I wish all my friends were more like Sesame Street, because Sesame Street has been celebrating its own birthday by giving us a ton of great presents. One of these, which I just finished consuming, is the two-disc DVD set 40 Years of Sunny Days.

Every season of the show is represented with at least one segment on this set, which pretty much guarantees you'll see some stuff you've known all your life, some stuff you've seen a time or two before, and at least one thing you've never seen.

For example, I had never seen the very first appearance of Telly Monster, in his initial incarnation as "the television monster." That's here, and it's almost worth the price of the DVD just to see it. That voice! Those swirling eyes! Boy, Telly's come a long way.

Then there's an appearance from the Fonz, and Bob and Linda performing "Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood" with an elevator operator, and some clips from the Hawaii episodes. (My goodness, but Mr. Hooper was hairy!) Oh, and Batman shows up at some point. It's a pretty comprehensive selection that goes way beyond the obvious.

The disc covering the first 20 seasons is a bit longer than the one covering seasons 21-40, and I'm guessing nobody's going to have a problem with that, as it's the old stuff that most people buying a Sesame retrospective DVD are looking for. So you got your Teeny Little Super Guy and your "Put Down the Duckie," and it all looks really fantastic, but there's plenty of great stuff from recent years, too. Mr. Noodle... Destiny's Child's cover of "I Got a New Way to Walk" with Zoe, Elmo, and Grover... season 40's groovealicious "Dance" iPod commercial parody... and "Can't Say the Alphabet Enough" by Gabi, Maria, and Gina, which I happen to love.

The extras are delightful too. There's a pretty healthy dose of "Behind the Street" footage that shows the cast and crew working on the show, and most of these focus on scenes that are included on the discs. As some folks on the Tough Pigs forum have noted, it seems like few people outside our little world of Muppet geeks would really be interested in a lot of this stuff, but that just proves that the Sesame people know we're out there and they want us to be entertained. (Hi, Sesame people! Thanks for the cool DVDs!)

My one and only fan-geek complaint is that I wish some of the clips were longer. I'm mostly talking about the street scenes... We get a few minutes of Snuffy being revealed to the grown-ups, and Gabriella's birth, and the hurricane, and so on, but it sure would have been nice to see a little bit more. It seems like we get an impression of what the episodes are about, and then it moves on to the next clip just as things are getting good.

My favorite part of the Snuffy story is when Phil Donahue comes in and hugs everyone, but that's not included. My favorite part of the baby Gabriella story is when Oscar sadistically withholds the news of the new baby from everyone, but that's not included either.

But that doesn't prevent this from being a dynamite DVD set. If you don't already have it, I suggest adding it to your Christmas wish list. If you do already have it, I suggest buying it for all your friends and family for Christmas. If they ever watched Sesame Street, chances are they'll dig it, and they'll thank you for getting "Ladybug Picnic" stuck in their heads.



Click here to talk about the 40th anniversary DVD on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: DVD, review, Sesame Street

On Saturday, November 21, The Brooklyn Public Library hosted a day of Sesame Street events. (Did you miss it? It's not like we didn't warn you!) Thankfully for us (and our lawyers), everything that Sesame Workshop advertised came true. There was music and art and puppets and panels, and we were there firsthand to see it and give you the full report. You can thank us later.

After the show, we had a few hours to check out the exhibit in the library. The front cases held photo puppets, original scripts and sheet music, claymation Bert and Ernie, the Teeny Little Super Guy, an invitation to Maria and Luis' wedding, an Emmy, and of course, lots and lots of photos. It's always impressive to see this much Muppet stuff in one room, and moreso to see it all be given the museum treatment it deserves. Behind these cases was a set of framed art, with original art from Sesame Street storybooks (including one from our favorite, "The Together Book"). It's easy to forget that Sesame Street has published so many books. I'll bet they could fill the entire library with illustrations by guys like Joe Mathieu, Michael J. Smollin, and Jack Davis.
One thing on my checklist that we weren't getting done was to get one of the new Elmo library cards. The advertisements said that they were for "new accounts", but I figured it couldn't hurt to try. When I asked, the librarian told me that they were "for kids." As if that's ever stopped me! But when I pressed further, she told me that I could request one, but only if I wanted to deprive some other child of getting his or her own Elmo library card. Needless to say, Elmo does not grace the cover of my card. Curse you, librarian guilt!
The main attraction for the day was the panel discussion, moderated by Louise Gikow, and featuring Chris Cerf, Executive Producer Carol-Lynn Parente, puppet builder Rollie Krewson, Bob McGrath, and Fran Brill. (Sesame Workshop CEO Gary Knell delivered the introduction, and he revealed that Iftah Ya Simsim, the Kuwaiti Sesame Street, is back in production.) After the customary how-did-you-get-started questions (Bob was big in Japan! Fran cold-called Jim Henson for an audition!), Louise Gikow did a great job at keeping the conversation moving and interesting to both the casual fans and the seasoned vets.

One of the most interesting bits to me was the inclusion of Rollie Krewson, who doesn't normally get to sit on panels like this. Krewson talked about getting her start as Henson's first intern (the first puppet she ever built: a baby Koozebanian, or "Koozie-pup", with the help of Dave Goelz). Another interesting tidbit she gave is that she prefers to sculpt characters before building, rather than sketch them out like other puppet builders. I for one would love to see some of the early sculpts for familiar characters. Yet another tidbit: Krewson's daughter came up with the idea to put sparkles in Zoe's hair (or is that fur?).

Chris Cerf, who lost his voice the day before, spoke briefly about working at Random House ("It helps when your father owns the company"), being in the army with Jeff Moss, and attending Harvard with Joe Raposo. He said that he got his start writing songs on Sesame Street because he "knew rock and roll", which is how his first song, "Count It Higher", came into fruition.

Bob McGrath talked about having trouble in his first year of Sesame Street because he couldn't figure out who his character was supposed to be. Jon Stone gave him the direction to "be himself", because kids can tell in an instant when an adult is faking it. Fran Brill spoke about the creation of Prairie Dawn, and how she started as "sweet, innocent and docile," but soon became a "neurotic perfectionist." According to Brill, the difference between Prairie Dawn and Zoe is that "Prairie would never go near a puddle, while Zoe would jump right in."

A few short tidbits from the panel: Fran Brill is 5'4", and sometimes has to wear 7" platform shoes, but she has never fallen. While performing a live-hand puppet, Frank Oz would sometimes rest his left hand over the right to keep the second puppeteer from over-gesticulating. Chris Cerf once wrote a sketch after receiving a letter from the Dairy Goat Association, in which a dairy goat apologized for a previous cartoon featuring a goat eating a sneaker (of course, it ended with a non-dairy goat asking, "are you going to eat those sneakers?"). The puppeteers and writers love Zoe's pet rock, Rocco, but they felt that he made Zoe "a little too bossy" (thankfully for all you Rocco fans, he'll be back in season 41). The Mr. Snuffleupagus costume weighs 115 lbs. While Paul Simon was on set in between takes, he walked past Oscars can, and Oscar popped out and said "Boy, you are short!". Paul Simon was not amused (Caroll Spinney said, "I don't know why I did that! I love Paul Simon!").

The highlight of the panel was an impromptu concert with Chris Cerf and Bob McGrath. Unfortunately, Cerf's voice was almost completely lost at this point in the night, so it's better in theory than in practice. But that doesn't stop these guys from being living legends, so enjoy this video of Chris and Bob singing a few famous Sesame tunes!

A million thanks go out to the great folks at Sesame Workshop and the Brooklyn Public Library for organizing this event. It was a lot of fun, we learned a lot, and we were thrilled to see so many people attend and show some love for Sesame Street.

If you'd like to see the exhibit, it will be on display at the Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza until February 21, 2010.
Click here to be denied a library card on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: events, Sesame Street, Sesame Workshop

Recently, Sesame Street has come under fire from conservative news sources about a two-year-old joke in which Oscar the Grouch's girlfriend Grundgetta claims to want to watch "POX News: Now there's a trashy news show!" As we all know, conservative ears have trouble differentiating the P and F sounds, so the O'Reilly Militia immediately started shouting at the top of their lungs about how Sesame Street's liberal agenda has crossed the line by slamming their beloved FOX News network.

Of course, if they had taken the time to hit the rewind button on their VCRs (it's a well-known fact that Republicans don't own Tivo), they would have seen that the premise of this episode is that Oscar is a newscaster for GNN, the Grouch News Network, which promotes "All grouchy, all disgusting, all yucky news, all the time." That sure sounds like FOX News' mission statement to me. GNN reports on Horatio the Elephant taking a bath in Maria's bathroom (obviously because of the Republican party's love for their elephant mascot) and Prince Charming and Sleeping Beauty's game of checkers (because they love lazy heads of state). Ultra-liberals Gordon and Bob both claim to watch GNN to get "both sides of the story," so they must not be the intended audience. No, the intended audience is Grundgetta.

In the now Internet Famous clip (which is way better than Regular Famous), Grundgetta claims that GNN isn't trashy enough for her, which is what gains POX News another point in the Female Grouches demographic. But how much trash could one Grouch need? GNN not only employs Oscar the Grouch, but also notable Grouches Dan Rather-not and Walter Cranky. Even Meredith Beware-a and Diane Spoiler are mentioned as grouchy guests on the network.

So what does constitute as "liberal news" on Sesame Street? Elmo sits behind the desk at MNN: The Monster News Network, Charles Blitzen anchors CDN: The Counter Downer Network (which I'm sure gets great ratings around the Christmas season), and Nora Nicks is a VJ over at NTV (they probably have NTV News, right?). There's also whatever network on which Kermit the Frog broadcasts his Sesame Street News Flashes. We can only assume that the residents of Sesame Street can't pick up the signals of DNN, DTV, KMUP, or WHHZ. Every one of these networks is bound to be the antithesis of POX News, so Grundgetta should be content with the level of trash on GNN.

But at the end of the day, GNN proves itself to be the yucky news network it set out to be by winning a Phlegmmy Award. And that's an honor that not even the real FOX News has achieved. So maybe the conservatives should do a little less finger-pointing at Sesame Street and work a little harder at bringing a fair and balanced amount of trash, rudeness, intolerance, and all-around grouchiness to their viewers.

Good night, and good yuck.
Click here to change the channel on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: controversy, Sesame Street

Maybe you heard: The season premiere of Sesame Street aired yesterday. (What season are they on now, anyway? I'm not sure.) It was episode 4187 -- that's the four thousand, one hundred and eight-seventh episode -- and when 7:00 AM rolled around, I was sitting too close to my TV impatiently waiting for the show to begin. It was exactly like it was when I was four years old, only I was slightly stubblier.

I've been doing jumping jacks of anticipation for season 40, but I'll confess that when I heard that the show was switching to a "block programming" format hosted by Murray Monster, I was a little nervous. Of course I trust the Sesame people to know what holds a child's interest better than I would, and I think Murray is great, but I was crossing my fingers and hoping it wouldn't feel like a completely different show. In fact, it feels a lot like Sesame Street, which is good, because it would have been very difficult for me to type this with my fingers still crossed. Here's what we saw in this show:

● A new theme song sequence. I think it's actually the same arrangement of the theme as last year but with a nifty new animated chalk drawing motif.



It's interesting to note that the itty-bitty Zoe puppet is seen here... In early 2009 we heard that they were switching permanently to the smaller Zoe, but in recent interviews she's been back to her normal, non-freakishly-small self. I wonder if she'll grow and shrink throughout the new season, kinda like Oprah.

● The street story. When Big Bird complains about the cold on Sesame Street, he's ambushed by Frank Flapman from Flychert Real Estate, who insists that what Big Bird needs is a new habitat. (Habitat! That's the Word on the Street! Take a shot!) Flapman is played by Lin-Manuel Miranda of Broadway's In the Heights, and as he takes Big Bird on a virtual tour of various habitats, he raps about them. Man, how great would it be if all real estate agents rapped their descriptions of their properties? I'd love to hear a rhyme for "Jacuzzi bathtub."

So Big Bird decides to migrate ("migrate" being a sort of secondary Word of the Day, apparently) away from Sesame Street and go to live in the rain forest. He says goodbye to everyone, and everyone is completely baffled, but then it becomes clear that Big Bird doesn't quite realize how far away the rain forest is. Hooper's doesn't deliver there, and Snuffy won't be around, so Big Bird decides to stay, and he sings a nice-but-forgettable song about how Sesame Street is his habitat, and then everyone's happy again. "Welcome back, Bird," says Snuffy, which is a lovely thing to say even though that he didn't actually go anywhere.

This was a fine street story: I'm always happy to see all the humans, and it's great to have the season start off with a Big Bird-focused show. It was lacking in silliness, but we still have the rest of the season for that.

● Cameron Diaz and some Muppet animals explain habitat. Have we ever seen that raccoon before? He looks less Muppety than his pals there, somehow.

● The Letter of the Day. Today it's H, and Murray talks about H words before introducing a film about kids looking for H words. Is it me, or did they used to spend more time focusing on the Letter of the Day?

● Abby's Flying Fairy School. The new show-within-a-show took up a pretty large chunk of the episode, as an animated Abby and her fairy friends chased down Niblet, the class pet gerbilcorn. It's definitely kids' stuff, but it's bright and colorful, and it had a few pretty good jokes. (Fairy kids: "We'll never find him!" Teacher: "Never? Do fairies say never?" Fairy kids: "NEVER!") "Gerbilcorn" is supposed to indicate the fact that Niblet is a gerbil with a horn, but it kind of sounds like a brand of pet food. The fairies end up jumping into a crayon drawing in their pursuit of Niblet, and I was halfway expecting them to take a wrong turn and end up in Elmo's World.

I'm sort of hoping Flying Fairy School doesn't show up every day, so as to make room for other material, but it's charming enough. But wow, it's weird to see Abby blinking.

● Bert and Ernie's Great Adventures. I think this was recycled from last year, but I had never seen it: Bert and Ernie are detectives investigating a maltese duck. Pretty good, but I hope we see the puppet Ernie and Bert on the show soon, even if it's in an existing sketch.

● Elmo's World. It's a plague of frogs! And Kermit makes a very brief cameo! That's pretty amazing right there. But hey, if this is a new episode, it looks like Elmo's World is still being shot in a standard 4:3 ratio, while the rest of the show is in widescreen. I hope Elmo asks about aspect ratios sometime this year so we can figure that one out.


And that's pretty much it. I was entertained by this episode, and while I hope they vary the format a bit from day to day, I have no major complaints. Oh, and I almost forgot... Michelle Obama showed up to teach kids how to bury things.



Yay! Golly gee whiz, I want to be the First Lady when I grow up, so a tomato will cheer for me. So did you see the show today? What did you think? Drop by the Tough Pigs forum to let us know!

Click here to migrate to the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: review, Sesame Street

Sesame Street's 40th anniversary is fast approaching, and there has been a slew of birthday-related shenanigans going on all around us. Let's take a moment to fondly remember them before Sesame Street gets old enough to need bifocals.

The most noticeable celebration has been over at Google, where Sesame Street characters have been incorporated into the Google logo every day. As of press time, we've seen Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Bert and Ernie, and Oscar, as well as a handful of international characters on the international Google sites. We'll keep on seeing more Sesame characters every day until the official anniversary on Tuesday, but who will we see next? I'm holding out hope for Herbert Birdsfoot hovering over the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.

Pretty much every news source in the world is talking about Sesame Street this week. From New York to Chicago, all over the USA, in merry old London, and even the bizarre planet known as CNN, you just can't get away from it. But frankly, why would you want to?

Sesame Street has finally caved in and joined the Twitter and Facebook games. And that's pretty impressive, considering the fact that most 40-year-olds still don't know how to turn on their computers.



Big Bird traded barbs with Jimmy Kimmel on his show last week in an interview that reminded us how great these live appearances can be. A few furry friends will be on that other Jimmy's show (Fallon) on Monday the 9th, and on the same day Oscar will show up on Bonnie Hunt's show, probably to mock her fake relationship with Brian Williams.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Elmo, Abby Cadabby, and Cookie Monster showed up on The Today Show this week, most likely airing at the same time as Sesame Street on many PBS stations. What a ratings killer!


No Sesame celebration would be complete without a little controversy. A two-year-old Sesame Street clip was recently discovered by the right-wingers in which Grundgetta declares her love for trashy news show, "POX News". Naturally, the Bill O'Reilly fan club got all up in arms because they hate all of that un-American tolerance and education and Michelle Obamas that Sesame promotes. Of course, Sesame Workshop and PBS aren't apologizing for the joke, but they are saying that they could have made the "P" a little clearer to avoid confusion that grouches actually watch FOX News. Spoiler: Only grouches watch FOX News.

And don't forget about the new Sesame Street anniversary book (and our interview with writer Louise Gikow, here and here), the Sesame Street: 40 Years of Sunny Days DVD, the paperback printing of Street Gang, and of course, the 40th season, which premieres on Tuesday, November 10 on your local PBS station.

Click here to count to 40 on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: news, Sesame Street

This week I'm watching Sesame Street's past anniversary specials as we all get giddy with excitement about the show's 40th anniversary next week. If you haven't already, check out my thoughts on the 10th anniversary, the 20th anniversary, the 25th anniversary, and the 30th anniversary!

No, seriously. Can you believe Sesame Street has been around for 40 years? Why, it seems like just yesterday that we were saying, “No, seriously. Can you believe Sesame Street has been around for 35 years?”

That was in 2004, when the anniversary special The Street We Live On aired on PBS. This one is a different animal… It’s really just an episode of the show that happens to be all about the show itself. I’m not sure why they did it this way. Maybe none of the broadcast networks were interested in yet another Sesame birthday party, or maybe the producers just wanted to be meta. So we ended up with this, and that's fine, 'cause I never meta Sesame special I didn't like.

Now here’s Grover, and – oh, right. Here’s one thing that’s changed since the Elmopalooza. Frank Oz’s characters are now performed more often than not by Eric Jacobson (Grover and Bert) and David Rudman (Cookie Monster). It's a great decision... The increased presence of those three characters has really made Sesame feel more like itself since the dawn of the 2000s.

In 2004, the once and future Fix-It Shop was in its Mail-It Shop phase, and Maria and Luis have hired Grover to deliver an important package to Oscar. This seems like a really inefficient way to do business considering Oscar lives about twelve steps away… and anyway, isn’t Grover pretty bad at every job he attempts? No wonder the Mail-It Shop didn’t last.

On his epic journey to the other end of the block, Grover passes by pretty much every major character, Muppet and human, plus three chickens. I love when they do stuff like this -- I think it usually happens in the season premieres, when they do a big street scene with everyone as an introduction/re-introduction to all the folks who populate the street. Plus three chickens.

When he finally arrives at the can (Oscar’s can, not the bathroom), Grover gives Oscar the parcel, and hey, it’s from Elmo (whom Oscar refers to as “the little red menace”). It’s a drawing of Dorothy with spaghetti spilled on it. Mmm, that sounds tasteful. Ha. And with that, we transition to Elmo’s World, where the—

Whoa! Hit the brakes there, buddy! Are they really doing this? A show celebrating the past 35 years of Sesame history, and five minutes in they toss us into Elmo’s World, without any kind of warning?

Answer: Yep. Before we know what hit us, we're off the street and hanging with Elmo and Dorothy. But hey, today Elmo is thinking about Sesame Street (“You know… Sesame Street!”) so all the usual parts of the Elmo’s World formula are related to the show. The question for Mr. Noodle is “How does Cookie Monster eat a cookie?” (Answer: By crumbling it all over the place without ever really eating it.) When Elmo asks a baby, that baby is big, blue and furry: It’s Cookie Monster himself in a “clever disguise.”

The remains of the cookie remind Cookie of the letter C, and now we have a few letter C inserts, some older and some newer. And later, Elmo and the Count count monsters to determine the Number of the Day. (It’s 10, in case you were wondering.)

So all the familiar Sesame elements are here, as are all the Elmo’s World elements. I’m not convinced this was the absolute best way to go about it, but it very well may have been the most effective way to simultaneously get kids high on learning and shoot their parents up with nostalgia. Or, how about this: If you think of a normal episode as a peanut M&M, with the peanut of Elmo’s World inside the candy-covered milk chocolate of Sesame Street, then The Street We Live On is like a reverse M&M. The milk chocolate is all there, but it’s inside the peanut. Come to think of it, that’s some damn skilled candy-making on the part of the Sesame producers.

After Elmo does some other stuff, Grover shows up and takes him on a magical taxi ride (What would an anniversary special be without Grover driving?) to witness scenes of Sesame Street… before he was born! Elmo gets to see Mr. Hooper, and baby Miles, and Maria’s wedding, and… Hey, wait a minute! Isn’t that Elmo as the ring-bearer at that wedding?

After his trip through the space-time continuum, Elmo runs out to the street and demands that everyone gather on the stoop, and they immediately drop what they’re doing to do his bidding. They all sing a song that I’m guessing is called “The Street We Live On,” which is nice enough, although it’s a bit adult contemporary for my tastes. My aunt would probably like it. Everyone gets to sing a line (including Dorothy! And… a CGI tree?!), and when Miles gets his turn he gives a hilariously melismatic performance. Don't wish your neighborhood had regular sing-alongs where everyone magically knew the words?

And so we come to the end of The Street We Live On, an hour that honors the show’s legacy and embodies the fact that it’s still going strong as it reaches today’s youngsters. The end of the song is the end of the special, and everyone says bye-bye… but we’ll be back. After all, we live there too.

Other things about this special:

●Status update on Oscar’s grouchiness this time in 2004: I am happy to report that Oscar yells “Get lost!” at various characters about three times, with no provocation whatsoever. I know, I know, it's far from the the most blatantly dickish thing he’s ever done, but it’s still pretty darn grouchy.

●In the lead-in to “Journey to Ernie,” Bert finds himself in Elmo’s World, at which point he asks, “How do I get out of Elmo’s World?” thus echoing the sentiment of millions of parents watching at home.

●Were the writers worried kids watching this show might get bored with vintage clips and such? There are four different moments here where the kids are instructed to get up and do a dance along with the characters. One of these is led by Snuffy, and is a popular Snuffleupagus dance called “The Snuffleupagus.” Isn’t that a weird name for a Snuffleupagus dance? You don’t see us doing a dance called “The Homo Sapien.”

●There’s an extended version of the song “Dance Myself to Sleep” that features celebrities dancing. Julianne Moore is adorable, while Larry King doesn’t even bother to get up from his desk:


Then again, it’s possible that Larry King is physically unable to stand up, or perhaps he forgot to wear pants that day, again.

BONUS! What’s the Name of That Song?

Believe it or not, there was also a direct-to-DVD special billed as a 35th anniversary celebration. It’s really similar to A Musical Celebration ten years earlier, with Big Bird, Super Grover, and Elmo searching for a song that everyone can sing, interspersed with cool Sesame Street songs. It’s perhaps most notable for the fact that, after 31 years, the cast finally determines that “What’s the Name of That Song?” is the name of that song.

Naturally, this special ends with a big group musical number, and it's another groovy medley. (In which Bob comes in with his arm around Gina. Could she be his rebound gal after Linda left the show?). Yay, everyone can sing together, and yay, Sesame Street has a lot of good songs, and yay, we love it.

Whew! That was a lot of anniversaries. If this were a less interesting television program -- like say, Fishing with Roland Martin, or Senate Judiciary Committee in Session on C-SPAN, or Friends -- I would pretty sick of it by now, but this is Sesame Street, so I want more. Lucky for me, then, that new episodes of the show start on Tuesday, November 10 when the 40th season hits PBS. Tune in, and then come back here to see what we thought of it!


Click here to see yourself before you were born on the Tough Pigs forum!

ToughPigsRyan@yahoo.com

Labels: my week, Sesame Street

●And now a few more images... Check out Maria’s amazing pants in the “Mambo, I, I, I” video!


●Bob gets cozy with a penguin:


●The Count looks short when you can see his whole body:


So that's Elmopalooza. Tomorrow it'll be 2004, and Elmo will be itching to learn about Sesame Street for the 35th anniversary show The Street We Live On.


Click here for The Street We Live On. And click here to do the Zig Zag dance on the Tough Pigs forum!

ToughPigsRyan@yahoo.com

*That's right: Although this was marketed as a 30th anniversary special, it aired in 1998, the show's 29th anniversary, so either they were so excited about turning 30 they just couldn't wait another year, or they're not as good at counting as they've always led us to believe.

Labels: my week, Sesame Street

This week, I’m preparing for the beginning of Sesame Street’s 40th season next week by watching old Sesame Street anniversary specials. Check out my thoughts on the 10th anniversary and the 20th anniversary.

So here we are in 1994, and it’s Sesame Street’s 25th anniversary, and wow. A lot has changed since the 20th anniversary five short years ago. In fact, there were more changes between the 20th and 25th years of the show than there were between the 10th and 20th. A few important people are gone – Jim Henson, Richard Hunt, Northern Calloway – and that makes a huge difference. But beyond that, the street itself has undergone a makeover. Everything’s a little brighter, and we now have the “Around the Corner” area, with a bunch of new sets and characters to go with it.

There’s Celina, and Ruthie, and Benny, and Zoe, and the Furry Arms Hotel, and the Finders Keepers store, and, and, and… I was well past the target audience by 1994, but I was already a Sesame geek, so I was pretty excited about Around the Corner’s debut. Now, though, I can see how it just wasn’t necessary. I mean, there were some funny street stories at the Furry Arms, but does a fancy hotel really belong on Sesame Street?

The guest star-filled special Stars and Street aired on ABC, and it has more of a narrative than the previous, more strictly retrospective anniversaries. The writers had to come up with a plot that emphasizes how valuable Sesame Street is, and they achieve that by threatening to take the street away. Joe Pesci plays real estate tycoon Ronald Grump, who wants to demolish Sesame Street to build his Grump Tower. He’s a spoof of the similarly-named real-life real estate mogul, of course, and while Pesci has played some bad guys in his career, you can’t get much more evil than Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, Julia Louis-Dreyfus is covering the whole story as it unfolds, as a reporter named Kathie Lee Kathie. Which is… funny? I guess? A look at the credits reveal that wacky Hollywood Squares regular Bruce Vilanch provided “additional material” for this special, and I have to wonder if some of this Kathie Lee Kathie stuff is his. We find out later that Kathie used to have a talk show, but it was canceled, and Elmo makes some snarky remarks about it. I love it when Elmo gets snarky.

But while there is a story, not much actually happens. The characters mostly stand around alternating between anger and depression, saying things like “How can we stop Grump? He’s so rich! And so mean!” And there’s a lot of restating the premise: Grump wants to get rid of Sesame Street, that makes us feel bad. I guess the writers were catering to the little kids in the audience. Man, little kids are dumb.

Of course, the threat of No More Sesame Street is really just an excuse for (guess what?) montages, as everyone reminisces about memorable moments. It’s not just the obvious letter montage/number montage/international montage setup. There are some other themes, like a series of clips featuring characters overcoming adversity, a group of slapstick-y, comic clips, and one that includes lots of hugging and smooching. (I'm sure Elmo remembers fondly the time Gina kissed him all over his furry face.) But grumpy Grump is unmoved by all this history: “If there’s one thing I despise,” he says, “it’s cheap sentiment. Hugs, kiddie television, cute, furry animals…”

Kiddie television? Naturally, that got me to thinking, AGAIN, about the issue of Sesame Street characters’ perception of their own reality. When they talk about “all the great things that have happened here on Sesame Street,” they’re not exclusively referring to a physical location. A lot of the stuff in the montages – Ed Grimley in a park, opera singer Marilyn Horne performing “C Is For Cookie” – obviously didn’t happen within a three- or four-block stretch of a New York city street. So are Gordon, Maria, and Savion aware that they’re actually campaigning for a TV show, and not just a street? Who knows? And indeed, who, besides me, cares?

At one point, Benny Rabbit (a cranky, high-strung character who's not around anymore probably because the producers realized they only needed one Oscar) approaches Grump and offers to help him with his evil plan, in exchange for a job as a doorman at Grump's new building. Grump immediately brushes him off, but I almost wish they had pursued that potential subplot. Benny's willingness to be a furry Judas is an unusually dark turn for a Sesame character. But then, Grump himself is unusual because it's not often we see villains in Sesame Street productions, especially not with hairpieces.

You want more guest stars? This show's got 'em. Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman have the thankless job of playing giant worms on Slimey’s favorite cable channel, WormTV. I’m a little suspicious of the idea that Slimey can afford cable on a worm’s salary, so I’m guessing Oscar just steals it. This leads to a montage of popular music-style songs, including one I’d never seen before with a dashing Kevin Kline and a fetching Phoebe Cates singing about measurements. I found the full clip on YouTube, which is at least 72 inches of delightful:



There’s a scene where Kathie Lee Kathie, seeking advice, calls up Regis Philbin and the real Kathie Lee Gifford, which dilutes the joke of her name even further. Those of you still playing the Kathie Lee Gifford drinking game can take a shot, because naturally Gifford manages to work in a reference to her son Cody.

Hey, remember when people still liked Rosie O’Donnell? They must have at some point, which explains why she’s here as the Spirit of Hope, who shows up when Telly, Luis, and Savion are at their most hopeless and helps them out by buying them all several beers. I mean, by showing them a particularly optimistic montage. Then she has to run, because “Hope’s very much in demand during sweeps week.”

The best guest stars are Susan Sarandon and the always-dependable Charles Grodin, playing a couple of rich twits who are considering buying a home in the Grump Tower. They’re horrified to see Oscar, which is not an unreasonable reaction. Grump assures them he’ll be gone along with the rest of the street once the tower is built, but guess what? It turns out Oscar’s can is on city property, so Grump can’t build unless Oscar moves.

Why would Oscar give up his trash can? It's spacious, affordable, and convenient to the subway, so he’s not going anywhere. I know, I know, that’s a spoiler. I’d like to apologize to anyone reading this who thought maybe Sesame Street was destroyed and replaced by a high-rise in 1994.

All the other poor saps on Sesame Street don’t know about this development yet, so they start the world's most pointless protest march. Their chant, “1, 2, 3, 4, Sesame Street forever more!” is no "What do we want? Freedom!/When do we want it? Now!" but it’s catchy enough. They quickly discover the truth, and Oscar is a hero, much to his dismay.

The show closes with everyone singing "Sing." Whoa, deja vu! That's the exact same song they used to end 20 and Still Counting, but this time around it's mashed up with a new song I'll assume is called "Our Favorite Street." Even the guest stars join in, and if you ever wondered whether Corbin Bernsen and Rosie O'Donnell are stunningly bad signers, I can assure you that they are.

So, Sesame Street in 1994. A lot of old-school fans will tell you that this is about the time the show started to lose its mojo. It definitely has a different vibe than it did five or ten years earlier, but it's still Sesame Street, and that means it was still evolving and developing, and I'm going to go ahead and say it was very nearly as good as it had ever been.

It's funny that the show seems to carry an anti-gentrification message, with the characters insisting that their urban neighborhood is fine just the way it is and nothing needs to change... but maybe that was the point. Maybe the writers were trying to let us know that even when things get tweaked here and there, the spirit of the show stays the same, and those closest to it are never going to let it become unrecognizable as Sesame Street, because they're always committed to continuing the elements that make it great. Or some crap like that.

Other things about this special:

●Back when Zoe first started wearing her tutu, I thought it was pretty silly, but I've gotten so used to it that now it's weird to see her naked, as she is here. Even weirder, though, is the fact that Ruth Buzzi also spends the entire special naked.

●Once again my copy of this special has the original commercials, and guess who shows up in a spot for Jell-O? Besides Bill Cosby, I mean. It's none other than tiny, adorable Desiree Casado, who plays Gabi on the show and in this special.


I'm sure millions of children saw this, and said to their parents, "Look, parents! Gabi from Sesame Street says I should eat Jell-O, so you have to buy me as much Jell-O as I want now or I'll never learn the alphabet!" And that's how the childhood obesity epidemic started.

●The important question: How grouchy is Oscar in this special? Stars and Street emphasizes the yucky aspect of Oscar's grouch-hood more than the jerk aspect. He's still grouchy, but not as aggressively so as in the previous two anniversary specials. Maybe he was just having a bad day. Or would that be a good day?

BONUS! Sesame Street: A Musical Celebration

As crazy as it sounds, there were actually two 25th anniversary specials. The other one aired on PBS as Sesame Street Jam: A Musical Celebration, and released on video as 25 Wonderful Years: A Musical Celebration. I have the home video version. I don’t have as much to say about it, because it’s mostly just songs from the show, with a framing story in which Big Bird, Telly, and Prairie Dawn are searching for singers, dancers, and “la-la-ers” in a city park.

