Folks, it’s August, 2022. The film Encanto came out in November, 2021 which was about eight months ago. And in all that time, I don’t believe that the song We Don’t Talk About Bruno has ever left my consciousness for more than a few minutes.
Why? With small kids around, you tend to watch a lot of kid-friendly programs. At first you pick them, but you know what happens next. Pretty soon, they’re picking their own programs, and of course they are going to pick the same program over and over and over and over… to the point where you literally begin to dream to the soundtrack of whatever it is that they like.
A fairly modern scourge
When I was a kid, there were vinyl records. I know that you’ve heard of them because vinyl has made something of a comeback in recent years. You could play the same thing over and over again, but it wouldn’t take long for a record to scratch and skip. This was especially true if, as a kid, you had your own record player. Personally I had this one:
It was durable, sounded like garbage, and tore up records pretty easily because the arm was weighted too much. I’m thinking that all that was on purpose because that way, a kid’s favorite record would be toast after just a few weeks.
Time marches on
The next time I had to deal with this problem was back in the 1990s when I had kids in the house. By then, people had VCRs, but you wouldn’t put one in a small kid’s room. Personally I had this one:
I liked this VCR because it was built like a tank and it was easy to get jammed tapes out of. I also had a fancier VHS Hi-Fi one which I used for watching movies at the best possible quality at the time (which was still crap, let’s be honest.) But this VCR was near the kids because it was so durable. Luckily for me, though, the tapes themselves weren’t durable. I recall The Little Mermaid breaking in the VCR one day. I thought oh, thank the lord because I could not take any more of that music. And then the kids discovered Aladdin and it all started again.
The next generation
I didn’t have to worry much about this problem for a good, oh, 15 years. By then things had changed a little bit tech-wise, for better or worse. VCRs gave way to DVDs, then (very briefly) to HD-DVDs, then to Blu-ray discs. I had all those formats, by the way, even HD-DVD which I think lasted 6 months. As for Blu-ray disc players, I had this one:
This particular Blu-ray disc player took about 2 minutes to start up and then another minute or two to load a disc. It was a pretty early example of the genre. I counted on that lag time because once again, there was a kid in the house and they loved The Lion King. I kind of gambled that in that 3-4 minute range, they’d misbehave long enough that I could say “no more movie for you.” Why? Because Blu-rays were a lot more durable and I knew they weren’t likely to break. But at least I could hide the thing and say that I didn’t have it right now.
Fast forward again, and this time we’re just basically screwed
Of course now we’re all streaming movies. Physical media is a thing of the past. And lucky us, Disney has created an app where for just a few bucks you can access virtually any of their films ever made. They play reliably, over and over, and there’s very little you can do about it. You can sabotage the streaming player or kill the Wi-Fi, but that seems like it would hurt the grownups more than the kids.
So, with another kid comes another song. This time it’s the catchy “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from Encanto. Lin-Manuel Miranda is a genius, and he’s created what might be the world’s most perfect earworm. I didn’t think anything could beat “Let It Go” for pure cross-generational appeal, but he’s done it. And, this song has essentially wrecked my life.
It’s impossible to get out of your head for very long, especially with another young person who wants to watch that movie over and over again. It’s a good movie but gosh darn it, it’s been half a year! I don’t want to be trapped in an endless loop of monotony in 2022!! That was the deal in 2020 and frankly I’m over it.
That’s why I sure wish this were a real thing:
I frankly see no other way out.
