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My Week with Everything April 1-5, 2002
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
I have it right here, on tape. It's one of those introductions that Brian Henson recorded for the Muppet Show episodes. This one is for the Vincent Price episode; it's on one of the Time-Life tapes.
Brian is sitting on a stool, and he talks directly to the camera. He says, "Hi, I'm Brian Henson," and then he takes a deep breath and he sort of moves his hands around a little bit. "The Muppet fans are sometimes... really crazy people. It's amazing. Every crazy little walk-on character, they know the name." He's talking really soft, like this is a sensitive subject. "So, if you want a few facts that'll... impress your friends... tell 'em about these characters." You can hear him hesitate there, in the middle of that sentence, as if he's not sure whether Muppet fans actually have friends.
And, I don't know. I just feel like I have to take that personally. I printed a fanzine called MuppetZine for five years, and I know Brian's seen it. In fact, I went to a panel on Jim Henson at the Smithsonian a few years ago, and I actually met Brian and gave him a copy of MuppetZine. So I know that when Brian recorded these introductions, when he talked about Muppet fans -- somewhere in the back of his head, he's thinking about MuppetZine. And when Brian says that Muppet fans are "really crazy people"... I mean, on some level, he's actually talking about me, personally. And I'm just not sure how I'm supposed to feel about that.
I mean, maybe Brian's right. Maybe I am a really crazy person.
So, this week, instead of reviewing a Muppet TV show, I'm going to spend a week reviewing my life as a Muppet fan, to see if I can figure out this whole crazy person thing once and for all.
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
Another country Monday, April 1
My morning starts just like any ordinary person. I wake up. I take a shower. I make sure that the candles haven't gone out on my Miss Piggy shrine.
No, I'm just kidding. I'm kidding, Brian. I put electric lights on my Miss Piggy shrine years ago.
Anyway, I get dressed and I get ready for work, just like anybody else. I wear a Muppet watch, but apart from that, I look just like any other person. The watch is really cool, actually; I got it at Walt Disney World a few years ago. It's got a little picture of Kermit with a thought bubble, and instead of a second hand, it's got little pictures of Piggy, Fozzie, Gonzo and Animal that circle through Kermit's thought bubble. I like it, because it's like Kermit is thinking about the Muppets every minute, just like I do. But that doesn't make me a crazy person. Does it?
On my way out the door, I give a little fish food to my goldfish, Dorothy. Today, Dorothy says that she wants to learn more about exercise. But I'm in kind of a hurry, so I drop a tennis ball into her bowl, and I tell her I'll get back to her.
Then I go to the office. I work as an educator for a non-profit agency. I'm not really going to talk much about work here, cause Brian didn't say anything about how people who work for non-profits are crazy people. I mean, maybe he did, but I don't have it on tape.
Anyway, on my way home from work, I stop in at Tower Records. I don't have the new Bear in the Big Blue House CD yet, or the Elmo's World Springtime Fun video. It's April now, and I can't have spring without the Springtime Fun video. That would be ridiculous.
The problem is that I can never figure out where the children's sections are in these stores. In the video department, it's just Matrix, Matrix, Britney Spears, Matrix. I go to the information booth and ask the clerk where the children's videos are. She says, you mean Disney? Well, not since 1996, I don't, I say. She gives me a weird look, and then she waves me over to this tiny little section that has like ten videos, and most of them are The Land Before Time. So, no Springtime Fun for me, I guess.
I go back to the information booth and ask where the children's music is. She sends me up to the second floor. Children's music is way in the back, past the World Music section. The second floor basically goes like this: Australia, Brazil, Cuba, Ireland, Scotland, South Africa, Children's Music. Children are another country.
Luckily, they have a little Sesame Street slot, which has Elmopalooza, Muppets From Space and the new Bear in the Big Blue House CD. I get a little irritated that Muppets From Space is stuck in the Sesame section, but then I figure that maybe this is one of those "really crazy person" deals, so I just take the Muppets From Space CD and stick it right at the front of the rack, so everyone will see it. Then maybe it'll sell better, and they'll stock more Muppet CD's, and it'll snowball into a huge demand for Muppet products. I don't know if anybody else ever does that. I've been doing it in every store I've been in since I was eight years old. It's like my own personal marketing campaign. As far as I can tell, the big Muppet rush hasn't happened yet, but I figure it doesn't hurt.
