Would You Be Mine? Could You Be Mine?
When I was a kid I watched PBS after school until my parents “got” cable. (And by got cable I mean that they had an old cable box from Nannie and hooked it up and Voila! Cable. …Moving on from the illicit acts of my parents in the eighties.) I was flipping through the channels on Friday afternoon and was pleased to see some of the same things.
1. Sesame Street. The granddaddy of all PBS kids shows. I learned about letters and numbers and how to sing and who Maria ended up marrying and just who could see Mr Snuffalupagus, anyway? And guess what? Nothing much has changed. Yes, there are new people on it, but Susan and Luis and Maria and Bob are still there! And they still run those awesome 70’s cartoons… 1,2,3,4,5… 6,7,8,9,10, eleven tweh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-elve.
Uh-huh. Just roomates. Right.
2. Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. I loved LOVED the neighborhood of Make Believe. I wanted Lady Aberlin to be my best friend, and I wanted to talk with X the Owl and Henrietta Pussycat and visit Lady Elaine (who lived in the Museum-go-round and recklessly flung her Boomerang Toomerang Soomerang all over the place with no regard for public safety) and the gay cat Daniel Tiger who lived in the clock and couldn’t stop crying because of his hurt feelings and that one who lived in the rocking chair factory and then in the rarely seen Neighborhood of Someplace Else with the Scottish Platypus family. Oh! And every now and then they would have a musical that would last the whole episode, like the one with the stolen wind, and they all started selling air in cans, and there were bubbles everywhere? Remember? No? Just me then? OK.
3. The Electric Company. HEY YOU GUYS!!!! Come on. Bill Cosby and Rita Moreno and Morgan Freeman and Spider Man and that one where they face each other and say one part of the word together until it makes a new word and Easy Reader? Classic.
You know there aren’t any good things on TV for kids like this nowadays. Maybe Blues Clues. Maybe.
4 Comments
July 14, 2009 at 12:21 am
PBS has a revival of The Electric Company on in the afternoons now. It is mind-blowingly awful. Like, set-yourself-on-fire-or-even-watch-Power-Rangers awful.
Mister Rogers was my favorite by far; I loved those “Picture Picture” videos about how everything is made. I think it instilled in me an inquisitiveness that when combined with Belgian ale and WiFi keeps me up watching YouTube videos of factory assembly lines until well past midnight. So thanks, Mister Rogers. I guess…
July 14, 2009 at 6:36 am
I guess I could be gazing back in time through the rose colored glasses of childhood memory. I have a tendancy to make everything old seem awesome, even if it sucked at the time. I guess, in the long run, it keeps my old age happy!
July 25, 2009 at 12:33 am
Been crazy busy (started grad school) and haven’t had the chance to catch up with your blog in quite awhile. Haven’t blogged myself in ages and have no intention of picking it back up any time soon but hope to again sometime in the future. Evenings home, I let my kids picked the show we watch while I fix dinner. Most are a form of torture, but have you seen “Phineas and Ferb”? It is actually really well done. Almost always good for a chuckle. Though the classics will never be beat.
July 28, 2009 at 8:01 am
Grad School? Excellent! What are you studying?