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Tuesday, November 27, 2012

November 27, 1985


It seems hard to believe, but there are only four weeks left until Christmas, and only thirty-four days left until we ring in 2013!  I can’t believe how fast this year has flown by!

As we enter the month of sparkling lights, freshly fallen snow, carolers singing on street corners, and shopping malls being filled with shoppers looking to cross off the last details on their lists, December is looking like it is going to be a busy month.  And, that’s not even taking into account the hullabaloo that is surrounding the uncertainty of what could happen on the twenty-first of December...though if you ask me, the worst thing that will happen that day is that we have a blizzard...and I’ve survived loads of blizzards!

Before we enter the month of December, we have to wrap up November.  And beginning with this edition of the Tuesday Timeline, the next few entries will be Christmas themed.  In fact, each day that we’ll be flashing back to for the next five weeks will have some sort of link to the holidays.  And that’s your only clue.

So from November 27 until December 25, all the Tuesday Timelines will have at least one reference to Christmas.  It could be a small reference, or it could take up the whole blog entry.  Either way, I think we’re going to have a lot of fun with this feature the next five weeks. 

So, what are we waiting for?  Let’s begin the series of holiday themed Tuesday Timelines with the November 27 entry. As it turns out, November 27 has a lot associated with it.  Some of the happenings throughout history on this date include the following events...and yes, they are written in red and green for a reason.  J

1095 – Pope Urban II declares the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont

1703 – The first Eddystone Lighthouse becomes a casualty of the Great Storm of 1703

1727 – The foundation stone to the Jerusalem’s Church in Berlin is laid

1807 – The Royal Family of Portugal flees Lisbon to escape from Napoleonic troops

1815 – Adoption of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Poland

1839 – The American Statistical Association is founded in Boston, Massachusetts

1856 – Luxembourg unilaterally adopts a new and reactionary constitution following the Coup of 1856

1868 – United States Army Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer leads an attack on the Cheyenne living on reservation land, sparking the Battle of Washita River

1895 – Alfred Nobel signs his last will and testament, which sets his estate aside to establish the Nobel Prize after his death

1901 – The United States Army War College is established

1924 – The first annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade is held in New York City

1934 – Bank robber Baby Face Nelson is gunned down during a shootout with the FBI

1940 – At the Battle of Cape Spartivento, the Royal Navy engages the Regia Marina in the Mediterranean Sea the same day that martial artist Bruce Lee is born

1941 – Country singer Eddie Rabbitt is born in Brooklyn, New York

1942 – American guitarist Jimi Hendrix is born in Seattle, Washington

1944 – Seventy people are killed in an explosion at a Royal Air Force ammunition dump at Fauld, Staffordshire

1954 – Alger Hiss is released from prison after serving a 44-month sentence for perjury connected to the allegations that he was a Soviet spy

1965 – President Lyndon B. Johnson is told by the Pentagon to increase American troops serving in Vietnam from 120,000 to 400,000 soldiers if he wished the planned operations in the country to succeed

1968 – Penny Ann Early becomes the first woman to play professional basketball

1971 – The first man-made object, the Soviet made Mars 2 orbiter’s release of a descent module, reaches the surface of Mars

1973 – The United States Senate votes 92:3 to confirm Gerald Ford as the official Vice President of the United States

1975 – The Provisional IRA assassinates Ross McWhirter after a press conference in which he announced a reward for those responsible for multiple shootings and bombings all over England

1978 – Harvey Milk, the first openly gay city supervisor of San Francisco, as well as San Francisco mayor George Moscone are assassinated by Dan White

1983 – Avianca Flight 011 crashes near Madrid’s Barajas Airport, killing 181 people

1989 – Avianca Flight 203 explodes in mid-air above Colombia, killing 107 on board, and three on the ground

2005 – The first facial transplant is performed in France

2006 – The Canadian House of Commons endorses Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s motion to declare the province of Quebec a nation within a unified Canada

