No, this has nothing to do with duck genitalia. Instead, it's about a basic principle of music: You've got to put down the duckie if you want to play the saxophone.
Via Scott. It's also a nice reminder of why Sesame Street was such a brilliant show (and may still be, for all I know...)-- not only does it have a great tune and silly squeaky noises to keep kids interested, it's got all those bizarre cameos to give parents something to look at.
More like this
A lot of people who rail against popular music (hipsters, classical music snobs, etc.) will cite the mere presence of one or more saxophones in a song as evidence that it sucks, as if saxophones are inherently evil. I've never really understood this attitude, and wonder how widespread it is.
Just a note about yesterday's metal detecting at the Baggensstäket battlefield.
This is something I use at the beginning of a semester. I ask the class: "How are you an expert?" What is an expert? Let me call an expert someone that is comfortable answering questions about that particular topic.
Jacks of Science â Bring Love to the Lab with a Science Valentine
Love notes for the deeply dorky
We've used the phrase "put down the duckie" within my family for years now. You betcha, if ya wanna toot on the horn!
That bit was broadcast well after my sister and I stopped watching Sesame Street, so I had never seen it before. I'm thoroughly earwormed with the song, though, so I can imagine that the phrase will stick in my head for quite a while...
That clip was brilliant, and does illustrate how Sesame Street is far more bearable for adults than, say, TeleTubbies. The "message," I'm sure, goes just as far above the heads of the target audience as all the celebrity cameos.
The only way this sort of thing could be at all good for children is if there's an adult right there watching the clip with them, who can talk with, and not to, the child about it. More often than not, that doesn't happen: children sit there, transfixed, and the only thing they learn is how to watch television.
Sesame Street might be better than most other programs aimed at children, but that still doesn't make it an inherently positive experience--we should never tell a child to stop drawing or playing in a sandbox in order to watch television, no matter the program.
Sesame Street was a mainstay of my early childhood (I have vague memories of being upset when it was preempted on PBS by the Watergate hearings!); now I'm finding that my two year old daughter loves Elmo, who wasn't around as a character when I stopped watching (although Ernie and Bert and Grover and Big Bird are apparently still mainstays)...
That bit was broadcast well after my sister and I stopped watching Sesame Street, so I had never seen it before. I'm thoroughly earwormed with the song, though, so I can imagine that the phrase will stick in my head for quite a while...
As I remember it this particular sketch wasn't originally broadcast as part of a Sesame Street episode and was actually filmed for a PBS fundraiser (hence the fact it looks like it's filmed in a telethon booth...). But it was done by the Sesame Street crowd and occasionally showed up in Sesame Street materials afterward...
I'm dating myself by saying I'm too old to have watched Sesame Street as a kid, but I saw a whole lot of it over my kids' shoulders (including that song). I liked how they always had stuff that was over the kids' heads, but would engage the parents to watch it with them.