So, I received this a bulletin on my MySpace page about this article in the New York Times Concerning Sesame Street. Now, I don't know how many of you watched Sesame Street as a child, but my mother was a big fan and now that I am a mom, i am as well. So, this article basically stated that Sesame Street is not appropriate for our children any more. Bull shit. It is just as appropriate as Spongebob, Fairly Odd Parents or any of the other cartoons on TV now.
Here is the article. Tell me what you think..
Sunny days! The earliest episodes of “Sesame Street” are available on digital video! Break out some Keebler products, fire up the DVD player and prepare for the exquisite pleasure-pain of top-shelf nostalgia.
Just don’t bring the children. According to an earnest warning on Volumes 1 and 2, “Sesame Street: Old School” is adults-only: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”
Say what? At a recent all-ages home screening, a hush fell over the room. “What did they do to us?” asked one Gen-X mother of two, finally. The show rolled, and the sweet trauma came flooding back. What they did to us was hard-core. Man, was that scene rough. The masonry on the dingy brownstone at 123 Sesame Street, where the closeted Ernie and Bert shared a dismal basement apartment, was deteriorating. Cookie Monster was on a fast track to diabetes. Oscar’s depression was untreated. Prozacky Elmo didn’t exist.
Nothing in the children’s entertainment of today, candy-colored animation hopped up on computer tricks, can prepare young or old for this frightening glimpse of simpler times. Back then — as on the very first episode, which aired on PBS Nov. 10, 1969 — a pretty, lonely girl like Sally might find herself befriended by an older male stranger who held her hand and took her home. Granted, Gordon just wanted Sally to meet his wife and have some milk and cookies, but . . . well, he could have wanted anything. As it was, he fed her milk and cookies. The milk looks dangerously whole.
Live-action cows also charge the 1969 screen — cows eating common grass, not grain improved with hormones. Cows are milked by plain old farmers, who use their unsanitary hands and fill one bucket at a time. Elsewhere, two brothers risk concussion while whaling on each other with allergenic feather pillows. Overweight layabouts, lacking touch-screen iPods and headphones, jockey for airtime with their deafening transistor radios. And one of those radios plays a late-’60s news report — something about a “senior American official” and “two billion in credit over the next five years” — that conjures a bleak economic climate, with war debt and stagflation in the offing.
The old “Sesame Street” is not for the faint of heart, and certainly not for softies born since 1998, when the chipper “Elmo’s World” started. Anyone who considers bull markets normal, extracurricular activities sacrosanct and New York a tidy, governable place — well, the original “Sesame Street” might hurt your feelings.
I asked Carol-Lynn Parente, the executive producer of “Sesame Street,” how exactly the first episodes were unsuitable for toddlers in 2007. She told me about Alistair Cookie and the parody “Monsterpiece Theater.” Alistair Cookie, played by Cookie Monster, used to appear with a pipe, which he later gobbled. According to Parente, “That modeled the wrong behavior” — smoking, eating pipes — “so we reshot those scenes without the pipe, and then we dropped the parody altogether.”
Which brought Parente to a feature of “Sesame Street” that had not been reconstructed: the chronically mood-disordered Oscar the Grouch. On the first episode, Oscar seems irredeemably miserable — hypersensitive, sarcastic, misanthropic. (Bert, too, is described as grouchy; none of the characters, in fact, is especially sunshiney except maybe Ernie, who also seems slow.) “We might not be able to create a character like Oscar now,” she said.
Snuffleupagus is visible only to Big Bird; since 1985, all the characters can see him, as Big Bird’s old protestations that he was not hallucinating came to seem a little creepy, not to mention somewhat strained. As for Cookie Monster, he can be seen in the old-school episodes in his former inglorious incarnation: a blue, googly-eyed cookievore with a signature gobble (“om nom nom nom”). Originally designed by Jim Henson for use in commercials for General Foods International and Frito-Lay, Cookie Monster was never a righteous figure. His controversial conversion to a more diverse diet wouldn’t come until 2005, and in the early seasons he comes across a Child’s First Addict.
The biggest surprise of the early episodes is the rural — agrarian, even — sequences. Episode 1 spends a stoned time warp in the company of backlighted cows, while they mill around and chew cud. This pastoral scene rolls to an industrial voiceover explaining dairy farms, and the sleepy chords of Joe Raposo’s aimless masterpiece, “Hey Cow, I See You Now.” Chewing the grass so green/Making the milk/Waiting for milking time/Waiting for giving time/Mmmmm.