Some of the song choices are obvious – “C Is For Cookie” and “Rubber Duckie” are required by law by this point, I think – but a few are more interesting, like En Vogue’s “Adventure,” and “Count It Higher.” “Do De Rubber Duck” shows up too, and how much do I love that song? A lot, that’s how much. In fact, I’m totally going to invite all my friends over to sing and dance with me in the bathtub in tribute to that song. Do you want in?

The big conflict in this special is that Big Bird gets depressed when he can’t find any la-la-ers, even with Mumford’s help, but what do you expect from an incompetent magician. Fortunately, Ladysmith Black Mambazo shows up out of nowhere to do some la-las, and then Big Bird’s happy again and everyone joins in a rousing rendition of… yep, you guessed it. “Sing." All right, it's a pretty song and everything, but now they're just getting lazy.

And so Sesame Street has reached its silver anniversary. It’s grown, it’s evolved, and it’s marked the occasion with two specials using the exact same closing number. They’ll do another special when the 30th anniversary rolls around, but this time, not much will have changed... except for one thing, and that one thing is the skyrocketing superstardom of a little guy with a red face. And I don’t mean Mickey Rooney!


Click here for Elmopalooza. And click here to make your reservation for the Furry Arms hotel on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: my week, Sesame Street

Click here to read about the 25th anniversary special! And click here to answer the Question of the Day on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: my week, Sesame Street

You know what happens next week? The 40th season of Sesame Street starts, that's what. And yes: 40 years is amazing, what a legacy, so many children educated, blah blah blah. Sesame Workshop is releasing a cool new book and a cool new DVD, but there's no TV special to celebrate the show going over the hill.

So I’m commemorating the show's 40th season by watching the previous anniversary specials, starting with 1979's 10-year show, A Walking Tour of Sesame Street with James Earl Jones. Later this week I’ll be watching the 20th anniversary special Sesame Street: 20 and Still Counting, the 25th anniversary special Stars and Street Forever, the 30th anniversary special Elmopalooza, and the 35th anniversary special The Street We Live On. Man, that’s a lot of anniversaries. Let’s get started.

So in 1979, Sesame Street had been around for a decade. That's quite an accomplishment for any TV series, although 30 years later it kinda seems pretty wimpy. As we've often heard, the show was created as an experiment to see if TV could teach kids in an entertaining way, so the point of the tenth anniversary special is basically to say, "Dude, it works!"

As you've most likely guessed unless you're pretty stupid, our host for this half hour is James Earl Jones, and he meanders down Sesame Street while talking to us. Sesame Street’s not a very big place, so a walking tour really doesn’t take very long. Jones takes a lot of breaks while we watch montages of clips from the show, which make up the bulk of the special. I don't know what he's doing while we're watching the clips... If I were James Earl Jones I'd probably just stand there saying random words out loud and marveling at how cool they sounded in my deep, rich voice. Words like "lugubrious."

There’s an alphabet montage that kicks off with a first-season clip of Jones himself reciting the alphabet – “I did it without cue cards!” he claims, although I remain unconvinced. That's not to say it’s not effective… James Earl Jones glaring at the camera while sternly growling the alphabet is a clip that taught a generation of children their ABCs while simultaneously terrifying them.

This montage also includes bits of alphabet segments with Flip Wilson, the cast of Bonanza, and Bill Cosby, who wears this remarkable getup:


Is Cos trying to look like a kid, or was there actually a time when that was an acceptable outfit? If Bill Cosby is reading this, I encourage him to call me up and let me know.

In this special, all the residents of Sesame Street are just going about their business while James Earl Jones addresses the camera. There’s nothing unusual about that – Susan and Gordon and the gang talk to the camera all the time. But to them, Sesame Street is a real place, where they live. Do they notice that James Earl Jones keeps talking referring to it as a television show? I hope not; if they were to become aware of their fictional nature they might suffer a complete nervous breakdown.

Man, overanalyzing the reality of Sesame Street is one of my favorite things to do.

Anyway, James Earl Jones is a good host for this show, because when he talks everyone listens, but he doesn’t seem entirely comfortable doing this gig. I’m pretty sure he is, in fact, reading from cue cards, and in his three-piece suit he comes across as overdressed, especially compared to Big Bird, who is of course one of the world’s most famous nudists.

At one point Jones says, “Sesame Street learned early on that the more we offered, the more the kids in the audience learned, and so the curriculum expanded.”

Hold it! What’s this “we” business? Since when does James Earl Jones write Sesame Street? And he keeps doing this throughout the show. I mean, really... The producers graciously offer him the privilege of hosting this special, and what does he do? When nobody's looking, he goes off-book, slips in a few “We did thises” and “We teach kids thatses,” and takes all the credit for the show himself. Pretty sneaky, Mr. Darth Vader!

One thing that's largely missing from the street scenes of this special so far is Muppets. Jones says hi to a bunch of humans, but we don’t see anyone furry until he approaches Oscar’s trash can halfway through the show. Oscar pops out, and Jones greets him: “Well, if it isn’t Oscar the Grouch!” Oscar says, “Well, if it isn’t Oscar the Grouch, someone’s been cloning around!”

That, by the way, is a perfect example of why Sesame Street deserved to last for 10 years and have its anniversary celebrated. It’s the kind of kids’ show that features a bitter, angry character who lives surrounded by trash, and who can deliver jokes that are deliberately constructed to go over the heads of the children in the audience. Yep, I'd say the show is a success.

Another observation: This is a pretty grouchy Oscar. I think some of the fans believe Oscar isn’t quite as grouchy he used to be, so I can’t wait to track his progress through all these anniversary specials and see how 10-year Oscar compares to 20-year Oscar, and 25-year Oscar and so on.

After one group of clips, we return to the street, where Jones is strolling – completely uninvited – into Big Bird’s empty nest area. Not cool, bro! Does Big Bird break into your house while you're not home? But Jones doesn’t give it a moment’s thought, he just keeps on talking to us about international co-productions or some crap. I'm not so sure about this Jones fellow.

One segment from the show that's presented here is a bit shot on location at the Metropolitan Opera House, with Big Bird trying to get the grown-ups to see Mr. Snuffleupagus, who’s coming to attend the opera. I can’t help but notice that, damn, the adults were mean to Big Bird back then.

Not only do they not believe that there’s a Snuffleupagus, they actively make fun of him for talking about it! While they all stand in front of a fountain, Snuffy walks by in the background, and Big Bird starts yelling: There he is! Turn around so you can see him, he’s right over there! And they just stand there, and they’re all like, “Oh, sure Big Bird, so all we have to do is turn around and we’ll see him, yeah, of course, sure…” and by the time they turn around, the fountain shoots up a wall of water, and Snuffy is completely obscured, and they all shake their heads and roll their eyes and leave. I know some kids of the 70s believe it was a mistake for the show to make Snuffy visible to the adults, but I think it was a great choice, because this clip makes me want to punch the TV.

Our Walking Tour wraps up with James Earl Jones sharing some final thoughts, and this is when Big Bird finally shows up. He appears to sniff Jones, and then he says, “You know, I’ve learned a lot on Sesame Street.” There’s an awkward pause (waiting for the cue card guy to switch to the next card?) and then Jones says, “And I’ve… met… many friends.” Then they stand there for a second like they’re not sure what to do… Is that it? And then they walk away from the camera, and that’s the end of that.

So it’s really not much of a 10th birthday party, really. (At least, it's not as exciting as my 10th birthday party when we played Battletoads all night). But here they are, and they must be amazed and overjoyed that they made it to ten years. And just think, this show is going to last long enough to see its fortieth anniversary! It’s perfectly reasonable, then, that the next anniversary special is a bit more self-congratulatory. And you can read about it tomorrow!

Other things about this special:

●When Jones first appears standing in front Hooper’s Store, he announces that he’s on one of the most famous streets in the world: "It’s not Flugel Street, and it’s not Pennsylvania Avenue… It’s not even the street where you live!" I'm sorry, but what the heck is Flugel Street?

●Here’s a fun fact: Will Lee, the actor who played Mr. Hooper, taught James Earl Jones acting at the American Theater Wing. Which is why it’s nifty, not to mention adorable, that Mr. Hooper greets Jones with a "Hi, Jimmy, nice to see you!"

●The Grover waiter sketch they use has Jerry Nelson’s Fat Blue customer Muppet making a mistake: Complaining about his alphabet soup, he says, “There’s a Y missing!” then corrects himself, saying, “No, not the Y… It’s the Z. The Z is missing.” I love stuff like that. I know it only happened because they didn’t want to do another take, but I find it endearing.

●The numbers montage includes a really funky song called “Gimme Five” that I don’t remember ever seeing on the show, but now I can't stop thinking about it:




Entertaining and educational! What a great TV show.


Special thanks to Tough Pigs' own Scott H for research assistance. Click here for the 20th anniversary special Sesame Street: 20 and Still Counting! And click here to mock Big Bird on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: my week, Sesame Street

Hey, how about that interview with Louise Gikow from the other day? Wasn't that fantastic? Sorry, what's that? You think it should've been longer? Well you are in luck, my furry friend! Part two of our chat with Louise is right here, right now!

ToughPigs: How did you get started in your career with the Muppets?

Louise Gikow: When I was very young, I was a graduate student of Medieval Literature at Columbia University. I got my Masters and decided that it was insane to be a Medievalist. It was a bad economic time and nobody wanted professors of medieval literature. I also realized that university teaching and the university atmosphere was probably not for me. I wanted real life. So I left, answered an ad in the New York Times, and got a job at the National Lampoon Magazine for six years. I worked with everyone from Doug Kenney to Henry Beard to John Belushi, because I was a production assistant on the first Lemmings show. I’ve been so incredibly lucky. I was there for about six years as the Senior Copy Editor, and then I decided that I didn’t want to be working for that magazine when I’d hit a ripe old age. I loved it madly, but it was time for me to move on, so I quit and freelanced for a while. And while I was freelancing, my friend Mark Saltzman, who had been writing for Sesame Street, called me and said that they were starting Muppet Magazine and they were looking for freelance-permanent staff. And I became the Managing Editor of that.

TP: So Muppet Magazine was your first job with the Muppets?

LG: Yeah, it was my first Muppet experience. I worked there for about a year, and it was a great gig for me, because I would come in irregularly and I made about $12,000 a year, which at that time was an enormous part of my income, which goes to show you how the world has changed. After about a year, Jane Leventhal, who was the head of publishing, who is the older sister of J.P. Leventhal, who is the publisher of [the Sesame Street 40th Anniversary book], called me up and said she’d like me to come and work full-time in the publishing division. I really like freelancing, and I like having permanent jobs, but I really don’t like transitioning between the two. And I told Jane a few weeks later that I had a nightmare the night after she asked me to come where she was chasing me around the office with a meat cleaver, shouting “Come join us! Come join us!” And I was running away going “No, no, I don’t want to! I like freelancing!” But I went and joined them anyway because it was one of those things you couldn’t pass up. I was lucky enough very soon afterward to become kind of an ad-hoc creative group that Jim gathered of people from a variety of places, and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time, and I guess he liked my big mouth and my ideas enough to invite me to all the meetings. So I didn’t do the scriptwriting very much for him, but I did a lot of bits and pieces like PR and internal films and things like that. Mostly I was a part of this brain trust kind of thing. And Jim… oh Jim, Jim was a wonderful guy. I miss him very much. He used to gather people together for these weekends, and he would hire the most amazing people, people who were famous in a variety of fields, and we’d go in and they’d tell you these fascinating things about their fields and we’d brainstorm about what we can do. It was just a joy, we were so lucky.

I did that for 11 years, past when Jim died, probably longer than I should have, mostly because I just loved it there and it was hard to leave. Then I got a job starting a publishing and multimedia division at Nickelodeon, and I thought I really had to try it. So I spent two years at Nickelodeon, and I learned more there than I had at any other job in my life, and it’s influenced everything I’ve done since, because it was more about what makes a successful show, what makes a successful network. And then Chris Cerf asked me to join Sirius Thinking, where I worked for seven or eight years, and I’ve got two Emmys to show for it. Then I left to freelance and I’ve been freelancing ever since.

I was always a book writer, I became a script writer, I helped develop shows like Johnny and the Sprites, I wrote the last two planetarium shows. And as a part of my freelance work, I got a call one day from J.P. Leventhal, and he told me about the 40th anniversary book, and he asked if it was a project I’d be interested in writing. Because when The Works was done, I was pretty instrumental in the publishing division, rewriting it and getting it all together. So I said you betcha. I know they’ve tried to do it before and haven’t really been able to. There was Sesame Street Unpaved, which was a different kind of book, and I think they planned on a 25th anniversary book in-house, but it was very difficult. I think one reason why it was possible now is because of the perspective. The world is changing so much and Sesame Street is still here, and it demands a celebration. It took a long time to get the project off the ground and it took a long time to get it done.

TP: You have written books for more of the Muppet franchises than just about anyone: Muppets, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, Muppet Babies, Muppet Kids, Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss., Labyrinth. Did you have a favorite franchise to work with?

LG: I love Fraggle Rock, I really do. I mean, I love them all, but there was something about Fraggle Rock that was joyous and amazing, and the people were extraordinary. It’s really inspired other people. John Tartaglia was inspired by Fraggle Rock to do Johnny and the Sprites. It has extraordinary music, it’s such a wonderful show. And it breaks my heart that more people don’t know about it, and I know they’re bringing it back now in DVDs, and I’m hoping that they really promote it because. It was a show that was ahead of its time in terms of a broadcast situation because it was on HBO and HBO wasn’t big enough. And the only place where it became popular was that band between America and Canada, because all of the northern states could pick up the signal from CBC. So we’d get huge numbers in Buffalo of Fraggle Rock fans because they could get it on television.

The other one that was close to my heart was the Palestinian-Jordanian-Israeli Sesame Street co-production. It was an amazing opportunity to work with those people, and to do something to really make a difference. That’s where Gary Knell is really standing out now, and that’s where he’s dug his heels in, saying this is how we’re going to change the world. I think Joan [Ganz Cooney] really wanted to change the world when she began, but I think she was thinking of the American world. And very soon after it became the international world. So to be a part of international for Sesame Workshop was an additional gift. I worked for Jim Henson for 11 years and it was all amazing, I loved it dearly, but that was something that let you wake up feeling good every day.

TP: Going back to the books, how did it work when you’d get an assignment? Did you pitch ideas, or would you get a note saying “We need a book about Wembley”?

LG: I’ll tell you the story about the first book I ever wrote. I wrote over 100 books, some under pseudonyms. I wrote under “Emily Paul” and “Rebecca Grand”. Emily Pauline is my niece, and Rebecca Grand was my grandmother. I liked both of those names, and I thought they sounded sort of professional. Now I can say it since no one will care anymore. Anyway, what would happen was we’d make a deal with the publisher, and they’d say how many books they want and how many pages in each book. So you really started with a format, and you’d know the kind of book you’d want to do and the age range of the kids who will read it. I was going to write the first Fraggle Rock books myself because they didn’t give us any lead time, and the show wasn’t going to be on for a while, and it was difficult to explain to people what the show was going to be. I was involved in production, I was at the set in Toronto, I knew about the show. So we were going to do the first books in-house and then outsource the later ones. You don’t want to do them all yourself, because then you don’t get any interesting voices. But I decided for the first book I ever wrote for them that I’d write “What’s a Fraggle?” I love rhyme, I love Dr. Seuss, and I wanted to write a sort of funny explanatory book for kids, because I thought it was a good way to start the line. Very often I would talk to the publisher about the book, or I would talk to [editor] Jane [Levinson] about my ideas, but this one I didn’t. We had a meeting where Jane told us what the formats were, and I said I’d like to do a book about Fraggles. She said let’s try a book like that, and then I went back to my office and wrote it in five minutes and came back and said “You mean like this?” She thought I was out of my mind. I’m sort of hyper when I get excited, and I’m a very fast typist. But I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and it was basically published verbatim, just as I wrote it. I don’t think there was a single word change. Jane really liked it and the publisher liked it, but God knows not all books were like that.

The way it works is, if the order is for eight books, you’d look at them and say “Let’s do a general book with all of the Fraggles, let’s do five featuring the main characters, and a Doozer book…” and I did a “What’s a Doozer?” book too, and I thought that had a genius idea, that the way Fraggles start was that there was a lazy Doozer who at a lot and didn’t exercise, so he became bigger and bigger and eventually became a Fraggle. So it’s part of Doozer lore that Fraggles are basically useless Doozers.

TP: You also wrote a lot of the Muppet Kids books. Was that any more difficult because you didn’t have source material to pull from, like Fraggle Rock or Muppet Babies?

LG: We were very careful on Muppet Kids. If you work for the Muppets for as long as we did, you really know these characters well. There were always creative kickoff meetings for things like this where we’d talk about how it would work, who would these kids be, where would they live, what would they look like and how would they behave?

The first time I came on board, when I was working for Muppet Magazine, I was writing the Miss Piggy column. The way you write a lot of this stuff, especially when you’re not the character yourself, is you get the voice of the character in your head. When I first began to do that, I had a meeting with Frank Oz. Frank was very particular about Miss Piggy at the time, and he spoke to me for a couple hours about Piggy. He told me the classic pig’s beginning story, born on a farm, lots of brothers. He was extremely helpful to me, because he told me where he got her from and from where he derived this extraordinary character and all the things that sort of made her her. So you’d get to know these characters like you know your friends. And I may not have known my best friend when she was 15, but I know who she was when she was 15. The essence of a person is the essence of a person. You know that Piggy started out scrabbling the yard with all her brothers, elbowing her brothers out of the way so she could get her share of the food because she was smaller, so she had to learn to be aggressive early on. So you know the kind of kid she was in grade school, and you know the kind of kid she was in junior high. She probably never went to college, and she’s probably embarrassed by that fact, because she had to go out and earn a living… To know who a character is is everything.

TP: You wrote the Sing Along with Kermit and Friends tapes. How was it different writing for Jim Henson, rather than just his characters in the books?

LG: Luckily for me, Jim was comfortable enough with what I’d written to just read them. Jerry Nelson, who’s just the most talented puppeteer, voice artist, character builder, and just an amazing and wonderful guy, did Robin on a number of those and was just amazing. I’m trying to think if it made any difference, and the truth is that it didn’t. Whatever I wrote they had to like, as far as I was concerned. It wasn’t a matter of whether they were going to read it or if they were going to read it and say it out loud. It was a little confrontational emotionally for me when they did it, but it was also very pleasurable. I loved working with them, they were brilliant, and I just loved being among them. But the books were just as important to me to get right, and if I didn’t write my best and do my best to get the voices right, I wouldn’t have been doing my job. And because everyone was so incredibly supportive, it was such a joy to work with them, it never occurred to me to be scared. It was actually more fun and more joyous, and I think the reason why I moved from writing books to doing more production is because I get to work with more people like that.

TP: I know that there are a good deal of inside jokes in the Muppet books. Were you ever caricaturized in any of your books?

LG: No, not as far as I know. My name was occasionally used as a character, but not artistically. Although I did play Miss Preen in the National Lampoon Yearbook. If you go back and find Miss Preen the guidance counselor, that was me.
Many special thanks to Louise Gikow for chatting with us! Keep an eye out for Sesame Street: A Celebration of Forty Years of Life on the Street, due in stores this November!

Click here to ask What's a Fraggle on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: interview, Sesame Street, Sesame Workshop

How do most average schmos mark their 40th birthday? They might have some cake, get some crappy novelty gifts like a “40 Isn’t Old If You’re a Tree” t-shirt, and endure a lot of jokes about being over the hill. But Sesame Street is no ordinary schmo. It’s one of the greatest TV shows of the last five centuries, which is why it deserves a big fancy book like the brand-new Sesame Street: A Celebration – Forty Years of Life on the Street by Louise Gikow. That's a pretty long title, but then, Sesame Street is a pretty long street.

The first thing you’ll notice about this book is that it’s massive. It’s a coffee table book, yeah, but you might just have to get a bigger coffee table to accommodate it. And if you were to hand the book to a small child of Sesame Street-watching age, he would most likely wobble unsteadily for a moment before adorably toppling over. This is a good thing: The bigger a book like this is, the more comprehensive it's likely to be, and we've been waiting for a Sesame book that we can not only sink our teeth into, but devour hungrily, Cookie Monster-style.

The second thing you’ll notice about the book is that the pictures are amazing. Even if you’ve read the previous behind-the-scenes books, seen the various TV specials about the show, and downloaded Muppet Wiki directly into your brain, I gurantee you will come across pictures you’ve never seen before.

It’s just as well the book is too big for me to take on the subway, because I would constantly be disturbing my fellow passengers with exclamations upon seeing all these cool and rare photos. Hey look, it’s Brian Meehl in China, wearing Barkley's head and feet! Hey look, it’s a promotional shot of the entire Muppet and human cast having a huge party on the “Around the Corner” set! Hey holy crap, it’s a shot of Jim Henson trying on Bert and Frank Oz trying on Ernie at an early workshop session!

The third thing you'll notice is that the book is equally perfect for the casual fan and the hardcore geek. About half of it is all the expected stuff, like how the show got started, how Maria and Luis got married, yada yada yada. That's all well and good for most of the book-buying public. But those of us who know how to spell "Snuffleupagus" without looking it up need more, and this book delivers. There are sections about how the set is built, how the music is recorded, the cartoons seen on the show, the various studios the show has occupied... and there are lots of tidbits throughout the book that I never knew: Slimey the worm's voice is that of sound effects editor Dick Maitland! Caroll Spinney still uses the exact same monitor when performing Big Bird that he used in the first season! Bobby Payne performed Telly in his first appearance! And so on.

And consider the fact that by the halfway point of the book, Sesame camera operator Frank Biondo has already been mentioned, like, eight times. That's right -- cameraman Frank Biondo is a major character in the book, and that is awesome. These shout-outs come during the pages that describe production on recent and yet-to-be-aired episodes, which really make you feel like you're there. Louise Gikow was a great choice to write this book, as she’s more than just a casual fan, she's an insider, having worked with the Jim Henson Company and Sesame Workshop on numerous projects.

I was initially a bit disappointed that there wasn’t a 40th anniversary TV special, but now I think this book is actually better. At 300 pages, it can delve into a little bit of everything instead of just showing us the same old boring clip of Ernie singing “Rubber Duckie” again.

As I said, it’s great for both geeks and normal people, and anyone can pick up the book and either read it straight through from beginning to end, or open it to any random page and find something to love. If you get sick of reading, you can stick the bonus DVD in your DVD player and watch the show’s first episode. Sure, you’ve already seen it, but it’s always fun to watch orange Oscar yell at Gordon #1.

So this is a book for anyone, basically, who’s ever heard of Sesame Street. I'm so glad it exists, and from cover to cover, it reminds me how glad I am that Sesame Street exists.



Come back later this week for part two of our interview with this book's own author Louise Gikow! And click here to give Sesame Street a crappy novelty 40th birthday gift on the Tough Pigs forum!

ToughPigsRyan@yahoo.com

Labels: books, review, Sesame Street, Sesame Workshop

The release of the epic coffee table book Sesame Street: A Celebration of Forty Years of Life on the Street is on the cusp of showing up on your doorstep (y'know, assuming you did the smart thing by pre-ordering it on Amazon.com). Rather than wait patiently on the stoop for the mailman, we took this opportunity to sit down for a chat with Louise Gikow, the book's writer and editor.

Stop back around these parts later this week for part 2 of our chat with Louise, when we'll be talking about her entire career with the Muppets. But for now, let's learn a thing or two about her work on Sesame Street: A Celebration!

ToughPigs: Can you tell us about some of the research you had to do for the book?

Louise Gikow: I was very lucky because I was with Sesame Workshop, and I knew many of the people involved. Many of the puppeteers, a lot of the writers, we were in and out of each other’s pockets over the years, and I love them all dearly. So one of the things I did was talk to every person I possibly could on the staff. And really, that was most of the research I had to do. That and my own knowledge of everything. I knew Richard Hunt very well, I knew Jim, I knew Jon Stone. I did use the internet. I used, God bless you, your site and I used the Muppet Wiki a lot. And I have to say, it’s extraordinary what you guys do. I will tell you, people at the Workshop have gotten information about what the Workshop is going to do from you guys before they even knew it was happening. There’s a habit at the Workshop, it’s a very casual work environment, that when some people got hired, they didn’t even know they were hired until somebody mentioned to them a week before shooting, “Oh by the way, we’re sending you your ticket,” and it’s like “So I got the job?”

I had to use the obituaries, sadly much more than I wanted to. But the truth is that most of what I did was talk to people. And it’s ironic because some of my interviews will sound like interviews that have been done in the past because people tend to give the same interviews over and over again, but I got them from the horses’ mouths. I was lucky enough to work with Betsy Loredo, who is a wonderful editor, who did a tremendous amount of work on this book. We had a conversation years ago, and we both felt really strongly that we wanted the book to not be a tombstone on what maybe some people think is a show that is no longer being produced. And what I envisioned was pretty much what happened. That season, I went on set for many, many days, I’d get there before 9 and I left when everybody left, and I sat in a chair on the set, and I got to meet all the members of the staff that I’d seen but never got a chance to talk to, and I literally scribbled in my notebook constantly. I wanted to get a sense in the book about actual production. I wanted this to be a book that people who are interested in television production could read and get a sense of what the show’s production is about. I really wanted to pay tribute to the people on staff who were the unsung heroes, not just the puppeteers. The technical people, the lightning people, cameramen, and really make sure they all show up in the book.

TP: Did you collaborate at all with Michael Davis?

LG: No, that was a completely separate project, but I think we’re appearing on a couple panels together. Actually, I still have to read his book. I specifically didn’t read it because I didn’t want to be influenced by it. He was writing at the same time I was, and I really wanted it to be my voice and the voice of the people who were in it, and it was too close a timeline. But because the books were so close, I wanted them to be different. I really wish him the best, and I want his book to sell well, I want our book to sell well. I think if they’re different, they’ll support one another. I also think it’s great that he was able to express a different point of view and really go after a different aspect of the whole thing. It was more me staying out of his hair because he got his haircut first, so I can’t say he had to stay out of mine. When I first went on set, everyone said “I’ve already talked to somebody who’s doing a book.” And I said, “But you didn’t talk to me! Who is this person?” I didn’t know about [Street Gang], and neither did publishing because it was another division of Sesame that had given him access. But they got used to me because I just sort of sat around and was very nice and smiled a lot. I was very well-behaved.

TP: What were some of the most challenging parts of writing and editing the book?

LG: It’s probably more publishing stuff; I know you’re more interested in Workshop stuff. That part was not challenging, everybody was very generous with their time, everyone was really willing, the materials were unbelievably rich. The problem was that writing a book like this is chicken and egg. When I spoke with my editor, and knowing the Workshop like I do, I asked her how she wanted me to do it, because there is an enormous treasure trove of images and information and letters and memorabilia, but we didn’t know what they were yet. They weren’t accessible yet because we hadn’t begun the research process. Each chapter starts out with an on-set visit and something that relates to that chapter, either puppeteering or behind-the-scenes or licensing or whatever. That part I could write because it was fresh. But the rest of the book was based on things that we didn’t have available. Normally if you’re writing a big coffee table book on just about anything, you’d have the images already, and your writing would determine what images you used. I couldn’t do that because I never knew what images were available. So the biggest challenge was writing an entire manuscript of many hundreds of pages, and then completely rewrite it for the most part because of what we discovered. We wrote it first, and some of it stayed, but some of it was cut because we didn’t have images, but more importantly, more images became available and we had to rewrite to that. And up until the last minute, we were rewriting to things that were surfacing weeks before it was due.

TP: Did you have a favorite part of making the book?

LG: Talking to the people. I got a chance to meet a lot of people I’d heard about. Frank Biondo, Caroll Spinney I didn’t know well, a lot of the actors and actresses. But talking to everyone was so extraordinary. And having an excuse to spend four hours with Steve [Whitmire], who I never get to see. Spending a little more time with Matt Vogel, who I vaguely knew. Getting to know Joan [Ganz Cooney], who I had met but never really spoken with. I got to watch the older interviews done with the American Television Institute. I just loved it. It was one of the main reasons why I agreed to write the book. What a gift, to be able to spend your life near people like that. It’s like, how did I end up here by answering an ad in the New York Times? These are the greatest people. I work with geniuses, whatever that word means.

TP: What about your least favorite part?

LG: It had to be all of the people I didn't meet. What I’m talking about is all the people who I didn’t get a chance to talk to. I mean, office managers from 1979. I send my thanks to everyone who was involved, all the people I couldn’t talk to as well as the ones I could, because every single one of them left a bit of themselves in the company and on the show.

TP: Was it difficult to find a balance in the book between the old years of Sesame Street and the new?

LG: Not really, no. I didn’t feel that there was. I’d like to think that I did a good job at keeping it balanced. Clearly there’s an awful lot of early stuff here, but I wanted to reflect what production is like right now and how it has changed.

One of the things I really wanted to do, and this is specifically to you and to [the Muppet Wiki] and all the fans out there, but I really wanted to put at least one thing in the book that you didn’t know, but I don’t know if I succeeded because you guys know everything! Many of the images I’m sure you’ve never seen, but I hope there’s at least a point of view or something that you guys will really like. It’s you guys who have kept it alive in an extraordinary way, and it’s humbling to everyone at the Workshop, and we admire you enormously. And it’s why I always felt that there was a little ToughPig sitting on my shoulder saying, is it good enough, is it original enough, is it unique enough, will you like it?

TP: I’m glad we were involved somehow! Was there anything in the book that you wanted to be in it, but had to cut?

LG: The truth of the matter is that you can’t include everything you want in a book like this. I wish I could have acknowledged every single person. Another thing that had to get cut was a lot of the on-set stuff. There were an awful lot of funny lines and interesting things that I had to let go of. I wrote a book that’s probably three times the length of the one that came out. But there’s nothing specific, nothing that stands out as a hole in the book.

TP: Since you’re one of a few people who has really delved into Sesame Street’s 40-year history recently, is there an era where you feel like the show was at its peak?

LG: Not really, no. The truth of the matter is that there are peak moments throughout. For example, there’s a description in the book of Jim and Frank in a recording session doing Bert and Ernie, and some of it was scripted and some of it was ad-libbed, and what comes out on the screen is just extraordinary. A couple of those moments with the kids, like Jon Jon, are just amazing moments. The sad moments, like Mr. Hooper, and the reveal of Snuffy. I like to think the show is sort of like a life. As a newborn, you take lots and lots of pictures, but less as it gets older. But that doesn’t mean that graduations and jobs and so many moments through a person’s life aren’t as important. The entire 40-year arc for me is a highlight.
Click here for part two of our interview with Louise Gikow, where you'll see Louise talk about her career writing for the Muppets!

Click here to be the little ToughPig on Louise's shoulder on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: interview, Sesame Street, Sesame Workshop

Earlier this month, Sesame Workshop announced that they are entering a deal with American Apparel to produce four new t-shirt designs featuring Sesame Street characters to help celebrate the show's 40th anniversary.

Did the folks at Sesame Workshop forget to Google American Apparel? Because this is a terrible, terrible idea.

Take five seconds and do a Google Image search for "American Apparel" (but only when your boss isn't lurking about). You'll see advertisements with pictures of young girls with their legs spread wide, without tops on, showing an unnecessary amount of skin, and otherwise bearing their assets. Some of these girls are professional porn stars, and some of these girls look like they're spread eagle on the floor of a dirty warehouse. Now picture those same girls modeling Sesame Street shirts. That doesn't seem like the sort of image we normally see in an ad for a Big Bird tee.

Behind the scenes, things aren't so much better. American Apparel CEO Dov Charney has been accused more than a few times of sexual harassment, and has proven to be quite a sleazeball outside of the office as well. They've had their fair share of scandals, which should have raised a red flag or two to Sesame.

But beyond the pornographic advertising and disgusting CEO, we're still just talking about t-shirts, right? Maybe if the shirts are pretty, we can overlook the name on the label and enjoy our Sesame Street merch. Sadly, the illustrations don't quite chalk up to the Sesame shirts we've enjoyed over the years. Simple line-drawings that look more like fan art drawn by a kid in junior high (no offense to all you 12-year-old fan artists out there!) don't seem like something that would either benefit a worldwide company like American Apparel or do Sesame Street's 40th anniversary justice.

The worst of the bunch, however, is the image at the top of this article. Though I've obscured the naughty bits, the pantsless girl in question is most likely going commando. The image, which was grabbed straight from American Apparel's website, actually blurred out the crotch (poorly, I might add), presumably because their model was dressed a little bit too casual. I guess nobody told her that she's modeling a shirt with images of preschool characters.

So in short, Sesame Workshop needs to screen their licensing partners a little better, and possibly find one that would be a bit more appropriate. I recommend something a little less porny.
Click here to slip into something a little more comfortable on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: merchandise, Sesame Street

Do you have your Thinking Cap on? Well, take it off right now and put on your Remembering Stuff About the Muppets Cap, because it's time once again for Wikitrivia! Below are a bunch of trivia questions about stuff that's on Muppet Wiki. Maybe you already know all this stuff because you're a great big geek, but if not, click on the answer links for the answers to the questions and craploads of further info.

