When Steve appeared at the Florida Supercon, I received a Google alert regarding video of a Q&A that he did there. Since Raleigh Supercon is run by the same organization, I was expecting another Google alert regarding Steve’s appearance(s) that weekend.
Unfortunately, that Google alert never came, but over the weekend, as I was watching some of his other comic con appearances, YouTube noticed and helpfully suggested this video of a Q&A out of Raleigh as something I might like. I had been looking for something like this through most of the month of August, but apparently it hadn’t been uploaded until the middle of September.
The same moderator from the Florida Supercon is back again, although he only interviews Steve for about 10 minutes before opening it up for questions, approximately half the time that he spent on the interview portion at Florida Supercon.
It’s been a week since I found and posted any long-form video of Steve’s convention appearances, but rest assured that I am still looking and will update as I find them.
In the meantime, I’ve found some short videos that don’t seem to merit blog entries all their own, but make for a good post in combination. First is a minute-long snippet within a slightly longer video that loyal reader and commenter Andrew K alerted me to about the Steel City convention in…Pittsburgh, I’m assuming(?) in which Steve gives a puppetry lesson to a little boy who reminds me a LOT of my nephew. To be clear: the little boy in the clip is NOT my nephew but kind of looks like him. Anyway, I’ve cued up the video so that when you click on it below, you should go right to the good stuff.
Also, I think it’s kind of weird that, as Steve enters to audience applause, the moderator says, “Come on, guys! You can do better than that!” They’re already giving him a standing ovation; what do you want them to do, levitate? It wouldn’t bother me except that the guy almost sounds angry about it; I seem to be getting flashbacks to gym class from it.
Second, I have no idea what “Surge of Power” is or why it needs celebrity endorsements, but here’s Steve giving them a shout-out at the Great Philadelphia Comic Con back in April. Yay!
Even though I’ve been actively searching for more video of Steve’s convention appearances, I didn’t expect to find anything out of Gen Con so soon, since it just ended yesterday. And yet, even though I wasn’t looking for it specifically, I found one this morning. It’s not a Q&A this time, but it’s Steve giving an hour-long chat and telling awesome stories:
I’ve been keeping an eye out for more videos of Steve Whitmire convention appearances for two weeks now. I haven’t found any more complete panels yet, but I did find this compilation in which a little girl dressed like Harley Quinn (I think?) interviews a lot of people at the Florida Supercon, including Steve and the Spinneys.
It’s about a 23-minute video, out of which there are maybe five minutes total (probably less) in which she talks to Muppet performers. Unfortunately, these instances are spaced out throughout the entire video. If you’re like me and you don’t want to sit through the other interviews, I’ve provided timestamps and links below to the portions of the video that we’re most interested in:
8:20 8:45 (Caroll and Deb Spinney) 9:08 17:17 (The question is, “What’s a lesson you learned later in life that you wish you would have known sooner?”) 19:56
A few weeks ago I got a Google alert on abrief interviewthat Steve Whitmire gave to a local news station in Knoxville, TN regarding the Fanboy Expo that was going on there. I hoped that would not be all that we heard out of Knoxville and happily, it is not.
This morning, YouTube helpfully and accurately suggested that I might like this 25-minute Q&A that Steve gave at the Fanboy Expo. This panel was recorded and posted by Joseph Scarbrough, a name I recognize from the Muppet Pundit forum, even though I don’t think I ever interacted with him there, but a big “thank you” to him on the off-chance that he’s reading this.
This panel is a little different than some of the other panels we’ve seen. It’s shorter by approximately 20 minutes, and instead of the moderator sitting up front with Steve and asking him questions that we’ve already heard a gazillion times, he stood in the audience and helped with their questions. The whole thing pretty much consists of audience questions, so in that sense, it’s a true Q&A
This alert was sent two hours ago and I’m just seeing it now, so I don’t know how “live” it is, but it’s a video of Steve doing a panel discussion in Florida, and I’m watching it now. Check it out:
Oh, I didn’t know it was going to embed itself. Cool!
It’s good that Steve has something to keep busy with while the O2 show’s been going on the in UK. I imagine that still has to sting at least a little.
Oh, I just realized that this is from several days ago, so it’s not live as in “happening this very minute,” but it was recorded live, and now it’s available for us to watch, so yay!
It’s not my birthday today, but it was my birthday when Steve was in Ontario for the Niagara Falls Comic Con, so this video of a (the?) panel discussion he did there feels like a belated birthday present.
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.
If you’ve been missing Steve as much as I have lately, have I got a treat for you! Reader Andrew K alerted me to the existence of this three-part interview that Steve did a few days ago at the Great Philadelphia Comic Con. Approximately 45 minutes of pure gold; a really pleasant, informative conversation that didn’t get into the controversial Schism stuff at all (not that I would have minded, but I know some people are tired of it).
