Happy New Year! As I look back on 2017, it seems to me that: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
Notwithstanding numerous references, however, The Muppets have yet to do an adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities, but we can acknowledge Mr. Dickens with another scene from Muppet Christmas Carol:
I would be remiss to post this video and not say a “thank you” or two…
I was doing some YouTube research today and discovered something that’s too delightful not to share:
via A “Mash” Made in Heaven: queen_of_kithia
Though my mind be filled with questions, in my heart I understand…
“Patience, my brothers
And patience, my sons.
In that sweet and final hour,
Truth and justice will be done.”
Generally speaking, I try to be an open-minded, nonjudgmental kind of person. Nevertheless, I do have my pet peeves, and one of them is nonhuman depictions of the Nativity.
So by all rights, I should be really, REALLY offended by this sketch…and yet, I am not. Why not? Am I a hypocrite in addition to being a heretic?
Well…possibly. But in this case, I think it’s the metafictional aspect that makes all the difference. This is a story about a bunch of characters putting on a Nativity pageant. Bert may be playing the role of Joseph, but the point of the sketch is not to persuade me to willingly suspend disbelief and convince myself that he is Joseph and not Bert. The humor in the sketch stems from the fact that he is still unmistakably, undeniably Bert even while trying to play the role of Joseph while valiantly fighting off an attack of hayfever.
As much as I love this episode of Fraggle Rock–and I do–I nevertheless have some questions about it:
Why did Gobo assume that the “Great Bell” was something that he’d be able to carry back home? Doesn’t “Great Bell” kind of imply something that’s large and heavy?
When Gobo and Wembley saw that the cave was bell-shaped on the map, why did it never occur to them that perhaps the cave is the Great Bell rather than simply containing the Great Bell? That’s immediately where my mind went.
Whatever happened to the Weebabeast, anyway? They introduce this whole implied mythos about the Weebabeast, and then we never hear about it again. I feel cheated.
Why does everyone think that Cantus is so cryptic? He makes perfect sense to me.
I’ve posted this song before, so this time I was going to go with Alice Otter’s original “Our World,” but this version is just better, which I guess was the point all along.
“Let us always love each other;
Lead us to the light.
Let us hear the voice of reason
Singing in the night,
Let us run from anger,
And catch us when we fall.
Teach us in our dreams, and please–yes, please–
Bless us, one and all.”
Ah, from the sublime to…well, as close as Sesame Street gets to the profane:
I don’t hate Christmas, but I love Caroll Spinney, whose birthday is today. Happy birthday, dear Mr. Spinney!
A lot of people seem to have the mistaken notion that the “12 days of Christmas” refers to the week and a half or so leading up to Christmas. To be fair, I used to think the same thing.
Traditionally, however, according to the church calendar, the Christmas season starts on Christmas Day and continues for 12 days until January 6th, which is the feast day of the three kings, otherwise known–and I swear I am not making this up–as “Epiphany“.
I knew I wanted to do some kind of twelve-day event to celebrate not only the Christmas season but the Muppets’ longstanding tradition of creating Christmas content. Originally, I wanted to look at and review 12 different Muppet Christmas productions, but I didn’t have time to do justice to them this year, so that will have to wait until next year. Instead, I’m going to look at snippets of Muppet Christmas things and talk about them as appropriate.
I know that some people tend to get Christmassed out by the time Christmas actually gets here. I empathize with that; last year my family had Christmas a week early, as my brother was here in town for a concert. Subsequently, someone in the grocery store asked me if I was ready for Christmas, and I said something to the effect of: “For me, Christmas is already over.”
Nevertheless, there is an apropos song to apply to this situation that is from a Muppet production even though it doesn’t have any actual Muppets in it:
My intention is to keep Christmas with me, and share it with you, for at least a week and a half.
I’m trying to remember the issues I used to have with Muppet Christmas Carol. Nothing’s coming.