I take my Bear CD down to the cashier. She's in a chatty mood. She asks do I want it gift wrapped. I say no. She takes my credit card. She asks is it for a boy or a girl. I say it's for a boy. She hands me the credit card receipt. She asks how old is the boy. I say, look, I'm thirty-one, okay? I like Bear. Now gimme the damn CD.
I get another weird look. Maybe Brian has a point.
I take my new CD home, and I listen to it while I update the news on my Muppet website. There's a new Sesame Street spin-off show that started today, and I watch that as I eat dinner. I brush my teeth after dinner, and I notice that my toothbrush is wearing out. I should probably buy a new one. World Trend just put out some cool new Kermit toothbrushes. Maybe they have them at the drug store.
No, no. That way lies madness.
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
My glamorous e-mail life Tuesday, April 2
In my dream, I'm in a piano bar. I'm having drinks with Charlie Rivkin, the president of the Jim Henson Company. It's 1992, and I'm a little down; it's been a rough couple of years. Charlie cheers me up by telling me about the Muppets' new movie. It's going to be really funny, with Gonzo and Rizzo, and Paul Williams songs. I ask if Miss Piggy's going to be in it. A little bit, he says. It sounds cool. I have another drink. Then a spotlight snaps on over the piano. Someone steps out of the shadows and sits down at the piano. It's Michael Caine. I can't believe it. Charlie puts a dollar in his tip jar. Michael Caine starts to sing. The love we found. The love we found. The sweetest dream that we have ever known. I look around, but Charlie's gone. I can't find him. I try to call out, to tell Michael Caine to please stop singing. The love we found. The love we found. We carry with us so we're never quite alone. I open my mouth, but no sound comes out.
I wake up in a bad mood. Another nightmare. But I don't have time to think about dreams. I have a website to run.
To start with, I've been asleep for seven hours, so I probably have to update the news page again. There's been so much news recently. Every time I turn around, there's a new Sesame Street spin off, or Palisades announces another action figure playset. So far they've announced like twenty-three playsets, and they haven't shipped anything yet. I remember back when I used to collect toys. Now I just collect press releases.
I check Yahoo News to see what I missed overnight. I'm in luck, it's just more details on the Nascar promotion, so I get the day to myself. Phew. I remember a Saturday a couple months ago when I slept in until eleven. Turns out that was the day Sideshow announced the new Muppet busts. It took me two weeks to catch up.
But today's a slow news day, so I can either work on the Muppet Show reviews or answer my e-mail. All my first-season Muppet Show tapes are piled up on my coffee table, just glowering at me. It's horrible. Sandy Duncan's lurking in there somewhere. I can't believe I told everybody that I was going to watch all the Muppet Shows in order. What was I thinking? There's a hundred and twenty episodes. I've watched ten so far. This is awful. I'll answer the e-mail.
So. Here's what's in my inbox. A saga in three parts.
Danny's glamorous e-mail life. Part one.
Here's a real life, no joke, actual e-mail that I just got. The subject heading is: i need you. For real. Here's the entire thing.
From: [ address removed ] Subject: i need you
hello!
I am french and i love miss piggy !
can you send me a funny photo?
it would be very nice!
thanks
david
You know, I've been waiting my whole life for mysterious Frenchmen to send me letters that say "I need you." And now that it's happened, it just feels kind of empty.
Danny's glamorous e-mail life. Part two.
From: [ address removed ] Subject: Muppet
Sir: I am looking for the music cd called Elmos funny lowdown Hoedown. By the muppets I Believe also, the BMG Kids? Not sure. I just heard the song Elmos funny lowdown hoedown and would like to purchase this. Can you give me any info? Thankyou
Now, as it happens, there is a CD that features Elmo's Lowdown Hoedown. The CD, oddly enough, is called "Elmo's Lowdown Hoedown," and it's available at any record store. Just look next to the World Music section. You could also buy it at Amazon, if you search for, oh, let's say, Elmo's Lowdown Hoedown. I send a reply to this effect. A little while later, I get a response.
From: [ ditto ] Subject: Re: Muppets
Sirs: Maybe something is wrong with my computer. I searched in popular Music for elmo low down hoe down and could find only Elmos favorite songs and wild west etc. I am frustrated. I should have been able to find this on the first try. Can you send me a link? Thankyou
Oh, for goodness sakes. I could be at this all day. And I still haven't replied to all the e-mails about Pepe dolls.
Hey... Did someone say Pepe dolls?
