25th
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I’m Bob the Blob: Bob the Blob (1983?)
My wife asked me what I wanted for Christmas, and after much deliberation, I told her to buy me anything and tell me that it was hard to find.
What does my penchant for the obscure say about me? Why am I so attracted to the discarded and the outdated? Is it a matter of identification? Do I see myself in the neglected and peculiar dusty junk left curbside? Or is it the opposite, a manifestation of inflated ego? In other words, am I just being difficult?
It took me almost ten years to find Bob the Blob Finds a Shape. And throughout that decade quest, Bob’s minor keyed anthem, with its haunting bass clarinet counter-melody, regularly resonated the halls of my memory. Bob’s absence of shape reflects post-modern anxieties regarding identity. A shapeless blob he does not want to be, and yet, his very name identifies him as a shapeless blob! This is not a children’s pre-school record about shapes; this is an existential quandary.
I’ve always admired the children’s gallantry in the vignette preceding the song. While Bob’s authoritative knock alone would be enough to rattle my aging nerves these days, the children allow him into their classroom, marveling at his tragic amorphousness. This is why Bob turns to them for help. Only young children possess this level of self-assuredness.
My wife did indeed buy me some hard to find stuff, much appreciated and duly added to my museum of shapeless substance and misfit matter. It is in these gestures, when our loved ones are able to trace the outline of our desires and define us with a gift, that we cease to feel so formless.
