That's Edutainment?

As a person born in California in the late '70s, every form of media that I was exposed to for the first few years of my life was at least moderately psychedelic.  Regardless of whether it was a McDonald's ad or a Disney movie, The Electric Company or a Public Service Announcement, everything was just slightly groovy.   Even the filmstrips about the pilgrims we were forced to watch had weird Moog soundtracks and Yellow Submarine character designs.

Things took a drastic change around 1984, when Nancy Reagan decided that she wanted to keep me off drugs.   The conflicting environmental messages and survival tips (don't litter, but if you get lost in the woods, use one of the many discarded trash bags you find as a poncho) edutainment and public service messages suddenly shifted to very special episodes.  Secondary characters on Webster became addicted to nonspecific drugs and wound up working as unpaid, one-handed meat packers.  Margot on Punky Brewster was so wracked with guilt after the refrigerator incident that she cut off all her hair, crashed her mother's car and started her own infanticide club.   Skippy never recovered from his experiences in El Salvador, and Screech became a nun.   Mostly, it was about drugs though.  And once people started warning me about the effects of drugs on the human brain, I put two and two together and it became obvious to me that anyone who had ever tried to simultaneously entertain and teach me anything had probably done a shit ton of acid.

Suppressed by the cold, hard reality of the '80s, my memories of "Free To Be... You And Me", "The Point" and "H.R. Puffinstuff" were crammed into the dark recesses of my brain, where they have festered for thirty years, occasionally bubbling to the surface and leaving me wondering if they were real or imagined.   They are stored in a nether region of my subconscious, even more distant than that well-guarded utopian playground where I suspect "Shamelessly Happy Matt" skips and dances about.   Here, in an abandoned, day-glo rock-n-roll church in a field of swirling sunflowers beneath a purple paisley sky, a faceless projectionist in massive, flower-print bell bottoms and a brown, fringed leather vest is playing a perpetual loop of rambling, senseless edutainment shorts, cobbled together from half-memories and engrams scarred into my psyche by well-meaning adults.

These shorts depict a rainbow colored Brooklyn and a technicolor alphabet hyphenation forest where Doctor John mercilessly torments and mocks your inability to find your way out.  Crude proto-muppets representing babies tell me about the differences between their respective genitalia as Michael Jackson sings about self-acceptance.  Six-Million Dollar Man Big Foot and Leonard Nimoy encourage me to go for nature walks and to seek out new age powers, but not to venture into construction sites.   Papa John and Mackenzie Phillips sing songs about the importance of family, accompanied by sexually aggressive mimes and then Witchy-Poo suddenly segues in and tells a knock-knock joke. 

Only it's never a funny joke. 

WITCHY-POO

Hey Kids!  Knock-knock!

KIDS CHORUS

Who's there, Witchy-Poo?

WITCHY-POO

Butter!

KID'S CHORUS

Butter who?

WITCHY-POO

Butter not get in a car with a stranger or they'll find your waterlogged, severed head floating in a canal!

Wendy Carlos music starts up and two teenagers in earth tone pants and blood red turtlenecks head into a locker room to have an awkward discussion about the changes their bodies have been going through.  Next up, Wayland Flowers and Madame explain that your parents probably still love you, even if they are getting divorced while a lifeless Charlie McCarthy puppet sits in a corner collecting cobwebs.   The Solid Gold dancers spill in, and Bootsy Collins tells a kid who can't play the sitar to never give up before a star wipe brings us more Witchy-Poo.

WITCHY-POO

Hey Kids!  Knock-knock!

KIDS CHORUS

Who's there, Witchy-Poo?

WITCHY-POO

Cha-cha!

KIDS CHORUS

Cha-cha who?

WITCHY-POO

 Cha-ch-cha-challenger explosion!! Deal with it.

Oh, look!  It's Alan Alda and a group of kids sitting inside a geodesic dome!  And they're discussing aspirations.   And they all want to be astronauts.   Luckily, according to all the latest data, we'll all be living on the moon by 1991!   Mamma Cass wants a pet alligator, but Meadowlark Lemon shows up on his flying phantom fire hydrant to tell her that it's a lot of responsibility.    John Lennon dishes some parenting advice to Eric Clapton in an over sized nursery, then Robert Blake talks about resolving conflict with a parrot.   Orson Welles stares at the camera for several minutes without blinking, breathing heavily while the Mummenschanz perform their infamous clay face genital routine.   Finally, the camera fades to black, with only the continuing sound of Orson's breathing for another two minutes.

Now let us never speak of this part of my brain again.