2009 – A bomb explodes on the Nevsky Express, causing 28 deaths and injuring 96 people

Okay, so that’s a lot of history.  And there happens to be a lot of celebrity birthdays as well.  The late Buffalo Bob Smith and Chick Hearn were born on November 27, as are these current living celebrities; Les Blank, Gail Sheehy, Dave Giusti, Henry Carr, Nicole Brossard, Barbara Anderson, James Avery, Jayne Kennedy, Kathryn Bigelow, Sheila Copps, Daryl Stuermer (Genesis), Curtis Armstrong, Kimmy Robertson, Bill Nye, Pierre Mondou, William Fichtner, Caroline Kennedy, Michael Stackpole, Mike Scioscia, Charlie Burchill (Simple Minds), Ken O’Brien, Fisher Stevens, Robin Givens, Michael Vartan, Myles Kennedy, Brooke Langton, Samantha Harris, Twista, Kirk Acevedo, Jaleel White, Hilary Hahn, and Domata Peko.

So, what is the date that we’re flashing back to this week?  November 27, 1985.



(Like the Christmas colour logo?  I decided to add a little holiday spice to it.)

Anyway, November 27, 1985 was a day of new releases in the movie theatres.  Two movies were released on this date in history twenty-seven years ago.  The first one was the fourth sequel in the popular Rocky series.

The second one was widely considered to be one of the worst movies of the 1980s, if not of all time.  And it is this second movie that we’ll be focusing on.

Throughout recent history, there have been some fantastic holiday themed films released.  “It’s A Wonderful Life”, “Miracle on 34th Street”, “A Christmas Story”...even “Home Alone” and “The Santa Clause” could be considered true holiday classics today.



And then there’s “Santa Claus: The Movie”, which was released on November 27, 1985.

The movie was one that I believe started with good intentions, and did have an all-star cast...but for whatever reason the whole movie was an exercise in complete failure.  Here are just a few of the statistics surrounding this film.

The film’s budget was between thirty and fifty million dollars.  It only made $23 million at the box office.  Ouch.

On the website “Rotten Tomatoes”, the film only has an 18% rating.  Double ouch.

Film critic Vincent Camby stated that the film was “elaborate, but tacky”, and that Santa’s workshop must have been the world’s largest purchaser of low-grade plywood, and that the flying sequences weren’t all that great.

Another film critic, Alonso Duralde, even went so far as to list “Santa Claus: The Movie” as one of the worst holiday themed movies ever made, claiming that the film is a “train-wreck of a Christmas movie that’s so very wrong that you won’t be able to tear yourself away from it.”

In other words...people hated it.  Even the trailer for the movie looked lame.  Take a look for yourselves, if you dare.


I thought about posting a link to the whole movie (believe it or not, it’s currently posted in nine parts on YouTube), but I thought the trailer was more than enough.

Here’s the thing though.  The movie may have turned out to be a bit of a poor execution...but there really was a lot of planning involved in the creative processes behind the movie.  The cast featured such stars as Dudley Moore and John Lithgow (who both made their roles work given the material), as well as Burgess Meredith, Judy Cornwell, Jeffrey Kramer, Christian Fitzpatrick, and featured David Huddleston as the title role of Santa Claus.




The film was actually the final project by the French father-son duo of Alexander and Ilya Salkind, and was directed by Jeannot Szwarc, and the plot of the movie tried its best to try and explain to young children how Santa Claus originated.  It made an attempt to try and answer some of the most commonly asked questions by children in regards to how Santa Claus flies all over the world every December 24th to bring toys and games to billions of kids.  How does Santa's reindeer fly?  How does Santa ascend up and descend down chimneys?  How did Santa Claus and his wife settle down in the North Pole?

Again, I do applaud the filmmakers for creating an innovative and elaborate story, and certainly they did appear to try their best.  It's just that the execution wasn't the best.  If anything, I found that the 1993 film "The Santa Clause" did a much better job.

