Catching up with Sesame Street

Sesame Friends
Originally uploaded by kristn1284

After falling a few months short of my new parent resolve to follow the American Pediatric Association recommendation of no television until age 2 (and while I was at it, I surpassed the no more than 1 hour per day until age 5 recommendation by adding Mr. Roger to our line-up) by letting Annabelle start watching Sesame Street in January. It is no coincidence this coincided with Nate’s arrival and my need to have her not need me for at least an hour a day. She really liked the Sesame characters in her books and was excited to see them every day, she is not so into the cartoons and claymation skits between but sure does love those puppets.

Not having watched Sesame Street myself since the twins were little 22 years ago (I heard the gasp from those of you who remember them in diapers, Yes, they are graduating college in a few months) I sat down to find out what was going in the hood since my last visit.

Now I will bring you up to date on what is going on, in case you have missed out.

• Probably the most surprising thing was now everyone can see/talk to Snuffleupagus, Gone are the days when everyone treats Big Bird like the crazy maiden aunt with too many cats and a yard full of gnomes named Norman. I also find Snuffy completely annoying. He talks slow, moves slow, even blinks slow. I have never known another wooly mammoth so this may be the norm for his species, but if he was my slow talking friend I would have to multi-task while having a conversation.

• Mr. Hooper’s store is still open, I knew Mr. Hooper couldn’t still be around but was happy to see they kept the name intact. It is now being run by a young fellow named Alan. I worry about the future of Hooper’s store though with Alan in charge, he does not seem to have a lot of business sense. For example: last week he had a “batch” off cookies for sale but there were only like 6 on the plate. Of course Cookie Monster mowed through these less than 5 seconds. Alan got all incredulous then went to the back to make more. He came back with – you guessed it—6 more cookies. Either he has the worlds smallest batch recipe or is being stingy with his break & bakes but either way he is not going to make any money putting out 6 cookies at a time. Hell, I can eat 6 cookies between the cookie sheet and the cooling rack, no problem.

• The Count is still as OCD as ever. I find it surprising no one has identified this and found him some medication. Just the other day he bought 19 toys from Big Bird just so he could line them up and count them. The weird part was he paid 1000 birdseeds for them, if he really needed to count he could have got more bang for his buck with the 1000 birdseeds. Maybe he was sick of counting the birdseeds, I don’t know. He still has enough testosterone after all these years to create thunder & lightening with his laugh, which I always found super cool.

• Ernie & Bert have this new segment. It is Claymation. It starts out with Ernie & Bert in their separate twin beds. Ernie wakes up smiling and Bert’s bed begins to rock. Ernie climbs into Bert’s bed straddling behind him and off they go to have an adventure. When it is over, Ernie jumps back into his bed and immediately falls asleep. Bert’s bed continues to rock a bit. That is all I’m saying. Not that there is anything wrong with that it is just that I would think if they do not want to perpetuate a rumor this is not the way to go about it.

• There are several new puppets/monsters. I firmly believe Elmo has some sort of subliminal message written in his fur that turn small children into cult following hystericals.

• I remember back when the twins were little it was a big deal that they were going to portray a divorce on the show with Susan & Gordon. Well Gordon is still on, still a bachelor. He really only hangs out with puppets, does his laundry at the laundry mat and occasionally plays golf with Alan. I am guessing Match.com hasn’t done very well for him in a community mostly populated with large yellow birds, puppets and wooly mammoths. He seems content with it though.

• They have really cool guest stars on to explain some things. The ones sticking in my head now are Miranda “the Nazi” from Grey’s Anatomy, LL Cool J and Doogie-I-believe-he-goes-by-the-name-Barney-now Houser.

• Luis & Maria are still on and still married. Last I saw they had an awesome Dancing with the Stars type number where they invited the letter of the day to join them. Maybe that is the secret to their longevity.

• There is this new character Murray that has a little lamb friend named Ovejita (little lamb in Spanish). Everyday this hyper little lamb runs all around taking Murray to a different school. She gives him clues in Spanish and he has to figure out where they are going, usually by saying “Oh, adios means good-bye in Spanish!” or whatever. Annabelle loves this and says everything she is doing is in Spanish. “I am eating in Spanish, I am running in Spanish” etc. I don’t think she gets it, but the exposure to another language is great.

That is about it – still singing & dancing, hanging out. I just heard the government is cutting funding which is disappointing.