“WHAT?!? The cave is…is empty! There is no bell! It’s all a lie!”
–Gobo Fraggle, who apparently never thought to look up to see if there was a clapper in the ceiling of the bell-shaped cavern.
In starting a Muppet blog, my goal was to try to strike a balance between the serious and the silly, as the Muppets have always done so effectively. While I’m still proud of the content I have created, I do feel that perhaps I’ve been less than successful in that regard.
I hoped that Christmas would be a time that I could lean more toward the lighthearted side of the spectrum, back off a bit from the Schism, and temporarily beat my sword back into a ploughshare.
(Although you don’t want to try plowing this time of year; at least in this hemisphere, the ground is frozen.)
Throughout this month, I’ve been watching Muppet Christmas productions in preparation for an article series that I see now that I’m not going to have time to do properly until next year. However, instead of being a temporary respite from the Schism, they reminded me of it all the more, especially the productions made subsequent to 1990.
I’ve seen Muppet Christmas Carol more times this month than in the previous 25 years combined, and I’m finally warming up to it. Nevertheless, I was struck by the fact that, notwithstanding the lyrics of the song, the Marleys’ dialogue suggests that they haven’t quite learned their lesson yet.
…inside my house!
*dramatic organ music*
Remember when I entered a contest by The Muppet Mindset in which I drew a picture of Walter as Harry Potter and somehow won a copy of a free Muppet book, even though Walter looks like he only has one arm and the rampant Gryffindor lion on his Hogwarts insignia looks more like E.T.?*
Well, my 15 minutes of sketching and two months of patience have finally paid off, because today went to the mailbox (for the first time in the better part of a week) and received my Muppetized version of Phantom of the Opera!
YAY!
Before I forget, a big thank you to Jarrod Fairclough and Mitchell Stein at The Muppet Mindset for hosting fun contests and giving out free stuff, and specifically for their very generous assessment of my drawing.
Even more fortuitously, I have today, tomorrow, and most of next week off from my part-time job, so I really have nothing to do in those evenings except read. So I’ll go start it now, and when I finish, I’ll come back and tell you what I thought about it.
In the meantime, give yourselves in to the “Music of the Night”:
______________________
*Although I am proud of one subtle Muppet reference that I put in there: the Ravenclaw crest is supposed to be a bronze eagle on a blue background, but I made the background bronze and the eagle blue as an homage to Sam the Eagle. “Is nothing sacred?”
Answer: Neither of them. It’s a trick question.
So…this last Monday that just happened, there was a Pentatonix Christmas special on TV, and the report was that Kermit was going to make an appearance. I debated with myself about whether or not to watch it, and ultimately I compromised with myself that I would watch it, but only with the sound down and the captions on. And I hoped that Kermit would appear early on, because watching a musical program with the sound down didn’t really appeal to me.
Okay, one thing you have to know about me: my taste in Christmas carols runs very traditional.
I don’t mind pop singers singing pop songs in pop style, but when they start singing Christmas carols in pop style, it rubs me the wrong way. (And some Christmas songs, like “Last Christmas,” need to be retired permanently. Seriously.)
Tonight I was working at the store where I work part-time, and of course, ’tis the season when stores play Christmas music from morning to night; I heard a weird soul/R&B version of “Carol of the Bells.” Let’s just say it was not to my taste. Also, whoever was singing it left out some of the words, so some of the words didn’t fit with the music, which is a major pet peeve of mine.
So, to get the bad taste of that song out of my ears, here’s a good, Muppety version of “Carol of the Bells.”
Thoughts from the Sunny Side Of Life.
Where thoughts come to rest
The songs of the Muppets and the Jim Henson Company
Bring Muppet fans together
The ramblings of a Melbournian Film Geek who knows a few things about books.
A daily selection of the best content published on WordPress, collected for you by humans who love to read.
The Art and Craft of Blogging
The latest news on WordPress.com and the WordPress community.
Frog of La Mancha 