Saturday Sesame Street: Birthday Edition

For John, because unlike Bert, it is his birthday:



Happy birthday, John!

Also, a virtual cake for you:
(Stolen from Cake Wrecks)

I also highly recommend checking out John's project, Operation Backlog Slog, Days 1-5, 6, 7-9, 10-16, 17-27, 28-30, 31-33, & (so far) 24-43. Check out his explanation for liking Lady Gaga on that last one. It makes me fully embrace my own love for her music, and feel more secure in my decision to not be embarrassed about it.

A Very Happy 40th Birthday to Sesame Street

Forty years ago today, Sesame Street went live.

Around 16 years later, I was around to be their demographic.

By virtue of not knowing any other channels existed (I spent my weekend early mornings enthralled by the bass fishing I watched on tv), I was a PBS kid from the start.

And my absolute favorite program was Sesame Street. Well, that and the bass fishing.

I don't know how much Sesame Street affected me, because there was no click moment; there was no moment in my life when there wasn't Sesame Street. I'm not sure how much I really learned. I could never recite the alphabet backwards. The two-headed monster sketches did absolutely nothing for my pronunciation abilities. I never mastered double dutch. Letters and numbers I picked up along the way, but I'm pretty sure I would have learned to count at some point or another.

What Sesame Street did give me, though, was a path to another world; in the early years, Sesame Street was actually gritty. It still seemed gritty through the '80s. It seemed real, like there were real people and real monsters and real giant birds living side by side on this street with a roving frog reporter. And because it seemed real, the things the show discussed and the way the show discussed them were real. It gave me characters I adored, from Big Bird to Grover, to Oscar to Telly Monster. It gave me Luis and Maria. It gave me Linda and Barkley. It gave me Bob.

I've read numerous books about Sesame Street. I've learned about the effort that went into making the show, the reasons for the different characters, the growing pains, and everything else. But what stands out is how Sesame Street was a show that understood kids, didn't talk down to kids, and then gave a little something for the grown-ups as well.

And so, as my own little gimmick suggests, I'm inordinately fond of Sesame Street. I'm glad it has made it to year 40, and I hope it has another couple of decades left.

Also, check out the Sunday Sweets: Sesame Street. Those cakes are the awesome.

Saturday Sesame Street

In anticipation of Sesame Street's 40th birthday come November 10:

Happy Birthday to Me!

And I want this cake:



Because part of my junior year in college was spent on the couch, rewatching the Fraggle Rock from my childhood on DVD with my best friend instead of studying for exams. And because I love it so.

(Ganked from Cakewrecks a million years ago in preparation for this moment).

What I Want For My Birthday

A whole lot of Whedonesque bumper stickers. Namely, this one:

I would want this one:

except I want at the very least the "Buffy" part to be in the Buffy font. Like, this:

I also really want this one:

I think, with all of those, I'd have the coolest CRV ever.

Happs, Birthday, John Lennon

The Beatles, I'm more than happy to admit, played a pretty large role in my life. In a long and much beloved bedtime ritual, my father would read me books, spin his own stories, and sing songs. "Yesterday" is one of the ones I remember most clearly him singing, because that's the one I gravitated to. "Big Yellow Taxi" was a bit complex, especially with all that talk about Joni Mitchell's "old man". "For What It's Worth" may have been a bit too dark, at times. "Piano Man" was awesome and long, but it had that confusing part about tonicingin - I later was able to translate that as tonic-and-gin, which makes a lot more sense (if a bit reversed) but for years that line confused me.

And, yes, "Yesterday" was written by Paul. But because of "Yesterday" and my insistence my father sang it better than whoever that original guy did, I discovered what are commonly referred to as The Red Album and The Blue Album. And I played those records over and over and over and over again, much to the consternation of my mother. I was entranced, enchanted, ensorcelled by the spell The Beatles wove. And though I have never truly developed a favored Beatle, I do think John's voice may be the most vocally interesting. I have become particularly obsessed with The Beatles' version of Please Mister Postman:

It may just be the sandpaper quality of John Lennon's vocals, but this is my favorite version of this song.

And so, I'm pretty glad John Lennon was born. I'm fairly happy I share a birthday month with him.

Happy Birthday, Joss!

In case anyone is out of the loop, that guy, over there in the right hand corner, is one of my favorite people ever. And today is his 45th birthday. YAY! So, in honor of his birthday, and because Joss Whedon and his impact on my life is actually surprisingly easy to write about, I'm going to recount a bit of that.

