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

Comments

[revme]

It's odd, because my mom claims that I used to watch Electric Company, but I don't remember a time when KCTS showed it, and I tend to remember almost everything from TV, from about being 3 or so. Jesus Christ, I still remember VEGETABLE SOUP, and _NO ONE_ knows that show. [_NO ONE_ isn't missing much either. From what little I remember of it, it was a bunch of poorly animated figures going around and doing presumably educational skits, intercut with live action people doing presumably educational skits. If I recall, the educational bits were less on the side of Actual Knowlege (but I seem to remember some of those, too, of the Math variety), but more on Interaction With Others, but it's been almost 20 years since I saw it last, so

[oddharmonic]

WGBH stopped showing Electric Company around 1984; I only remember that because I initially thought it was because we moved. Noggin pulled it for good, it seems, earlier this year. I am not happy about that, but hopefully it will be released on DVD like some eps of the Muppet Show have been

[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

[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.

[revme]

[con't from last]

But yes, I hate Maisy (If you're going to speak gibberish, does it have to be such a FUCKING AWFUL sound? I mean, god, scraping metal on metal sounds better than that. Unless they redubbed it since the last time I watched it with something that isn't like the past 6,000 years of Human Misery compressed into a single sound.) and Baby Bear is irritating. While Big Bird was never my favorite character, I liked that he was both Childlike but also Reasonable Eloquent. I mean, he wasn't about to go off and deliver a monologue on the use of old english from Shakespeare or anything, but he speaks very precisely and correctly, and if he DOES make an error, it's a reasonable one. None of that Bwaybwy Bweah cwahp. Or Elmo's sociopathic 3rd person. Correct English is AWESOME. People need to speak more correctly. Or at least a reasonable approximation of same.

also: "homeland of Wachovia" like "watch-over-ya"? Or is there another reference-type thing I'm missing?

[toddler_hiway]

Shakespeare wrote in modern english, but I probably shouldn't point that out because

a) It's lame
and
b) There's maybe a 10% chance that you said it just to get me to be lame and point out that Shakespeare wrote in modern english.

hell, I don't even like Shakespeare that much.

Also, I personally would watch Maisy if the sounds were actually metal-on-metal. The world needs children's shows that sound like Rejected.

[revme]

Yeah, it was one of those things where I sorta knew that, but was using Old English to mean "He done wrote lon' time 'go, so alla his stuff is ol'. An' it's in English, so it's therefo' Ol' English! Like that likker

[oddharmonic]

I'd have to get my hands on a copy of the original education report on Sesame Street (it pops up on eBay occasionally) for a cite, but I'm pretty sure one of the original proposals of what Sesame Street wanted to do was model correct English.

One of my favorite recent Big Bird moments was in Elmopalooza (1998); after they finally open the stuck door that's been preventing Jon Stewart from hosting the show, Big Bird takes the tape of "One Small Voice" to control room and before entering, he looks up at the sign and says "Con... trol... Room. Gee, all those years of living on Sesame Street sure paid off!"

Wachovia is a bank in the southeastern US. They have near-constant advertising on the NBC affiliate in Raleigh that range from forgettable to annoying.

[morganastar]

I don't know if you have it down there but the worst childrens show around lately is George Shrink, or as the spawn calls it "Joe Spink". Its just..*shakes head*.. stupid. What ever happened to the quality programming we had when we were young?

[revme]

Hm, is that the one with the kid who's either tiny or can be tiny at will? That's one of the ones that occasionally worms its way into my insomnia window. I tried to watch it once, but it sucked, so I changed it. It just struck me as boring and poorly done. Not really deserving of rage or anything, though, at least from me, but, well, I saw maybe a half episode max. I'd probably hate it more if I had to see it more.

[morganastar]

George Shrink is this little boy who's perminantely small and has all these helicopters and dumptrucks to assist him with his "big kid" stuff. They over-emphasize the "Size doesn't matter" thing a little too much.

[oddharmonic]

George Shrinks? Our local public TV station put that in the 3 PM slot a few months ago to replace Liberty's Kids, which I found much more annoying (fake anime style American Revolution stories, plus the theme song was done by some current teen pop star

[ex_dervish821]

baby bear irritates me SO MUCH.