This blog has been inactive for about a year. Test Subject V started cruising at six months and walking at eight. Everything since then is kind of a blur. I’ve been very, very busy, very happy, and very tired. I now live from playground to playground. It’s a good life, although a tiring one at times.
But I am going to be posting here again, hopefully on a regular basis. My interest in Sesame Street has become a full-fledged research interest, and I’ll likely be posting here about my many, many, far too many thoughts on Sesame Street.
This past weekend I presented at the New England American Studies Association (NEASA) conference. I hope to post my presentation here shortly, after a few minor revisions. It was about the Gentrification of Sesame Street.
When I was getting my PhD in American History, “So What” was a popular question among the professors. It’s an important question to ask sometimes, but at the same time, asking a student that at the beginning of research means that you aren’t letting them discover the importance of their topic by researching about it and writing about it. And that can be an important way to discover meaning!
I decided that, now that I’m no longer either a grad student or (technically even) a historian, I’m going to let myself be okay with that ambiguity, with that process of discovery by writing around the topic. That’s always how I’ve best found meaning and import, anyway.
So I’ll be talking here about my adventures as a parent, again, and also I’m hoping to have a healthy dose of Sesame Street news and analysis, as I’m thinking this might eventually make its way into a book project.
So on that tip, I wanted to draw attention to this item in Deadline, that says that Bo Burnham, whose Thirteen I absolutely loved, and whose standup I find… Fine, I mean, he’s fine. He’s funny sometimes… Bo Burnham has been tapped to pen some songs for the upcoming Sesame Street movie project.
Burnham, as I said before, is definitely funny, at least some of the time, and I hope his contribution is primarily lyrical. I haven’t seen much that indicates he’s any great musical talent. Of course, I love the songs in the Muppet movie that the Flight of the Concords guy gave us, so you never know. And even Harry Nilson (and Altman and Feiffer and Robin Williams and so many others) couldn’t make Popeye any good, so you never know.