In the speech he gave after he received the Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism, Whedon said this:

Right now, things are not terrible for a nonbeliever. Uh, okay. We got a shout out during the inauguration. That was amazing. That has to be a political first. I mean, one of the biggest things in politics is establishing your religious street cred. But the fact is, just - just by Obama saying - including nonbelievers in his speech, um, I felt something I've never felt before in my life. And I've had people come up to me and say, "Oh, you wrote this thing and helped me to come out" and it's meant a huge amount to me that people say these things to me. But I never - I never, until that moment. And I was like, "Oh, that's what it feels like. I matter. I'm a person. They counted me."

I got a bit of that jolt on Inauguration Day as well. But I'm one of the fans who has gotten that feeling from Joss Whedon's work. I didn't need it to come out because I'm not gay (though, because of my Buffy the Vampire Slayer shirt collection, more than a couple of people assumed I was in high school). And I wouldn't be able to explain that to Whedon directly if I were ever to see him anywhere, because (as my mother oh so helpfully points out) I'm a flight animal. 

My jolt came as a result of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I was in 6th grade, had moved to a new - and strange - town the previous year, and still felt out of sorts. Out of place. The town I moved to was extremely tiny and extremely religious, so I felt extraordinarily out of place. And then this show came on, about this girl who also moved to an extremely tiny town she didn't fit into. A show came on that had lines like, "Note to self: religion, freaky". A show came on that had a girl who rocked and kicked ass and took names. And it had a guy at the helm who was a humanist, was an absurdist, was a pop culturist, was an atheist. Was a feminist. And who proudly proclaimed all of those things. Who made characters I admired and that I loved and that I looked up to. I didn't really know much of that at first. All I knew was that there was a show created that I felt at home with, that I had to watch. A show that gave me a warm feeling inside, like it had something to say.

It's kind of sad, really, how much this one man and his creations really have impacted my life. But he - and they - have. Joss Whedon was one of the first atheists I ever knew about, aside from those in my own family. I don't really know how I can express how big a deal that was, to have someone who wrote something I fell so strongly for be an atheist - let alone be an atheist who was also a feminist. It's kind of sad how much watching episodes like The Body meant to me, where someone died and there was no comforting answer given or theorized about what happened after death and where they might have gone. 

There are a couple of things I don't agree with Joss Whedon about. One of them is the use of the term "sky bully" in reference to other people's gods. One, I don't think that such a pronouncement is very helpful in creating good atheist-believer relations; and two, I don't think there is any proof that if a god exists, s/he is in fact a bully. I'm more than aware that people have bullied on behalf of their god, but I'm also aware that a belief in a god has also inspired incredible works of good. Frankly, with or without a god, people would find reasons to bully; and with or without a god, people will find inspiration to do good. God's the convenient excuse in those cases, but not the root of the cause. And to maintain, even obliquely, that a god or a religion is the root cause of the problem is just as bad as maintaing that a god or a religion is the root cause of the solution.

I think its important to note that Joss Whedon isn't the reason I'm an atheist, or the reason I'm a humanist, or the reason I'm a feminist. He is the reason I'm so picky about my television programs, but that's neither here nor there. What Joss Whedon did - and has done and continues to do - is to inform my atheism, my humanism, and my feminism. And also? How I write and speak. But more than that, he gave me a feeling of belonging.

I don't know if I read Whedon's work the way Whedon means for it to be read, with a hint of optimism abounding in the darkness. In the absurdism, in the existentialism, I see a tremendous amount of hope and expectation in this life we live and these people we live it with.  But in quotes like:

Faith in God is means believing, absolutely, with no proof whatsoever. Faith in humanity means believing absolutely in something with a huge amount of proof to the contrary.

And:

If there is no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do. 'cause that's all there is. What we do, now, today... ...Because, if there is no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world.

I find inspiration. I feel connected. And that's really what matters.

So, happy birthday to the guy who has played an unwittingly large role in my life for now more than half of my life. In the words of the guy himself,

Stay crunchy, even in milk.

Happy Birthday, Darryl Strawberry!

In the course of my lifetime, I've been to many, many major league baseball games. I've been to many stadiums before they were torn down. Because my parents are sports nuts and love baseball. This love hadn't truly transferred to me, though I did want a "Don't Whack My Wiener" Milwaukee Brewers tee shirt when we were out at the stadium a couple of years ago. For anyone who doesn't know, the Brewers' mascot(s) are various sausages, and one of them got knocked down at a game during the Sausage Race. By the way, the Sausage Race is well worth the admission to the baseball game.

