urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tem2 I Make Stuff Up! tem2 2038-01-19T03:14:07Z urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tem2:134548 2038-01-19T03:14:07Z 2038-01-19T03:14:07Z <span style="font-weight: bold;">Today's word of the day is: Sesame Street, brought to you by the letters B and H and by the number 6!</span><br /><br />Every time I'm feeling old, which is more and more these days, I remind myself that I'm still younger than Sesame Street, which is celebrating the 39th anniversary of its 1969 debut.&nbsp; <br /><br />Happy 39th birthday, Big Bird!<br /><br />Happy 39th birthday, Oscar the Grouch!<br /><br />Happy 39th birthday, Ernie and Bert!<br /><br />I spent many childhood hours watching this show, and many more looking out the car windows on every trip we took in the hopes of glimpsing that crazy street where all the Muppets lived. Not to mention the hours I spent theorizing about the alternate universe Sesame Street where Oscar was rust orange instead of moss green, like in the first-season Sesame Street picture book I had. Or the hours I spent drawing people with big oval-shaped noses interacting with monsters. If you add all those hours together, you'd get the first five years of my life. <br /><br />Cookie Monster made his debut in a 1966 snack-food commercial that Jim Henson did for General Mills, so he's 42 years old.<br /><br />And Jim Henson first started to perform with Kermit the Frog in 1955, making him the oldest Sesame Street Muppet at 53 years old.<br /><br />So now I'm feeling young again, though old enough to remember when Snuffleupagus was merely a figment of Big Bird's deranged imagination.&nbsp; Thanks, Sesame Street!<br />