Of course, that's just my opinion.

Anyway, I won't really go into too much detail about the plot because I don't like revealing too much about movies (even if they were generally regarded as being overly terrible), but there are a few main plots that intertwine with each other.




We are introduced to Santa and his wife in the early 14th century, where Santa (or Claus, as he is first introduced) works as a woodcutter.  He and his wife, Anya (otherwise known as Mrs. Claus), deliver gifts to children in a nearby village.  One night, two of Claus' reindeer are rescued from certain death in a blizzard, and are transported to the ice mountains.  There, Claus and Anya end up meeting several elves (known in the movie as the Vendequm), and learns that it is his destiny to distribute toys to children every Christmas Eve.

Flash forward to 1985 and Santa Claus is unable to keep up with the demand, leaving Anya to suggest that he get an assistant.  Although several elves want the position, Patch (Dudley Moore) ends up winning the coveted prize position.




But Patch is soon thrown into a huge test of trying to discover what is right and what is wrong when he meets up with greedy toy developer B.Z. (John Lithgow), whose company is failing amidst allegations that they make shoddy toys.  Patch suggests that he help B.Z. make the toys after seeing that all of the store shelves that are supposed to be carrying his toys are empty (unaware that his toys were actually recalled).

Patch also ends up making a series of lollipops using a secret ingredient in the reindeer feed that Santa feeds them to make them fly.  These lollipops also make people float in midair, and Patch ends up marketing them to children, which causes a bit of a rift between Patch and Santa.  B.Z. meanwhile begins to manufacture candy canes laced with the ingredient, at the time unaware that it has a nasty side effect.  It isn't until the candy canes are manufactured that B.Z. realizes that they have the tendency to explode in extreme heat.  With the candy canes being laced with this ingredient, the discovery would shut his company down for good.  But what happens when a little homeless boy named Joe happens to eavesdrop on his plans to flee North America to escape federal charges?

Does this plot seem like a mess to you?  It does to me.  I suppose that's one reason why it failed at the box office.



But, since I try to find at least one positive point in each subject, I will say that Roger Ebert wasn't nearly as harsh with the critique of the movie as others were.  He did say that he liked the way the film envisioned Santa's workshop and the elves, and believed that young children would really like and appreciate the movie.  And since I was four when the movie came out, I probably would have liked it had I seen it for the first time at that age.



Instead, I was in my teens...and the magic just wasn't there.  However, I still think that it could have been a great film, and some people do genuinely like it despite all of its flaws.  I suppose in that aspect, "Santa Claus: The Movie" wasn't all that bad.


But I still wouldn't care to watch it again.

So, that's what happened twenty-seven years ago...on November 27, 1985.


Monday, November 26, 2012

Miss Congeniality


With modern television being the way it is these days, one can sit down and watch as many as five hundred different channels depending on the cable/satellite television package that one might have.

I myself can only afford basic cable, but that's fine with me, as I really tend to watch a lot of television programs online through videos posted on network television websites, video sharing websites, and other forms of digital media.

And certainly with cable and satellite television having so many choices, there's millions of sitcoms, dramas, sporting events, and even full-length feature films airing on the five hundred channels you might have included in your entertainment packages.

But what happens when you have five hundred channels, and you STILL can't find anything to watch?

I'll readily admit to being one of those people who can't seem to find anything to watch on television some days. It seems almost like a first world problem...five hundred channels and nothing to watch.

Unfortunately, for every decent show on television these days, there are always about twenty-five others that are just horrible, cheesy, or so incredibly boring that they would put you in a coma in just a matter of minutes. Such is the curse of cable television, I suppose.

Do you want to know what I find most frustrating about cable television? The fact that some of the cable channels seem to play the same movies over and over again. I can't even begin to tell you the number of times that I have seen “Cocktail”, “Double Jeopardy”, or “Batman Forever” on cable television. It's almost as if all cable television channels own the rights to only ten different movies, and play them four times a day. I'm sure most of you know what I am talking about, right?

