Do The Right Sesame Street

The things you do on a lazy Sunday...

I tidied up the front garden a bit, now that most of the snow has melted (again, I welcome you to the country). There was quite a bit of garbage left lying there through the winter and my bulbs are starting to peek out, so after the boys and I did some serious bubble blowing, I got my fingernails dirty.

Hmmm, then what.

I thought I'd check out my email and from there, I started farting about. And I found THIS!!!

It marries my love for one of my favourite movies and one of my favourite TV shows. Actually, when I first saw Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing, it reminded me of Sesame Street. Both are set in decidedly-not-Manhattan-New York. Both use racial harmony (or disharmony) as a backbone. I took a guy to see the movie once and he was very unnerved by the interracial couple thing. So blind I was that when I was told in sociology class that Sesame's Maria and David were possibly the first interracial couple on television, it hit me like, uh, a bag of hammers. Having been introduced to interracial couples when Sesame first aired on the Buffalo PBS station, it didn't cause me to even blink an eye when I saw Tina and Mookie.

Both Sesame Street and Do The Right Thing are full of colour and character. The first hour of the movie has quite a bit of joy in it; all kinds of stuff that makes me love urban life and my childhood in the Junction. Sesame was lovely and optimistic and fun ... and then adulthood set in, which is kind of like the insipidness that pervades the second half of the movie. WAKE UP.

And, on top of it all, the guy who made this video uses Fisher-Price toys which, after Barbies, were my favourite.

I love this stuff!