Hey You Guys!!!

Apparently, I've been planning for this blog my entire life. If I didn't think that I'd one day have to find semi-interesting things to scan and post to a web page on an semi-regular basis then I can't imagine why I saved onto some of the things that I did. Like this pile of semi-complete Electric Company magazines from the 1970's. 'Semi-complete' because I didn't save the entire magazine, I just tore out random chunks of each issue and stored those away. As an archivist I lack a certain thoroughness.

I just stumbled across this pile of papers a couple days ago and they, along with the recently released Electric Company DVD set, reminded me of how much I loved this show as a kid. For those who don't know, The Electric Company was the sister show of the eternally popular Sesame Street. The Electric Company was for children slightly older than the Street crowd and instead of covering a wide range of subjects, it's focus was entirely on vocabulary. And unlike the gentler Sesame Street, EC rocked. Or at least it rocked in a 1970's kind of a way. It was more colorful, much louder and just plain 'hepper' than SS. And it starred Rita Moreno, Morgan Freeman, Bill Cosby and Spider-Man! Also that lady who played Ted Danson's nurse/receptionist on 'Becker.' That's an all-star cast!

So in honor of 'The Electric Company' I present the first part of a week-ish-long celebration of all things EC. Or at the very least, four or five things EC. Today's post features random bits of stuff from that pile of magazine bits...

Jennifer of the Jungle always sounded like she had a cold. Shoulda put some pants on.

I've erased my answers so that you can try your own hand at breaking this tricky code. No fair turning ahead to pg. 22 for the answer!

Otherwise known as, "Oh crap! We still have one more page to fill."

The Short Circus (Get it? It sorta sounds like 'short circuit') were your standard-issue annoying pre-teen sidekicks, added to the show to give the viewers someone to identify with, I suppose. Here we see 'Jesse' and 'Samantha' helping human Muppet, Doug Henning perform some sort of magic trick. 'Jesse' is actually Todd Graff, who recently directed the movie 'Camp.' He also wrote 'The Beautician and The Beast' so don't think too highly of him.

Everyone in the Short Circus was heroin-addict thin.

Is it just me or is that the most obscene fire hydrant you've ever seen?

These are the jokes, folks. I admit that I kind of laughed at the hippopotamus one.

Fun & Games!

This is all that remains of the subscription form, unfortunately. I really would have liked to have sent in a check.

Coming up... Spidey Super Stories, The Fargo North Decoder board game and Julia Grownup teaches us all how to make yogurt. All you need to start is a little yogurt. Wait a minute...