Today's blog entry is all about one of these particular movies that seems to air repeatedly on cable television. Worse still, it's a movie that could be classified as a “chick flick”. And yet, I believe that I've stumbled across this film so many times that I reckon I could recite the plot from memory.



That movie happens to be “Miss Congeniality”, which was released on December 22, 2000. The movie was directed by Donald Petrie, and starred Sandra Bullock, Benjamin Bratt, Michael Caine, William Shatner, and Candice Bergen.



The movie begins with a flashback sequence in which a little boy is being picked on by a bully. A young Gracie Hart intervenes and beats up the bully who is picking on the boy in an effort to help him (and because she has a secret crush on him). Instead of showing his gratitude, he not only is disgusted that a girl had to bail him out of trouble, but goes so far as to criticize everything about Gracie...which earns him a punch in the face for his trouble.



Fast forward a few years, and Gracie Hart (now played by Sandra Bullock) is now working for the FBI alongside her partner, Eric Matthews (Bratt). Initially, she worked as a Special Agent who went out into the field, but after a mishap which leaves a member of her squad wounded by a bullet, she's forced onto a desk job. Which she hates.

But soon enough, the team gets word that a tragic event could spell doom for the 75th annual Miss United States Beauty Pageant, and the FBI is dispatched down to San Antonio, Texas (where the ceremony is being held) in order to prevent disaster from happening.

Naturally, Eric is selected by the team to go to San Antonio to stop the attack from the domestic terrorist simply known as “The Citizen”. However, the FBI also has the idea to send a female agent down to the pageant where she could go undercover as a contestant in hopes of infiltrating the plot from within.



And surprise, surprise, Gracie Hart is transformed into Gracie Lou Freebush, Miss New Jersey! Bet you didn't see that one coming.

Now, Gracie isn't exactly the most...girly girl of the bunch. She was always a tomboy by nature, liking most hobbies that boys liked including sports and martial arts (which ends up being one of the talents that she displays at the actual beauty contest). She even dressed like a tomboy, which sort of turned off pageant coach Victor Melling (Caine), who was already trying to regain the lustre lost from his reputation after his last client completely tore him apart emotionally. Nevertheless, he tries his hardest to get Gracie ready for the contest, which essentially means a complete head-to-toe makeover. Think transforming a GI Joe action figure into a Barbie doll.

A tough task, given that Gracie hates the idea of beauty pageants to begin with, accusing them of promoting anti-feminism.

A funny thing happens once Gracie arrives at the pageant and starts befriending other girls at the pageant. Some of the girls she starts to develop friendships with included...



Miss California (Wendy Raquel Robinson)
Miss Hawaii (Asia De Marcos)
Miss New York (Melissa De Sousa)
Miss Texas (Deirdre Quinn)
Miss Rhode Island (Heather Burns)



In fact, of all the contestants, Miss Rhode Island happens to be the one person who Gracie gets the closest too. Initially Gracie suspected her to be the one who was plotting the attack on the pageant, but quickly dismissed the idea the more that she got to know her. And besides, there were other suspects on the list.



The suspects included the director of the beauty pageant, Kathy Morningside (Bergen), herself a former winner. This pageant happens to be her last one, as she is in the process of being replaced by someone younger...the same fate that is about to befall the pageant's long time host Stan Fields (Shatner), who also ends up being a suspect. Frank Tobin (Steve Monroe) also becomes a suspect, as he is associated with Morningside (he happens to be her personal assistant).

As the movie progresses, the viewer soon finds the answers out to the following questions...

  1. Who is the person stalking the Miss United States Beauty Pageant?
  2. What is the dirty little secret that Miss Rhode Island has been keeping?
  3. What secret are two of the suspects hiding from the others?
  4. Who wins the title of Miss United States?
  5. What is the real extent of the relationship between Gracie and Eric?

