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Comment by jeffwass | Hacker News Reader

I've always wondered how many classic Sesame Street sketches were made by artists and animators while tripping on psychadelics.

All the sketches below are ones I've seen when I was little.

The legendery Pinball Number Count, with music by the Pointer Sisters : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZshZp-cxKg

Totally tripped-out alphabet, and I mean totally tripped-out : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waxmzwxpKOo

Multi-armed guru counting to twenty a few times including in Spanish : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOkbuwRUTZo

Little kid gets lost in a weird neighborhood : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqPcQeMEnFc

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The Sesame Street creators weren't stoners who tripped balls while creating content. They were very meticulous about what they were doing. The colorful, abstract, "trippy" visuals engaged young minds so they were tuned in for the preschool lessons presented. They even layered social messages in a very subtle, non-preachy manner on top of the primary lessons. Here's one of my favorites:

A car appears to have trouble starting. Its driver, a Pam Grier-like woman, struts out, pops the hood, and drops a lowercase letter 'r' into the engine compartment. Now that the engine is capable of making appropriate 'rrrrrrr' noises, she drives off: https://youtu.be/L8AJATJoo5s

What a lovely little lesson! Its primary purpose being to teach a letter and its consonant sound, they didn't stop there, they built a narrative around that premise featuring a black female character oozing confidence (positive depictions of black and other minority characters being a Sesame Street priority since the early days). Sesame Street was full of stuff like this, engaging children of all backgrounds in a positive way in multiple dimensions.

My son had some trouble at age 2 or 3 speaking his Rs. I remembered exactly that cartoon (30 years later) and tried to get him to imitate a car noise with it. Worked like a charm!

The current poet laureate of the US famously struggled with the letter R as a child. L and R are also kind of hard to differentiate for some non native english speakers. Interesting brain stuff, and I think sesame street really was working on a great level there.

>The Sesame Street creators weren't stoners who tripped balls while creating content.

I'm sure it wasn't while creating content. But in their off time, that was part of the culture.

Lots of intelligent and creative people use or used marijuana and/or psychedelics. The idea of reducing those people to a label like "stoners" is disingenuous.

Philip Glass scored an animation for Sesame Street.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JWwOzEDGss

I blame this for my interest in modern classical. I can't imagine them doing something so progressive today. But that's because they had a captive audience in the 70's.

That's amazing! I wonder if I saw that and tuned it out as one of the 'boring' segments. It's genius, of course, but I'm not sure I would have felt so at 6. (I did recognize it from this thread a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18253445.)

One of the great things about Sesame Street was how they could entertain the parent along with the child. I remember a sketch about some composer struggling to write a song which is obviously "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", who somehow gets coaxed into the following instead:

  Twinkle twinkle little bird
  Isn't eating crumbs absurd
  Try a ham and cheese on rye
  Or a piece of cherry pie
  If the crumbs are all you want
  Don't come in my restaurant

That appeals perfectly to the small child who immediately recognizes the song and thinks it's ridiculous to rewrite it; perfectly to the adult with an ironic sense of humor; and perfectly to anyone who appreciates the craftsmanship it takes to pull something like that off. (Edit: I found it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jfqc07-C4Vw - I forgot the Kermit news reporter. What a brilliant thing. The nuances of those puppets are incredible.) (Edit 2: oh gosh, there were tons of those! https://muppet.fandom.com/wiki/Don_Music.)

Another example: using "To be or not to be" and "Let It Be" as devices for teaching the letter B:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPb8oRJfNpQ#t=1m45s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPb8oRJfNpQ#t=4m3s (I wonder why they changed the melody - surely it would've been fair use)

I remember in the 90s they did a sketch where Cookie Monster was dressed as Brutus from Shakespeare's _Julius_Caesar_. They were trying to get him to recognize the numeral '2'.

"Is it a 2, Brutus?"

> But that's because they had a captive audience in the 70's.

They experimented more in the early years before they settled into their current business model. Since then they've shifted age groups, the creation of everything involves committees, and there's a process for everything.