Oh, what’s that? Right, the trance of early “Sesame Street” and its country-time sequences. In spite of the show’s devotion to its “target child,” the “4-year-old inner-city black youngster” (as The New York Times explained in 1979), the first episodes join kids cavorting in amber waves of grain — black children, mostly, who must be pressed into service as the face of America’s farms uniquely on “Sesame Street.”
I call BULL SHIT!!!
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Sunday, November 18, 2007
GREAT NEWS
I am an AUNT again. (with out bringing up the big whole long story)
By brother had another child, different women. A son. He was born tonight, sometime between 9pm and 10:30 pm. He was 8.5 lbs and 20.5 inches long. Full head of brown hair. His name is going to be Nathen Alexander Edward (and what ever last name she has). I have not gotten to see him yet, but I am excited. ...
By brother had another child, different women. A son. He was born tonight, sometime between 9pm and 10:30 pm. He was 8.5 lbs and 20.5 inches long. Full head of brown hair. His name is going to be Nathen Alexander Edward (and what ever last name she has). I have not gotten to see him yet, but I am excited. ...
Classic..Shit..Happy
Well, I just realized today that because of my lack of baby-sitters around, that I am going to have to retake aone of my classes. Im not to happy about that, but, I'll just retake next semester to get it out of the way, and I will take the online course that way I wont have to worry about a sitter.
Nest note, I spent the better half the of day sitting at my computer trying to locate a few classic movies that I watched at one time or another with my mom. The first one I thought was titles "Baby Face". And all I could remember about it was that somebody cried into a jar and somebody else drank the jar of tears. After countless searches through Google, I came across the title " Cry Baby". Ah hah. Found it. With Johnnie Depp, then realizing that it was not a classic movie at all. Did I mention that I used to watch the movie years ago with my mom? Years ago.... 2nd movie, I still have not been able to find, and have been looking for this movie for a long time, but the only thing I remember is some lady selling something out of a backet, resting by a train track and loosing her legs or dying. I think is a black and white, so I tried to search black and white classic movies, didn't find anything similar to what I was looking for. Don't think Im ever going to find it unless I start watching AMC or TCM. Who knows....
So, my brother in-law came down for the Thanksgiving holiday. Excited to see him. My parents are going to Washington state for my Grandparents 5oth wedding anniversary, so they will be there over Thanksgiving. I am heading down to Orlando to be with the in-laws and making sure that I make plenty of the traditional Thanksgiving eats. My husbands family is Spanish, so for the most part they have Spanish food, and INSTANT mashed potatoes and stuffing in a BOX. So I plan on making these items from scratch this year. Yah for me!!!
Nest note, I spent the better half the of day sitting at my computer trying to locate a few classic movies that I watched at one time or another with my mom. The first one I thought was titles "Baby Face". And all I could remember about it was that somebody cried into a jar and somebody else drank the jar of tears. After countless searches through Google, I came across the title " Cry Baby". Ah hah. Found it. With Johnnie Depp, then realizing that it was not a classic movie at all. Did I mention that I used to watch the movie years ago with my mom? Years ago.... 2nd movie, I still have not been able to find, and have been looking for this movie for a long time, but the only thing I remember is some lady selling something out of a backet, resting by a train track and loosing her legs or dying. I think is a black and white, so I tried to search black and white classic movies, didn't find anything similar to what I was looking for. Don't think Im ever going to find it unless I start watching AMC or TCM. Who knows....
So, my brother in-law came down for the Thanksgiving holiday. Excited to see him. My parents are going to Washington state for my Grandparents 5oth wedding anniversary, so they will be there over Thanksgiving. I am heading down to Orlando to be with the in-laws and making sure that I make plenty of the traditional Thanksgiving eats. My husbands family is Spanish, so for the most part they have Spanish food, and INSTANT mashed potatoes and stuffing in a BOX. So I plan on making these items from scratch this year. Yah for me!!!
Friday, November 9, 2007
Update on the Pickle!!
So, I decided to do some searching on the pickle ornament tradition. Mom said she received the ornament as a gift. Well, after doing some searching, I actually found that their are a whole shit load of people with this same tradition. Ya, who would've thought. A whole country for that matter. Germany. Yes, it is a German tradition. Heres the only story I could find on it....
The German Christmas Ornament pickle Story.
