What's your favorite letter segment?

[Rosewood]

Airplane letter writer

i remember seeing a number of these in the late 70s and was suprise to have seen them in the SSU shows in the 1st season. this was where a plane would fly over and write a letter. remember these?

Yes! Iremember it, too! They called the guy "Alphabet Bates"!

 

[Rosewood]

Ones forgotten

O.K. guys! I've eyeballed this entire thread and heres a couple I havn't heard mentiond yet:

Y for the "Yellow Yahoo". ("He dreams about you, the Yellow Yahoo; under the stars and the midnight sky, Under the tree that looks like a Y.)

Muppet segment: (shows a mechanic in a garage, pumping up a letter O) and a lady comes in with a letter J that wont "Jump". Mechanic "jumpstarts" it and it starts jumping out of controle, finally crashing through the wall!

 

[Ziffel]

O.K. guys! I've eyeballed this entire thread and heres a couple I havn't heard mentiond yet:

Y for the "Yellow Yahoo". ("He dreams about you, the Yellow Yahoo; under the stars and the midnight sky, Under the tree that looks like a Y.)

That's neat you bring this one up, Rosewood. I was just thinking about this one a few weeks ago. But I couldn't think of what to search for or what the Y creature was called! I never could tell that they were saying "yellow yahoo". I recall it pretty well. "What do you think your mother would do, if you yelled like a yellow yahoo?" Then I think he says, "Boo!"

There was also a brief y one that simply shows a letter Y and the voice offscreen says, "Y. Yawn." And then the letter Y yawns and starts to snore. Some soft music plays and then the voice whispers, "Y."

 

[Rosewood]

Lines in full (to the best of my memorie)

Not sure if this one has ever been brought up. There was an animated one with a man and a gorilla. The gorilla was mentioning a lot of words that begin with the letter g ( I think he was writing them down as he said them, and perhaps on a chalkboard). Girl and gum were two of the words he thought of. After gum, he says, "And um um..." Then the man says, "Gorilla." The gorilla is scared and jumps into his arms saying, "Where?!" The guy frowns and says, "Right here. You're a gorilla." The gorilla says, "I am?" and starts to leave. The man asks, "Where are you going?" I think the reply of the gorilla, which was also the close of the sketch, was, "If I'm a gorilla I'd better go to the jungle and eat bananas."

Gorilla opens door and comes in. Man at desk says "Hi". Gorilla says "Is this the Gerfner Employment Agency?" Man: "So it is." Gorilla: "Good! I need a job." Man "Well, what can you do?" Gorilla: "Well, I can write." Man: "You can? Gee!" Gorilla: "Certainly! G is one of my best letters. You can tell by the "Gu" sound. Man: "Good!" Gorilla: "Thats right. Good begins with g. (he picks up a piece of chalk and writes "good" on the blackboard)then says "Many other word begin with G; like girl, goat, goose, grape, grease, gum, and...um..um...(at this point he has passed the bottom of the chalkboard and is writing on the wall) and the man says "Gorilla!" The gorilla jumps into the mans arms and yells "Where?!" The man puts him down and explains "Here. Gorilla is also a G word. And you are definately a gorilla." At which the gorilla says "I am? Gosh!! I gotta get out a here!!" and proceeds to leave. The man asks "Where you goin'?" To which the gorilla replies "I Gotta go learn how to run around in the jungle and eat bananas!" and slams the door. To which the man says "Gee". the end. Ziffel: check your personal mail; I left another one for you there!

 

[SesameMike]

D Building

One more point about that "D Building" animation.

There's an error in it that actually bothered me as a kid. As the sequence opens, the two men are on the elevator/girder/letter talking about the building, how it has "everything in the world that begins with D". As they're talking, their already rising, and you can see several floors go by. So they're already a number of stories up when the first of the floors are shown to us. But when they're stuck at the top, and he realizes that they left out the word "down", we see a wide angle of the entire building, complete with a simultaneous vista of every floor we saw earlier. It turns out that the first floor we saw is actually the first floor of the building. What happened to all the floors they passed initially?

Of course, some of you probably want to say to me "Did you know that the word 'pedantic' isn't in the dictionary?"

Other D-words that I hope were not included in the D Building: Dynamite, Demolition, Destruction, Despoil, Dismantle. etc.