All these questions will be answered and more whenever you get a chance to watch the movie (and considering that it seems to air at least six times a year on cable television, I'm sure you won't have much trouble finding it).

All in all though, I will say this. The movie wasn't as bad as I thought it would be...and in all honestly, I am a little bit of a Sandra Bullock fan.

And now some behind the scenes trivia for “Miss Congeniality”.

  • The film ended up making $212 million at the box office.



  • The song that you hear during the opening scenes of the beauty contest is this one.



  • Screenwriter Marc Lawrence (with help from his then seven year old son) helped write the theme song for the Miss United States pageant.



  • Remember how in the Q & A portion of the pageant, Miss Rhode Island stated that her idea of a perfect date was April 25th? Believe it or not, that scene was inspired by a REAL-LIFE EVENT!
  • The original New Jersey was originally played by soap star Jennifer Gareis, but her part was left on the cutting room floor. Feeling bad, the director created another part for Gareis...as the lesbian lover of Miss New York!
  • Heather Burns was asked to dye her hair blonde for the movie, as she looked a little too much like Sandra Bullock.
  • Both Sandra Bullock and Benjamin Bratt did their own fighting in the film.



  • William Shatner's character name of Stan Fields is a throwback to his Canadian heritage, as Stanfield's is a Canadian brand name of underwear.
  • Originally, Matt Dillon was cast in the role of Eric Matthews.
  • In the scene that takes place at a Starbucks, the employees were actual Starbucks employees.
  • Though Heather Burns learned how to twirl a baton for the movie, she refused to work with the fire baton, so stunt throwers were used in place.

And that is our look at “Miss Congeniality”.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Taking On a-ha


One thing that I have always been fascinated with is the subject of animation. I was once so enamored of animation that I ended up doing my independent study in senior year French class on the subject of animation.

Of course this meant that I had to give a half hour presentation completely in French, but I managed to make it work. I ended up getting a final grade of 87 in the course, so I must have done incredibly well in the presentation.

Here's how it all went down. After typing out a handout written entirely in French for my classmates which illustrated the bullet points of my presentation, I designed the whole project as if I were hosting a round of Jeopardy! I guess you could have considered me the French Alex Trebek.

I ended up using a slew of visual aids for my presentation as well. I showed video clips, used comic books, and came up with a bunch of trivia questions related to the subject of animation. I divided the class into two teams (the teams were separated by the colour of dot that I placed in the top right corner of the handout), and the winning team received prizes...in the form of chocolate peppermint patties.

(My project presentation date was on the last day before Christmas vacation began and I only had a limited budget.)

At any rate, the project was a lot of fun to put together, and I have a feeling that my classmates enjoyed the presentation. Or, maybe they just enjoyed the fact that they got free chocolate at the end of the day. Either way, their happiness meant a lot!

And I actually ended up learning a lot about the different kinds of animation techniques. There's standard animation, computer animation, three-dimensional animation, claymation, stop-motion animation, and even sand animation!

But have you ever heard of a term used within the animation world known as “rotoscoping”?

It's a technique that was invented by Max Fleischer in the early 20th century, and it involved a process in which animators traced over footage frame by frame to be used in live-action and animated films. There's been many examples of rotoscoping used in a variety of projects in the world of entertainment. Rotoscoping has been used in...

  • Walt Disney's “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”.
  • The “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” sequence in the Beatles film “Yellow Submarine”.
  • Various cartoon series, including He-Man: Masters of the Universe and Flash Gordon.
  • At least two Peanuts specials (What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown and It's Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown

And one of the most memorable music videos that ever came out of the 1980s used the animation technique of rotoscoping. The video combined animation with live-action footage, and was a real masterpiece on MTV. It ended up winning six awards at the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards ceremony, and remains one of the best music videos ever made.

