My Brother Loves YouTube!

I thought I’d break up the onslaught of Spring Break 2008 posts with the start of what I hope becomes a semi-regular feature. I have cleverly entitled it “My Brother Loves Youtube!” See, my brother Tony has a youtube channel and posts nothing but clips found off of old video tapes from the Meier household. The results are sometimes odd, sometimes cool, and sometimes oddly cool. Usually though, they’re just from “Reading Rainbow.”

And this maiden post is from exactly that. Infact it’s from the pilot episode known as “Tight Times.” In this clip Levar Burton attempts to cheer up a bored little girl with some awkwardly ill rhymes over the minimalist of beats. Levar really sells it (even the “flying disk!”), as he gradiually becomes more and more excited with each passing idea.

 
However, I’m a little stunned that an activity involving a bleach bottle slipped passed the censors. I have a feeling an exchange like this occurred on set…

PA: “Okay. Newspapers,check. Yogurt lid, check. Bleach bottle,che…whoa,whoa,whoa. A bleach bottle? Levar, is this a mistake?”
Levar: “Nope.”
PA: “But what could we possible need a bleach bottle for activites that are supposed to be child safe?”
Levar: “It’s for this sweet activity called Bleach Bottle Birdhouse! You see, it’s a birdhouse, but it’s not just any birdhouse. It’s a birdhouse whose name is an alliteration. It flows so well with the rest of my rhymes, I can finally silence all those playa haters. My style is WILD!”
PA: “But do you realize it’s made out of a used bleach bottle. Can you imagine the number of kids who will simply use whatever they can find and in most cases will just take a bottle that isn’t yet empty and dump it. And who knows the number of accidents that will cause. I mean come on…it’s bleach!”
Levar: “But do you realize one day I will be on ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’!?!?”
PA: “But it’s a…”
Levar: ” ‘STAR TREK: TNG’!”

Well, I hope that was a pleasant trip down memory lane. Or perhaps my parents were the only ones who refused to get cable (and still do to this day), and everyone else was watching “Maya the Bee.” In the immortal words of Levar, “We’ll see you next time.”

Ryan