And yes, I know you could just hover your mouse over the links to see the answers without reading the articles, but that would be cheating, and if you did that I would be very disappointed in you. I might even cry, and no one wants to see that.

1. According to his original performer Toby Towson, which Sesame Street character was initially conceived as "an acrobatic ape?"
Click here for the answer!

2. The town of Coos Bay, Oregon inspired the name for what far-out fictitious location occasionally seen on The Muppet Show?
Click here for the answer!

3. What's the name of the donkey from The Muppet Musicians of Bremen?
Click here for the answer!

4. Who is the only actor to make cameos in two theatrically released Muppet movies?
Click here for the answer!

5. From what college do the Muppets graduate in The Muppets Take Manhattan?
Click here for the answer!

6. Which of the three main characters on Little Muppet Monsters was performed by Richard Hunt?
Click here for the answer!

7. Who is the mayor of Waterville in Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas?
Click here for the answer!

8. Where can you find a statue of Jim Henson and Kermit the Frog sitting on a bench?
Click here for the answer!

9. In the Fraggle Rock episode "Boober's Quiet Day," who is Boober forced to impersonate?
Click here for the answer!

10. What's the name of the seedy dive where Kermit first meets Fozzie in The Muppet Movie?
Click here for the answer!

11. What starchy deity is briefly worshipped by the citizens of Pangaea in an episode of Dinosaurs?
Click here for the answer!

12. What's the closing number of the Peter Sellers episode of The Muppet Show?
Click here for the answer!

13. Which Muppet rock band performed the song "Rock 'n' Roll Readers" on Sesame Street?
Click here for the answer!

14. A robot version of which American president ran amok on the Paula Abdul episode of Muppets Tonight?
Click here for the answer!

15. According to a 1977 Sesame Street song, what is Bert's favorite number?
Click here for the answer!

So, how'd you do? Click here to compare scores on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: fanaticism, Sesame Street, The Muppet Show

In the next step to help celebrate Sesame Street's 40th anniversary, Sesame Workshop is teaming up with two of my favorite celebrities: Brooklyn, New York and libraries.

The Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza will be slewing a host of events (sorry, that's hosting a slew of events) through November, including the exhibit "Sesame Street: A Celebration of 40 Years of Life on the Street". The exhibit will run from November 14 to February 21, and will include Muppets and show props, scripts and sheet music, and photographs and animation cels. I heard a rumor that they might have Emilio Delgado in a glass case, but that's probably not true.

When the exhibit opens on November 14, the Brooklyn Public Library will hold a Family Fun Day, in which you can be among the first to see the displays and meet a real life walkaround Elmo! We don't have word yet if it will be Kevin Clash in the Elmo suit, but don't get your hopes up. Or get them up, what do I care?

On November 21, Bob "Bob" McGrath will be on hand to kick out a few jams for the kids (and the Bobketeers like myself, who will be standing in the back row). Bob's concert will start at 1:00pm.

Following Bob's operetta, Louise Gikow will moderate a panel discussion about Sesame Street's 40th anniversary and the upcoming book, Sesame Street: A Celebration. Panel members include Fran Brill, puppet builder Rollie Krewson, Bob McGrath, Carol-Lynn Parente, and Chris Cerf. Panel watchers will include me. The panel will start at 4:00pm on November 21.

To reserve your free tickets for the two events, call the Brooklyn Public Library at 718-230-2100.
Finally, all 60 Brooklyn Public Libraries will have limited edition Elmo library cards to dole out to budding readers. There are only 30,000 cards, so get yours fast! And if you don't want a new library card (or if you're one of those "non-Brooklynites"), they will also be giving away free Sesame Street bookmarks, coming in four different designs.

If you live near the New York area, be sure to stop by and see the exhibit! And if you attend the panel discussion, come say hello to your ToughPigs friends!
Click here to crack open a book on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: events, Sesame Street, Sesame Workshop

How did the Cold War end? Maybe you thought it was the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, but in reality, the seeds were sown by Marlo Thomas three years earlier… and she never could have done it without the Muppets, in a TV special that you probably haven’t seen. In 1988, Thomas produced a TV special called Free to Be… a Family.



It was a follow-up of sorts to Free to Be… You and Me, her lovely 1974 special which explained how boys and girls are equal, and people who are different can still be friends, and other stuff that everyone really should have already figured out by 1974.

The Free to Be… a Family TV special is an international variety show, as kids in Moscow meet kids in the New York City via the magic of television. Penn and Teller teach the kids how to do a magic trick, a Russian rock singer sings a song with words I can’t understand (Honestly, it’s like he’s not even speaking English), and Robin Williams shows up to be hyper for a few minutes.

The other executive producer of the special was longtime Sesame Street contributor Christopher Cerf, and it was written by Cerf with Sesame writer Norman Stiles and Sesame composer Sarah Durkee… all of which explains why there are Muppets in the show. The first Muppets we see are Kermit and his (non-Sesame) pal Miss Piggy, in a filmed segment demonstrating how the American puppets traveled to Moscow to meet with a Russian puppet character to “hammer out the terms of this show.”



Piggy doesn’t say much, so I’m guessing Frank Oz wasn’t present for the filming, (photographic evidence from Muppet Wiki suggests Piggy was puppeteered by Kathy Mullen) but they’re really in Russia, so I’m guessing Jim Henson made the trip, which is pretty impressive. Less impressive is the Russian puppet character, Kruscha the Pig (whose name I’m probably spelling wrong. If anyone reading this is familiar with Russian children’s television, please correct me). Compared to the expressiveness of Kermit and Piggy, Kruscha looks pretty lame. He’s really just a fancy finger puppet, and his mouth doesn’t even move. No wonder the Soviet Union failed, if that’s the best puppet they could come up with to represent their nation.

Kermit and Kruscha’s negotiations involve a lot of yelling and banging on the table, but finally, as Marlo Thomas tells us, “the exact details of our show were agreed upon.”


The next time we see Muppets in the special is a segment called “Pig to Frog,” which is presented as a panel discussion between “a distinguished panel of Americans, and an equally distinguished panel of Soviets" who "participate in a frank and open discussion” of their differences. The American panel includes two Honkers, a penguin, and Meryl Sheep; in other words, the very definition of the word “distinguished.”


So this is the weirdest part of the special. The purpose of the whole project is to teach kids that their counterparts in a Communist country are just like them, and that citizens of both countries have a lot to offer each other. But in this segment, Kermit talks about how crappy life in the Soviet Union is, and then Kruscha talks about how terrible life in the USA is. It’s completely contrary to the message of the show!

They’re pretty funny, though. Kermit shows us a Soviet elephant who lost his job and the love of his life…


…and Kruscha tells the story of a homeless bear, performed by Kevin Clash, who just can't catch a break.



I’ve never been to 540 Park Avenue in NYC – a web search tells me it’s the Regency Hotel – but if I ever find myself passing by, I’m going to look for this sign:

This bit features an appearance by Whoopi Goldberg, in what would be the briefest, most random cameo of her career until Letters to Santa: A Muppets Christmas 21 years later.


So basically, the “Pig to Frog” sequence teaches us that Americans and Soviets can never get along, and that both countries are awful places to live. So much for druzhba.

But wait, there’s still more Muppets! An ongoing gag in Free to Be… a Family is the premise that the satellite link between Moscow and New York is maintained by Lily Tomlin’s character Ernestine the operator. She sits in a control room inside a van parked on the street, and of course she gets to count ringy-dingys.

About halfway through the show, Ernestine informs Marlo Thomas that if she wants to continue the connection, she’ll have to feed the parking meter. Thomas doesn’t have any change, but she’s rescued by a passing Honker, who gives her a quarter. But where has he been keeping that quarter? Honkers don’t wear no pants -- they ain’t got no pockets!


There’s one more super-brief appearance by a Muppet who shows up in a montage, but I’ll let you see for yourself in the following YouTube clip, which contains the rest of the aforementioned Muppet moments too.





And here’s a fascinating tidbit if you’re a fan of the sitcom Scrubs: One of the American kids who gets to talk to his Russian penpal is Donald Faison, who would grow up to play Turk on that show. And Faison’s younger brother Olamide was the third actor to play Miles on Sesame Street, which just goes to show you that everything and everyone in the world is inexorably linked to Sesame Street forever.

In conclusion: If Marlo Thomas ever writes a memoir, she should definitely call it Rescued by a Passing Honker.
Click here to talk about Communist puppets on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: Muppets on TV, Sesame Street

Do you remember the days when you had to sit in front of your TV all day just to catch a glimpse of that commercial everyone is talking about? Or when you actually had to wait for the new season of your favorite show to debut before seeing what they had in store for you? Me neither.

This new-fangled age of immediacy on the internet has completely spoiled me. Now as soon as something Muppety shows up, we can share the wealth! And in the past week, a lot of Sesame Street and Muppet videos have been begging to be shared. Let's take a peek:

The latest videos to hit the net are the Muppet Monsters on Disney.com, celebrating the Pagan candy holiday, Halloween. Give a click and see Big Mean Carl, Yorick (the skull, not the purple dude), Mo Frackle, and some other spooky-yet-obscure characters tell some not-so-scary jokes.
There was a surprise cameo or two on last week's episode of Dancing with the Stars, featuring Animal, Gonzo, and Aaron Carter. That last guy isn't a Muppet, but he does dance to one of their favorite jams.

The Muppets have been popping up all over the Disney websites lately, promoting Disney's "Give a Day, Get a Disney Day" campaign. Three commercials have already hit the net, the first of which (featuring James Denton) can be seen below. The other two aren't on YouTube yet, but you can watch Miss Piggy lock eyes with Taye Diggs here and butt heads with Teri Hatcher here.

From the same campaign, Kermit and Piggy donned their hardhats (to protect their puppeteers' hands, I guess) to officially announce "Give a Day, Get a Disney Day." According to the video uploader, this took place on September 29, which hopefully means that Steve Whitmire is back performing Kermit. Charity shmarity, I'm just glad Steve is back!

Next month, Sesame Street starts its 40th season, making it only ten years away from joining AARP. To get us started on the party early, they released some videos to keep us amused. First, take a look at the updated opening sequence. The hipper version of the theme song is still in play, but now we get to see Cookie Monster eating chalk (what, are they turning him into Chalk Monster now??).

Following in the footsteps of her First Lady brethren (sistren?), Michelle Obama is slated to appear on Sesame Street to talk about the all-important issue of gardening. How much longer must we endure Obama's liberal agenda???

In order to give Leslie Carrara's arms a rest, Abby Cadabby will be appearing as a much more static (and creepy-eyed) version of herself in the CGI segment, "Abby's Flying Fairy School". I wonder what she did to get kicked out of Storybook Community School...

It didn't take long for Apple to sneak some product placement into Sesame Street. When do you think we'll see the "I'm a Mac/I'm the letters P and C" parody?

Lastly, the video that's been hitting all the blogs in the right places, we've got Sesame Street's Mad Men parody. It's exactly like Mad Men, except less sexism and cigarettes, and more Joey Mazzarino. The sketch is also notable for the triumphant return of Frank Oz, who performs a better Don Draper than John Hamm himself.

Click here to write an ad for the Happy Honey Bear account on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: internet, Muppets on TV, Sesame Street

Hey, did you see the Sesame Street special Families Stand Together, which aired a couple weeks back on PBS? It was scheduled for a Wednesday night, but then Barack Obama went and decided to talk about health care or some crap like that, so it got preempted on many PBS stations. What's the big idea, Obama? I thought you liked Sesame Street! Who do you think you are, anyway -- the prime minister?!?!


But heck, who cares? Only old people still watch TV on their televisions! If you haven't seen the special, you can click this link right here to watch it on Sesame Workshop's website.


So, the point of the show was to help families deal with financial crisis in the recession, so I can't make fun of it or I'd be a big jackass. (Although I have to say the title's not very memorable -- I keep calling it "Families Standing Up" or "Families Hanging Out" or "Families Falling Off the Monkey Bars.") And anyway, it's a very good special.

It's hosted by Al Roker and his wife Deborah Roberts, who are hanging out on Sesame Street on the day of the big "Community Market," which is apparently a fancy name for a flea market. I love that Elmo and Grover and Chris all act like Al Roker is their best pal whom they've known for years. There are many reasons I'd like to live on Sesame Street, but that's a biggie -- the fact that I'd automatically be friends with any celebrity guest who dropped by.

Speaking of biggies, Al Roker sure looks different since he lost all that weight, doesn't he? I can't help but feel like he's the wrong shape somehow... he's kind of like a Stretch Armstrong that's lost all its elasticity. I wasn't expecting so much Grover in this special, but it's great to see so much of him. He has some great, Grovery bits with Chris, as he tries to buy a community at the community market and looks for a job.


Meanwhile, Elmo's family has run into trouble: His mom has lost her job. And so, as we see in scenes interspersed throughout the special, they're making a few changes in their lifestyle and cutting a few corners. But that doesn't mean they can't have a good time as a family! You know, I have to wonder how much money they've spent on fish food for Elmo's goldfish Dorothy over the past 12 years. That's one old fish.

So then there are real, human families who are not as loveable as Elmo and his parents, but who have also found themseles in tough situations after losing jobs and such. I really don't know how a child might respond to all this stuff, but the dominant theme is always "It's going to be okay because we're still a family," which is nice without being too unrealistic. It wouldn't really do any good to tell them, "Soon we're going to be able to take that trip to Disney World after all!" because it probably won't happen, but telling them they're going to be okay is probably... okay. There's a song about that too, but unfortunately it was super-bland.


So, yeah. This was a good TV special, and thank goodness Sesame Street is around to do stuff like this (I was surprised to see that they got some help producing this show from Worldwide Pants, which is David Letterman's company. I always got the impression Letterman didn't even like Muppets!). Of course, it would be even better if the economy hadn't gotten so bad and they had never had to do this special in the first place, but for all the tickle hands and silly Elmo birthday DVDs, it's great to see Sesame still doing something so important.


Oh, but I just want to point out one thing: Toward the end of the show, the kids from one of the featured families are selling lemonade for 25 cents a cup. Al Roker pays them a quarter and takes a cup... and then Deborah takes a cup too, but they never pay for it! It's a hot cup of lemonade! THE ROKERS STEAL LEMONADE FROM FINANCIALLY STRUGGLING CHILDREN -- PASS IT ON!

Click here to update your résumé on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: review, Sesame Street, Sesame Workshop

You know how people in their 20s and 30s are always complaining about the current version of Sesame Street? They say the show has been ruined, that it's a shadow of its former self, that it's a whine whine of its kvetch kvetch... The complaints are nearly always built around one word, and that word is Elmo.

Folks who watched the show in the 70s and 80s hate the fact that a sappy, silly "new" character became a star and usurped Big Bird as the representative Sesame Street character. Several weeks back, in my review of the new Sesame Street DVD Being Green, I embedded the "Elmo's Green Mashup" video, which was officially posted on YouTube by the show's producers. Anyone who knows me well knows I'm always fascinated by internet comments, and I couldn't resist looking to see what the common people of the web had to say about the clip.

One trend immediately caught my attention. Several commenters who saw the clip assumed that Elmo's change of hue was a permanent development... and they were pretty unhappy about it. This comment posted by AnimenerdMuffin is representative of this: "noooo he cant be green D: he was always red when i watched him growing up"

Meanwhile, NikTee123 is a little confused, but had the same basic reaction: "wtf first they made the cookie monster orange now elmo is green. WHAT ON EARTH IS HAPPENING ON THAT STREET!"

lexy1234 is even more sadly misinformed about other characters, but is in the same boat: "this sucks. elmo and cookie monster have changed. elmo is green. cookie monster is now the veggie monster. what happened to the old days :( "

Do you know what this means? The tide is turning! Whereas Generation X holds dear the pre-Elmo Sesame Street from its childhood and resents Elmo for showing up and changing it, we now have Generation Y, who grew up with Elmo and resents any indication of a Sesame Street without the standard Elmo. Mr. Born-in-1974 believes with every fiber of his being that the only true Sesame Street is the Sesame Street before the little red guy... but you know what? Mr. Born-in-1994 believes with just as many fibers that Elmo is an essential ingredient in the Sesame Street recipe.

Just think -- whereas now we have young adults complaining that Elmo has taken screen time away from classic characters like Big Bird and Grover, in just a few years we're likely to have young adults ranting about how Abby has taken screen time away from classic characters like Elmo and Baby Bear! Since Elmo hit the big time, grown-ups have been like, "It's a huge mistake to give Elmo the spotlight over the classic characters! The show was so much better before he showed up!" But now the viewers who were in the audience for the first Elmo's World segments are becoming grown-ups themselves, and they're all like, "It's a huge mistake to change the Elmo character! The show needs the classic Elmo!"

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, and I guess I don't really have a point to make, and I can't say that one group of fans is more correct than the other. But isn't it interesting?



Click here to wonder what happened to the old days on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: controversy, Sesame Street

You know who's great? Cookie Monster, that's who. You know what I'd like to do today? Watch some Cookie Monster videos, that's what. So first off, here's Cookie Monster at the library, a sketch which features a typically fantastic performance by Richard Hunt, who plays the librarian.



Next, here's one featuring one of my all-time favorite Muppet pairings, and possibly the all-time most underrated: Cookie Monster and Prairie Dawn.



Here's Cookie's cousin Baby Monster, who doesn't like cookies. Doesn't like cookies?!



Elsewhere on the Monster family tree, here's Cookie with his mom, who is not very classy, despite her stylish hairdo and earrings:



Aaand finally, here's an old classic, in which Cookie Monster settles an argument between two kids (and in which the title of the video totally gives away the joke).



Well, that was fun. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go devour an entire package of Chips Ahoy.

Click here to express your love of cookies and Cookie Monster on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: Sesame Street

Disclaimer: This article is not exactly about Muppets. Actually, it's not about Muppets at all. But it is about Sesame Street, and it is very, very important.

If you’re a big fan of Sesame Street, like myself, or my fellow Tough Pigs, or President Barack Obama, you probably know that the human character Gordon has been played by three actors in the show’s history: Matt Robinson, who originated the role; Hal Miller, who only stuck around for two seasons; and Roscoe Orman, the best-known and most beloved Gordon. But what about this guy?



What about this guy?!

This is the actor who played Gordon in a 1969 test episode (available on the DVD release Sesame Street Old School Vol. 2), which was screened for kids before Sesame Street made its official TV debut so the producers could find out what worked and what didn’t. This guy, apparently, is what didn’t.

While his co-stars Loretta Long, Bob McGrath, and Will Lee were chosen for the privilege of saying the alphabet on television (in the roles of Susan, Bob, and Mr. Hooper, respectively), this guy didn’t make the cut. Maybe children didn’t like him, or maybe the producers didn’t like him, but either way, this Proto-Gordon was not destined to be part of the show. So before it had even started, his Sesame Street career was... what's the word I'm looking for?



Done. Right. It was done. So who was that guy? Here’s the shocking truth: Nobody knows. Muppet Wiki, the most comprehensive source of Sesame Street facts in human history, describes him as “an unidentified actor.” When Michael Davis wrote the Sesame Street history Street Gang, he interviewed tons of people involved with the show and was given access to thousands of pages of documents… and he didn't find out anything about the Proto-Gordon! In his book, Davis quotes Jon Stone as saying, "At the last moment we cast an actor with whom no one was completely happy..." Later, Davis describes him as "a person in the neighborhood that children would run away from, not to." And that's it for poor old Proto-Gordon.



Of course, if he had been credited, I wouldn't be nearly so curious about him. If Street Gang had said something like, "Gordon was played in the pilot by Franklin P. Funkytonsils, a struggling New York actor who never did anything else of note," I would be satisfied. But instead we have a mystery, and my inquiring mind will forever be churning until it's solved. So I’d like to take this opportunity to shout a question out into the vast expanse of the internet: Does anyone know who this guy is?

Seriously - if you know anything about this guy (or if you ARE this guy) please post on the Tough Pigs forum or drop me an e-mail. Is he still among the living? Did he continue acting, or did the rejection drive him to abandon his show-business dreams forever? Was he always bitter about not getting the job, watching from the outside as Sesame Street became one of the most important TV programs in history? Does he still watch the show today, and if so, which episode of Elmo’s World is his favorite? Perhaps there are no answers to these questions. Perhaps the identity of the Proto-Gordon will never be known to man (or woman, or grouch or monster or bird or etc.). But if he’s out there, I just want to say this to him: Nice dance moves, man.



Click here to help us solve the mystery of the Proto-Gordon on the Tough Pigs forum! And my thanks to Muppet Wiki for the nifty images!

Labels: controversy, old school, Sesame Street, Sesame Street humans

Forty years ago today, Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, and people all over the world watched in awe as the first human beings set foot on the big rock in the sky. Four months later, Sesame Street premiered, and completely spoiled the excitement of space travel.

As exciting as it was to see two guys bounce around on the Moon, Sesame Street didn’t take much time before turning that crowning achievement into nothing more than a blip in aeronautic history.

Ernie himself has expressed his distinct disinterest in lunar travel and the eventual colonization of the Moon. In “I Don’t Want to Live on the Moon,” he compares living on the Moon to the horror of trying to survive underwater, living amongst dangerous animals in the jungle, and a lifetime of running from man-eating dinosaurs. Thankfully, Ernie’s warning has given us the comfort of knowing that our lives are much better without the possibility of having to live on the Moon, especially one with so little real estate that it can barely hold one Ernie-sized Muppet.

In his opus, “C is for Cookie,” Cookie Monster declares that “the Moon sometimes looks like a C, but you can’t eat that.” Of course, that wouldn’t stop him from trying. Sesame Street’s resident overeater once compared the Moon to his most desirable temptation in “If Moon Were Cookie.” In the song, he fantasizes about riding in a convertible-style rocket ship to the Moon, and then eating and digesting that giant satellite that gives us moonlight and controls our tides, thus tossing civilization on earth into utter chaos. He then discovers that the whole endeavor would be catastrophic and regrets thinking of it in the first place. How great could the Moon be if Cookie Monster is so willing to abandon the embodiment of his obsession?

Even “Other Guy on the Moon” Buzz Aldrin had to disillusion Cookie Monster by explaining that the Moon is made of boring old rocks, as opposed to totally awesome cookies. Why does the Moon have to suck so bad, Buzz Aldrin? Why???

In 1998, five brave worms ventured into outer space to wriggle on the Moon (while forming letters and numbers in zero-G, because that’s totally what I’d do if I could float around weightlessly). Though their vessel was blessed by Mr. Tony Bennett, their trek into the void is marred by one thought: Why worms? Is it because they eat less, take up less room, and can use a toothbrush holder as a spacesuit? No, it’s because they chose the most inferior species on earth to send to the lifeless rock in the sky, where they’ll most likely burn up on reentry. Sorry worms, but this mission isn’t even worth the time of our space monkeys, let alone human beings.

Sesame Street has never steered me wrong before, and if they’re going to come straight out and say that the Moon is a useless splotch in the sky, one which nobody in their right mind would ever even consider visiting, then I’m happy taking their word for it. The Moon sucks, and I am willing to get punched in the face by Buzz Aldrin to defend my position. Besides, it seems like they’ll let just about anybody onto the Moon these days.
Click here to boldly go where no Muppet fan has gone before on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: Sesame Street

Last week, the King of Pop unexpectedly passed away. No, not Dr. Pepper. Michael Jackson shed this mortal coil, leaving a trail of press coverage in his wake. Every news source, including blogs, has been talking about Michael, so why should we be left out?

Long before MJ became the poster child for all things creepy, he crossed paths with the Muppets a few times. The most notable example is his appearance in A Special Sesame Street Christmas, the goofy special nobody saw because Christmas Eve on Sesame Street completely overshadowed it. Michael's afro (and Michael) passed by Oscar's can to donate the book, "Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex Ghosts", to the Scrooge-ified grouch. He doesn't count to (Jackson) 5, he doesn't Moonwalk in the shape of the letter R, he doesn't organize a cadre of celebrities to sing about how we are the world. He just hands Oscar a book and exits, stage right. Check out the video below for Michael's cameo, which is sandwiched in between Ethel Merman singing the Christmas classic, "Tomorrow," and the moustacioed Smothers Brother dressed as an astronaut.

Michael was parodied and referenced a few times here and there: a Muppet Babies comic book cover, "Beat It" in the Muppet Show on Tour show, "Billie Jean" light-up sidewalks in the "I'm Gonna Always Love You" music video. But Jackson only had one other significant connection to Sesame Street, which Chris Cerf related at a book signing last winter.

For all of the musical parodies that Sesame Street produced, very few of them resembled the original song enough to warrant legal action. "Letter B", a parody of The Beatles' "Let It Be", had the unfortunate distinction of being too similar to the original. Northern Songs, which owned the Beatles' library, threatened to sue the Children's Television Workshop for $5.5 million. Thankfully, before the case went to trial, Michael Jackson swooped in on wings of angels and purchased the Beatles catalog. He decided not to pursue legal action, and CTW was only fined $50, which Cerf paid out of his own pocket.

Did Michael decide to drop the suit because of his appearance in A Special Sesame Street Christmas? If so, maybe the special wasn't so bad after all. It might've saved Sesame Street $5.5 million (minus $50, of course). And we'll just tack that on as one of the many, many ways Michael Jackson left his mark on the world.
Special thanks to Guillermo for uploading the video!

Click here to Moonwalk on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: death, Sesame Street

This past weekend, America celebrated its 233rd 4th of July. Other countries had a 4th of July too, but they just called it "Saturday." PBS did their part with A Capitol Fourth, which featured British celebrities, Chinese fireworks, German frankfurters, and a touch of good ol' fashioned American patriotism. The Sesame Street gang was on-hand to lend some red white and blue (and green and yellow and pink) to the celebration, and while we wait for some kind soul to add the entire segment to YouTube (which included an introduction by Barack "I'm the President and You're Not" Obama), let's take a peek at the two videos that are available to us.

First up is a promo for the special featuring former fictional President Jimmy Smits and some red furry thing that sounds like the baby from Dinosaurs.

Next is the whole Sesame clan at the tail end of their appearance with special guest Natasha Beddingfield. And for some reason, Cookie Monster looks really bored. Maybe he hates America.

Click here to stick a feather in your cap and call it macaroni on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: Muppets on TV, Sesame Street

In honor of Sesame Street being old enough to be your mom, Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers is releasing Sesame Street: A Celebration, a 304-page hardcover book with 1,100 photographs, loads of behind-the-scenes materials, and a DVD (just in case reading just isn't your thang). Not just that, but the publisher provided ToughPigs with some sample pages of the new book! And we'll do with those pages what we do with everything: Put it online for the entire world to read. You are most welcome.

Sesame Street: A Celebration is due in stores in November, 2009 and will retail for $40.

Click here to discuss 40 years' worth of Sesame Street on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: books, Sesame Street

Here's a secret: one of my all-time favorite Muppets isn't one that is seen regularly like your Grovers or Gonzos. Chances are you don't own any merchandise or DVDs with him in them. He doesn't even speak the Queen's English. I have a soft spot in my heart for Moishe Oofnik, Rechov Sumsum's resident hobo.

Fun Fact #1: Moishe might be the only Sesame Street Muppet to have gotten drunk on-screen.

Thankfully for me and the rest of Moishe's fan club, SISU Entertainment just released "Meet Oofnik the Grouch", a new DVD featuring everybody's favorite Israeli garbage-dweller. The DVD boasts three full episodes of Rechov Sumsum, plus bonus clips. The total running time came to about an hour, which already trumps the domestic Sesame DVDs, which usually come to about half that.

Fun Fact #2: "Meet Oofnik the Grouch" translates into "Meet Grouch the Grouch." It's like using your "PIN number" at an "ATM machine".

This being a foreign production, the video is naturally in Hebrew with English subtitles. While that wouldn't bother you or me, that's the one factor that might turn kids off. Vicariously, that might turn you off too if you're the one who little Timmy keeps asking "What did he say? Now what did she say? Now what did he say? Can I have more caffeine? I like turtles!"

Moishe, as you would guess, is just like his American counterpart, Oscar. They're both jerkfaces, they both live in trash cans, and they're both probably one step away from going postal on all of their neighbors.

In the first episode, Moishe demonstrates what he does when he's angry: he plays his noisemaker, which calms him down (why a Grouch would want to calm down is beyond me). Noah, the orange monster, has another method for cooling off, but he won't show it since he's not actually mad. In classic Grouch form, Moishe emasculates Noah for not being capable of anger, which of course makes him infuriated. Then Noah reveals his secret method as he begins adding numbers ("One and one are two, two and two are four..."), and the magic of mathematics sedates him into a near slumber. Though Moishe has been defeated, he still gets props for being able to piss off a kid in just 10 seconds flat.

The next episode features Avigile, a purple girlie-girl monster who speaks in the third person, much like another dude we know. Avigile tells Moishe that she wants to play with him, but like any self respecting Grouch, he tries to get rid of her by telling her that he's bringing out the dreaded "karambula." Avigile, shaken with fear, runs away to the safety of the grocery store where the clerk informs her that a karambula is just a star fruit. She introduces Avigile to some other fruits, and then Avigile goes back to Moishe's hovel to tell him that she still wants to play. Unfazed, Moishe then tries to scare her by threatening to bring out the "pasiflora," which Avigile coincidentally just learned is just a passion fruit. She then laughs right in Moishe's face, boasting that she's smarter than the homeless guy. And then I guess they played a game or something, we'll never know for sure. Moishe will apparently stoop pretty low to get rid of annoying children, even to go as far as threaten them with fruit.

Fun Fact #3: Monsters hate vitamin C.

In the third episode, everyone is playing "The Dwarf and the Giant," which is pretty much Secret Santa, but with a slightly politically incorrect name. Moishe is excited to get a Stinky Garbage Cake, which is made of mango peels, spinach, and rotten cucumbers. Unbeknownst to Avigile, Moishe is her "dwarf" and buys her a jar of the very best Spoiled Sardine Jelly. The ungrateful brat deduces who bought her the gift and says that it's the worst present she's ever gotten, with Moishe standing right next to her! Even though he already spent good money on the Grouch delicacy, Moishe disguises himself as Groucho Marx and forces himself to buy Avigile a "nice" gift. Kids these days, they're never happy.

There's a good deal of extra Moishe Oofnik sketches on the DVD in case you're not happy with just three. (C'mon, the guy is on the cover! Give the Grouch his screen time!) There's a sketch about Moishe wearing a watermelon peel as a hat, one where Moishe asks everyone in town to make as much noise as they can so he can fall asleep, and one where he thinks that kids never have anything important to say (and then ignores Avigile's warnings that the sign over his trash can is about to fall on his head). One sketch in particular involves Moishe trying to teach the kids at home that everyone is the same, which seems to be a valuable lesson for kids in the Middle East. He is then immediately countered by every person in town who tells Moishe how they're nothing like their neighbors. And then they all fought a war over the Gaza Strip, which is why you should always listen to Moishe Oofnik, kids.

Because the DVD contained full episodes, a few dubbed versions of our Sesame Street made the cut, with one Muppety skit for each one. A sketch I've never seen featuring Oscar, Grungetta, and a few other Grouches as cavemen inventing the word "Scram" (subtitled as "Get Lost", which is obviously not one word) was in the first episode. Bert singing "I've Got to Be Clean" also appeared, which proved to us that Bert has a lovely singing voice, even when he's singing in Hebrew. The last had another new-to-me sketch about Two Nosed, a kingdom of people with two noses ("They can sneeze twice at the same time!" What an astonishing mutant power!), where the king and queen won't allow their daughter to play with Elmo. They said it was because he only has one nose, but we all know it was because Two Nosed is constantly at war with Elmo's World.

All in all, I had a great time watching and rewatching this DVD. Moishe Oofnik is hilarious in his jerkitude and filthiness. And because it's a foreign product, every sketch is brand new to us. If you don't mind a little light reading while you watch your Sesame, this DVD is highly recommended.

Click here to visit SISU Entertainment's website, where you can order this DVD, as well as other Rechov Sumsum and Shalom Sesame DVDs and merchandise.
!לחץ כאן כדי לשוחח על אשפה בפורום הטאפ-פיגס
(Translation: Click here to talk trash on the ToughPigs forum!)

Labels: DVD, review, Sesame Street

So what’s all this I keep hearing about “going green?” People are going on and on about how recycling is good and carbon footprints are bad… or is it the other way around? Are my feet made of carbon? I don’t understand. You know what I need? I need somebody to explain the “green” movement to me as if I were three years old.

