Soppho

In honor of Sesame Street’s 40th anniversary this month, B sent me along this little number, with a note:

“Mediocre Sesame Street song featuring the Count, but it really shines at the 55-second mark, with the arrival of dancing bats.”

(I suggest you heed his advice and skip on in to :55)

I haven’t seen Sesame Street in years upon years, much less that particular segment, but there I was, singing and shimmying along with the weird dancing bats.

It’s amazing how firmly this stuff latches on to your subconscious and just sort of hangs out there; you never know when it’s going to resurface. For all I know it’s been influencing all of my decision-making, which certainly explains that whole biting thing. And this is why I’m happy I grew up watching Sesame Street and not Barney, Teletubbies, or Veggie Tales.

I happened to catch the latter on TV earlier this year. I like to have background noise on Saturday mornings when I’m doing some work, and I’ve found that cartoons are the best way to go.

The hosts of the show are a tomato and a cucumber, but this episode happened to star a giant blueberry named—wait for it—Madame Blueberry. Look at how progressive and tolerant! She’s French! I bet when old Grandpa Potato bites it and goes to the crematorium they don’t even call him a freedom fry!

Anyway, Madame Blueberry loves stuff, but she’s blue because she can’t seem to get her hands on all of the things she wants. Fortuitously enough, a big-box store, Stuff-Mart, opens down the road, and Madame Blueberry excitedly dashes down and goes all Supermarket Sweep on its ass, snatching up everything she sees without stopping. She fills carts and carts, and still doesn’t feel satisfied. And at this juncture I’m beginning to have grave doubts that Madame Blueberry is French after all.

After the store’s workers pack up everything to deliver it to her home, Madame Blueberry sees Father and Junior Asparagus in the front of the store. The son, who evidently has received nothing but socks for all the major holidays based on his reaction to his spiffy new toy, is going on and on about how excited he is that his father got him a ball, so now the two can play together. He sings a little song and tosses in some references to Jesus, Madame Blueberry gets a little emotional, I make a crack about how Veggie Tales is composed of—and runs exclusively on—corn, nothing terribly out of the ordinary here (maybe with the exception of Jesus on network TV, but we’ll let it slide).

Suddenly, Madame Blueberry realizes that all of the things she purchased aren’t what she really wants/needs, so she rushes back to her home to stop the delivery of all of her new things. She discovers that what she really desires is to be with the other produce she cares about.

Lesson learned, right? Cute little story, right? Ta-da, the end, cue rainbows and crudites, right? Right??

WRONG.

Madame Blueberry arrives back home just in time for her house to buckle under the weight of all of the new possessions, get thrown into the air, and come down in Stuff-Mart’s parking lot, smashed to smithereens. It’s not enough for her to learn a lesson, she has to be humiliated, smitten, and left for homeless.

Sure, there’s a little speech how none of that matters, and she goes to hang with some of her other veggie friends who are having a picnic, but come on! They made her homeless! I’m surprised the cucumber didn’t whip out an Uzi and finish the job, all the while muttering something about how she’s gonna be wearing cement-oatmeal-crumble shoes and when she sinks she’ll be sleeping with the dishes.

I was so enraged I had to haul out my food processor and make fresh veggie salsa right then and there. This is a show for kids; do we really need to be kicking it Old Testament in the face of a 4 year old at 9am? If I watched this as a kid, my mother would have found me face down on the floor and needed to go sprinkle some carpet shampoo in the puddle I’d left on the rug.

I’ve never pined for Sesame Street more. Frankly, there’s enough scary crap rolling around in my brain, I certainly don’t need some sort of Evangelical Eggplant and his mega crisper drawer lurking around in there, too.