Four Quick Steps To Death!!

While 'The Electric Company' television show focused almost entirely on vocabulary-related songs and skits, it's companion magazine delved into all sorts of different areas. Occasionally they'd muscle their way into 'ZOOM' territory by offering their readers fun tricks, experiments and recipes that they could try in their own homes. They were far-ranging bits of 'how-to-itiveness,' covering everything from how to make your own sex doll to how to breed virulent colonies of bacteria in your oven. Here are a few random samplings. Have fun and remember- if your mom catches you don't tell her who gave you the idea...

The loneliest little boy in the world.

This trick always made me very nervous when I was younger. As a child having a balloon pop in my face was one of my biggest fears, right after evil robots and two-headed Dracula/Wolfman monsters.

I can not over stress how important it is that you do not try this recipe at home. Leaving milk & yogurt sitting in a tepid pool of water in a warm oven might give you even more yogurt than you started off with, but it might also leave you with that much more food poisoning than you started with as well.

Theoretically my favorite bit of 'do-it-yourselfness' in the whole bunch. 'Theoretically' because there are just way to many steps for me to try this myself...

While Julia Grownup is cooking up pots full of biological warfare in her kitchen, The Mad Scientist is attempting to take over the world with static electricity. Poor bitch.

It was pretty and green, so I scanned it. Test your sharp shooting skills with the 'Annie Oakley Aim Game.' Then drink yourself into a rotgut stupor and try to slip a little tongue to Sitting Bull.

Tomorrow brings us to the end of our week-long Electric Company gala and with it the most anti-climatic climax since humankind began climaxing. Really, I've pretty much got nothing for tomorrow's post...

Will The Short Circus Be Unbroken?

A pet cobra?

Along Came A Spidey...

Some of my favorite segments of The Electric Company television show were the 'Spidey Super Stories' shorts. These three or four minute long mini-shows starred a slightly creepy alternate universe version of Spider-Man who never spoke aloud... he communicated entirely through word balloons which would appear in the air above his head... and didn't seem to have any other non-Spidey identity as he was seen doing everything, from fighting crime to going to the laundromat, in his web-covered long johns.

The villians he faced had motives which were less 'kill, maim & destroy' than the mainstream S-Man's foes and more 'I never got a pony for my birthday so now I'm gonna throw pies in peoples faces.' Among these baddies were a guy dressed in a mouse costume who stole cheese, a woman dressed as Napoleon Bonaparte who socked people in the face with an over-sized boxing glove (I think she was the pony-deprived), a human wall who walked around looking like a wall, a book-eating bookworm and a nightmare-inducing yeti who prowled the city searching for cold things on which to sit. Nightmare-inducing I tell you! I still dream of this yeti and wake screaming!

Marvel Comics published a comic book based on 'Spidey Super Stories' which was called 'Elektra: Assassin' and featured easy-to-read short stories featuring Spidey, the Electric Company cast and gobs o' Marvel Universe heroes and villains... everybody from the Fantastic Four and Captain America to the White Tiger and Thundra showed up in this comic. Every issue followed the same basic format- the inside front cover featured a one page strip which introduced one of that issue's characters, usually whoever was guest-heroing would have their entire origin stories recapped in five easy to read panels, after that came the first part of the two-part feature story. This main story was interrupted in the middle of the book by a short story that teamed Spidey up with various EC characters. At first these stories were based on the actual televison stories, later they would be original tales. After the main story's conclusion there was one more strip to go. The inside back cover of every issue featured Spidey telling a joke or riddle that had been sent in by one of the book's readers.

'Spidey Super Stories' also appeared in The Electric Company magazine, a pile of which is what started this whole Electric Company hoopla in the first place. I have no idea how many issues there were of the Electric Company's mag and I don't know how many different Spidey comics were created for it, although I do know that they would repeat stories on occassion. When I was little I used to tear the strips out of the magazine and staple a bunch of different stories together into one big comic. That's right, I invented the trade paperback collection.

