertainment positive without being unbearably dull comes down to making an apple taste like a Twinkie.

"You assume that everything that is good for you is boring. Which one do the kids want? They need the apples, but they want the Twinkies," says 36-year-old co-founder and president of Illinois-based Big Idea Inc., from which sprang the Veggie Tales series.

There's no sure recipe for making biblically based entertainment, well, entertaining. Vischer and co-founder Mike Nawrocki's list of ingredients include Old Testament stories, a dash of Monty Python, a little bit of Meatloaf, equal parts silliness and sweetness and limbless vegetables that sing and dance.

It seems an incongruous mix at best, but the combination has made Veggie Tales wildly popular with preschoolers and adults, conservative Christians and people of other faiths or no faith.

If you're not hip to Veggie Tales, especially if you have kids, you're really missing the boat. Here's an especially amusing tune, The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything:

Narrator: "Joining Larry are Pa Grape and Mr. Lunt, who together make up the infamous gang of scalliwags, the Pirates Who Don't Do Anything!"

Larry, Pa, Mr. Lunt: "We are the Pirates Who Don't Do Anything! We just stay home and lie around. And if you ask us to do anything, we'll just tell you ..."

Larry: "We don't do anything!"

Pa: "Well, I've never been Greenland and I've never been to Denver, and I've never buried treasure in St. Louis or St. Paul, and I've never been to Moscow and I've never been to Tampa, and I've never been to Boston in the fall."

All: "'Cuz we're the Pirates Who Don't Do Anything! We just stay home and lie around. And if you ask us to do anything, we'll just tell you .."

Mr. Lunt: "We don't do anything. And I never hoist the mainstay and I never swab the poop deck, and I never veer to starboard 'cuz I never sail at all, and I've never walked the gang plank and I've never owned a parrot, and I've never been to Boston in the fall."

All: "'Cuz we're the Pirates Who Don't Do Anything! We just stay at home and lie around. And if you ask us to do anything, we'll just tell you .. We don't do anything!"

Larry: "Well, I've never plucked a rooster and I'm not too good at ping-pong, and I've never thrown my mashed potatoes up against the wall, and I've never kissed a chipmunk and I've never gotten head lice, and I've never been to Boston in the fall!"

Pa: "Huh? What are you talking about? What's a rooster and mashed potatoes have to do with being a pirate??"

Mr. Lunt: "Hey, that's right! We're supposed to sing about pirate-y things!"

Larry: "Oh ..."

Pa: "And who ever kissed a chipmunk? That's just nonsense! Why even bring it up? Am I right? What do you think?"

Mr. Lunt: "I think you look like Cap'n Crunch!"

Pa: "Huh? No I don't!"

Mr. Lunt: "Do too."

Pa: "Do not!"

Mr. Lunt: "You're making me hungry."

Pa: "That's it, you're walkin' the plank!"

Mr. Lunt: "Says who?"

Pa: "Says the captain, that's who!"

Mr. Lunt: "Oh, yeah? Aye aye, Cap'n Crunch!"

Larry: "And I've never licked a spark plug and I've never sniffed a stink bug, and I've never painted daisies on a big red rubber ball, and I've never bathed in yogurt and I don't look good in leggings ..."

Pa: "You just don't get it!"

All: "And we've never been to Boston in the fall!"

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 27, 2003 6:33 PM