Well, I’m in luck, because there’s a new Sesame Street DVD out now called Being Green, which is all about saving our planet and crap like that. I couldn’t wait to find out about environmentalism, so I drove my Hummer to the video store, left it idling while I ran in to buy the DVD, then drove home and turned on all the lights in the house while I watched it.



With so few episodes of Sesame Street produced these days, these direct-to-video specials are like extra bonus episodes, and this one isn’t about to waste any of its running time... There are no opening credits, just the title, and then boom!, we’re on Sesame Street, where Elmo and Abby Cadabby are playing Hide and Seek.


Hey, remember when Zoe was Elmo’s best friend? Lately it sure looks like he’s ditched her for Abby. Man, Elmo’s so fickle. Or maybe Zoe was playing Hide and Seek with them, and she was so good at hiding that they never found her.

Anyway, the game is soon interrupted by a guy wearing a big, puffy globe. Why, it’s comic actor Paul Rudd, in the role of Mr. Earth! And he’s hosting the Earth-a-thon, a TV show that’s happening right here on Sesame Street!


So here are two things I like about this special: 1) They never try to pass Rudd off as being the actual planet Earth, or even the Spirit of the Earth or something silly like that. He comes right out and admits he’s “an actor in a ridiculously awkward Earth costume,” and it allows him some room to be loose and irreverent. 2) Every time anyone mentions the Earth-a-thon, they have to sing it, like this: “THE Earth-a-THOOOOON!” I highly recommend you do the same while reading this.

Elmo’s all like, “What the heck is an Earth-a-thon?” and Rudd explains that they’re taking calls from all over from people who want to help the Earth. Then he has to explain to Elmo and Abby what the Earth is. Man, those kids are stupid.

Of course, a telethon needs volunteers to answer the phone, and fortunately for us, three familiar monsters are standing by: Telly, Rosita, and Cookie Monster. One has to wonder: Who thought it would be a good idea to trust Cookie Monster with this job? I don’t think it’s an enormous spoiler to say that before the end of this DVD, the telephone will find its way inside Cookie’s mouth. (One of my favorite parts has Cookie struggling to focus on pledges rather than cookies while Rosita yells at him: “You’ve got to pull yourself together, Cookie!”)


The special goes back and forth between Paul Rudd and the Muppets on the street doing the Earth-a-thon – sorry, I mean “THE Earth-a-THOOOOON!” – and various films and cartoons with an environmental theme. So it’s a lot like an episode of the show. Some of the segments I had definitely seen before. Yep, they’re recycled, which is perfect for this video.

There’s a clip about kids planting trees in Turkey… one about some other kids making paper out of old clothes… and one about kids in New York City working on a garden. That one looks to be from the early-to-mid-90s, and I swear one of the kids is a young Rosario Dawson, who shows up onscreen for about one second.


And then there are some segments that look like they might be new, including a cartoon about people of all the colors of the rainbow joining together to help the Earth… At this point in my notes, I wrote “Sign me up for WORLD PEACE!” Oh, and one with an all-kid band doing a surprisingly rockin’ song about… well, I don’t remember what it was about. Compost heaps, maybe?

But hey, what’s going on here? We’re 17 minutes in and Elmo is still red! I thought the whole point of this video was that Abby accidentally turns Elmo green! Where’s Elmo screaming frantically, as seen in this amazing “Being Green mashup” video on YouTube?



(Speaking of that YouTube clip: I love that Sesame Workshop made this official promo for the DVD that looks exactly like something a fan would come up with just for kicks. It’s really smart to use internet video tricks to sell projects to fans on the internet… Muppet Studios did something similar with that “Glad All Over” lip-synching video to promote Letters to Santa, and I have a feeling we’ll be seeing more stuff like it in the future. Too bad none of the clips seen in the Being Green mashup are actually present on the DVD.)

A-ha, here we go. Elmo is inspired by the words of Mr. Earth, and says he wants to be green, so Abby obliges with a wave of her wand: “Make Elmo more green than we’ve ever seen!” At first, Elmo thinks it’s fun being the color of green paint and green beans, but when it becomes clear that Abby doesn’t know how to change him back (“Um, well, here’s the thing,” she says, “and you’re gonna laugh… I don’t know how to do that.”) he FREAKS THE HELL OUT. As seen above.


Will Elmo ever return to his normal color? Well, I’m not going to tell you, because that would COMPLETELY SPOIL THE ENDING, and I would never want to do that.

But I will answer the obvious question: When does the song “Bein’ Green” show up? And the answer is… never! Well, that’s not exactly true. When Elmo thinks he’s going to be green forever, he starts to sing the song, but Paul Rudd interrupts him after about a line and a half to sing a song about how it is, in fact, easy being green. I don’t mind that Kermit doesn’t show up. I wouldn’t expect him to, these days. But the title of this DVD is clearly meant to evoke the song, so would it have killed them to at least let Elmo finish a verse?


Misleading title aside, this is an entertaining special. Paul Rudd is clearly having a blast in that uncomfortable Earth suit, and I’m guessing a few of his funnier lines were ad-libbed. All the Muppets get to do what they do best – Oscar even shows up for one scene, in which he’s mean to Telly. Oscar being mean to Telly was a staple of Sesame Street during my childhood, so that moment was particularly enjoyable for me. Much more enjoyable than for Telly, anyway. They even manage to squeeze in a closing musical number... It’s pretty low-budget, but the performers really sell it, so you almost don’t notice.


But what about the “green” agenda? Will it inspire kids to save the planet? I don’t know… A four-year-old who hears Elmo saying it’s cool to pick up trash is probably not going to run out and adopt a highway. But it couldn’t hurt to plant the seed, much like those Turkish kids planted those trees. And maybe in time, as that seed matures, the kids who watch this video over and over will grow into responsible adult trees who try to reduce their carbon emissions instead of douchebag trees who throw empty bottles out the windows of their tree cars.

And you know what? Since I watched this special, I’ve been thinking a little more about turning off lights and not wasting water. I’m green! Thanks, Elmo and Paul Rudd!

Click here to freak the hell out about Elmo turning green on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: DVD, review, Sesame Street

Season 40 (FORTY!) of Sesame Street is scheduled to begin airing in November, which is, like, forever from now. But the Sesame folks have already gotten us excited by announcing all the guest stars who will be appearing this year. For the past few seasons, it seems like they've tried to cram a celebrity guest into every episode, which is lots of fun for parents and grown-up fans, and probably less fun for the children in the audience who have no idea who these people are.

Last year we held a poll to determine which upcoming guest star was generating the most excitement, and Neil Patrick Harris won in a landslide, taking 56% of the vote. And of course, he did a fantastic job in his role as the Shoe Fairy.

This year I want to know once again: Which upcoming celebrity appearance on Sesame Street is gonna be the awesomest?

Is it comic actor Ricky Gervais, whose interactions with Elmo promise to be a hoot? Is it everyone's favorite mutant awards show host, Hugh Jackman? Or basketball-playing guy Kobe Bryant? Maybe you're more a fan of Late Night host Jimmy Fallon, though I can't imagine why.

Perhaps you're looking forward to actress Sarah Jessica Parker, who will probably be talking about something other than sex for a change. Or comedian Adam Sandler -- based on that photo, I'm guessing he'll be playing an acoustic set with a Muppet dragon singing backup. Then there's singer Jason Mraz, who has a funny last name; and Cameron Diaz, who used to be a movie star; and racecar driver Jeff Gordon, who could teach kids how fun it is to drive at unsafe speeds.

Or... well dang, I'm just about out of slots in the poll and there are still more guest stars left. There's a list on Muppet Wiki's season 40 page, so check it out and then click here to vote in the poll and tell me which season 40 guest star you're most looking forward to!

Here's yet another link to the poll: Click here to vote in the poll and explain your choice!

Labels: celebrities, poll, Sesame Street

The 2009 Daytime Emmy Awards have been announced, and it's no surprise that there's a bunch of Muppet-related nominations on the list. Let's take a peek:

Sid the Science Kid is nominated for Outstanding Children's Animated Program. They're up against Curious George, Little Einsteins, The Backyardigans, and Wordworld. Prediction: Sid wins, but I only say that because it's the only one on this list I've actually seen.

Sesame Street is nominated for New Approaches - Daytime Children's. I have no idea what constitutes a "New Approach", so I'm gonna assume that Sesame will win, if only because it's freaking Sesame Street.

Sesame Street is also nominated for Outstanding Pre-School Children's Series, and they're vieing against Between the Lions, Johnny and the Sprites, and two other shows that don't have Muppet people working on them. That's a tough choice, but does Sesame ever really lose in this category?

There's a whopping four Sesame Street nominees in the Outstanding Performer in a Children's Series category. They are: Chris Knowings (for Chris), Kevin Clash (for Elmo), Marty Robinson (for Telly), and Leslie Carrara (for Abby Cadabby). Man, that's a hard vote, but most of me is saying that this is Marty's year. Alls I know is that Bindy Irwin better not surprise us and win.

Johnny and the Sprites is nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction. They're up against a bunch of booooring talk shows, so the puppets deserve the Emmy.

Sid the Science Kid is nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Main Title and Graphic Design. Considering the whole show is one big graphic design achievement, they should win this one.

Sesame Street has three nominations for Outstanding Original Song (Children's and Animation) for Elmo's Ducks, I Don't Wanna Be a Prince, and The Addition Expedition. I don't know what those songs are, but they sound like winners to me!

Sesame Street garnered yet another nomination for Oustanding Achievement in Costume Design, up against Barney and Friends, The Price is Right, The Ellen Degeneres Show, and Yo Gabba Gabba. I do love the designs on Yo Gabba Gabba, but the other shows consist of a purple bodysuit, a suit, and some clothes for dancing. Let's give this one to Sesame too.

Sesame Street and Johnny and the Sprites were both nominated for Oustanding Direction in a Children's Series against From the Top at Carnegie Hall. Yeah, you know what I'm gonna say about that.

Sesame Street has another nomination for Outstanding Writing in a Children's Series. I'm an advocate of them winning that award.

Outstanding Achievement in Lighting Direction? Sure, let's let Sesame Street win that too.

Outstanding Achievement in Music Direction and Composition? Yeah, Sesame Street.

Outstanding Achievement in Technical Direction? It's Frank Biondo for the win!

And if 15 nominations isn't enough, Sesame Street will also recieve a Lifetime Achievement Award in honor of their 40th year on the air. Grover sure is going to have a lot of statuettes on his mantle this year!

The Daytime Emmy Awards ceremony will air on the CW Network on August 30 at 8:00EST.
Click here to thank the Academy on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: awards, news, Sesame Street

Earlier this month, I posted everyone's favorite multiple personality disorder-inducing Sesame Street book, Just Like Ernie, which you can read in it's entirety by clicking here. Unfortunately, if you missed out on reading it way back when, then you missed out on saying funny things about it, and then getting your name up in lights (pixels on your computer screen are like lights, right?).

Thankfully for all of us, we've got some funny folks over on the ToughPigs forum who did the heavy lifting, as well as a few readers who sent in their comments via e-mail. But don't take my word for it, let's see what those cats had to say about Just Like Ernie:
IDENTITY THEFT:

Mo: Ernie is a wise man. By nurturing his friend's self-esteem, he may have headed off a wicked case of identity theft at the pass.

Jog: Bert's not the only one with an identity crisis... what's Ernie's reason for wearing a "cool jacket" and sunglasses anyway? Isn't the whole point of the book that you're cool in your own style; in Ernie's case, sans sunglasses and with a good old stripy sweater?
That jacket, for instance, reveals a desire to be more like Scooter.

Michal: Bert is no match for Ernie's burgeoning social life. Between Ernie's weekend gigs and telling jokes to his sycophantic playground pals, Bert has been getting zero Ernie face-time. He won't stay Ernie's best friend for long unless he does something drastic. His only recourse is to assume an alternate identity, Mrs. Doubtfire-style.

ERNIE IS COOL; BERT IS LAME

Michal: Good gravy, I wish Chris and the Alphabeats would ask *me* to play a set with them every time I ordered ice cream. What a life Ernie's got. No wonder Bert wants in.

Ryan: I know we're supposed to feel sorry for Bert when nobody laughs at his joke, but to be fair, it's a pretty sucky joke.

Steven: If Bert is depressed that no one likes him, just get some cookies and persuade Cookie Monster to be his friend for them since Cookie Monster only cared about what's inside Ernie's lunchbox.

Jog: I wonder if Ernie uses his cool image to take the attention away from that dorky tricycle of his. Dude can't even ride a real bike.

Ryan: "Ernie ordered a Banana-Dana Super Sundae. Bert had a small dish of vanilla ice cream." Ernie may be cooler than Bert... but we'll see who has the last laugh when Ernie gets a cavity!

Jenny: This book makes a laughable attempt to pass Ernie off as "cool", when in reality he's nothing but a sadistic jackhole. The other denizens of Sesame Street see Bert as a warning - this will be them if they don't placate Ernie, and so they pretend to admire him. Lately Ernie's ego has inflated dangerously - he's tired of the "Bert and Ernie" dichotomy, and he's made it known to his friends that Bert will be ignored if they know what's good for them. Bert, in a desperate, last-ditch effort to ingratiate Ernie, begins to imitate him, and fails disastrously. Ernie is unimpressed by this sad parody, and makes his disproval clear by usurping Bert's possessions - insinuating Bert won't be needing them for much longer, unless his Ernie homage does the man justice. Rather than up his game, Bert opts for the sweet release of death, rather than the living hell of being Ernie's roommate for another 40 seasons.
BERT’S HAIR

Mo: I am worried that if I ever meet someone with that hairdo, I will accidentally bread and fry their head in juicy cutlets. Mmmm... Muppet-head Parmesan...

Michal: His slicked-back hair may look hip now, but just wait until he busts out into "You're the One That I Want."

Jarrod: Bert's little "cool dude" hair is just a comb over that makes him look like he's balding. And no-one likes bald people. Besides Gordon. That dude RULES!
ERNIE’S UNDERWEAR

Ryan: So, why DO we see Ernie in his undies? I was so sure it was going to turn out that Bert had stolen his pajamas, but that never happened. In fact, we never even find out whether Ernie found his pajamas. So where are they? I demand a sequel!

Michal: Either Ernie's boxers bunched up, or his naked bum has a wacky tanning pattern. But I refuse to believe that Ernie wears briefs.

Lara: I have just seen a mostly naked childhood friend in his underwear. And I have nothing more to say.
THE LUNCHBOX

Cathy: So when did Cookie Monster get a licensing deal and why don't any of his friends find that odd?

Ryan Mead: Cookie Monster isn't even startled that his own picture is on the box- he's just curious as to the contents. Given that he probably thinks there's cookies inside, I'm not surprised, but it seems rather unusual that his first thought would be "me want cookie" rather than "oh yeah, me remember posing for that lunch box" or "hey, that unauthorized use of me image." But then again, Cookie Monster doesn't seem like the type who would know about either licensing deals or legal matters.

Beth: Isn't it a bit odd that Cookie Monster is depicted as a superhero, when this is usually Grover's job? Maybe Cookie is trying to steal Grover's identity as well!

Cathy: Also, Ernie finds it strange that Bert is trying to be like him, but he doesn't see a problem with carrying a lunchbox with his friend's face on it? If one of my casual friends started carrying around a lunchbox with my picture on it, I'd probably be a touch creeped out. Perhaps Ernie is the one with the case of identity envy?

Jarrod: Is Super Grover aware of this sudden new Super Cookie? Or is he a villian? The Cookienator. Watch your back, Grover. It's always the person you'd least suspect...
UNDER BERT’S BED

Scott: What's Ernie doing snooping under Bert's bed while he sleeps? It's not like he just noticed a box of paper clips and went in closer to investigate. He actually had to go out of his way to get down on the floor (in his underwear) and move away the blankets that were obscuring his view. Does Ernie regularly check under Bert's bed after he goes to sleep? I can imagine a sketch on the show in which Ernie creates an idea in his head that looking under Bert's bed is imperative to his friend's safety. But it's harder to grasp in storybook land where Bert and Ernie don't fly planes or drive cars, but instead go to school and carry lunchboxes.

Joe: Yeah, but if they tried that on the show, Ernie would look under the bed and find Frank Oz.

Steven: Unless, Frank Oz puppeteers Cookie Monster who is under the bed looking for cookies crumbs since his sleepover there with Ernie.
THE MORAL OF THE STORY

Jes: You had me at Ernie's underwear....
Click here to dress like your roommate on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: book club, reader participation, Sesame Street

While we eagerly await the next Muppet movie, upcoming Doozers TV show, the new season of Sesame Street, and that dusty VHS you've got of Aliens in the Family, it kinda seems like there aren't any Muppets on television these days. Well, you're wrong. Dead wrong. Really really super dead wrong.

In one form or another, the Muppets have been popping their little heads on TV a lot lately. Let's take a peek at a few of them.
Three (three!) recent episodes of 30 Rock have contained tidbits that'd make more than a few Muppet fans' eyebrows to raise. Three weeks ago, a picture of Miss Piggy appeared in a non-sequitor about Jenna's wardrobe. One week ago, Alan Muraoka made a cameo as a guy about to get fired. But the kicker was two weeks ago when the cast was seen as Sesame Street Anything Muppets! Click here and here to see the video while they last!
The whole Muppet gang (kinda) made an appearance on Saturday Night Live in what might be construed as a disturbing deleted scene from The Muppet Movie. But it begs the question: Why is Rowlf driving?? Click here for watching!
Elmo and Abby Cadabby went on Bonnie Hunt's show to promote the new DVD, "Being Green," and to promote their own cuteness. I couldn't find the first half of the interview, but here they are talking about how kids can greenify their home.
Kobe Bryant, along with Mini Kobe, will be on the 40th season of Sesame Street. Mini Kobe sounds like a cut of steak on the children's menu. Watch the video!
Lastly, Elmo was on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon earlier this week. And we're doing you the great favor of linking to a video of the interview, rather than making you actually watch an episode of Jimmy Fallon's show. You're welcome. Click here, yo!

Click here to discuss this article on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: celebrities, Muppets on TV, Sesame Street

Okay, I'll be the first to admit that I totally dropped the ball on the last Book Club. Sadly, I chose a book that held many fond childhood memories for everyone, which nobody wants to mock in the fashion that we ToughPigs hold so dear. But look at the bright side, at least you got to read an awesome Grover book for free!

This time around, I think we'll have better canon fodder because of one thing: Ernie in his skivvies. So go ahead and read "Just Like Ernie", and post your introspective/anal-retentive/ridonkulous comments on the ToughPigs forum. Or if you'd rather do the e-mail thing, feel free to send them to me directly. In a couple weeks, I will post the best of the best right here on ToughPigs.com for the whole world to see. Now, on with the oversized glasses show!Suggested Discussion Questions:

1.) Is Bert just dealing with a mild case of depression (as always) in a new and creative way, or is he suffering from Single White Female Syndrome? Or is he perhaps using imitation as an outlet to express his true feelings for Ernie?

2.) If imitating Ernie doesn't make Bert less lame, what else can he try? Lord knows those saddle shoes aren't doing him any favors.

3.) Where can I get me one of those Super Cookie Monster lunch boxes?

4.) Do the Alphabeats go through drummers like Spinal Tap? And what does it say about their professionalism that they'll pick up a new drummer at Hooper's Store on a whim like that?

5.) How does the Figgy Fizz bottle cap hold up against the American dollar in this economic climate? Apparently they're worth at least the cost of a jacket, sunglasses, sneakers, joke book, and lunch box. Should we be adding Figgy Fizz bottlecaps to our investment packages?

Bonus question: Does Ernie wear boxers or briefs? Oh wait, nevermind.
Click here to share your thoughts on Just Like Ernie on the ToughPigs forum, just like Ernie!

Labels: book club, reader participation, Sesame Street

We haven't done heaps of coverage on merchandise here at Tough Pigs lately, but this week two recent products came to our attention that I just had to mention.


The first one is a line of officially licensed Sesame Street items made by Fisher Price. They're called Collect-a-Pals, and they were apparently designed to finally provide an answer to the age-old question, "What if Sesame Street characters were little round balls with tiny arms and legs?" You can see all of them on Muppet Wiki, but I think my favorites are Grover (as seen above), Cookie Monster...


...and Snuffy.


They had to cram a whole lot of Snuffleupagus into a tiny little space there, and I think they did an admirable job. These are reportedly available at Target, among other places, so if you've ever wanted to play softball with Elmo as the ball (and I know some of you have), now's your chance.

And now for the opposite end of the spectrum. ToyCyte.com recently posted a report on some unlicensed Sesame toys, produced by a company called RealxHead, that have to be seen to be believed. They're calling them "Real Street," and they're evidently meant to be kaiju-style, kaiju referring to the genre of Japanese entertainment involving bizarre giant monsters.


Yikes. In case you're not sure what you're looking at, that's supposed to be Cookie Monster, Elmo, Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, and the Count. Now, it's tempting to put these into the "Ugly Muppet Toy" category, but the thing is, these are ugly on purpose. They're grotesque... but they're kind of amazing, too. Most of them are obvious enough reflections of what the characters would look like if they were involved is some sort of freak accident involving radiation, but look at Big Bird:


If I hadn't told you that was supposed to be Big Bird, would you have guessed that's who it was? Maybe the orange feet would have given it away. Then again, I guess it wouldn't matter much to these toymakers if their Hideous Mutant Monstrosity Big Bird doesn't look like the real Big Bird. And here's the best part: If you follow the link on that ToyCyte page, you can order this complete set for just $160 plus shipping! What a bargain!

So, there you go. Two sets of radically different Sesame Street toys. Which ones do you like best?

Click here to talk about Collect-a-Pals, and click here to talk about kaiku Sesame toys, both on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: merchandise, Sesame Street, weird stuff

Who is Kermit the Frog? He's often described as the glue that holds the Muppets together. When Jim Henson's colleagues are asked which character Jim was most similar to, the frog is often the first one name-checked: He was the guy making everything work, a straight man in the middle of a throng of eccentrics. -"I wish I'd never been born!" Freakouts are seemingly rarer in Kermit's Steve Whitmire era, but Whitmire showed us he could bring the frantic with Kermit's Christmas Eve rant in It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie. The Muppet Theater has been lost to a greedy corporate type, and Kermit blames himself. His self-loathing diatribe to Daniel the angel (which mostly consists of variations on "I WISH I'D NEVER BEEN BORN!") is really just a device to steer the movie into the "world without Kermit" sequence, but it manages to be sad and hilarious at the same time.
On the Freakout-o-meter: 9



-Stop That Bus Stop
Even rarer than a Kermit/Cookie Monster pairing is a Kermit/Oscar the Grouch pairing, and this one finds Kermit understandably displeased when Oscar tries to build a bus stop in his living room. "This is a terrible place for a bus stop! What kind of bus is going to drive into my living room?!" he demands, and of course the next thing that happens is a bus drives into his living room. You can't stop civic progress. As I was watching Sesame clips in preparation of this article, I noticed that they almost never used the same set more than once to represent Kermit's apartment, but if you think about it, there's a perfectly reasonable explanation: He keeps moving, in a desperate, futile effort to prevent the other Muppets from dropping by and annoying him.

On the Freakout-o-meter: 4
Watch it on the Sesame Video Player!


-Kermit's Telephone Demo
So we've seen Kermit abused by Grover, Cookie Monster, and Oscar. Now how about America's dumbest urban cowboy, Forgetful Jones? In this sketch, Kermit tries to teach Forgetful how to use the telephone, and of course everything goes smoothly and Forgetful gets it right on the first try and nothing funny happens whatsoever.

On the Freakout-o-meter: 3
Watch it on the Sesame Video Player!

-Piggy is fired
This is the one, right here. In the Loretta Swit episode of The Muppet Show, Miss Piggy leaks a story to a tabloid that she and Kermit are secretly married. To say that Kermit is unamused would be a vast understatement. "I will not stand around while you do dumb things like that!" he snaps, and when she asks what he's going to do about it, he has an answer: "I'll tell you what I'm going to do, Piggy, I'm going to fire you! Piggy, you are fired! You are fired, Piggy! You are fired! FIRED!" And he fires her! But of course she's back by the end of the episode. You know, sometimes when I watch this stuff it really hits me just how dysfunctional Kermit and Piggy's relationship is.

On the Freakout-o-meter: 10
Watch it on YouTube!


-"Go ahead and walk!"
In The Great Muppet Caper, Kermit confronts Piggy at a duck pond in the park, the day after she tricked him into believing she was Lady Holiday. This scene is really more about Kermit and Piggy snapping at each other...

PIGGY: I'm playing over 800 different emotions here!
KERMIT: Well, why don't you try playing one of them right?!
PIGGY: I have a career of my own! I don't need this lousy duck pond!
KERMIT: Okay, sure, go ahead, walk! Walk! Go ahead and walk!

...than a rant from Kermit, but it's entertaining as always to see him make scrunchy faces and breathe heavily. Naturally, this scene of Kermit and Piggy screaming at each other is immediately followed by the most romantic scene in the movie, the "Couldn't We Ride" number.
On the Freakout-o-meter: 5


-The Huggies
And here's another classic Kermit/Piggy scene that confirms the notion that for these two crazy lovebirds, yelling is like foreplay. Kermit's just discovered that Piggy (whom he thought was far away at a new job) has been spying on him and his new friend Jenny. If she's just a friend, Piggy demands, why were you giving her the huggies? And then I just have to quote the scene:

KERMIT: Jenny and I were hugging because we're friends! That's what friends do! Friends do not spy!
PIGGY: I spied because I care!
KERMIT: I care too!
PIGGY: Well, why don't you say so?!
KERMIT: I JUST DID!
PIGGY: ALL RIGHT!
KERMIT: AAAGH!
PIGGY: AAAGH!
KERMIT: AAAGH!
PIGGY: AAAGH!

So the only thing that can come next is a romantic carriage ride around Central Park.

On the Freakout-o-meter: 8


Now I'm trying to remember, and I honestly can't: When was the last time we saw Kermit yell? I can only hope it happens in the next Muppet movie. I mean, lots of Muppet characters and guest star cameos are great, but could we have Kermit flipping his lid, please? Thanks.

Click here to tell me which Kermit freakouts you can't believe I forgot on the Tough Pigs forum! And scroll down to the previous post for some Tough Pigs April Fools' Day merriment!

Labels: fanaticism, Muppet movies, Muppets on TV, Sesame Street, The Muppet Show

As you may have heard, Sesame Workshop was recently forced to let 20% of their workforce go. It seems that not even Hooper’s store is safe from this economic downturn. While we sit back and hope that Elmo’s coworkers can all get back to work real soon, let’s do what we do best: Make fun of a situation we have no control over.

It seems to me that Sesame Workshop’s woes would all be fixed if only they had a bit more dough, more clams, more bread, more kumquats. And they’ve got a workshop full of puppets just lying around on pegs and in drawers. It’s past time they all get off their furry bums and earn a buckaroo or two for Sesame! Here’s a few ideas I’ve had that can totally work, for realz.
It’s almost April, and if the Sesame Street Muppets are anything like me, they haven’t done their taxes yet. So let the Count do them. That vamp knows his way around a calculator, and he’s bound to get a whopper of a refund, mostly because he knows that cookies are tax deductible.
Ernie pulls the greatest scam ever, in which he releases Twiddlebugs into people’s homes, and then gets hired to exterminate for a nominal fee. Man, that idea is so good, I might do it myself.
Let Telly Monster enlist with medical research to test anxiety pills.
Start finding new sponsors for each episode. Maybe part of Sesame’s money problems lie with the funders: the letters and numbers. I’ll bet the umlaut or the ampersand has a marketing budget, and I’m sure they’d love the opportunity to be read aloud by Trash Gordon.
The Two-Headed Monster can get a job translating at the United Nations. Hey, if Nicole Kidman can do it…
Two words: Group baths. Then again, the money they’d save on the water bill would have to be spent on superhuge bathtubs.
Have Grover donate some of the money he’s made in his 97 different jobs. According to the Muppet Wiki, he’s been an actor, baker, bus driver, camp counselor, clerk, concession monster, chauffeur, conductor, construction worker, dancer, furniture deliveryman, doctor, daredevil, detective, dog walker, elevator operator, farmer, fast food worker, flight attendant… you know what? Just read the Wiki article. Grover lives with his mommy, so you know he’s living rent-free. And he doesn’t have to pay for clothes, so where’s all those paychecks he’s been saving?
Start selling real estate in Elmo’s World. The only downside is that Elmo would have to be your landlord, and I have a feeling he doesn’t know his way around a broken toilet.
Oscar doesn’t need money; he lives in a trash can.

Meanwhile, we at ToughPigs will keep on writing about Sesame Street in any capacity, helping to give the show more viewers and letting them know about the great merch that’s out there, which will hopefully keep money going to the Street we all love, and help to get some of those lost jobs back.

Wondering how else you can help? Donate to Sesame Workshop by clicking here!
Click here to give us your Muppety money-making ideas on the ToughPigs forum.

Labels: Sesame Street, Sesame Workshop

Back in this post, I showed you the cover of the new 25th anniversary DVD release of Follow That Bird, and pointed out the sneaky move of putting Elmo on the cover when doesn't have any kind of significant role in the movie. Then I asked you to come up with your own Follow That Bird covers.

I got some great responses, so how about we look at them now? Do yourself a favor, and click on these to make them bigger!

Scott H:


Jarrod F:


Paul B:


Joe H #1:


Michal R:


Mike C:


Phil R:


Joe H #2:


Mo W:


Frank:


Joe H #3:

I tell ya, if Sesame Workshop would just put any of these designs on the real cover, they'd sell... well, they probably wouldn't sell many copies. But Tough Pigs readers sure are a creative bunch. Big thanks to everyone who submitted a cover, and don't forget to look for the new Follow That Bird DVD on March 24th!

Click here to follow that DVD on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: DVD, fan art, fanaticism, reader participation, Sesame Street

When was the last time you checked out the Muppet Wiki? You can learn a lot just by clicking around randomly for a few hours... There's really a ton of information there that you never knew, even if you're a huge geek, which, let's face it, you are.

So let's play a little game I'm calling Wikitrivia. Below are a bunch of trivia questions about stuff that's on the wiki. Maybe you already know all this stuff, but if not, click on the answer links for the answers to the questions and craploads of further info.

And yes, I know you could just hover your mouse over the links to see the answers without reading the articles, but come on, man. That's no fun.

1. What is the name of Elmo's large-headed father?
Click here for the answer!

2. Which Muppet performer played Scred in the Land of Gorch sketches on the first season of Saturday Night Live?
Click here for the answer!

3. Which Muppet Show guest star appeared in the film Cabaret alongside considerably more famous fellow Muppet Show guest stars Joel Grey and Liza Minelli?
Click here for the answer!

4. Which episode of The Muppet Show included a writing credit for "The Hatrack?"
Click here for the answer!

5. In Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas, which member of the Riverbottom Nightmare Band was performed by Richard Hunt?
Click here for the answer!

6. In 1981, the Muppets appeared in commercials for what camera company?
Click here for the answer!

7. What direct-to-video Muppet production featured Caroll Spinney's own puppet creations, Picklepuss and Pop?
Click here for the answer!

8. What 1974 Muppet TV special includes the "Froggy Went A-courtin'" sequence with Kermit riding a bicycle... five whole years before The Muppet Movie?
Click here for the answer!

9. The name "Rgllmzaxpoops" was briefly considered for which group of Fraggle Rock characters?
Click here for the answer!

10. Who was the guitarist for The Jim Henson Hour's house band Solid Foam?
Click here for the answer!

11. Which Frank Oz character sang the instant classic song "Accidents Happen" with Elmo in the 2007 Sesame Street home video release Elmo's Potty Time?
Click here for the answer!

12. What future teen drama star appeared in an episode of the Henson sitcom Aliens in the Family, in which he was eaten by the family pet?
Click here for the answer!

13. What's the name of the Egyptian prince who befriends Big Bird and Snuffy in the Sesame Street special Don't Eat the Pictures?
Click here for the answer!

14. What's the name of the restaurant -- well, it's more of a supper club -- where Kermit and Piggy dance and Lady Holiday's necklace is stolen in The Great Muppet Caper?
Click here for the answer!

15. What actor appeared with the Southern Colonel Muppet in the "Change Your Face" sketch on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1969?
Click here for the answer!

Click here to talk about incredibly interesting/obscure Muppet facts on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: fanaticism, Fraggle Rock, Sesame Street, The Muppet Show

Did you miss the first part of our chat with Sesame Street puppeteer and head writer Joey Mazzarino? Well it misses you too. You should call it more often.

Let's dispense with the preliminaries! On to part two!

ToughPigs: I wanted to ask you about Horatio the Elephant. How did he get his name?

