A classic little number

Considering that Season 39 of Sesame Street is going to focus on teaching basic math concepts, it's a shame that Sesame Workshop would reject some of their best number/counting clips as too old. Here's a tricky little gem from late in Season 1; the characters don't look too dated, but the music might seem that way to some children. Many thanks to user cdkscully for posting it--

Sesame Street - As I Was Going to St. Ives

I miss the days when Sesame Street used that kind of intelligent humor to teach, instead of talking down to kids...and played original musical arrangements, instead of having celebrities parody their own songs. Unfortunately, that won't happen until the Workshop gets enough funding to stop running six minutes of ads in every new episode...*sigh*

What's happening to Gina?

Thanks to a message at Muppet Central, I've just seen some studio footage from the next season of Sesame Street. (That would be the 39th, if you've lost track... :-) ) One major change to the set bothers me: Gina has been on Sesame Street for twenty years (long enough to qualify as a classic character, in my opinion). She's run a veterinarian clinic there for seven of those years...but next season, the vet's office is going to be replaced by an auto-repair shop! Since Gina becoming a mechanic seems totally out of character, I'm worried that the Workshop is planning to write her off the show. Hopefully, an official press release will either confirm or deny my suspicions in a month or two.