The pickle German glass ornaments are considered special Christmas in Germany decoration by many families where the Christmas tree was decorated on Christmas eve.
The pickle glass Christmas ornament was always the last glass ornament to be hung on the Christmas tree, with the parents hiding the pickle glass ornament in the Christmas tree among the other German glass ornaments. When the children were allowed to view the Christmas tree they would begin gleefully searching for the German glass ornament pickle. The children knew that whoever found the pickle glass ornament first would receive an extra little gift and would be the one to begin the unwrappingof the Christmas gifts.
Then, I found more material on the pickle.\
But the biggest problem with the German pickle (saure Gurke, Weihnachtsgurke) tradition is that no one in Germany seems to have ever heard of it. Over the years this question has repeatedly come up on the AATG (German Teachers) forum. Teachers of German in the U.S. and in Europe have never been able to find a native German who has even heard of the pickle legend, much less carried out this Christmas custom. It may have been some German-American invention by someone who wanted to sell more glass ornaments for Christmas. Or could the Weihnachtsgurke be an obscure regional custom that few people are aware of?
And more./
Then Rita heard from someone who claimed to have an answer that might solve the mystery. A descendent of a soldier who fought in the American Civil War, John Lower (Hans Lauer?), born in Bavaria in 1842, wrote to tell about a family story that had to do with a Christmas pickle. According to family lore, “John Lower was captured and sent to prison in Andersonville, Georgia. ...In poor health and starving, he begged a guard for just one pickle before he died. The guard took pity on him and found a pickle for John Lower. According to family legend, John said that the pickle—by the grace of God—gave him the mental and physical strength to live on. Once he was reunited with his family he began a tradition of hiding a pickle on the Christmas tree. The first person who found the pickle on Christmas morning would be blessed with a year of good fortune.”
A Web search in German and English turned up only the fact that the pickle ornaments are indeed sold in parts of Germany, ranging from Höxter in North Rhine-Westphalia to Kissing in Bavaria. All of the German articles on the topic debunk the legend (some even refer to the myth article you are reading right now, first written and published in 2003). My efforts to get confirmation of the actual pickle custom from someone in Höxter have so far been fruitless. (Have the people there really kept this custom a secret for all these years?) We still lack any proof that this is truly a German custom, or that the custom is not a fairly recent invention. Has the popularity of the supposedly German legend in America brought it to Germany, or was it really the other way around? It's still a mystery.
All I can say for certain is that to this day almost no one in Germany has ever heard of the German Christmas pickle custom. So far I have found no historical or other evidence to indicate that the Weihnachtsgurke is a genuine Christmas custom from Germany. If anyone has proof otherwise or can tell me how this legend really got started, please let me know.
so I ask, then what the hell is up with a pickle?! I guess we Americans like legends behind everything, or else the makers of the glass pickle decided that the best marketing strategy would be to attach this legend and sell the pickle overseas to us Americans...
The German Christmas Ornament pickle Story.
The pickle German glass ornaments are considered special Christmas in Germany decoration by many families where the Christmas tree was decorated on Christmas eve.
The pickle glass Christmas ornament was always the last glass ornament to be hung on the Christmas tree, with the parents hiding the pickle glass ornament in the Christmas tree among the other German glass ornaments. When the children were allowed to view the Christmas tree they would begin gleefully searching for the German glass ornament pickle. The children knew that whoever found the pickle glass ornament first would receive an extra little gift and would be the one to begin the unwrappingof the Christmas gifts.
Then, I found more material on the pickle.\
But the biggest problem with the German pickle (saure Gurke, Weihnachtsgurke) tradition is that no one in Germany seems to have ever heard of it. Over the years this question has repeatedly come up on the AATG (German Teachers) forum. Teachers of German in the U.S. and in Europe have never been able to find a native German who has even heard of the pickle legend, much less carried out this Christmas custom. It may have been some German-American invention by someone who wanted to sell more glass ornaments for Christmas. Or could the Weihnachtsgurke be an obscure regional custom that few people are aware of?
And more./
Then Rita heard from someone who claimed to have an answer that might solve the mystery. A descendent of a soldier who fought in the American Civil War, John Lower (Hans Lauer?), born in Bavaria in 1842, wrote to tell about a family story that had to do with a Christmas pickle. According to family lore, “John Lower was captured and sent to prison in Andersonville, Georgia. ...In poor health and starving, he begged a guard for just one pickle before he died. The guard took pity on him and found a pickle for John Lower. According to family legend, John said that the pickle—by the grace of God—gave him the mental and physical strength to live on. Once he was reunited with his family he began a tradition of hiding a pickle on the Christmas tree. The first person who found the pickle on Christmas morning would be blessed with a year of good fortune.”
