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LazyTown

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I wanted to tackle the attitude that you get everything for free, which it's easy to have as a child now.

Ok, let's forgo the obvious stuff: this is a programme aimed at getting kids active, excercising and eating right. These are noble goals in themselves, and this is fantastic. But that's not what I want to get at exactly. It's actually the show's hero, Sportacus, which I want to hail. I was reading an interview with him in the paper today, as the producers are looking for someone of similar stature and ability to play him in the stage-version which is going to tour around the UK. This man is great in the show: energetic, fun and full of positive stuff. The thing is, is that he's not some mopy bastard off-screen. He takes this stuff seriously.

Magnus Schevig (a name almost as cool, if not cooler, than Dan Edge), is a man of great ability. He was a Gymnastic athlete originally, before getting into the health industry. He's a self-made man, and whilst being successful in the health industry, he also discovered that he wanted to help get kids active, but that it wasn't the right time to act. When he was ready, he set about creating LazyTown, focused at achieving his goals. And where does he live? He lives in a house he built himself, from scratch.

Furthermore, his character is just as gloriously human as he is, which I find incredibly admirable. What do I mean? I mean he isn't trying to get kids to worship some impossible idol, or to get them to be the 6 foot tall, muscle-bound gymnast that he is, but instead he's trying to get them to see that they just need to be motivated and active, to live life to the fullest. "If you put Superman and a costume character on a stage, what can they do? We go to kids and get them jumping around. We show them it is humanly possible to do these things."

One of the other great things is the bad guy in the show, Sportacus' antithesis, Robbie Rotten, who's pretty impotent within the show, as Schevig puts it, "Robbie is going nowhere. He's the status quo. We all know some-one like that, who says "no let's not go out, its too cold/expensive/whatever." I think this is great. I mean, they're not showing the bad-guy as some weird psychopath who wants to rule the world - they're actually showing him as what the evil in the world really is - the status quo, the lack of actually doing anything. He doesn't want people to achieve, he wants to suck them into being as life-hating as himself.

I'm not exagerrating or just being a bit silly, like people do with that whole Chuck Norris thing, when I say that Magnus is a real-life hero. He's an example of a great human being, not just because he wants to help kids get active. He's stated before, his goal isn't so much about getting kids healthy and into the same shape as him. It's not out of a selfless benevolence. It's out of a sense of life which he wants to spread. One of his top values is to see the world become a place with people with a greater sense of life, and that starts at a young age. If the majority of parents are poisioning their kids with bad philosophies, then he's going to offer the kids something fun and lively, to get their passion for life burning before it can be squashed by peers or parents.

Google search some interviews with him (his Wiki article is very scant) and I promise you'll be very enlightened by this individual. It's not that he's saying anything we don't already know about life, it's the fact that he's applying it practically, it's that he is one of the heroes who Ayn Rand said do exist in the world.

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Ah, Lazytown is Icelandic (Icelandic-Virginian) , I went to the first run of the Lazytown play!

It's spelled Magnús, but I'll forgive since you don't have 12 vowels on your keyboard.

Lazy town has numerous references to Iceland.

I like the show because of it's light hearted songs.

It's a piece of cake to bake a pretty cake!

Edited by BinniLee
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Great story, Tenure. He does look to be a multi-talented man. Another guy similar to him is the late Mike Mentzer, body builder extraordinaire. Have you heard of him? Okay, not as multi-talented, but he was a brilliant motivator, and spreader of the philosophy of Objectivism, which he did through body building, and was the absolute best in his profession at one time. You may have noted an over representation of body builders among Ayn Rand acolytes. I attribute this to him.

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  • 3 weeks later...

This is quite intriguing. LazyTown is something I have watched just out of curiousity sometimes. It's good to know that something like this is floating around. I have to admit that I didn' see it this way, I thought it was just another stupid kids' show.

It's been about fourteen years, but does anyone else think that Barney sometimes smacks of socialism?

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