40 years of sesame street

Few years back I had a vitriolic debate about consumerism in Lahore. It was probably 2002 and we were sitting in the Macdonald near the old collage. My left wing uncle and brother argued that the Americanization was killing the local culture. Certainly after years I do agree with their left wing political stance. But certainly there are many things that have become international crossing borders and language barriers. We might call it a new face of globalization, cultural imperialism, capitalist sponsored colonialism but it is there to stay in form of international brand names, music and sometimes tv shows.
As a kid the most irritating program I had to endure on Friday afternoons was Sesame Street. During those days Friday was a holiday . My mother would switch on the tv, forcing us down to watch weird puppets to finish house hold chores. I had little reading skills at that time and we would irritate her again and again with our "story time requests". She started buying story cassettes from feroz sons and later tried to substitute tv as a semi form of baby sitter.
Regardless my hate for Sesame Street grew exponentially with time. It was irritating boring without any worthwhile entertainment.. at least for someone like me. It seemed as if the puppets are trying hard to act as cartoons when they were quite real. Language was one barrier. Despite my fascination with art of puppetry ,sesame street failed to grow on me. Yes.. I have seen many puppetry shows in the local alhamra hall.. and then once an old style string puppetry at the local village.
But still...
The big bird, cookie monster.. the blabbering of numbers.. embedded cartoons and the irritating numbers..
Sesame street was definitely one irritating program , well I discovered barney and friends way later.
Then ptv modernized itself and started playing the urdu version of sesame street.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fywGjBqrodE&feature=related
I found it funny and entertaining.. and fascinating but still ugly. I have 3 younger siblings and 2 first cousins who live under the same roof (almost as near as to my own siblings). I find though some of them did enjoy the show. The most irritating part was the tv monopoly. One of my younger siblings would start weeping if we would switch the channel.A common scenario .. in most houses I guess...
Now most of them are grown up kids.. The youngest one in my family is in grade 5 and hence sesame street barney and freinds.. dora all are tales from the past.
Sesame street is celebrating its 40th birthday..
My hate is still there..
I promised to myself that I am not going to torture my kid with sesame..
Big bird is ugly.. Thankyou.. Certainly some childhood memories are not that cheerful.:)