The Muppets

Hi-ho!  Kermit the Frog here!  (Okay, you caught me.  I’m not actually Kermit the Frog.  I’ve just always wanted to say that.) 

If my five month long break from blogging had not happened earlier this year, my Muppet post would have been in May.  Not sure exactly when, but the 1^st and 15^th were both likely and appropriate dates. 

But instead, I’m posting it today, which is another appropriate date, being just one day after what would have been the 86^th birthday of Muppet creator Jim Henson. 

Sesame Street and Early Life Goals

Like nearly all children of my generation, I watched a lot of Sesame Street growing up.  I wasn’t watching for the humans in the show.  And I wasn’t watching for the animation (I enjoyed the animated bits, but that wasn’t why I was there).  And I wasn’t there to learn my numbers or the alphabet.  No, I was simply there for the Muppets. 

I absolutely loved the Sesame Street Muppets.  Probably from the moment I saw them.  Bert and Ernie.  Big Bird.  Oscar the Grouch.  The Count.  Harry Monster.  The Amazing Mumford.  Mr. Snuffleupagus.  Cookie Monster, of course.  And Kermit the Frog. 

I also loved Muppets that – when I mention them to people nowadays, they respond by saying, “Who?” – like Roosevelt Franklin, Sherlock Hemlock, and Forgetful Jones. 

I didn’t like Grover.  But I was too young to understand that.  Grover was a Muppet, and I loved the Muppets, therefore I must love Grover, too.  (Even though I didn’t.)  I didn’t realize that I didn’t like Grover until I was a teenager.  I didn’t hate him or anything, I just didn’t care for the character. 

Elmo didn’t yet exist when I was watching the show as a child.  I have no great love for Elmo as a character on Sesame Street.  (I think I like Grover more.)  But you take Elmo away from Sesame Street, and I find him hilarious and endearing.  Guest appearances of talk shows, cooking shows, even sit-coms and dramas.  Yes, please.  On the show that created him I just find him annoying. 

And since I stopped watching (probably as a teenager sometime during the 80s) they’ve added a whole host of new Muppets that I know absolutely nothing about.  On the occasion that I see footage from Sesame Street nowadays, these characters just baffle me. 

Sesame Street gave me what I believe to have been my first ever choice of career path.  When I grew up, I was going to be a puppeteer.  I was going to work on Sesame Street, or work for the Children’s Television Workshop with my own puppets on my own show. 

For this reason, I ended up with a fair number of puppets as a child.  They were all good quality puppets, too.  Those bought from stores were nearly stuffed animal quality.  And those bought from puppet master craftsman William Walther (a puppeteer and toymaker who traveled the festival circuit) were… well, they were made by William Walther.  What else would one need to know? 

I never did venture into the realm of making my own puppets, because I knew that I didn’t have the skills to make good puppets.  I wasn’t about to settle for sock puppets or paper bag puppets.  I wanted the ones comparable to what the professional puppeteers used. 

Certain bits of Sesame Street have continued to stick with me over the years.  Every now and then I’ll wake up with a very short song stuck in my head, just the numbers one through twelve, as originally sung over an animation of the inside of a pinball machine. 

And as late as our senior year in high school, my friend Bob and I would sometimes ‘quote’ the Sesame Street Martians to each other.  (The guys who would go, “Yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip uh-huh uh-huh”.)  Used to drive the ‘normal’ people nuts.  Good times. 

The Muppet Show

One of my clearest early memories is sitting in front of the television waiting for the first episode of the Muppet Show to start.  My memory doesn’t include any information on what the episode was, just the amount of excitement I felt, as I had been waiting for this ever since Mom told me that the show was going to happen.  I would have been all of five years old at this point in time. 

These post-Sesame Street Muppets were an integral part of my childhood.  It reinforced my dreams of becoming a puppeteer.  It cemented Kermit the Frog in place as not just my favorite Muppet, but one of my favorite characters.  The Muppets are who I credit for my love of the absurd and the surreal. 

The Muppet Show’s format allowed for incredible variety paired with the comfortable redundance of recurring sketches.  A format which would be revisited throughout the Muppet franchise. 