Joey Mazzarino: Belinda [Ward] named him. He’s had a few different performers. I think Dave Goelz did him for "Elephant Elevator Operator", and Marty Robinson did him for Monster’s Clubhouse, and I don’t even remember when I started doing him. I just remember when I started doing him, I thought, “You know what would be great? If I could do this upright. And it would be even greater if he had legs!” And they started to build him that way. He doesn’t have the greatest eyes, he was made by Ed Christie to be a big jungle animal. It’s the most freeing thing in the world to be a full-bodied puppet.

TP: So how does he work…?

JM: It’s just like Big Bird, but I give him this weird curve in his spine (sticks arm in the air, but tilted forward, not straight up like Big Bird).

TP: Is it like Big Bird where you’ve got a monitor strapped to your chest, with the camera pointed at the character?

JM: Yeah, it’s looking straight on. I do have some little slits in the front, because it does get dangerous. I mean, that trunk really hurts if you hit somebody with it.

TP: How did you come up with that hyperactive personality?

JM: It was a one-shot thing, and I was just stealing Bobcat Goldthwait’s voice. Most of my characters, even Murray, have been developed in any way. Even Stinky the Stinkweed was a one-off in an Oscar parody. I know some people hate the voice, but I never cared about it. I love that most of my characters are hyperactive.

TP: Is that a part of you coming out?

JM: Yeah, I’m very hyper. Murray’s interviews are about as close to me as you’re going to get. I tend to be big and annoying.

TP: You were one of the writers on Muppets From Space. What was that like?

JM: It was a miserable experience. We were working with a director, Randal Kleiser, who had directed Grease, one of my favorite movies. We got the green light, it was Jerry Juhl’s script, and they asked me to do a pass, and I wrote a very parody-heavy script. We parodied Men in Black, Contact, Alien, and we were very close to shooting. Then I got a panicked call from Henson saying that they were firing Randal. They said, “We don’t feel like he’s bringing enough vision.” I said, “But we got the green light! We’re going!” So they flew me out to LA to pick a new director, and we picked a director who was a very nice guy, and he did a decent job, but he wanted to get rid of all the parody stuff. He wanted it to be more real, and the ending, I hate the ending. In my draft, the aliens were getting the signal of old Muppet Shows, and they made themselves look like Gonzo because he was the ultimate being to him. And then they peel back to reveal themselves to be these hideous creatures. And it’s not about family being those guys, his family is the Muppets. So he’s still a whatever, he’s not an alien in the end. So the fact that they made him an alien bugs the crap out of me. Anyway, they hired him, he wanted to make all these changes, and I just left.

TP: So you weren’t on set for the filming?

JM: No, I left before they started. And it was probably a mistake because I never worked on a feature again.

TP: That might not just be you, the Muppets haven’t worked on a feature since then either.

JM: I know, but I was doing really well with Columbia at the time.

TP: I recently rented Ghost Town. I knew you were in it, but I forgot at the time. When I saw your name in the credits, I had to go back and find your blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene. How did that happen?

JM: We were doing auditions for the character who would become Leela, and I had Murray on the auditions, and I was improving with all of the actresses, and at the end of the day, [casting director] Pat McCorkle said to me, “We’re looking for funny character actors to come in and do Ricky Gervais’ new movie. Are you interested?” And I was like, yeah sure, why not. And about three weeks later, I got a call to come in and meet David Koepp, the director, and he asked me, “Can you sneeze?” So I did some sneezes and he says, “Those are really good sneezes.” The next thing I know, I’m called to the set and I did my sneeze and that was it. And at the end of the day, I said to Ricky, “I work on Sesame Street, we’d love to have you,” and all of the sudden he was like, “Oh yes! I’d love to do that! What do I do?” And we’re having him on the show this season.

TP: Do celebrities often come to you to ask to be on the show?

JM: Yeah, sometimes. We have a talent booker who keeps an eye out on who’s in New York that we can grab for a few hours. But some people are just big Muppet fans, like Neil Patrick Harris.

TP: Yeah, we’ve heard in a few interviews, he loves talking about how much of a Muppet fan he is.

JM: It was great, he came in and did a whole episode, which is rare.

TP: That was a great episode, he was fantastic.

JM: You liked it? I wrote it and directed it! Neil was great. He was totally committed to it. And coming up this year, we have Judah Friedlander. He plays “Inspector Four” and he’s hilarious.

TP: Well, if you ever want more celebrities, we’re available.

JM: (Laughs) I’ll keep you on the list.

TP: We heard at the event in New Jersey that Frank Oz had performed earlier that day. Was he on set?

JM: He was, he came in. He did Grover for a bit, and then he did a parody, I think he did Mad Men. He hadn’t been on in a couple years, he’s just so busy.

TP: How often does Jerry Nelson come in?

JM: Jerry’s been on quite a bit this year. He’s been in maybe four or five days. I’ll tell you this: keep an eye out this season for Marshall Grover and Fred the Wonder Horse with Frank as Grover.

TP: We’ve noticed that you’ve done a lot of the Muppet and kid moments on the show.

JM: That’s how Murray came about. I happened to be in Egypt working with the puppeteers there, and they have this character named Filfil, who’s this purple monster with a jaw line like Murray, and I fell in love with this character. And just by chance, that year new A.M.s came in and one of them was that puppet design, so I said, “Please put this puppet away, don’t let anyone take him, I don’t know what I want to do with him yet but I want to use him.” That was when they had me interviewing kids as Papa Bear and a broccoli.

TP: Yeah, I remember you had the broccoli doing pushups in one sketch.

JM: Well it was all improv, right? So I said they should let me use this guy, and they let me change it up and use Murray. We were trying to figure out a name and I think a crew guy or a producer said he looks furry, how about Furry Murray? My grandpa’s name was Murray, and I was always naming characters Murray, like Little Murray Sparkles, there’s a Murray in the Halloween video. And I was like great, it’s my grandpa’s name, so I’m going to use it. And then the Word on the Street thing came about, and there was a marketing campaign behind it as a promo for the show, and we were trying to figure out who to use, and they said they really liked those Murray and kid videos, and we took a chance. People saw it and recognized it as Sesame Street right away, so it turned out to be really great. And then we did those Murray Has a Little Lamb pieces, and those were the greatest shoots ever.

TP: Are those coming back?

JM: We’re going to re-air them if we don’t have the budget to shoot new ones, but if not then we’ll do new ones for season 41. I loved the stuff in the schools. Because we’d go into a place, like a karate school, and we’d watch a class for a little bit, and then we’d say, “Okay, we have a puppet, we have wild legs, Ovejita, and a throwing Ovejita, what can we do?” And in a couple hours, we’d figure out what physical stuff we can do. My favorite thing is throwing Muppets.

TP: Wild feet are what you call the disembodied feet?

JM: Right, they’re the legs that are not attached. They’re rodded. For the karate one we had them kick, and in the gymnastic one we had Murray on the rings, and in the pottery one we had the legs working the pottery wheel.

TP: Should we expect any surprises in season 40?

JM: We’re trying to do what we call a gem in every episode. That’s for you guys, the fans. Little things like Biff and Sully in a scene, or some other stuff that I won’t tell you about that will be hidden in the scene. There’s one, the writing on the sandwich board outside of Hooper’s Store reads, “Loaf of bread / Container of milk / Stick of butter”. We’ll try to get one of those in most of the episodes this season.
Special thanks to Joey Mazzarino for taking the time to chat with us! We can't wait to see what you've got in store for season 40!

Click here to show your fake sneeze on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: interview, Sesame Street

You may know him as Stinky the Stinkweed. You may know him as Murray, the Word on the Street monster. You may know him as one of the writers of Elmo in Grouchland, Muppets From Space, and Kermit's Swamp Years, not to mention being the head writer on Sesame Street. Well, we know him as Joey Mazzarino. And, y'know, all those other things we mentioned in this paragraph.

Besides being a veritable Muppet Rennaisance man, Joey Mazzarino is a supercool guy, because he took the time to sit down with us for an interview all about what it's like to be the head writer on Sesame Street.

So what are you waiting for? Look down about half an inch and start reading!

ToughPigs: First of all, congratulations on winning the WGA award [for Elmo's Christmas Countdown] last week.

Joey Mazzarino: Thank you.

TP: Were you actually at the ceremony?

JM: I was. The great part about that was that they were honoring Norman Stiles. Norman was my first head writer, and he taught me a lot about comedy writing. He was being honored for the Herb Sargent Award that night.

TP: Wow, that’s awesome. So, you are the head writer on Sesame Street this year. How did you get that job?

JM: Belinda Ward was head writer last year and she was having a hard time balancing work and her family, she didn’t want to do it, they asked me to do it, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to give up my free time, because Belinda had to be there a lot. So I thought I’d give it a try. And it’s actually pretty fun. It’s hard though. 26 episodes doesn’t sound like a lot, especially when we used to do 130, but 26 stories that are 12-15 minutes long, it’s been tough.

TP: How do you break up the writing duties?

JM: There are about nine other writers beside myself, and they’re all given an assignment, and you’ll get assigned characters. So you might get Elmo, Snuffy, Big Bird, whatever. You can also trade, like “I really want Telly for this one, can I have Telly?” Then they’ll come and meet with me, and they’ll have their curriculum laid out with the letter and number and pitch me a story based on the characters in their cast list and we’ll work on it from there.

TP: So, you started as a puppeteer, but some of your writing is pretty early on in your career. Did you set out to be a performer or a writer?

JM: I set out to be a performer. I didn’t even know about puppetry until college. I didn’t know that was a job. Camille Bonora came to teach improv at my college. At the time I was working for a nursery school and we’d watch a lot of Sesame with the kids in school. She said that she worked on Sesame Street as a puppeteer, and I asked “What a great job! What do you do?” and she said, “Oh, I do this character Meryl Sheep…” and I said, “Meryl Sheep! You did the Sophie’s Choice accent, that’s really great!” She said, “You watch it? You really know the stuff?” I said yeah, and she said I could come and meet Jim one day. I said that’d be great, and then a year and a half went by and I never saw her again.

Then I was lighting a show at Fordham and she came and she said, “Oh, I told you you could come and visit the set. Jim’s going to be here next week, why don’t you come?” And I went and visited and I got to meet Jim, and I was very tongue-tied and didn’t know what to say. But he was very gracious, and we talked about Fordham because he’d gotten an honorary degree from there. So I was watching those guys work, especially Richard Hunt. I think Richard was doing a butler, and he had the puppet’s hands behind his back and he was really very funny, but the stuff he was saying off camera was even funnier, he was cracking the crew up. And I just said, “I want to be that guy!” So I put on a puppet, and Camille said, “You know, this is really hard, some guys have been doing this since they were little kids, it’s really tough.” I said I don’t care. I said, “Give me a tip,” and she said, “Just drop the thumb.” So I’d practice while talking on the telephone, and I went back to the costume shop at Fordham and I asked the professor if I could borrow some fabric and wigs and stuff, I started building Frankenstein’s puppet.

TP: I hope you still have that puppet somewhere.

JM: I do, it’s at my parents’ house, I think. It was awful, it was terrible. I had my "Of Muppets and Men" book I got from my brother-in-law, and I put a camera up in my bedroom. During the day when I wasn’t at school, I’d practice and rehearse in front of the camera. I was obsessed with building my puppets, and my parents thought I was insane, they really thought I went nuts. Then I sent in a tape and Kevin Clash invited me to a workshop. And that’s how I got into puppetry.

I didn’t know I could write, I was a terrible writer. I was literally the worst grammarian in school. At the end of the year, after 120 episodes, they needed characters, so they said we could go to the Workshop and look at any characters we wanted to do. I saw this little black lamb and I came up with this little commercial for “Colambo”, I put it up for the writers, and they thought it was funny. Lisa Simon, God bless her, she said to me, “Do you want to try writing?” I said no, I’m a terrible writer, I can’t do it. She said, “Well, we pay for the audition,” and I said, oh yeah!

TP: And this was after your first season?

JM: This was probably 1991, so probably my second season.

TP: Can you describe the writing process for an episode of Sesame Street?

JM: Yeah, so I’m a writer and I get my assignment for, say, episode 4210. It’s science and nature, I’ve got Big Bird in my cast, so I’m going to write a show about migration. I’d go to the head writer, I’d pitch my story about Big Bird, he wants to migrate, this real estate worker sells him on a new home and at the end Big Bird decides he wants to leave, and what’s that going to do to everybody? Everyone’s like, “You can’t leave, this is your home, this is your habitat,” and I’d pitch that to the head writer and he’d say, “Yes this is great,” or “No, let’s work on it some more.” So you’d work it out and look at the curriculum and figure out what each scene is going to be, you’d go off and write it, hand it in, the head writer will look at it and give you some notes, you’d take a second pass at it then you’d do a polish on it based on research and producer’s notes. It’s pretty autonomous, it’s the most autonomous writing job I’ve ever heard about, especially in television because there’s not a lot of network involvement, PBS is pretty hands-off. You might hand that all off at once and do your inserts later, when you’d pitch your parodies and you’d pitch your letter films.

TP: So the writers just pitch whatever they come up with?

JM: Sometimes we go, “Hey we need things about near and far” or something, but normally we say we need some parodies, like we’ll have a Mad Men parody this year and Jon and Kate Plus 8.

TP: The recent ones have been really great.

JM: Oh yeah? Which ones did you like?

TP: Like Pre-School Musical…

JM: That was me!!

TP: Are there certain characters you really like writing for?

JM: Telly Monster is my favorite. I don’t understand why kids don’t love Telly more. I love all the characters, I honestly do, but it took me the most time to write Big Bird. For some reason, I couldn’t nail Big Bird’s voice as quickly as everything else. But Telly I just fell in love with right off the bat. I love writing Grover, Grover is awesome. I love writing for Elmo, Elmo’s really fun to write for too. My favorite thing is when we came up with Rocco, Zoe’s pet rock. I love it because it shows this darkness to Elmo, like Elmo gets mad. “It’s not a pet, it’s a rock!” I wrote Rocco first, and when I found that little dynamic, Elmo suddenly got a whole other side to him, it’s not all super sweet.

TP: Do you have any favorite scripts that you wrote?

JM: The first time I got to write and direct my own show, it was the opening air show last year with the Indiana Jones parody. It’s got Telly, who I love. It’s got Chris, who I love.

TP: Murray is in that one too, right?

JM: It’s got Murray. I actually didn’t love that Murray was in it. I kinda keep Murray like, who’s the guy on Fraggle Rock? Uncle Traveling Matt. Because I feel like he goes out into the real world, and when we put him on the Street, there’s just a million characters who can service this. We wanted to try it, and I didn’t think it was that great. Plus, it’s really hard to direct when you’re in it. But I loved coming up with big ideas, like the giant 8-foot boulder. And to parody my favorite film in the world, it was great. The new sequel had just come out, and I’m like, “I can finally parody Indiana Jones!”

TP: That was a pretty ambitious episode.

JM: It was a little ambitious. We actually took a day and a half to shoot it instead of just one day. But just because it was my maiden episode for writing and directing, it’s probably my favorite one.

TP: Do you have any least favorite scripts?

JM: Maybe if I go back and look at the first scripts I wrote, because I didn’t know anything about writing. My first Street scene that I wrote, I just remember there were a lot of stupid, obvious, punny things like the Count with a bat, but it was a baseball bat. I remember being in the control room, and Jon Stone was there and he didn’t know I was there, and someone said, “Should we do it again?” and he said, “It’s not worth it.” At the time, I was so crushed, but looking back, he was right. I didn’t know what I was doing. It wasn’t until maybe my third season when I wrote one that I loved. It was called “Cindertelly”. Flo Bear, who was an awful character, was writing this story called Cindertelly, and there were these little mice getting him ready for a bowling ball.

TP: We heard that the target audience is younger than it used to be. Has that influenced the way you write?

JM: We’ve made a conscious decision that we’re aiming for three, because that’s our target, but I’m still pushing to get that comedy in there for adults. But is it tougher? No, but if I feel like there’s pressure to start taking jokes out, then I get mad. And in my first year as head writer, I’m trying to keep a really consistent comedic voice in the show. Right now, I don’t feel it as much. I’m trying to push a lot of the physical stuff and I want to stay away from the talking-to-the-camera stuff. I don’t mind talking to the camera like we’ve always done on Sesame, but trying to elicit answers from kids really bugs me out.
Click here for part two of our interview, where you'll hear Joey talk about Horatio the Elephant, Muppets From Space, and some super special surprises coming up in season 40!

Click here to drop your thumb on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: interview, Sesame Street

On Wednesday I showed you some strange and wonderful Sesame Street toys from Japan, made by the Chara Hiroba company. Today I'm going to show you some more, starting with these:

Labels: merchandise, Sesame Street, weird stuff

You gotta see this stuff. There's a Japanese toy company called Chara Hiroba that makes a lot of Sesame Street toys, and Tough Pigs founder Danny Horn recently told me about their website, where new Sesame toys are displayed every single month. These toys are... different than our Sesame Street playthings in the U.S. of A.

I mean, a lot of them are cute. Like these Muppets wearing sombreros:


Yay, they're forming a mariachi band! Except they all showed up with maracas and nobody knows how to play guitar. Oh well.

And then there's these guys:


Look how adorable they are! And they're best friends, 'cause they're holding hands! Except Rubber Duckie, who doesn't have any friends. These toys are also very small. You probably shouldn't leave those lying around anywhere near a small child, because that's the kind of thing kids love putting in their mouth. Oh, but you think those are small? Check these out:


One of those could fit in your nostril with no effort at all. Oscar seems to have traded his trash can for a cotton ball.

So those are all very nice, but then you come across something like this:


And two questions come to mind: 1. What? and 2. Huuuh? Are these bricks? Could you build a house out of Cookie Monsters and Elmos and Big Birds? If so, that's the most compelling reason to move to Japan I've ever heard. By the way, these three Muppets seem to be the most popular characters in Japan, at least if you judge by toys like these similarly rectangular products:


Elmo, you're a blockhead. Ha!


Now these are interesting. The only thing distinguishing Elmo from Cookie Monster here is the presence of a nose, and slightly more focused eyes. I guess that's two things. Oh, and the color, so that's three things. Nevermind.

Hey, how about Muppets in animal costumes?


This is from the time Cookie, Elmo, and Big Bird tried to crash Kermit's family reunion, I guess. But where are Cookie's froggy eyes? And more importantly, would they be googly too?


Man, I don't remember Elmo being so leggy. Or so... army?


These aren't actually that weird... but look at their faces. They seem to be expressing pure terror, don't they? "NOOO! NOOO, PLEASE DON'T PUT ME ON YOUR HEAD! ANYTHING BUT THAT! AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHMMMF!!!" Something like that.


Hmm. Are they cheerleaders, or boxers? Or did they get melons stuck on their hands?


Yikes! What kid in any country of the world wants this thing? I think it would be a little less shocking if his nose were in color. Then it would just be like, Oh, okay, it's Elderly Elmo! Tickle him and he laughs and then has a coughing fit! But this is something else altogether. I don't really know what it is.

Have you seen enough? Well, I haven't. Click here for part two!

Click here to discuss crazy toys on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: merchandise, Sesame Street, weird stuff

Greetings, art lovers! We at ToughPigs hope that you had a splendid Valentine's Day weekend. If you did, then I hope it was either spent cuddling up to a loved one or with your favorite Ben and Jerry's flavor (the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive). And if you didn't, then perhaps some new art from ToughPigs' own Smig will tickle your fancy!

First up is a strip referencing the new Tiny Zoe (tm), which debuted at the Sesame Street panel in Wayne, New Jersey (click here and here for our recap of the event).
And next is another sick and twisted scene from the sick and twisted mind of one Mr. Smig.
Click here to question which came first, the chicken or Gonzo? on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: fan art, Sesame Street, Smig

This is part two of a two-part write-up of last Friday's Sesame Street panel discussion in New Jersey. Part One is here.

I also want to point out the latest edition of the MuppetCast, in which host Steve Swanson gives a detailed account of the other panel that happened before the panel on Friday night -- it was a session just for teachers. You can listen to that podcast by clicking here, or by subscribing to the MuppetCast via iTunes.

Now, let's see, where was I? Ah, yes. Michael Davis asked Fran Brill about Zoe, and moments later Zoe herself appeared onstage. I could tell right away something was different about her... From the balcony, she looked like more like a Zoe doll than the usual puppet. Sure enough, the puppeteers revealed that after a smaller Zoe was built for her role as the Dormouse in the Abby in Wonderland video special, they liked it so much they decided to use it for season 40 as the actual, real, official Zoe.

Fran Brill said it felt right to her for Zoe to be smaller, but I gotta say, I'm not convinced. What's she going to look like standing next to Elmo now that she's suddenly two-thirds of Elmo's size? But Fran said they've had kids visit the set and they don't seem to notice... which prompted Bob to point out that "We had three Gordons, and they never noticed!" That got a big laugh. Go, Bob.

Do you think he'd mind if I call him Bob? I feel like I know all these people well enough to call them by their first names in this article, with the possible exception of Tony Geiss. Somehow he seems like a last name guy.


Pretty soon Davis asked about Telly, and he too emerged from his duffel bag. As it turns out, Marty Robinson is incredibly funny, and Telly was very loud, nervous, and hilarious. After doing a bit about the fact that he had been stuffed inside a plastic bag, Telly insisted (loudly and frantically) that he's not neurotic, and that Marty is the one who's not normal -- there's a Jekyll and Hyde thing going on there.

Telly was completely freaked out by li'l Zoe. "She's a SHADOW OF HER FORMER SELF! Look at little homunculus Zoe! We used to be married! Now she's TOO YOUNG! Life on Sesame Street is REALLY WEIRD!" It's just too bad they'd never let Telly do the same rant on the show.

Davis asked Kevin Clash about Elmo, and Kevin briefly told the story of Richard throwing him the Elmo puppet with a command to give it a voice, a story we've heard many times before. Or anyway, I've heard it many times before. I had to remind myself a few times during the panel that not everyone in the audience was a Muppet fan, and in fact some of them were Normal People hearing these time-worn anecdotes for the first time. It was a good thing, though, that Kevin soon brought out Elmo for some improvised banter with Davis. Except I was so mesmerized I forgot to write down anything they said.

Next came perhaps the most inspired part of the whole evening: Michael Davis presented the Inside the Actors' Studio questionnaire to Oscar and Elmo. As expected, they answered very differently. Here's how it went:

What is your favorite word? Elmo: "Happy." Oscar: [Pause, mug to the audience.] "It's not happy!"

What is your least favorite word? Elmo: "Sick." Oscar: "Six? Did he say six? I was gonna say seven."


What turns you on? Elmo: "A great big hug." [The audience went "Awwww," and Elmo replied cynically, "Oh, come on! What did you expect from Elmo?"] Oscar: "You really wanna ask me that question? She's sitting right next to me." [Maria! Oscar totally lusts after Maria! After years of sexual tension, the truth comes out!]

What turns you off? Elmo: "People being unhappy." [Again with the "awww," and Elmo's resulting exasperation was wonderful. He can't help being sweet! He's trapped in a world of cuteness!] Oscar: "Happiness."

What is your favorite naughty word? Elmo: "Poopy." [You could sort of sense that the wheels in Kevin's head were turning as he tried to come up with something funny that wouldn't be too unacceptable for Sesame Workshop standards, and "poopy" falls somewhere within those boundaries.] Oscar said, "You better not ask me that." Which doesn't indicate anything specific, but it just sounds funny, doesn't it?

What sound or noise do you love? Elmo: "A baby laughing." [More "Awwws" from the audience, and Elmo threatened to leave.] Oscar: "You don't really want to know." Which was the same answer as the last question, but somehow it was funny again.

If Heaven exists, what would you like God to say when you arrive at the pearly gates? Elmo: "He would say He wants a big hug." Oscar: "How did YOU get here?!"

Then it was time for questions from the audience. It's always a crapshoot when you let people from the audience come up and ask unrehearsed questions at events like this, because you never know what kind of weirdos you have in the audience. Way too many of the question-askers felt the need to preface their questions with lots of details about their lives and their careers and their interest in puppetry. I mean, it's great that you want Maria to know your name, but she's already forgotten it 10 seconds after you ask your question. The questions, more or less:

Q: Is Linda Bove still on the show? Bob answered: No, she hasn't been for a few years. He's not sure why she left, but it might be because of the smaller episode count per season these days. She's lives on the west coast, where she's still involved with the Theater of the Deaf, so that keeps her busy.

Q: Has there ever been a study to determine what the world would be like without Sesame Street? [This one wins the prize for Most Impossible to Answer Question of the Evening.] Everyone on the panel kind of stared at each other silently until Marty spoke up: They tried, but there was no control group.

Q: For Frank - How do you come up with character voices? Before he answered, Frank said he wanted to talk about Richard, which he had not done earlier. He said Richard had a greater sense of "childlike abandon" than any other performer, and he always rooted for the underdog. Frank told a story from The Muppet Show days when the performers were all in a car, and the guy ahead of them threw a pack of cigarettes out the window, and Richard got out and yelled at him. Anyway, to answer the question, Frank said he's not a voice person, but rather the voice comes from the character instead of the other way around.

Speaking of voices, here Kevin talked about the time when he was working on Dinosaurs in Los Angeles and he would talk on the phone to his daughter on the east coast. She would often ask to speak to Elmo, and with the time difference he sometimes found himself at 5:00 in the morning trying to get his Elmo voice warmed up. (He demonstrated the result, which somewhat resembled Elmo after smoking his own pack of cigarettes.)

Q: For Frank - Is there a major shift required going between producing work for adults to working for children? Frank said, "This might surprise you, but I've never directed or performed for children." So basically, that's two questions in a row that Frank answered by negating the question, which is awesome. He said Jim's philosophy was not about separating children from adult sensibilities... He never talked down to the kids in the audience, which is what happens when you try to write "for children."


Q: For Frank - a question about Cookie Monster's healthy eating habits. Frank pointed out that they've been doing that with the character occasionally for years, but he said he doesn't buy it (and here the audience applauded). He thinks "kids are smarter than that," and seeing one character who only eats cookies isn't going to inspire them to only eat cookies for their entire life. Similarly, he thinks it's silly when people complain about Cookie Monster saying "Me" rather than "I," because no kid is going to grow up to be a lawyer and say, "Me want to represent you."

At the time, I had this thought: Ooh, what if Tony Geiss was the one who wrote "Healthy Food" or "A Cookie Is a Sometimes Food"? And Frank basically just dissed those songs with Geiss sitting right there! But I just looked them up on the Muppet Wiki, and Geiss wrote neither of those. Oh well.

Q: (From Tough Pigs forum member Chris Stultz!) For Frank - Does he miss performing? Frank said that more than anything, he misses working with the other performers, his "brothers and sisters." He did remark that that morning he had performed for the first time in two years, which is intriguing. Was he taping material for the new season of Sesame Street?

Q: Could Frank say something as Miss Piggy? I wouldn't have blamed Frank for just growling at that guy, but he answered simply: "I'm not going to do that," explaining that the characters are too important to him, and he does not use them like party favors. It would have been fun to hear Frank do some of his character voices, but I was just as happy to see that he was exactly as Frank Oz-y as I hoped he would be. But what if somebody had asked him to say something as, say, Prince Charming from the "Sesame Street Newsflash" sketches? Is that character important to him?

Q: For Caroll - Oscar started out orange. Why did he become green? I'm not 100% sure I wrote this down correctly, but I think Caroll said it was Jim's idea to make him green. The first green Oscar was seen on The Flip Wilson Show. Caroll arrived at the studio, opened the box containing the puppet, and was shocked to see this green thing sitting there. When one of the producers (Dave Connell maybe?) saw it, he said, "We have to change him back!" but by then the Flip Wilson stuff was ready to air and it was too late.

Q: For Frank - Has he ever thought about writing his autobiography? (The guy asking started by saying something like, "I'm begging you," and it sounded for a second like he was going to plead with Frank to do the Miss Piggy voice, which would have been pretty awkward.) Frank said, "I've thought about not writing it." He's a private guy, and he'd rather do new work than talk about work.

That's understandable, but man, it sure would be great if he would just dictate everything he remembers from his Muppet career. He also said that while he realized most of the questions during the Q&A session were coming to him, he wanted everyone to realize that Jim Henson was "the guy," and everything the Muppets did came from him. You can't argue with that.


Q: From nine-year-old Tough Piglet Emileigh: She started by explaining that she's nine years old, almost ten, and she's been watching Sesame Street for about 10 years now. That is adorable and brilliant. She's seen some of the newer characters like Abby, but what happened the older characters like Betty Lou?

Fran answered: Betty Lou has an interesting history... In the early days, they had two very similar little girl puppets, Prairie Dawn and Betty Lou, and they were occasionally mistaken for each other. Eventually, aspects of Betty Lou's character "morphed" into Fran's Roxy Marie character, and later, elements of Roxy Marie "morphed" into Zoe. They now have about 10 main characters that they focus on in most episodes, which means they can't devote screen time to every minor character.

At this, Marty chimed in to say that they have a "Dead Muppet Wall" in the green room, featuring all the failed characters. I'd like to see that for myself, and pay my respects to Elizabeth.

Q: How heavy do the puppets get? Marty answered: Snuffy's the heaviest, Slimey's the lightest.

Then they got onto the subject of Jon Stone, whom Frank referred to as "the Father of Sesame Street." He recalled when they were doing a scene, just messing around and having fun, and Frank asked, "What are we teaching?" to which Jon replied, "It doesn't matter!" Kevin said Jon was great with children. Manzano noted that Christmas Eve on Sesame Street was one of the purest expressions of Stone's spirit.

Q: For Caroll - What happened to Bruno the trashman? Caroll first explained that Bruno was inspired by something he saw on The Gong Show: a large, walking clown puppet pushing a baby carriage, with the puppeteer inside the carriage. The puppet builders wanted a way to get Oscar out onstage for live appearances, so Caroll came up with the idea of Bruno as a way of making Oscar mobile. Bruno was a man of few words, as it was hard to manipulate his mouth while also puppeteering Oscar.

A few years ago, Caroll asked the producers why they never use Bruno anymore, so they took him out of storage, but he had dissolved, and it would cost 20 grand to build a new one, so that's it for Bruno. $20,000 for one Bruno? Dang, that's a lot of money. It seems to me all you'd really need was a puppet head, puppet hands, and a uniform with a big hole in the middle, but I'll go ahead and assume that Caroll Spinney knows more about his job than I do.

Q: For Frank - Is it true that you were originally supposed to be Big Bird? Frank said no. The guy asking the question was like, "Are you sure? 'Cause I'm pretty sure you were." Frank said it was possible that Jim had the idea that Frank would play Big Bird early on... Frank hated playing large characters, and Jim liked torturing him by making him play those characters, but he never was going to be the bird. So there you go.

Q: How did they get Elmo to ride Snuffy? Kevin described how they actually had him inside the puppet with Marty and Bryant Young, who performs Snuffy's back end, and the camera avoided showing Snuffy's bottom half. Zoe's done it too, and Kevin and Fran agreed that the inside of that puppet between Marty and Bryant is not a fun place to be.

Then time was up. Michael Davis thanked all the guests, and we gave them a standing ovation. I want to point out here that normally I hardly ever participate in standing ovations, as I think they've become too commonly used for performances that are merely good but not great. Often I'll find myself the only person in my row not standing at the conclusion of a show, because I'm that curmudgeonly... but this time, I was one of the first people to rise, because if anyone deserves me standing up, it's the Sesame Street people. I'm sure they'd be thrilled to know they have my approval.

I don't suppose Sesame Street will last forever. But for one television show to be so important, and so beloved, and still so great, inspiring a concert hall full of people of all ages to stand up and applaud so whole-heartedly, even after 40 years? Well, I think that's pretty good.

I'm sure there's a ton of little bits and pieces that I left out, so you should really
click here to drop by the Tough Pigs forum to read the memories of other audience members, and to give Sesame Street a standing ovation of your own.

Labels: books, events, Muppet performers, Sesame Street, Sesame Workshop

Last Friday night, an event took place which I'm pretty sure was the coolest thing that's ever happened in New Jersey.

They called it "Sesame Street at 40: A Night of Celebration and Discovery with the Legendary Cast," and it all went down at William Paterson University. A ton of grown-up Sesame fans were there, including a large handful of Tough Pigs forum members. This was lovely, because as terrific as the panel discussion was, it was a special bonus feature to get to spend time with so many fine Muppet fans, some of whom I've known in "real life" for a while now, some of whom I was meeting for the first time.

I'm going to tell you all about it now, and hopefully I'll get this posted before someone inevitably posts a video of the entire thing somewhere, thus rendering this written account completely moot. I hate being moot. I will, however, sprinkle in a few stealthily recorded video clips posted by a member of the audience.

