Poagao's Journal

Absolutely Not Your Monkey

Jul 17 2001

Mr. Rogers is leaving the neighborhood. He started…

Mr. Rogers is leaving the neighborhood. He started his show in summer 1968 to console kids who were being bombarded with reports of Robert Kennedy’s assasination. A few months later I was born. Now, over 30 years later, he’s finally going to end the series. Good job, Mr. Rogers.

I don’t know how to feel about this. One one hand it makes me feel old, dated. I grew up watching this guy’s program, as I suspect a lot of other people my age did, on one of only 3 channels, each one accessed by clunking a heavy dial with backlit numbers on a TV encased inside a wooden cabinet-like box. He was the impossibly good parent, someone who was ok with everything and ok with me, sure of himself and anxiety-free, which was no doubt the exact opposite of not only my parents but those of most kids, then and now. Sure, the generality of his expression was a little banal, but it felt safe, and that was what mattered. It feels like the end of an era, but that era really ended long ago.

Speaking of nostalgia, there’s a TV crew in one of the offices, interviewing one of the bigwigs. I was just starting out as an assistant cameraman 10 years ago. I even visited this very office for some of the projects. I look back at all of the stuff I’ve done since, but it still seems like the time has just flown by nonetheless.

I’m going to stop here before I get really sickeningly nostalgic and depressing.

You’re welcome.

posted by Poagao at 9:28 am  

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment