ZOOM was a PBS kids show produced in Boston and syndicated nationally. There were two runs of it, most recently from 1999 to 2005. But it’s the original 1972 to 1978 version that burned holes in my evolving brain.
The cast changed each season, but it was always multicultural and there was usually at least one kid who looked like s/he’d never had a haircut.
The sometimes wacky, frenetic style of the show gave a pretty clear indication that the adults involved were fans of the show Laugh-In, which was in its heyday at the time.
ZOOM even had their own language, Ubbi Dubbi, which is somewhat like Pig Latin but harder to figure out if you don’t know the trick. There’s lots of Ubbi Dubbi out there, here’s an example.
By 2000, in the second run of the show, they had to do Ubbi Dubbi rap.
St. Cloud, Minnesota-based gamer Comrade (a.k.a. "Merfish") has created a great new video where the intro for PBS Kids' cartoon series, Arthur, is remade in the popular video game Grand Theft Auto V. We previously wrote about his GTA V remake of the intro to Full House. Merfish also shared…
http://youtu.be/sScHUorw-Hc N Apostrophe T is a catchy grammar oriented song written by Tom Lehrer, arranged by Joe Raposo and performed on The Electric Company, an educational PBS kids television series from the 70's, by actors Jim Boyd and Lee Chamberlin. Like many of the sketches on The Electric Company, this…
The most recent episode of the PBS animated series Blank on Blank features John Lennon and Yoko Ono talking about love, marriage and romance in a 1969 interview with journalist and director Howard Smith. Howard Smith: Marriage thing itself, as an official ceremony seems to have somewhat gone out of…
PBS Idea Channel host Mike Rugnetta takes the "100th-ish" episode to explore the intentions of the show and how he as host attempts to guide it. In short, it is a PBS Idea Channel episode about PBS Idea Channel. An Idea Channel episode ABOUT Idea Channel? It was inevitable, I…
Dr. Erica Brozovsky of Otherwords explained how a long term method for teaching reading to children became an issue during COVID.
Mikl-em
Actor, nerd, poet, producer, writer mikl-em made his name short so you wouldn't have to. In addition to his blog you can find his writing in "Hi Fructose" magazine and witness him almost life-sized in various plays at The Dark Room Theater in SF's Mission district.
He tends to write about theater, humor, San Francisco culture and history, and stuff that's just plain weird. He thanks Scott for sharing the keys to the Laughing Squid virtual HQ and promises to uphold whatever it is that the mirthful cephalopod would prefer to be uplifted.
