Creepy things on "Sesame Street"
James Kibo Parry
>
> well, when I was 4, the sound of a piano being destroyed really scared me.
> It occurred during one segment where a piano was being moved, I believe,
> into/out of Oscar's can piece by piece (first the white keys, then the
> black keys, etc.) And between each piece there was a horrible horrible
> ruckus with random notes and crashing sounds.
This was presumably during one of the many segments concerning de-segregation
and Oscar's piano exploded because he put all the white keys on the left
and all the back keys on the right. And then Schroeder tried to play
Beethoven on it.
> I also became scared of that pinball machine that counted to twelve
> because one time, at the end of that segment, instead of immediately
> cutting to the next scene, they played that horrible horrible sound
> at the end and then cut to the next scene.
I loved that faux Peter Max-style pinball machine. I still do.
However, I have intellectual difficulties with the version of it that
counts to "1". I assume they did all twelve versions, although I haven't
catalogged them (I've probably seen them all, though.) The one where
the ball hits Some Thing and then the voice yells "ONE!!!" and then the
ball hits Another Thing and the voice yells "ONE!!!" is just
too weird. They should also have a "zero".
Also, I like how there's sky behind the pinball machine on the left
and outer space behind it on the right and there's this little zeppelin
that goes from the clouds into outer space while you watch.
> I also remember our PBS affiliate had a lot of "AUDIO DIFFICULTIES"
> during children's programming. The sound would cut out and words
> that I could sound out but not understand were at the bottom of the
> screen.
This was presumably before they decided that "Sesame Street" needed
to be 1/3 English, 1/3 Spanish, and 1/3 American Sign Language.
(Now they just leave off the "AUDIO DIFFICULTIES" caption.)
Is it just my imagination, or does every local PBS station have bad audio?
Except for WGBH in Boston, of course, but it's special. All the others
transmit crackly sound with the gain turned up so high that everything
becomes muffled mumbling at maximum volume.
-- K.
I have trouble understanding what
the Teletubbies are saying.
James Kibo Parry
>
> I found it very very disturbing when Bert's TV went on the fritz,
> and the only thing it broadcast was the letter "I", repeated over
> and over again.
Oh, they stole that segment from "The Prisoner". It was the episode
where they tried to break Patrick McGoohan by forcing him to live
with Ernie for a week. And then his TV set kept shouting "I! I! I!"
even after he smashed it. And then a big weather balloon came in
the window and ate his face.
This leads up to my story about the "Sesame Street" segment that terrified
me the most...
There was a segment where the camera just panned across dozens of kids
blowing pink gum bubbles. The soundtrack consisted of kids' voices
droning in a creepy monotone, "BEEEE... BEEE.... BEEE... BEEEEE ISSSS FORRR
BUBBBBBLLLLE... BEEEEEEE ISSSSS FORRRRR BUBBBBBBBLE..." and while this
was happening the bubbles were popping and clinging to the kids' faces
and I would burst into tears and run from the room screaming. The nearest
I can reverse-engineer this event is that I must have seen the American
broadcasts of "The Prisoner" with the balloon suffocating Patrick McGoohan --
I _did_ have a fear of balloons for several years, and I was never able
to figure out why I didn't like "BEEEEEEEE ISSSSSSS FORRRRRRR BUBBBBBBLE"
or balloons until I saw reruns of "The Prisoner" twenty years later.
(I got over my balloon-phobia on my own.)
The other segment that made me cry, although not for the same reason,
was that one I've described before that had the six-by-eight grid of
yellow dots that appeared in time to some cheesy music,
O O O O O O O O
O O O O O O O O
O O O O O O O O
O O O O O O O O
O O O O O O O X
...except nine times out of ten the bottom-right one would come out
wrong (it would be a square that went "thud" or a blob that went "blorch"
or something) and they would play this segment several times an episode.
I think the intent was to teach you "Just be patient, 'Sesame Street'
is teaching persistence, don't give up after your dots go 'blorch'"
but the message I always got was "'Sesame Street' keeps getting it
WRONG!" and I would cry out of frustration.
(Think how powerful an emotion frustration was when you were a kid.
Remember when your ice-cream cone fell on the ground, or you let go
of the balloon's string for just a second and Daddy wouldn't get it
down from the sky for you?)
The ones that scared me on "The Electric Company" (although they didn't
make me cry, because "Electric Company" was for _big_ kids ages 4 to 7)
were (1) two people mummifying Arte Johnson at super-speed because he
was done reading the news ("And now, a quick wrap-up...") and (2) this
surreal sequence where a guy at the top of a slide would send "g"s
down the slide to these people bringing words past in little red wagons
and the prefixed "g" would change the meaning. The segment ended with
someone having "lob" changed into "glob" and the guy on the slide
yelled "WATCH OUT FOR THE GLOB!!!" and the screen filled with this
shimmering orange-and-purple wad of Flexitroned psychedelia and the
soundtrack went "blorch".
I also had trouble with the girl turning into the foam-rubber blueberry
in "Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory", and with the people getting
hit with pies as punishment on "Beat The Clock". There. Now you know
_everything_ about my television-induced childhood neuroses.
> Second-most disturbing was the PBS pledge drives that would pre-empt
> the show.
Chris Franks will now tell us about how they pre-empted "Howdy Doody"
for Joseph McCarthy.
-- K.
Did you know that "Howdy Doody"
started as a radio show with
an _imaginary_ marionette?
Of course, _Charlie_ McCarthy was also on the radio back in the 1930s
(when his show was over, people switched to the middle of Orson Welles's
show and two or three of them freaked out because the Martians were
invading and it must have been real because everything on the radio
is real) but I think if they had pre-empted "Howdy Doody" for
Charlie McCarthy, it still would have been annoying, and Candice Bergen
still would have grown up to run "Murphy Brown" into the ground for ten years.
Mark Hill
> Kibo thinks food that goes "blorch" is icky. Got it.
Does cheese go "blorch"? Maybe deep down that's the reason he hates it.
See, you can trace everything back to Sesame Street.
Were they any good traumatic cheese-related Sesame Street skits?
Mark Hill
> ki...@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry) writes:
>
>
> > So, what "Sesame Street" clip or puppet or dead elderly shopkeeper
> > do you think is the creepiest thing on the show?
>
> The two monsters from outer space who have big, upward-facing
> mouths and googly eyes who confront the radio and go "RAAAAY
> DE-O! RAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYDE-O RADIO! RADIO! RADIO!"
> That drove me out of the room.
You didn't like them? They were COOL! they were the COOLEST part of
sesame street. I was probably the reason they included them in the show.
It really disturbs me that this much later I can still have an opinion about
this.
David DeLaney
>I seem to remember an eerie segment, set on that separate puppet stage that
>looks like a wall, that had hands instead of pupp^H^H^H muppets. Kind of an
>EST-like "getting real" moment. That made me flee. I still have dreams set on
>that stage as a result. The most interesting of which featured Jaques Derrida
>and a set of alphabet-shaped Jello molds. HAND.
I've identified another of my Recurring-Once-In-A-While Dreamplace Settings;
in addition to the locker room/bathroom with afternoon sunlight slanting
peacefully through a wall full of very tall very narrow windows seen from the
side, and the attic of our old house except with much less stuff, much more
room, a Sekrit Passage, and an extra room in the middle full of Dad's
nonexistent paperback book collection, today I got back to The Store I'm
Working in By Myself That Has Waaaay Too Much Space To Move Around In. I've
apparently got at least three separate Views of this place (like the way you
always see sitcom houses' insides from fixed angles - the 'sets', I guess) -
one from out from where there's a -large- dark rectangular cafeteria-style
eating area, which is apparently partly modeled on my high school's cafeteria
(no, wait, really - Gilmour was run by the Brothers of the Holy Cross, who
lived in Tudor House next to the campus, and the cafeteria was attached to
Tudor House and was all high-class and stuff) except large&rectangular instead
of small&odd-shaped; one from behind the counter where there's -waaay- too
much space to move around in and fix stuff, especially when customers start
drifting in through the 2'-tall swinging doors that got Left Unlocked By
Mistake or jumping over the counter because that's what customers do, they
go where they're clearly not supposed to; and one from Inside the Back which is
apparently modelled on a glass atrium of some entirely different restaurant
with tables and multiple levels and Paths and entirely-glass walls and stuff.
And this paragraph wasn't bricktext, no, and I'm not gonna go back and Force it
either. None of these three sets are places I've ever _been_, but I can
visualize them _quite_ clearly for some reason. (Oh, just got another one
back - the basement-level cafeteria that's also a subway/Rapid Transit
station - weird...) Lots of details are there, but they don't seem to
want to be written down well. Or, I guess, typed.
Dave "we now return you to -your- regularly-scheduled nightmares" DeLaney
--
\/David DeLaney d...@panacea.phys.utk.edu "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://panacea.phys.utk.edu/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ/ I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
David DeLaney
>WRONG!" and I would cry out of frustration.
I feel your pain.
>(Think how powerful an emotion frustration was when you were a kid.
>Remember when your ice-cream cone fell on the ground, or you let go
>of the balloon's string for just a second and Daddy wouldn't get it
>down from the sky for you?)
Yes, it's -much- better now. Back then frustration lasted maybe five whole
-minutes-, which took -forever- to get through; it was like you'd -never-
get back to being happy! Now it only lasts an evening or two, or at most
a day, and you'll be happy again in just a few hours. Growing up -does- have
a few advantages, I guess...
>yelled "WATCH OUT FOR THE GLOB!!!" and the screen filled with this
>shimmering orange-and-purple wad of Flexitroned psychedelia and the
>soundtrack went "blorch".
Hmmm. Perhaps you're actually reacting to a childtime accident with a
"blorch", somewhere in the wilds of your backyard? (You did have a backyard,
didn't you? Every kid's supposed to have one, right? And it should have
woods in it, even if later on you go back and find they were only 100 feet
thick...)
>I also had trouble with the girl turning into the foam-rubber blueberry
>in "Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory", and with the people getting
>hit with pies as punishment on "Beat The Clock". There. Now you know
>_everything_ about my television-induced childhood neuroses.
Kibo thinks food that goes "blorch" is icky. Got it.
>Chris Franks will now tell us about how they pre-empted "Howdy Doody"
>for Joseph McCarthy.
But how could they tell the difference?
> Did you know that "Howdy Doody"
> started as a radio show with
> an _imaginary_ marionette?
"And that marionette's name was Mortimer Snerd. This is Pat "Paulsen" Harvey,
signing off ... FOREVER!!"
>Of course, _Charlie_ McCarthy was also on the radio back in the 1930s
Oh. Never mind. You were just setting up for it, sorry.
Dave
James Kibo Parry
>
> James "Kibo" Parry (ki...@world.std.com) writes:
> >
> > So, what "Sesame Street" clip or puppet or dead elderly shopkeeper
> > do you think is the creepiest thing on the show?
>
> The two monsters from outer space who have big, upward-facing
> mouths and googly eyes who confront the radio and go "RAAAAY
> DE-O! RAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYDE-O RADIO! RADIO! RADIO!"
> That drove me out of the room.
Ah, yes, the monsters from the planet Koozbane. Just like the ones that
showed up on the first season of "Saturday Night Live" (the staff hated
them -- Marilyn Miller called them the "mucking fuppets") and those
interminable Koozbane segments on "The Muppet Show".
Come to think of it, Jim Henson spent a lot of time doing the same
_bad_ things over and over and over. He really should've just done
Kermit and only Kermit.
> Also, I wanted to smack that little "Near! Far!" beast. Who
> was that? Was that a proto-Elmo?
You are close to formulating a Theory Of Muppet Evolution for which
you will someday win the Muppet Nobel Prize. Which would be this
gold puppet that would keep telling you how much it wuvs you.
> Also, I was pissed about the construction of Oscar's pet
> Slimey: they made him out of wide-gauge, ultra-thick felt
> such that you could see that he WASN'T SLIMEY! If they
> had taken some felt and covered it with slime it would've
> been OK. As it was, they shoulda called him "Felty".
Or "Linty".
Also, real worms don't usually have sticks holding them up.
-- K.
I just hope Caroll Spinney
got a pay raise when they
switched to the Big Bird
costume that requires him to
operate his mouth _and_
both arms simultaneously.
He had it much easier when
Big Bird had one withered
arm, although they never
thought about giving him
a pen like Bob Dole.
Peter Willard
ParryJames "Kibo" ParryJames "Kibo" ParryJames "Kibo" ParryJames
"Kibo" ParryJames "Kibo" ParryJames "Kibo" ParryJames "Kibo"
Parry!!!!!Sun, 27 Feb 2000 22:55:22 GMT???
>The ones that scared me on "The Electric Company" (although they
>didn't make me cry, because "Electric Company" was for _big_ kids
>ages 4 to 7)
My memories of "The Electric Company"are these: Rita Moreno (is that right??)
shouting "HEYY YOUUU GUYYYYS!!!" and E-Z Reader (Morgan Freeman). This, in
spite of watching that show everyday for the first 9 years of my life. Must be
the fluoride in the water? I should remember the "Spiderman" episodes, for they
were quite strange.
If you have a suitable connection this place has episodes on-line:
http://www.noggin.com/shows/electricco/
>
>I also had trouble with the girl turning into the foam-rubber
>blueberry in "Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory", and with the
>people getting hit with pies as punishment on "Beat The Clock".
>There. Now you know _everything_ about my television-induced
>childhood neuroses.
I only saw "The Wizard of Oz" six months ago on the CBC midnite movie. Never
could watch that during the formative years; it was a little too close to home
iykwim. But I always watched "Willy Wonka" every year on the CBS movie special
thing and the damage was done.
--
*Peter Willard
*http://www.drizzle.com/~petew
*"Thagre tyvrora tynhora tybora!"
*KCBIWIYWI
*********
Peter Willard
DeLaneyDavid DeLaneyDavid DeLaneyDavid DeLaneyDavid DeLaneyDavid
DeLaneyDavid DeLaney!!!!!Mon, 28 Feb 2000 00:36:13 GMT???
>pe...@drizzle.com (Peter Willard) writes:
>>I seem to remember an eerie segment, set on that separate puppet
>>stage that looks like a wall, that had hands instead of
>>pupp^H^H^H muppets. Kind of an EST-like "getting real" moment.
>>That made me flee. I still have dreams set on that stage as a
>>result. The most interesting of which featured Jaques Derrida and
>>a set of alphabet-shaped Jello molds. HAND.
Oh, and Derrida spelled out the word "vagina" in cherry Jell-o, hope that
helps! This is funny if you have to read his book,"Dissemination".