A Web search in German and English turned up only the fact that the pickle ornaments are indeed sold in parts of Germany, ranging from Höxter in North Rhine-Westphalia to Kissing in Bavaria. All of the German articles on the topic debunk the legend (some even refer to the myth article you are reading right now, first written and published in 2003). My efforts to get confirmation of the actual pickle custom from someone in Höxter have so far been fruitless. (Have the people there really kept this custom a secret for all these years?) We still lack any proof that this is truly a German custom, or that the custom is not a fairly recent invention. Has the popularity of the supposedly German legend in America brought it to Germany, or was it really the other way around? It's still a mystery.
All I can say for certain is that to this day almost no one in Germany has ever heard of the German Christmas pickle custom. So far I have found no historical or other evidence to indicate that the Weihnachtsgurke is a genuine Christmas custom from Germany. If anyone has proof otherwise or can tell me how this legend really got started, please let me know.
so I ask, then what the hell is up with a pickle?! I guess we Americans like legends behind everything, or else the makers of the glass pickle decided that the best marketing strategy would be to attach this legend and sell the pickle overseas to us Americans...
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Today!
You know, I absolutely hate it when people make things sound like a 911 emergency, just to find out that its not really that big of a deal at all.
I get this message on my Myspace from my brothers ex who is pregnant with my new little nephew, (who, by the way, is named Nathen Alexander) that I need to call her right away. I get 3 of these messages, and once again, all they say is "you need to call me right now". So I start freaking out. Whats wrong, I hope everything is ok. (she also lives next door to my sister in-law and my other nephew Dominic Mikel). So, Im sitting here thinking that something is wrong with one of my nephew, and of course, I call, and I get a voicemail, no answer. So I then send a message asking if everybody is ok and what is going on, just to get a response that everybody is fine, my sister in-law just wanted to speak with me but is now at work. huh. What is wrong with peope.
On another note, I have this cute adorable doggie, a Shit Zu, named Gizmo. And his water and food dishes are this rod iron and stoneware set that I got from At Home America, which is discontinued. So today, as I am putting around the house, my son reaches onto the counter top( that's where we keep Gizmo's food dishes because child plays with them) and grabs his water bowl, which is stoneware, and drops it to the floor. Shatters everywhere. So now, my poor Gizmo does not have a matching dish set, and I have no idea where Iam going to find another bowl to fit in his stand.
I get this message on my Myspace from my brothers ex who is pregnant with my new little nephew, (who, by the way, is named Nathen Alexander) that I need to call her right away. I get 3 of these messages, and once again, all they say is "you need to call me right now". So I start freaking out. Whats wrong, I hope everything is ok. (she also lives next door to my sister in-law and my other nephew Dominic Mikel). So, Im sitting here thinking that something is wrong with one of my nephew, and of course, I call, and I get a voicemail, no answer. So I then send a message asking if everybody is ok and what is going on, just to get a response that everybody is fine, my sister in-law just wanted to speak with me but is now at work. huh. What is wrong with peope.
On another note, I have this cute adorable doggie, a Shit Zu, named Gizmo. And his water and food dishes are this rod iron and stoneware set that I got from At Home America, which is discontinued. So today, as I am putting around the house, my son reaches onto the counter top( that's where we keep Gizmo's food dishes because child plays with them) and grabs his water bowl, which is stoneware, and drops it to the floor. Shatters everywhere. So now, my poor Gizmo does not have a matching dish set, and I have no idea where Iam going to find another bowl to fit in his stand.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Lookie what i found....
Well, I know its a little early to be thinking about Christmas decorating, but, now that its getting closer to Christmas, and I have to new house, I find myself thinking about it alot. Not that I have a whole lot of money to spend on Christmas decorating, but anyways.
So, I get this email subscription to Create and Barrel and I absolutely love looking at their products. And after looking through their Christmas stuff, I found an ornament that I thought I would NEVER find. Let me back up.