 

[Ziffel]

Lots of times the Pink Panther karate chopping the letter k has been brought up at MC. But remember another karate one where the guy says, "K, karate"?
Then this guy makes "haaaaa" noises as he does a karate chop on something (forgot what it was. a letter k maybe? ) and it shatters. Then when he tries another karate chop he is unsuccessful and hurts his hand. He says, "Owwww oooooh oooh!" Then he says, "K", holds out his hand that is in pain and says, "Kiss?" That's another thing I can't recall from this - was there another person standing there next to him that he wanted to kiss his hand? I think so.

 

[Ziffel]

There were some catchy d segments. A popular one I've seen people mention a lot as their favorite is the "d d d d Daddy dear oh Daddy sweet..."
Also with the Cookie Monster and Ernie song "d dd ddddd don't throw dishes down on the floor. do a dance. dig some dirt. and dunk a donut for dessert..." The Cookie Monster was trying frantically to keep up with Ernie by acting it all out and at the end falls from exhaustion.

By the way, this d song with Ernie and Cookie Monster was also on the Sesame Street record from around '74 or '75 that had a song for each letter. Some of them were not on the tv show also (like Oscar's b sandwich) and some were, like this d one. But boy without seeing the visual you really miss a lot of the fun of this skit, since Cookie Monster doesn't say anything. So for someone who heard this one on the record but never saw it on tv, they had no idea that while Ernie was singing, CM was getting exhausted keeping up. And then when Ernie concludes and the music makes a sound to reflect the exhaustion of CM as he faints, the listener to the album wouldn't have realized what really took place.

Just a little observation. And I imagine they selected this d song for the album anyway because it really is a catchy song on its own and includes many d words throughout.

 

[superfan]

Hi, Ziffel!

I have the album you mention and here are some details (just because I can finally contribute something relevent!) And if you already know about it, than maybe others might like to know.

The Muppet Alphabet Album
starring Jim Henson's Muppets from Sesame Street

Songs:
A~ Sound of the Letter A....Big Bird
B~Oscar's B sandwich....Oscar
C~C is for Cookie...Cookie Monster
D~Dee Dee Dee...Ernie
E~WHat's my Letter...Guy Smiley and Prairie
F~Four Furry Friends...Grover, Oscar and Cookie Monster
G~Two G Sounds...Grover and George
H~Ha Ha...Harvey, Herry and Big Bird
I~Stand Up Straight and Tall...Grover
J~J Friends...The Anything Muppets (my favorite song and it skips)
K~Herb's Silly Poem...Herbert Birdsfoot
L~La La La...Ernie and Bert
M~MMM Monster Meal...Herry Monster, Cookie Monster
N~The Noodle Story...Big Bird, Oscar
O~Would you Like to Buy an O?...Salesman and Ernie
P~My Favorite Letter...The Anything Muppets
Q~The Question Song...Grover, Little Girl
R~The R Machine...Ernie and Bert
S~Sammy the Snake...Sammy
T~The Tale of Tom Tattertall Tuttletut...Herber Birdsfoot, Anything Muppets
U~Lecture...Professor hastings
V~The Very Special Letter
W~The National Association of W Lovers...Bert
X~X Marks the Spot...Sherlock Hemlock
Y~Just Because...Grover, Little Girl
Z~ The Zizzy Zoomers

*PHEW!*
And it was released 1976, given the copyright date on the back

 

[Ziffel]

Hi there superfan!

Yes that's the record indeed. We moved from Maryland at the end of March 1976 and I know I had this record in Maryland and listened to it quite a bit so I estimated it was from 1974 or 1975. Maybe I got it in January '76 or it was available in late '75 but had the '76 copyright date.

The D song had Cookie Monster too but, as I mentioned, you wouldn't know it from the record alone. In the F song Herry was the fourth monster. In the Q and Y songs Prairie Dawn was the girl with Grover. The Q one was on the tv show too but I don't think the Y one was. In the U lecture by Professor Hastings, Ernie was also in it and kept saying "Up professor!" when he would fall asleep. Big Bird did the V song. Oh and one more small point of interest: Farley speaks a couple of sentences to Oscar at the beginning of the B sandwich song.

 

[superfan]

All true. Enjoyable album, start to finish! I also picked up over the weekend (at Value Village, second hand store) Oscar's Let a Frown Be Your Umbrella and Sesame Street 25 Greatest Hits. Finding SS records among the stacks always brings a smile to my face.