>
>I've identified another of my Recurring-Once-In-A-While Dreamplace
>Settings; in addition to the locker room/bathroom with afternoon
>sunlight slanting peacefully through a wall full of very tall very
>narrow windows seen from the side, and the attic of our old house
>except with much less stuff, much more room, a Sekrit Passage, and
>an extra room in the middle full of Dad's nonexistent paperback
>book collection, today I got back to The Store I'm Working in By
>Myself That Has Waaaay Too Much Space To Move Around In.
I have "Workplace++" dreams where it's the little area I spend most of my time
in and then a labyrinth of similar areas which I'm obliged to wander through.
The worst was when I was washing dishes at a restaurant that didn't have a
proper dishwasher, I would have dreams of "Sinkland": many hectares of steel
sinks filled to overflowing with unwanted calzone and romaine. When I worked at
a bookstore, it was room after room of dis-alphabetized shelves, rooms where
the lights had gone out, and then rooms that were chic and luxurious, yet
sinister; a foreshadowing of the current "every shop is a hotel lobby" trend
that keeps me from going out much. My work dreams never any have people in
them, my school dreams have everybody I ever met in them and then there's the
army dreams, even though I've never been in the army (or anything remotely like
that). Can anyone explain that? Last night, I was an army radio operator and I
was interrupted to repel down the side of the armory I was in and climb over to
this other wing of the armory. In the room I reached on the other side, was
this arty-chyq-I-knew-from-college's apartment. From there, me and the arty
chyq flew over Manhattan in a helicopter piloted by the Mad Hatter, John
Tenniel's rendering. We landed and went to a brownstone where Mad Hatter
lectured us and a bunch of other people on how to parse sentences. Of course,
his idea for how to parse sentences made a lot of sense during the dream and
now I forgot everything. Gur raq!!!
Sometimes the army dreams turn into school dreams. Work dreams stay work
dreams.
RainyCyanide
<kibo-27020...@192.168.200.201>:
>So, what "Sesame Street" clip or puppet or dead elderly shopkeeper
>do you think is the creepiest thing on the show?
The people with large heads covered with toilet paper rolls. They would
silently slink around and pull paper off of their heads as an expression of
their emotions. Truly frightening.
> I'M ONLY WATCHING "SESAME STREET"
> BECAUSE I'VE ALREADY SEEN TODAY'S
> EPISODE OF "HEADLINE NEWS" 47
> TIMES!
And I am only watching Sesame Street because my toddler MAKES ME! la la la
la la la la...Elmo's World....[at least it's better than the Teletubbies
where random things keep appearing and disappearing].
Rainy
--
I left AOL the day I learned that *S* meant *smile* and not *sarcasm*.
James Calhoun
later on... now here's ZippoNiner with "The Wacky, Wacky World of
alt.religion.kibology!"
>On Sun, 27 Feb 2000 11:13:33 GMT, ki...@world.std.com (James "Kibo"
>Parry) wrote:
>
>I don't think anything about Sesame Street ever bothered me, but
>early-80s Nickelodeon had some stuff on it that really freaked me out.
>There was those one 5-minute-or-so aminated short about this kid who
>goes to bed and has a nightmare and becomes schizophrenic, or at least
>that's how I remember it through the mists or time and terror.
I think either Fox or ABC had something like that a couple years back, called
"Nightmare Ned". The one episode of that I can remember has this kid with
Swifty Lazar-style glasses going to some generic tourist attraction, he
drifts off on the fun house ride, has this wierd psychotic daydream that
could probably be compared to a bad acid trip, and eventually ends up riding
the Bouncy Pony all day while his parents try to avoid dying from
embarrassment.
And I think the only thing that ever bugged me on Sesame Street was this one
bit where one of the characters (Telly, I think it was) finishes painting a
bench, then doesn't want anyone to sit on it by accident so he paints a WET
PAINT sign. But then he decides he doesn't want anyone to accidentally touch
the sign while it's still wet, so he makes a WET PAINT sign for the first
sign. But THEN, he doesn't want anyone to touch THAT sign for the first sign,
so he makes a WET PAINT sign for the second sign for the first sign. But
THEN...
I'm still afraid that this means I might wind up in an endless bizzare
paradox someday, painting WET PAINT signs for the rest of infinity.
David DeLaney
>ki...@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry) wrote in
>>So, what "Sesame Street" clip or puppet or dead elderly shopkeeper
>>do you think is the creepiest thing on the show?
>
>The people with large heads covered with toilet paper rolls. They would
>silently slink around and pull paper off of their heads as an expression of
>their emotions. Truly frightening.
Ha ha, M\"ummenschanz sca-a-red Ra-ainy!
>And I am only watching Sesame Street because my toddler MAKES ME! la la la
>la la la la...Elmo's World....[at least it's better than the Teletubbies
>where random things keep appearing and disappearing].
That's supposed to be an instantiation of the toddler-world before they
learn about Cause ... and Effect! yet. I bet.
Dave "I have not had much chance to watch Pokemon, Telletubies, or Sesame
Street even in the last long while" DeLaney
James Kibo Parry
>
> The people with large heads covered with toilet paper rolls. They would
> silently slink around and pull paper off of their heads as an expression of
> their emotions. Truly frightening.
What? You don't like mime combined with bathroom humor?
Those were members of Mummenschanz, a Swiss mime troupe that appeared
on the show from time to time. (And they turned up on "The Muppet Show" too.)
I've seen Mummenschanz perform live. Up close. In Schenectady.
They did a sort of abstract mime, where they would dress up as asterisks
or balls and come out and move back and forth a while. One of their
costumes was a big flexible pipe pretending to be an inchworm because
there was a guy inside it. I think you've heard all you need to know
to be more than adequately warned about Mummenschanz.
I think they preferred to be called "a modern movement troupe"
and not "scary mimes". They were quite clever, although obviously
out of context any of their acts would seem rather weird. And the
ones they showed on "Sesame Street" were usually the most abstract,
least interesting ones (like the ones with someone dressed as a ball
rolling around on the floor.)
I found several Web pages, but they don't seem to have an official page
of their own. Apparently people have trouble spelling their name for
some reason -- here's a 1996 review that uses three spellings in one paragraph:
-> Memmenschanz: Parade
->
-> As part of a highly acclaimed world-wide tour Mummenschanz bring their
-> higely popular and wildly entertaining "greatest hits" show Parade to the
-> Big Top for their long-awaited Galway debut. For more than 25 years
-> Mummenschan have been wowing audiences of all ages with their distinctive
-> brand of visual theatre [...]
And here's an oddly excited review from MIT's student newspaper (1990):
-> MUMMENSCHANZ is the most delightful, creative, and exciting entertainment
-> I have seen in a long time. It is also extremely difficult to describe.
-> The Swiss group could be called "mimes," although that word falls far
-> short of what they do. True, the actors never speak during the
-> performance, but the emotional power that they express is far beyond that
-> of run-of-the-mill mimes. In addition, their exotic costumes are so
-> convincing that it takes some time before one realizes that there must be
-> people inside.
->
-> One of the first scenes involved "the blob," a reddish-brown ball that was
-> attempting to get onto a higher portion of the stage. Almost magically, it
-> was able to tell us that it had to get onto that platform, no matter how
-> difficult that would be. When the blob failed, much of the audience shared
-> its tension. When it finally reached its goal, and began jumping in place,
-> the audience laughed and applauded, sharing the blob's success.
-> It was this sort of silent, emotionally charged dialogue that made
-> Mummenschanz so special. No matter how outrageous or strange the creatures
-> appeared, there was always a humanness to them that made it possible to
-> communicate through the silence.
->
-> The actors had a wonderful sense of humor, which added much to the show. A
-> life-sized hand, a six-foot-long centipede, and a person with a black box
-> instead of a head made fun of the audience, patting bald people on the
-> head and scolding others for returning late from the intermission.
Another review:
-> It is hard to explain exactly what seeing the Mummenschanz perform is
-> like. Numerous times during the performance the phrase; "What the hell
-> am I looking at?" was heard.
More reviews, each from a different site:
-> Although the trio known as "Mummenschanz" presented its first programme
-> in 1972 as a fringe event at the Avignon Festival [...]
-> Dressed in black body suits, the three don a variety of masks --
-> ranging from a huge glove that takes up half a body to a monstrous
-> Slinky that more than covers the entire mime.
-> Although Mummenschanz's silent performances are accessible to a broad
-> range of ages, Confer says it helps children to know in advance that they
-> will see actors pretending to be giant noodle-shaped objects and
-> characters with electric plugs and suitcases for heads.
-> If you like Blue Man Group, you'll LOVE Mummenschanz!
I'd like to note that I couldn't find any negative reviews, just all those
reviews about how wonderfully creepy they are.
You gotta admit, mimes don't get any more interesting than Mummenschanz!
So, whatever happened to Mummenschanz? Are they still doing this stuff?
-- K.
Are mimes now passé?
-> Frassetto has heard the rumor about how this tour is supposed to be
-> the last hurrah for the troupe. She angrily attributes much of the
-> confusion to postings on the Internet that have said that the mime
-> troupe is breaking up.
RainyCyanide
Thank you for the superb explanation of Mummenschanz. From Kibo himself,
too! [It must be true if Kibo says it!] But it doesn't make Mummenschanz
any less creepy to me^H^H a toddler.
MY SON: "Aaaaahhh! Mommy the scary man has a box instead of a head!"
ME: "But honey, it's Mummenschanz."
[no effect]
See? Thanks though.
Rainy
RainyCyanide
<89d35r$h1s$1...@penn.dii.utk.edu>:
>rainyc...@geocitiesgeocities.com (RainyCyanide) writes:
>>ki...@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry) wrote in
>>>So, what "Sesame Street" clip or puppet or dead elderly shopkeeper
>>>do you think is the creepiest thing on the show?
>>
>>The people with large heads covered with toilet paper rolls. They would
>>silently slink around and pull paper off of their heads as an
>>expression of their emotions. Truly frightening.
>
>Ha ha, M\"ummenschanz sca-a-red Ra-ainy!
Sure, make fun of me. I spent a lot of kid-time wondering what happened
when the TP on the mime's eye ran out. Could he replace it or was he just
blind?
Mark Hill
> And I am only watching Sesame Street because my toddler MAKES ME! la la la
> la la la la...Elmo's World....[at least it's better than the Teletubbies
> where random things keep appearing and disappearing].
Oh, you guys. Some day I'm going to post the photos of my parrot killing
Elmo.
James Kibo Parry
>
> James "Kibo" Parry (ki...@world.std.com) wrote:
> >
> > Those were members of Mummenschanz, a Swiss mime troupe that appeared
> > on the show from time to time. (And they turned up on "The Muppet Show"
> > too.) I've seen Mummenschanz perform live. Up close. In Schenectady.
>
> too! [It must be true if Kibo says it!] But it doesn't make Mummenschanz
> any less creepy to me^H^H a toddler.
>
> MY SON: "Aaaaahhh! Mommy the scary man has a box instead of a head!"
> ME: "But honey, it's Mummenschanz."
> [no effect]
>
> See? Thanks though.
The easiest way to think about Mummenschanz is that they were to the
1970s what Blue Man Group were to the 1990s, except that they were
advertised on "Sesame Street" instead of Jay Leno's show, and they
don't get naked at the end of their performance.
-- K.
I wonder if colorblind
people find Blue Man Group
completely disinteresting.
Peter Willard
ParryJames "Kibo" ParryJames "Kibo" ParryJames "Kibo" ParryJames
"Kibo" ParryJames "Kibo" ParryJames "Kibo" ParryJames "Kibo"
>"RainyCyanide" (rainyc...@geocitiesgeocities.com) wrote:
>>
>> James "Kibo" Parry (ki...@world.std.com) wrote:
>> >
>> > Those were members of Mummenschanz, a Swiss mime troupe that
>> > appeared on the show from time to time. (And they turned up
>> > on "The Muppet Show" too.) I've seen Mummenschanz perform
>> > live. Up close. In Schenectady.
>>
>> Thank you for the superb explanation of Mummenschanz. From Kibo
>> himself, too! [It must be true if Kibo says it!] But it doesn't
>> make Mummenschanz any less creepy to me^H^H a toddler.
>>
>> MY SON: "Aaaaahhh! Mommy the scary man has a box instead of a
>> head!" ME: "But honey, it's Mummenschanz."
>> [no effect]
>>
>> See? Thanks though.
>
>The easiest way to think about Mummenschanz is that they were to
>the 1970s what Blue Man Group were to the 1990s, except that they
>were advertised on "Sesame Street" instead of Jay Leno's show, and
>they don't get naked at the end of their performance.
I wonder if anyone else was permanently scarred by the Mummenschanz episode of
3, 2, 1, Contact.
>
> -- K.
>
> I wonder if
> colorblind
> people find
> Blue Man Group
> completely
> disinteresting.
>
I wonder if garba^H^H^H^Hsanitation engineers are the main audience for
"Stomp".
Peter Willard
"deutsch" entrance, the "english" one is "under construction", anyway the
"deutsch" side is half "english" anyway. Rather dull, so far, unless the
adventures of a large dryer hose is your thang. Reminds me of the Creative
Playthings company and Seattle's forlorn attempts to become a slice of
Scandanavia, when it's really a slice of San Diego.
THAT'S! NOT! A! DRY!!!ER!! HOS+NO CARRIER+
James Kibo Parry
>
> www.mummenschanz.ch seems as official as anyone would want to get. Pick the
> "deutsch" entrance, the "english" one is "under construction", anyway the
> "deutsch" side is half "english" anyway.
I couldn't find that site in the three search engines I used, and it
wasn't linked from any of the other pages I read about Mummenschanz, and
it won't show me its goods (I think Switzerland is being electronically
neutral right now) so I think you made it up, you Mummenschanz-maker-upper.
-- K.
If I wore a black leotard and put
a cardboard box over my head and
walked around trying to act like
a piece of dryer lint, would I be
internationally beloved like
Marcel Marceau and Benny Hill?
Roger Douglas (new Durian Recipe)
>Further notes on the degeneracy of modern "Sesame Street":
>
[snip]
>Then someone discovered that anything with quick edits in it (no matter
>whether the content was violent or not) made kids beat each other up,
>so they reduced the twitch content of "Sesame Street" and are now trying
>to increase kids' attention spans by ending every episode with a
>fifteen-minute "show within a show" called "Elmo's World", which is
>just like "Pee-Wee's Playhouse" at one-eighth speed, and starring only
>Elmo, and with all the humor removed.