The first person onstage was Tommy Shi. Tommy Shi! I couldn't believe it was really him! After all my years of watching Sesame Street, I never thought I'd get to see Tommy-- wait, who? I don't know. Some kind of guy from Mercedes Benz, apparently. I'm not really sure why he was there, but it's a good thing he was, because he introduced Street Gang author Michael Davis, who in turn introduced the eight people we paid 45 bucks to see: writer Tony Geiss, Bob McGrath, Fran Brill, Marty Robinson, Kevin Clash, Sonia Manzano, Caroll Spinney, and Frank Oz.

I don't think I'm alone in saying that, while I was excited about seeing all these guys and hearing their stories, it felt extra-special to have Frank Oz on the panel. He tends to be a pretty reserved with his Muppety memories -- as is his right, of course -- so I was particularly psyched to see his bald head. He was also rocking a fairly magnificent scarf. David Rudman was originally advertised as being on the panel too, but for some reason he didn't appear and wasn't even listed in the program.

Michael Davis kicked things off by asking everyone about their early days on the show. He asked Frank about the genesis of Bert and Ernie (prefacing the question by asking whether it's more correct to say "Bert and Ernie" or "Ernie and Bert" -- the consensus was "Bert and Ernie"; personally I've always used them interchangeably), and Frank talked about how, during the workshopping process, they initially tried Jim as Bert and Frank as Ernie until they realized it was more natural the other way around.

Next, Caroll Spinney talked about evolving Big Bird from the dumb, goofy fellow from the first season to the lovable, giant kid he is today. He said when he sees the first episode now he finds it "embarrassing."

Sonia Manzano said Maria was created as a response to complaints from the Hispanic community that there were strong African-American characters on the show, but no Hispanics. She talked one the earliest scenes she did -- It was with Grover, and she was watching Frank instead of the puppet, until finally Grover said, "Stop staring at that man!" She also mentioned an early scene with Big Bird -- She was feeling nervous, and Big Bird said: [and here Caroll jumped in and did the voice to finish her sentence] "Don't worry, Maria, just remember that behind that camera there are millions of people watching you."

Manzano recalled that Maria initially ran a library on the street, and over the years the character went from being a teenager to a bit of a hippie to a feminist, and eventually became a wife and mother. It's a pretty impressive fictional biography... Not many other TV characters have gone through so many phases of life in "real time" like that.

Kevin Clash talked about watching Sesame Street as a kid for two reasons: Because he liked the show, and so he could study the puppets to try to figure out how they were built. (When I was a kid, I watched the show for half of the same reasons.) Kevin's favorite character is Grover, and when he said this, Michael Davis launched into his "Grover as middle child" theory. If you've seen any of the publicity Davis has done for his book, you've heard the theory, in which he claims that Grover is a middle child because he tries so hard at everything he does in a desperate attempt to be noticed. It's an interesting thought, but it doesn't explain why Grover was my favorite back when I was first an only child, then an oldest child. In those days, Grover, as far as I was concerned, lived under my bed. What does that say about me?

Marty Robinson said he's been on Sesame Street since he was 28. Instead of starting out performing right hands for years and years, as is the tradition for newcomers, he was given Snuffy quickly. He now believes his first eight years as Snuffy were pretty terrible, which, if my math is correct, means he started getting good around 1988. He said there was a hazing process on the show, and that puppet builder Kermit Love in particular loved torturing newbies. He didn't elaborate on that thought, which is unfortunate, or possibly fortunate.

Fran Brill explained how she became an Muppeteer: She was doing work as a voice actor when she saw an ad stating that Jim Henson was training new puppeteers for a Christmas special (The Great Santa Claus Switch), so she called the company and talked to Jim on the phone himself. (Can you imagine? As Davis suggested, that's like calling Disney and talking to Walt. Heck, it's like calling Kellogg's and talking to Tony the Tiger.) She said she'd like to record voices for the special, but he told her they didn't really do it that way -- puppeteers do their own voices. She went to the puppet training workshop, got cast in the special, and ended up on Sesame Street. It was striking for her to work with Will Lee (Mr. Hooper) on the show, because he had been her acting teacher. I never knew that, and it's a great story, but having read Street Gang, it's amazing at how many little coincidences like that there were among the cast and crew of the show in the early days.

Bob McGrath talked about how being on Sing Along With Mitch led him to superstardom in Japan (Thousands of teenage girls screaming, "Bobu! Bobu!"), and how he decided he'd rather pursue a singing career in the States, which eventually led to his being cast on Sesame Street. He also had some funny stories about working with Ralph Nader doing "The People in Your Neighborhood" for The Sesame Street Special. Nader had trouble memorizing his lines, Nader insisted on singing "the people whom you meet" instead of "the people that you meet," etc. It's a good thing Nader didn't audition for the role of Bob.

Next, Michael Davis asked Tony Geiss about writing for kids, and Geiss replied that it's "impossible," so instead they write for people. He went on to describe how the writers are given a list of curriculum needs every season and they choose items they want to write about. For the environmentally themed season 40, he picked the word "hibernation" from the list and wrote a script about Baby Bear's family attempting to hibernate.

So all that stuff was fascinating and informative, but the audience really perked up when Caroll unzipped his duffel bag and pulled out Oscar. Oscar brought the house down every time he was on, leering at Sonia Manzano and doing his usual "I hate being happy because it makes me miserable, but being miserable makes me happy, but being happy makes me miserable" shtick, which is somehow still entertaining even after the millionth time. There was some discussion about how Maria and Oscar have a unique dynamic on the show, and Caroll took advantage of the opportunity of a grown-up audience to make it clear exactly what's at the root of that dynamic: "Maria, I just have one question," Oscar said. "So why'd you marry Luis?!"

The whole event was dedicated to the memory of Richard Hunt, and it was around this time that the discussion turned to Richard and his amazing talent. Manzano pointed to Gladys the Cow's song "Proud to Be a Cow" as one of his best performances, and Tony Geiss said the character of Sully proves that Richard was a great actor. They ran a video of the Forgetful Jones "Oklahoma" sketch and the Don Music "Mary Had a Bicycle" sketch. The audience absolutely loved them, and it was fantastic to watch them with an auditorium full of people cracking up. In fact, I would pay to attend an event consisting of nothing but screenings of Richard Hunt sketches. I can imagine that the "Cookie Monster tried to get cookies from a library" sketch with Richard as the librarian would get a huge response. If you're reading this website, you probably agree that Sesame Street is one of the greatest comedy shows in the history of television, and Richard was one of its funniest performers.

Geez, I still have pages and pages of notes left on this thing. This seems like as good a time as any to take a break. Come back tomorrow (or simply click right here) for Telly in a plastic bag, Michael Davis as James Lipton, questions from the audience, and the astonishing debut of Tiny Zoe.

Click here to comment on Richard Hunt's greatness, or anything else in this article, on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: books, events, Muppet performers, Sesame Street, Sesame Workshop

Coming up after these messages is part two of our chat with "Street Gang" author Michael Davis! Be sure to click here and read part one, or else you'll be horribly, irrevocably lost. Continuity is king!

And in case you haven't been reminded enough, Michael will be appearing TONIGHT (that's Friday, January 30 if you're reading this late) with lots of famous Sesame Street alumni (including some folks by the names of Clash, Spinney, Manzano, McGrath, Robinson, Brill, Rudman, Geiss, and one Mr. Frank Oz) at William Patterson University in Wayne, New Jersey. Click here for more info, and if you're already attending, be sure to say hi to the ToughPigs, who will be attending the heck outta this thing.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled interview.

ToughPigs: Aside from the interviews, what sort of research materials did Sesame Workshop provide you with for the book?

Michael Davis: A lot of tape. And you probably know, all of Sesame Workshop’s paper archives up until about 1976 are at the University of Maryland. Whatever I needed after that point, they tried to provide if it was still available. So if there was something specific that I wanted, I had to know exactly what to ask for. They didn’t give me the key to the filing cabinet. But to their great credit, whenever I had a question, it got answered. If I wanted a document or a letter, they found the letter. They were very professional about their assistance to me. And because Joan was interested in the project and gave it her blessing, they were doing Joan’s bidding. She’s the boss of bosses. Nobody wants to let her down. I can think of no time when I was turned down for anything.

It got a little sticky when it came to finding photographs for the book. Because as you know, they’re very interested in creating their own book, and needed to have a proprietary sense about holding on to some of those images, and I understood that. But their reluctance was actually a plus, because it forced me to think about what I could get for this book that they likely won’t go after. And the answer became evident to me, that we should ask the sources in the book if they would consider providing images from their personal collections. I had a wonderful photo researcher work with me named Vashti Anderson and between the two of us, appealing to sources in the book, we were able to get over 50 images which, I think have a real intimacy, a real kind of family feel to them. They’re pictures you would probably see framed in somebody’s house. Some people were a little reluctant. Loretta Long, a little. But God bless her, some of the images she gave us were the best of them all. We could have done a whole book of Bob McGrath images. He and his wife Ann have done a wonderful job of collecting personal mementos, archives, photographs. He had so much great stuff, it was such a hard choice to narrow it down. People were wonderful, and because they were so generous, it gave a very different feel to the collection of photographs. Originally we were just going to have 20, but when Viking saw what was coming in, they’re the ones that said “No, 50.”

TP: I mentioned in my review, my only complaint about the pictures was that I wanted more. If you got 20, I wanted 50. If you got 50, I wanted 500. Are you planning on making the images available elsewhere?

MD: Yes, StreetGangBook.com. To my regret, we didn’t end up using any pictures of Matt Robinson. I want to do something nice about Matt on the site, and soon, because I have a couple of great Holly Robinson Peete stories that I didn’t get to use. I wanted to create content on the website for people to come back to. I haven’t done a lot yet, but I wanted it to be a place where I can update content every once in a while and write some more about Sesame Street. There’s so much to write about, even the current stuff. I thought the season that just ended was just superb. I love the animated Bert and Ernie, I thought that was great. It’s presumptuous, but I think Jim would love it.

He was so techno-savvy. I don’t think Jim ever thought the characters were too precious. That’s why I did so much in the book about Burr Tilstrom. People ask me why I did so much; it’s because Burr created a very different model about how he felt about those characters. He didn’t want any commercialism at all. He didn’t want a Kukla and and Ollie in the stores. He felt that there was only one Kukla and one Ollie and those were the puppets on his hands. He felt that they had a soul and a life of their own. Jim didn’t, he kept the puppets in a plastic bag, he didn’t think that they were alive. He knew that the performers were the ones that gave them life. I’m not saying Burr Tilstrom was off his rocker, he just came about it from a different angle with a very different belief about these characters and what they represent. He could have been a gazillionaire. I’m old enough to remember Kukla, Fran and Ollie on television and they were it. They were it for a while. They could have been in every five and dime, every drug store, every toy store, but he didn’t want it. And then here you have Jim who went about it carefully, cautiously, but he was interested in making money from the characters. Why? Because it gave him the freedom to do the things he really wanted to do like the Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. He wanted to expand and make sure that the people who worked for him made a good wage. It’s two different ways of looking at the world. It’s so true to say that Burr Tilstrom influenced Jim in a profound way. We don’t know when it happened, but we do know that the light went on in Jim’s head about the way that these characters are represented through the lens of the camera and how they’re projected on the screen and how they have dimensionality and shape and form. One of the reasons he knew that was because of Kukla Fran and Ollie.

TP: Regarding Caroll Spinney’s reading of the audio book, did you have any influence in getting him? Was that your idea?

MD: ((Nods yes)) He was really up for it. Right from the start when I got the first call from Viking that Listen and Live bought the rights to the audio book, my first words were “I want Caroll Spinney to read this book.” If it can’t be me, I would want Caroll. I think my persistence helped. I said that if anybody is concerned about the hint of New England accent in his voice, get over it, because within five minutes it will melt away. I think the world of Caroll Spinney, and it was such a thrill to listen to him read the book. To be in the studio and to do that interview with him and to hear him read the words that I pecked out on my PC, it was an out-of-body experience. (Note: The audio book is also available on iTunes, where you can hear a sample of Caroll's reading.)

TP: For people like me who bought the book in its first printing, if there will be extra chapters in future editions, will we get a chance to see them or will they be exclusive to those printings?

MD: I’m going to put everything up online. I have spoken to Viking about refreshing the book for its release to paperback and doing a chapter that updates the book and brings us right up to this year as the 40th anniversary approaches. I haven’t gotten anything that solidly promises that I can do that, but it’s something we’re discussing. I don’t want to ever make it like I’m trying to steal any thunder from the book that’s coming out this fall from Sesame Workshop, because they need their day in the sun too. If I’m allowed to, I’d really like to update the book because so much has happened and is happening. I think they’ve done some really interesting things in the last two seasons. I like Murray a lot and the Word On the Street idea. I realize that one of the great challenges of educating preschoolers and getting kids ready for school these days is their spoken vocabulary as well as their written vocabulary. Introducing kids to words now is so very important, and I admire what they’ve done for the show toward that end. I have no qualms whatsoever about Abby Cadabby. I think she’s adorable.

TP: I agree, I love Abby. And Leslie Carerra performs the hell out of her.

MD: She is magnificent. She’s hilarious, she’s adorable, she’s talented to the Nth degree. And they finally have their female star. I’ve read all of the contrary reviews about Abby and I don’t want to belittle it because I know it incurs the wrath of feminists that there’s this princess character in pink that reinforces what they believe is this kind of stereotype and an unfortunate target for young girls to reach for. But I’m old enough to see that everything in pop culture is a cycle, and we’re into that cycle of princesses again and little girls who desperately want to be in dresses and tutus.

It’s always a marriage of great writing and performance. If you didn’t have the great writing for Abby, she’d be shallow and a dud. But Abby grew out of the mind of the writing staff, Tony Geiss’ brain, he’s the one who gave birth to Abby Cadabby. It didn’t come from the marketing department, it came the old fashioned way. Abby didn’t spring forth fully formed, she evolved and they played with her a bit. The first season was good, but the second season was better. That says to me that they’re wrapping their arms around this character, creating a real persona, a real personality with depth. I think she’s hilarious and I love the situations they create for her. They’ve got to stay in business, and the competing forces in the marketplace are profound. This is the golden age for preschool television. There’s great stuff on Nick, there’s great stuff on Disney, there’s great stuff on Discovery Kids. Sesame Street ain’t the only game in town anymore. They’ve got to fight, they’ve got to make themselves known, they’ve got to continue to move merchandise in the stores, and I’ll say that with my support. Because the money that comes in not only supports the domestic show, it helps to keep propagating the ideas of Sesame Street around the world, and I buy into those ideas. I think it’s very good, what they do, and unless somebody shows me an example of a degrading Sesame co-production that’s wrong-headed or promotes cultural stereotypes, I’m going to keep saying that it’s a good thing. It may be the very best ambassador that the United States has out there in the world, and I’m for it.

TP: Regarding Jon Stone’s memoir, is the Stone family actively trying to get it published? Because I’d love to read it.

MD: It’s my dearest hope that it will be published someday, and I’ve mentioned it to [Stone’s wife] Beverly and I’ve mentioned it to [their daughters] Polly and Kate, and I have offered my assistance to them if they want somebody to help edit the book and get it ready for an agent to look at or a publishing house to look at. I do think there is a long section of the book toward the back that has a little too much anger and vitriol in it. I don’t think anybody really wants to hear it. I think it was extremely cathartic for Jon to get it out of his system, but I don’t think anybody wants to read it. If you surgically removed that, what you have left is this magnificently funny, moving, poignant insider look at not only Sesame Street but the early days of television, and it really is such a window into his psyche, into the mind of this great creative person. He’s very tough on himself, he doesn’t project himself as this wonderful guy who has no flaws. To the contrary, he writes about his challenges, about getting along in the workplace, he doesn’t come across as this guy who had all of the answers all of the time. He does come off as somebody who really appreciated women, women in the workplace. He has wonderful things to say about Bob Keeshan and his term of service on Captain Kangaroo. I really hope the world gets to read the book some day because it’s that good. I feel privileged for having had the opportunity to read it and quote from it, and I thank the Stone family over and over again for allowing me to do so. It was a real extension of trust for them to allow me to do that, and I hope I did not let them down in any way.

TP: The story of the production of Sesame Street starts about halfway through "Street Gang". With 40 years worth of production history to fit into about 200 pages, how did you choose what to cut?

MD: It was very hard. A smart person told me at the beginning of the project that I should have no more than seven major characters, so that helped me a little bit. I had to make decisions on what would keep the narrative moving. I also wanted to make sure that the people that I felt after doing the years of research who didn’t get as much credit, I wanted to make sure that the book would give them their due. So, Dulcy Singer. Lloyd Morrisett. Richard Hunt, I found his story to be so moving. I love his characters. Gladys, I love. I love Placido Flamingo and the Two-Headed Monster. His characters always spoke to me in a profound way. Oh, how could I leave this out? How could I leave out Sully and Biff? Genius, Sully and Biff.

TP: I don’t know any other character who could perform a silent character as well as Richard.

MD: And there’s a linkage there to Beaker. I really wanted to write more about that. I had a passage about Beaker and Stan Laurel, because I think they’re the same character in a lot of ways. And Beaker is genius.

TP: When we asked Steve Whitmire about performing Beaker, he said, “I can’t tell you exactly where that character came from, from within Richard, because I just don’t know.”

MD: My wife and I talk about this a lot, about the interior life of Beaker. We know his soft spots, we know what makes him happy, we know what makes him quizzical. It’s very hard for a puppet to do a comedic take, but Richard could do it. I talked to Caroll Spinney just the other day, and I asked him how he was able to make Oscar look chagrined and embarrassed when Sonia pulls him out of the can. Because he does, he shrinks. That’s just talent. These guys were master puppeteers. For all the things you can say about Frank and Jim, for all of Jim’s talents as a producer, director, performer and on and on, there was a point in our cultural history when he and Frank were the two best puppeteers anywhere. And if that was all they ever did, that would be enough. It’s very hard for me to watch Ernie and Bert’s “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” duet in Christmas Eve on Sesame Street. It makes me so sad, I just couldn’t watch it this year. Because what it always brings me back to is that it can’t happen again.
Special thanks to Michael Davis for taking the time to meet with us, and double special thanks for writing a book like "Street Gang"!

Click here to discuss this article on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: books, interview, Sesame Street, Sesame Workshop

As I mentioned here a few days ago, the Sesame Street Muppets appeared on ABC's Scrubs on Tuesday night. If you missed it, you can watch it online for free over at ABC.com, at least for a while. Also, if you haven't seen this online promo with Elmo and Zach Braff, you should check it out.

Labels: Muppets on TV, review, Sesame Street

I hope you all bought this semester's required reading, Street Gang by Michael Davis. If you haven't there's still time before I give you a big fat F. And if you have, then you probably have some questions for author Michael Davis (aside from his recommended questions for book clubs). Well, you're in luck, because we at ToughPigs had the unique opportunity to speak to Mr. Davis and ask all of those pesky questions that have been keeping you awake during nap time.

And just a reminder, Davis will be moderating a panel discussion this Friday, January 30, at William Patterson University in Wayne, New Jersey celebrating the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street. Panelists include a few folks you may have heard of: Frank Oz, Kevin Clash, Caroll Spinney, Sonia Manzano, Bob McGrath, Marty Robinson, Fran Brill, David Rudman, and Tony Geiss. The event will also have a special showcase celebrating the life of Richard Hunt. The ToughPigs will also be in attendance (not on stage, unfortunately), so keep an eye out for us and feel free to say hello! Click here for more info on the event.

Special thanks to Michael Davis for being supercool and making the time to chat with us. Take it away, interview!

ToughPigs: I’m sure all of our readers on ToughPigs are jealous over just about every person you got to interview for the book. Some of the more notable names, like Judy Collins, James Earl Jones, James Taylor, how were you able to get those interviews just to talk about one specific subject with them?

Michael Davis: I started with a polite letter explaining my purpose, and in some cases I had to give them a bracketed amount of time like, “I have to talk to you sometime this spring.” I do think that in most cases, publicists were very helpful. Having a contract with Viking definitely opened doors. And I would also just say please and thank you. What I found was, in every case, every case, people opened up tremendously about the show, about their experiences. They wanted to contribute to this book, wanted to share their stories. Judy Collins, goodness gracious, she talked about her battle with alcoholism. She said Jon Stone gave her a reason to live. James Taylor gave us that wonderful riff about how Sesame Street prepares children for the real world and doesn’t wrap it in cellophane. They all felt kind of a sense of duty to tell their story, their experience with everybody. And even those who sadly didn’t get into the book, I wanted to keep the book to less than 400 pages, there are a lot of wonderful people who gave me their time and with the website, over time, present their stories. Norah Jones is one of them; she was fabulous. So many of the celebrity guests had great stories to tell. More than you can capture in a book. There’s a tremendous sense of pride that celebrities have for being on Sesame Street. They feel honored. Some of them approached rather gingerly, like Johnny Cash. He really did say, “May I please come with my son?” And they said, “Of course! Will you sing?” So I didn’t have that many barriers to cross with people once they knew that I had a contract and this was something real, and I know that a lot of celebrities called the Workshop to ask if I had their blessing. Then I sent thank you notes right away, I sent them progress reports about the book, I tried to keep a line of communication open with everybody.

TP: Likewise, you were able to talk to a lot of family members like the Hunts and Raposos. Was there any hesitation in asking them on your part, or were they already open to talking about their family?

MD: There wasn’t any hesitation on my part, because what I tried to do was to learn as much as I could before approaching them, so I wasn’t going in there and asking vague questions. I came to them with specific questions about their dad or their husband. Some people expressed a little bit of hesitancy, and just like the celebrities, some of them called the Workshop to check on me, but I have to say, they were incredibly helpful, forthcoming, the interviews took on a kind-of intimacy, we cried a lot, we laughed a lot. I took my wife Debra with me on a lot of them, and she was another set of eyes and ears for me. She picked up on a lot of things that, because I’m male, I would not have picked up on them. So it was really like having another reporter there, and because she came with me, she got to be in the presence of these great people.

TP: Who were some of the more fun or interesting interviewees you got to speak with?

MD: We’ve already talked about him, but I’ll mention him again. I’m such a big James Taylor fan. I think he is one of the great singer-songwriters in history. I think he is to our time what Stephen Foster was to previous times. Also right at the tippity top was Bernie Brillstein.

TP: It’s so great that you got to meet him before his unfortunate passing.

MD: For me, he’s the real deal, and I was honored to be in his presence. His office could have been an airplane hangar. It was the biggest office in Beverly Hills that I have ever seen. He was this big, rotund man behind a desk you could land a helicopter on. Photographs and posters on the wall of all of his successes. In his career, if he did only what he did for Saturday Night Live, that would be career enough for most people, but Bernie did so much more. There was no hiding his love for Jim, and he cried a lot in that interview. And I think he felt, until his dying day, a tremendous regret for not being on top of what was happening on the week that Jim died. It tortured him. I know that they weren’t separated by age in that many years, but he took on a more paternal role with Jim as his son, and I really do think that Jim’s death was not unlike when a parent loses a child. And I put that interview right at the top, because it was so moving and so real and so funny. If there was a Mount Rushmore of comedy, I would put Bernie there.

Jerry Nelson, what a great man. I told Jerry when I met him, “You’re a Beatle!” For people who love The Muppet Show, he’s it! Dave Goelz, I flew out to California to be with him, and it was one of the very best days of the project. He’s an astounding person.

TP: Dave Goelz only worked on Sesame Street a couple of times…

MD: That interview was more about Jim and that ensemble. But it was really worth it. And you could see how they were a band of brothers. I’m very fond of Fran Brill. She gave me so much, just a great interview. Stephanie D’Abruzzo, who I think is one of the funniest women I’ve ever heard. These people are to be celebrated for their talent, for their virtuosity. And because they work with puppets, in some people’s eyes they’re seen only as “children’s performers”. They’re satirists, is what they are. I have such an appreciation for their talent, for their imagination, their bond. That we all could work in such an environment, wouldn’t life be so much better?

And then I would have to say, meeting Grover was very emotional. I was on set for a taping, and I just think it’s uncanny how an artist has channeled Frank’s characters like Eric Jacobson. It’s not just a representation. It’s almost eerie how great he is. So, there I am in the studio, and there’s Grover messing up Fat Blue’s order again. And Jerry Nelson was there, voicing Fat Blue but not performing him, and it gets done and everyone on the floor gives Jerry a standing ovation. All the carpenters and technicians, Frankie Biondo on camera. We’re all wiping away tears, because he’s Jerry! And they begin to clear away things, and Eric is still on stage with Grover, so I begin to very gingerly walk forward. Now, I’d been on this project already for four years, and this wasn’t the first time I’d seen the puppets in action, it was the first time I’d seen Grover in action. I’ve been with Elmo and Bird a bunch of times, but there’s something incredible about being in Grover’s space. I know that he’s my favorite of the Muppet characters, and I believe that Grover is of special interest to second-born children. We had that thing happen that happens to a lot of people with the Muppets, you buy into it. You drop your sense of disbelief and you’re in the moment with the character, and the puppeteer drops away, Eric wasn’t there, and we had a conversation.

TP: What did you talk about?

MD: Television. (In a Grover voice) “Tell me about TV Guide!” (note: Michael Davis is a former editor for TV Guide) I asked him some questions about being a waiter. He said some really funny things, but I didn’t have my tape recorder. He said “What I really want to do is act.” (Laughs) So, here’s my view about Grover. Grover, of all of the Sesame Muppets, is the greatest teacher. If you look at the clips, those stick in the heads of kids. Some of the characters might be hard to get, especially with the complicated characters like Forgetful Jones, but Grover, because he’s so direct and so earnest, and because he wants so much for you to know what he knows, he’s a great teacher. And of course, he’s an extension of Frank. And I can’t tell you how great Frank was to me in the five years of making this book. I just count it as one of the most fortunate things that’s ever happened to me. I shared with him what I learned over the course of the project, because I felt that he above everyone would tell me the truth and tell me if I was off course or if I had something really, really wrong. Not only about Jim, but about the whole deal of the studio, the early years, the characters, where they came from, the motivation. There’s a bluntness about him, he can be very direct. I shared a lot with him and he was great, providing me with a lot of the feedback I needed. So I owe him a huge debt. And if I sweated anything about the book, I sweated, “Will Frank respect this book?” If I wanted to reach anyone’s standards, I wanted to reach Frank’s standards.

TP: Was there anyone you tried to contact that you couldn’t meet for an interview?

MD: No. The only people I wanted to talk to who I couldn’t are no longer on the planet. There were so many days when I’d say, “Oh Jeff Moss, I need to talk to you!” Actually, I have to correct myself. Michael Eisner didn’t talk to me. I tried very, very hard in writing, phone calls, I know his speech writer very well who helped me make an appeal to him. I come from the school of journalism that says you don’t try to take a whack at somebody without giving them the opportunity to hear what you have to say and respond to it. I tried everything to get his attention and to get him to consider it. And after he said no, I tried to change his mind, I didn’t take no for an answer. I kept going back to him saying, “Would you please reconsider? Would you accept ten typed questions, written by me, faxed to you?” So I regret that he didn’t talk. It’s easy to criticize him, and he was a punching bag for a lot of people. I didn’t want to be part of that punching bag brigade. I presented what I believe to be a true, factual story about the tug-of-war between Eisner and Jim and Joan Cooney, but it would have been so good to have his voice in the story. All that being said, I don’t harbor any bad feeling for Eisner, and I would still love to talk to him. If he called me tomorrow and said, “Alright, I read your book and I want to talk to you,” I’d tell him that his words would be in the second printing of the book or the paperback version, and I still hold out hope that he will.

TP: If I meet him, I’ll let him know.

MD: (Laughs) Please.
Click here for part two of our chat with Michael Davis where you'll hear about the audio book, Abby Cadabby, and the Holy Grail that is Jon Stone's memoirs.

Click here to visit the Mount Rushmore of Comedy on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: books, interview, Sesame Street, Sesame Workshop

We've got some pretty talented people over on the ToughPigs forum. We've got jugglers, balloon artists, didgeridoo players, contortionists, and all sorts of freaks, geeks, and squeaks. More than one of our pals is good with the art thing. You've already seen some great work from Smig on our site, and now we're pleased to introduce Peter Savieri, who has made some beautiful images of some of our favorite Muppet characters.

Peter will be showcased here on ToughPigs as he continues to create his Muppet works, so hopefully we'll be seeing a lot more of him. Going back, here's a collection of his completed works, and his new images will pop up here soon.

And because you demanded it, here's two new Smig cartoons, the first of which he presented to Street Gang author Michael Davis at a recent book signing. WARNING: the image may or may not confirm some risqué rumors. Bert was unavailable for comment.Click here to get all artsy-fartsy on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: fan art, Peter Savieri, Sesame Street, Smig, The Muppet Show

It was recently announced that a new 25th anniversary edition of the Sesame Street movie Follow That Bird will be released on March 24, 2009. Extras will include a featurette and an interview with Caroll Spinney.

All of which is great. Follow That Bird is a fun movie with good songs, touching moments, and the lesson that it's okay for a six-year-old to jump from a moving truck. So we Muppet fans really have nothing to complain about here... but that's never stopped us before.

See, where the previous DVD release basically just duplicated the original movie poster, this release has a brand-new cover. And it's hard not to notice that Elmo is prominently featured along with the other Muppets, despite the fact that the film was made before he was really a character, and he only appears onscreen for about two seconds as part of a crowd scene (and not performed by Kevin Clash).

We've been talking about this over on the Tough Pigs forum, and one thing led to another, and now we're asking ourselves: Could we do a better job? A couple of forum members have already whipped up their own alternate versions, and I'd like to see more from the Tough Pigs reader population at large. (Longtime TP readers will recognize that this is the same concept as the highly successful "Muppets Magic Extreme Makeover" commissioned by Danny Horn way back in 2003.)

So here's your assignment: Come up with a new Follow That Bird DVD cover and send it to me at ToughPigsRyan@yahoo.com. That's it. It can be a legitimate redesign, or it can be silly, and a few weeks from now I'll post the good ones here. Here's something I just came up with to give you some inspiration:

Look, Big Bird has a moustache! And glasses! And the movie is called Follow That Cow! Ha ha!

Okay, that's really terrible. I know you can do better... so get to it.

Click here to do something or other on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: merchandise, news, reader participation, Sesame Street

My New Year's resolution for 2009 is to post a new Book Club entry on ToughPigs. And why not just get that over with so I can start eating my chocolate-covered pretzels and ignoring my treadmill?

Let's celebrate 2009 by laughing at the worst day in Grover's pitiful existence. Please enjoy "Grover's Bad, Awful Day", and afterward pop your head into the ToughPigs forum to give us your discussion comments, witty observations, and run-on sentences. Or, if you're not the forum kinda person, you can e-mail your comments to me at joe.toughpigs@gmail.com. Then, in a couple weeks, I will post the best comments here on ToughPigs for everyone to ogle.

Why am I still talking? Let's go watch Grover's Job impression! Remember, clicky the images to make them biggie.












Suggested Discussion Questions:

1.) What is the root of Grover's problems? Is it living in a single-parent household? Or the lack of a properly nutritious breakfast?

2.) Which of Barkley's four performers do you think Grover is trying to draw?

3.) Why does Oscar get to bring his garbage can into class? Wouldn't that be the equivalent of Bert and Ernie bringing their apartment to school?

4.) Does Herry Monster's penchant for pointing out the obvious help or hinder Grover's bad day? Because that'd bug the bejeezus out of me.

5.) Wouldn't the grossness of grape ice cream just make Grover's day even worse? Ick.
Click here to add your comments/concerns/conundrums on the ToughPigs forum! Or click here to e-mail them directly to Joe.

Labels: book club, reader participation, Sesame Street

'Round these parts, we ToughPigs have a certain love for Bob McGrath. Recently, we found a couple of videos on the YouTube Machine from Bob's pre-Sesame career. And frankly, I can't think of anyone I'd rather share them with than Viewers Like You.

Here is Bob on To Tell The Truth in 1966. Can you figure out which one is the real Bob McGrath?


Here's Bob from his first big gig on Sing Along With Mitch. Feel free to stop watching after Bob's song, unless you want to see a commercial for Mary Poppins.


The YouTube Machine is so big, why would we stop there? Here's a few more videos that you might already be familiar with. And if you're not, then you'd better get familiar real quick.

This is a song that they'd never show on Sesame these days. Not because of the lack of educational value, but because of the dirty hippies.


Here's Bob doing his job as a music teacher, and failing miserably. I don't know why the Two-Headed Monster even pays for those lessons.


I've got three words for you: Bob the Blob.


Bob earns his paycheck by dressing up as... well, just watch the video.


Lastly, TV Legends did a huge interview with Bob that's cut into four parts on YouTube. If you've got a couple hours to waste on Bob, then give 'em a click-a-roo.