Not bad for a group who only ended up having a total of two Top 20 singles during their near thirty year career. And although the band performed off and on since 1982 before splitting up for good in 2011, this song remains their signature hit, and it happens to be the subject for today's blog.



ARTIST: a-ha
SONG: Take On Me
ALBUM: Hunting High And Low
DATE RELEASED: September 16, 1985
PEAK POSITION ON THE BILLBOARD CHARTS: #1 for 1 week



The band a-ha (and yes, that is how the band name really is spelled) was born in Norway, and was comprised of members Morten Harket (vocals), Magne Furuholmen (keyboards), and Pal Waaktaar (guitars).



I know I just butchered those names, but Norwegian is not my native tongue.

Now, you might have seen that the song has a release date of September 16, 1985...but this date was actually the release of an alternate version. The original version was recorded a year earlier in 1984, and reportedly took three attempts to get the single released in the United Kingdom. The persistence by the band paid off however, as the song would eventually top the charts in the United States, and reach the number two position in the United Kingdom in November 1985.



Another interesting fact about the music video for the single is the fact that there were two different versions of the video. The first version is shown above.  The original video just showed the band singing in front of a blue background. Sounds exciting, doesn't it?  Watching it as I type this out, I find it kind of a drag too.

Needless to say, the Steve Barron directed update of the song ended up getting a much warmer reception from the viewing public. And, here's a few pieces of trivia in regards to the video.

  • Despite the fact that a-ha never used a drummer (the drum sounds were created using a synthesizer), an animated image of a drummer is featured in the music video!
  • The song is set in quick tempo, moving along at a rate of 170 beats per minute.



  • Part of the video was filmed at Kim's Cafe, as well as a London, England soundstage.
  • Three thousand frames were rotoscoped in total for the film, and took approximately four months to complete.
  • Morton Harket plays the role of the hero in the music video.



  • The woman is played by Therese “Bunty” Bailey, who began her career as a dancer for the group “Hot Gossip”, who was in a relationship with Morton Harket at the time the video was filmed.



  • One of the biker men in the video was played by British actor Philip Jackson, who was best known for his role in the British television series “Poirot”.
  • The final scene of the video was inspired by the 1980 film “Altered States”.
  • In addition to winning six MTV Video Music Awards in 1986 (which included the award for Video of the Year), the video was also nominated for Favourite Pop/Rock Video at the 13th Annual American Music Awards in 1986.

And the song has appeared in various other media sources over the years. The British-Norwegian boy band A1 released a cover version of the song in August 2000, which you can hear below, though I readily admit to liking the original version the best.



The song has also appeared in the following television shows and movies.

  • It appeared in the South Park episode “Asspen” in 2002.
  • It was featured in a GEICO commercial which featured a dog playing the song on a synthesizer and a cockatoo singing along.
  • It was featured on the soundtrack of the video game “Saints Row 2”.
  • It was featured on an episode of “Family Guy”.
  • Pitbull and Christina Aguilera sampled the song on their joint single “Feel This Moment”.
  • A cover version recorded by Jeffster was featured in the 2012 series finale of the television series “Chuck”.

So, as you can see, the song remains very popular twenty-seven years after it was released. And to think that all it took was the animation process known as rotoscoping to make a song stand out.

Well, that...and the band's persistence to have a hit single.  

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Blue's Clues


Have you ever visited the website called snopes.com?

I absolutely love that website, and you can visit it by clicking HERE if you like. What the website does is compiles a list of all of the urban legends that people have told for years and years, and actually works to try and disprove them.

Granted in some cases, the legends turn out to be 100% truthful, and if that is the case, there is a green dot placed right beside it. Sometimes, the urban legend is proven false, but have some inkling of truth to it, in which case, the story will have a yellow dot next to them. And flat out lies and false stories will have a red dot next to them.

Over the years, snopes.com has placed a plethora of red dots next to some of the most creative and shocking urban legends out there. Amongst them...