Because there is never any humour (or humor either) in Sesame Street. Humor
(and humour) is NOT ALLOWED!
I have a theory about this:
<serious>
<well, semi-serious anyway>
All humour (and humor) is offensive to somebody. You cannot be funny without
making fun of somebody (or something that somebody, somewhere cares about)
and since Children's Television is not allowed to make anyone cry (except
the good kind of crying that comes from realising that even monsters can be
nice to each other and be friends, even if they have different coloured fur
or live in a dustbin in a back alley), it can't ever be funny.
Q.E.D.
</well, semi-serious anyway>
</serious>
Noone cries in Sesame Street. Also Noone cries in Star Trek, but for a
different reason. In the 23'rd century they discovered a cure for crying.
--R.
Roger Douglas (new Durian Recipe)
world:
>"RainyCyanide" (rainyc...@geocitiesgeocities.com) wrote:
>>
>> The people with large heads covered with toilet paper rolls. They would
>> silently slink around and pull paper off of their heads as an expression of
>> their emotions. Truly frightening.
>
>What? You don't like mime combined with bathroom humor?
>
>Those were members of Mummenschanz, a Swiss mime troupe
I'm already too scared to read any further!
WAAAH!
--R.
Roger Douglas (new Durian Recipe)
world:
> If I wore a black leotard and put
> a cardboard box over my head and
> walked around trying to act like
> a piece of dryer lint, would I be
> internationally beloved like
> Marcel Marceau and Benny Hill?
Only if you ended every performance being chased by a whole lot of scantily
clad girls with big tits, in speeded-up motion.
Or I suppose you could try to copy Benny Hill.
--R.
pete
[snip]
> Did he at least say, "Hey,
> someone threw out a perfectly
> good piece of a rancid sandwich!"?
>
> And was he wearing a barrel
> supported by two straps and
> drinking from a big brown jug
> marked "XXX" and wearing fingerless
> white gloves and carrying
> a stick over his shoulder with
> a polka-dotted rag bundle on
> the end containing a baby
> he had stolen from a stork?
>
> I think that, in light of
> Disney taking over Times Square,
> New York's bums now actually
> dress like that, only with
> giant paper-mache heads.
> And they all have one finger
> missing. (Leave it to Disney
> to amputate the middle finger
> of all its employees so they
> can't offend.)
My initial impression of his appearance, was that of a
circus bum tramp clown.
He had a floppy hat, baggy clothes,
and his beard stubble contrasted against his pale white face,
like clown makeup.
He was sing yelling, in sounds which indicated that his
joy over the half eaten sandwich, was too pure for words.
--
pete
RainyCyanide
<8EE8DE278pet...@207.211.168.82>:
>www.mummenschanz.ch seems as official as anyone would want to get.
I went to the site and showed the face movie to my son, in order to scare
the bejesus^W^W^W perform a little experiment. I had hoped he would prove
my point that Mummenschanz is terrifying to children. He just waved, said
hi to it and tried to give the screen a kiss. So I guess it's just me who
has an irrational fear of performance art.
Rainy "But I like the idea of a woman living in a glass house...honest I
do."
Joseph Michael Bay
>IS "SESAME STREET" IN LEAGUE WITH THE HAMSTER CARTELS?
>I used to think every episode of "Sesame Street" was gone over with a
>fine-tooth-comb by educators and child psychologists and a priest and
>a minister and a rabbi and two Nobel laureates because they genuinely
>cared for childred and did not want to make anyone cry,
A priest, a minister, a rabbi, and two Nobel laureates walk into
a bar. Who gets a free drink?
The girl with the biggest tits! HAW HAW!
--
Joseph M. Bay Boy Genius
Putting the "harm" in the "Molecular Pharmacology" since 1997
(Oo) Yog Sothoth Neblod Zin (oO)
/{|\ What Would Cthulhu Do? /|}\
Joseph Michael Bay
>The two monsters from outer space who have big, upward-facing
>mouths and googly eyes who confront the radio and go "RAAAAY
>DE-O! RAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYDE-O RADIO! RADIO! RADIO!"
>That drove me out of the room.
RAAAAAAAAAAAAAY DEEEE O!!!! IS A SOUND SAAAAL VAY SHUN!
RAAAAAY DEEEE O! IS CLEEEEANING UP THE NAAAY SHUN!
Demian Phillips
>
>I'll tell you the four "Sesame Street" and "Electric Company" things that
>made me flee the room in terror later. First I'll just mention that I
>remember the season of "Sesame Street" where they had a robot who looked
>just like the evil Russian Venus Probe robot from "The Six Million Dollar Man",
>and I remember when Oscar was brownish before they decided to give the Muppets
>less realistic fleshtones so that kids wouldn't assume that all people
>with brown skin live in trash cans.
Most bizarre thing I remember was the whole 2 shadow faces who say
parts of a word and then faster and faster until it's whole.
It was gra-ss as I recall. Once they were done one of the heads did a
motion like taking a hit from a joint.
---
^_^
Demian Phillips
PGP KEY ID 0x5BC4FCB4
Bill Newcomb
Peter Willard <pe...@drizzle.com> wrote:
> www.mummenschanz.ch seems as official as anyone would want to get. Pick the
> "deutsch" entrance, the "english" one is "under construction", anyway the
> adventures of a large dryer hose is your thang. Reminds me of the Creative
> Playthings company and Seattle's forlorn attempts to become a slice of
> Scandanavia, when it's really a slice of San Diego.
>
> THAT'S! NOT! A! DRY!!!ER!! HOS+NO CARRIER+
IHNJH, IJWTS "mummenschwanz". Thank you, I'll be here all week.
--
nu...@best.com "I must not kludge. Kludge is the codekiller. Kludge
is the little cruft that brings total obfuscation. I will replace my
kludge. I will permit it to pass over me and into the bit bucket. And
when it has gone only comments will remain."
Foolcow
The sentient typewriter who would roll into view, singing,
"nooneenooneenooneenooneenoo"
Also, there was one animated skit where a kid sets out from home, and then
walks past about ten or so really creepy-looking buildings. Eventually, he
just sits there crying because he is lost. Then this tall scary dude with a
metallic voice explains that in order to find his way home, he just has to walk
past everything he saw once again, in reverse order.
Jim Vandewalker
>
>I have "Workplace++" dreams where it's the little area I spend most of my time
>in
>them, my school dreams have everybody I ever met in them and then there's the
>army dreams, even though I've never been in the army (or anything remotely like
>that). Can anyone explain that?
No. But I still have dreams about being in the army and I got drafted in
1966 and ETSed (this means let out--I also got discharged but that
happened in 1972 and was largely symbolic) in 1968. In these dreams I
KNOW I originally got drafted a LONG time ago and I have a kind of vague
idea that getting drafted TWICE is sorta unfair, especially at my age.
Also I never have any full uniforms because my old ones all WORE OUT
years ago, and somehow I missed getting any new ones issued this time.
However, I DO know a LOT more about the army this time and am not nearly
as stressed out as last time.
Hands up for all who have had the Final Exam dream: It's Exam Week and
not only do you not know where the exam is being held you gradually
begin to realize that you haven't been to that class all term.
--
Jim the Dead Guy
Jim Vandewalker
Parry) wrote:
>"RainyCyanide" (rainyc...@geocitiesgeocities.com) wrote:
>>
>> The people with large heads covered with toilet paper rolls. They would
>> silently slink around and pull paper off of their heads as an expression of
>> their emotions. Truly frightening.
>
>Those were members of Mumenschanz, a Swedish mime troupe that appeared
>on the show from time to time. I've seen Mumenschanz perform live.
>Up close. In Schenectady.
>
>I think they preferred to be called "a modern movement troupe"
>and not "scary mimes".
>
>Amazingly, there are no Web pages about Mumenschanz. I did some searching
>and turned up five pages that mention them in passing, a few others that
>mention them misspelled, and several billion that don't mention them.
>
>(I think I'm spelling it right.)
I saw a performance of Mumenschanz (sorry, I dunno the spelling either)
where they had several people (I HOPE they were people) dressed up in
hard to describe sort of triple-segmented costumes such that they were
symmetrical top to bottom. Their heads were encased in big rectangular
blocks of foam, and so were their torsos and they had blocks of foam the
same size as the head block depending from their butts, and they rolled
around the stage like Escher rollemups and you couldn't tell which end
was the head and which wasn't, if either. It was creepy. I was not a
little impressionable child so I did not run screaming from the room.
_ _
/ ___ \
// | | \\ <==== Moomenchance rollup person (not rolled up)
\\ |_ _| //
\_ --- _/
| | _______ Audience people with either
|___| | little heads or big eyes
//---\\ |
//| |\\ \/ OO OO OO
|||___||| OO OO OO
_|| ||_ OO OO
------- --------- OO OO
---------------------------| OO OO
Bill Newcomb
James "Kibo" Parry <ki...@world.std.com> wrote:
> Is it just my imagination, or does every local PBS station have bad audio?
> Except for WGBH in Boston, of course, but it's special. All the others
> transmit crackly sound with the gain turned up so high that everything
> becomes muffled mumbling at maximum volume.
WKNO (Geddit?) in Memphis had fair audio. The only exception to this
was the live-action segments of little morality tales they would run
in between Electric Co. and Sesame St. episodes. They ran them on
some horrible rickety 19th century telecine, so the sound fluttered
badly. The sound, the poor production values, and the disturbingly
serious tone of these segments made them seem quite scary to me. I
think they were titled "Inside OUT" or something similar. They were
supposed to teach you that bullies aren't so tough and black people
are OK and don't steal stuff, but they just scared me.
Peter Willard
ParryJames "Kibo" ParryJames "Kibo" ParryJames "Kibo" ParryJames
"Kibo" ParryJames "Kibo" ParryJames "Kibo" ParryJames "Kibo"
>Peter Willard (pe...@drizzle.com) wrote:
>>
>> www.mummenschanz.ch seems as official as anyone would want to
>> get. Pick the "deutsch" entrance, the "english" one is "under
>> construction", anyway the "deutsch" side is half "english"
>> anyway.
>
>I couldn't find that site in the three search engines I used, and
>it wasn't linked from any of the other pages I read about
>Mummenschanz, and it won't show me its goods (I think Switzerland
>is being electronically neutral right now) so I think you made it
>up, you Mummenschanz-maker-upper.
Heh. Sometimes typing THE MOST OBVIOUS URL, in the little box and the top of
the browser window and then hitting [ENTER] or [RETURN], works better than
using search-engines, O Mighty One.
>
> -- K.
>
> If I wore a black
> leotard and put
> a cardboard box over my
> head and
> walked around trying to
> act like
> a piece of dryer lint,
> would I be
> internationally beloved
> like
> Marcel Marceau and
> Benny Hill?
>
No, but you may have already won an endowment from the Peggily-Googily
Foundation!!! Actually, someone should look into getting grant money for usenet
art projects. Hmmm.
"This Usenet Posting-Event will re-emBody a de-contextualization of ordinary
experiencings, e.g. going to the supermarket, watching popular television
programs, working at a corporate retail outlet, etc. This will challenge the
Reader into para-authorship with the facticity of the Death of the Author and
the rhizomatic action of de-contextualized mimesis..." Now, to figure out how
ROT-13 fits into "scenarios of post-McDonaldization among micro-colonialized
bodies of psuedoengendered, ad hoc cryptominorities" and I'll get the job...
Marcel Marceau recently spoke (!!!!) to the National Press Club and C-SPAN
telecast it live. He looks real scary without the make-up.
Schwa Love
>> do you think is the creepiest thing on the show?
>
>mouths and googly eyes who confront the radio and go "RAAAAY
>DE-O! RAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYDE-O RADIO! RADIO! RADIO!"
>That drove me out of the room.
I will second that one. Although now they just look like giant washrags with
eye to mes, at the time they were scary as hell. I think it was the
repetition in combination with their body movements is what set me off.
Other things that scared me on Sesame Street:
1. The two-headed blue monster muppet. Had two heads that looked similar,
although the horns and hair were in different locations on each face. Always
argued. Bit me repeatedly in my three-year old nightmares.
2. Cartoon where some little kid gets lost and has to find his way home. So
he talks to a stranger (smart move!) who tells him to remember all the
locations he passed by on the way, only in the reverse order that he passed
them. The stranger then transforms into the objects the child passed as the
child is describing them. The results of early drug experiments in public
television.
3. The black Mummenschanz thing with two box heads described elsewhere in
this thread. He walked UPSIDE-DOWN! Or was he right-side up!
4. The creepy^H^H^H^H^Hlumsy painter.
And as a sorta-related-but-maybe-not side note...
In the Muppet Movie, super-giant 50-foot tall Animal made me cry because he
was too big and too loud (first memory I have of plugging my ears) and I
feared him doing it again on the Muppet Show until I was about seven or eight
or twenty.
-- Schwa ---
oOSCHWAOo. .oOSCHWAOo. .oOSCHWAOo. .oOSCHWAOo. . schw...@hotmail.com
Your ad could be here! Act NOW to reserve a space. Offer for a lim-
ited time only. Ohio residents please add 5.25% sales tax. See store
for details. Game pieces available while supplies last. Mention this
ad for a 3% discount. Return this signature for a five cent deposit.
James Kibo Parry
>
> I saw a performance of Mumenschanz (sorry, I dunno the spelling either)
> where they had several people (I HOPE they were people) dressed up in
> hard to describe sort of triple-segmented costumes such that they were
> symmetrical top to bottom. Their heads were encased in big rectangular
> blocks of foam, and so were their torsos and they had blocks of foam the
> same size as the head block depending from their butts, and they rolled
> around the stage like Escher rollemups and you couldn't tell which end
> was the head and which wasn't, if either. It was creepy. I was not a
> little impressionable child so I did not run screaming from the room.
>
> _ _
> / ___ \
> // | | \\ <==== Moomenchance rollup person (not rolled up)
> \\ |_ _| //
> \_ --- _/
> | | _______ Audience people with either
> |___| | little heads or big eyes
> //---\\ |
> //| |\\ \/ OO OO OO
> |||___||| OO OO OO
> _|| ||_ OO OO
> ------- --------- OO OO
> ---------------------------| OO OO
Yes, those are the Mummenschanz players dressing up like asterisks
I had referenced in another article. This particular act is especially
disturbing when you realize the only thing they're trying to communicate
is "YOUR HEAD IS INTERCHANGEABLE WITH YOUR GENITALS". Also, you forgot
to mention that the costumes were solid black (on a solid black stage)
to ensure that you get a migraine headache if you enjoy Mummenschanz.
