lesserjoke:

Scott Lynch: I was a hard-core Sesame Street viewer from about 1979 to 1984, and my memories of the show are the sort of deep nostalgic tangle you’d expect, with a great deal of idiosyncratic noise blended into the signal. So, for many years, I carried around a vague but emotionally vivid recollection of a Sesame Street episode in which Big Bird and Snuffleupagus had witnessed the the passage of a soul to the ancient Egyptian afterlife, complete with the weighing of the human heart against a feather. I shit you not.



For all those years, I just assumed that I was nuts, or that I was conflating a memory of a childhood dream with a childhood television experience. Not long ago, I was trading Sesame Street memories with that girl I like, and I determined to Google-fu my way to the truth.



In the 1983 special Don’t Eat the Pictures, assorted humans and Muppets are stuck overnight in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. While Oscar, Bob, Cookie Monster, Olivia, and some small children are having the sort of mild and educational adventures you’d expect, Big Bird and Snuffy meet Sahu, a 4,000-year-old Egyptian prince (!) condemned to wander eternally in spirit form (!!) unless he can answer a riddle posed by a demon (!!!) that appears to him each night at midnight. I am not fucking with you. This really happened.









There’s Sahu!

There’s Sahu!









ACTUAL DIALOGUE from Big Bird: “Oh no! The demon’s gonna be here any second now!” And here’s the appearance of that demon, played by James motherfucking Mason.

ACTUAL DIALOGUE from Big Bird: “Oh no! The demon’s gonna be here any second now!” And here’s the appearance of that demon, played by James motherfucking Mason.



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Actually, I want to point something out here.



Don’t Eat The Pictures aired in November of 1983. For those of you who remember Sesame Street in the 80s, remember what happened in November of 1982?



That’s right: Mr. Hooper died and Big Bird learned about the permanence of death.



Now, a year later - almost on the anniversary of losing his friend, someone who he thought would be in his life forever - Big Bird encounters a lost soul. Someone who, through no fault of his own has been damned to wander the earth for 4000 years.



And even though BB and Snuffleupagus help break the curse on Saru, the kid still gets fucked over by Death.



Again: a year after Big Bird has learned the existence of mortality, he is now seeing another friend being cheated by the universe.



Only this time, he’s actually face-to-face with Death himself.



This is the moment that Big Bird has been waiting for: to get up in Death’s grill and to tell him to go fuck himself.



After the unfairness of losing Mr. Hooper and now seeing the arbitrary cruelty of the universe, Big Bird is FACE TO FACE WITH A GOD AND NO FORCE IN THE UNIVERSE IS GOING TO STOP HIM FROM SEEING JUSTICE BE DONE.



Big Bird stares into the eyes of one of the primal forces of the universe and makes it blink. All because of the pent up rage and frustration at losing his friend and his inherent sense of fairness and justice.



This is why Big Bird is important.

Do not. Fuck. With. Big Bird.

(via postcardsfromspace)