Think about their early years like a startup. Then the company grows into a FAANG and things change.

Thanks for sharing that! Here's what appears to be a slightly higher quality upload:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D--qSD01VRA

EDIT: the muppet wiki seems to have a good quality upload on Vimeo too:

https://muppet.fandom.com/wiki/Geometry_of_Circles

If you'd asked me yesterday to describe my memory of Sesame Street from childhood, that animation would have been what popped into my head. And I had no idea that it was Philip Glass. I just remember the music being weird and off-putting.

This is extremely cool, thank you!

> no idea that it was Philip Glass

Listen to it and then try skimming around through Koyaanisqatsi.

Yeah! It made perfect sense like 2500ms into the video! I just think it's kind of neat to get such clear telemetry on what my young brain thought of Philip Glass. I didn't remember the music literally, just my impression that the circle animation was neat, but ruined by the music. :)

Nice as that animation is, I bet it would be 1000 times more effective if a parent/teacher worked through it with the kid with paper, pencil, scissors, ruler, and compass.

It's more intended as abstract art aimed at children than as a pure maths lesson, I think

Good God that's awesome! I must have missed that episode.

Wow!

I'm a bit taken aback that YouTube won't let me add these to a private playlist, because they're oriented towards kids. Huh? What does this accomplish?

Interesting, according to this blog post: https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/better-protecting-kids-...

> YouTube now treats personal information from anyone watching children’s content on the platform as coming from a child, regardless of the age of the user. This means that on videos made for kids, we limit data collection and use, and as a result, we need to restrict or disable some product features. For example, we no longer serve personalized ads on this content or support features such as comments, live chat, notification bell, stories, save to playlist, and others.

So it's to keep kid behavior from being tracked. Kinda cool.

How does "save to personal playlist" track you? Are they trying to say they don't even internally log videos kids watch?

First mistake: you're trying to apply your usual reasoning to an area governed by emotions.

Second mistake: you're glossing over the obvious. "Save to personal playlist" tracks you by keeping a list of things you told it to save.

Third mistake: you're forgetting the wider context. Google is such a juicy target, that the criteria are becoming "can an adversary convince a clueless person this deserves a jillion credits fine?" Children's data is as toxic as medical data and you don't want it anywhere near your service, unless you really really have to and both legal and privacy agree there's no remotely viable alternative.

Source: I'm regularly taking the mandatory trainings in Google.

I guess that means YouTube tracks everything in playlists so rather than give up on tracking people they would rather disallow putting content marked as "for children" in playlists.

> This happened when a YouTube peado ring was discovered using playlists and comments to share clips.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26698084

Jazzy Spies numbers, with Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WSHvbGM6oE

So .. yeah I reckon there was a psychedelic influence at play.

Thank you for the pinball number count link. The days they included that in Sesame Street were the best days and now that I have this link every day can be a best day.

I remember one about "The Seventh Seal" where a character is looking for his pet seal and counting. I don't imagine many of the target audience would get the Ingmar Bergman reference but respect to the show's creators for putting it in anyway!

> Little kid gets lost in a weird neighborhood : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqPcQeMEnFc

Thank you so much. That was in the cobwebs of my memory and you restored it.

People often wonder this about psychedelia art. But is it even possible? The alphabet one, for example. It takes awhile to draw the stationary design behind any of those letters, let alone an animated sequence that transitions to the next one. Surely the mind of someone hallucinating would have moved on to many other fleeting visions before even finishing the letter A.

In my experience, you use the psychedelics to give inspiration, and then you complete the artwork once you're (mostly) sober. Anything else and I and my friends couldn't complete anything coherent. But the dose makes the poison too: low doses of psychedelics can help with creativity and the flow state without making it impossible to focus or complete less-fun specific tasks.

That's a good point. They could have designed the overall vision for how and what to create while under the influence, for example.

The "Lost Kid" one is very Yellow Submarine, for sure.

The myth that drugs make you more creative is, well, a myth.

