When I was a little kid I preferred Sesame Street and The Electric Company to Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, but as an adult I’ve learned to appreciate the man’s deep caring for his audience. One thing that made Fred Rogers especially cool is that he didn’t talk down to kids — he was willing to speak frankly and honestly with children without overly dumbing-down complex ideas or sanitizing troubling subjects. That said, I was surprised to find out about one week spent in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood in the grip of Cold War terror. Here’s the word from Quartz…

Universally beloved for his gentle manner, Fred Rogers was the soothing educational voice in the lives of countless American children for nearly 40 years. His PBS show, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, taught kids about important issues using songs, skits, puppets, and more.

In November 1983, as relations between the US and Russia boiled, PBS aired five episodes of the show that served as a kid-friendly allegory for the increasingly real potential of nuclear war. In them, King Friday, the puppet monarch (performed by Rogers) of the fictional “Neighborhood of Make-Believe,” grows paranoid when he mistakenly believes a rival kingdom is building bombs. He orders his town to do the same, and redirects all of its funds into stockpiling weapons in case of war.

Watch all five episodes here…

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more Counter Culture posts.

Lately it feels like we’re heading back into some kind of full on Cold War II with Russia or WWIII with Russia or some slimy partnership with Putin involving Russian mobsters, bad debts, shirtless badminton, a vodka haze, a Volga fog, some leaked emails and a pizzagate golden shower.

Whatever the future holds between our two bonkers governments it’s important to remember that the Russian people are not Vladimir Putin. And while he’s a KGB vampire the people and their culture have given the world some of its greatest gifts including this amazing take on A.A. Milne’s classic character, Winnie the Pooh. Shout out to Phoenix Sun Marino-Ramer for turning me on to these beautiful cartoons…

Stay Awake!

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more Music posts.

Let’s start the week with a nod to the season of the supernatural. Sometimes real life is way more whacked-out than any horror tale, and who felt more horror in the 20th Century than the Russians who lived through their revolution?

The rise of Trump has put a spotlight on what is feeling like the beginning of a new Cold War with the East. Without getting too much into the actual politics and economics at play, now is certainly a good time to brush up on the history of modern Russia.

Assassination Of The Tsar is a great flick that subverts the tropes of the period film in order to create an immediate, realistic re-enactment of the killing of the Romanovs. This is a timely history lesson as well as a perfect tale for this goriest of holidays. It stars the legendary Malcolm McDowell as a mental patient who claims to be a famous assassin in a film that treats history as its main character. In this film two characters find themselves irreversibly trapped in the events of the past, as they hurtle towards a future that forever points back to a legendary assassination that changed the course of the world.

Anastasia screamed in vain…

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more Cinema posts