Welcome once again to My Favorite Muppet of the Day, as we wrap up a week-long examination of whoever my favorite Muppet happens to be on any particular day. Who’s going to make the cut today? There sure are a lot of Muppets to choose from, and today’s the last day of the week, so I’d better pick a good one. That’s why I’m going to go with… Taminella Grinderfall from Tales of the Tinkerdee!

Wait, no. Is Taminella a good choice? She’s pretty obscure. Okay, okay… I choose Angel Marie from Muppet Treasure Island and The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz! No, wait – that’s an even worse choice. I mean, in Oz he had a tickling fetish, for crying out loud. So instead, my favorite is Pip. No – Pop! No – Roosevelt Franklin! Rugby Tiger! Mopatop! Waffle the Cow Monkey!

Dang, this is stressful. I need a favorite Muppet who’s laid back… a favorite Muppet who’s cool as a fuzzy cucumber. I think there’s one obvious choice, so that’s the direction I’ll go. My favorite Muppet today is Floyd.

Much has been written about how the Muppets are quietly subversive, and I can think of no better representative of this than Sergeant Floyd Pepper, bass player for the Electric Mayhem and all-around groovy cat. He doesn’t give off the obvious burnt-out hippie vibe of Zoot, but you can still tell Floyd has been around and seen a lot of crazy things in his life as a musician (heck, he’s seen Gonzo. That’s a pretty crazy thing right there.) Floyd goes along with all the madness that comes with being a Muppet, but you can always tell he knows he’s cooler than everyone around him.

How cool is Floyd? In the Kaye Ballard episode of The Muppet Show, he leads the band in a walkout because the show’s theme song is just too square. How cool is Floyd? He managed to hook up with Janice, who is one of approximately two female characters on the show. How cool is Floyd? Since The Muppet Show, he hasn’t had much to do because all the Muppet writers know they’re just not cool enough to write for him.

Floyd is performed by Jerry Nelson, which means he’s the best singer of the Electric Mayhem, although that’s not so difficult an honor to achieve when your bandmates include Animal and Zoot. On The Muppet Show, Floyd sang classics like “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and contemporary hits like “New York State of Mind,” and was equally at ease with both. It’s almost impossible to do a Beatles cover that’s as good as the original, but Floyd pulled it off with his soulful rendition of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”

Floyd’s voice is cool. His way of speaking is cool (“We are, am, is and be, they whom are known as the Electric Mayhem!”). His hat is cool. His “hah-hah-hah” laugh is cool. In the early episodes of The Muppet Show, even his walk his cool… it’s sort of a rhythmic hipster mosey.

To summarize: Floyd is cool. He just is. And he does it all effortlessly. He never tries too hard to be cool, which makes him even cooler and which, to me, is the very essence of the Muppets at their best. And that’s why Floyd is my favorite Muppet today.

Man, this week has been fun, but there are still so many more Muppets, and so many more days. I might just have to do this again sometime. So, who’s your favorite Muppet today? Click here to discuss this article on the Tough Pigs forum and tell the world! And click these links for part one, part two, part three, and part four to see who my favorite Muppets were earlier this week!

Labels: fanaticism, favorite Muppet of the day

Welcome back to My Favorite Muppet of the Day, a series of articles in which I tell you who my favorite Muppet is today. Let’s see… On Monday my favorite was a Muppet Show character, on Tuesday it was a minor character from Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, and yesterday my favorite was a Sesame Street character. Today I think I’m in a Fraggle Rock mood. So today, my favorite Muppet is Junior Gorg.

In the early episodes of Fraggle Rock, the Gorgs are basically the villains. It would have been easy to make them one-dimensional bad guys, but that’s not what the show is about, so Junior quickly becomes a lovable, eager-to-please goofball. He’s always trying to catch Fraggles, but it’s never really clear whether he knows what to do with them once he captures them. Eat them? Stomp them? Steal their tiny little Fraggle credit cards? Junior’s too good-natured to do any of that.

As the series went on, the Gorgs became more developed characters, occasionally getting their own major episode stories. It would be difficult for viewers to identify with Pa and Ma Gorg, the king and queen of the universe, so Junior became the show’s central Gorg. We're sad for him when we realize that his dearest friend is a radish in “The Great Radish Caper,” we worry about him when Wander McMooch takes advantage of his naivete in “Junior Sells the Farm,” and we freak the heck out with him when he sees his mom without a head in “The Great Radish Famine.” Who would have thought a pantsless giant could be such a sympathetic character?

