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Mr Fred
03/04/2003 - 3:55 p.m.
Cuz it happened when I Wasn't-Updating�, I didn't weigh in on the whole Mr Rogers death thing in a timely manner, but I think I will now.
Ironic in a way, cuz back around 6 or 7 months ago, I started an entry on ole Fred, but I never finished it. I was puzzling over the fact that you never really see Mr Rogers name-checked in pop culture, and you rarely see folks waxing nostalgic over the Neighborhood of Make Believe like you do Sesame Street or the Electric Company's offices (to say nothing of less overtly educational places like Living Island and Tranquility Forest).
I was wondering why that is, and I figured that maybe it has something to do with how calm Freddy baby was, and how peaceful and friendly the whole Mr Rogers oeuvre was. The closest you got to conflict was when Lady Elaine Fairchild got a little crabby, and that was always smoothed over pretty quickly by having Henretta Pussycat or Daniel Tiger or Lady Aberlin speak calmly and slowly to Lady Elaine and explain just what kinda misunderstanding she had got going on.
Not like Sesame Street with Oscar grouching and Bert screaming at Ernie about playing his radio when Bert wants to watch tv or The Electric Company with Rita Moreno hollering "Hey you guys!" and J Arthur Crank complaining about some dingbuzzid thing or other. Nope, in the Neighborhood, everybody was pretty quiet, which made it seem kinda uneventful. Dull, even.
Until recently, I remembered Mr Rogers as something I watched because it was one of the few things I was allowed to watch, but I've come to realize that that isn't really true. I really liked a lot of that show, especially the stuff that happened in the Neighborhood, and the Trolley. I thought the Trolley was the coolest thing ever. I knew it was controlled by someone, but it never occurred to me that when Mr Rogers sat down to wait for the Trolley, he was running the dang thing with a switch right there betweeen his legs. But it's true - watch it and see.
I liked X the Owl (I remember very fondly the day he asked Handyman Negri to change his door so that it said "X" instead of "Z," and how cool it was that Handyman Negri just happened to have two pieces of wood in his jacket pocket that were exactly the right size and shape.
I dug Cornflake S Peshly, though I was always disappointed that his rocket rocking chairs were just that - rocking chairs. Dr Billbill Platypus was kinda keen, and that old French cat who lived in the clock kinda grooved as well.
The thing of it is, though, that it wasn't exciting. It was just nice. Calm and friendly and nice. And, oddly enough, a lot cooler than I thought I thought.
And hey - was anybody else as freaked out as I was when Lady Aberlin showed up outside the Neighborhood of Make Believe and had a first name?
Coming up sometime - memories of the Friendly Giant, Captain Kangaroo, and Matter of Fiction with John Robinson.
See what I did there? I went and moved my diaryring to a rings and reviews page!
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