Then came the movies: The Muppet Movie, the Great Muppet Caper, and Muppets Take Manhattan.  That first film (which was almost an experiment to see if they could get the movie audience to take to the characters like the television audience had) was an Origin of the Muppets story.  (Don’t try to look for continuity with the Muppet Show, or indeed, any other parts of the Muppet mythos.) 

It tells the story of how the Muppets basically assembled around Kermit as he travels cross-country from his home in a Florida swamp to Hollywood with the intention of becoming famous. 

I tend to think of the Muppet movies like I think of the first six (and a half) Star Trek movies.  Simply extensions of the television show.  Although in the second and third film, the Muppets are definitely playing characters in a story.  Familiar seeming characters, but characters nonetheless.  (There’s a running gag in the Great Muppet Caper about how Kermit and Fozzie are identical twins, and if Fozzie takes his hat off, you cannot tell the two apart.)

The movies proved successful enough that they brought the five year long run of the Muppet Show to a close to focus on their big screen ventures. 

The Jim Henson Hour

But I think that my favorite iteration of the Muppets (and certainly the one with the most unrealized potential) was The Jim Henson Hour. 

An hour long program, the show was usually split into two half-hour segments.  The first was MuppeTelevision, an updating of the classic Muppet Show format, complete with guest start of the week.  (MuppeTelevision is notable for introducing the Muppet Clifford, as well as my favorite short lived Muppet, the robotic Digit, who I don’t believe has ever appeared since.)

Following MuppeTelevision was usually a Henson story that didn’t involve any of the classic Muppet characters, often an episode of the excellent The Storyteller which starred John Hurt as the eponymous character, telling stories by the fire that are enacted by actors and creations from Henson’s Creature Workshop. 

Several times throughout the shows short run however, they skipped MuppeTelevision in favor for an hourlong special.  Included among these were Monster Maker, the story of a young boy who gets the chance to work for a master creature and special effects designer, and Secrets of the Muppets, which was a behind the scenes look at how the Muppets work, and what goes on at the Jim Henson Creature Workshop. 

Twelve episodes were created, but NBC pulled the plug after only nine of them had aired. 

May 16^th, 1990

On the 16^th of May, 1990, Sammy Davis Jr. died.  It was apparently an otherwise slow news day, as that’s all the television had to tell me.  Sammy Davis Jr. was dead. 

Then Dad came home.  Asked if I’d heard who had died today.  “Yeah, I heard.  Sammy Davis Jr.”  I’m sure I sounded bored.  Sammy Davis Jr. was before my time, and I didn’t really care. 

“No,” Dad said, “Not him.  Did you hear who else died?”  I hadn’t.  And then Dad couldn’t even remember the guy’s name.  “That puppet guy that was on Arsenio Hall the other week.” 

And that’s when I felt the bottom of my heart fall out, and land on the floor of my stomach.  I immediately knew who he meant.  Jim Henson had been on Arsenio Hall the other week.  My Dad was telling me that Jim Henson was dead. 

Did I cry when I heard that news?  Of course I did.  And my father, who got so very much use out of the phrase, “Oh, if you’re going to cry, I’ll give you something to cry about” didn’t say one word.  He just let me go down to my bedroom where I could sit in the dark and completely break down. 

(Is it possible that there are tears in my eyes right now as I sit here typing this?  Sure, why not?) 

I was devastated.  Long before I ever knew who had written or drawn what comic book, or what the names of the actors who played the people on tv were, I knew that the man behind the Muppets was Jim Henson.  He was my first idol.  He was always the answer to the question, “If you could have lunch with anyone on Earth, who would it be?” 

Now he was gone.  I never got to meet him. 

 

Jim Henson’s official cause of death was organ dysfunction resulting from streptococcal toxic shock syndrome caused by streptococcus pyogenes.  A more basic explanation:  He got sick.  Sick enough to need to be in a hospital.  He chose not to go to the hospital until the last minute.  And finally went there too late to be saved.  (Having that knowledge was a not inconsiderable factor in me relenting and going to the hospital the night of my first pulmonary embolism.  Which is why I’m not dead today.) 