90% of their acts just consisted of dressing up as something which is
more symmetrical than people are and exploiting the fact that
MUMMENSCHANZ IS MORE SYMMETRICAL THAN YOU!!!!
-- K.
I always had the feeling they
were mocking the audience.
Hey, wait, that means they're
Kibologists! Waah, I'm Mummenschanz!
(Kibo dresses up as an all-black
Rubik's Cube and stands on stage
turning slices of his body and
confusing the audience as to which
end of the cube is his head. The end.)
James Kibo Parry
>
> I went to the [Mummenschanz] site and showed the face movie to my son,
> in order to scare the bejesus^W^W^W perform a little experiment.
> I had hoped he would prove my point that Mummenschanz is terrifying to
> children. He just waved, said hi to it and tried to give the screen a kiss.
> So I guess it's just me who has an irrational fear of performance art.
All's I know is that although Mummenschanz is really, really, really scary,
I would much rather be stranded on a desert island with them than with any
other mime troupe in case a computer error ever causes Congress to pass a
law saying that I have to choose a mime troupe to be stranded on the desert
island with and Bob Odenkirk and David Cross don't go into the mime business.
-- K.
I like how all the navigation on
their Web site occurs through
printed w-o-r-d-s when everyone
knows mimes aren't supposed to have
any language skills, especially in
Switzerland where everything has to
be a pictorial icon because they
can't pick an official language.
Also, is it just me, or do still
pictures of Mummeschanz rolling
around in a garbage bag just
look like a still picture of a
garbage bag not doing mime?
James Kibo Parry
>
> [re "The Electric Company"]
>
> Most bizarre thing I remember was the whole 2 shadow faces who say
> parts of a word and then faster and faster until it's whole.
> It was gra-ss as I recall. Once they were done one of the heads did a
> motion like taking a hit from a joint.
That wasn't two faces, it was just a talking vase covered with mouths!
There's nothing creepy about optical illusions covered with body parts.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go buy some tires that will leave
Zöllner lines on everything I run over as I drive to the horizon
past increasingly-large dwarves who all appear to be the same size.
-- K.
And then there's the
Margaret Thatcher illusion,
which teaches you that
the Museum of Science
hates Margaret Thatcher.
Jorn Barger
> I had referenced in another article. This particular act is especially
> disturbing when you realize the only thing they're trying to communicate
> is "YOUR HEAD IS INTERCHANGEABLE WITH YOUR GENITALS".
I'm afraid to ask what you think of Pilobolus? They say something like,
'your head is interchangeable with a slime mold'...
--
XML for webpages is like plastic bags for comic books.
I edit the Net: <URL:http://www.robotwisdom.com/>
"...frequented by the digerati" --The New York Times
Karlo Takki
(James "Kibo" Parry) wrote:
> The easiest way to think about Mummenschanz is that they were to the
> 1970s what Blue Man Group were to the 1990s, except that they were
> advertised on "Sesame Street" instead of Jay Leno's show, and they
> don't get naked at the end of their performance.
HIVEMIND ALERT!
While I'm reading this post (elapsed time 00:49), a BMG commercial
comes on the TV!
Needless to say, after I wiped it off I got the job.
k.
p.s.: I auditioned for BMG in '97 but wasn't tall enough.
--
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are
really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Chris Franks
>
> Chris Franks will now tell us about how they pre-empted "Howdy Doody"
> for Joseph McCarthy.
At the time, I was a design engineer for a company that was making
television test equipment. We had a 12-inch Westinghouse color TV set
that we used to test our test equipment on, and the McCarthy hearings
were in black and white. We watched them anyway. What I remember
most was not Howdy Doody, because he looked exactly like my
brother-in-law, but Kenny Scherzer's wacky version of 3 coins which
went:
"Roy Cohn's in the fountain,
In the Army's David Schine.
Sent there by Joe McCarthy,
To be his Valentine.
It was this tribunal that made me switch away from a previous life of
Young Republicanism to a more realistic worldview. At the end of the
project, they gave me the Color TV as a bonus. There weren't that
many good color shows on in 1956, so I converted it to a 19" black and
white set.
>
>
>
> Of course, _Charlie_ McCarthy was also on the radio back in the 1930s
> (when his show was over, people switched to the middle of Orson Welles's
> show and two or three of them freaked out because the Martians were
> invading and it must have been real because everything on the radio
> is real)
Our town was about 80 miles north of the "invasion site", and there
were a few people who loaded up their tanks at the gas stations on Route
202 and headed north that night in 1938. I had just read the book and
enjoyed the show immensely.
Radio was much more real than TV. Your imagination could run free
with Jack Armstrong, Tom Mix, the Lone Ranger, Secret City. Later on,
I met Jean Shepherd, who played Billy Fairfield on Jack Armstrong. If
you think Sesame Street was scary, try "Lights Out" with Leiningen and
the Ants, or "The Inner Sanctum" with the screeching door slowly
closing. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The
Shadow knows, m-m-m-m-r-r-r-r-a-a-a-ha-ha-ha-ha.
RainyCyanide
<38baa4fc...@news.newsguy.com>:
>Hands up for all who have had the Final Exam dream: It's Exam Week and
>not only do you not know where the exam is being held you gradually
>begin to realize that you haven't been to that class all term.
Yep...once a month I have this dream. But it takes place in high school.
With the added pressure that I can't remember where my locker is, where my
classes are, and if I don't get out of the hallway in five minutes, the
bell will ring and all the students will leave. Then I'll be alone,
confused and the hall monitors will come after me.
So if this dream is so common, what does it mean?
Rainy
Beable van Polasm
pe...@drizzle.com (Peter "Cube Brane" Willard) wrote:
>
> I have "Workplace++" dreams where it's the little area I spend most of
> my time
> through.
> The worst was when I was washing dishes at a restaurant that didn't
> have a
> proper dishwasher, I would have dreams of "Sinkland": many hectares of
> steel
> sinks filled to overflowing with unwanted calzone and romaine.
So you're actually Archie? YAY! IHBT!
> When I worked at
> a bookstore, it was room after room of dis-alphabetized shelves, rooms
Speaking of alphabetising, how do you order your CD collection?
I used to have about 300 of them, and I built a rack to hold them
out of wood. Then, they had to be put in some sort of order,
otherwise visitors would complain that "there's too many!" and
"I can't find the one I want!" and "Have you got any Warren Zevon?".
And of course, I had heard them all before, so I would just play
them in alphabetical order so that I didn't have to make any
decisions and so that each CD would get play time. Otherwise,
it might be possible for a CD to be IGNORED! AND NEVER PLAYED!
You know how it is; you buy a new CD and listen to it and say
"That's WEIRD, man!" and it sort of doesn't get played again
for a while. But after playing it half-a-dozen times, it sounds
ok. Then it starts to sound GOOOOOD!
So! Anyway! Ordering! I decided to put them in alphabetical
order. This immediately presented a problem: what do you do
with CDs where the artist has two names, like "Warren Zevon"
or "Jimi Hendrix"? Does Warren Zevon go under "W" or "Z"?
Does Jimi go under "J" or "H"? And what about bands with
names that start with "The" like "The Beatles" and "The
Rolling Stones"? Do "The Beatles" go under "T" or "B"?
So eventually I decided to put artists' CDs under the initial
letter of the first name, so "B B King" goes under "B".
Bands go under the first letter of their name, UNLESS their
name starts with "The" and then they go under the first letter
of their last name. Which only left "The The" in a bad situation.
Luckily I didn't have any Prince CDs. This worked out good,
because everybody could find what they wanted. And Japanese
record shops file stuff exactly the same way! YAY! Except for
the less gaijin record shops file them under the first character
of the artists' names in katakana. Which can be tricky!
> then there's the
> army dreams, even though I've never been in the army (or anything
> remotely like
> that). Can anyone explain that?
Yes certainly. This is your subconcious mind's way of telling
you that IT'S YOUR TURN TO BE IN THE ARMY NOW D00D!
> Last night, I was an army radio operator and I
> was interrupted to repel down the side of the armory I was in and
That should be "rappel" methinks. You know, I am really sick
of walking down stairs. I'd like to beable to walk up to the
railing of a stairwell, attach a rope and abseil straight
over the side of the building. It would be much faster! And
if there was a fire, I'd be straight out and over the edge!
ZOOM! HIT THE GROUND RUNNING AND BUY SOME CHEAP SUNGLASSES!
But I can't work out how to disconnect the rope once I get
to the ground. After all, I can't just leave my rope there!
And walking back up the stairs to get the rope would make the
whole thing pointless. How do mountain climbers get their
ropes back?
> climb over to
> this other wing of the armory. In the room I reached on the other
> side, was
> this arty-chyq-I-knew-from-college's apartment.
OH YEAH BAY BEE! Those Artillery chyx are HOT!
>From there, me and the arty chyq
Did she have a BIG GUN? FNARR FNARR!
> now I forgot everything.
I had a really wacky dream, but now I've forgotten it too.
>Gur raq!!!
Ok! Stop posting that now! Nobody knows what it means!
cheers
Beable van Polasm
--
Beable van Polasm is incredibly wealthy, handsome,
talented and funny! He has a really cute, intelligent,
funny, rich girlfriend! Everybody loves Beable!
http://members.xoom.com/_______/index.html
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
David DeLaney
>d...@panacea.phys.utk.edu (David DeLaney) wrote in
>>rainyc...@geocitiesgeocities.com (RainyCyanide) writes:
>>>The people with large heads covered with toilet paper rolls. They would
>>>silently slink around and pull paper off of their heads as an
>>>expression of their emotions. Truly frightening.
>>
>
>Sure, make fun of me. I spent a lot of kid-time wondering what happened
>when the TP on the mime's eye ran out. Could he replace it or was he just
>blind?
Well, probably he could yank on the connecting-roll projection thingy and
another roll would drop down and let him smell things again.
Dave "what, you thought those were the -eyes-?" DeLaney
--
\/David DeLaney d...@panacea.phys.utk.edu "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://panacea.phys.utk.edu/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ/ I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
William Clifford
Hey! I saw that one.
The creepy guy was shaped like one of those Christmas tree ornaments
with a sharp top and bottom but a round middle. He walks around on
tiptoe and advises the lost kid, "All you gotta do is walk backwards
through your mind."
Also the buildings changed. As I recall, they were less creepy when he
first walked by them but after he walked backward through his mind
they transformed into true wierdness.
Before it was subverted by Elmo, _Sesame Street_ was a truly
groundbreaking show in that it would attempt to educate young people
through psychedelia. I think very creepiness is a symptom of a much
higher goal of the show.
I still remember when Ernie and Bert's house was invaded by flying
furry squid-like aliens who said some thing like:
"neebeeneebeeneebeeneebeenbeeneeb uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh."
They were unintellible, impersonal, and terrifying. They clearly
didn't know anything about Earth and you didn't know what they would
do. They seemed impersonally curious like a little kid poking at an
anthill or perhaps like a doctor doing a biopsy. Except that you
couldn't quite say why they showed up where they did. No other SF that
I've seen or read has ever so successfully portrayed anything as
completely alien as that skit did.
I'm guessing that that alien skit freaked the shit out of people
because they stopped showing it and tamed those guys down in their
subsequent appearences. They were still freaky as hell and when I
stopped watching the show (not long after the initial Elmo takeover
bid) you didn't see them anymore. Too bad. _Sesame Street_ has always
taken a multi-cultural but taming down and abandoning the scary
seeming aliens is sad case of closing the borders due to irrational
fears. _Sesame Street_ now reinforces and is an example of the very
kind of thinking it was trying to stop when it introduced those
characters.
Back in those days all the monsters really were monsters and they had
to be dealt with. This was the pinnacle of that show's achievements.
Ernie was constantly harrassed by the cookie monster and had to find
ways of staving him off. Oscar the Grouch had be dealt with on his own
terms. When Telly first appeared on the scene he was watching a TV
constantly and wouldn't move or even acknowledge the existence of
other people. There was at least one more I only vaguely remember. The
point is that they were difficult people who had to be dealt with?
What happened?
I say it was Grover.
With Grover the children had what seemed to be a cute furry friend. He
was oafish, nosy, insecure, but otherwise a totally sympathetic
character. The parents boards must have loved Grover and from all over
the country the pressure came to do more of the same.
But I thought _Sesame Street_ was preparing to do a very brave thing.
They had managed to rehab most of the monsters somewhat over the
years. Oscar had become more compromising, Cookie less gluttonous,
Telly had acknowledged a world outside of his TV set, but what about
Grover? Grover stayed the same. This made Grover perhaps the most
dangerous monster of all.
Apparently unable to mature as he got older how Grover wouldn't enter
the adult world willingly. He would look longingly back at childhood
and at children. He wouldn't play with the kids his own age instead we
saw him abandon his playmates as they grew out some halcyon age group
that Grover has fixated on. Grover only plays with the younger ones
who come to the street to play. In fact this has been evident since
those first, seemingly harmless, improved, one-on-one sessions that we
saw Grover having various small children. Grover is too old for this.
What is going on?
I remember throughout my childhood, in those years as I watched Sesame
Street, there was, at the same time, a great push to 'educate'
children about the dangers of strangers. Those shadowy figures created
by parental paranoia, those candy handed kidnappers who do terrible,
unspeakable things to children for no reason. I believe that Grover
was created to educate children that the danger doesn't always come
from someone you don't know but, more likely than not, someone you
know very well. In fact, even from someone you have always known.
Someone who is friendly, and kind, someone you look up to and trust.
But behind their kindliness and sympathy are dark needs and
frustrations with each passing year. Grover was to be the embodiment
of this kind of stunted maturity.
However, when the letters started coming in about Grover's nation-wide
popularity I think the CEW chose to abandon the original plans for
Grover. One can't help but wonder what might have been though.
Of course nothing would have happened. I doubt that the bleeding edge
progressives who created _Sesame Street_ would have tried to show the
nightmare of a person whose developing sexuality is twisted by such
emotional immaturity.
And yet they could have educated millions of children to recognize
false faces in older people. They could ahve taught them to try to see
the very real needs and motives behind their front of playfulness.
They could have shown them how to deal with them somehow in a way that
protects their own integrity since often such people can blind the
child's real guardians. How could this have been bad?
Instead, they created Elmo, young, innocent, light colored, and as
obnoxious a shit in a steamer. And the parents must have approved
because Elmo has taken over.