Of course, there's a ton more videos of Bob on YouTube, as well as the Sesame Street Video site, so check 'em out, and then click here to visit the ToughPigs forum to tell us which ones are your favorite.

Labels: Sesame Street, Sesame Street humans

The production: Elmo's World: Happy Holidays
The gift: Elmo gives Dorothy a drawing he made

Elmo spends this entire special trying to think of a good present for Dorothy, but gifts such as a new sweater, a bottle of wine, or a puppy are just not appropriate for a fish. On a suggestion from a fat guy in a red suit, he uses his imagination and comes up with an original work of art called "Dorothy's World," which depicts Elmo inside Dorothy's fishbowl. (Presumably in Dorothy's World Elmo has gills.)

Score: 4/10
This is a last-minute gift that looks like something scribbled by a three-year-old. I'm only scoring it this high because Elmo trekked all the way to North Pole and sat through a boring song about the Christmas spirit in order to get Santa's advice.


The production: A Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa
The gift: The Muppets' neighbor Claire asks Santa for, and receives, Christmas with the Muppets

Santa grants a few different wishes in the new Muppet Christmas special from this year: Nathan Lane gets a tricycle, which, sadly, we don't get to see him ride. Pepe gets an opera voice, which should really come in handy when they get around to making The Muppets' Gotterdammerung. Claire's letter to Santa, the plot device that drives the whole special, is simply to spend Christmas with all her Muppety friends.

Score: 8.5/10
Claire lives in the same building as the Muppets, so she gets to see them every day anyway. So I was going to rate this one pretty low... but then I got to thinking, How great a present would it be to have the Muppets come to your house on Christmas Eve? It would blow 1987's ThunderCats Cat's Lair playset out of the water, that's for sure.


The production: A Special Sesame Street Christmas
The gift: Big Bird gives Leslie Uggams a hat that everyone hates

This is the little-seen Sesame Christmas special (Danny wrote about it on this site a while back) in which Leslie Uggams is inexplicably hanging out on Sesame Street on Christmas. The humans all chip in to buy her a present, and they entrust Big Bird to pick it out, which is a pretty terrible idea. Was he established as being six years old back then? I wouldn't want a six-year-old picking out my present. Anyway, Leslie doesn't even pretend to like the hat, but she turns it into a cue for an inspiring song about really crappy Christmas presents.

Score: 1/10


The production: Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas
The gift: Emmet attempts to give his Ma a piano, while she attempts to give him a guitar

You know the story. The otters have noble gift-giving intentions, but each of them sacrifices the other's prized possession, then they both lose the talent contest, so they don't make any money, so they can't buy any presents so they did it all for nothing. But they still have each other... and then there is that happy ending. Hmm.

Score: I can't decide. What do you think?


The production: The Great Santa Claus Switch
The gift: Santa Claus gives Thog and Thig a toy truck and a teddy bear, respectively.

In this very first Muppet Christmas special, the guy who played Ed Norton on The Honeymooners teaches two naked, monstrous beasts that Christmas is all about giving toys away without expecting anything in return. Rumor has it that Thig was so touched by this lesson that he quit the Muppets and became the head of the Salvation Army.

Score: 7/10


The production: A Muppet Family Christmas
The gift: Robin gives Grover a Fraggle pebble

A tiny rock is just about the cheapest, most worthless gift you could ever give... but when it's changing hands between the two cutest Muppets in the world in a gesture of selflessness, it seems a lot better than one of those XBox 3whatchamacallits. Besides, Grover seems genuinely touched to receive it, and he's not one to fake sincerity. This gifting also happens to connect three different Muppet worlds, which is the point of the whole special.

Score: 10/10
The best part of the Fraggle pebble is that Grover can pawn it off on the first monster, rat, or chicken he sees, and rather than seeming ungrateful, he's just following the tradition!


The production: Christmas Eve on Sesame Street
The gift: Mr. Hooper returns Bert's paper clip collection and Ernie's rubber duckie to their rightful owners

If only they used money on Sesame Street, this story never would have happened. Bert trades Mr. Hooper his paper clips for a soapdish for Rubber Duckie, and Ernie trades Mr. Hooper Rubber Duckie for a cigar box for Bert's paper clips. Then Mr. Hooper gives everything back, which means he gets absolutely nothing from the whole deal except the satisfaction of selflessness, which, of course, is the true meaning of blah blah blah.

Of course, it's not like he would have had much need for a used rubber duckie anyway. The really important thing here, though, is this: Is this the only time a grown-up human was ever seen in Bert and Ernie's apartment? He looks very tall.

Score: 9/10

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everyone! I hope you get presents that don't suck!

Do you agree with my assessments? Disagree? Which ones did I leave out? Click here to talk about this article on the Tough Pigs forum!

ToughPigsRyan@yahoo.com

Labels: Christmas, Fraggle Rock, lists, Sesame Street, The Muppet Show

There’s a great story out there; someone just needed to tell it. Well ok, it’s been told before, but why haven’t we gotten that story with all the sordid details?

That’s what we’ve been saying for years. Sure, we’ve gotten the general Sesame Street origin before: Joan Ganz Cooney wanted to use the previously bad-for-kids medium of television to teach kids, hired Jim Henson and company, and created 40 years worth of history. But not many people have bothered to get into the nitty and gritty of the story. Until now. When someone did. Get the nitty.

TV Guide’s own Michael Davis did his homework (which consisted of over 200 interviews conducted over the last 5 years) and wrote the comprehensive history of Sesame Street in his new book, Street Gang.

But we don’t just get the history of Sesame Street, we get a thorough history of children’s television (including enough info on Captain Kangaroo to warrant its own book) and the stories of the most important people involved, including Joan Ganz Cooney, Jim Henson, John Stone, Jeff Moss, Joe Raposo, and some other people whose names start with the letter J.

The prologue starts the book on a surprisingly depressing note. Our tale starts with Joan Ganz Cooney attending Jim Henson’s funeral. It’s a fresh viewpoint on a story we’ve all heard many times before, and it successfully gets the reader emotionally involved before we read anything remotely related to television development and production. Davis shows us right away that for as many uplifting effects the story has, there is just as many upsetting. Street Gang is bookended with stories about death, as the end of the book deals with the inevitable passings of Jeff Moss, Jim Henson, Joe Raposo, Jon Stone, Northern Calloway, and Richard Hunt. As a Muppet fan, I’m sad to revisit this part of Sesame history, but I’m ecstatic to see their stories written with the brutal honesty they deserve.

If you have at least a passing interest in the history of children’s television, then the first half of the book will be like a triple malt sundae to you. It’s compelling, thorough, and it reads as if Michael Davis leaves no stone unturned. Even if he mentions someone mundane like the Kukla, Fran and Ollie cameraman, he’s going to give you a quick bio on him before moving on. Thankfully, Davis is able to do this without sounding like he’s meandering or losing the point of the story at large. I found this portion of the book to be very intriguing, but there’s just one small problem: You might not.

Although there’s more raw information in those first 150 pages than you can shake a stick at (assuming you’re one for stick-shaking), there isn’t much about Sesame Street or the Muppets. And let’s face it, you’re probably on this site in the first place because you’re a Muppet fan. Or because you’re my dad (Hi, Dad!).

There are some great bits in the first half of the book involving Jim Henson and Jon Stone, and lots more that set the stage for the premiere of Sesame Street, but if you bought this book because it’s got a big picture of Oscar on the cover, you might only really start to enjoy the book in the eleventh chapter.

Thankfully, that eleventh chapter starts with the preparation of the pilot episode, and that’s when the book gets a big shot of vitamin M. Throughout the second half of the book, we get interviews with just about every human cast member and puppeteer, we live through their glory years as the invincible children’s television machine, we get hit with the sudden competition of Barney and Sesame’s subsequent format changes, we witness the unfortunate downward spiral of Northern Calloway, and best of all, we see that after 40 years, Sesame Street remains the leader among children’s programming. It’s a wonderful rollercoaster ride, and my only complaint is that I wish there was more.

The book also contains a few pages of photos, most of which I haven’t seen before. I honestly don’t think I’ll ever get tired of seeing pictures of Muppeteers with the puppets on their hands. My favorite by far is a picture of Bob McGrath in Japan, surrounded by Japanese teenagers waiting to get an autograph with “Bobu”.

Needless to say, I think Street Gang deserves to sit on every Muppet fan’s bookshelf, right between your copies of The Works and Sesame Street Unpaved. It will be the book we go back to regularly to confirm the details of the Sesame trivia we’ve memorized, and it will fit into the rotation of books we re-read every few years, along with Caroll Spinney and Kevin Clash’s autobiographies.

Street Gang will be released on December 26, and I recommend that everyone wait in line to get your copy at your local Barnes and Noble overnight as if this were the new Harry Potter book. I can’t imagine a more fulfilling way to spend your Boxing Day. Or click here to get a personalized bookplate for your book, signed my Michael Davis himself.

And don’t forget, Caroll Spinney’s reading of the audio book will also be available on December 26.
Click here to see a list of Street Gang tour dates, along with additional info.

Click here to discuss this article on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: books, review, Sesame Street, Sesame Workshop

"Street Gang Activity"? What a terrible title for this article. It sounds like a rejected "Before and After" on Wheel of Fortune.

For years, the Muppet fan community has been hoping and praying and wishing and complaining and whining for an extensive, academic book encompassing the history of Sesame Street, along with lots of behind-the-scenes stories and photos. Man, did they listen or what!?!

Coming out this Christmas, "Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street" will hit shelves. The book will contain information gathered from over 200 interviews conducted in the last 5 years, and will most likely mention Muppets once or twice in passing. Author Michael Davis has been kind enough to offer up some information to us at ToughPigs about the book and some events surrounding its release.

There will be a book tour soon after the release, which will hopefully have some Sesame faces attached. The last of the confirmed dates is the biggie: on January 30, at William Patterson University in Wayne, New Jersey, Michael Davis will moderate a panel discussion with Kevin Clash, Caroll Spinney, Sonia Manzano, Bob McGrath, Marty Robinson, David Rudman, Tony Geiss, and the one and only Frank Oz. The evening will also include a tribute to Richard Hunt. Tickets are going fast, so reserve yours right now. Go! This article will wait for you while you enter your credit card information.

The other confirmed tour dates are:

Monday, January 5, 2009
Lincoln Center Barnes and Noble, New York City

Tuesday, January 6, 2009
National Press Club, Washington DC

Thursday, January 8, 2009
Harvard Coop, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Saturday, January 10, 2009
Greetings and Readings, Hunt Valley, Maryland

Tuesday, January 27, 2009
University of Pennsylvania Bookstore, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Gershman Y, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Friday, January 30, 2009
William Patterson University, Wayne, New Jersey

From what I hear, many people in this country don't live on the east coast (s'matter with all of you?), so to make it up to the folks who won't be able to attend any of the signings, Michael Davis will send a personalized, peel-and-stick bookplate that can be pasted into your book. All you'll have to do is buy your book during the holiday season and you'll get the signature for free! What a sport, that Davis guy is.

One book that I make sure to revisit often is Caroll Spinney's "The Wisdom of Big Bird." Partly because it's a great book for a rainy day, but also because it's one of the few books to actually share these great behind-the-scenes stories from the early days of Sesame Street. For some reason, Caroll never recorded an audio version of the book, but as luck would have it, he agreed to read the audio book for Street Gang. That's a whopping 7 hours of Caroll in your head! Jim Dale, eat your heart out.

For more information, keep an eye on this space, as we'll have a review of the book up next week. Also, in early January we'll have an interview with Michael Davis himself. And there's always Street Gang's official website, which has the sole purpose of making us foam at the mouth in anticipation.
Click here for street talk on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: books, Sesame Street, Sesame Workshop

With an outstanding 61% of the vote, Ernie has been elected President! Thanks to the great voter turnout at the ToughPigs forum, President Elect Ernie, along with his running mate Bert, will soon be moving from Sesame Street to Pennsylvania Avenue.

Gobo and Red Fraggle received 32% of the vote, and conceded the election to Ernie from his home in Fraggle Rock. He will continue to serve as Explorer for the Rock until his term is up.

There were, however, several write-in votes, including one for Mr. Scrooge (because he is "rude and badly dressed," according to one voter). Another vote was tallied for Kermit the Frog. As confessed "Joe the Plumber" Nia put it, "I've decided to cast my vote for the only amphibian whom I've ever had complete and total faith in. I'd stand behind this frog until the end. I know him to be a natural born leader who never hesitates to accept the responsibility of command. He rallies the masses and gets the job done. And so, while many will accuse me of tossing my ballot, I see no other option but to vote Kermit The Frog for Commander in Chief of the next 8 years .... at least."

Is this country ready for a frog in the White House? Maybe we'll find out in 2012!

Click here to discuss this Article Elect on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: Fraggle Rock, politics, Sesame Street

First, let me say thank you to ToughPigs.com for hosting this debate, and thank you to Mr. Strand for having the courtesy to attend. While I respect Mr. Strand’s arguments of the benefits to an Ernie/Bert Presidency, I cannot sit idly by while American voters are being swayed by two young men with a history of trickery, blatant deceit, and a track record of illegal activity. Aside from the fact that Gobo Fraggle would make a brilliant President, Ernie has proven to the American public time and time again that he can’t even be trusted with a plate of cookies, let alone the national budget.

Ernie’s, for the lack of a better word, “jerkitude” has been well documented. Generally, Ernie’s jerk-like tendencies have been directed at his roommate, better known as his running mate, Bert. The candidate from Sesame Street has reportedly convinced his running mate to say that he “8 the sandbox,” to talk to elephants on a banana, and to be chased by four-eyed monsters. Ernie has woken Bert up from deep sleeps to be reminded to take a nap, to play his radio, to tell him that the room has gone quiet, to count sheep, to count fire engines, to count balloons, to play his drums, and to invite a team of sheep into their bedroom for a musical number.

Ernie has posed as a doctor to examine Bert on several occasions without receiving a medical degree. He has gotten Bert kicked out of movie theaters after he himself made too much noise. He has lured Bert into playing games and singing songs, only to cruelly quit once Bert starts to enjoy himself. He has flooded their apartment more than once, put a fish in Bert’s cowboy hat, eaten Bert’s share of pizza, eaten Bert’s share of licorice, eaten Bert’s share of cookies, and eaten Bert’s share of cherries (nature’s gumdrop).

If this is the way he treats his best friend and running mate, how will he treat the American public? Do you really want a President who will get cookie crumbs in your bed?

His running mate, Bert is hardly worthy of the White House himself. According to sources, he can’t even beat a pigeon at a simple game of checkers. He has a history of cross-dressing, not just in the privacy of his own home, but also on stage in front of an audience (while Gobo and Red support alternate lifestyles, a lifestyle like Bert’s should not be kept a secret from his constituents). Perhaps most importantly, Bert serves as the president of a secret organization dedicated to the love of W, of which Ernie is also a member. W has given us eight years of difficulties, including economic crisis and war, and Bert is not only a supporter of W’s administration but a dues-paying member!Ernie has a history of waffling. In 1969, he declared that his favorite number was 2. Immediately after, he changed his mind and announced that his favorite number was 7. Just a few years later, he stated that his favorite number is 8,243,721. Can we afford to elect a President who chooses favorite numbers so willy-nilly? Why, I feel dirty just pluralizing the term “favorite numbers.”

Ernie has also been seen fraternizing with a man only known as “Lefty.” This man is guilty of grand larceny (for stealing the golden AN), alphabet trafficking, and conspiracy. We have film footage of Ernie buying certain letters of the alphabet from Lefty, as well as empty boxes, city property (such as stop signs), and invisible desserts. Who knows what other sorts of illegal dealings with which Ernie has involved himself. And that’s not to mention his perception of the value of a nickel.

Public planning is not one of Ernie’s strong suits. In one notable example, he double-booked his own bathroom for both Bert’s bath and a street-wide sing-along session. When confronted with this issue, Ernie blatantly ignored the pleas of his helpless running mate and commenced with the singing and public embarrassment.

According to paleontologists, Ernie and Bert have lived since the time of cavemen. That would make them thousands of years old. Are they too old to be able to relate to the common American man or woman? Are they out of touch with the needs of 99% of the country? In a word: Yes. In two words: Yes Yes.

It is our duty as Americans to choose the best candidate for the Presidency, and the best person in this race is an easy choice: Gobo Fraggle. Between Ernie’s sharing issues and his utter disregard for his fellow man, he would prove to be an incompetent world leader. But where his flaws start, Gobo’s strengths begin. Just look at his bond with his fellow Fraggles for proof. While Ernie can’t manage to share one stick of licorice, the Fraggle share their dreams. While Ernie plays cruel, pointless tricks on his buddy Bert, Gobo often leads his friends out of dangerous situations and back to the comfort of the Rock. We deserve a President who will lead us home, and that man is a Fraggle.Special thanks go out to Anthony Strand, who did just as much work on the ToughPigs election special as I did!

Head on over to the ToughPigs forum to cast your vote for the candidate you think would make the best President! Polls close at 9pm EST on November 4th! And be sure to vote in the for-real election on the same day!

Click here to talk trash about the guy who taught you the alphabet on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: politics, Sesame Street

Yesterday, Joe posted his arguments in favor of a Gobo Fraggle Presidency. On Thursday and Friday of this week, we will refute each other's statements. Be sure to come back for that.

Ernie. He knows how to dream big. The most remarkable thoughts he thinks have a way of being true. Ernie is the only candidate in this race who can mold reality to his will. Now he’s ready to take that large imagination and dedicate it to the United States of America. With his running mate Bert, he’ll do whatever it takes to lead this country into a bright and shining new era.

Ernie is a man of conviction. He can’t imagine anyone he’d rather be other than Ernie, and he’s known for seeing his plans through to the end, even if those around him can’t immediately see the value in his actions. He’s no self-absorbed fanatic, however. When he has to, Ernie is more than willing to put down the Duckie in favor of serving the greater good. As President, he’ll do what’s best for the people of the United States, not what’s best for himself. By the hilarious musical sting at the end of his first four years, he’ll have carried out big plans on these issues and more:

The Economy

Ernie hails from Sesame Street, and he knows how to cut government spending. He and Bert have shared an apartment for nearly forty years, and they haven’t spent a dime – not on food, not on utilities, and certainly not on earmarks. Also, both Ernie and his running mate have experience in helping workers see the value in their jobs. Ernie, during his stint as Old King Cole, showed his fiddlers three how to form a trio and Bert taught sheep how blankets are made. They’ll continue this commitment to the American worker from the White House.

Education

Education is not even an issue in this campaign, because my candidates are so far ahead of the other platform. They have a collective 78 years of experience in early childhood education, having dealt with subjects ranging from sharing to counting to keeping your room clean. Even with their decades of experience, they aren’t senile or out-of-touch. They’re veterans, but they’re as youthful – and as eager to help the children of America – today as they were in 1969.

The Environment

Ernie is an avid gardener, and he and Bert have spent time on America’s farms, even briefly running one of their own. VP candidate Bert has shown a remarkable vigilance in aiding our feathered friends over the years, even teaching one special bird how to play checkers. They will ensure that our precious natural resources – both our flora and our fauna – get the love and attention they so richly deserve.

Foreign Policy

Ernie and Bert have real, tangible international experience. In their careers, they have adapted to dozens of different cultures – Egypt, The Netherlands, and Brazil, to name only a few. They’ve not only visited, they’ve taken the time to learn local language and customs fluently. This international focus doesn’t mean they’re light on homeland security. Ernie defeated a dragon – the ultimate terrorist – just by saying “Mr. Dragon, you better behave.” And the dragon was so scared of him that it ran away, and the Kingdom was free. Ernie’s simple, decisive tactics will keep this nation safe.

Health Care

Ernie has a unique solution to the current health care situation – instead of relying on insurance companies, the American people should learn to take better care of themselves and each other. He demonstrated how to care for a sick friend when Bert came down with a cold, and he taught Cookie Monster how to eat a healthy breakfast. We don’t need to wait until after something bad has happened, he says. We can prevent it from ever happening in the first place. With the help of President Ernie, we can get free of the suffocating gasp of insurance and breathe freely.

Immigration

As you may expect from a man with his experience in world travels, Ernie welcomes immigrants to Sesame Street, and he’d do the same for the nation at large. For decades, he has allowed a thriving community of Twiddlebugs to reside in his window sill. They live independently, according to their own cultural customs, but they enjoy all the rights and freedoms of any other Sesame Street resident. He’ll take your tired, your poor, your Twiddled masses, and welcome them with open arms.

Space Travel

As he has stated many times, Ernie would like to visit the moon on a rocketship high in the air. Outer space – the real outer space, not his opponent’s cockamamie name for the Earth – is this nation’s future, and Ernie knows it. He knows that commercial space travel is the next logical step in this country’s development, and he won’t stop until someone like himself with no formal training can easily take that trip.

Ernie. He’ll spend all day developing innovative ways to attack this nation’s problems head-on, and he’ll keep his vice president up all night if that’s what it takes to see them through to completion. Can we afford anything less?

Click here to imagine an Ernie presidency on the Tough Pigs Forum.

Labels: politics, Sesame Street

It's that time again! Time for more Muppety art by ToughPigs' own Smig! What's notable in this installment is the piece at the end of this post, which was published in a recent issue of The Comic Buyer's Guide in his regular strip, "For Art's Sake." Enjoy the enjoyment! And as always, click on the images for embiggenment.


Click here to feast on a vegan at the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: comics/magazines, fan art, Sesame Street, Smig, The Muppet Show

Not content to keep to one country, Sesame Street has cloned, doppleganged, and otherwise duplidupliduplicated itself into over 30 co-productions all over the world. Each one has its own set of characters, but the jury is still out on how many provinces and commonwealths exist within Elmo’s World.

To celebrate the international aspect of all things Sesame, Putamayo Kids has released “Sesame Street Playground,” a CD chock full of songs from Streets around the world. Also included with the CD is an extensive booklet with liner notes and a bonus DVD.

The CD contains music from Sesamstraat (The Netherlands), Takalani Sesame (South Africa), Zhima Jie (China), 5 rue Sesame (France), Ulitsa Sezam (Russia), Plaza Sesamo (Mexico), Galli Galli Sim Sim (India), Shara’a Simsim (Palestine), Rechov Sumsum (Israel), Kilimani Sesame (Tanzania), Vila Sesamo (Brazil), and of course, good old USA, home of the Whopper.
The music itself is pretty great. I only wish I spoke all of these different languages so I could get that much more out of it. The theme songs to Sesamstraat and Galli Galli Sim Sim are both included, which sound remarkably familiar. We also get the Chinese version of "Rubber Duckie" and the Brazilian version of "One Small Voice." The rest of the songs are catchy, but not as familiar to American audiences.

Something I don’t always take special notice of is the liner notes. In this case, a full booklet is included, featuring a brief synopsis of each song (which is important if you don’t know what “Ohgneyat Al Lo’ba Al Sha’beyya” means) and translations into Spanish, French, and German. The notes are cute and informative, and now I’ve figured out how to say “Mr. Noodle” in four languages!

The cover, in my opinion, could use a little improvement. As you can see, it looks like a watercolor painting done by the artiest 10-year-old in the class. It doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the Sesame Street library, but after looking at some of Putamayo Kids’ other releases, it definitely fits in well with those. I’d assume that this album would have a better release with other international titles rather than Sesame albums, but it might have been nice to have something eye-catching to both demographics. Still, I’m perplexed by Cookie Monster’s hovering cookie basket, Zoe’s claw feet, and why half of the characters included on the cover don’t appear in the album at all.
By far, my favorite song on the album is Takalani Sesame’s “Pollution Song,” which is one of the songs included on the bonus DVD. Part of the song is in English (one of 11 languages spoken on the show), which makes it a little easier to follow. I like the design of Moshe, the walkaround character, and the low, gravelly voice of Zikwe (the blue monster) fills out the song nicely in a way we don’t often hear on our Street. The song also includes everyone’s favorite Muppet to help create false rumors, Kami, in the only clip I’ve seen of her that didn’t involve a lesson about being HIV positive.

Also notable is Rechov Sumsum’s “En Den Dino,” which features Ronnie Rock, an Israeli children’s performer who doesn’t look anything like his name should be “Ronnie Rock.” The chorus has mostly nonsense words, which makes it easy to enjoy, although if you’re listening to a song to which you don’t recognize the language, it’ll all be nonsense to you anyway. Still, the inclusion of this song saddens me, if only for the fact that we didn’t get an appearance by Moishe Oofnik.

Two songs from Sesame Street USA made it onto the album: “Elmo’s Song” and “Sing.” I suppose the former was included to forgive the fact that Elmo is on the cover (as is with most Sesame releases these days), though I would have preferred one extra international song. I did enjoy the inclusion of “Sing,” which is sung in both English and Spanish, making for a proper fit in this compilation. Wiki fact: Did you know that Emilio Delgado wrote the Spanish translation for “Sing”? Es verdad!

The only dud of the 5 DVD tracks is “The Song of Caretakers” from Ulitsa Sezam. The video features Na-Na, which, as far as I can tell, is the Russian equivalent of The Wiggles. The song is pretty much a music video for these guys, and Muppets don’t even show up until we’re two minutes into the three minute song. On top of it all, it’s the third song out of the five to feature a regional celebrity, rather than spotlighting the best of the puppet characters.

In all, I found the CD and DVD to be most fun. Since I don’t have the biggest interest in foreign language music, I doubt it’ll jump off my shelf too often, but that doesn’t mean it’s not well-done or entertaining. The one reason I would bring it out again and again would be for the DVD portion. If Putamayo Kids or Sesame Workshop decide to release another volume, I would hope that they’d make it a DVD with a bonus CD, rather than the other way around. I haven’t seen much of the international characters, and they’ve teased me enough to make me want more.

All said and done, I would recommend the album, but only if your heart yearns for world music. If not, then a second listen may not be in your future.

Sesame Street Playground will be available in stores on September 30.
Klicken Sie hier, um diesen Artikel auf dem Forum von ToughPigs zu besprechen!

Labels: DVD, music, review, Sesame Street

Labels: music, old school, Sesame Street

Over the past few days, Ryan Roe and I have been sharing some of our favorite obscure Sesame Street songs.

Today, let’s talk about Sesame Street albums. Back in the 70s and into the 80s, the fine people at Children’s Television Workshop released records with alarming frequency. While many of the songs came straight from the TV show, a very large number of them were recorded especially for the audio releases. Many of these albums (you can find a full list at Muppet Wiki) have been out of print for years, so they’re a perfect place to look for obscure songs. I’ll begin today with a few of my favorites:

I'm Square – 1983 (The Gang’s All Here!)

If you’re reading Tough Pigs, chances are high that you’re a big geek, or a big nerd, or even kind of square. Here, Bert celebrates his status as One of Us. He waxes sentimental for his love his boring things, getting more and more excited as the song goes on. Any adult Sesame Street fan can relate to Bert’s frustration at being ridiculed for having unusual interests. The only difference is that in Bert’s case his interests include Kleenex and “pigeons in the news”.

The song is packed with amusing lines, as Bert reels off one nerdy obsession after another. Frank Oz’s performance is typically excellent, of course. When Bert sings about cold mashed potatoes towards the beginning, you can feel the affection in his voice. But by the time he gets to argyle socks at the end, he almost sounds like he needs a cold shower. Again, all geeks probably sound like that sometimes, which only makes it funnier.

Come Along (1978 – On the Street Where We Live: Block Party!)

Yesterday Ryan highlighted “Soul Food”, a Gordon-sung tune from this same record, my no-doubt-about-pick for the best Sesame Street album of all-time. Every song on it is a gem, with great numbers for most of the human cast members, as well as both of Caroll Spinney’s Muppets. It starts out with this track, where Big Bird is impatiently waiting for the party to start. When no one wants to play with him, he does what comes naturally – starts singing about how beautiful a day it is.

In the song, he urges everyone to join him and “Sing a happy song”. They do, conveniently as soon as he gets to the line “Oh, what a lovely sound when we sing this song.” And it’s a lovely sound indeed. This is straight-forward, snark-free happy Big Bird at his finest. I can’t help but feel happier and more energetic just for having heard it. While re-listening to it for this article, in fact, I started pumping my fists in the air and then jogging laps around my apartment. I swear to you that’s the truth.

It also features a reference to John-John. How can you say no to that?

Upside Down, Inside Out (1978 – On the Street Where We Live: Block Party!)

As I mentioned, this album is full of great songs for the human cast members – Gordon, Maria, Susan, Olivia, and David all get memorable numbers. Best of all is this one, sung by Bob and The Kids. The beginning is as understated as can be, with Bob idly playing piano. One of The Kids asks him to play a song, and he does.

It’s a typically upbeat Bob song, and it’s all about how great You are. Yes, You. “You can turn my seams around, put my toes back on the ground, with just the love in your eyes” he says. And don’t think he doesn’t mean it. Would Bob lie to you? No, of course he wouldn’t. If you don’t believe me, listen to the song. Just once. You won’t doubt that you’re more important to Bob than anything else in the entire world.

Too Busy (1978 - Fair is Fair)

Here’s an example of how prevalent Sesame Street albums were in the 1970s – the very same year as Block Party!, CTW put out the also-terrific Fair is Fair. It has a lot of great Muppet songs on it, but its most memorable moment comes from, surprisingly, The Kids. Just one Kid takes the lead here – a boy named Jamie Aff – and he’s pretty far away from the likes of “Sing” or the theme song.

Instead, he’s talking about being ignored by his parents. He painted a picture at school today, it seems. But when he excitedly brought it home, his unspecified didn’t have time for him. It’s slightly unsettling to hear a Sesame Street song address parental neglect so head-on, but this was the 1970s, the era of the latchkey generation. In any case, the song is terrific. Young Mr. Aff really invests in the emotion of his character’s dilemma, and the refrain is relentlessly catchy. As for how the parent-child conflict is resolved – well, I’m not going to spoil it.

Cripple Creek – 1970s Sesame Street

This was never featured on an album, but I couldn’t leave it out of this list. Sung by Buffy (the human cast member who has sadly become mostly forgotten) and Fred the Wonder Horse, it’s an old-fashioned folk song about “going up to Cripple Creek to see my girl”. Buffy doesn’t change the gender-specific lines in the song, by the way. She mentions that she’ll “kiss her on the mouth” and that the girl will “wrap herself around me like a sweet-potato vine”. It’s slightly shocking to the modern listener.

That example of less-restrictive curriculum standards aside, the song is simply amazing. While singing, Buffy also plays a mouth-bow. This lends the song a unique, off-the-cuff vibe like nothing else ever heard on Sesame Street. Meanwhile, Buffy’s and Jerry Nelson’s voices blend together so perfectly that you’ll bemoan the fact that they never recorded a full album together. Say, that would have made an excellent addition to CTW’s release slate.

Well, that’s it for our twenty picks, but that isn’t all we have to say about obscure Sesame Street music. Click here for part five, where you’ll see Ryan and me together! At the same time!

Click here to kiss Tough Pigs Forum on the mouth.

Labels: music, old school, Sesame Street

This is the third installment in a five-part article about really great Sesame Street songs that are not as well-known as they should be. Part one is here, and part two (by Anthony Strand) is here. And now, more words about songs.

Soul Food
On the Street Where We Live: Block Party!, 1978

I've always loved the humans of Sesame Street nearly as much as the Muppets. I never owned a Bob doll or a Maria PEZ dispenser, but they've taught and entertained me for years, so the 1978 Block Party record is right up my alley: Big Bird and Oscar are present, but the spotlight is really on the less fuzzy residents on the street.

Of course, there's no Sesame Street character less fuzzy than Gordon, who offers this groovy, timbale-infused musical invitation to check out his food booth at the titular block party. When I hear the song, I can practically smell Gordon's dishes, including shrimp & rice, po' boys, birdseed ice cream, and enchiladas -- with meat AND cheese! "Everybody's got soul food/Would you like to buy some?" he asks, then warns "Don't say no till you try some!" Which, now that I think about it, kind of sounds like he's selling drugs, but I'm pretty sure he's not.

I would certainly get in line for some of Gordon's soul food... although I'm not sure I have any cash. Are there any ATMs on Sesame Street?

Count von Count's Continuous Country Cooking Downhome Diner
Sesame Country, 1981

As it turns out, Gordon's not the only skilled chef on Sesame Street. If, as this song says, you like home cooking, "try it Transylvanian style!" Everyone is welcome to "come inside and open wide" at the Count's restaurant, which is presumably the world's only Transylvanian-Southern fusion eatery.

The title of this track alone is fun to say, and the song is all banjos and fiddles. The Count's friends place their orders (by number, of course), although none of them sound especially "country"... Cookie Monster orders a cookie sandwich, while Ernie ultimately decides on cereal, but I'll assume those are authentic Nashville corn flakes. (Or perhaps authentic Romanian Rice Chex). Grover, meanwhile, orders "a number 5: the business monster's lunch," which is fairly adorable.

