Voting Is REALLY Important!

To keep the focus of the blog consistent, I try never to post content on the main page that doesn’t relate in some way to the Muppets or the Jim Henson universe. If I can’t find a way to relate it, however obliquely, I put it under a separate tab. 

Unfortunately, however, it seems that the pages I post under a separate tab don’t go out to subscribers, so most of you didn’t see my voting story. I linked to it in a recent post that related it loosely to Sesame Street, but that didn’t get the attention that I hoped for either. 

It’s really important to me that you see this, take it to heart, and learn from my mistakes, especially if you are an American who is eligible to vote but thinking about not doing so. So I’m making an exception to my rule and posting this completely off-topic post on the main page where it will remain, pinned to the top, until after the election.

The first presidential election I was eligible to vote in occurred in the year 2000. I had taken government class in high school but ended up getting a C and didn’t glean much from it. In the year 2000, which was two years later, I was excited about the primary, but when my chosen candidate was not nominated, my enthusiasm waned following the conventions.

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Remembering Caroll Spinney

Today would have been Caroll Spinney’s 86th birthday. I knew that I didn’t want to let the occasion pass without comment, but at the same time, I didn’t know what I could say that hadn’t already been said. Then I ran across a tribute that I hadn’t seen yet from Good Morning America

Here’s what makes it most noteworthy for me: On the occasion of Mr. Spinney’s retirement, I wrote about how when I was little, I couldn’t figure out Oscar’s raison d’etre. In this video, there is footage of Mr. Spinney himself expressing similar confusion, and it’s nice to know that I wasn’t the only one. 

I know that I need hardly ask, but I hope you will all join me in holding the Spinney family in your hearts during this time that should have been joyous but is instead steeped in tragedy.

Muppet Masters Q&A

Boy, did I discover an unexpected Christmas gift today! I was on YouTube, and one of the videos recommended to me was a Q&A from GalaxyCon Louisville back in November featuring Steve Whitmire and Kirk Thatcher:

It’s so great and entertaining and informative just in general, but here is what I particularly like about it: 

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Muppet Christmas Double Feature

Merry Christmas, all! By the time I post this, it will technically be Christmas Day, but in my mind, at least, it is still Christmas Eve. This evening I watched Christmas Eve on Sesame Street and “The Bells of Fraggle Rock” back to back. I decided to do that merely because I hadn’t watched either of them yet this season, but in the process I found that they are more closely related thematically than I ever realized, and probably more so than anyone involved intended. 

I have some deep thoughts about that, and I’d like to share them, but it’s really late right now (or early, depending on your point of view), and I am tired. So I’d just like to observe that if Cantus had been on Sesame Street while Big Bird was having his crisis of faith, he probably could have explained to Big Bird how Santa gets down the chimneys. 

However, knowing Cantus, he probably would have done so in an oblique, metaphorical way that would probably just have confused and frustrated Big Bird, so he probably would have ended up on the roof anyway. 

Nevertheless, that’s a scene that I wish existed, because I would love to see it. 

Never Prepared

It’s a curious thing about this human life we live. We know that it’s temporary, we know from a young age that eventually each of us is going to die, and yet when it happens to someone we care about, we are never quite prepared. 

I’m sure you’re all already aware by now that Caroll Spinney passed away today. It is not such a strange thing that an 85-year-old man should die, especially when he was in ill health and had been for some time. But grief is not beholden to logic; it operates entirely separately from it. 

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Sesame Street Memories

Today is the 50th anniversary of Sesame Street! HBO, where it airs primarily now (and has for several years), put together a video in which an interviewer asks the Sesame Street Muppets about their favorite memories. It’s quite cute and clever: 

Couple of things I noticed about it: 

  • Elmo does not appear in this video at all. And granted, I’m a grumpy Gen X-er who doesn’t have much use for Elmo in the first place, but I find that I didn’t miss him in the slightest or even notice his absence at first. 
  • There are only three characters in this video still performed by their original puppeteers: Abby, Rudy, and Rosita. That’s just an observation, not a value judgment of any kind. 
  • Whatever my mixed feelings may be about Peter Linz playing Ernie, I have to say that whoever’s writing Bert and Ernie’s banter nowadays is spot-on. Absolutely brilliant and perfect.
  • High definition hasn’t done Big Bird any favors in one important respect. The monofilament that connects his arms used to be all but invisible, but now it’s plain as day. It’s a shame, because it makes Big Bird seem slightly less magical as a result. 
  • However, I love that they revisited the idea of Big Bird being an artist. 
  • At first it seemed too easy to have Abby’s favorite Sesame Street memory be the day she moved there, but the payoff was worth it. 
  • Oscar’s interactions with Slimey have always been one of my favorite things about Sesame Street.
  • I don’t watch Sesame Street regularly, so I haven’t seen much with Rudy, but from what I have seen of him, I like him very much.
  • I love that some of the Muppets are wearing microphones during their interviews. That’s one of my favorite Muppet gags ever.

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Steve Whitmire Talks New Characters, Big Cats, and More

Gigantic thanks to reader and commenter Sidney who alerted me to the existence of this newly posted interview that Steve gave at Louisville Supercon in either late November or early December. It made my day. Pretty much my whole week, really:

For months (and this isn’t a criticism, just a statement of fact), Steve has been talking in the vaguest of terms about new characters he’s been developing, and now we finally have something more specific. Apparently he made a new character debut in Louisville. Someone commented upon it on Instagram, but I didn’t mention it at the time because I didn’t know any specifics.

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Sesame Saturday: Magic, Tragic Big Bird

This is Part One of a two-part series celebrating Caroll Spinney’s two most famous characters on the occasion of his retirement.

