Worm Parking Only

James Lileks' Bleat today on his daughter's early mastery of counting and language led him to a critical appraisal of Sesame Street which was right on target:

"Thank Sesame Street? No. We just watch the Elmo and Count portion. Most of Sesame Street bugs me and bores her. The theme annoys me. Big Bird annoys me. The location segments appear to be set in this Serpico-era New York where kids have to get tetanus shots before they touch any of the playground equipment, and the parents all look like it’s 1974. (Possibly because the film is old, and it is 1974.) It’s often smug and self-righteous - today, for example, there was this worm who was about to take the worm subway. The human person was praising the worm for taking the worm subway instead of driving a car, and said 'when you drove the worm car you were stuck in traffic, and you couldn’t find a parking spot! I’ll bet you’re so much happier now that you have the worm subway.' Jebus."

Even by the 1980s I had begun to think that the live-action shots of kids running around on the playground looked disturbingly gritty and dated. As if all of the featured children were from some unusually rough public housing project and had to be sent to the public park where they filmed part of Sesame Street to keep them away from the dealers and pimps in the hallways. That, combined with the PC indoctrination, make Thunder Cats seem like a viable viewing alternative.