[Later that year, my friend Ed and I went to a sci-fi convention in Canada to sell zines and promote his Sci-Fi Museum project.  (The Sci-Fi Museum is too long of a topic to go into here.  I suppose I should have just said that we went to Canada for reasons.)  Anyway, when we got to the convention, I learned that the previous year, Jim Henson had appeared as one of the con’s guests of honor.  There was a remembrance panel for Jim that I missed because I was stuck babysitting the donation jar at Ed’s Sci-Fi Museum table.] 

At the time of his death, Jim Henson had been in the process of selling the Muppets to Disney.  When he died, Disney reneged on the deal, justifying it by saying that part of their agreed upon purchase price for buying them was continued access to Henson’s creative genius for future projects. 

Longtime Henson collaborator Frank Oz has said that it’s his belief that the stress caused by the negotiations for the Disney deal are what killed Jim. 

With their creator dead, I found myself wondering if the Muppets would survive. 

The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson

If there’s ever an emergency situation, and you absolutely have to get me to cry (like if someone has injected poison into my tear ducts or something), go immediately to YouTube, search for “The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson”, and skip almost to the end of the program.  There is a scene there that never fails to bring me to tears. 

The hour-long special, which aired on CBS six month’s after Henson’s death, has the following premise:  An absent Kermit the Frog (said to be ‘off traveling’) has enlisted Fozzie Bear to organize the Muppets and produce a tribute to Jim Henson.  Which is all well and good, except that none of them know who Jim Henson it. 

So, they spend that bulk of the special learning about Jim Henson, (watching short films and celebrity testimonials) and coming up with very absurd components to add into the tribute.  Then as the time for the tribute nears, the go to move a desk and discover a box that Kermit had left for them.  A box filled with letters from actual fans of the man. 

So Fozzie pulls one at random and begins to read it out loud to the rest of the assembled Muppets.  That first one is addressed to Kermit, and is cute and adorable until Fozzie gets to the line, “I feel very sorry that your best friend Jim died.”

The reactions of the various Muppets to this new piece of information has never not made me tear up.  From Fozzie’s incredulous “Jim died?!” to Gonzo’s “But we were just starting to get to know him…” to other Muppets continuing to read the fan letters, all dealing with Jim’s death. 

The aftermath of that is Fozzie announcing the cancellation of the tribute because it’s too silly and not appropriate to honor the death of someone like Jim. Then Kermit’s nephew Robin has a talk with Fozzie trying to talk him out of his sudden despair, which segues into a song, at the end of which Kermit appears (now operated and voiced by Steve Whitmire, Jim’s personal choice to take over the role), and tells the group how beautiful the song was, but asks if they have something silly to end with.  At which point Fozzie beams, and says, “Do we have something silly?!  Cue the production number!” And credits roll over your basic Muppet performance antics. 

Post-Henson Muppets

Not long after Jim Henson’s death, another of the core Muppeteers – Richard Hunt – died of AIDS.  And Frank Oz was hardly ever with the group any more due to the successes he’d had behind the camera as a director for movies.  Which left a lot of characters with no hands and voices to bring them to life. 

This era is notable for three movies and a television series.  The movies were The Muppet Christmas Carol, Muppet Treasure Island, and Muppets from Space.  The tv series was Muppets Tonight. 

With Muppets Tonight, there was an emphasis on the introduction of new characters.  Most of the characters that had been brought to life by Henson and Hunt were used sparingly, and usually without dialogue. 

I personally felt that this was the right move for the company, and was very glad that seemed to be the route they were taking. 

The show was an updating of the Muppet Show’s basic premise.  A variety show being broadcast on a fictional Muppet channel.  Weekly human guest stars.  A formula that had worked for them in the past. 

But ABC didn’t put a lot of effort into marketing it.  The ratings weren’t great.  Which ABC used to justify pulling the plug on the show after airing 10 of it’s 13 episodes.  The Disney Channel picked it up for a second season, but then they too canceled it. 

Christmas Carol and Treasure Island were your basic Muppetization of classic stories.  They were fine, just not spectacular.  Muppets from Space, on the other hand… Muppets from Space was simply an abomination. 