As much as I love Ma and Pa, I think Junior is the greatest example of the high-tech puppet sorcery that went into bringing the Gorgs to life. When I watch the show, I never doubt for a second that Junior is a living, breathing fellow, and a frigging enormous one. Have you ever noticed how much energy Richard Hunt brought to each character he performed? Junior is no exception, and Hunt’s vocal performance is perfectly matched by Rob Mills (and later Frank Meschkuleit) inside the shaggy, pleasantly plump costume. Every once in a while we get to see Junior dance, and it’s always a good time for everyone.

So, let’s see what we got here... Junior Gorg boasts an ebullient, collaborative performance, a funny, likeable personality, and… oh yeah! There’s that one episode where he traps the Fraggles in a basket, and he’s sitting on the basket, and he hears Gobo’s voice calling to him, and his eyes go really wide and he says, “My bottom is talking to me!” That cracks me up every single time.

And that’s why Junior Gorg is my favorite Muppet today.

Click these links for part one, part two, part three, and part five to see who my favorite Muppets happened to be on other days. And click on these words to discuss this article on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: fanaticism, favorite Muppet of the day

Oh welcome, oh welcome, to our little site
We’re ever so glad you could join us tonight

Welcome back again to My Favorite Muppet of the Day, a week-long daily ode to whoever my current favorite Muppet happens to be. Click here for part one, and click here for part two. As you've probably guessed from the introduction -- and the large picture to the right -- my favorite Muppet today is Prairie Dawn.

You know, there was much ballyhoo about the introduction of Abby Cadabby as a female Sesame Street character in 2006, and there was similar ballyhooing in 1994 when Zoe showed up. But the fact is, Prairie Dawn has been on the show since its second season, doing her thing day in and day out as many other Muppet chicks have come and gone (Are there any fans of Roxy Marie, Lulu, or Merry Monster in the house?), and she’s a perfectly good female character. I think she’s quite ballyhoo-worthy.

I totally would have played with Prairie Dawn if she had attended my preschool. You could never be bored hanging out with Prairie, because she’s the kind of kid who always has to have something going on. I’d love to be in one of her pageants… I don’t care if I have to play a tree, an egg, a nose hair, or whatever; I’d just love to be in one of her productions, which boast some pretty impressive costume design and songwriting, considering she’s just a little girl.

One of my favorite Prairie Dawn moments comes on the Sesame Street Fairy Tale Album, which I owned on vinyl during my childhood Sesame phase. The Sesame Street Muppets take turns telling stories, and when it’s Prairie’s turn, she tells a lovely story of a girl named Annabelle who befriends a dragon. The album track includes a song called “What Does a Sleeping Dragon Dream Of?” and when I listened to the record as a child, it would often soothe me right to sleep. Prairie’s story doesn’t have the comedy of Bert and Ernie’s or the passion of the Count’s. It’s just a really nice story, and she tells it well.

Which is not to say Prairie can’t be comedic or passionate. In recent years I’ve come to realize that Prairie Dawn is just about the funniest straight man ever, and it’s because her deep desire for everything to go right is a desire not shared by many other Muppets. This is especially evident in her recent “Letter of the Day” sketches with Cookie Monster, in which she goes to great lengths to prevent Cookie from eating the day’s letter, despite the foregone inevitability of it all. Nobody does exasperation quite like Prairie Dawn.

As the story goes, Fran Brill was inspired to come up with the name “Prairie Dawn” when she saw a 8x10” glossy photo in her agent’s office of an aspiring actress named Prairie Dorn. Do you think Prairie Dorn feels ticked off today because Brill built a career in puppetry on a character with her name? I’d like to think she’s proud of her namesake. Prairie Dawn is strong-willed but definitely feminine (Do any little girls in real life wear bows in their hair any more?), which makes her a great role model for girls. She’s adorable when she’s frustrated, but frustration never prevents her from seeking perfection. Plus, she’s infinity times more interesting than her döppelganger Betty Lou. And that’s why Prairie Dawn is my favorite Muppet today.

Click these links for part one, part two, part four, and part five to see who my other favorite Muppets were and will be. And click these words right here to discuss this article on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: fanaticism, favorite Muppet of the day

Welcome back to My Favorite Muppet of the Day, a week-long peek into my ever-changing Muppet love. Yesterday I chose a major Muppet star as my Favorite Muppet of the Day, but today I find myself drawn to a far more obscure character. As soon as I woke up this morning, I knew that my favorite Muppet of the day had to be Beautiful Day Monster. You may not recognize his name, but if you’re a Muppet fan, you’ve seen him around. This is a guy whose career has spanned from The Ed Sullivan Show to Sesame Street to The Muppet Show and beyond, which means he's a showbiz veteran with as much experience as Danny Kaye. (More, even. Danny Kaye was never on Sesame Street.)