--
|William Clifford |"Run Mr. Hooper run! They're trying to |
|wo...@yahoo.com | kill you! Get out while you still |
|lame webpage at: | can!" --James Terback to a rerun of |
|http://www.ionline.com/wobh | _Seasame Street_ on Noggin Network |
Schwa Love
><38baa4fc...@news.newsguy.com>:
>
>
>>Hands up for all who have had the Final Exam dream: It's Exam Week and
>>not only do you not know where the exam is being held you gradually
>>begin to realize that you haven't been to that class all term.
>
>
>Yep...once a month I have this dream. But it takes place in high school.
>With the added pressure that I can't remember where my locker is, where my
>classes are, and if I don't get out of the hallway in five minutes, the
>bell will ring and all the students will leave. Then I'll be alone,
>confused and the hall monitors will come after me.
>
>So if this dream is so common, what does it mean?
I get them too from time to time. Supposedly the dream means you are
walking through life unprepared... not planning for the future. Or maybe you
just didn't like high school all that much.
-- Schwa ---
oOSCHWAOo. .oOSCHWAOo. .oOSCHWAOo. .oOSCHWAOo. . schw...@hotmail.com
"Compadres, it is imperative that we stop the freedom fighters before
the start of the rainy season. And remember, a shiny new donkey for
whoever brings me the head of Colonel Montoya." - C. Montgomery Burns
l33t like a fox!!!!
> On 28 Feb 2000 17:42:21 GMT, foo...@aol.com (Foolcow) wrote:
>
>
> Before it was subverted by Elmo, _Sesame Street_ was a truly
> groundbreaking show in that it would attempt to educate young people
> through psychedelia. I think very creepiness is a symptom of a much
> higher goal of the show.
>
This theorey is further backed up by an early appearance of Ozzy Osbourne
on the show:
A B C D, E F G
I am Ozzy, worship me.
Joseph Michael Bay
>How could anyone dislike the twist ending of "The Monster At The End
>Of This Book"? We all thought it was going to be something creepy,
>but it turned out to just be Grover. Awww! Everyone wuvs Grover.
>Even though he's obviously nuts and flails his arms around histrionically
>while screaming for no reason and is covered with matted blue hair,
>he's the most sympathetic Muppet.
The twist ending of "The Monster at the End of This Book" wasn't Grover.
The inside of the back cover was reflective.
And in that reflection! was! ...
... a LOBSTER!
Brack!
wrote:
>Hands up for all who have had the Final Exam dream: It's Exam Week and
>not only do you not know where the exam is being held you gradually
>begin to realize that you haven't been to that class all term.
Me me me!
It's doubly horrible because now I'm in art skool and dont have to sit
for exams, yet still have to dream that I'm missing all these exams I
dont know about.
Brack! Deploy Spam-Away(tm)!: |"Scruffy didn't used to be
<root@[127.0.0.1]> | able to eat ham because
<MAILER-DAEMON@[127.0.0.1]> | he had this wierd idea
<abuse@[127.0.0.1]> | it was made outta monkeys."
<.@[127.0.0.1]> UNSUBSCRIBE | -Scruffy
Nick Bensema
Brack! <gur...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>On Mon, 28 Feb 2000 16:46:58 GMT, jim...@gate.net (Jim Vandewalker)
>wrote:
>
>>Hands up for all who have had the Final Exam dream: It's Exam Week and
>>not only do you not know where the exam is being held you gradually
>>begin to realize that you haven't been to that class all term.
>
>for exams, yet still have to dream that I'm missing all these exams I
>dont know about.
It's doubly stupid for me because I was never nervous about finals. Not
enough to dream about them. So I just dreamed about showing up two weeks
before the end of the term and realizing "hey, wait, I just remembered,
I'm taking ALGEBRA too!" Which would have been OK I guess because I'm
good at algebra, but I loathe all the homework one always gets in algebra
classes.
--
Nick Bensema <ni...@io.com> ICQ#2135445
~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
James Kibo Parry
>
> "Foolcow" (foo...@aol.com) wrote:
> >
> > The sentient typewriter who would roll into view, singing,
> > "nooneenooneenooneenooneenoo"
> >
> > Also, there was one animated skit where a kid sets out from home, and
> > then walks past about ten or so really creepy-looking buildings.
> > Eventually, he just sits there crying because he is lost. Then this
> > tall scary dude with a metallic voice explains that in order to find
> > his way home, he just has to walk past everything he saw once again,
> > in reverse order.
>
> Hey! I saw that one.
Oh yeah? Well, I've seen some "Sesame Street" segments TWICE!!!
> The creepy guy was shaped like one of those Christmas tree ornaments
> with a sharp top and bottom but a round middle. He walks around on
> tiptoe and advises the lost kid, "All you gotta do is walk backwards
> through your mind."
>
> Also the buildings changed. As I recall, they were less creepy when he
> first walked by them but after he walked backward through his mind
> they transformed into true wierdness.
They morphed into each other in this liquid psychedelic way, too,
suggesting that the moral was that you should trust strangers to
give you psychoactive candy because you'll always be able to find
your way back to reality just by falling the trail of imaginary
bread crumbs you left as you went to Crazyland.
> Before it was subverted by Elmo, _Sesame Street_ was a truly
> groundbreaking show in that it would attempt to educate young people
> through psychedelia. I think very creepiness is a symptom of a much
> higher goal of the show.
So what you're saying is that "Jabberwocky" was as good as "Sesame Street",
if not better?
> I still remember when Ernie and Bert's house was invaded by flying
> furry squid-like aliens who said some thing like:
> "neebeeneebeeneebeeneebeenbeeneeb uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh."
I don't remember any flying aliens. Waah! That must have been the year
I decided I was too big for "Sesame Street" any more and stopped watching
it for a while!
I do remember worrying about whether the guy who helps the kid retrace
his steps was the same as the scary talking typewriter that worked
its own buttons, though. (After all, they could morph, and they were
both creepy and psychedelic.)
I think you spelled it wrong, though. The typewriter didn't say
"nooneenooneenooneenooneenoo", he said "noo-noo, noo-noo, noo-noo"
because his purpose was to prepare your mind for The Noo-Noo
(the living vacuum cleaner with the pink hiney on "Teletubbies".)
> [The flying monsters] were unintellible, impersonal, and terrifying.
> They clearly didn't know anything about Earth and you didn't know what
> they would do. They seemed impersonally curious like a little kid poking
> at an anthill or perhaps like a doctor doing a biopsy. Except that you
> couldn't quite say why they showed up where they did. No other SF that
> I've seen or read has ever so successfully portrayed anything as
> completely alien as that skit did.
Well, Phil Dick did write the perverted fantasy "Null-O" (not to be confused
with anything by Alfred Bester) about the little boy who is a _perfect_
sociopath and so he keeps cutting people open because he's curious what's
inside them, and he gets taken to a psychiatrist, who is impressed that
he's a _perfect_ sociopath and it's okay for him to kill anyone he wants
because he's a _perfect_ sociopath and the psychiatrist becomes his friend
and gets to follow him around and worship him as he blows up the world.
YAYYYY!!! While reading that story you always get the feeling that he
wrote it when he was 13 and was getting beat up a lot, but it turns out
that it was written during his middle period when he wasn't _very_ insane.
(The stuff he wrote when he was _really_ insane was less disturbing.)
This gets back to Louis Wain, whose cat paintings eventually reached
a point where they got less creepy because they became completely
abstract Mandelbrot sets. I'm still working on a long article about him.
> I'm guessing that that alien skit freaked the shit out of people
> because they stopped showing it and tamed those guys down in their
> subsequent appearences. They were still freaky as hell and when I
> stopped watching the show (not long after the initial Elmo takeover
> bid) you didn't see them anymore. Too bad. _Sesame Street_ has always
> taken a multi-cultural but taming down and abandoning the scary
> seeming aliens is sad case of closing the borders due to irrational
> fears. _Sesame Street_ now reinforces and is an example of the very
> kind of thinking it was trying to stop when it introduced those
> characters.
Or maybe the Muppets in question just died. I mean, that can happen.
I keep hearing this rumor that says that Ernie is dying of AIDS and
is going to drop dead on the same day that Jim Henson dies, and I've
heard this rumor whispered to me so many times that it must be true!
> Back in those days all the monsters really were monsters and they had
> to be dealt with. This was the pinnacle of that show's achievements.
> Ernie was constantly harrassed by the cookie monster and had to find
> ways of staving him off. Oscar the Grouch had be dealt with on his own
> terms. When Telly first appeared on the scene he was watching a TV
> constantly and wouldn't move or even acknowledge the existence of
> other people. There was at least one more I only vaguely remember. The
> point is that they were difficult people who had to be dealt with?
I've always thought of them as Freudian-influenced archetypes.
Cookie is orality, Oscar is the personification of anality.
Grover is neurotic and somewhat schizophrenic. Telly is a hysteric.
Kermit is the superego, Big Bird is the ego, and all the scary ones are
the id. (Especially the invisible ones that chase Leslie Nielsen around.)
> What happened?
>
> I say it was Grover.
>
> With Grover the children had what seemed to be a cute furry friend. He
> was oafish, nosy, insecure, but otherwise a totally sympathetic
> character. The parents boards must have loved Grover and from all over
> the country the pressure came to do more of the same.
How could anyone dislike the twist ending of "The Monster At The End
Of This Book"? We all thought it was going to be something creepy,
but it turned out to just be Grover. Awww! Everyone wuvs Grover.
Even though he's obviously nuts and flails his arms around histrionically
while screaming for no reason and is covered with matted blue hair,
he's the most sympathetic Muppet.
> But I thought _Sesame Street_ was preparing to do a very brave thing.
> They had managed to rehab most of the monsters somewhat over the
> years. Oscar had become more compromising, Cookie less gluttonous,
> Telly had acknowledged a world outside of his TV set, but what about
> Grover? Grover stayed the same. This made Grover perhaps the most
> dangerous monster of all.
LOOK OUT! GROVER HAS A GUN!
> Apparently unable to mature as he got older how Grover wouldn't enter
> the adult world willingly. He would look longingly back at childhood
> and at children. He wouldn't play with the kids his own age instead we
> saw him abandon his playmates as they grew out some halcyon age group
> that Grover has fixated on. Grover only plays with the younger ones
> who come to the street to play. In fact this has been evident since
> those first, seemingly harmless, improved, one-on-one sessions that we
> saw Grover having various small children. Grover is too old for this.
> What is going on?
>
> I remember throughout my childhood, in those years as I watched Sesame
> Street, there was, at the same time, a great push to 'educate'
> children about the dangers of strangers. Those shadowy figures created
> by parental paranoia, those candy handed kidnappers who do terrible,
> unspeakable things to children for no reason.
(They're scarier than the ones who have a very good reason for torturing
children.)
> I believe that Grover was created to educate children that the danger
> doesn't always come from someone you don't know but, more likely than not,
> someone you know very well. In fact, even from someone you have always
> known. Someone who is friendly, and kind, someone you look up to and trust.
> But behind their kindliness and sympathy are dark needs and
> frustrations with each passing year.
BOB HOPE!!!
> Grover was to be the embodiment of this kind of stunted maturity.
>
> However, when the letters started coming in about Grover's nation-wide
> popularity I think the CTW chose to abandon the original plans for
> Grover. One can't help but wonder what might have been though.
Well, see, Grover demanded to be paid more than all the other Muppets
combined, and couldn't act his way out of a paper bag, so J. Michael
Straczynski fired him, which forced them to abandon the story arc where
we would see the outcome of that flash-forward where Sesame Street
is burning and Grover is screaming, "Kermit is dead! They're
coming through the walls!" and then Big Bird would take off his giant
bird head and inside he'd be Bert, only fifty years older, and he'd
say "I tried to warn them... but it's all happening again." And
then Snuffy would turn into an energy being. But they couldn't do
this without Grover, so instead they used the other ending where
J. Michael Straczynski just walked onto the set and pushed the button
that turned the show off.
> Of course nothing would have happened. I doubt that the bleeding edge
> progressives who created _Sesame Street_ would have tried to show the
> nightmare of a person whose developing sexuality is twisted by such
> emotional immaturity.
I think maybe they did. In their earliest years, they did insinuate
attempts at social re-education into the show. For instance, do you
remember a sequence just showing two little girls washing their hands,
brushing their teeth, and drinking water? They started running that
one in the first season, and it got "Sesame Street" booted from some
TV stations in the South, because the whole point was that it just
showed a white girl and a black girl sharing a faucet for several
minutes. (I find it interesting that apparently there were racist
_PBS_ stations.) I think the original goal of "Sesame Street" was not
solely "let's teach the alphabet" but "let's get white people to
like black people under cover of teaching the alphabet." So I wouldn't
put it past them to have slipped in some other attempts at psychologically
conditioning the children to undo the effects of bad parenting.
You can see the famous clip of the two girls sharing a sink at
the Children's Museum in Boston right now. However, their "Sesame Street"
exhibit still refuses to acknowledge that Kermit was created to get
people to accept public nudity.
> And yet they could have educated millions of children to recognize
> false faces in older people. They could ahve taught them to try to see
> the very real needs and motives behind their front of playfulness.
> They could have shown them how to deal with them somehow in a way that
> protects their own integrity since often such people can blind the
> child's real guardians. How could this have been bad?
>
> Instead, they created Elmo, young, innocent, light colored, and as
> obnoxious a shit in a steamer. And the parents must have approved
> because Elmo has taken over.
Maybe Elmo just took over because he's evil. He's got the _fun_ Muppets
locked up in a basement somewhere.
"Errrrnie, we're trapped in Elmo's erotic torture chamber!"
"Yeah, Bert, we sure are!"
"Ohhhh, Errrrrrnie, I don't like this! This is kinky!"
-- K.
I leave it to the reader to
figure out whether that
dialogue is an obvious
fabrication or not.
Aldis Ozols
>
> I do remember worrying about whether the guy who helps the kid retrace
> his steps was the same as the scary talking typewriter that worked
> its own buttons, though. (After all, they could morph, and they were
> both creepy and psychedelic.)
I wonder if it's the same one as the talking
mutant giant cockroach typewriter in Cronenberg's
_Naked Lunch_? I think it has a lot of talent, and
could easily star in the musical remake of _2001_.
--
How to Lobby Politicians
http://www.zeta.org.au/~aldis/lobby.html
"Reality is whatever doesn't go away when you stop believing in it."
-- Philip K Dick
James Kibo Parry
>
> James "Kibo" Parry (ki...@world.std.com) wrote:
> >
> > I do remember worrying about whether the guy who helps the kid retrace
> > his steps was the same as the scary talking typewriter that worked
> > its own buttons, though. (After all, they could morph, and they were
> > both creepy and psychedelic.)
