I'm watching this Sesame Street rerun on one of the cable channels. The main story is a marathon that (and now I forgot everyone's names) one of the real people is in. I forgot just how many live regular cast were on the show when I was a kid. This is one of the rare outdoor shoots and not done in Sesame Street proper. Big Bird is there waiting for Mr Snuffleopagus to finish, and all the adults keep telling him that his friend is imaginary. Now, occassionally, as what happened a little earlier, a little kid is with Big Bird and gets to meet Mr Snuffleopagus. But never adults.

And it's kind of sad, and Big Bird is arguing that he does exist but the adults don't believe him. Later on in the series, everybody met Mr Snuffleopagus, but that was after I stopped watching the show regularly. The other point is that Maria is quite the babe. As a young kid I was totally attracted to her. Gordon, that's the guy who was in the marathon.

Another children's show I watched when I was much younger was 3-2-1 Contact. This was an early science show with 2 boys and a girl doing experiments in their clubhouse or whatever it was. Cool chemical reactions and physics examples. They went to NASA and Sea World and talked to people about science. And at the end of the show there was a short episode of The Bloodhound Gang. Three black kids solving crimes and mysteries, one during the week, in 2-3 minute segments Monday to Thursday and resummarized in about 5-6 minutes on Friday's show.

Electric Company I don't remember much about. Other than they had Spider-Man skits. Barney was after my time. Most of these shows were shown at times when you're at school, so I think they were aimed at preschoolers. But occassionally I'd get sick and watch them all day. PBS used to show some really good kids nature shows. Don't know if they were regular shows or one-shots, but these looked like 15 minute one-shots of insects or small critters or the weather or whatever. Those were nice and quite interesting to me.

Oh, Mr Rogers' Neighborhood. Not one of my favorite shows, but the train was cool. There was a track in every set so that the train could choo-choo around. But there was something sinister about Mr Rogers himself. The owl I remember as being rather flaky, yet wise like he's supposed to be. The king was this hand puppet, as were most of the other characters in the magical kingdom of make-believe or whatever it was called. With Mr Rogers and some woman being the only people there.

Now Barney, who my roommate calls the Great Satan, is not that bad of a children's show. I think I've seen an episode, but the show is aimed at such a young age that I find it boring. At least Sesame Street has a story line and interesting characters. I watched this short segment with Barney's creators, who said that the aim of the show is to teach toddlers to cooperate with others. A laudable goal, as communicating and cooperating with others is a valuable ideal to install in kids.

When I was watching the kids shows I was a bit old for them, being in middle and high school. But the nature shows were aimed at almost my age and were informative. The really famous ones like Sesame Street I didn't watch until I got to the states, and by then I knew how to count and so forth.