Sweeping the Clouds Away

Telly and his dolly

So, I’ve been putting off blogging because I promised a big post about my San Francisco trip, and for some reason that seems like a lot of work. As time wore on, I felt it was embarrassingly late to post about month-old adventures, but then Miss Renee did it, and it was just fine. Point is, I will get to the SF post when I feel like it, which is definitely not now.

Right now I feel like blogging about a subject that is, as many of you know, near and dear to my heart: Sesame Street. In my humble opinion, Sesame Street is the best television program ever made. It’s educational, it’s funny, it’s timeless, it’s commercial-free, and it invented PC only to have others blow the concept wholly out of proportion.

I grew up watching Sesame Street—as Mary Ess will tell you, when I was three I simply referred to the show as “The Favorite.” At five, I won a Sesame Street coloring contest sponsored by JC Penney; my prize was a new wardrobe of awesome Sesame Street duds. As a teenager, I preferred to spend any sick days lying on the couch, sipping Sprite and watching Sesame Street rather than Ricki Lake or soaps or other daytime fare. When I was in college and worked at KBYU Master Control, I always volunteered for the early Monday shift (12:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m.), because that’s when we aired all five of the previous week’s Sesame Street episodes back to back.

I’ve got Sesame Street on the mind because the other day I saw a news blurb on Sesame Street Old School Vol. 2, which is a “best of” from 1974-1979. I’m only slightly embarrassed to say that’s almost the exact timeframe in which I watched it the most. This got me thinking about my own favorite Sesame Street sketches, which are as follows (the ones with the asterisk [*] are not necessarily “old school” but I still love them).

1. Me and My Llama
2. My Name is Fred
3. "A loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter"
4. The Triangle Song (by Telly, not the one with James Blunt, though)*
5. “Ten! Root Beer! Floats!”
6. The Ladybugs’ Picnic
7. Lost Dog Flyer
8. Anytime Bert’s opining about his bottle cap collection
9. That one time where Elmo learned to brush his teeth only, having no teeth, he used an ear of corn*
10. Monsterpiece Theater

Sure, Elmo, Ernie and Oscar are great, but a bit overdone don’t you think? Here are my personal favorite Sesame Street characters:

1. Telly (the self-conscious one)
2. Baby Bear* (the worry-wart)
3. Telly & Baby Bear in any scene together (hi-larious)
4. Slimey
5. The Yip Yips
6. Prairie Dawn
7. Those conjoined monsters that sound out words by bringing them together
8. The Count (actual eastern European royalty, or mere Rocky Horror fan roaming the neighborhood—you be the judge)
9. That adorable talking loaf of bread in the fridge full of talking food
10.LeVar Burton (okay, so he wasn’t on Sesame Street–but he should have been!)

Anyhow, feel free to register your own faves in the comments section.