Below are scans of three complete 'Spidey Super Stories' as torn from the pages of 'The Electric Company Magazine.' In the first two tales, Spidey faces his arch-Electricverse-foe The Mad Scientist. Mad tangles with Spidey solo in the first story than wises up and gets himself some hired muscle to do the dirty in the second. The last story was one of my favorites as a wee one, I thought the villians were cool and a little bent!

Cue theme song:

Spider-Man! Where are you coming from, Spider-Man?

Nobody knows who you are!

Hmmm, I guess it's time to update that theme song:

Spider-Man! Where are you coming from, Spider-Man?

In light of your recent public unmasking arising from events taking place with-in the Marvel Comics crossover event 'Civil War,' everybody and their idiot cousin knows who you are!

Catchy!

25,26 -- 22,12,16,26,22,12 -- 9,26,7,5,11,12,3,2

Today we're going to join four of our intrepid Electric Company cast members as they match wits with the diabolical Mad Scientist, who has devised a devious code to spread his web of evil throughout the world! That's what it says on the box, kiddies..."web of evil" We're definitely a long, long way from Sesame Street... there were no webs of evil being spun over there!

Along with a colorful gameboard, the "Fargo North, Decoder Secret Word Game" also includes four handy dandy decoders...

...four Decoder Scorers...

...a pile of coded word cards and our players, from left to right: Easy Reader, Paul the Gorilla, Jennifer of the Jungle, and Julia Grownup. Having Jennifer & Julia together in the same game means that actress Judy Graubart probably got twice the royalties! Morgan Freeman hated her for that.

First step, according to the directions on the inside of the boxtop, is to place all four Secret Decoders on the table with their Decoder switches in the 'off' position. Failure to do this could result in a Decoder going off prematurely during gameplay and fatally wounding a player.

Next we select one game card at random and place it in the center of the game board. That's ours up above, being propped up by Jennifer of the Jungle who was the only character short enough that her head didn't peek out over the top of the card. Trivia!

Let's get our contestants to the starting line and get this game under way! Jennifer is up first...

...and she rolls a '5!' Way to go Jennifer! Please follow the arrows and advance five spaces!

Next up is Paul who rolls a measly '2.' Monkeys suck. Take your two sad little spaces Paul, we don't have all day.

I'm so bored. Let's cut to the highlight reel...

Oh, boy! Easy Reader has landed on a light bulb! That means that he gets to decode one letter of one of the words on our game card! Easy is currently in the 'Red Zone' so he'll be decoding one letter of the red word with the help of...

...the red Decoder! Cast your eyes back up to our game card and you'll see that the first letter of the red word corresponds with the number '11.' With the switch still in the 'off' position, rotate the Decoder's dial until the number eleven is visible in the lower window. Then switch that switch to 'on'...

...and we can clearly see that the number eleven represents the letter... 'u?' Or possibly 'j' Or it could be an 's?' Decoders are precision instruments! Decoders are precision instruments?

The game pieces were too small to prop up a Decoder, so it's being held up by a King's Island souvenir shot glass. Trivia!

Meanwhile, Julia Grownup has landed on a shortcut space which means she can cut across the game board to...

...the library, where she... oh my god! Mrs. Peacock!

Looks like Julia has stumbled unto yet another murder! She's gonna be busy locking horns with her on again/off again boyfriend Sgt. Pete Brisco until this mystery is solved... I guess we're down to three contestants. Speaking of whom... let's see what they're up to-

Oops, looks like Easy is putting the moves on Jennifer. Doesn't he know about Paul's violent jealous streak?

Oh, Paul!

That does it! Jennifer has had all she can stand of Paul's possessiveness... she's out of here!

Paul's the winner!

"The Fargo North, Decoder Secret Word Game" gets an enthusiastic two thumbs up from this reviewer! Thrift it today! And remember, always be the monkey!