note: I wrote this while in an excited/tired state at 2:00AM, so I am in no mood to care about grammar or punctuation or whatever. I will not be proofreading this or revising, since I wrote this for myself and don't expect anyone else to actually read it.

While YTV had interesting programming, it was always the live action segments in between that were the most fun. As a child, seeing the PJs always made me happy, somehow. They were a constant. They were always there, and having fun, and they seemed to be the one absolute proof that adults could have fun lives. I had fun watching them. It didn't occur to me that they were actors or poor struggling college students trying to earn a paycheck on children's television..no I believed that they actually and truly did live in some huge treehouse, talk with puppets, and watch cartoons all day. I still remember three names: PJ Phil, PJ Jenn (who betrayed us all and jumped ship to host the saturday morining lineup on ABC!), and PJ Allison. I was also old enough to remember the much hyped "Warren Day," when that green fuzzball took over the network. Aside from those memorable live action segments, they mostly played anime, heavily edited French and American cartoons, and some other stuff that I can't remember ( There was some show about a guy named Lupin. It may have been french. It has nothing to do with the anime by Monkey Punch. There was also show about robots, and one of them was called Ninjas and he had Bruce Lee or some other guy's spirit programmed into him, and for the life of me, I can't remember the title.)

Anyway, what I wanted to get at was, while YTV was good, TVO was better because it was mostly live action, and those kinds of shows created memories that stuck with me. Later on in the 90s, they also started one of those afternoon "host" lineup thingies. There was a white woman with long brown hair, and a tall black guy with short hair or perhaps bald. I have completely forgotten their names, but I do remember them telling me everyday to "call 1-888-TVO-KIDS." It may be nostalgia talking, but I think these types of shows, along with their host-lineup format, were worlds better than the utter garbage Nickalodeon plays today. If they ever sold DVDs of these, you bet I would buy them up right away, because they were totally awesome. What the hell is today's programming? Wild Thornberries, Rugrats, CatDog, Hey Arnold? It hurts my head thinking about it.

Among the best of the best of the old TVO shows:
Join In! (Zack, Jacob, and Nikki live together in some apartment and do stuff. It was fun.)
Art Attack (This got me interested in art. In retrospect, Niel's arts and crafts projects were always impossibly hard for any 8 year old to do well..but at least he got me trying.)
Today's Special (I remember this being my favorite goddamn show on TV ever when I was 5 years old. I still remember the episode with Sam doing chinups.)
Eureeka's Castle (Nobody I know remembers this show. Nobody.)
Ghost Writer (I used to think this was good but now I realize it kind of sucks).
How do you do? (Technically not a children's show. It was actually a series designed to teach English to foreigners. But it had a cool robot who looked like the Tin Man, and the skits where he learns to be human are hilarious.)
Inquiring Minds (Yes, inquiring minds want to know.)
Lamb Chop's Play Along (I used to watch this for hours on end when I was sick, because TVO would play this for hours on end)
Pingu (coolest claymation show ever. ever. Really, no claymation has ever topped this, not even Wallace and Gromit)
The Elephant Show (The only name I can remember is Bram, but everybody on this show was cool..especially Eric, which leads us to:)
The Eric Show (I think this only lasted one season, but in the pilot episode, Eric had managed to improvse "I need to go to the bathroom" lyrics into his song that had me rolling.)
Polka Dot Door (For some reason this was always intensely interesting, but now I realize it must have been totally boring for my parents. It is definitely the kind of show you could watch on acid though; then it would be the best show ever.)