I’ve always been fond of this crazy-lookin' monster, although for years I referred to him as “Got Anything Cheaper Monster,” after a travel agency sketch he did in the Paul Williams episode of The Muppet Show. The monster’s not very threatening in that appearance, but he can be when the situation calls for it. In an episode of The Jim Henson Hour, he was part of a roving gang of monsters who demanded money in a telethon for themselves, even going so far as to invade other TV channels to extort some cash. In the early days of Sesame Street, before Cookie Monster and Grover were established characters, he was all over the place, serving as the go-to monster. He annoyed Ernie, frightened Bert, and helped Kermit demonstrate the sound of the letter “B” (by blowing Kermit away and then bellowing at the camera, in a sketch that ensured a generation of children would grow up with a deep and intense fear of the second letter of the alphabet).

Perhaps his most striking appearance is in the sketch that gave him his name. In the “Beautiful Day” sketch, as seen on The Ed Sullivan Show, he destroys flowers, causes a rainstorm, and even shoots a chirping bird, all in an attempt to make a little girl unhappy. He’s so wicked, you can’t help but love him.

I’m a big fan of BDM’s design. The whole tall-headed, flat-faced, beak-mouthed thing is an unusual look, and I think it makes him stand out from the more generic Muppet monsters. I also love the way his mouth flaps open when he talks, which is a compliment I don't bestow on just anybody. It's been a while since we last saw him in a Muppet production, but I feel pretty confident he'll be back someday. He’s been performed by a million different puppeteers, and every performer gives him a slightly different personality, but when he’s performed well – as by Frank Oz on Sesame Street or Richard Hunt in the aforementioned “Got anything cheaper?” sketch – he’s a joy to watch. And that’s why Beautiful Day Monster is my Favorite Muppet today.

Check these links for part one, part three, part four, and part five to see who my other favorite Muppets are! And click hereabouts to discuss this article on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: fanaticism, favorite Muppet of the day

“Who’s your favorite Muppet?”

When people ask me that – as they so often do, in chatrooms, at job interviews, at the dentist’s office – I’m never sure how to answer the question. I’ve been a Muppet fan my whole life, and there have been thousands of Muppet characters created for various productions in the three hundred and fifty years the Muppets have existed.

I’ve come to realize that I don’t have a single favorite Muppet. Instead, my favorite Muppet at any given time depends on a number of factors, including which productions I’ve watched most recently, which characters I might be personally identifying with, and what I had for lunch.

In fact, my favorite Muppet changes just about every day. If you ask me Tuesday who my favorite Muppet is, I’ll give you a different answer than I did on Monday. With that in mind, I’ve decided to post here every day this week, explaining who My Favorite Muppet of the Day is for each day.

To get things started, I’d like to take this opportunity to tell the world that my favorite Muppet today is Rowlf the Dog. Of all the Muppets, Rowlf is the one I’d most like to hang out with on a rainy Saturday. I imagine we’d play some cards, trade a few good jokes, trade a lot of bad jokes, share a nice big bowl of Kibbles ‘n’ Bits, and maybe if I asked him nicely, he’d grace me with a little tune on the piano.

Rowlf’s songs on The Muppet Show are always entertaining. One wouldn’t necessarily think that watching a puppet pretend to play the piano would be so riveting, but riveting it is. He didn’t appear backstage much on the show, due to being performed by the same dude as Kermit, but when he does it’s always a treat, and it’s just as exciting to see him doggin’ it on the big screen – most notably in The Muppet Movie’s legendary frog/dog duet “I Hope That Somethin’ Better Comes Along,” and in The Muppets Take Manhattan’s sequence spotlighting his new job working at a kennel, which I would argue is the funniest of the “Muppets find new jobs” scenes in the film. And who better than Rowlf to serve as the president of the Organization of Muppet Dogs in the “Secrets of the Muppets” episode of The Jim Henson Hour? I'd vote for him, if I were a Muppet dog. Heck, I'd vote for him for president of the United States... and because he's a dog, his term in office would last 28 years.

Rowlf has been around forever – his gig on The Jimmy Dean Show began back in 1963, when Coca-Cola cost a nickel and and an iPod cost $1.50 – and he’s a multi-talented entertainer. He can sing, he can play piano, and in “Veterinarian’s Hospital” sketches he can deliver some of the worst puns ever devised with expert timing. Rowlf the Dog is one cool cat. And that’s why Rowlf is my favorite Muppet today.

Check these links for part two, part three, part four, and part five to find out who my other favorite Muppets are! And click right about here to discuss this article on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: fanaticism, favorite Muppet of the day