The Count

I don’t remember precisely at what point I figured out how to count, but I do remember one very early memory from my childhood involving Sesame Street.

I was young as hell. I was sitting Indian style in front of the family television. And I remember seeing that creepy counting vampire counting things, and being happy as hell about it, laughing after every number. He helped teach me what 1 represented and what 2 represented, and I’m pretty sure lil’ toddler me was nodding my lil’ toddler head all like ‘oh I get it.’

Actually now that I’m recalling it better I’m pretty sure he was counting in Spanish. Basically I’m saying Sesame Street played a strong role in my early childhood education. A period of relative purity for me. And seeing this video and its strong contrast with the purity of my childhood with its vulgarity, it was just too much for me to bear.

I’m pretty sure I cried laughing the first time I saw it.

You may have seen this all ready, I watched this video a while ago, but I just saw an episode of Sesame Street while I was perusing the airwaves and it jogged my memory of this video and I felt like I needed to just jog the collective blogosphere’s consciousness about how funny this video was. It’s a PSA from the Count concerning his trouble with a strong impulse of his. It delves into the Count’s dark journey and battle with addiction, and he relays in song just what specifically he’s addicted to.

Laughter is the best medicine, but it doesn’t seem to cure The Count of his addiction. In my opinion this is one of the greatest implementations of unnecessary censorship for the sake of comedic value in the history of unnecessary censorship. Everything works. Every line damn, nothing even feels like a stretch. It sounds ridiculous, but each one sounds like an actual plotted joke.

The original “Song of the Count” video is great standing on its own. The way he just goes up to everything in his house, smiling at the camera and running off numbers like counting was his own personal fetish, and how he sings the song with such conviction damn, it’s just the best. He truly means it, that’s what kills me about it. It was the easiest possible thing for somebody to dub to add a new twist on it, but it took a keen eye to see an opportunity for making this so damn funny.

Damn all this thinking about Sesame Street is just reminding me how awesome Sesame Street is, and what type of impact it probably has on millions of random kids all over the planet. I’m pretty OCD about numbers now, and have been for years. I blame The Count, and to a lesser degree my paranoia. I wonder how many adults now have early memories of learning random things from Sesame Street.

I know I do.