Every year for as long as I can remember, my parents and my brother and I would decorate the tree together. We all had our own specific ornaments that we hung on the tree, then we would hand the rest together. After we were done, Mom and Dad would hang this particular ornament, then my brother and I would have to search the tree until we found it. Nothing special, just something we always did. And to this day, every Christmas, after they put up there tree, I go over and search for this ornament.
Well, I found this particular ornament, and I'm going to buy this ornament and pass this tradition on in may family. But the real point of this post, is that I never thought I would find this ornament. Picture is below.....
Yes, it is a Pickle. I have no idea where my parents found this ornament, but I, thier wonderful daughter, I found another, and I am going to carry on this silly but wonderful tradion of locating the pickle!!!
So, I get this email subscription to Create and Barrel and I absolutely love looking at their products. And after looking through their Christmas stuff, I found an ornament that I thought I would NEVER find. Let me back up.
Every year for as long as I can remember, my parents and my brother and I would decorate the tree together. We all had our own specific ornaments that we hung on the tree, then we would hand the rest together. After we were done, Mom and Dad would hang this particular ornament, then my brother and I would have to search the tree until we found it. Nothing special, just something we always did. And to this day, every Christmas, after they put up there tree, I go over and search for this ornament.
Well, I found this particular ornament, and I'm going to buy this ornament and pass this tradition on in may family. But the real point of this post, is that I never thought I would find this ornament. Picture is below.....
Yes, it is a Pickle. I have no idea where my parents found this ornament, but I, thier wonderful daughter, I found another, and I am going to carry on this silly but wonderful tradion of locating the pickle!!!
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
AHHH!!!
OK, so I am taking this Internet Psychology 101 class through my college. Which was a mistake to begin with, I have no idea what possessed me to take an Internet course instead of regular class. Maybe it was saving money that I didn't have to put out for extra child care. Well, then I guess this is what I get for being cheap.
We have this Gorden Rule writing requirement that has to be met in order to pass specific classes at college. I had a Research and Respond Paper due at the begging of the month, which I was very proud of. Did it on Gender and Sexuality. Anyways, your supposed to submit it in the drop box before the due date. So, when I finished this assignment, I was totally stoked and turned it in early. Well, the teacher did not receive my paper. Now, let me clarify on the Gorden Rule writing requirement. Even if you pass every assignment and test with an A, and you do not score at least a 60% on the writing requirement, you fail the class. So, now my dilemma, if my teacher does not have this paper, I fail the class. Which, CAN NOT HAPPEN. So I send email after email, explaining that I did indeed turn in this assignment. I finally got a response back today, that "I could turn the paper in for her to read"...Now, what exactly does that mean? Is she going to read it and grade it, is she going to mark off a letter grade for being late, or is she JUST going to read the paper? I have no clue. But what I do know is that I am FREAKING out because I have no idea if I am going to pass or fail this class. ugh....
We have this Gorden Rule writing requirement that has to be met in order to pass specific classes at college. I had a Research and Respond Paper due at the begging of the month, which I was very proud of. Did it on Gender and Sexuality. Anyways, your supposed to submit it in the drop box before the due date. So, when I finished this assignment, I was totally stoked and turned it in early. Well, the teacher did not receive my paper. Now, let me clarify on the Gorden Rule writing requirement. Even if you pass every assignment and test with an A, and you do not score at least a 60% on the writing requirement, you fail the class. So, now my dilemma, if my teacher does not have this paper, I fail the class. Which, CAN NOT HAPPEN. So I send email after email, explaining that I did indeed turn in this assignment. I finally got a response back today, that "I could turn the paper in for her to read"...Now, what exactly does that mean? Is she going to read it and grade it, is she going to mark off a letter grade for being late, or is she JUST going to read the paper? I have no clue. But what I do know is that I am FREAKING out because I have no idea if I am going to pass or fail this class. ugh....
Thursday, November 1, 2007
November
WOW. Occtober is over already. Now its time to get ready for Thanksgiving. One of my fav. holidays. Ofcourse Christmas is numero uno...This Thanksgiving, we are spending it with my in-laws in Orlando. My brother in-law is comming down from New Jersey, were going on a camping trip the weekend prior to thanksgiving, then on to eat until our pants wont buckle. lol. Ofcourse, my mother is going to Washington state for Thanksgiving. Its my grandparents 50th wedding aniversarie. I would love to be there, but the hubby can't get vacation time yet. She mom gets to eat turkey with the snow and I get to eat turkey with the Palm Trees yet again. How nice.....
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