Lowercase ‘n’
standing on a hill
the wind is very still
for the lowercase ‘n’
for some reason, that’s been buzzing around in my head lately. Glad I could get it out.
I always liked the early Electric Company episodes- they were seriously trippy. Anybody remember “It’s a word, it’s a plan, it’s Letterman”
Whoever put those shows together had to have been on some major hallucinogens.
I wouldn’t say I was afraid of them, exactly, but some of them did strike me as very weird. I was sort of gothic as a child, anyway, and some of these skits would keep me up at night.
The Capital I – not scary, but those little people, cleaning that I every day. EVERY DAMN DAY. What a life. Get up, clean the I, go to bed … day in and day out. This made me very sad, I loved the little I people, I wanted them to somehow break out of their limited I life, yet I somehow knew that the mindless act of repeating the I cleaning over and over was validating for them – if they DIDN’T clean the I, would they lose direction, fail to have meaning, drift through life always lamenting the loss of their destiny?
The alien things who are afraid of the clock striking – they probably have a name, but I don’t think I ever knew it. They made me very anxious. They had no learning curve AT ALL, and lived in fear. Truly the modern representation of the panic detailed by Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Bells.”
The Twiddlebugs – I had a love/hate thing going on with them. On the one hand, they were cute and clever, but at the same time, they steadfastly refused to see beyond the limits of their little twiddlebug world, even when faced with things that were right before their eyes. A shameful display of deliberate ignorance.
The guy who painted numbers on things – this freaked me out, you can’t go around painting on things that don’t belong to you!
I harbored a nasty and secret fantasy that someone would catch him in the act, and beat him to near-death, without mercy, on camera. However, this, along with the short of the kids who paint things (I think animals, and maybe ladybugs?) on clear window panes, was the root of an obsession I still have about painting on glass.
Oh… and I just remembered:
Muppet monster #1: Hat.
#2: Hat!
#3: Hat.
#1: Cat.
#2: Cat!
#3: Cat.
#1: Fat.
#2: Fat!
#3: Fat.
A beat, then from out of the background, PSYCHO MONSTER ON SPEED tears towards the screen:
“Seethefatcatsittinginthehatafatcatinahat (etc. etc.)”
Then he comes down and sheepishly retreats to the background.
Rinse and repeat. Traumatize scott evil.
Quoth zev_steinhart:
Nah, it was “immediately”. Trust me on this one.
But none of them really freaked me out. Probably the closest was Grover doing NEAR… [sub]far[/sub].
And does anyone else remember the llama? “Me and my llama, me and my llama, we’re going to the dentist today…”
I loved those little guys! I would look forward to their skits every time!
You know the ones with the typewriter, where he types out a word on himself, and something bad always happens to him on account of the word he’s typed? I absolutely dreaded those segments. He was such a nice little typewriter-- he deserved to have something nice happen, rather than getting caught in a puddle of G-L-U-E or being blown away by a strong gust of W-I-N-D. You know? I’d always watch, a little sweaty, hoping he’d type some kind of dessert or something. He never did.
Then there’s the skit with Bert and Ernie, where Ernie is holding a banana in his ear to keep the alligators away from Sesame Street. Bert points out that there aren’t any alligators on Sesame Street, so Ernie says it must be working. Aaaggh! What if he takes the banana out of his ear? Will the alligators come and eat everybody? Aaggh! (I didn’t get the joke, obviously.)
Oh, and how about the implication that there were elephants living with Oscar the Grouch in his garbage can? That ain’t right! There’s no room in there, and it probably stinks, too!
Of course, there’s also a selection of random skits that left an indelible impression on me for no discernible reason.
The one with the real hotdog, shot it time-lapse photography, getting placed in a bun, covered in mustard and onions and then having bites disappear from it until it was gone. Always got hungry after that one. And any of the ones with kids painting on glass. Oh, how I wanted to paint on glass! It was bound to be much more satisfying, not to mention permanent, to paint on windows and such! And the Ladybug’s Picnic Song:
1, 2, 3
4, 5, 6
7, 8, 9
10, 11, 12
And they all came down, to the ladybug’s picnic!
The lambs that would kidnap Bert in the middle of the night! The lambs!! No!!! Aaaahh!!!