Cookie Monster and Elmo are back again, talking (and singing!) with more Olympic athletes.
First, they ask several athletes to explain their sports (Elmo asks skier Lindsey Vonn what sport she “plays,” which is kind of awkward, but she copes with it beautifully):
Then they get the athletes to join them in a sing-a-long of the “Olympic song.” I wasn’t sure what that meant at first; for some reason I was thinking of the Olympic Anthem, but once they started singing, it all became clear:
Man, I wish I could sing the “Olympic song” with some Muppets. I would not only sing it, I would conduct it, because I figured out how to do that a long time ago, when I was young and precocious.
(It’s not that hard; if you know anything about music conducting at all, you can probably figure it out.)
Okay, so a couple things you need to know about me: I am not an athlete at all; generally speaking, I am severely disinterested in sports…except as it relates to the Olympics.
And of the Olympic sports, my favorite is figure skating. I am a complete figure skating nerd.
So I’m completely geeking out about this adorable video in which some of my favorite skaters (and some I’m not familiar with) teach Elmo and Cookie Monster vocabulary words from the world of skating:
My first instinct when they asked, “Do you know what a Salchow is?” was to say yes, because I know that it’s a figure skating jump, but I couldn’t have explained it in any more detail than that.
I think I was about seven years old when I learned that “Walt Disney” was the name of an actual person. Prior to that point, I assumed that it was just a meaningless, made up brandname, like “Kodak.” I bring that up because it seems to me that a lot of people, even–and perhaps especially–those who work for the company itself, sometimes forget that there was a real person behind the name, a man behind the mouse.
When I heard that Disney’s rationale for dismissing Steve Whitmire from the Muppet Studios was “unacceptable business conduct,” I laughed–loudly and derisively, without mirth.
Paging Mr. Kettle: Phone call from the Walt Disney Company regarding your color!
Disney’s shady business dealings are the stuff of legend. They could fill several books–and have. What follows is not intended to be a comprehensive account of Disney’s propensity for screwing people over. We’ve got a loooong journey ahead of us; this is just the first step.
Three years ago, the Muppets were featured on “A Capitol Fourth,” the yearly Independence Day special that airs every July 4th on PBS. In order to promote the special, Kermit the Frog and host Tom Bergeron did a series of satellite interviews with local TV new programs. One of these was an affliate in Omaha, Nebraska, which is about 175 miles, or a 2-3/4 hour drive, south of where I live in Sioux Falls, South Dakota:
In the interview, Kermit mentioned the zoo in Omaha, and I freaked out: “OHMYGOSH! Kermit the Frog just mentioned the name of a place that is relatively close to where I live, and that I’ve actually visited!!!”
These are the scraps that you have to console yourself with when you’re a Muppet fan who lives in South Dakota. Although, there may be an obscure Muppet connection for those of us to live in Sioux Falls: Raven Industries is based here in town; their main thing is the manufacture of balloons and inflatables, including some of the big balloons for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and that sort of thing. I’m not able to verify it now, but I think I remember hearing once that Raven Industries had made the Kermit the Frog balloon that appeared in the parade from 2002-2012. I haven’t been able to confirm it yet, but it’s certainly possible.
Anyway, getting back to Omaha: what really impressed me is not only that Kermit mentioned the Omaha zoo, but he actually called it by its proper name: the Henry Doorly Zoo. I think that was the first time I’d ever heard someone not associated with the zoo call it by its real name; most people just call it “the Omaha zoo,” as I have done all throughout this post.
I asked Steve Whitmire, in a comment on his blog, if he had ever actually been to the zoo in Omaha. He didn’t respond at the time, so I still don’t know, but I am not without hope that he will be able to address it someday.
But anyway, the other reason that I wanted to post this interview is because it’s really a beautiful example of the lovely, fluid, dynamic facial expressions that Steve gives Kermit when he performs him. It really makes Kermit alive and vibrant.
We don’t have footage of five consecutive minutes of Matt Vogel performing simula-Kerm yet, (at least, not through official channels) so I’m not yet able to make a fair comparison, but thus far simula-Kerm’s face seems very static.
I’m also a big fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and there’s a phrase related to that show that keeps running around in my head. When Bill Corbett took over performing Crow T. Robot from Trace Beaulieu at the beginning of Season 8, he had not done a lot of puppeteering before, and he apologized for the resulting mediocre performance by telling people, “Crow has had a stroke.”
And I’ll just say that, if I didn’t know what was going on with the Muppets and Disney and Steve and the whole thing, if I looked at those videos with Matt performing Kermit without knowing what was going on, I would have said, “What’s the matter with Kermit? It looks like he’s had a stroke.”
Frog of La Mancha 