>
> mutant giant cockroach typewriter in Cronenberg's
> _Naked Lunch_? I think it has a lot of talent, and
> could easily star in the musical remake of _2001_.
That was an Arabic typewriter, if you will recall, and the one on
"Sesame Street" had normal letters. However, there is an Arabic-language
version of "Sesame Street" (produced in Kuwait, it went on hiatus when
Saddam's troops stole the "Noman The Camel" costume -- I am not making
this up) and I don't know if they have their own talking typewriter.
I am never going to watch the movie of "Naked Lunch" ever again because
the first time I did, I was enjoying it, and then the nice-looking woman
rips her skin open and inside, SHE'S ROY SCHEIDER SMOKING A CIGAR!
If I had been five when I had seen that, I'm sure I would have burst
into tears and run from the room wailing, "MOMMY! THE GREASY BROWN GUY
FROM NBC'S 'SEAQUEST DSV' IS GETTING INSIDE OTHER PEOPLE NOW!" and been
scarred for life.
If Roy Scheider took a role as an albino, would he make the makeup person
put the pale makeup over his brown makeup, or would he admit that that stuff
that looks like chocolate pudding all over his body is actually removable?
Also, suppose David Cronenberg and Terry Gilliam got into a fight over
whether Hieronymous Bosch or Gustav Doré was better. Regardless of who
won, I bet the zero-budget TV-movie about the true story would be directed
by Anson Williams.
-- K.
"Someday maybe I'll be in a
movie directed by Potsie!"
-- Steve Martin thought he
was making a joke, but
unfortunately he gave
Potsie an idea...
James Kibo Parry
> > for Joseph McCarthy.
>
> At the time, I was a design engineer for a company that was making
> television test equipment. We had a 12-inch Westinghouse color TV set
> that we used to test our test equipment on, and the McCarthy hearings
> At the end of the project, they gave me the Color TV as a bonus.
> There weren't that many good color shows on in 1956,
What about "Science Fiction Theatre"? Oh, wait, you said _good_ shows.
Never mind.
> so I converted it to a 19" black and white set.
>
> > Of course, _Charlie_ McCarthy was also on the radio back in the 1930s
> > (when his show was over, people switched to the middle of Orson Welles's
> > show and two or three of them freaked out because the Martians were
> > invading and it must have been real because everything on the radio
> > is real)
>
> Our town was about 80 miles north of the "invasion site", and there
> were a few people who loaded up their tanks at the gas stations on Route
> 202 and headed north that night in 1938. I had just read the book and
> enjoyed the show immensely.
Wow. That was back when both Orson _and_ H.G. Welles were alive.
I can sort of remember when one of them was alive.
> Radio was much more real than TV. Your imagination could run free
> with Jack Armstrong, Tom Mix, the Lone Ranger, Secret City.
"Secret City" was that PBS show where Commander Mark enlisted kids
into his secret fascist army that spent all day drawing pictures
of tanks running over mean gym teachers, right?
> Later on, I met Jean Shepherd, who played Billy Fairfield on Jack Armstrong.
Even though his mom never let him have that Daisy Red Ryder BB gun
because he would have shot his eye out.
> If you think Sesame Street was scary, try "Lights Out" with Leiningen and
> the Ants, or "The Inner Sanctum" with the screeching door slowly
> closing. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The
> Shadow knows, m-m-m-m-r-r-r-r-a-a-a-ha-ha-ha-ha.
I know of Arch Oboler's "Lights Out" but I've never heard the radio version;
I've seen the TV version, with the floating bald guy's head slowly moving
back and forth so the glare wouldn't burn the image-orthicon tube.
I prefer "Tales Of Tomorrow", myself, because it opened with a picture of
a black velvet glove with the coiled wire handle of an old teakettle
glued to the back of it, then the glove slowly closed a knife switch
where nothing was connected to its screw terminals. They did _really_
low-budget H.G. Wells stories. (My favorite H.G. Wells dramatization,
however, is the one he himself wrote for a Jack Benny movie, in which
Jack Benny turns evil and destroys the world.)
Thankfully, the Sci-Fi Channel shows ancient (over 40 years old) shows
such as "Lights Out", "Tales Of Tomorrow", "Science Fiction Theatre",
and "Thriller" very late at night. In fact, I think they only do so
between 4:30 am and 5:30 am on Friday mornings, where they have scientifically
calculated that the fewest number of people will stumble across the shows
and say "Ew! Black and white. I'm never going to watch the Sci-Fi Channel
again. They show stuff even older than 'Star Trek: The Next Generation'."
Chris Franks remembers where he was when Orson Welles read "The War Of
The Worlds" aloud on the radio.
I remember how 20th Century Fox seemed to be baffled when "Star Wars"
became a hit despite their lame attempts at promotion ("Princess Leia"
did a daytime talk show) and how long the lines were for "Star Trek:
The Motion Picture".
Is there anyone else on the Internet who remembers where they were
when "Space: 1999" was _new_? And when Oscar was orangish-brown?
HA! I HAVE RETURNED THIS THREAD TO ITS ORIGINAL TOPIC! NOW WE CAN
DRIFT IT ALL OVER AGAIN!
-- K.
I bet you folks are too young
even to remember NBC's "seaQuest DSV"
and only saw "seaQuest 2032".
Nick Bensema
Chris Franks <chris_...@agilent.com> wrote:
>It was this tribunal that made me switch away from a previous life of
>Young Republicanism to a more realistic worldview.
Old Republicanism?
Joseph Michael Bay
>In article <38BB15...@agilent.com>,
>Chris Franks <chris_...@agilent.com> wrote:
>>It was this tribunal that made me switch away from a previous life of
>>Young Republicanism to a more realistic worldview.
>Old Republicanism?
HAW HAW! No, of course not. The HUAC hearings motivated Chris
Franks to become an enlightened red-haired genius Libertarian who
got laid a lot and flew around in a spaceship and ran over his
oppressive statist gym teachers with a recon rover.
NO WAIT! I mean that after watching that red-baiting circus he
became VERY CONCERNED about COMMUNIST ADULTERATION of our own
PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS. Did you ever see a COMMIE drink a glass
of TAP WATER? Nope, only VODKA.
WAIT NO SORRY! SUMIMASEN! The McCarthy hearings caused Chris
to realize the folly of representative government. Finally
understanding the divine right of kings, he dedicated the rest
of his life to bringing Victor Emmanuel to the American throne.
Ranjit Bhatnagar
> Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The
> Shadow knows, m-m-m-m-r-r-r-r-a-a-a-ha-ha-ha-ha.
Egg! Stone! Chestnut! Or Pea!
r.
--
Get caught red handed!
Don't forget to suggestively sell!
robert lindsay
Jim Vandewalker <jim...@gate.net> wrote:
>
>Hands up for all who have had the Final Exam dream: It's Exam Week and
>not only do you not know where the exam is being held you gradually
>begin to realize that you haven't been to that class all term.
>
>Jim the Dead Guy
I've had that in several variants. It comes in High School and College
flavors, and is always either a math exam or a book report in english
on some really long boring book that I haven't read.
The modern one that has just popped up recently is that I have lots
of videos that I haven't returned in a month. I blame Lots42 for this.
And I don't even rent many videos...
--
Robert Lindsay, NASA - Goddard, Greenbelt MD rlin...@seadas.gsfc.nasa.gov
"This whole business of killing bugs to be cool on the Internet is Grace
Hopper's legacy." -J. "Kibo" Parry, USENET, Sep 24, 1999 Why not me?
#include <standard_disclaimer.h> 301-286-9958 ISTJ -REM
Joseph Michael Bay
>Chris Franks <chris_...@agilent.com> wrote:
>> Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The
>> Shadow knows, m-m-m-m-r-r-r-r-a-a-a-ha-ha-ha-ha.
>Egg! Stone! Chestnut! Or Pea!
Very small rocks! Gra-gravy! Churches!
Adam Jones
> m-m-m-m-r-r-r-r-a-a-a-ha-ha-ha-ha.
My X server doesn't have this font. Please help.
--
Adam Jones (ad...@yggdrasl.demon.co.uk)(http://www.yggdrasl.demon.co.uk/)
.oO("Me too. Stuck I mean" )
Chip Salzenberg
>Is there anyone else on the Internet who remembers where they were
>when "Space: 1999" was _new_?
"I ask you, Morton Con-Drackie!"
I was there. I must have been about ten years old. I was already
well on the road to geekdom at that tender age: I made little Eagle
models from Legos, and a moon base for them to land on and take off
from. I even had little cargo modules to attach in the middle.
Granted S:2K-1 was cheesy, but at least Eagles had thrusters in the
right places, unlike the cargo carriers from another show I could
name. (*cough* above and beyond *cough*)
--
Chip Salzenberg - a.k.a. - <ch...@valinux.com>
"What country is this?" "Europe." "Oh." //MST3K
Keith Handy
> This leads up to my story about the "Sesame Street" segment that terrified
> me the most...
>
> There was a segment where the camera just panned across dozens of kids
> blowing pink gum bubbles. The soundtrack consisted of kids' voices
> droning in a creepy monotone, "BEEEE... BEEE.... BEEE... BEEEEE ISSSS FORRR
> BUBBBBBLLLLE... BEEEEEEE ISSSSS FORRRRR BUBBBBBBBLE..." and while this
> was happening the bubbles were popping and clinging to the kids' faces
> and I would burst into tears and run from the room screaming. The nearest
> I can reverse-engineer this event is that I must have seen the American
> broadcasts of "The Prisoner" with the balloon suffocating Patrick McGoohan --
> I _did_ have a fear of balloons for several years, and I was never able
> to figure out why I didn't like "BEEEEEEEE ISSSSSSS FORRRRRRR BUBBBBBBLE"
> or balloons until I saw reruns of "The Prisoner" twenty years later.
> (I got over my balloon-phobia on my own.)
>
> The other segment that made me cry, although not for the same reason,
> was that one I've described before that had the six-by-eight grid of
> yellow dots that appeared in time to some cheesy music,
>
> O O O O O O O O
>
> O O O O O O O O
>
> O O O O O O O O
>
> O O O O O O O O
>
> O O O O O O O X
>
> ...except nine times out of ten the bottom-right one would come out
> wrong (it would be a square that went "thud" or a blob that went "blorch"
> or something) and they would play this segment several times an episode.
> I think the intent was to teach you "Just be patient, 'Sesame Street'
> is teaching persistence, don't give up after your dots go 'blorch'"
> but the message I always got was "'Sesame Street' keeps getting it
> WRONG!" and I would cry out of frustration.
I think the creepiest thing I can remember from Sesame Street was when
the young black guy (not Gordon, I don't think . . . was there a younger
black guy named David or something?) was coaxing video-superimposed
numbers out of a clay pot while sitting cross-legged as a "swammi" or
whatever the fuck you call it. I don't remember if he was playing a
wind instrument or just putting his hands together in a praying stance,
but there was definitely some kind of haunting mid-eastern type music,
and the numbers would come out very slowly and sort of wave back and
forth horizontally. Then they very gradually got larger and changed hue
as the background ever-so-slowly faded to an image of hieroglyphics (now
that I think of it, the wallpaper on my indierecords.com website was
probably inspired by that . . . yikes!). It didn't make me flee from
the room, but it made me uneasy.
Also there was some bad, grainy film of a girl doing cartwheels that had
kind of a similarly disturbing effect, probably just because of the
quality of the film and/or the music. Again, nothing to scare me right
out of the room, just something to leave a weird, spooky imprint. In
fact, I think there's something incredibly seductive about memories of
things that are just slightly off, things that aren't outright offensive
or shocking, but just . . . ever . . . so . . . slightly . . .
off.
If I put my mind to it, I'm sure I could come up with other examples.
But what I'd really like is to just sit and watch hours and hours of
entire unedited Sesame Street shows from the early seventies, without
the sanitizing/modernizing that has apparently happened in decades
since. I'm sure I would have a mental breakdown, but at least it would
be a *fun* breakdown.
-Keith
Oh, incidentally . . . one thing that genuinely upset my young mind was
an episode of "Davey and Goliath" where Davey fantasized about getting
revenge on a kid who bullied him . . . they showed "fantasy scenes", one
where the bully kid gets tied to a tree on a high mountain where no one
can hear him, and another where he's getting his face pushed into wet
cement and leaving an imprint. I don't know if it was the principle or
the claymation, but in any event it kept me awake an extra hour that
night.
Clement Cherlin
(Schwa Love) wrote:
>Other things that scared me on Sesame Street:
>
>1. The two-headed blue monster muppet. Had two heads that looked similar,
>although the horns and hair were in different locations on each face. Always
>argued. Bit me repeatedly in my three-year old nightmares.
I don't think that I was ever scared by Sesame Street, but I do remember
that nobody told me that Ghostbusters wasn't a horror movie. I thought
that Slimer was going to come and get me, and I could feel his presence
as a sort of vague glow-in-the-dark-plastic-colored blob in my room at
night when I couldn't sleep.
I was more than slightly annoyed when I found out about the whole wacky
comedy thing.
Yours In Tangibility,
Clement Cherlin
Ted Frank
Matt McIrvin <mmci...@world.std.com> wrote:
>Said in the same sly tone of voice as "Yes, I did lose a million this
>year. I expect to lose a million next year. At this rate, I'll have to
>shut this newspaper down in... *forty years.*"
YM "sixty," Mr. Thatcher.
Ted "I do have a general idea of my holdings" Frank
--
"I don't have to accept their tenants. I was trying to convince those
college students to accept my tenants."
-- George W. Bush, landlord to the nation
WWS
Mojo Jojo wrote:
>
> On Wed, 1 Mar 2000 11:44:11 GMT,
> ki...@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry),
> doing dastardly deeds for http://www.kibo.com,
> publicly revealed 89 lines of trade secrets:
>
> <snip>
>
> >Is there anyone else on the Internet who remembers where they were
> >when "Space: 1999" was _new_? And when Oscar was orangish-brown?
>
> Four thumbtacks, a pencil, and a wedge shaped add-on eraser...
> the perfect classroom Eagle. Teach could swipe your bone-fide toy
> Eagle, but your pencil?? Blasphemy! Amazing how a flip-top schooldesk
> makes a workable Moonbase Alpha.
> Oscar. Hmm. I also remember racing to the TV in time to catch
> the very first ep of The Electric Co. Wuttever happened to *that*? I
> really hated their Spidey bastardization, since I was a big fan of the
> toon.