Danny's glamorous e-mail life. Part three.
From: [ address removed ] Subject: pepe's biggest fan
my name is megan and i have been searching for a stuffed pepe or a picture or poster of pepe for three months now. tonight i happened to stumble across your web page. please let me know if you can help me find what i'm looking for. thank you so much.
~ megan ~
You know what I love most about this message? "I happened to stumble across your web page." Like she's just been typing random words into Internet Explorer since Christmas, and she finally found her way to me. Rest, little bird, weary traveler. You've found your way home.
And you know which web page she stumbled across? The Pepe FAQ. It's a page I made about four months ago, where I talk about how there isn't a Pepe doll yet. The people who answer customer-service e-mail for Long John Silvers said they might make a Pepe doll at some point. First they said they'd make one in March, and then about two weeks later, they said, well, maybe not so much March. And then they didn't say anything else about it. That's all the information I have, and that's what's up on the site.
From: [ address removed ] Subject: pepe
Hey
any word on the pepe toy (doll)
thanks
-mike
Apparently the Pepe fans think I'm holding out on them. I don't know, guys. When I find out, I promise I'll let you know.
Here's another.
From: [ address removed ] Subject: Pepe
where can i buy a Pepe toy? Please help as i have searched forever. He will get to ride in US Army Blackhawk Hellicopter as a Crewman if I can find him
Jonathan
And that is the glamorous e-mail life of Danny.
My goldfish Dorothy says that today she wants to learn about e-mail. She's heard that e-mail helps you communicate with other people, and she wants to get e-mail from her fish friends. I tell her that e-mail is a myth, like Santa Claus and unicorns. She says okay and swims around her bowl. I feel bad about lying to a goldfish like that. But I think she's happier this way.
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
Be honest with me Wednesday, April 3
So I'm sunbathing on a tropical island with Charlie Rivkin. A cool breeze is blowing through the palm trees. Charlie tells me that 1996 is going to be a great year for the Muppets. They're doing a new movie -- a funny one this time -- and they're doing a new prime-time TV series. I ask if Miss Piggy's going to be in it. A little bit, he says. It sounds great. I take a sip of my daquiri and look out towards the bay. There are dark shapes circling in the lagoon. I jump up to look. They're not shark fins. They're mouse ears. I look back and Charlie is gone. I'm alone, on a deserted island. I grab a scrap of paper to write for help. I scribble a note. Dear ABC. Please don't cancel Muppets Tonight. It's a really good show and it deserves another chance. I stuff the note into a bottle and throw it out into the surf, but nobody ever finds it. Nobody comes to rescue me.
I wake up from another bad dream. I don't know what's wrong with me this week. Usually I dream about toy stores.
I don't know, I guess I'm still a little shaken up about this whole "crazy person" thing. I mean, now that I really think about it, maybe I am crazy. How would I actually know? Isn't the whole point of being crazy that you can't tell when you're crazy?
I look around my bedroom and I try to be objective. Okay. First, there's two big Ikea shelves full of toys that I never dust. There's a bunch of postcards and Miss Piggy greeting cards tacked to the wall. My dresser has my display of new Muppet stuff. The dresser is the first thing I see when I walk into the room, so that's where I put the new toys, so I can enjoy looking at them when they're still new. Right now, on the dresser, there's the big Animal and Kermit amusement-park dolls I got on Ebay, the Igel Statler and Waldorf PVC's I just found in New York, and the beanbag dolls I got at Disneyland in December. When I get new Muppet toys, I add them to the display on the dresser, and then I rotate the older ones on to the other shelves.
Already this is not going well. Looking at this objectively, the fact that I actually have a system for which Muppet toys get displayed on my dresser... It's just not a promising sign, mental health wise.
I take a few deep breaths. This is okay. I've been through this before, and I know what to do. Whenever I have a little moment of self-doubt like this, I look at The Flatsy FAQ. That always calms me down.
The Flatsy FAQ is on a website called Flatsy.com, a fan site for people who collect a toy I've never seen. Apparently Flatsy was a flat rubber fashion doll made in the early 70's. I was busy in the early 70's being an infant, so I guess I missed the whole Flatsy craze, but it looks like they made a lot of different Flatsies.
The thing that I love about this site is The Flatsy FAQ, because you get to watch somebody getting really upset over stuff that you never even heard of. For some reason, I find this comforting.