That isn't to say that I don't like baseball. I like it, and I like it all the more now that I'm older and don't get quite so antsy. But when I was younger, there were only so many peanuts I could shell before coming a bit undone. At least, there were only so many peanuts I could shell unless I was in Shea Stadium. Because Shea had the Home Run Apple:

The apple is less red than pink now, so that photo is a bit dated.

The Home Run Apple would appear out of the top hat, appropriately enough, when someone hit a home run. That someone, from about the time I was two on, was Darryl Strawberry. Because of that, he was my favorite player. Ever. Yes, he's had a lot of problems, drugs and the like. But he's also a major part of my childhood. And so, happy birthday, Darryl.

February's Charity

When my maternal grandmother was 14, she contracted the polio virus. One day, she was winning hopscotch tournaments and being the one of the best jump ropers (specifically double dutch) in her area, and the next, she was bed-ridden. She was taken to the hospital like all of the other sufferers of polio, and because my mother's side of the family were and are mostly poor, rural folks, the March of Dimes stepped in and paid the bill. The March of Dimes also paid for my great-grandparents to travel to the hospital and see their daughter. Eventually, my grandmother got well enough to go home, go to work, get married to a man who had lost his left arm at birth, and have two children, but never well enough to walk again, or play hopscotch or double dutch. 

The March of Dimes has an odd story; founded by Franklin Roosevelt to find a cure for polio, it was headed by his legal advisor Basil O'Connor, who agreed to be its treasurer not because he had any pressing wish to cure polio but because he was so loyal to Roosevelt. It became the March of Dimes during the depression years by asking the general population to send in a dime to the charity; the thinking was that even during hard economic times, everyone could spare a dime (which was also probably the thinking behind the song, "Buddy, Can You Spare A Dime"). And the people did, partially because most could find a way to spare a dime and partially because the specter of polio loomed so large nearly everyone feared getting it and nearly everyone wanted to find a way to ensure not to. It was a rousing success, and it led to - along with Jonas Salk's vision and Basil O'Connor's impatience - a vaccine. From that point forward, March of Dimes shifted from being about curing polio to preventing premature birth, birth defects, and infant mortality.

Today is my grandmother's birthday; her favorite charity is the March of Dimes, for obvious reasons. And even though we bought her earrings and some cupcakes and we brought her balloons and flowers, I thought that her favorite charity and the one she has been giving to her entire life could be this month's charity for me as well, as my way of continuing to fulfill #5 on my New Year's Resolution list.

Happy Birthday, Elvis!

It's Elvis' birthday today; Elvis was the first love of my life, knocking me off of my feet when I was just learning how to walk. And I've remained enthralled ever since. Sure, when I was five I developed a deep and passionate love for Stevie Ray Vaughan, but I remained true to Elvis.

So, in honor of Elvis' 73rd birthday, I'm going to put up a couple of my favorite Elvis songs:

Love Me Tender is probably my all time favorite Elvis songs, and one of my favorite songs of all time. It makes me go all to pieces whenever I hear it. It also has a tendency to calm me right down, so I have a tendency to listen to it on the way to work.

As an atheist, I probably love Gospel music more than I should. But Amazing Grace is an awesome song; I seriously doubt anyone could really mess it up, because no matter what quality the singer's voice is, it fits in with the whole "wretch" sentiment of the song. But when someone with an incredible voice sings it, it is really magical.

My second favorite Elvis song is Suspicious Minds; I love how his voice cracks a bit on the recording, and I'm a sucker for a cracking voice (that would also be one of the reasons why I adore a Sex Pistols song - Johnny Rotten's voice cracks and it is awesome). But it also just a really cool, really catchy song - especially for the sentiment. I normally don't expect to groove to a song about bad relationships, but hey. Elvis makes it work.

The song that is responsible for reintroducing Elvis to a new generation. Plus, I really really love it. So fun to bounce to!

Happy Birthday, Paddington Bear!

I friggin' loved Paddington Bear as a kid. I even tried marmalade because Paddington liked it so much (I, however, did not like it so much). And so, while going onto Google today, I was extremely excited/surprised to see this:

Paddington Bear is officially fifty years old today. I almost feel like digging out my old books and enjoying the bear from darkest Peru, dressed almost continually in his rain coat and hat and galoshes.