Sesame Street Memories
Aaron and I were talking about how it's so easy to spend an entire afternoon or evening on YouTube, just surfing from video to video in a particular genre.
I just spent two hours watching clips of Sesame Street, The Electric Company, 3-2-1 Contact, and Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.
I could go back and link to all my favorite stuff, but I think maybe you should just go and search on Sesame Street and see what you turn up. OK, I guess I do want to share a couple things...
- The Sesame Street closing credits I remember best. I'd forgotten that Fridays had different closing credits than weekdays, and I'd forgotten all about Barkley.
- I'll Miss You, Mr. Hooper, where the grown-ups explain to Big Bird that Mr. Hooper isn't coming back. (I'd always heard that it wasn't long after this episode that David passed away, as well, but the cast had to explain it away, since they'd so recently had an episode about death. According to Wikipedia, though, Northern Calloway didn't pass away until 1990.)
Everybody has their own favorite Sesame Street bits, but OMG. The King of Eight, the Ladybugs Picnic, the series on pollution (that totally freaked me out as a young child), the lost kid on the bicycle that passes all the crazy psychedelic shit, Bert doin' the pigeon... Wow.
I am convinced that Sesame Street was and is quality television. I mean, the Electric Company clips I watched seemed kind of cheesy in that 70's sort of way. The 3-2-1 Contact bits were actually OK, although they were initially meant for an older audience, anyway. But the Sesame Street bits pulled me in visually and with music, although some of the songs were pretty cheesy.
Oh, and did you know that a hurricane hit Sesame Street? Big Bird's nest got all destroyed, and you can buy the DVD to see him deal with his loss and see how his friends help him rebuild his nest. Outside of the typically cheesy musical song-and-dance numbers, I think that kind of sums up one of the neatest aspects of Sesame Street: it takes real-life stuff that a kid might come across in his life, and has the grown-up characters explain it in kid terms. Death, hurricanes, holidays, the Beatles...
Buh-Buhbuh-Buh-Buhbuh, Letter B...
(Swear to god, I knew that version of the song long before I knew why it was funny.)
2008 Diana M. Schnuth.
Mary says...
Tue 17 Oct 2006 | 5:17PMI love 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Tho one where a ball rolls around a disco themed pinball machine. I remember when David died, I was ad, I was also sad that Sesame Street refused to air anyhting about it. My sister and brother were little then, and I remember watching the episode, and they said that David went to live w/ his grandma who was sick. It was like David was a pet hamster, and he "ran away." Tasteless if you ask me, but death is a tough subject. Mr. Rogers didn't deal with it until 9/11.