It seems like the life of a Flatsy collector is just one disappointment after another. The FAQ is full of questions like,
Why has my Flatsy's hair come loose from the back of her head?
and
What is that stain on my Flatsy's hair?
and
What are those colored stains on my Flatsy's feet?
There's a kind of dreadful poetry to it. It's like the back cover to an Oprah's Book Club Selection. Why has my Flatsy's hair come loose from the back of her head? Something must be terribly wrong. I keep expecting it to go on to things like Why does my Flatsy blow all her money on the lottery? and Why does my Flatsy just sit around and complain?
The best part is the "Common Misconceptions" section, where they set us straight on what to look for when buying a used Flatsy, which is not as simple as it might seem. To start with, "just because your Flatsy has really super hair, in great shape, does not necessarily mean it's in its original style!" Also, "just because the doll is wearing clothes in super condition that seem to fit her well, it does not mean that they are original to her! I cannot tell you how often I see Flatsys dressed in another Flatsy's clothes." And you think you have problems.
And then there's the big tied-to-the-liner scam. "Often I will see a Flatsy for sale, still factory tied to the liner. No cello, but still tied down. Clean and in perfect condition. At doll shows, I've seen people eagerly buy the set, paying too much, because they are getting a perfect, mint Flatsy, still tied to the liner. On the auctions, I've seen the price shoot to ridiculous heights for the same reason. In both cases, I sit back, shaking my head, and wonder if the buyers ever noticed that Trixy was missing her hat? That the steering wheel was missing from Rally's car? (Been there, done that. Argh!)"
There's more. "That the entire fabric piece was missing from Kookie's hammock? That Candy was missing her shoes? That Cookie was missing the little rooster that sits atop her stove? That Sandy was missing the bows at the bottom of her pigtails?"
So what I'm saying is this: I need you to tell me if I ever get to this stage. The woman who runs the Flatsy site seems like a perfectly nice, intelligent person, but she's getting really, really upset about the bows at the bottom of Sandy's pigtails.
I mean, how do you know when you've crossed that line? A few months ago, I wrote a whole article where I was angry that the Muppet Family Christmas DVD cut out Fozzie's duet with the snowman. I was really, sincerely upset about it. I still am. Is that on the same level as Sandy's pigtails?
I need you to be honest with me. I trust you. Just tell me when my hair starts to come loose.
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
Crazy little thing called Fan Thursday, April 4
I'm taking a moonlight stroll along Cape Doom with Charlie Rivkin. I'm trying to let him down easy. Charlie, I say. I just don't think this relationship is going to work out. It's not you. It's me. Well, it's the movies, actually. He says this time it's going to be different. The Muppets are playing themselves this time, and nobody sings. I ask if Miss Piggy's in it. He says, sure she is. I shake my head. That's what you said last time, Charlie, and she didn't get on screen until like minute seventy-five. I can't keep going through this. It's just not fair to us, Charlie, to what we used to mean to each other. Charlie points up, towards the night sky. I see a bright light, slowly falling to earth. I shade my eyes. It's an enormous egg, drifting silently to the ground. It settles on the beach with a soft thunk. I'm the only person that saw it. Nobody else bought a ticket.
My alarm clock switches on, and I wake up to NPR. A woman is talking about corn. I blink sleepily as she explains about the book she's written on the history of corn. She goes all the way back to the Aztecs. She can talk intelligently about how the development of breakfast cereal technology affected corn production over the last hundred years. It's pretty impressive.
And it makes me wonder. At some point, I guess you just wake up in the morning and say to yourself, well, I'm a woman who knows a lot about corn. And then you write a book, and that's pretty much your identity for the rest of your life.
I wonder if she ever gets tired of corn. I can imagine her being on the radio, somewhere in the middle of her book tour. She's been talking about corn nonstop for weeks. And someone finally asks her, So what is it about corn that fascinates you? And she just snaps. Oh for Christ's sake, stop asking me about CORN! I've had it up to HERE with corn, corn, CORN! The interviewer is taken aback. He stammers and asks what she wants to talk about. And she says, well, let me tell you a few things about wheat.
There's corn fans. Who knew?
And, now that I think about it, there's fans everywhere. On my way to work, the subway car is full of 'em. There's a guy wearing a Phillies hat and reading the sports pages. Obviously, he's a baseball fan. There's a young woman with a Free Mumia T-shirt, and she's reading Noam Chomsky. Looks to me like an anarchy fan. The woman sitting next to me has a tote bag with a verse from the Gospels on it, and she's underlining passages in a Bible. Apparently, she's a God fan.
