Crayons are made by very happy old people!
Just today I was able to google up a Sesame street sequence I saw one time when I was six. (It was [url=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjEE5Mf24vg”]Celia Cruz and Big Bird singing a Cuban song about hummingbirds.[/url)
I love the Internet for letting me find this, but what’s even freakier is that I’ve retained it all that time after (and I’m certain of this) seeing it only once. I would have been able to hum you the melody of the chorus and even blibber out a decent phonetic approximation of the Spanish lyrics.
O RLY? Well, I suppose that accounts for that Pointer Sisters pinball numbers sequence.
Strange how he focuses on the misconstruing of “phonics” in the Times article, and completely ignores this gross falsehood, which is just as serious, if not more:
Whole language doesn’t accept errors in reading material. It advocates not obsessing about every little spelling error all the time when learners begin to write. But even that is not its main point.
And it’s disappointing that Liberman doesn’t even question these glibly tossed and unsubstantiated claims:
If anything, phonics is more a default than whole language, in my experience. (It’s easier to teach.) In any case, it’s nearly impossible to know what teachers are actually doing unless you can monitor all classrooms all the time, and as far as I know, no one has done this. And:
Where does he (Sidenberg) pull these from?
But I agree with Liberman’s main point. Junie B. is just a child author trying to brand herself.
I love YouTube!!!
This is the stuff that makes life worth living.
That milk video is just so simple, relaxed, and charming, it actually brought a tear to my eye. I had forgotten the “man rushing because the baby needs milk” part and that got a chuckle from me.
Parente’s bio says she studied marketing and economics at Rutgers. Why am I not surprised? A successful and unique creative enterprise just should not be tinkered with.
Oh, well.
Look up Stan Freberg’s sketch “Elderly Man River” from episodes 6 and 15 of his 1957 radio show. A censor forces him to change the song for, among other reasons, “the chillllldren.”
From “Frauds on the Fairies” by Charles Dickens (1853) http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/pva/pva239.html:
Classic! This is another one that I can remember the words to after 30some years…
Don’t make me link “Wanda the Witch” and “Capital I” again, people.
Yip yip yip yip! Telephone. Tel-e-phone. Rrrrrrring!!!
I was a very small child in the 1970’s and I loved Sesame Street because of those chicks with big hair and tight pants. No one could tell me they didn’t have a hair pie to match even at 4 years old. Maybe that is what people are concerned with.
Oh I just found one that I had been wanting to see again since forever. Gone With the Wind: http://youtube.com/watch?v=qa2pdCgUzrE
Especially disturbing is the squealing pig impaled on the chandelier.
One of the finest books ever written. And yes, I currently own it.
Lovable, furry old Grover.
Sesame Street is just a shadow of what it was. Noggin had a show called “Play with Me Sesame” that was far more tolerable than the Elmo-infested crap that is now Sesame Street.
Fortunately for me, my daughter does not like Elmo at all. (Unfortunately for me, she has Elmo’s Potty Time)
Elmo bugs the hell out of me 99.9% of the time. The only exception is that for about 20 seconds I think that “Elmo’s Song” is kind of cute. Then I get very sick of it.
Remember the song “I, Grover”? Now that song was cute all the way through. I used to have it on an album when I was a kid. Man… now I wanna hear that song…
*…Some mornings I wake up
I feel so good and new
I find my socks myself
I put my shoes on too
The feet are right, the feet are right
Is it not wonderful that the feet are right?
I, Grover, am big and tall
and very smart and kind of cute and wonderful
I think that there is nothing I cannot do
You can get the feet right too…*
The best part is when he builds a brick wall over the next page. “Did you know you are very strong?”
Boy, that milk short scared the crap out of me as a kid. It was the music, I think. “Miiiiiiiiiiiiiiilk!!!” And the baby’s crying and the guy’s running around with weird machinery like the baby’s going to die if she doesn’t get milk. Miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiilk!! It was the only thing on Sesame Street that ever upset me.
Of course, I was also secretly a little afraid of There’s a Monster at the End of This Book, even though it was one of my most favorite books ever. It was the whole meta-nature of the thing that tripped me out. I probably became an English major just to psychologically process the lessons unwillingly learned at Grover’s furry and cute knee. 
Let me guess. The monster was Grover, right?
Dude, use a spoiler box.
:rolleyes:
Like any reasonable adult could argue that the “hidden” gag in Special Letters Unit was intended for kids.
I’ve been singing "Roosevelt Franklin-ahhhhhhhh-Elementary School" for almost 40 years, and I knew I got it from Sesame Street because I could always picture the school in my head…but I never paused to think about it, and how something could stick that long.
One thing about Sesame Street was that, as a grouchy kid, I was disturbed by the nice people and the whole friendly neighbor thing. I actually grew up in the ‘inner city’ and people weren’t nice. They were a product of the miserable late 60’s to early 70’s, and I didn’t feel comfortable with the nice people. Oscar I got. Big Bird annoyed me. Mr. Hooper? Bah - please that was uncomfortable - he didn’t sit well with me.
I like anything that was a film clip about a crayon factory or some farm animals. Please, I don’t need to see the actual Sesame Street anymore. Show me something else.
MAD did a spoof of Sesame Street that I saw in the late 70’s or circa 1980 that was great. I was about 13 when I read it and felt sooooo much better that someone could take shots at the show.
Funny thing is that one of my most memorable things about SS is the end, when they (PBS) switched over to “The Electric Compannnnnnyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy”. But I was kinda ticked that I didn’t get why they named a show after a utility company.