I just saw that one the other day while watching with my 2 year old. I never thought that it was weird as a child, but as an adult I did wonder about the inspiration for the bit. Sesame never scared me or weirded me out as a child.
I still do my part in annoying the HELL out of LilMiss with the pinball 1…2…3…4…5… For some reason I liked that bit.
What always got me were the morphing vegetables/fruits made out of clay. They bugged me.
What’s NOGGIN ???
How do I get it?
Gotta do a web search gotta do a web search!!!
I actually asked the woman at the WGBH booth at the last library conference if they were offering Electric Company on VHS or DVD (they didn’t produce it, but they have ties to it) and she said not yet, they are having trouble securing all the rights.
Aaargh. Gotta buy Electric Company.
Whew - I need a beer. Luckily it’s Friday near quittin’ time.
Good Lord. I sang this song LAST NIGHT while dealing cards, and had no idea where it came from or why. My friends thought I was trying to rattle them. You forgot to say that “one more makes diez” is sung about five octaves higher than the rest of the song…
I always got scared when the Count was counting things and started laughting and they had thunder and lightning on the soundtrack…
There was a band in the Provo, Utah area a few years ago–I have no idea if they’re still around–they were called Idiots on Guitar for a while and then Warren Trenchcoat, or something like that. Anyway, they did a concert at BYU as part of the annual Life, The Universe and Everything symposium, and they did a very cool a cappella cover of “We All Live in the Capital I.” The funniest thing was the reactions in the audience–everybody saying, “Oh! I know that song! What’s that from? I know it!”
Okay, this really happened. Anyone remember a bunch of little things that looked like KIX cereal that rolled around. They seemed to have to form a number 12.
Remember a guy looking for a 20? The gorilla had it.
How about where everything including a smoking 707 went backward?
Or what would happen if there were no traffic lights?
How about Herbert Birdsfoot?
Me and my llama.
Suddenly popped into my head yesterday for no Godly reason.
-Myron
Does anyone remember a counting skit that was live action, had dancing girls that were singing about whatever number represented how many of them. Then one of them would fall in a hole or get pulled away by a hook and they’d sing about the new number.
It messed me up good. I always thought there was some strange fetish to it that I never quite understood.
OK this one made me cry:
“One, two, two little cats…” The little kitties in the dollhouse. Then the dollhouse collapses or something. Poor kitties. 
Anyone remember that one?
Freaked me out? NO! I loved those skits! The typewriter, Teeny Little Superguy, the pinball machine, the yip-yips… this is the reason I think today’s incarnation of the Street of Sesame is crap. Craptacular, in fact.
My favorite was the one where Ernie and Bert went fishing. Heeeeeeeere fishyfishyfishyfishyfishy!
I loved the pinball machine and all the farout journeys the ball took.
Loved the “hat, cat, fat” monsters because the music was so cool.
Loved the “manamana” song, I’ve got to go buy some Esquivel music now.
Hated the guy painting numbers also, just paint the damn number already!
The “yipyipyip” monsters were irritating because they never communicated, just got together and made noise.
I used to think Oscar had a whole underground complex of tunnels under Sesame Street or his trash can linked up with the sewers and I wondered why he never poped up from under the manhole covers.
I also used to use to the Spanish words they taught us in those little shorts with Maria (like abierto/cerrado) in conversation because I thought they were a more complex form of English that adults used. No one told me they were another language when I was little.
Daddy Dear from Sesame Street definitely freaked me out when I was a kid… hell it still freaks me out a little now. There’s something almost menacing about the last verse.
But it’s still way cool.
There was this really surreal muppet sketch about two aliens on the Planet of Snoo. I think it was supposed to teach about cooperation, but the set was dark and surreal and the music was all cacophanic and trippy in an attempt to sound alien. It freaked the hell out of me every time. I used to run out of the room screaming in terror whenever that came on.
The Planet of Snoo-Snoo would have much more fun to watch.
kingpengvin wrote:
The baker was portrayed by JeanPaul Jenack, a long-time acquaintance of mine. He has been active in childrens circus projects for the past twenty years or so, produces juggling equipment, and writes poetry. He has given up on teaching me to ride a unicycle.