I know Star Trek fans, and figure skating fans, and pot smoking fans. I have friends who are leather fans, who show off their new accessories and complain about how their favorite bar went out of business. I know politics fans, who talk about voter turnout and City Council meetings the same way I talk about why Muppets Tonight got cancelled.
Now, when I call people fans, I don't mean that everybody likes something. I mean, obviously, everybody has their own tastes and interests. But there's a sure way to tell when someone's crossed over from just liking something to being a fan of something. Just listen for The Fan Conversation.
The Fan Conversation is the same conversation whenever two fans of any kind get together, no matter what they happen to be fans of. There's three topics.
#1. It's not as good as it used to be.
#2. Where did you buy that?
#3. How do we get more people to be fans of this?
So here's an experiment. Listen to sports talk radio for a while, and count how many times one of those three topics comes up. Then go to a Star Trek convention and do the same thing. It's the same conversation, everywhere you go.
Same deal, by the way, with God fans. In fact, It's not as good as it used to be, Where did you buy that, and How do we get more people to be fans of this? is pretty much the abridged version of the entire history of Christianity over the last two thousand years, from Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation to the Crusades, from Vatican II to the WWJD bracelets. No offense meant to Christians; it's just an example. Those three sentences are the history of everything.
So the only difference, really, is that sports fans and God fans and politics fans are all fans of proper, grown up things, and I'm still a fan of the same thing I was a fan of when I was three.
When I get home from work, I log on to the Tough Pigs message board. I'm currently in the middle of a really bitter argument with some people who don't like Elmo. They say that thanks to Elmo, Sesame Street isn't as good as it used to be. I say that Elmo attracts more kid viewers, and it encourages more kids to be Muppet fans. We've been going back and forth like this for months. I wonder if it's too late for me to sign up to be a corn fan.
My goldfish Dorothy says that today she wants to learn about growing up. I shrug. Don't we all.
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
Radio Free Muppet Friday, April 5
In my dream, Charlie Rivkin gives me a huge gift-wrapped box. I ask him, what's this for? He's surprised I don't remember. It's our twenty-fifth anniversary, he says. Just open the box. I tear through the wrapping. The box is full of action figures and playsets, polystone busts and a Christmas special. And deep down at the bottom of the box... there's a new Muppet TV show. I pick up the new show and look at it. You'll have to take good care of it, Charlie says. It's edgy and audacious. I tell him that this show looks a lot like the last show. He says this time is different. This one's going to get a chance to grow up. I look down at the new show, which is squirming in my arms like a puppy. I give it a little cuddle. It would be great to watch it grow. But I have to be strong. Forget it, I say, and I hand the show back to him. I just don't believe it anymore. You do this to me every time. You give me all this stuff, you make me all these promises, but you never, ever follow through, Charlie. I could spend the rest of my life listening to your pretty lies. It's never going to happen, Charlie. I think we both need to accept that. It's never going to be the way it used to be.
I wake up from yet another bad dream. I can't stand this anymore. Luckily, today I have a therapy appointment.
I go to see my new therapist. I had to stop seeing my old therapist when she asked me who the two old guys in the balcony were. I sit down with my new therapist, and I tell him that being an adult Muppet fan makes me feel like a freak. He says that Gonzo felt like a freak too, until he found his alien family. I ask what it means when you have recurring dreams about Charlie Rivkin. He says it means I should stop waiting for the Featured Creature to change on Henson.com. I love my new therapist.
He asks about my childhood. I tell him about my earliest childhood memory. It's Chanukah, and I'm three years old. I'm sitting cross-legged on the living room rug. My parents put my Chanukah gift down in front of me -- it's a huge Cookie Monster doll, and it's exactly my size. I throw my arms and legs around Cookie Monster, and I give him a big hug. I can still remember the thrill of it, how excited I was to get a Cookie Monster as big as I was. Now I've grown up, and the toys all got smaller. Sometimes I think I'm just collecting Muppet toys until I find another Cookie Monster as big as I am, and then I can stop.
My therapist asks about my family. I admit that I always felt a little out of place. My family, to be brutally honest, didn't really have a sense of humor. My parents and my older brother are really smart, and they're really earnest, but they're really, really boring. I'm not giving away any family secrets here. It's obvious. My parents' favorite story about my brother is the summer he spent every day on the bus to camp reading the complete works of Shakespeare. That's a true story. That's just the way my family is. They like classical music, and Italian renaissance painting, and taking night classes at the New School. There's nothing wrong with that. They're just amazingly dull people is all.
