the zeitgeist report

This rang so true with me:

Everyone turning 40 should be issued a wallet-size card at the doctor's office. It would say something like: "Idealizing Your Childhood Years Is Unhealthy and Boring to Others, So Don't Do It! Things Were Not Better Back Then."*

The asterisk would lead to fine print stipulating the big exception: the mid-1970's, which were, in fact, better in numerous, demonstrable ways. They also happen to be years when I viewed life from a preteen perspective, but never mind that.

Their superiority was confirmed beyond doubt last month by the release of a four-DVD set of "The Electric Company," one of the best children's television shows ever. It ran from 1971 to 1977 and, since it was not released on videotape, is remembered mostly by a small generational slice of America: the Early-Post-Baby-Boomers. It is cherished, I feel sure, by every last one of us.

"The Electric Company" and its companion, "Sesame Street," arose like alien monoliths on the vast moonscape of junk television. Joan Ganz Cooney, a founder of the Children's Television Workshop and the brains behind "Sesame Street," assembled the team to create a show for older children. What she got was a hippie-Broadway-vaudeville-Carol Burnett Show hybrid put on by people who knew how to write, sing and act. It had songs by Tom Lehrer, cartoon voice-overs by Gene Wilder, Joan Rivers and Mel Brooks, and a cast of regulars that included Bill Cosby, Rita Moreno and Morgan Freeman, then unknown, who played a wordstruck hipster, Easy Reader.

Check it out!