There’s something magical and miraculous about the mundanity of Big Bird. He does things that other birds do, such as eating birdseed and preening his feathers. He also does things that kids do, like roller skating or playing hide-and-seek. 

Unlike most Muppets, there’s no need for Big Bird to hide behind a low wall or a counter or inside a giant bathtub. There are no telltale cables trailing off him, and he is unfettered by marionette strings and arm rods. Big Bird walks freely among us, as an equal.

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Sesame Saturday: The Torchbearers

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that there was a little boy born in Georgia on Jim Henson’s birthday in 1959, who loved Muppets so much that he was nicknamed “Kermit” in high school.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that there was another little boy born in Kansas on this date in 1970 with a last name that means “bird” in German, who received prophetic Sesame Street toys as Christmas gifts. 

And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the great and good Caroll Spinney took each of them under his figurative wing and served as a mentor to them both.

Matt Vogel and Steve Whitmire were each born to be torchbearers, to keep the flame alive and to light the way for others. 

I debated with myself about the appropriateness of talking about Steve on Matt’s birthday, but “Journey to Ernie,” the most prominent example of Matt playing Big Bird that I know of, also prominently features Steve, and that didn’t feel like a coincidence either, so I decided I had to honor it.

These “Journey to Ernie” segments, which teach the very important skill of deductive reasoning, are fairly clever and utterly delightful due to the talents of Matt, Steve, Joey Mazzarino and David Rudman as the Two-Headed Monster, unidentified voice actors and animators, and whoever was on right-handed Duckie duty.

Luceat lux vestra

Steve Whitmire visits Fanboy Expo

via wbir.com | Puppeteer Steve Whitmire visits Fanboy Expo

Steve gave an interview to a local news team in Knoxville, Tennessee while he’s there for the convention. It’s a nice little interview; the hosts are very gracious, and Steve seems relaxed and happy. One of the interviewers refers to Steve “voicing” characters but later asks about the specific challenges in puppetry, so I’ll forgive it. The other interviewer asks Steve about his future plans, and he says he’s working on “a few projects” in Atlanta but doesn’t get any more specific than that.

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Sesame Saturday: A Sesame Special and a Searing Scratch

EandB HensonOz.png

On April 7, 1989, I suffered an abraded cornea.

(“Abraded” is a fancy medical term for “scratched” that I didn’t learn until much later.)

I was 8 years old and in second grade.  It was a Friday, and unusually windy even by South Dakota standards.  The wind was out of the east and blowing so hard that it was almost horizontal.  After school, I had to walk directly into the wind to get to my carpool that would take me to my weekly Girl Scout meeting, and the wind blew some dirt or debris of some kind into my left eye.

All my life, people had told me not to rub my eyes, but no one had ever tried to explain why.  And I didn’t know any other way to dislodge foreign objects from my eye, so I just kept rubbing it, and it just kept hurting, and so on in a vicious cycle. 

So on the off-chance that there are any little kids reading this, let me pause for this public service announcement:  Don’t rub your eyes, kids, because you could accidentally scratch your eyeball, and that really, really hurts.

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Sesame Sunday: ‘Hamilton’ on Sesame Street

I know I’ve been subtle about it (har, har) but if you pay close attention, you’ll notice that I’m a big fan of Hamilton, both the musical and the man whose life inspired it.  January 11th was Alexander Hamilton’s birthday (or it might be more accurate to call it the anniversary of his birth), while January 16th was Lin-Manuel Miranda’s birthday (he being the one who wrote the play and originated the role of Hamilton).

So, if I had been really organized, I would have done a whole week-long thing of Hamilton-related posts pertaining to the musical.  But I’m not really organized, unfortunately; plus, I still have two jobs.  Maybe I’ll do that later, or maybe I’ll do that next year.

In any case, I can’t help but notice that a lot of (past) Hamilton cast members also have connections to Sesame Street, so I thought I’d explore that today.

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Thanksgiving

Character.chistmasturkey

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!  I know the holiday is not really a thing outside the U.S. and Canada (and in Canada it happened a month ago), but there’s never a bad time to be grateful for the good things in our lives, especially when the bad things threaten to overwhelm us.

Thank you especially to Steve Whitmire, for teaching us (back in 1987) that turkeys are selfish, ungrateful bastards and that we should eat them, because if we don’t, they will conspire to murder Big Bird. 😉

Seriously, though…

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Sesame Saturday: Episode 2096–Retrospective on a Revelation

“When Snuffy wasn’t being used, cables were attached to his head and back and he was hoisted 40 feet in the air, where he was out of the way and safe. […] What made this so much fun was that in those days, we had a lot of kids on the show […] Many of these kids spotted Snuffy hanging overhead.  When they did, they went nuts!  Kids would grab the leg of the nearest adult and yell, ‘Look!  Look!  It’s the Snuffle-upagus!’  And, the adult response was always the same: ‘Aw, c’mon, kid.  You can’t fool me.  There’s no such thing as a Snuffle-upagus.'”
                  –Joseph A. Bailey, demonstrating the sadistic attitude of the adults on Sesame Street in the ’70s and early ’80s in his book, Memoirs of a Muppet Writer.

Someone once asked Street Gang author Michael Davis, in an interview that seems to have become lost among the shifting sands of the Internet, what was the most significant episode of Sesame Street.  

I thought about the question myself and I decided that, for me, there’s an objective answer and a subjective answer.  The objective answer is the same that Davis gave, the death of Mr. Hooper.  But the subjective answer, for me, is the episode in which Snuffy was revealed to be nonimaginary, which aired 32 years ago on November 18, 1985.  I was five years old at the time, and I was watching.

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