  • The boy from the Life cereal commercials from the 1970s did NOT die from downing a solution of Coca-Cola and pop rocks.
  • Humphrey Bogart is not the model for the Gerber Baby.
  • Jon Heder, the star of Napoleon Dynamite did NOT die in a car accident. The same could also be said for Full House star Jodie Sweetin and Saved By The Bell star Mark-Paul Gosselaar.
  • Susan Lucci is NOT Phyllis Diller's daughter.
  • Kid Rock is NOT Hank Williams Jr.'s son.
  • Marilyn Manson did NOT play the role of Paul Pfeiffer in The Wonder Years.
  • Bobby McFerrin, who had a hit in 1988 with “Don't Worry, Be Happy” did NOT kill himself.
  • Grace Slick did NOT name her daughter “God”.
  • Frank Zappa was NOT the son of the actor who played Mr. Greenjeans on Captain Kangaroo.
  • Keith Urban did NOT order all Canadians to leave one of his concerts.

Where do they get these urban legends from anyway?

Here's one more for you. Steve Burns did NOT die in a car accident, or any other manner of death, for that matter.

But, I suppose some of you may be wondering who Steve Burns is. Well, here's a clue.



Still don't know? Here's Clue #2.



Okay, I see you're still confused. Okay, one more clue.



So, what do you get when you mix together a blue paw print, a salt and pepper shaker, and a notebook? And, why is this blog entry written entirely in blue?

Okay, I'll show you today's topic.



Yes, we're taking a look back at the children's show “Blue's Clues”, which aired on Nickelodeon from September 8, 1996 to August 6, 2006.

The show was created by Traci Paige Johnson, Todd Kessler, and Angela C. Santomero, and ran for 145 episodes.

TRIVIA: Traci Paige Johnson did double duty on the show by voicing the main character, Blue the Dog.



The show also featured human host Steve Burns...at least for the first few seasons anyway. We'll get to the reason why he departed the show in a minute, as well as the urban legends that surrounded his departure. But first, let's talk about how Blue's Clues came to be.

Before the 1990s, one of the only places where educational television programs were aired in the United States was PBS, the home of such classics as Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and Zoom! By the mid-1990s, Nickelodeon was trying to enter the market themselves by creating educational programming of their own. They had success with such programs as Pinwheel and Eureeka's Castle, but the network didn't really have any programming for toddlers and kindergarten aged children at that time. So Johnson, Kessler, and Santomero teamed up to create and develop the program by using various methods of research including literary research, focus groups, and studying early childhood education trends in other similar programs.

Did you know that one of the earliest ideas that the creative team behind Blue's Clues came up with was making Blue a cat instead of a dog? If the team went through with those plans, the show could have been called “Blue's Prints”. But with Nickelodeon already working on a children's show about a cat at the time, the decision was made to change the main character to a dog (although a cat named Periwinkle would eventually be included in the program).

Within eighteen months of the show's September 1996 debut, the program became wildly successful, helping Nickelodeon cement its status as a network capable of providing quality children's programming. By the early 2000s, it was estimated that the show attracted 13.7 million viewers each week!



Now, I suppose you might be wondering why I know so much about the show when I was way above the target demographic. It's simple. My niece was born about two weeks after Blue's Clues premiered, and having a niece and three nephews between the ages of twelve and sixteen, I was exposed to Blue's Clues a lot when I was babysitting them as a teenager.

Not that I minded of course, because it was a fun show. I reckon that if I had been born ten years later, I probably would have watched it too.

The premise of the show was quite interesting. Each week, we would visit Blue's house, where Blue would often try to explain to the viewer what she wanted to do. Sometimes she would want to participate in an activity. Other times, she would have a big announcement that she would make. But since Blue couldn't speak English very well, the only way she could communicate was by leaving clues on household objects by putting her paw prints all over them. At the end of every episode, the clues would be put together, and Blue would finally be able to tell everybody what was on her mind. For young kids, it was a great game to play, and the way that it was presented was so brilliant, I can understand why so many kids loved the show.

