TVSquad

I am older than Sesame Street.

That's the first thing that went through my head when I saw that the show starts its 39th season today on PBS (check local listings for time). This means that I must have started watching the show when I was around four years old, which seems strange to me, but I've learned never to argue with Bert & Ernie.

The new season of Sesame Street is right around the corner and, while I normally wouldn't give it a second thought, I am unusually excited right now. No, this isn't a snarky rant about how I've been driven to children's TV because of the sorry state of grown-up programming. Sesame Street's 39th season, starting August 11th, looks like it has a lot of fun lined up not only for the pre-schoolers but parents as well. I already posted Feist's upcoming special take on "1 2 3 4", but I had no idea how many amazing guest appearances were coming. Just check out this star-filled highlight reel after the jump.

Can you tell me how to get, how to get a pair of the New Balance Sesame Street sneakers?

That's right, the long-running PBS children's show has made a mega-deal with the shoe company to create a line of sneakers for infants and grade school kids. The infant sneakers will cost $43 (cough) and the grade school sneakers will be $65. The shoes will be available in major chain retail stores and the shoes will also be pushed during episodes of Sesame Street.

If you've ever wanted to see CNN's Anderson Cooper report the news from a trash can, today's your lucky day.

Cooper will be a guest today on PBS' Sesame Street. Check out the pic on the right. That's Cooper inside a trash can, next to Oscar The Grouch and his trash can. He'll be reporting for GNN: The Grouch News Network.

Muppet fans know that some characters evolve while others just spring up from out of nowhere. Cookie Monster, for example, began life as somewhat more ferocious-looking monster (the row of sharp teeth helped) in several commercials before being toned down and brought to Sesame Street.

In the clip below, a pre-Sesame Street Cookie Monster devours a machine while the machine describes how it works and what its many functions are. Actually, it only has one main function, but you'll have to watch the clip for that.

If you're of a certain age, you know that disco infiltrated every aspect of popular culture many years ago. Every sitcom had to have at least one episode where the characters talked about going to a disco or practicing for a dance or actually going to a disco. Rock songs were disco-cized, commercials had disco music, and everyone wore bad clothes.

It happened with Sesame Street too. I don't know what year this is video is from, but it features Cookie Monster in a disco looking for a cookie. Or maybe some blow, if this is Studio 54. Not sure. But it's rather disturbing, especially since CM is wearing a bowtie and necklace that I don't think even Liberace would have been caught in. Video after the jump.