Progressive Boink (one of my all-time favorite sites) has started a list of Favorite Muppets. 50 Favorites.
Do yourself a favor and read the commentary – don’t just scan for pictures, you’ll miss out.
I mean, the first one on the list goes like this:
Though there are a few mute Muppets in the Jim Henson Universe, Slimey is by far the best. He doesn’t have anything special to communicate like the Honkers or Dingers, but with a few wiggles and nods there has been a lot the little worm from the bottom of Oscar’s trash can has accomplished. He’s the first worm on the moon and is treated to mud baths whenever he is feeling too clean. Slimey is part of the reason why I’m not scared of bugs. I would go digging under the rocks in my backyard to pull up pillbugs, worms, beetles and all sorts of other little creatures. Any one I liked I would keep temporarily in a little bug house my grandmother had bought me. I’d watch them crawl around and try to talk to them to see if any would look up at me and nod like Slimey did, but it never happened. It was probably because they had no necks.
I could read commentary like that all day.
Or this, on the Muppet Babies:
WHY are the Muppet Babies all in foster care? Nanny is clearly not the interspecies erotic mother of a dog and a frog and a stuffed chicken. So why do they end up in a nursery with more imagination than toys and more time together than with a guardian? In that book, indeterminately-origined Scooter, the Muppet Show gofer and 1980s child show character type “computery one,” says that his mother was a parrot and that he doesn’t know his father. So is that the true origin of the Muppet Babies? That they were the offspring of human raped animals that somehow became pregnant? Like, some guy was fucking a pig and when he left, the pig gave birth to a man-pig? I can imagine those creepy mistakes being shuffled off into some government lab and experimented on. Come to think of it, that would explain why they were always hallucinating and confusing fantasy with reality.
Or this, on Prairie Dawn:
She was a little pink girl who wore picnic table dresses and liked to put on plays. She was mature and wanted to be a journalist and a writer. She had something to her rather than just being a tan colored Elmo puppet with eyeshadow and jewelry and a tutu on. Remember that someday, when you’re flipping through the channels and stop on PBS to find Elmo and Zoe and a retarded bear floating on a CGI background, one of those floaties should be Prairie Dawn, sitting at a piano, trying to get Cookie Monster to say his lines and get over his stage fright and dramatically announce that he is a rain cloud.
And #33 made me laugh out loud.
So much more though – go read, and enjoy.
Elmo is Scrappy-Doo covered in shaggy red felt, and I want to hunt him down and strangle him to death too.
Pure Genius!
Thanks for finding this–I sent this to my younger sis. Who once got caught watching Sesame Street as a teenager on a summer morning by the guy pointing the bricks on our parents’ house. What? We didn’t have cable and watched a lot of PBS.
I am so glad Don Music got recognition. Maybe it was b/c I was an anxious-catastrophizing-perfectionist kid, but he was the only character that made me want to laugh and pat him on the back simultaneously.
The first time I saw Sesame Street and the Muppets was in Hong Kong my four year old little brother was fascinated by it and so was the rest of the family. So much so that we’d cut our sight seeing short to make sure we were at the hotel in time to watch the show.
(In those days Armed Forces TV was WAY behind the US in programing. I remember when a new kid to the Philippines was shocked that none of us had heard of The Waltons and she wouldn’t be seeing another episode for the next three years.)
Our favorite was the salesman skits with Ernie, and until today I never realized he had a name, Lefty.
So you mean there’s somebody else out there who would crack up if I started singing, “Would you like to buy an O?”
Not as good as the one with the stop sign, but still pretty good.
Oh! Oh! ANIMAL, HANDS DOWN.
“WOOOO-MAN! WOOO-MAN!”
Frank Oz has a twisted sense of humor that I like a LOT.
And then there were the “Mah-nah-ma-nah” muppets.
And Cookie Monster…
I love reliving my childhood LOL!!
//That’s why Don Music speaks to me so honestly. He doesn’t wax philosophic about poetry and he doesn’t make music more important than it has to be. He has a bust of William Shakespeare, he has a bust of Beethoven. He respects and loves those men for what they’ve given the world, and wants to give the same. But he just… can’t… do it. He can’t. He sits at the piano to write a symphony and he sucks at it. I’ve been there. I want to write Of Mice and Men. I want to write the fucking Grapes of Wrath, but when I sit down to write all that comes out is wrestling jokes and bullshit. Don Music tries, fails, and bashes his head against the piano. That is life. That is true creative spirit. That is bohemianism in the form of Guy Smiley in a hippie wig.//
But the line is gone now, and we don’t have anybody really saying “hey, guys, we’re all people with different sleeves” because they’re scared of being seen as no longer “of their race.” This is all dynamically the fault of that one asshole who felt it necessary to write a letter to Viewers Like You and get Roosevelt Franklin taken off the air.
Roosevelt Franklin’s mother was PROUD of him. I hope you can say the same about yours.
True dat.
THIS is what made me laugh out loud:
Koozebanians – And so did one of the older kids. “Uh-oh. They’re gonna have sex!” The two Koozebanian creatures raced towards each other, head on at full speed. Or as full speed as you can run sideways with your arm up in the air and covered in a horny Muppet. The sacred Galley-oh-hoop-hoop mating ritual came to a climax as the two creatures butted heads and EXPLODED into a cloud of sparkles and smoke. A roar of laughter erupted among the older kids and me. They could very well have been laughing at the sex. I was laughing at the exploded aliens, but all our laughter turned into a unified “Awww” at the sight of four chirping Koozebanian babies as the smoke cleared.
And that’s how I learned where babies come from. Throw in the fact that I’m adopted, and for at least five years of my life I was certain that my biological parents fucking exploded and turned into me.
I can’t wait for the top 25! those were so funny.
And, THAT, my friends, is why I teach kindergarten. I get to experience that kind of stuff on a daily basis and get PAID for it!!! Strangely enough,we have been all about “The Street” in my room these last few days in school. What a coincidence that you posted about it, Sheila! I came across some books on tape the other day and found an Ernie and Bert one about Ernie being afraid of the dark, and being convinced he was seeing ghosts every time he closed his eyes. Bert had to talk him through it. I played it for my class and they LOVED it.
I liked Roosevelt Franklin a lot when I was a kid. He didn’t need a gimmick to be cool, and we shared a love of cooked string beans. Still do.
That was a great post–I actually felt a little letdown at having to wait for the rest of it.
Ken – I know!! I’ll make sure to link to Part 2 whenever it goes up. I’m trying to guess who will be on it.
I’m rooting for Skred. :-)
I completely lost it with the picture of Franklin and Gob at the end of the Roosevelt Franklin one. Who doesn’t love Franklin?