Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street?

I remember vividly watching Sesame Street when it premiered 40 years ago. I was a little old for it, I was a very mature 7 after all (he said ironically), and the repetition kind of bugged me, but I was transfixed when I watched it. And if I could, I would gladly sit and watch it if I could have gotten away with it back then.

I loved the Muppets, the adults on the show, the kids, the stuff they shot on film, the whole enchilada. Two things I loved about the show were that it didn't talk down to kids and it looked like the world I was used to. What I mean by that last observation is that on TV for kids back in the late '60's, and TV as a whole for that matter, you mainly saw only white people. It was rare to see a show that had many black folks on it, let alone black kids, or even Asian kids. But in my neighborhood in Detroit, I saw black kids, white kids, Asian kids, and it seemed to me to be the melting pot that they kept telling us about in school. So when Sesame Street hit the airwaves with all types of kids and adults of various skin colors, it seemed to me to be more real than anything else on TV.

My favorite character on the show was this guy:
Oscar the Grouch was someone I identified with and loved right off the bat. He was cranky but deep down he was the salt of the earth. Big Bird was too nice, Cookie Monster wasn't real to me because he never swallowed all those cookies, Bert and Ernie were cool but Oscar was the bomb.

Year later, in the late '70's when The Muppet Show ran in syndication, I fell in love with the Muppets once again. This show was the perfect show for the kids who had grown up with Sesame Street. It had a slew of new Muppet characters, it was for an older crowd, and it featured all kinds of pop culture icons as weekly guests. I loved it right away.

I loved the stupid jokes, the puns, the cheesy duets they get the guest stars to do with the Muppets. And I loved the new characters they came up with. Since I was in my class clown phase of life back then I identified with Fozzie Bear a lot, but my favorite characters were the Swedish chef and Statler and Waldorf:I always wanted to be like them when I got older and I'm pretty much on track for that to happen. I haven't seen any episodes of The Muppet Show since it went off the air many years ago but I'm sure it holds up pretty well 30 years later.

I'm glad Sesame Street has lasted for 40 years and hopefully it will run for eternity. I'm also glad that most every country on the planet has a version of Sesame Street and that it continues to play such a big part in our global culture. I'll be celebrating the anniversary of Sesame Street by reading Street Gang-The Complete History of Sesame Street, I've been wanting to read it ever since I read Samurai Frog's review of it and it was finally in at my local library yesterday so I checked it out.

Happy anniversary Sesame Street! Keep on sweeping the clouds away and teaching kids while entertaining them at the same time.