Ask and ye shall receive...

Lil' Sis left a comment in my previous post, asking if there was anything from the Sesame Street Disco album out there. When we were little, we had that album on vinyl...we'd sing and dance to it, and pretty much had the whole thing memorized.

Lil' Sis, check it out: none other than the Cookie Monster classic Me Lost Me Cookie at the Disco!



LH

Tripping down amnesia lane...

My last entry was about happy songs...in one of the comments, hereistand provided a link to a Sesame Street oldie but goodie: What's The Name of That Song?



Thanks to the magic of YouTube, it's now possible to peruse these wonderful old Sesame Street clips, many of which will probably never be seen again on TV, if only for the sake of continuity. Bob, Gordon, Olivia, Maria, and Luis are all still on the show, but as one might guess, they've all aged considerably...I could just imagine the look on Kiddo's face if these people who look sorta like the characters he knows (but wearing weird clothes and hairstyles) and with those characters' voices suddenly broke into song on tomorrow's episode of Sesame Street.

Yeah, I understand why they can't run some of these clips. But with others, it's a crying shame.

Take for example anything having to do with Kermit the Frog. Correct me if I'm off-base, but it's my understanding that after Jim Henson's death, his family had some sort of dispute with the Children's Television Workshop which resulted in them denying CTW's use of Kermit whatsoever in future Sesame Street episodes. No matter what the reason, the bottom line is that there's an entire generation of kids missing out on classics like this "Sesame Street Newsflash" from Peter Piper's Pickle Patch:



Well, after looking up those two clips, I couldn't just stop there, could I? My next stop on my Sesame Street journey was the segment that, as a kid, I lived for. Every episode, I watch, hoping this segment would be a part of it. And when it did come on, I'd sing along, run around, and just make a general fool of myself. Still brings warm fuzzy feelings when I hear it. It's the song Hard Workin' Dog:



And of course, no exploration of Sesame Street would be complete without a classic Bert and Ernie sketch. This is one that I always loved...it all starts when Ernie broke the cookie jar...but then the cookies had to go somewhere, so he put them in the sugar bowl...and...well, you can see where it's going:



So many wonderful old clips and sketches...I could spend all day doing this if I let myself! So one last clip. One of the things they've done (and still continue to do) that I just love are the unrehearsed one-on-one conversations between a muppet and a young child. In this one, Kermit's trying to get a little girl to sing the alphabet. Adorable and hilarious!



LH

"Happyness"

For our weekly summertime "God at the Movies" I've been having at church, today we watched The Pursuit of Happyness. (And yes, the "y" is supposed to be in there...it's part of the movie.)

At any rate, I had forgotten exactly how much that movie moved me. Sweetie and I saw it in the theater when it first came out, and today was my second viewing. Granted, I've never been homeless, and I pray I never find myself in that sort of situation. But there were a few things in that movie that just resonated with me:

• Will Smith's character Chris was a smart guy. He was a good, decent person who made some bad choices and found himself in a hole most people would have forever despaired of digging out of. And the more he tried to do the right thing, the more it seemed life was against him. I remember that blank look on his face when yet another thing went wrong in his life, I remember the upbeat front he put on for those around him while inside he beat himself up, I remember the promises that he knew were empty that things were going to get better--just one break and he'd be able to get on his feet again...and waiting in vain as that break seemingly never came. I don't think I'm overdramatizing to say that I remember all of those emotions from my own life, a decade or so ago. It's the same reason why my interaction with Derek a couple of weeks ago moved me so much. I'm in such a different place now--but I'll never forget where I was.
• One of the main things I took away from the movie was this: you never know if the guy you see in line at the soup kitchen is spending the day as a brokerage intern, and you never know if the brokerage intern at the office is spending his nights on the street. The movie is a stark reminder that we can't take for granted that the people we share time with during the day are in the same life situation we are. I'll never forget the anger and resentment I felt when I was working part time at a church as director of music--I played the organ and directed a voice choir and two bell choirs. At night I'd go home to a mattress on the floor in a roach infested apartment on the wrong side of town. I remember thinking to myself, "these people have no idea about the life I live." Just like the boss in the movie had no idea when he asked Will Smith's character to spot him 5 bucks for cab fare that he was sentencing him to a date with donating blood for money to make up the extra he needed for that day, the folks at my church had no idea about how I had every dollar in my budget accounted for by some necessity (and then some), and that the extra 5 or 10 bucks for this fundraiser or that outing was literally something I didn't have. They had no idea that the day my car came within hours of being reposessed was a Wednesday, and that it was a minor miracle I was able to conduct choir and bell rehearsal that night. Or the day I was reprimanded for wearing a sweatshirt to church to play organ for a Wednesday evening Lenten service, that was literally the only piece of clean laundry I had because I couldn't afford to go to the laundromat that week. But I know I've been guilty in my own life of some of the same behavior and making some of the same assumptions. The movie serves as an excellent reminder of what a mistake that is.
• The last thing that really hit home in The Pursuit of Happyness was a line Will Smith's character had, which was something to the effect of "I remember when I'd get a good grade on a test in school, how I'd imagine all of the great things my good grades would allow me to be in the future. But I never became any of them." As a college graduate first driving a daycare van, then going into outbound telemarketing to make a little more money ($8 an hour versus $6), I remember thinking the same things. How the hell did I get where I was? How did this happen?

I'm glad those days are behind me. But I'm glad I went through them. They helped make me the person I am now.

And they helped make The Pursuit of Happyness that much more meaningful to me.

LH

Three years ago...

About a week and a half ago, Kiddo turned 3.

My little baby is 3 years old.

Of course, that night after Kiddo went to bed Sweetie and I had to pull out the old videotape of the days surrounding his birth. We laughed at the pile of luggage I lugged to the hospital room (hmmmm...is that why it's called "luggage", because you "lug" it everywhere?), winced as we watched Sweetie's pain during early labor, laughed again at the sudden change in her demeanor AFTER the epidural, cried as he was born, and went through the whole range of crazy emotions we felt in the following 3 or 4 days, emotions intensified by an INCREDIBLE lack of sleep.

On the one hand, it felt like yesterday.

On the other hand, it seemed like a lifetime ago.

I remember taking him home from the hospital. As we got into the car, Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" was playing on the radio--we were videotaping ourselves driving away, and with the music and the freshly fallen snow outside, it honestly sounded like a movie soundtrack. One of these days, if I have a chance to convert that video to digital, I'll have to post it because it's entirely too funny. I remember driving home white-knuckled, more nervous than I've ever been behind a wheel since I was a teenager learning the ropes in an empty parking lot, knowing that I had this brand new life that I was responsible for in the back seat.

I remember walking into the house, setting Kiddo down in his carrier, looking at Sweetie helplessly and both of us saying to each other, "okay, what do we do now?"

I remember the first diaper change at home. Now, you need to realize that I've changed many a diaper in my day, even before Kiddo was born. I did a lot of babysitting growing up, and worked for a time at a child care center. But I made a classic mistake for this first "at-home" changing. He had pooped a little bit, and I had him on the couch, butt facing outward, as I knelt with my face at butt level, getting ready to wipe him off. Well, you can guess what happened next. That's right, he wasn't quite done pooping yet. Ever had a faceful of baby diarrhea? No? I swear, it was something right out some B-grade new parent comedy movie, except if it had happened in a movie I would have said "that's too unrealistic, that NEVER would happen in real life!"

I remember having the entire Nick at Nite lineup from midnight to 6 AM memorized.

"Memories...light the corners of my mind...wispy watercolor memories...of the way we were..."

Happy belated birthday, Kiddo.

LH