Something old and something new for my pop-culture report this week. It really is heartening how much more of the disability experience can be found on DVD of late.

Watching childhood favorites can be a mixed bag, even when you aren't trying to be Social Security Cultural Critic. Some of them just don't hold up to informed scrutiny(Most of the Star Wars trilogy) the discovery of irony(Batman as played by Burt Ward and Adam West) or just the fact that watching vans blow up isn't your idea of a good time anymore(The A-Team) so even though Mom and I agreed to start watching The Rockford Files together about two years ago, I was kind of afraid of facing that same letdown, but Jim Garner, always and forever, turns my mom's crank, and it was a detective story, so what would be the harm?(It's where I learned about two things: The power of a wiseass' smile and the existence of machines that record phone calls, both things that would haunt much of my later life.)

I was slow to hear about the situation with BBC children's television host Cerrie Burnell. Several online friends had mentioned some parents' tendencies to want to sanitize kids' lives from all but the most Disney-fied realities, but that could apply to anything from a racy web page to blowback from an appearance on an adult television program, as when the actor who used to star on Blue's Clues appeared on the gritty crime drama Homicide: Life on the Street. (Not as Steve; I could see why that'd be upsetting.) Check out the following video.