You know what? I've given up on Saturday Night Live for my parody and satire. I'm turning to Sesame Street from now on. Sure it may be skewed to children, but at least I expect it. SNL, who should be trying to skew towards me, ends up hitting the lowest common denominator which is far below children and, most often, insulting. If you're a fan of Mad Men - enjoy!
I remember this from when I was a kid. Starts off a bit melancholy then takes a bizarre left turn that Sesame Street cartoon shorts were so good at. Do not pity the lower case n.
Here's my Sesame Street search engine analogy:
Bing = 8
Yahoo = 4
Ask = 2
Google = 9
Yeah, I know the metaphor doesn't totally hold up, but it gives a new perspective on the happy-go-lucky Ernie and the creepy pusher trying to make the sale.
Another brilliant turn of Cookie Monster as Alistair Cookie on Monsterpiece Theatre doing "Conservations With My Father". Everything with Cookie Monster is an instant classic and here the blue fuzzball goes "green"... maybe he should be called eCookie Monster... "Me get you drift Pop!"
Since I've been getting some nice responses from the two installments of Sesame Surrealism, and since it's too late to post a long and rambling lovehate about the minutae that is my pop cultured life, I give you Sesame Songs.
To refresh you on the basic concept, so many of the animated clips on Sesame Street, completely normal within the context of the show when we were kids, are odd to downright bizarre when watched on their own years later. The songs, however, were sometimes completely groovy and endlessly catchy.
Sunny days sweepin' the clouds away... I hope you are inspired to Do The Pigeon... that sounded dirty and probably illegal.
What can I say? In the context of the show, great learning moments. On their own, it's like someone dropped the brown acid at Woodstock.
If the stats developed by the UN are right, and the BBC hasn't misrepresented them at all, and I can wrap my head around this number, there are 1,000,000,000 (that's one billion folks) frogs culled to get to the world's plates every year:
"Frogs legs are on the menu at school cafeterias in Europe, market stalls and dinner tables across Asia to high end restaurants throughout the world," said Corey Bradshaw from Adelaide University in Australia. "Amphibians are already the most threatened animal group yet assessed because of disease, habitat loss and climate change - man's massive appetite for their legs is not helping."
Now while I don't want to even think about the numbers for chickens, cows, fish, or pigs, I've only got one thing to say. If you can watch Kermit sing "It's Not Easy Being Green" and ever want to eat a frog again, you have no heart... or you may be the Swedish Chef.
Within the context of watching Sesame Street as a child, most of their short cartoon clips seemed completely normal. Outside of such a context these clips are small surreal bits that seem better matched with Sprockets than Sesame.
...and just because I couldn't resist, the Count's origin with Cookie
Monster. The best part - Cookie's exit at the very end!