Is “educational” television today missing a certain level of creativity and cleverness that perhaps existed in the past? At the risk of sounding like an old geezer, in today’s age of video games and reality TV, I really don’t think there are shows like Sesame Street being made anymore that challenge and educate kids in a fun and constructive way.

Do you remember the Yip Yips on Sesame Street? While making dinner last night, Michelle and I began reminiscing about Sesame Street and the Yip Yips (yiiiiiiiip, yip yip yip). In particular the telephone sketch below was memorable, but the concept in general was awesome. The show as a whole was wonderful in its simple genius; teaching us to reason logically as we watched the Yip Yips use their book to determine if, for example, a grandfather clock was a human or not (according to their book, humans are tall and have a face and hands - yiiiiiiiip yip yip yip). And it was just so clever. The way the little guys hid behind their lower lips when they were scared of something was brilliant, and it was fucking awesome the way they would scale objects and huddle together as they were identifying an item from the book.

As we chatted about it, we both became increasingly obsessed with how great the show was, and how badly we wanted to see those little dudes again. Well, I have to admit it. YouTube is a pretty cool site, and it’s amazing how you can find almost anything in almost no time at all.