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Google celebrates the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street and the 20th anniversary of Wallace and Gromit on both their American and British sites.  I much prefer the Wallace and Gromit omage.  But then again, I just love claymation and stinky cheese. 

So we heard yesterday that the Sesame Street gang were going to drop a Mad Men parody/homage on the world yesterday.  Which seems like a curious to show to pick, given the drinking, infidelity, smoking, tricking people into buying things they don’t need, etc. aspect of the show.  Except that they also did a Desperate Housewives thing a few years ago. 

Said Miranda Barry of the Sesame Street Workshop:  “You may have seen our parody called ‘Desperate Houseplants.’ It was about a houseplant not getting its needs met by the gardener. So it always works on two levels.”

Can’t wait to see what they come up with for the November episode.  Flavorwire took the time to put together a casting breakdown of who should play whom in the special episode.  It’s not a bad list at all.  My favorite is the Prairie Dawn/Peggy comparison:

Season 3 of Mad Men debuts on August 16th on AMC. No word on the exact date of when the Sesame Street/Mad Men episode will air.

Update: The photo is copyrighted and not reusable.  For shame.  We’ll work on trying to get permission.  In the meantime, it’s worth checking out for a good chuckle.

Your daily improper Sesame Street/Muppet photo.  And yet, Elmo is so freaking adorable, that even when he’s strung out on JD and willing to work for tickels, my first thought was, dang that’s a cute picture.

So how far could you push Elmo before he’s no longer cute?

Sorry internets game over.  Sesame Street won the game with this segment from the early 1990s, in which two dogs wearing floral aprons teach kids to bake bread.  Also?  The dogs have human hands just in case you thought the game wasn’t over.

[via Serious Eats]

Ricky Gervais could get me to watch anything.  In fact, I rented Ghost Town the other day because of him (review forthcoming) and actually enjoyed it.  Such is the power of Mr. Gervais.

Whether it’s his acerbic, off-putting personality and sarcastically aloof sense of humor, the man can say just about anything in that psuedo-self-assurance and I would laugh.

Team him up with Elmo for an off-camera (yet still recorded, oddly enough) outtakes sort of thing and it’s gold.  Did you ever think anyone would ask Elmo about necrophilia?  Clearly this one is for the older kids.

We’re turning into the unofficial Doogie Howser fan blog here at The Sly. But it’s all good. I think people could afford to have more Doogie in their lives. So now that Dr. Horrible has ended and the numbers are being crunched as to the business side of things, which Joss himself seems to concur, what’s doing with The Doog?

Well, glad you asked. Or rather we asked. A while back we mentioned that Feist would be adding some hipster indie cred to Sesame Street on the 39th season premiere. And guess who’s going to be there with her? That’s right. It’s the Doogster*.

He’ll be playing a shoe fairy. “Not the shoe fairy – the fairy shoe person. It’s quite a different connotation. I was asked by Sesame Street to be a part of a song and I just leapt at the opportunity. Jim Henson was the only person I ever wrote a fan letter to as a kid and I’m a wild fan of puppets and the Henson Company in general,” he told After Elton. “They wrote a song, wanted me to sing it. There are all these different mythical characters this season. Sandra Oh plays another type of fairy that Abby Cadabra creates and so we got to do this big musical number with puppets and dancing. It was a great, great afternoon. It’s one demographic that I have yet to win over.”

Well consider them won over.

*Joss has the best line about people calling NPH “Doogie.” When he said that Doogie has a name and it’s “Barney.” That just kills me. Always quick with a joke that Joss Whedon character. [via]

We’re glad the kids will have someone cool to sing along with, even if the adults are all sick to death of Feist’s “1-2-3-4″ when the venerable PBS show debuts its 39th season this year. Leslie Feist will drop by to teach kids to count to four.

A salient point is to be made here. In the actual song, Feist herself has a hard time counting to 10. In fact, she doesn’t do it. Second, we’re a bit miffed that she doesn’t have a showdown with The Count. This would have been the way to go.

In the wake of Yo Gabba Gabba’s hipster credentials, is Sesame Street trying to do the same. They have Will Arnett, Heidi Klum and Jack Black making stops to the stoop made famous by Big Bird, Oscar and Grover.