I've had a few content-producing startups and I can tell you that there was literally no correlation between the amount/quality of the art produced and whether the person making it was a drug-addict or not (everybody was treated equally at my place).

If you want to know the secret behind creative genius, it is, as in other things, hard work and dedication. No substitute for that.

I think you're misinterpreting my point.

I'm only referring to the particular style of visual artwork and audio in those clips and others from that era of Sesame Street, which connects to psychadelic imagery and music.

You are right, there's definitely a connection regarding the style. Perhaps as other commenter suggests, has to do with it being one of the predominant visual styles of that time.

Drug addict or not?

Where does the part time smoker weed smoker vs crack whore fit at your startups?

Are they all addicts? Did you notice a difference with the microdosers? Was your offices setup to foster a more productive environment with the addicts or did you put them in cub-farms.

>Where does the part time smoker weed smoker vs crack whore fit at your startups?

As long as they behaved properly on premises, I didn't give much of a thought about their hobbies.

>Are they all addicts?

No. About 30%.

>Did you notice a difference with the microdosers?

There was a guy who did this, actually. He was kind of mediocre at work so we usually assigned him the easy but boring, repetitive stuff. n = 1 so I won't draw conclusions here.

>Was your offices setup to foster a more productive environment with the addicts ... ?

No, it was just a regular office. And no, they had no special benefits nor special handicaps because of their drug use. They never complained or requested any sort of special treatment. If anything, they were kind of ashamed for it, but I never brought the subject up.

I know it's hard to believe for some, but you can really treat everyone with dignity and things just ... work.

Bachelor of Arts (Multimedia) with honours and a Diploma of Education in Arts here.

I was high quite often. Though you wouldn't call it an addiction, and I found having a session before sitting down to create a piece helped the creative process.

Earning big dollars now.

Thanks.

Good for you.

If you read what I wrote, I said I saw "no correlation".

For every guy that used drugs and was very talented I had another one who was clean and on par. I had guys who were regular drug users told me that they liked to work clean and then smoke a joint afterwards to chill.

I know you're trying to push you viewpoint but there's really not much to discuss. Perhaps it works for you, but if you look at the whole picture, there is no correlation.

To be fair, it was more your distinction of 'drug addict or not' which I'm commenting on, which is pretty revealing of your opinion on people who take a drug.

???

I don't understand.

Drug addicts DO exist. And they have a hard time landing jobs because of that. If anything, I helped them and allowed them to have the same opportunity as others without those issues. And they performed well, so I don't see the issue, honestly.

> I don't understand.

From your initial post, you come across as thinking people either 'don't use drugs' or are a 'drug addict', with no middle ground.

That's what you wanted to read there. So it would fit within your history or whatever baggage you're carrying; none of which is my problem, and I mean that with sympathy. You need to stop projecting onto others.

I'll rewrite my initial post with more detail and clariry, I hope:

• I've had a few "artsy" startups in the past.

• Because of this, I have employed about 200 people in creative roles.

• Some of these people had issues with drug abuse, as they straight up told me or came out on background checks.

• (Bonus) Since I am a super nice guy :), I gave them a pass on that and a chance to perform. This, in stark contrast with 95% of similar businesses which just had probably smiled them goodbye and then ghosted them.

• I found out that there was no difference in the amount of "creativity", to put it that way, between the drug addicts compared to people who were not.

• Since I think this is an interesting insight, I decide to share it here.

• Somehow, that's a bad thing for some. I guess you can't please everybody, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

You just appear to have a moral superiority complex, in the sense that to you people are either "clean" or an "addict", you feel you are doing people some kind of favour for "giving them a chance", and assuming that I have some kind of emotional baggage.

Quite the opposite, I'm afraid. Though I'm clearly not the only person here that picked up on your comments, so I'm going to leave it at that.

>"clean" or an "addict"

Those adjectives are correct.

>I'm clearly not the only person here that picked up on your comments

Thanks for noticing! I act on principle, not on popularity, so that's irrelevant.

Wow.

They were eating rotisserie chicken.

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