Never watch children's television with me.

[oddharmonic]

To counter their fabulous weekday children's programming (kids' stuff from 0700 or 0730 to 1800 except for an hour and a half in the early afternoon which is either arts/crafts or women's issues, then a half hour of a GED or ESL program), the statewide PBS in North Carolina puts their Saturday morning programming really early so there's crap to

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[revme]

One of these days I'll watch the Electric Company, and maybe it'll be one of the ones Tom Lehrer did a thing for. That'd be awesome. Although, in Elementary school, I did see this one Filmstrip that had "Pollution" (From TWTYTW) in it, with an animated bird host. I can't remember if the filmstrip was narrated by Tom Lehrer too, but it did have that song. I think at the time I either didn't know who Lehrer was, or if I did, I had pretty much only known him from stuff on Revisited/Evening Wasted With that got played on the Fake-Dr.-Demento show, because I remember being _really_ impressed with the "Like lambs to the slaughter/they're drinking the water/and breathing/the air" bit.

Rightfully so, as it's an awesome bit of the song.

Heheh, yeah. I like shows like that. For a long time, I was addicted to this remedial reading show starring Famous Amos. It was for adults learning to read. My parents didn't get why I liked it. Then they took it off, and then I went back to watching the news, and then probably MASH. This was around the time when on weekends, some cable channel would turn into the deaf network. Which I'd watch usually, although I liked it best when they'd have subtitles, rather than being all in sign language. Odd thing is, I seem to remember there being actual ambient (nature and stuff, I mean, ambient relating to the images, not just a hum or anything) noise (I mean, on the all sign-language ones.)

[Side note: "Whatever Happened To Robot Jones" just showed the one where they watch the music video for "The Nudist and Mr. Pendleton" which is, to date, the only good thing about that show. Only it's _REALLY_ good. It's this sort of 60s Pastiche Rock Song, and the character/environmental design is all by Paul Coker, Jr (guy who worked for Mad Magzaine for _YEARS_, he might still be there even, I haven't got an issue since about 2000-1, and he also worked with Rankin Bass for a long, long time, doing character designs for their specials, including most of the Beloved Christmas Specials, like Frosty, Santa Claus is Coming To Town, Rudolph, and then a bunch of the ones that only I remember, because I really like Christmas Specials) so it's extra neato. Pity the rest of the show is unwatchable, aside from the intersting decision they made to use all sorts of muted colors to make it look like it's an old-unrestored 1970s independent-studio-type cartoon. Actually, kinda like the aforementioned Vegetable Soup.]

Anyway, those American Girls things, those were those things about 10 years ago, where they'd be books about, say, Molly, and then you'd read the book and then go "wow, I am compelled to consume!" and then buy the Molly Doll and then make up your own Frontier Schoolmarm Adventures with Molly and your Other Dolls Like Jane, Susie And Mr. Twibblepants the Giant Talking Frog, right? I remember when that was the Big Fad, then it sorta seemed to disappear.

[oddharmonic]

As soon as I manage to get a couple of episodes on tape, I'll make a copy for you. (I'm hoping Noggin sticks it back in their overnight stuff.)

I've watched that series! The series I didn't get to see the last episode of was Connect With English, which I swear had the most addictive theme song ever.

Molly's the WWII-era doll, but they're booming -- there was only three dolls in the series when a classmate showed me the catalog in third grade, but now there's eight American Girls, plus the American Girl of Today line from which you can select the combination of eye, skin and hair color for the doll. They're still absurdly expensive, which makes me wonder how much I could sell mine (Samantha, the Victorian doll, which I saved up for and bought when I was 12) for on eBay or someplace.