The story wasn’t great, the jokes were actively bad (I did not need the notion of Miss Piggy urinating taking up space in my mind), and the core premise of the film – Gonzo’s search for and discovery of his origins – was territory that I felt did not need to be explored.  Defining Gonzo as a lost member of a race of extraterrestrials does nothing but rob him of some of his inherent weirdness.  I was not a fan. 

The Disney Era

Eventually, Disney decided that they wanted the Muppets after all, and acquired the company. Again.

So far they’ve released two movies, “The Muppets” and “Muppets Most Wanted”.  The first one is a bring-the-old-gang-out-of-retirement story.  (Because Disney wasn’t going to purchase the property and then not use its most identifiable characters.)  The second movie showed us what happens to the Muppet’s performance when an evil doppelganger switches places with Kermit. 

Both movies were entertaining to me as a movie-goer, but not necessarily as a Muppet fan.  The more I look back on them, the more things I find to be disappointed about. 

And, there was also a Muppet sit-com.  I managed to sit through a whole two episodes of that before realizing just how big of a NOPE it was for me.  I won’t be discussing that show here, because I’m hoping that I can eventually convince myself it was just a nightmare I had, and not actual media produced by the Muppet’s new owners. 

There are more projects in the works, but I’m not as excited about them as you’d think I’d be.  The one thing that the Disney era had made clear to me is that I’m not a fan of the Muppets.  I’m a fan of Jim Henson’s Muppets.  And that saga is now sadly complete. 

The Jar Jar Binks of the Muppets

Okay, as much as I hate to do it, it’s time to talk about… the Pig. 

At some point when my little brother was in high school, he had to have his wisdom teeth pulled.  After he got back home, I went over with a stack of video tapes, and we just sat there and watched miscellaneous stuff.

One of these tapes included Muppet content, and when Miss Piggy came on screen, I showed her my middle finger.  Which is when my brother looked at me first incredulously, then with the telltale signs of epiphany.  Mouth sore from dentistry, he mumbled, “Are we allowed to hate Miss Piggy?!?” 

Just like with me and Grover years earlier, my brother knew the unspoken rule that you loved the Muppets.  But he hadn’t realized that there could be exceptions.  I told him that not only was he allowed to hate the Pig, but that I personally encouraged him to do so.  (Later on when the Muppet action figures were released, he bought a Miss Piggy figure so that he could hang it from the jacket he wore everywhere by a noose.)

Yes, it’s true.  I hate the pig.  And I can’t really tell you why.  I mean, there are a few obvious seeming reasons, not the least of which is how she treats Kermit.  But I don’t think any of those reasons are responsible for the inner cauldron of loathing that I possess in regards to the character. 

My severe dislike of that one pig has led me to an actual dislike of pretty much all pig characters. 

I’ve created a t-shirt design, but so far several online make-your-own t-shirt companies have returned my money along with an email informing me that they can’t make me that shirt because if violates copyright. 

 

But whether I have the shirt to wear or not, its text has become my slogan in regards to the Muppets.  “Love the Muppets!  Hate the Pig!” 

The Henson Biography

There was a fair length of time (like, years and years) where I was somewhat disgruntled by the fact that there did not exist a biography of Jim Henson that wasn’t a children’s book.  I wanted to read a biography of Henson that was aimed at adults.  And that book did not exist. 

Then after not having that book for the aforementioned years and years, I read that there was a Henson biography – for adults – in the works.  I was overjoyed at this news, and began my wait. 

When the listing for “Jim Henson: The Biography” by Brian Jay Jones turned up on Amazon I immediately placed a preorder for it.  As publication day approached, I awaited the book’s delivery almost twitchily.  And on the day it finally arrived, I opened up the box, lifted up the book reverently, thumbed through it a bit, and then placed it on the bookshelf so that I’d know exactly where it was when it was time to read it. 

Then, several years later, I moved out of the basement into my own apartment.  The Henson biography remained on that shelf in the basement, still unread. 

By that time my eyesight had started going wonky on me, and I had gotten myself a Kindle so that I could read more easily.  Shortly after moving out, I acquired another copy of Henson’s biography, this time in e-book format.  Downloaded it to the Kindle, along with a handful of other books, and then continued to ignore it. 

Why?

