What the heck were we watching?

I am a child of the 70’s. I was born at the beginning of them, I remember the latter half of them fairly clearly and though filled to the brim with fuzzy velour shirt memories, I’m often blown away with what I’ve managed to forget. Perhaps “forget” is too harsh a word. How about “Not thought of in thirty years”. I grew up with a television in the living room like most folks. It was color, fairly big (or at least the case was) and like much of my age group, it was very important to me. I can remember a handful of my favorite TV shows and given a peer group, some beer and a fun evening with both, I think I could remember more of them with little difficulty.

Some shows are easy to recall. Captain Kangaroo, Drawing with Captain Bob, Zoom, School House Rock and The Electric Company come to mind. Remembering specific episodes of the shows is a bit harder. This is where the inter-tubes come in. I must say that there has never been a more amazing time traveling device than YouTube and its ilk. Somewhere out there, someone had the most amazing stuff on tape AND is a big enough geek to take the time to rip the video from cassette, edit it copy and upload it to the web. Thank you Geeks! We owe you a box of Ho-Ho’s and a 2 liter of Mountain Dew.

Some shows are still running after 30 years, but by necessity, have little resemblance to what they once were. Sesame Street is the best example possible. The adult annoying Elmo and many others were not from my era, but that’s not to say that the show wasn’t fun. The Doctor sent me this bid of acid trip nostalgia from the early days of children’s public television. I can almost picture myself plunked down on the floor, eating a bowl of Cinnamon Life cereal, watching this trippy story unfold on our Zenith.

Now THAT’S infotainment. I remember being mildly freaked about the claw-arm that comes out of the rocket ship. Why did they have the “n” in the first place? Is it an alien “n”? Was it kidnapped? Brainwashed? The topic of probing hadn’t come into the vernacular at that point, but if it had, I would have wondered that too. It leaves one with more questions than answers I thought. Zen cartoons. Now that’s what we need more of.

What’s the sound of one “n” clapping?

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