Video
Thank God for Sesame Street, which at its most base level is still 100 times more interesting than Mad Men. Jon Hamm’s relief is almost palpable as he explains the art of sculpting to children; safe, for a brief moment, from the tyrannical directions of Matthew Weiner, forcing him to drink fake whiskey and look angry all the time for no reason. Read More
When meeting the costumed characters at Disney World, tourists often get hugged. When meeting the costumed characters in Times Square, tourists often get harassed.
If you’ve traipsed the flashy, crowded sidewalks of Times Square in the past year, you’ve seen them: Cookie Monsters; Elmos; SpongeBobs; Dora the Explorers—(kind of creepy looking) costumed characters who pose Read More
Update: 12/11/12 4:47 p.m. So Kevin Clash has not only lost his job at Sesame Street, facing four underage sexual molestation charges, but now on top of that is being accused of having a limp dick by the latest alleged victim.
The accuser, now a 33-year-old man, ran away from his family in Miami when he was 16 to live with Clash. He revealed in his lawsuit (obtained in part by The New York Post), that “Kevin Clash told [his accuser] he had difficulty…due to a medical condition.” It’s like this Clash’s life cannot get any worse at this point. Except: Read More
– Kevin Clash, the voice of Elmo, has resigned from his role on Sesame Street after a second young man stepped forward to accuse the Academy Award-nominated documentary subject of being a sexual predator. 24-year-old Cecil Singleton is asking for $5 million from Mr. Clash, after claiming he met the voice actor on a phone sex line when he was 15. Then he made a pretty large leap in logic, claiming that Clash spent his days at Sesame “preying on teenage boys to satisfy his depraved sexual interests.”
– So in addition to bringing new chapters of Trapped in the Closet to IFC, R. Kelly is now bringing his hip-hopera to the Great White Way. Hey, it can’t be any worse than Ghost: The Musical. Read More
Kevin Clash, the puppeteer who has long played childlike red monster Elmo on the kids’ show Sesame Street, has decided to leave the program after having been seemingly exonerated on claims of sex with a minor. Read More
It was only last Monday (though it feels like forever ago) that 23-year-old Sheldon Stephens accused the voice of Elmo, Kevin Clash, of starting an inappropriate relationship with Mr. Stephens when he was 16-year-old. And while we thought all that ugliness was behind us after Stephens retracted his allegations and took a $125,000 out-of-court settlement, he is now rescinding his recant, claiming that he was “pressured” to drop the case. Read More
The world awakened Monday to the deeply depressing news that Kevin Clash, the voice and hands behind Sesame Street‘s beloved red mascot Elmo, was leaving the show for a while after being accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a 16-year-old boy. Mr. Clash has insisted that the relationship occurred after his accuser was an adult, but the now 23-year-old man making the allegations is being represented by the same law firm that represented a victim of convicted pedophile Jerry Sandusky, which can’t be good news for anyone.
We still don’t know just how deep inside the fuzzy red muppet this story goes. We do know that this is certainly not the first whiff of scandal in children’s entertainment.
Here’s a handful of other scandals that range from darkly funny to frankly terrifying. Read More
“The bar’s set really high–everyone on the street should feel like they’re part of our ‘hood,” said Carol-Lynn Parente, executive producer of Sesame Street, outside the Roseland Ballroom on Monday. Ms. Parente was attending the venerable series’s first open casting call in 43 years of production, as the Sesame Workshop sought to add a Spanish-speaking Read More
Happy Birthday to Big Bird, who is 43-years-old today. No wait, actually, he’s six, and he’ll always be six. (Except for the time he was 4, and when he was originally very old.)
Come on Sesame Street: how much are you going to make us suspend our disbelief here?? A big yellow talking bird…fine. A big yellow talking bird that doesn’t age? That’s just nutty! Read More
Downton Abbey, the Masterpiece franchise about life at a stately British manor, began with the sinking of the Titanic; its recently-concluded second season took on the Great War and the influenza outbreak. It’s a series about people unaccustomed to change suddenly dealing with staggering new technological and sociological realities, those who have long enjoyed a Read More