I’m honestly not 100% sure.  I’ve thought about reading it.  I’ve sat down with it with the intention of starting it dozens of times.  But always end up reading something else instead. 

The closest I can come to an explanation is this:  I have read very few biographies where I haven’t finished the book and felt disappointed in its subject.  Because I hadn’t known that they had done this thing, or that thing, or held such and such a belief.  And even though I doubted that it would happen, I think that subconsciously I wanted nothing to do with a book that might tarnish the image of Jim Henson for me. 

Am I going to ever read the book?  Yes.  Will it be soon?  Actually, probably yes.  Because I recently found out that Ron Howard has been tapped to direct a biopic of Jim Henson, and I feel like I need to read the print biography before I see it’s film counterpart. 

[Potentially interesting side note: During the time I was writing this post, I responded to a tweet about the Muppet Show theme. That response was ‘liked’ by Brian Jay Jones, author of the Henson biography.  And even though I just admitted to not having read his book, I’m kind of hoping that when I post the link to this blog entry on Twitter it also catches his eye.]

My Own Muppet Tributes

As a somewhat creative person, I’ve touched upon the Muppets in my own work a few times.  (I’m going to go ahead and count this blog post as one of those.)

Back in the 90s, I released a special edition of my zine 93.5 that was an all Muppets issue.  Most of that was just the typical thing where I ramble on long-windedly about my topic.  But at the end of the zine was a piece of Muppet fan fiction.  (Yes, I wrote a piece of Muppet fan fiction.  What have you done with your life that’s so much better, huh?) 

The story in question was my version of what a pilot for a Muppet Show spin-off featuring Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem would look like.  (Which amuses me now, because back in March Disney announced a Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem series coming to Disney+ next year.) 

My version of the story placed them in a recording studio on Seedy Road to record their first album.  I placed Floyd Pepper in the traditional Kermit role of having to reign in all of these weirdos in order to get something accomplished.  It was a fun little story. 

(And that was all of the Muppet fanfic that I had in me.  Really.  I never outlined a couple of stories featuring original Muppet bouncer/bodyguard Pitt Bullfrog.  Nor did I once consider a crossover story where Cookie Monster and Galactus have a showdown on the Cookie Planet.  Nope.  Not me.)

And at one point in the mid-90s, I took a weekly oil painting class at the craft store where my Mom was working at the time.  I decided to recreate the cover of Time magazine from the week after Jim Henson died for my painting.  And I think that I did surprisingly well. 

 

I would later go on to attempt other paintings, whereupon I discovered that what little artistic talent I have has to be directly focused by a competent painting instructor, and won’t just manifest when I’m on my own.  

Well of Course I’m Going to Talk About the LEGO Muppets!

On May 1^st of this year, two of my interests collided, like chocolate into peanut butter, giving us a series of LEGO Muppet collectable minifigures.  Yay!

 

I opted to not rush to the store on the first and gamble with blind bags, and instead ordered a complete set off of eBay. 

The twelve figure wave included Kermit, the Pig, Fozzie Bear, Gonzo the Great, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, Beaker, Rowlf, the Swedish Chef, Statler, Waldorf, Janice, and Animal.  

 

(I’d show you pictures of all twelve of them, but when I reorganized my LEGO room the Muppet figures got put away in a safe place that I cannot currently access.  So much for good planning.) 

I (and everyone I’ve talked to about this) am really hoping that we get a series two wave next year.  Because there were a lot of Muppets left out of the initial product.  The rest of the band, for starters.  Dr. Teeth, Floyd Pepper, and Zoot.  (Possibly the trumpet player Lips, but not getting his figure would really be no great loss.)  Sam the Eagle.  Mahna Mahna and a Snowth.  Scooter.  Bobo the Bear.  Uncle Deadly.  Crazy Harry.  Lew Zealand.  Beauregard the Janitor.  The Newsman.  That’s 13 figures right there, and I haven’t even mentioned getting a second Kermit (this time in his reporter’s outfit) or the three member cast of Pigs in Space in their Swinetrek uniforms. 

So the remaining question is:  Do I have any plans for MOCs using the Muppet minifigures?  Hmm.  Maybe.  Seattle’s BrickCon IS less than a week away…