> Hell, for that matter, anyone remember Vegatable Soup? the
> Outerscope 1 bit was a trip. That has to be where they got the idea
> for that movie where those kids build a spaceship outta junkyard bits.
> How about Dusty's Treehouse? I think that drew breath for
> about 5 minutes before dying. How'bout Hot Fudge? or Patchwork Family?
> Gawd, I used to hate Patches and whats-her-face. Incredibly dippy.
> If I'm sliding that way, how'bout Kukla Fran & Ollie? They had
> those Beanie & Cecil cartoons, and didn't they show Clutch Cargo too?
> I can't remember.
> Now that I'm really thinking about it, how'bout all those Sid
> & Marty Kroft productions? Now they were a force to be reckoned with.
> H.R. Puffinstuff, The Bugaloos- I also had a stack of Puffinstuff &
> Bugaloos comic books. Wish I still had those. Sparky was a freak.
> Sigmund the Seamonster was pretty freaky too. Oh well. They don't make
> 'em like they useta!
You had to mention the Bugaloos, and H.R. Puffinstuff, too. Well,
they hold a memorable place in my life, as seeing those shows marked
the first time that I ever completely and unrepentantly wished that
I could see someone die horribly. The entire cast, really. (That
thought sprung into my mind fully formed like Venus from the sea
the very first time that I saw them and I never changed, never wavered.
Not once)
>
> Anyone remember Avon's Moon Lander game? The main gamepiece
> was actually a bottle of shampoo in the shape of the Command Module,
> and the cap was the Lunar Lander. When the shampoo was gone, you could
> jam the two together, and whack it on the floor, sending the lander
> "into orbit", and (i forget exactly how) it would determine your move
> on the board, which was a printed vinyl sheet... great fun to play in
> the tub, along with yer astronaut and scuba diver G.I. Joes!
Well, I've asked some people this question already, but since we're
looking in the way-back machine.....
Who did you vote for, Quisp or Quake?
--
__________________________________________________WWS_____________
Jim Nowotarski
news:kibo-01030...@192.168.200.201...
>
<snip>
>
> Is there anyone else on the Internet who remembers where they were
> when "Space: 1999" was _new_? And when Oscar was orangish-brown?
Uh, in high school? I remember being upset that I had to do something
at school the
evening that the local TV station ran the half hour promotion for the
series.
My father dutifully watched it for me (this is pre-vcr, you know) and
helpfully told me,
"They were fooling around on the back of the moon and it blew up."
Many years later I was to realize the wisdom in that sentence. Sadly,
I had to watch all of the episodes
at least twice. Except for the one where the monster with the
bazillion tentacles ate the people and
spit out the partially digested smoking bodies. That one permanently
scarred me on the first viewing.
Speaking of Oscar, I know that I saw the first episode of "Sesame
Street" the first time it was broadcast,
(on channel 26 WETA in Washington D.C.) I have however successfully
completely blanked it from my mind.
Wasn't that the show where the monster with a bazillion tentacles ate
Big Bird?
Jim
Matt McIrvin
(James "Kibo" Parry) wrote:
>Matt McIrvin will now do his impression of the terrifying, terrifying
>Binney The Brush character from "Gerbert" sawing the Twiddle Bugs' home
>in half to make a boat THAT!!!! REALLY!!!!! FLOATS!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just imagine an obnoxious bellowing guy with a Texas accent, and you'll
have it. Sort of a greater Dallas-Fort Worth variant of Yosemite Sam.
>(The weird part about Binney
Besides his being a giant paintbrush-like creature...
>was that not only did he have the scary
>male voice BELLOWING at you, but he had BREASTS under his leotard!
--
Matt McIrvin http://world.std.com/~mmcirvin/
Matt McIrvin
rainyc...@geocitiesgeocities.com (RainyCyanide) wrote:
>The people with large heads covered with toilet paper rolls. They would
>silently slink around and pull paper off of their heads as an expression of
>their emotions. Truly frightening.
For some reason I always really *liked* Mummenschanz. I think I was
severely disturbed.
What scared me was one of the things Nick Bensema mentioned: whenever
there were TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES while I was watching my PBS kiddie TV, I
had to go and hide. For a long time I thought that this was because of
some deeply metaphysical sensibility: I had feared that reality was going
to disintegrate someday and be replaced by a card that said PLEASE STAND
BY. (I actually did have a nightmare about that once: I dreamt that I
woke up in my bed in the middle of the night to see a giant, glowing,
1970s-vintage WETA-26 PLEASE STAND BY card covering one entire wall of the
room. Maybe I was dreaming about "Fahrenheit 451.")
Anyway, recently I was thinking about this, and I realized that it wasn't
anything profound at all. As I've previously mentioned, when I was little
I had an incredibly sensitive startle reflex, and consequently had a dread
of anything that might make a sudden noise. TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES were
usually associated with a total absence of audio for an unpredictable
interval lasting a minute or so, followed by a sudden disembodied voice
saying "please stand by," usually at a fairly high volume level. I was
just afraid that I was going to be startled by the scary voice.
Foolcow
I spend my toddler years in constant fear that voltron was going to come after
me, after having formed a blazing sword.
Matt McIrvin
(James "Kibo" Parry) wrote:
>I am never going to watch the movie of "Naked Lunch" ever again because
>the first time I did, I was enjoying it, and then the nice-looking woman
>rips her skin open and inside, SHE'S ROY SCHEIDER SMOKING A CIGAR!
And on the inner surface of her skin is the same hexagonal pattern
that appears on the insides of the wrappers of institutional hamburgers,
like the ones at the Museum of Science or your high school cafeteria.
THINK ABOUT IT, WON'T YOU?
Matt McIrvin
>William Clifford (wo...@yahoo.com) wrote:
>
>> Also the buildings changed. As I recall, they were less creepy when he
>> first walked by them but after he walked backward through his mind
>> they transformed into true wierdness.
>
>They morphed into each other in this liquid psychedelic way, too,
>suggesting that the moral was that you should trust strangers to
>give you psychoactive candy because you'll always be able to find
>your way back to reality just by falling the trail of imaginary
>bread crumbs you left as you went to Crazyland.
The thing like *that* that disturbed me was not on "Sesame Street," but on
"Villa Allegre," a relatively short-lived show that focused mostly on
English-Spanish bilingualism, and had lots of sketches and cartoons about
random educational subjects that were in both languages.
Once there was a cartoon on "Villa Allegre" about simple physics, weights
and levers. It talked a lot about kids of different weights balancing
each other on a seesaw, and to convey the idea that a kid had a certain
weight, the kid would morph into an inanimate lead weight, like the 16 ton
kind that killed Graham Chapman. I recall the effect as revolting and
frightening: the kid's outlines would crumple and collapse into a little
trapezoid, and his or her colors would fade into a uniform gray with a
yellow number of kilograms on it.
Also, when the chef fell down the stairs with Four!!! Banana Cream!!!
Pies!!!, it made me cry. Not frightening, just very, very sad.
Matt McIrvin
> Radio was much more real than TV. Your imagination could run free
>with Jack Armstrong, Tom Mix, the Lone Ranger, Secret City. Later on,
>I met Jean Shepherd, who played Billy Fairfield on Jack Armstrong. If
>you think Sesame Street was scary, try "Lights Out" with Leiningen and
>the Ants, or "The Inner Sanctum" with the screeching door slowly
>closing. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The
>Shadow knows, m-m-m-m-r-r-r-r-a-a-a-ha-ha-ha-ha.
My favorite "Shadow" moment: A few years ago I heard a tape of an episode
in which, at the end, Lamont Cranston says of the deceased villain: "It's
too bad I couldn't save him... though he did *deserve to die.*"
Said in the same sly tone of voice as "Yes, I did lose a million this
year. I expect to lose a million next year. At this rate, I'll have to
shut this newspaper down in... *forty years.*"
--
Matt McIrvin http://world.std.com/~mmcirvin/
info starlight
"Matt McIrvin" <mmci...@world.std.com> wrote in message
news:mmcirvin-010...@ppp0c068.std.com...
> And on the inner surface of her skin is the same hexagonal pattern
> that appears on the insides of the wrappers of institutional hamburgers,
> like the ones at the Museum of Science or your high school cafeteria.
>
> THINK ABOUT IT, WON'T YOU?
Mmmmm... hamburgers.
Mojo Jojo
ki...@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry),
doing dastardly deeds for http://www.kibo.com,
publicly revealed 89 lines of trade secrets:
<snip>
>Is there anyone else on the Internet who remembers where they were
>when "Space: 1999" was _new_? And when Oscar was orangish-brown?
Four thumbtacks, a pencil, and a wedge shaped add-on eraser...
the perfect classroom Eagle. Teach could swipe your bone-fide toy
Eagle, but your pencil?? Blasphemy! Amazing how a flip-top schooldesk
makes a workable Moonbase Alpha.
Oscar. Hmm. I also remember racing to the TV in time to catch
the very first ep of The Electric Co. Wuttever happened to *that*? I
really hated their Spidey bastardization, since I was a big fan of the
toon.
Hell, for that matter, anyone remember Vegatable Soup? the
Outerscope 1 bit was a trip. That has to be where they got the idea
for that movie where those kids build a spaceship outta junkyard bits.
How about Dusty's Treehouse? I think that drew breath for
about 5 minutes before dying. How'bout Hot Fudge? or Patchwork Family?
Gawd, I used to hate Patches and whats-her-face. Incredibly dippy.
If I'm sliding that way, how'bout Kukla Fran & Ollie? They had
those Beanie & Cecil cartoons, and didn't they show Clutch Cargo too?
I can't remember.
Now that I'm really thinking about it, how'bout all those Sid
& Marty Kroft productions? Now they were a force to be reckoned with.
H.R. Puffinstuff, The Bugaloos- I also had a stack of Puffinstuff &
Bugaloos comic books. Wish I still had those. Sparky was a freak.
Sigmund the Seamonster was pretty freaky too. Oh well. They don't make
'em like they useta!
>HA! I HAVE RETURNED THIS THREAD TO ITS ORIGINAL TOPIC! NOW WE CAN
>DRIFT IT ALL OVER AGAIN!
>
> -- K.
Ha! I've done my part to start the redrift.
> I bet you folks are too young
> even to remember NBC's "seaQuest DSV"
> and only saw "seaQuest 2032".
Sealab 2020- I even had the board game.
Anyone remember Avon's Moon Lander game? The main gamepiece
was actually a bottle of shampoo in the shape of the Command Module,
and the cap was the Lunar Lander. When the shampoo was gone, you could
jam the two together, and whack it on the floor, sending the lander
"into orbit", and (i forget exactly how) it would determine your move
on the board, which was a printed vinyl sheet... great fun to play in
the tub, along with yer astronaut and scuba diver G.I. Joes!
Mojo Jojo
*
*still* a little kid...
Mortis
<38bdd98c...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>, in which
niw...@ix.netcom.CHALUPAcom (Mojo Jojo) typed:
> Hell, for that matter, anyone remember Vegatable Soup? the
>Outerscope 1 bit was a trip. That has to be where they got the idea
>for that movie where those kids build a spaceship outta junkyard bits.
Inside of an impenetrable, airtight bubble? God, I love "The
Explorers".
...almost as much as "Labyrinth".
Mortis
Master of the Unknown, KPS
Nebulosis Defunctus
"Armageddon means never having to say you're sorry."
-Joseph M. Shair
Peter Willard
McIrvinMatt McIrvinMatt McIrvinMatt McIrvinMatt McIrvinMatt
McIrvin!!!!!Thu, 02 Mar 2000 01:37:32 GMT???
>In article <kibo-29020...@192.168.200.201>,
>ki...@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry) wrote:
>
>>William Clifford (wo...@yahoo.com) wrote:
<...>
>Once there was a cartoon on "Villa Allegre" about simple physics,
>weights and levers. It talked a lot about kids of different
>weights balancing each other on a seesaw, and to convey the idea
>that a kid had a certain weight, the kid would morph into an
>inanimate lead weight, like the 16 ton kind that killed Graham
>Chapman. I recall the effect as revolting and frightening: the
>kid's outlines would crumple and collapse into a little trapezoid,
>and his or her colors would fade into a uniform gray with a yellow
>number of kilograms on it.
It seems like Villa Alegre also had instructive cartoons that were drawn in an
Aztec style, but all I remember for sure was an obnoxious bird puppet and a
Hooperesque old d00d. I haven't found anything about VA on the web, though the
producers do seem to have followed-up with a flavor of Linux.
>
>
>
>Also, when the chef fell down the stairs with Four!!! Banana
>Cream!!! Pies!!!, it made me cry. Not frightening, just very,
>very sad.
>
It was just disgraceful what that chef went through, week after week. Actually,
probably just once, but you get the point.
--
*Peter Willard
*http://www.drizzle.com/~petew
*"Thagre tyvrora tynhora tybora!"
*KCBIWIYWI
*********
Matt McIrvin
> Hell, for that matter, anyone remember Vegatable Soup? the
>Outerscope 1 bit was a trip. That has to be where they got the idea
>for that movie where those kids build a spaceship outta junkyard bits.
You get Golden Not Jaffo Points for being the first person to correctly
NAME the puppet spaceship on Vegetable Soup, thereby awakening several
brain cells that have been dormant in my head since the 1970s.
Tim Serpas
>>when "Space: 1999" was _new_?
I... knew it existed. But I can't say that I really
watched it or had any idea what was going on. All I
knew wass that it was about people who were really in
Space, and that was good enough for me.
Chip Salzenberg <gr...@pobox.com> wrote:
>I made little Eagle models from Legos
YM "Lego bricks and toys". HTH.
Wretch
James Kibo Parry
>
> at school the
> evening that the local TV station ran the half hour promotion for the
> series.
> My father dutifully watched it for me (this is pre-vcr, you know) and
> helpfully told me,
> "They were fooling around on the back of the moon and it blew up."
>
> Many years later I was to realize the wisdom in that sentence.
Maybe someday we will _all_ come to realize the wisdom of blowing up the Moon.
> Sadly, I had to watch all of the episodes at least twice.
I usually can't find the plot until at least the ninth viewing.
Ever seen the one where the rock that makes The Death Color falls in
love with Maya? Pee-yew! That's the dumbest plot about an evil rock
that I ever saw!
-- K.
The episode did have Barbara Bain
screaming in agony, so it wasn't
all bad.
James Kibo Parry
>
> For some reason I always really *liked* Mummenschanz. I think I was
> severely disturbed.
Or at least you have a fetish for people who have toilet paper for faces.
Your sex life is going to be very, very, very unhappy.
> What scared me was one of the things Nick Bensema mentioned: whenever
> there were TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES while I was watching my PBS kiddie TV, I
> had to go and hide. For a long time I thought that this was because of
> some deeply metaphysical sensibility: I had feared that reality was going
> to disintegrate someday and be replaced by a card that said PLEASE STAND
> BY. (I actually did have a nightmare about that once: I dreamt that I
> woke up in my bed in the middle of the night to see a giant, glowing,
> 1970s-vintage WETA-26 PLEASE STAND BY card covering one entire wall of the
> room. Maybe I was dreaming about "Fahrenheit 451.")
Dear MATTHEW J MC IRVIN,
Please cease STANDING BY. The state of EMERGERGENCY TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES
has been resolved and there is no need to continue STANDING BY. If you
have been STANDING BY all this time, you will not be DE-MOLECULARIZED by
our new Benevolent Muppetator, Lord Kermit. Thank you for STANDING BY,
unless you thought it was just a dream, in which case you are being
DE-MOLECULARIZED even as you read this sentence. END END END
> Anyway, recently I was thinking about this, and I realized that it wasn't
> anything profound at all. As I've previously mentioned, when I was little
> I had an incredibly sensitive startle reflex, and consequently had a dread
> of anything that might make a sudden noise. TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES were
> usually associated with a total absence of audio for an unpredictable
> interval lasting a minute or so, followed by a sudden disembodied voice
> saying "please stand by," usually at a fairly high volume level. I was
> just afraid that I was going to be startled by the scary voice.
RESUME STANDING BY NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That is all. END END END DELETE DELETE DELETE DE-MOLECULARIZER PREPARED
FOR NEXT VICTIM RESETTING CEREBRAL TOMOGRAPHY APPARATUS END END END
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
James Kibo Parry
>
> Oh, incidentally . . . one thing that genuinely upset my young mind was
> an episode of "Davey and Goliath" where Davey fantasized about getting
> revenge on a kid who bullied him . . . they showed "fantasy scenes", one
> where the bully kid gets tied to a tree on a high mountain where no one
> can hear him, and another where he's getting his face pushed into wet
> cement and leaving an imprint. I don't know if it was the principle or
> the claymation, but in any event it kept me awake an extra hour that night.
There really should be a show just to teach kids that revenge against bullies
is wrong. It would feature a solid hour of this nerdy little boy torturing
bullies every day, except at the end there would be this voiceover that said
"The preceding was wrong!" and this would end all violence everywhere in the
world forever, except for the bullies beating up the nerds and the nerds
building giant robotic arms that pick up bullies and drop them in vats of acid.
Oh, and there would be spaceships in it too because kids like spaceships,
except for girl kids. So we'd have some fluffy pink half-pony half-whale
creatures living in the spaceships and powering the spaceships with kissing.
It would be the cartoon that's wholesome for EVERYONE! Except bullies.
But that's okay because we'd amend the Constitution so that bullies wouldn't
be allowed to vote so they'd never be able to undo the amendment. The End.
-- K.
Also the pony-whales would
be real and you could have
as many as you wanted unless
you're not a girl in which
case you'd get your own country.
Tim Serpas
> Anyone remember Avon's Moon Lander game? The main gamepiece
>was actually a bottle of shampoo in the shape of the Command Module,
>and the cap was the Lunar Lander.
Well *I'm* jealous. I did, however, have dinosaur shampoo
bottles. T. Rex, Brontasaurus and Triceratops (my favorite).
You'd pop their heads off to get to the caps. Strangely, the
Brontasaurus head fit onto the T. Rex body as well as its own,
so you could add its snakey, long head to evil-mean Rex and
the nasty, bitey head of Rex onto the placid, veggie-munching
body of Brontie. Great fun!
Wretchasaurus
Darla
>
> > and I would burst into tears
--- and then Keith added:
>
> ... it made me uneasy.
>
> ... just something to leave a weird, spooky imprint.
> ...I'm sure I would have a mental breakdown...
> ...one thing that genuinely upset my young mind ...
> ...it kept me awake an extra hour that
> night.
Man. You guys sure are pussies. *snort* Scared by "Sesame Street" or
"Davey and Goliath." *snicker*
In MY day, "kids' shows" were half-hour nightmares like The Pinkie Lee Show.
Pinkie wore a bad sportcoat and a porkpie hat and did a stupid dance in the
opening and closing segments. One day he had a heart attack and DIED during
the show on live TV.
YOU weenies have a gander at a grown man thrashing around on the studio
floor with his tongue lolling and his eyes bugged out and people with 45
pound headsets yelling and rushing at him. And then see the picture replaced
by an Indian head test pattern and that alien-landing "oooooo" sound, and
THEN tell me about "scared." HA!
Darla
--- who actually spent most of her youth hoping that Spin or Marty or Mary
Stone or Kitten would be spanked while she watched.
Stephen
"Jim Nowotarski" <some...@out.there> wrote:
Except for the one where the monster with the
> bazillion tentacles ate the people and
> spit out the partially digested smoking bodies. That one permanently
> scarred me on the first viewing.
Now you can watch 'Deep Rising', the genetically engineered bastard
offspring of every action movie ever, in which a monster with a bazillion
tentacles... you get the idea. But with CGI and jetskis.
--
Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas - Virgil.
RainyCyanide
<HTwv4.530$dD6....@sapphire.mtt.net>:
>YOU weenies have a gander at a grown man thrashing around on the studio
>floor with his tongue lolling and his eyes bugged out
We have Jim Carrey for that now, thank you very much.
Rainy
--
I left AOL the day I learned that *S* meant *smile* and not *sarcasm*.
RainyCyanide
<20000301204410...@ng-cd1.aol.com>:
>
>I spend my toddler years in constant fear that voltron was going to come
>after me, after having formed a blazing sword.
>
Thank you so very much for re-awakening my childhood fear of the family car
unfolding itself into a robot who would crush me. I had nightmares about
this until I was 24.
"Transformers...more than meets the eyes. Transformers...robots in
disguise!"
Tim Serpas
>You had to mention the Bugaloos, and H.R. Puffinstuff, too. Well,
>they hold a memorable place in my life, as seeing those shows marked
>the first time that I ever completely and unrepentantly wished that
>I could see someone die horribly. The entire cast, really. (That
>thought sprung into my mind fully formed like Venus from the sea
>the very first time that I saw them and I never changed, never wavered.
>Not once)
I prefer to say 'like Athena from Zeus's skull', but I guess
this works as well. Although I think the violent overtones
of my version work better than the erotic ones you present to
your dreams of murder.
Wretch
Tim Serpas
>>I spend my toddler years in constant fear that voltron was going to come
>>after me, after having formed a blazing sword.
I used to beable to do an uncanny imitation of 10-year-old
Vietnamese boys arguing over whether or not Voltron could
beat up Optimus Prime. I also would imitate the way they
said 'foam buhweiziiiing soad'.
RainyCyanide <rainyc...@geocitiesgeocities.com> wrote:
>Thank you so very much for re-awakening my childhood fear of the family car
>unfolding itself into a robot who would crush me. I had nightmares about
>this until I was 24.
But the Autobots were the *good*guys. Bumblebee would
never hurt a soul!
Wretch
Mojo Jojo
mmci...@world.std.com (Matt McIrvin),
doing dastardly deeds for Samantha and Matt's House of Bits,
publicly revealed 15 lines of trade secrets:
>In article <kibo-29020...@192.168.200.201>, ki...@world.std.com
>(James "Kibo" Parry) wrote:
>
>>I am never going to watch the movie of "Naked Lunch" ever again because
>>the first time I did, I was enjoying it, and then the nice-looking woman
>>rips her skin open and inside, SHE'S ROY SCHEIDER SMOKING A CIGAR!
>
>And on the inner surface of her skin is the same hexagonal pattern
>that appears on the insides of the wrappers of institutional hamburgers,
>like the ones at the Museum of Science or your high school cafeteria.
>
>THINK ABOUT IT, WON'T YOU?
>
>--
>Matt McIrvin http://world.std.com/~mmcirvin/
Roy Scheider is a HAMBURGER??
Ya learn something new every day!
Mojo Jojo
*
"Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat."
-John Lehman
---------------------------
for email, drop the chalupa
Mojo Jojo
wre...@fnord.io.com (Tim Serpas),
doing dastardly deeds for Illuminati Online,
publicly revealed 16 lines of trade secrets:
Good point. I think, in that light, it may signify psychosexual
destabilization- tones of Jeffrey Dahmer, or Son of Sam...
or mayby it's just poetic.
(Everyone knows all poets are crazy.)
robert lindsay
>
>
>Well, I've asked some people this question already, but since we're
>looking in the way-back machine.....
>
>Who did you vote for, Quisp or Quake?
Quake was clearly the victim of widespread vote fraud. The Quisp bastards
had it in for us since day one....
General Mills darkest day was when Quake was canned.
--
Robert Lindsay, NASA - Goddard, Greenbelt MD rlin...@seadas.gsfc.nasa.gov
"This whole business of killing bugs to be cool on the Internet is Grace
Hopper's legacy." -J. "Kibo" Parry, USENET, Sep 24, 1999 Why not me?
#include <standard_disclaimer.h> 301-286-9958 ISTJ -REM
WWS
Mojo Jojo wrote:
>
> On 2 Mar 2000 19:55:16 GMT,
> wre...@fnord.io.com (Tim Serpas),
> doing dastardly deeds for Illuminati Online,
> publicly revealed 16 lines of trade secrets:
>
> >WWS <wsch...@tyler.net> wrote:
> >>You had to mention the Bugaloos, and H.R. Puffinstuff, too. Well,
> >>they hold a memorable place in my life, as seeing those shows marked
> >>the first time that I ever completely and unrepentantly wished that
> >>I could see someone die horribly. The entire cast, really. (That
> >>thought sprung into my mind fully formed like Venus from the sea
> >>the very first time that I saw them and I never changed, never wavered.
> >>Not once)
> >
> >I prefer to say 'like Athena from Zeus's skull', but I guess
> >this works as well. Although I think the violent overtones
> >of my version work better than the erotic ones you present to
> >your dreams of murder.
> >
> >Wretch
> >
> Good point. I think, in that light, it may signify psychosexual
> destabilization- tones of Jeffrey Dahmer, or Son of Sam...
> or mayby it's just poetic.
> (Everyone knows all poets are crazy.)
and besides that, everyone knows that sex and death are just two
sides of the same coin anyways. That's what makes shows like
VIP so great.
--
__________________________________________________WWS_____________
Quis trolliet ipsos trollerizum? - Blackhawk
robert lindsay
James "Kibo" Parry <ki...@world.std.com> wrote:
>
>There really should be a show just to teach kids that revenge against bullies
>is wrong. It would feature a solid hour of this nerdy little boy torturing
>bullies every day, except at the end there would be this voiceover that said
SUBSCRIBE
>"The preceding was wrong!" and this would end all violence everywhere in the
UNSUBSCRIBE
Chip Salzenberg
>Chip Salzenberg <gr...@pobox.com> wrote:
>>I made little Eagle models from Legos
>
>YM "Lego bricks and toys". HTH.
No, I mean simple doggone legos. No capital "L" for them if they
can't grow a sense of proportion about these things.
Now, if you'll excuse me, there's a Jello pudding snack[tm]
I need to lob from a great height onto Bill Cosby.
--
Chip Salzenberg - a.k.a. - <ch...@valinux.com>
"What country is this?" "Europe." "Oh." //MST3K
Chip Salzenberg
>It seems like Villa Alegre also had instructive cartoons that were
>the web, though the producers do seem to have followed-up with a
>flavor of Linux.
AGUA!
Chip Salzenberg
> Sealab 2020- I even had the board game.
Ah, that was a great show.
Just one thing bugged me.
DID THE AIR HOSES AND FACE MASKS HAVE ONE CONNECTOR OR TWO?!?!
The animators were too lazy to be consistent. It drove me nuts!
>*still* a little kid...
I wanna GI Joe ^W^W Athlon 850!
Mortis
which WWS <wsch...@tyler.net> typed:
>Well, I've asked some people this question already, but since we're
>looking in the way-back machine.....
>
>Who did you vote for, Quisp or Quake?
Hey, I didn't know you had Quake back in the distant past! Any of you
guys ever rocket-jump? How many Shamblers didja frag?
Wondering what this "Quisp" game is,
Niwashi
WWS <wsch...@tyler.net>,
doing dastardly deeds for no mas,
publicly revealed 64 lines of trade secrets:
<snip>
>Well, I've asked some people this question already, but since we're
>looking in the way-back machine.....
>
>Who did you vote for, Quisp or Quake?
>
>
>
>__________________________________________________WWS_____________
I vaguely remember that, but wasn't involved. I was into more
"wholesome" cereals like Sugar Smacks and Sugar Corn Pops. Y'know, I
think I'd kill now for a box of Sugar Corn Pops right now! I can still
taste 'em. They were about 4% corn, I think, and 96% glucose rush.
I'd also do unspeakable acts for a Reggie! bar too, and real
Gummardine. The cheap imitation Fruit Rollups pushed them right out of
the market.
Anyone ever play with SST's, with "T-Stick Power"? I destroyed all the
kickboards in the house with those things.
Mojo Jojo
*
...flyin' the Way Back Machine into the dirt!
Matt McIrvin
>Anyone ever play with SST's, with "T-Stick Power"? I destroyed all the
>kickboards in the house with those things.
SSPs, right? Though I don't remember what it stood for.
Remember the "demolition derby" ones, with parts that popped off
when they collided? Now THERE'S FUN! For a WHOLE FIVE MINUTES!
Then the play value is sort of exhausted.
Still, when I got them for Christmas, I was the happiest boy in the
world.
Jim Nowotarski
news:kibo-02030...@192.168.200.200...
>
> I usually can't find the plot until at least the ninth viewing.
> Ever seen the one where the rock that makes The Death Color falls in
> love with Maya? Pee-yew! That's the dumbest plot about an evil
rock
> that I ever saw!
I'm not certain. Was that the one with the aliens that were suffering
from
hereditary sterility? And they had to cover the moon with soap suds or
Dame Judith Anderson would suck them all through a black sun?
>
> -- K.
>
> The episode did have
Barbara Bain
> screaming in agony, so it
wasn't
> all bad.
I don't know about you, but Martin Landau trying to smile always
scared the
hell out of me.
--
Jim