As far as I know, this is the only time the Count has ever done a country song, so that's pretty cool. I think this is also the only time we ever heard about the Count owning a restaurant, which makes sense... He probably got so caught up counting every single plate, glass, and utensil in the kitchen that he forgot to serve the food.

A Very Unhappy Birthday to You
For the First Time, 1982

This song should not be confused with Disney's "Very Merry Unbirthday" song from Alice in Wonderland, which does not mention chocolate pickle juice.

Oscar is at his best when he's at his worst. That contradiction defines the entire grouch culture that exists in Sesame Street's world: To a grouch, anything awful is wonderful. This song explains the goings-on at a grouch birthday party, and Oscar is beautifully nasty, wishing horrible things on the birthday boy or girl.

It's really rude to hope your friend gets a tummy ache from eating his cake, but for a grouch, anything nicer would be much more offensive. (Do you suppose grouches ever suffer from cognitive dissonance, what with all that "feeling good makes me feel bad, which makes me feel good" stuff?)

I didn't know about this song until recently, but I sure hope somebody sings it to me on my next birthday.

Get Along
late 80s/early 90s Sesame Street

Remember when I said I was impressed that Sesame Street composers can work in any style? Well, you might wonder, can they do a capella? And can they come up with an a capella song including parts for Twiddlebugs, Martians, and cows?

The answer, of course, is yes. Kermit takes the lead vocal on this toe-tappin', finger-snappin', yup-yup-yuppin' doo-woppy number, which carries the message that we can all get along if we just get together and sing. You know, they make it look so easy on Sesame Street, but when I try to start a sing-along on the subway or in Burger King nobody ever jumps in. Maybe I just need to move to a city with more Martians...

Best Friend Blues
late 80s Sesame Street

There are so many great Sesame Street characters that it's impossible for all of them to interact with each other. Which is why it's pretty exciting to see this Snuffy/Ernie team-up. Those guys are usually seen in the company of Big Bird and Bert, respectively, which just happens to be what the song is about.

As the song begins, Bert has just abandoned a kite-flying session and gone home after suddenly falling ill. (At least that's what he told Ernie. It's altogether possible he's faking it so he can watch his oatmeal soap operas or whatever without being disturbed.) Meanwhile, Big Bird has up and gone to Granny Bird's without notifying his big brown friend, leaving both Ernie and the snuffleupagus with an acute case of the titular blues.

Hoots the Owl contributes some fine sax-blowing as Ernie makes a medical breakthrough: the cure for the best friend blues! He reminds Snuffy "we're buddies too!", which doesn't quite seem accurate, as I've never seen them talk to each other before or since, but whatever. He then suggests that the two of them can play together -- they can play in his room, he says, though that sounds problematic given Snuffy's girth. I do like the idea of Bert in bed trying to sleep off his 24-hour flu, when suddenly Snuffy stomps in and knocks over all the furniture. That'll teach him to be sick!

This song makes me wish for more rare character pairings. What about a Mumford/Rosita song? Or a Grover/Stinky the Stinkweed duet? The possibilities are so many they could even keep the Count busy for a few days.

So there you go -- five more delightful but lesser-known Sesame Street songs. And believe it or not, there are still more, five of which Anthony will tell you about in part four, which you can find right here. Oh, boy! You can hardly wait!

Click here to talk about groovy Sesame tunes on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: music, old school, Sesame Street

Yesterday, our own Ryan offered a look at five obscure Sesame Street songs. Now it’s my turn. But today, I won’t just list any five songs – I’ve got a theme!

You see, one of the things I love most about Sesame Street is the way the universe it takes place in is so fully realized – it’s a world where two people can have an entire conversation about sharing or healthy food or the number six, and the audience not only doesn’t question it, they revel in it. How much more exciting is it, then, when the characters are singing instead of talking? Today’s five songs are all examples of the popular music you can only find on the Street.

With Every Beat of my Heart – 1970s Sesame Street

Little Jerry and the Monotones are probably best known for their string of hits about emotions, including “Mad,” “Sad,” and “Proud. But they were a staple of Sesame Street Top 40 for years, reaching their creative peak here, with a doo-wop song that somehow manages to be both a heartfelt love letter to a girl and an educational lesson on the circulatory system.

The tone is set right away, when Little Jerry proclaims “You know your heart beats pumping blood to all the parts of your body. I know that my heart beats too, and that my heart is beating FOR YOU!” The Monotones join in, harmonizing on “Boom-thump/Feel my heart ju-u-ump!” The next two minutes are sheer exhilaration. If your heart doesn’t jump just a little bit, it’s possible that you don’t have one.

A final note: “With Every Beat of my Heart” might sound familiar – writer Jeff Moss reused much of it when he wrote “Gonna Always Love You” for The Muppets Take Manhattan a few years later.

Rock and Roll Readers – 1990s Sesame Street

Little Jerry’s primary competition, Little Chrissy and the Alphabeats, shoot back with a song all about the rock star lifestyle on Sesame Street – rather than sex and drugs, it’s full of books. “Sure it’s lots of fun to be a rock and roll star, but being a rock and roll reader is better by far,” screams Little Chrissy. It says a lot about how things work on Sesame Street – education is all around, and everyone spends all of their time learning, even popular musicians. Looking beyond what it means, though, it’s just a catchy, Jerry Lee Lewis-style tune that you can dance to. And that’s what really matters.

Bert’s Blanket – 1980s Sesame Street

With Ernie staying over at the Count’s, Bert looks forward to a good night’s sleep. He lives on Sesame Street, though, so he doesn’t get to sleep at all – he both gives and gets an education. He and a herd of sheep (led by Jerry Nelson) explain how blankets are made, and they do it in a Shangri-Las-esque fashion. The sheep sing about being sheared, and Bert takes over to explain how wool is spun into thread and finally woven into a blanket. The reason the song works, though, is that the beautiful, almost haunting melody is accompanied by terrific harmonization – some sections have several sheep all taking different parts. It’s staggeringly lovely. Yes, I just called a song about how blankets are made “staggeringly lovely.” I won’t take it back.

In the Doghouse – 1970s Sesame Street

Roosevelt Franklin is apparently a child himself, but he was the teacher at Roosevelt Franklin Elementary back in the 1970s. Here, he gives his students a lesson in respecting the property of others through a parable about two small dogs taking a bone that belongs to a much larger dog. The style of the song is remarkably loose and experimental – it really sounds like a classroom full of students just singing.

What it doesn’t sound like, however, is anything else ever heard on Sesame Street. Without paying attention to the lyrics, it’d be easy to mistake it for an underground soul recording – the students clap, chant, and lay down beats like there’s no tomorrow. When you realize it’s a song about not taking things that aren’t yours, it will blow your mind. On Sesame Street, it’s possible for learning to sound like anything at all, not just mainstream pop music.

Rain Falls – 1970s Sesame Street

Finally, this could have been an adult contemporary hit, if it weren’t about two fellows explaining why they love rain. The first is Oscar the Grouch, and the second is Bob. Oscar, of course, loves to see “trucks roll by splashing mud on everyone”, while Bob praises it for “helping flowers start to grow,” to cite two examples. It’s a great character study – a person who has never encountered either character will know exactly who they are by the end of the song – but it’s also a solid lesson in what rain does.

I went out of my way to bring up the educational content of all these songs, obviously, but that’s because it’s easy to miss if you happen to be an adult. Like so many of the great Sesame Street songs, they play just like any other well-crafted piece of music. In the end, I think that’s the most impressive thing about these songs – adults can not only appreciate them, but actively enjoy them.

If you thought this was a bunch of hogwash, click here for part three and five more choices from Ryan. I’ll be back on Thursday with five more. See you then.

Click here to share your love of Roosevelt Franklin on the Tough Pigs Forum.

Labels: music, old school, Sesame Street

You know what I love? Sesame Street music. In the show's four decades of existence it's covered pretty much every genre -- pop, rap, opera. Heck, Menudo even made an appearance sometime during the Reagan years. I don't know the exact figure, but what with over four thousand episodes plus two movies, numerous specials and countless albums, I'd estimate the total number of original Sesame Street songs at about fifty million.

Songs like "C Is for Cookie," "Rubber Duckie" and "Sing" are American classics -- and we're sick of them. Which is why my pal and fellow Muppet fan, Tough Pigs' own Anthony, and I are going to write this week about our favorite lesser-known Sesame Street songs. It seems like every time I hear an old Sesame LP or watch a special I've never seen before, I discover at least one amazing song that I never knew existed.

So I'm going to tell you about a few today, then Anthony will tell you about a few tomorrow, I'll be back on Wednesday, Anthony will be back on Thursday, and the two of us will wrap it up on Friday. Got that? Here we go.

Oh-- one more thing. You may notice that while we're telling you how great these songs are, we're not actually presenting the tracks themselves here for your listening enjoyment. That's because they're all owned by the Sesame people, and we ain't the Sesame people. However, I may or may not have heard rumors that it may or may not be possible for you to hear and see these songs by doing some searching around the internet. And that's all I'll say about that.

Write It Down
1980s Sesame Street

As far as I know, this is the only time Sesame Street has covered the topic of "You should write things down if you want to remember them later," which makes sense, as I can't imagine it's a major issue for preschoolers. But the highlight of this number isn't the rarity of the subject matter, it's the style: "Write It Down" is a rap.

Maria, the illest rhyme-buster on the street, sets things up for us, then we learn more about writing things down from Luis (who writes plays and stories) and David (who documents his grocery orders "from all over town" -- apparently Hooper's clientele reaches far beyond Sesame Street). But Forgetful Jones steals the show, despite having no idea where he is. "Write It Down" is an incredibly catchy old-school rap, and proves that Sesame Street is just as dope as it is educational.

Comb Your Face
1980s Sesame Street

I guess this first appeared on Sesame Street in the 80s, but I just discovered it a few years ago on Play With Me Sesame. It's sung by Furline Huskie, a monster performed by Richard Hunt, a Muppeteer with more energy than a 6-year-old after three bowls of Count Chocula. The monster's about to go out (perhaps on a hot monster date), and before leaving the house he shows us his grooming routine and invites us to join in.

It's only a minute and 20 seconds long, but it really does make fur management seem like the most fun you can have. I can only imagine how many children watching at home ended up bruised and mangled as a result of following Furline's instructions and vigorously combing their own faces, waists, and tummies.

Sing in the Shower
1980s Sesame Street

Speaking of good hygiene, here's a song about proper bathing habits -- a worthwhile topic considering the fact that 78% of children smell funny.

Hey, remember Olivia? That lady sure had a set of pipes, and she's in better voice than ever as she sings in the shower about singing in the shower. How meta!

But she's not the only one who la-las as she lathers: Verse 2 finds Big Bird singing in the birdbath. Whereas Olivia was tastefully filmed from the shoulders up as she showered, Big Bird is seen fully nude. Meanwhile, Ernie sings in his bathtub and Oscar sings in his mudbath. Which explains why Oscar has such great skin.

This song, much like "Comb Your Face" and "Write It Down," makes a mundane task seem fun and does it with gusto. I sing this song at the top of my lungs every time I shower.

Counting the Days
Merry Christmas From Sesame Street, 1975

There's one thing Big Bird doesn't like about Christmas, and it's not the crass, exploitative commercialism. Rather, as he explains on this track from Merry Christmas From Sesame Street, it's the mere act of waiting for December 25 to arrive! Big Bird's frustration makes for an amazing 1950s-style rock 'n' roll number, complete with falsetto singing that makes my voice crack when I try to sing along.

Once again I'm amazed at the apparent ease with which the Sesame Street songwriters compose a song that sounds like it could have been a hit single... and if Ernie's verse about helping Rubber Duckie write a letter to Santa doesn't cause your spine to melt from cuteness, you are a heartless beast and I want nothing to do with you.

Shapes in My Room
1990s Sesame Street

Telly is by far the most underrated Sesame Street Muppet. I mean, the dude can't catch a break. He's been a major Sesame regular for decades now, but he always gets ignored when it comes to merchandise, and no kid ever names him as his or her favorite character. Telly is the middle child of the Sesame Street Muppets.

But with "Shapes in My Room," Telly proves his worth, buoyantly taking us through his daily routine of scrutinizing every object in his bedroom and identifying what shape it is. I guess this song came before the writers gave Telly his bizarre triangle obsession, but still, this fella really loves his shapes. His energy is infectious, as is his scatting prowess. ("Dooby dooby doo-WAH, ba-doo-WAH, ba-doo-wah!")

I really don't know how I'd classify the song itself... it has some jazzy horns, but it's not really jazz; it has some wicked electric guitar, but it's not quite rock. I've never seen another Telly solo this impressive, but that's okay... the shape of this song is AWESOME.

And those are five of the best lesser-known Sesame Street songs. Click here for part two, in which Anthony will tell you about five more!

Click here to talk about excellent songs on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: music, old school, Sesame Street

So, everyone's been watching the new season of Sesame Street, right? This is year 39(!), as well as the first season to be shot in high-definition, which means you can see all of those funny little hairs on Telly's head in crystal clarity.

So far we've seen an Indiana Jones parody that was better than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, an appearance by Neil Patrick Harris as a singing shoe fairy, and some nifty clay-animated Bert and Ernie shorts. Oh, and lots and lots of Murray Monster chasing a hyper sheep. Oh, and Jack Black and Heidi Klum and some ballerinas, and Cookie Monster trying to devour a sentient letter O. And that's only the first five episodes!

So set your TiVos and VCRs, or just call work and tell them you'll be late every morning for the next several weeks because you're watching Sesame Street. They'll understand.


Click here to discuss the new season of Sesame Street on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: Sesame Street

On Wednesday, I reviewed You Can't Rock Sittin' Down, the new album by the Mighty Weaklings, a band that includes Sesame Street Muppet performer Matt Vogel (He's the one standing in front of the playground in that picture). Today, ToughPigs.com is pretty darn happy to present an interview, conducted via e-mail, with Mr. Vogel himself.

TOUGH PIGS: How did you come to be involved with Sesame Street? What was the first thing you did on the show?

MATT VOGEL: In 1994, I answered an ad in Backstage looking for a left-handed puppeteer. I’m not a left-handed puppeteer—but I am left-handed and I thought that was close enough. The job was to be the secondary performer of a full-body Coca-Cola Polar Bear puppet that Muppets had built for live appearances. I met with John Henson (the primary performer) and soon after started doing polar bear appearances.

My first Sesame Street gig was for a home video called Tell the Truth. I played some background characters with Stephanie D’Abruzzo. My first season on Sesame Street was in 1996. I did a lot of right-hand work, but also got to do some small characters including one of Kingston Livingston III’s Crew Four.

TP: Was it intimidating for you coming to work alongside Sesame veterans like Jerry Nelson and Fran Brill?

MV: Both Fran and Jerry are such great performers and they were very welcoming to me right from the beginning. They made me feel comfortable and at ease… but I was—and still am—in awe of them. So, I wouldn’t say that I was intimidated. Although I did see Fran wrestle a mountain lion. Not intimidating, but impressive.

TP: How and at what point was it decided that you would become the alternate Big Bird? Was the audition process open to any puppeteers beyond the Sesame cast?

MV: They were looking for someone to perform Big Bird at live appearances when Caroll Spinney was unavailable. So, Caroll held a workshop/audition with a few of the Sesame Street puppeteers. I’d never met Mr. Spinney before and when I was introduced to him as “Matt Vogel”, he shook my hand and said, “You know, your last name means ‘bird’ in German, this might be the job for you.” That was a bit intimidating. Caroll told us his history with Sesame Street and Jim Henson and then he had us each put on Big Bird and give it a shot. That was very intimidating—trying to sound like Big Bird right in front of the man who IS Big Bird. After that, I met with Caroll one-on-one a few times to work on Big Bird. Even now, Caroll continues to give me pointers and I consider him one of my mentors.

TP: Was Journey to Ernie your first gig as Big Bird?

MV: Well, my first real job as Big Bird was a live appearance in front of an auditorium full of Kmart managers. Seriously. Big Bird was revealed behind a giant revolving K (for Klassy).

My first Big Bird appearance on Sesame Street was not “Journey to Ernie”, but I think it was in a scene with a bunch of other characters and I said only a line or two.

TP: How are the Journey to Ernie segments produced?

MV: We shot those on a huge blue screen. I would only see a rough sketch of what the final animation would look like, I’d have to imagine the action that would be animated later. I found “Journey to Ernie” to be challenging because of how we had to shoot it, the physicality of the segment, and the fact that being inside Big Bird is disorienting—you only see what the camera’s shooting. There’s no peripheral vision, it’s like you’re working in a yellow bubble.

TP: Have you ever taken a crack at being Oscar the Grouch?

MV: Oh, sure…at home for my kids when I’m cranky. But I’ve never done it seriously.

TP: You were Big Bird for the Sesame Street segment with Laura Bush. What was that like? Did the Secret Service have to frisk the bird?

MV: The First Lady came to the Street prepared and she was very sweet. The Secret Service did not frisk Big Bird, but they did shake down Elmo.

TP: What's your favorite Sesame Street thing you've done? Do you have a favorite character you've performed on the show?

MV: I’ve had a lot of opportunities to perform some fun characters on Sesame Street. Some of my favorites are Howie Eatswell from the “Meal or No Meal” sketch, David Letterguy, Hansel (of Hansel & Gretel), and Herb the Dinosaur. But I also do a lot of right-hand work on the show and some of my favorite times are assisting puppeteers like David Rudman, Steve Whitmire, Jerry Nelson and Frank Oz.

TP: What kind of hilarious or fascinating anecdotes can you tell us from behind the scenes at Sesame? Come on, you must have a million of 'em.

MV: I was doing a live appearance as Big Bird with Penny Marshall for a new Sesame Street kid’s clothing line. We were hosting a fashion show in front of a bunch of press and children. As Penny Marshall walked on stage, she lost her footing and grabbed Big Bird by the right wing—ripping it off the puppet! In front of everyone—Cameras, reporters, children!

There she was, standing there with the wing in her hands. She quickly realized what had happened and hid the wing behind her back. Neither of us knew what to do so I just said, “Don’t worry. It’ll grow back.” And we went on with the show.

TP: How much ad-libbing happens on Sesame Street? Or is it pretty much stick-to-the-script for maximum educational value?

MV: The puppeteers all respect the writers and the work that goes into the scripts on Sesame Street. When there is ad-libbing, it’s something that wouldn’t impact any educational point. Sometimes a puppeteer will change a word or switch the order of a sentence to make more sense to their character or the scene, but if someone really wants to change something major (which has happened) then there’s a discussion with the director, the writer—who’s always on hand—and the producers.

TP: According to Muppet Wiki, you voiced Scooter and Janice in the Muppet Race Mania video game. What was that like? If you're at liberty to say, is there a particular reason that was the only time you played those characters?

MV: I did voice Scooter and Janice for the Muppet Race Mania game. There were only a few lines and I think I was cast to do it because they hadn’t made any official recasting choices for those characters at the time. I had a good time doing it, but I never thought it was a recast, just a one-time job.

TP: So... your band. Why the name "the Mighty Weaklings"?

MV: The band was originally just me and my songwriting partner, Michael Ray Escamilla. We wrote and played goofy songs at parties and for anyone who’d listen. It was never really anything taken very seriously. The name The Mighty Weaklings was the winner we picked from a list of about fifty names we’d written down. But as the band has evolved and grown in numbers, the name really suits us.

The name is a dichotomy—and so are a lot of our songs. It’s kind of how we do everything. Like we wanted to do a kid’s album, but we didn’t want to sound like a kid’s album.

TP: You Can't Rock Sittin' Down is billed as a "rock album for kids." Did you approach the songs as rock songs first and kids' songs second?

MV: I’m a parent of four children, so I’ve heard lots of kid’s music. But after we’d done Jack’s Big Music Show and decided we wanted to do our own kid’s record, we wanted it to sound different from what was typically heard. The band already had a guitar-centric rock sound, so we knew the end result would be a rock album for kids.

We also wanted to make sure that parents could listen to it as much as their kids. The songs came about happened in a few different ways. Some were influenced by what I saw my kids were interested in (“Super Hero”, “Bug Town”) and some were my thoughts about what being a kid was like (“Grumpy Song”, “It’s Sunny When You Share”). Sometimes I knew what the song sounded like and other times Michael would noodle around with guitar riffs that would find the melody.

For “It’s Sunny When You Share”, I asked Joey Mazzarino to write it with me because he’s a really funny writer and I knew he could help make the song what it needed to be. On “Fallin’ Down”, our drummer, Bj Hemann, had the idea and the sound of the song and together we wrote the lyrics.

TP: Were you influenced at all by the kids' rock music that They Might Be Giants and Barenaked Ladies have done? The Mighty Weaklings' material seems to fit in the same sub-genre.

MV: I’m a huge fan of Barenaked Ladies and They Might Be Giants. I’ve listened to them for years and my kids listen to them, too. We’ve been told we have a similar sound to both bands but we all come from a lot of different musical tastes including Van Halen, Ben Folds, Metallica, Billy Joel, Guns ‘n Roses, Journey, Neil Diamond – you name it—and they all influence our music in one way or another.

TP: Jerry Nelson makes a great cameo on the song "Mr. Grumpy." How did that come about? Did you have him in mind when you wrote those spoken interludes?

MV: Jerry’s a good friend of mine and I knew that I really wanted him to do something on the album. I thought the spoken word part on “Grumpy Song” would be awesome if Jerry did it, so I asked him and he agreed. We recorded it in his dressing room at Sesame Street during Season 39. We’re so honored to have him on our CD. It’s one of the highlights of the album for us.

TP: What kind of feedback have you gotten on the new album? It seems like parents would dig it just as much as kids.

MV: We’ve gotten great feedback for our album. People say their kids sing and dance along with all of the songs and laugh at the spoken word bits—which was one part of our goal—obviously, you want the kids to like the music. The other part of our goal was to have parents say that they like listening with their kids—which we’ve also heard.

We plug it as one of those CDs you could enjoy if you’ve got kids, know someone with kids, or ever were a kid yourself. It’s not available everywhere, so we’ve had to rely on word-of-mouth to help us and it seems to be working. We’re hopeful that by the end of the year, every kid in America will have a copy of You Can’t Rock Sittin’ Down. And The Mighty Weaklings will not rest until that happens! Unless, of course, there’s something really good on TV.

TP: There are several of those funny spoken word bits between tracks on the album. How did you decide to include that? Was it all scripted?

MV: We put the banter on the album to act as little intros into the next song but they’re also intended to give you an idea of the personality of the band members. Each of those bits are scripted, but it’s a pretty accurate picture of how each of us fits into the band dynamic. All five of us are trained actors, so doing the scripted parts were fun and kind of second nature to us.

TP: Finally, here's a very important question: Having worked intimately with all of them, what is your favorite letter of the alphabet?

MV: Wow. You know, I’d love to come right out and say I’m an “R” guy through-and-through…or a really big fan of “E”. But I can’t. To be honest, I think committing to a single letter in today’s rocky economy is foolish and can only spell trouble. So while I’d love to proclaim “L” my favorite above all letters…or tell you that I invest all of my free time in only “U”…I’d be lying. I just try to play the field with my letters and hope that at the end of the day the numbers don’t get too jealous.


Click here to comment on this article on the Tough Pigs forum!

The Mighty Weaklings album “You Can’t Rock Sittin’ Down” is available at CDBaby.com and iTunes. You can check out mightyweaklings.com for more.

Labels: interview, Muppet performers, Sesame Street

Season 39 of Sesame Street is coming to PBS this summer, and we're all vibrating fiercely with excitement. As usual, it's going to be a star-studded affair, and we've already seen announcements about several celebrities who will be dropping by the neighborhood to educate, entertain, and maybe grab a milkshake at Hooper's.

Which celebrity appearance do you think will be the coolest? Will it be Canadian rocker Feist, who is reportedly doing a variation on her hit "1234"? Will it be LL Cool J, whose very last name has often been the Letter of the Day?

What about David Beckham, who will be teaching Elmo the meaning of the word "persistence" as only a Spice Girl-marrying soccer star can? Maybe Sandra Oh of Grey's Anatomy will be the highlight of the season, as she portrays the Cookie Fairy. Ah, but Neil Patrick Harris just might top her -- he's playing "the greatest fairy in the world," the Fairy Shoeperson.

I know which one I'm most looking forward to, but which one are YOU anticipating? Let us know by dropping by the Tough Pigs forum to answer the very important question: "Which upcoming celebrity appearance on Sesame Street is gonna be the awesomest?"

Click here to place your vote in this poll on the Tough Pigs forum! (Hey, didn't I just say that?)

ToughPigsRyan@yahoo.com

Labels: poll, reader participation, Sesame Street

posted by Ryan Roe  # 12:49 PM

A few weeks ago, I posted a very important reader participation project for the ever-so-loyal readers of ToughPigs.com. It was a book about togetherness, about helping your fellow man, about finding that missing piece to complete your life’s goals.

Now, what do I have that needs a helper? I have an article that won’t fill itself with silly things to say, and snarky observations about a 37-year-old book. Who has something good for a ToughPigs article?

But what’s this? All of my ToughPig friends are racing toward me with seemingly random things in their hands! Why, there’s Beth with a Northern Exposure DVD! And there’s Tony with seventeen rolls of scotch tape! And Ryan R. with a bowling trophy! And Michal with a beard of bees! And Peter with a case of the blues! And Jog with an autographed 8x10 of Joe Rogan! And Erik with his identical twin brother! And Amy with a tap dancing penguin! And Anthony with the key to the men’s room! And Grant with the Internet! And Ryan M. with insomnia!

Special thanks to all of the above folks for making this happen. And feel free to read The Together Book by clicking here. Enjoy the funny!
Jog: "What do I have that needs a helper?" Sounds like the Sesame Street Book of Slavery.

Erik: I think they're all running with stuff because they heard Antiques Roadshow was in town. The fact that they're running past someone who needs help is just a coincidence.
THE ART:

Jog: What does the illustrator have that needs a helper? Reference material as to how many fluffy rings Big Bird has around his legs. Four? Five? Or, four on one leg, five on the other leg?

Ryan R: I love the art. I always like the more expressive takes on the characters. They didn't even bother to color within the lines, which sends kids the subtle message that one needn't always conforms to society standards in order to be helpful.

Tony: Bert looks like a neanderthal, Cookie looks like he's choking, and Grover looks like Fozzie.
BETTY LOU:

Ryan R: Betty Lou ordered a milkshake bigger than herself. I think she knew the whole time that she was going to need help finishing it, and she was just waiting for Pantsless Farley Guy to join her. She's just lucky he was the one carrying his straw collection... if it had been Herry, she would have ended up with fur in her milkshake.

Michal: No wonder she looks so terrified that her hair is about to fall off. She's facing a big enough milkshake to drown in, some Farley impersonator who forgot his pants is fast approaching, and her feet can't even reach the floor for a quick escape.

BABY MONSTER:

Anthony: Bert does not look at all pleased about having to help Sherlock Hemlock trudge that soapbox car through the snow.

Ryan R: Herry doesn't look very happy to be joining him/her on that sled. Something tells me Herry never really wanted to help, but he knew that if he didn't, he wouldn't be in the book.

Michal: Apparently, the Sesame gang all wear their regular outfits, rather than any gesture towards winter gear - or in a couple of cases, any clothing whatsoever - while trudging through the snow with their sacrificial offerings to the Baby Monster.ERNIE:

Jog: Most of these guys seem to be content with whichever one object leads to the solution to their problem, right? But look at Ernie with Cookie in the sandbox - that's right, he took EVERYBODY's stuff.

Ryan R: The next scene, which we don't get to see, is Ernie asking "What do I have that needs a helper? I need to get my stomach pumped!" And then the other characters run in carrying llamas, underwear, the corpse of Richard Nixon, etc.

Jog: Are we seeing a selfish side of Ernie, or did he simply say, "Guys, come on. Get real. It's a SAND CAKE. I can make a new one. No conflict here." And then everyone would be mad at Ernie, calling for help and letting them carry all those things for nothing, and Ernie would have said: "Hey, but, ya know? You can still leave all your things here. We'll find stuff to do with it."

Ryan M: The expression on Bert’s face when he's holding the wrench leads me to believe he plans to whack Ernie in the back of the head with it, perhaps as revenge for all the silly pranks Ernie has played on him over the years. NOW who's eating the sandbox?

Beth: No one seems to notice the problems involved in asking Cookie to help out with a falling cake either. Ernie is too ecstatic over the invention of a portable flat surface called a plate to notice the cake's sudden disappearance.

Ryan R: Before everyone brought their stuff, all Ernie had was a cake made out of sand. Now that Cookie Monster has offered his "help," it's only a matter of time before all the sand cake is gone. So I can't blame Ernie for wanting to keep the other stuff... at least until Cookie Monster eats it too.

Ryan M: Ernie is obviously to blame. Remember that Life cereal commercial where the two boys give their brother Mikey who won't eat anything a bowl of cereal and are surprised that he eats it? This is sort of the same thing- Ernie is obviously testing Cookie Monster. So Ernie decides to make a cake out of sand and then announce that the cake is going to fall over. Cookie Monster, glutton that he is, brings a plate in order to keep the cake from falling, and then proceeds to eat it. The expressions on both Ernie and Cookie Monster's face show that Cookie Monster is as satisfied as he would be eating a real cake, and that Ernie is obviously pleased that the con has worked. Continuing in the footsteps of Mikey, Ernie's next trick will no doubt be sharing with Cookie Monster a delicious snack of Pop Rocks and Coke.

FARLEY:

Tony: Why do all the male AMs have no pants?

Jog: What do Roosevelt Franklin and his friend have that needs a helper? Answer: blisters, since they've strapped their rollerskates around their bare feet... Or someone to stop Ernie from beating the green guy senseless with his sledgehammer.

Beth: No one thinks to help the rollerblade kid with a band-aid, an asprin, or the doctor in the neighborhood. Instead, the old geezer brings a tuba to "help" with his headache. Or to entertain everyone by blowing Little Bird out of it, a la Robin on the Julie Andrews episode of the Muppet Show.

Michal: I just noticed that Little Bird carries a copy of "American Gothic" to help Pantsless Farley Impersonator with his skates. Way to sneak in art appreciation, Sesame Street!

Grant: I like the two-page spread depicting Sesame Street itself, complete with a rare early glimpse around the corner. But if that's supposed to be the stoop of 123, then Big Bird's going to be mad when he finds out that they've replaced his nest with a fruit store, 29-cent oranges or no 29-cent oranges.

GROVER:

Jog: Check out Grover. He's sweating on practically every page.

Beth: I think Grover must be "helped" by creative usage of controlled substances. It's the only way to explain those eyes.

Michal: Grover's lucky to be a synthetic monster with no need for thermoregulation. Can you imagine him sweating through every waiter and bellhop outfit, running backstage to change twice per sketch?

Peter: This book is clearly a forgery, as it seems to be the first and only time Grover has ever tried to help someone and actually succeeded.

Ryan R: Maybe this was the first time Grover had ever tried to be helpful. Then, finding success, he got addicted and determined to be as helpful as possible for the rest of his life, only to fail hilariously. That explains why he keeps popping up with different jobs (waiter, taxi driver, professor)... he's desperate to recapture that one moment where he was actually useful.

CAPS:

Michal: So does anyone have any thoughts on the choice to put the resolutions in all caps?

Jog: They have to shout so that the senile old man can hear it too.

Ryan R: As many internet users can attest, saying something in all caps means it's indisputably true.

Jog: If this book were reissued these days, it'd probably read "ZOMFG! THEY FIT JUST RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111 ^_^ ROFL"

Amy: They ran out of lowercase type?

Beth: Again with the capitals. It gives me the feeling that this book was written as a satire on Sesame Street with its evil overlords and sadistic tuba players.
THE OLD MAN:

Jog: My favorite character is the senile white bearded man who runs in with the most useless crap, like a tuba.

Beth: Also, check out the old geezer on a snowy hill carrying a lawnmower on his head. No wonder there are no adults on Sesame Street. Clearly they all contracted Alzheimer's and were put in a home for their own safety.

Ryan R: Evidently it's the kind of lawnmower you wear as a hat.

Michal: Is this the same old man bringing the lawnmower and the tuba? Do you think he rode his lawnmower from his farm all the way to Sesame Street?

Ryan M: The [old man] looks somewhat like Professor Hastings with a green nose- if the lawnmower was running, perhaps this explains the character's mysterious disappearance by the early 1970s- narcolepsy plus running lawnmowers...not a pretty picture.


FINAL THOUGHTS:

Beth: I think you can sing the last pages: "Every day I need a helper. Every day you need one too... You help me, and I'll help you" to the tune of "Monster in the Mirror."

Click here to discuss the nature of togetherness on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: book club, reader participation, Sesame Street