And then I arrived, this nutty little guy, and I have to say that my family never really quite got me. I mean, you know how I am. I like the funny. The funny speaks to me. Comedy is how I learn, it's how I see the world. Whenever I don't know what to think about a complex situation, I try to figure out what's funny about it -- and that usually helps me figure out what's true. I'm the kind of person that thinks The Dark Crystal is too much of a serious art film.
So there I was, this goofy little alien, stranded on the Planet of the Highbrow People. And my family's response was to try to change me. Don't worry, this isn't like a child abuse story or anything. It's just a weird fact about my life. My parents really, sincerely saw my sense of humor as childish and weird, and they were so earnest and worried about it that they convinced themselves that they could talk me out of it.
I'll give you an example. I loved The Muppet Show, obviously, and I used to tape all the episodes with a portable tape player held up to the TV speaker. Then I would listen to those tapes all the time. Whenever my parents or my brother would walk by my bedroom, they'd hear Kermit and Miss Piggy. It drove them nuts. They told me that it was time for me to grow out of Sesame Street. I told them that The Muppet Show wasn't the same thing as Sesame Street. Adults liked The Muppet Show. They had no idea what I was talking about. As far as they were concerned, adults liked health food and art history.
So when The Muppet Movie came out, my parents made a deal with me. They'd take me to see The Muppet Movie, but only if I promised not to tape-record any more Muppet Show episodes. Of course, I did what any normal child would do in that kind of situation. I lied my face off, and made whatever promises I had to make until I got myself into that movie theater. Then, after I saw the movie, I went back to taping The Muppet Show.
Now, there's something important about that story, which is this: The Muppet Movie came out in 1979. I was eight years old. Who makes deals like that with an eight year old about the thing he loves most in the whole world? My family, ladies and gentlemen. Let's give them a big hand.
So this is my actual point. My family was perfectly nice, and smart, and loving. I just didn't happen to belong there. I was basically alone, this funny little boy with nobody to joke around with. And the Muppets -- this is the point, right here -- the Muppets were like Radio Free Europe, broadcasting across the Berlin Wall. They were sending me transmissions from the free world, talking directly to me, telling me all about the big funny world outside. The Muppets told me, There's vaudeville out there. There's pratfalls, and production numbers, and bears driving to Hollywood. I would tape the broadcasts, and in the privacy of my own room, I would listen to them, over and over again.
In some kind of essential way, I was like Tarzan the Puppet Boy, raised in the jungle by frogs and pigs and googly-eyed monsters. My family couldn't teach me how things could be funny even when I was lonely and afraid. Grover taught me that. They couldn't teach me about how making jokes gives you power over people who are mean to you. Miss Piggy taught me that. They didn't understand how you could learn and grow and solve problems with songs and fantasies and jokes. But Kermit knew that. Jim Henson knew that. And I knew it.
So I tell my therapist that being a Muppet fan makes me feel like a weird outsider freak, and he says, So what else is new? You've always felt that way. That's where you live.
And he's right. It doesn't matter, really, whether the new Muppet TV show does well or not. It doesn't matter whether I'm the only person buying a ticket for the next Muppet movie. I mean, it matters to the Henson company, obviously, but it doesn't really deep down matter to me -- because the most important Muppets, for me, are the Muppets that live inside me. The ones that raised me. And those Muppets are never going to go away.
After my therapy session, I go home, and I look around my apartment. The shelves are full of toys I never dust. There's a pile of Muppet Show videos on my coffee table. And The Muppet Movie -- the movie that I scammed my way into back in 1979 -- I've got it on DVD now. I can watch it anytime I want.
And then there's my Muppet website, where I broadcast my own version of Radio Free Muppet, going out live to the people, twenty-four hours a day.
And I think, yeah. This is where I live. I mean, it's a mess. It's weird and hard and scary sometimes. But that's freedom for you.
So this is Radio Free Muppet, going out live to the lovers and the dreamers around the world. You're not alone, funny kids. No matter where you are, no matter what's happening. There's vaudeville out there. I promise.
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
Special thanks to Scott Hanson (aka Scarecroe) for the Gonzo benediction
and Carolyn Wiesner and Jes Evans for schooling me about Flatsy
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