That's why I opened the blog with the three clues before going into the program description. All three clues appear in the show. I already explained about the paw prints, but the salt and pepper shakers are actually two speaking characters named Mr. Salt and Mrs. Pepper (who weirdly enough had a child named Paprika later in the series), and the last clue was the notebook that was used to figure out the clues.

Of course, you couldn't have a show without a human master taking care of Blue. And, that's where Steve Burns comes into play.

Before Steve Burns became the host of one of the most successful children's shows of all time, he was a struggling actor who moved to New York City from rural Pennsylvania. Living in a basement apartment in the middle of Times Square, he made guest appearances on a couple of dramatic series as well as working as a voice-over artist for various television commercials.

It was in late 1995 that Steve Burns would take on the role that would make him a star in the eyes of an entire generation of preschoolers...though his appearance at the time didn't exactly win him any support. You see, prior to appearing on Blue's Clues, Steve's look was best described as “skate rat chic”. Picture the host of Blue's Clues as a 22-year-old with long hair and an earring? You can't, can you? In fact, Nickelodeon executives were so unsupportive of Burns' look at the time that they actually asked him to dress more conservatively in the future!

As luck would have it, Steve Burns chopped off his long locks, dressed in more appropriate clothing for a children's show, and ended up getting the job! Reportedly, close to one thousand people auditioned for the role, and initially, the producers were leaning towards casting a female for the role. But Traci Paige Johnson saw something in Steve, claiming that of all the applicants for the job, he gave the most real performance, and she felt he connected to kids unlike any of the other people who were up for the part.

Over the next six years, Steve enjoyed being what he called a “micro-celebrity”, which he described as being a superstar to his target audience (kids) and their parents, but a virtual unknown to everyone else. It was reported that he developed a bit of a fanbase from single women and teenage girls who believed that he was cute. And would you believe that in 2000, he was actually listed as one of People Magazine's most eligible bachelors? Crazy, I know!

Alas, all good things must come to an end, and by Steve's sixth season on the show, he knew that it was time to move on. Part of the reason why he opted to leave the show in 2002 was because he wanted to try something else (in this case, he wanted to pursue a music career), but he also stated another reason why he decided to leave with the following quote; “I knew I wasn't gonna be doing children's television all my life, mostly because I refused to lose my hair on a kid's TV show, and it was happenin' – fast!”



TRIVIA: The day after Steve's final show was taped, he shaved his head...which was something that the producers would not let him do during his entire run on the series!

Now, how do you make the transition from host to host as least traumatic as possible for the loyal audience of preschoolers? It was a difficult task, but how the producers made it happen was to have a three-episode arc in which Steve was leaving for college. In these episodes, producers introduced a new character, which would become the new host after Steve Burns departed the show.

Just as they had done with Steve, thousands of people auditioned for the hosting job. After several hundred auditions, the part went to a man who had never seen an episode of Blue's Clues before, but when Donovan Patton's audition was screened to an audience of preschoolers, the reaction was quite favourable.



As a result, Patton was cast as Steve's brother, Joe, and he remained on the show until it ended in 2006.

And of course, with Steve leaving the show, the urban legends came out in full force. Would you believe that the rumours regarding the untimely demise of Steve Burns were floating around while he was still doing the show? Apparently, Steve Burns died in a variety of different ways including in a car accident, and even from a reported heroin overdose. There were even reports of Steve actually being replaced by a lookalike midway through his tenure!

Of course, these rumours were proven to be untrue. Steve is alive and well, and he'll be turning 40 years old next year. But the rumours got so bad that Burns actually appeared as a guest on The Rosie O'Donnell Show in 2002 to dispel the rumours that he had died!

How do these silly rumours get started anyway?