Is there rly any softer scene than when o’malley sees duchess and falls in love with her at first sight in the aristocats, complimenting her at every turn and climbing into a cherry blossom tree to make the flower petals snow gracefully down on her? How dreamy đĽđ
This Is Love đđ
Not to mention when he found she had kids, he was thrown for a second, then proceeded to not only still help her, but dote on them too.
familiar au: in which Nina gets to grow up, too, and Ed searches diligently for a way to fix everything. you deserved better, and this time Ed makes sure you get it.
So by that point Sesame Street was already legendary. So were you out by the time you joined the staff?
Well, itâs more levels. I already had my life partner, the love of my life. We werenât living together. All our friends knew, but I donât think I was professionally out.
[Saltzman pauses in thought. I donât have to ask why. The âlove of his lifeâ was acclaimed editor Arnold Glassman, who edited films like Frailty and The Celluloid Closet. The two were together more than 20 years before Glassmanâs death in 2003.]
I think I was cautiously out. I remember not inviting Arnie to the first Christmas parties, you know. But then I have memories of bringing him to beach house parties with everybody. I think during Sesame Street was when I came completely out. By â86 we had an apartment together. My father knew. There was no hiding it.
Ok, so we have to addressâthatâs the big question, right? In the writerâs room, youâre all adults. Were you thinking of Bert & Ernie as a gay couple? Did that question ever come up?
I remember one time that a column from The San Francisco Chronicle, a preschooler in the city turned to mom and asked âare Bert & Ernie lovers?â And that, coming from a preschooler was fun. And that got passed around, and everyone had their chuckle and went back to it. And I always felt that without a huge agenda, when I was writing Bert & Ernie, they were. I didnât have any other way to contextualize them. The other thing was, more than one person referred to Arnie & I as âBert & Ernie.â
Thatâs telling.
Yeah, I was Ernie. I look more Bert-ish. And Arnie as a film editorâif you thought of Bert with a job in the world, wouldnât that be perfect? Bert with his paper clips and organization? And I was the jokester. So it was the Bert & Ernie relationship, and I was already with Arnie when I came to Sesame Street. So I donât think Iâd know how else to write them, but as a loving couple. I wrote sketches⌠Arnieâs OCD would create friction with how chaotic I was. And thatâs the Bert & Ernie dynamic.
So youâre saying that Bert & Ernie became analogs for your relationship in a lot of ways?
Yeah. Because how else? Thatâs what I had in my life, a Bert & Ernie relationship. How could it not permeate? The things that would tick off Arnie would be the things that would tick off Bert. How could it not? I will say that I would never have said to the head writer, âoh, Iâm writing this, this is my partner and me.â But those two, Snuffalupagus, because heâs the sort of clinically depressed MuppetâŚyou had characters that appealed to a gay audience. And Snuffy, this depressed person nobody can see, thatâs sort of Kafka! Itâs sort of gay closeted too.
The secret friendâŚbecause at that point Snuffy was Big Birdâs secret friend. It was later on he out and everyone realized he actually existed.
That happened while I was there, yeah. But they havenâtâŚthe New Yorker cover was kind of vindication, but thereâs not a Bert & Ernie float in the Pride Parade.
We wish!
And because it was always diversity, diversity, itâs a shame [Sesame Steet] wasnât leading the charge. Hereâs a story about pushing the gay envelope of Sesame StreetâŚ
The saxophonist is Big Jay McNeely, who died on Sept. 16th 2018 at the age of 91. He was a crucial part of LAâs postwar R&B explosion and helped lay the foundation for rock and roll.
In May 1953, Ebony magazine reported, âA young white lad got so hepped up over Big Jayâs music that he jumped out of a balcony onto the main floor, where he miraculously landed without hurting himself and went into a riotous dance.â
Back in the early aughts, when many millenials were in high school, before Facebook and Youtube, The Game began. No one knows who started it, but the moment we learned we were playing it, we began to lose. The goal of The Game is to forget you are playing The Game for as long as possible. The rules of The Game are as follows: Everyone is always playing The Game all the time; at school, during breakfast, at night when you are asleep, etc. The Game never ends. The moment you remember that you are playing The Game, you lose and must immediately announce to those around you, âI just lost The Game!â thus making them remember they are also playing The Game and causing them to lose as well. Upon losing, you begin The Game again. Sometimes players could go weeks or months without losing, sometimes only minutes. At the height of The Gameâs popularity, it became common to see people at events such as Comic Con or midnight movie premieres, wearing t-shirts proclaiming âYou just lost The Game!â Once they were noticed, groans and shouts of âFuck you!â could be heard for miles. These people thrived on the chaos, taking great pleasure in the cries of their victims. Most people eventually grew bored of The Game, and many began to claim they won by choosing not to care about it anymore. Some rely on a particular XKCD comic strip or Tumblr post to lend a sense of legitimacy to their feeling of victory. They are fools. It is impossible to win The Game. There is only losing. Only a few diehards remain loyal to the rules. The drop in popularity has allowed many to keep from losing The Game for years at a time. The growth of social media has caused a minor resurgence, although without the satisfaction of real time auditory feedback when causing others to lose, The Game will likely fade back into obscurity once again. Someday when we are old and gray, our grandchildren will innocently ask us to play a game of checkers, and we will shriek and shout until the whole nursing home joins us in defeat. Death is the only release from The Game.
Millennials have always been pretty nihilistic lol.
