The next cinematic universe.

I believe in the next issue they faced Timer -- special guest star: Interplanet Janet!

TV trivia.

Fun with Five.

The other day I was doing math---checkbook, not just for fun---when I thought of the old animation from Sesame Street about counting to five. Well, there were many of those; Sesame Street thoroughly indoctrinated us in the importance of counting up to numbers 2 through 12, and it seemed to require hundreds of different animated bits to spread the idea.

I didn't think anyone but I remembered it. Ha! Did it come after 1970? Then the Internet remembers:

I had remembered it even nuttier than this, that the singers were counting to five and cheering, as if it were the most fun party game ever and maybe everyone was so loaded that they thought it was. Five! Whee!

The Muppet Wiki, which I had no idea covered Sesame Street non-Muppet activities, tells us that Jim Henson produced the bit, that it was written by Keith Vernon Textor and Alan Robert Scott. Which one wrote the lyrics? (Hyuk!)

It also appeared on a 1975 Sesame Street album called The Count Counts, "covered" by the "band" Three Bat Night.

I have to wonder where Textor and Scott came up with the melody. I just picture them writing it to be part of a song, maybe something like "My Love in the Dew" (it was 1971, and many songs had titles like that) and not being able to get anyone interested in it. "The heck with it, let's give it to Henson," they said, and the rest is history. Or maybe Textor did the melody alone and Scott did the animation. The Muppet Wikia is silent on many of these details. But we know there's a story behind everything, and often it's quite interesting, After all, Keith Textor was a professional musician from the 1950s, and wrote the theme song for Candid Camera, which was heard for many years on TV. The Internet is less forthcoming about Alan Robert Scott, his partner.

So if Messers Textor or Scott are out there and can weigh in on the origin of "1-2-3-4-5," please drop us a line at frederick_key at yahoo.com. The Internet has solved many mysteries, but we have to fill in the gaps. We're counting on you!

A film classic.

One of the advantages of being a cultured and refined creature of arts like myself is that you discover fine works of which the standard-issue bourgeoisie remain entirely ignorant. All one must do is turn on the television set to see what kinds of things entertain the great unwashed. Golly!

But that is not to say that there is nothing redeemable about the vast wasteland that is television in general. Oh, no! Fortunately there is the Public Broadcasting Service. What a treasure trove for we of elevated sensibilities. All my friends in Park Slope and Lenox Hill enjoy PBS. And it's all free! The government pays for it, you know.

I do want to give you an example of the kind of truly fine television one can only find on PBS. I had seen this short film on PBS years ago, and was thrilled to find it now available on the You Tube. I believe its English title is "Three Spheres":

What a fine piece of work! Such pathos, such representation of striving in the human heart! And yet so fascinatingly open to interpretation.

The stark, black-and-white (dare I say noir) photography reminds us of a comfortless world of hard choices. On one level it's easy to see this as a racial struggle---as African Americans struggling to fit into a white world they have not made, where expectations limit their options, delineated by white society.

And yet, in a wider scale, isn't this the struggle we all face? Trying to "fit in," to "find our place"? The balls initially fail in their quest, but through persistence they nestle in their predetermined spaces, apparently finding peace.

But is this really peace? Have they been trying to fight societal demands all along, and is this the sigh of contentment---or of acquiescence, of giving in? The point is crucial, but the director is purposely ambiguous.

Further ambiguity is caused by the choice of Gibberish for the dialogue, leaving us to wonder about the motivation of the balls, their desires and ambitions, and their conclusions from their experiences. The director keeps us guessing---and that keeps us thinking.

This is the kind of deep, demanding film that can only be seen on the television thanks to the Public Broadcasting Service. I cannot imagine this kind of thing appearing on any other venue. Three cheers for government film!

Look up!

Friday morning was as gorgeous a summer morning as you will ever see in New York. 

By mid-August we're usually ready to die, or kill someone, or at least move in with Santa Claus so we never have to endure blistering heat and swampy humidity again. But these last few days have spectacular. Low humidity, pleasant temps, blue skies with puffy white clouds that only look like duckies and horsies. 

And within a block of the subway I almost got slammed twice, by two women staring at their phones as they walked along.

Put down the phone! Look around you! You're in one of the world's great cities on a fantastic morning! And there's trees and things! And it's FRIDAY! You can text your idiot boyfriend or crush that candy later! WAKE UUUUUP!!!!

I was never big on walking the streets with earbuds in or sunglasses on. I wanted to hear and see the things around me. There's a little self-preservation going on there---you never know what's sneaking up on you when you purposely block your senses---but there's also a lot of wonderful things to enjoy outside the self-made cocoon. 

Maybe they didn't have the Sesame Street album with "Nearly Missed"* on it:

While lookin' at my feet at a crack in the sidewalk

An old tin can by the side of the road

I nearly missed a rainbow

I nearly missed a sunset 

I nearly missed a shooting star going by

Enjoy the world around you. Or at least stop walking into me!

* Susan's version, not the one Rosie O'Donnell and Elmo did before they both went insane.