December 16, 2013

One of the best things about being born in the late 80's is that it was a really good time for children's programming. I grew up with wicked shows like Under the Umbrella Tree, Lamb Chop's Play-Along, and Fred Penner's Place which was a show that ran for a decade or so on the CBC.

I always wanted to crawl through that goddamn log like he did at the beginning of each episode. What a boss.

What was really cool about growing up with Fred Penner's Place is that he's actually from my city, so pretty much everyone I know has either seen or talked to him at some point, or knows someone who dated one of his kids or something like that.

There's even a small local tumblr that features people taking pictures with him in the background

because people from Winnipeg are sneaky like that and we really, really love Fred Penner.

Anyway in addition to other shows he does throughout the year he always comes back to Winnipeg to do two sing-along shows each year right before Christmas

-one for kids during the day and one for us nerds at night.

Tthe kids show is probably just the same songs, but the evening show must be way more fun because we're all drunk and belting out the words to the songs that we thought we'd forgotten years ago.

Plus it's super cool to have omg Fred Penner play the song you requested

(even if we all know we're all secretly there to hear him play his version of The Cat Came Back, but never mind that)

because there's something about sitting with yr friends drinking beer singing along to songs you learned when you were 5 that just melts yr heart

even when it's -35 outside and everything else is frozen solid.

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