In Honor of Veteran's Day

Sesame Street Turns 40

Yes it does! And in honor of this achievement, I present some old school songs from the series. My era of Sesame Street watching was the late 70s/early 80s, but these songs were a part of the show even before that.

Take a Breath!



If I Could Only Paddle Like a Doggie Oughta Paddle


There's a Bird On Me


Imagination (love this one!)
That's About the Size of It (really love this one!)


Somebody Come and Play


I Love Trash (an orange Oscar? Yep)


Milk (yet another favorite!)


The Alligator King


It's Not Easy Being Green (can't have a Sesame Street retrospective without Kermit)


And finally, quite possibly the most famous Sesame Street song of all, Sing.


This post is brought to you by the letter B and the number 8.

Prediction of the Internet From 1969

In the 1960s, The US military created ARPANET, the predecessor to today's Internet. It was originally conceived to be used for military and university applications. However, a forward thinker was able to see the potential for use of the 'Net by everyone. Here is how the Internet was envisioned back in 1969. Not too far off the mark, although a little sexist.



If only I could watch this clip, or any YouTube clip for that manner. A new Flash player came out last week, but my workplace hasn't updated it yet. Me sad :(

Starcrash Film Trailer from 1979

Strange things wind up in my "Recommended For You" section of my YouTube account all the time. Some I wish never popped in there, and others I'm thrilled to discover. The following is an example of the latter.

This is the trailer for a movie from 1979 called Starcrash. Wow. This is a blatant ripoff of Star Wars, except it features two things the first Star Wars film doesn't have. A series of scantilly clad women...

...and David Hasselhoff.

I must see this movie.



Yes, I must see this movie!

Who the Hell is Charlotte Braun?

That's exactly what I asked when I read a tweet from Chris Sims of the Invincible Super Blog the other day about this situation.

In case you haven't noticed, I'm one of the world's biggest Peanuts fans, and I consider myself a near-expert on the history of the strip and the animated TV specials. So it came as quite a surprise when I learned of a character that only appeared in ten strips from November 1954 to February 1955. Her name was Charlotte Braun, and she was supposed to be a female analog to Charlie Brown (hence her name). However, the character would become angry upon hearing someone say this, as she hated Charlie Brown. Her personality was very abrasive, and in fact she was a sort of predecessor to how Lucy and Sally would behave later on in the strip.

However, creator Charles Schulz became disenchanted with the character and decided to drop her quickly. His decision may have been influenced by a letter he received from an Elizabeth Swain, who complained about Charlotte. Schulz's acerbic response can be seen here.

I'm more surprised that I hadn't heard about this sooner than the dark humor Schulz applies to his letter. Although it wasn't always apparent in his strips, her certainly had a snarky sense of humor, especially for a Midwestern boy. I personally find the letter very funny.

Here's hoping none of you readers ever give me "The Ax!"

Oh, one more thing:

DAMN YANKEES!




Thanks, Phillies, for a fantastic season. See you at spring training!

Holy crap! I got mentioned in the Guardian!

I was checking my blog stats yesterday and noticed that I had over 120 hits on Halloween, much to my surprise. I thought people would be much too busy to read many blogs on that day. I then noticed that I had quite a number of hits from England on this one day, which I also found odd. Then I noticed why.

The Guardian is a long running and well established newspaper and Web site in the UK. In their Technology section, they gave a shout-out to my blog in an Internet reviews column. Awesome! Thanks to column author Johnny Dee for highlighting my site. Read the column here!

On, one more thing:

GO PHILLIES!

Welcome, New Readers, to my 2-Year Anniversary!

Hello everyone! I hope you all enjoyed my contributions to the Countdown to Halloween. I'm sure many of you are sad to see the season go, but cheer up kitten! November is a great month. The crisp autumn air, walks through the fallen leaves--it's a nice month to take a breather and experience some serentiy before the holiday rush. And a great way to do that--read my blog! And if it's not so serene, read my blog anyway :)

Friday, October 30th marked my 2-year anniversary as a blogger. I've been thrilled to write it since then, and I like to take a few moments to look back at the previous year to see how the blog shapes up. Last year I started highlighting posts that I thought represented most clearly the goal of the blog, which posts were more popular, and which posts I simply like as my favorites. I label these posts "The Best of Me and You." My latest entries into this category for 2009 include:

The Flintstones Christmas Episode
Saturday Supercade
My Saturday Morning Recreated feature
And Now a Public Service Announcement---From Superman!
Commercials for Zeller's Department Stores Starring Batman

There will be others as well. This feature should be especially helpful for new readers who have just discovered my blog this past month. Please also feel free to check out all of my archives via the labels to the right. If you are a new reader, please stick around! I'm delighted to have you here.

Thanks!