My Week with Everything – Wednesday

Be honest with me
Wednesday, April 3

So I’m sunbathing on a tropical island with Charlie Rivkin. A cool breeze is blowing through the palm trees. Charlie tells me that 1996 is going to be a great year for the Muppets. They’re doing a new movie — a funny one this time — and they’re doing a new prime-time TV series. I ask if Miss Piggy’s going to be in it. A little bit, he says. It sounds great. I take a sip of my daquiri and look out towards the bay. There are dark shapes circling in the lagoon. I jump up to look. They’re not shark fins. They’re mouse ears. I look back and Charlie is gone. I’m alone, on a deserted island. I grab a scrap of paper to write for help. I scribble a note. Dear ABC. Please don’t cancel Muppets Tonight. It’s a really good show and it deserves another chance. I stuff the note into a bottle and throw it out into the surf, but nobody ever finds it. Nobody comes to rescue me.

I wake up from another bad dream. I don’t know what’s wrong with me this week. Usually I dream about toy stores.

I don’t know, I guess I’m still a little shaken up about this whole “crazy person” thing. I mean, now that I really think about it, maybe I am crazy. How would I actually know? Isn’t the whole point of being crazy that you can’t tell when you’re crazy?

I look around my bedroom and I try to be objective. Okay. First, there’s two big Ikea shelves full of toys that I never dust. There’s a bunch of postcards and Miss Piggy greeting cards tacked to the wall. My dresser has my display of new Muppet stuff. The dresser is the first thing I see when I walk into the room, so that’s where I put the new toys, so I can enjoy looking at them when they’re still new. Right now, on the dresser, there’s the big Animal and Kermit amusement-park dolls I got on Ebay, the Igel Statler and Waldorf PVC’s I just found in New York, and the beanbag dolls I got at Disneyland in December. When I get new Muppet toys, I add them to the display on the dresser, and then I rotate the older ones on to the other shelves.

Already this is not going well. Looking at this objectively, the fact that I actually have a system for which Muppet toys get displayed on my dresser… It’s just not a promising sign, mental health wise.

I take a few deep breaths. This is okay. I’ve been through this before, and I know what to do. Whenever I have a little moment of self-doubt like this, I look at The Flatsy FAQ. That always calms me down.

The Flatsy FAQ is on a website called Flatsy.com, a fan site for people who collect a toy I’ve never seen. Apparently Flatsy was a flat rubber fashion doll made in the early 70’s. I was busy in the early 70’s being an infant, so I guess I missed the whole Flatsy craze, but it looks like they made a lot of different Flatsies.

The thing that I love about this site is The Flatsy FAQ, because you get to watch somebody getting really upset over stuff that you never even heard of. For some reason, I find this comforting.

It seems like the life of a Flatsy collector is just one disappointment after another. The FAQ is full of questions like,

Why has my Flatsy’s hair come loose from the back of her head?

and

What is that stain on my Flatsy’s hair?

and

What are those colored stains on my Flatsy’s feet?

There’s a kind of dreadful poetry to it. It’s like the back cover to an Oprah’s Book Club Selection. Why has my Flatsy’s hair come loose from the back of her head? Something must be terribly wrong. I keep expecting it to go on to things like Why does my Flatsy blow all her money on the lottery? and Why does my Flatsy just sit around and complain?

The best part is the “Common Misconceptions” section, where they set us straight on what to look for when buying a used Flatsy, which is not as simple as it might seem. To start with, “just because your Flatsy has really super hair, in great shape, does not necessarily mean it’s in its original style!” Also, “just because the doll is wearing clothes in super condition that seem to fit her well, it does not mean that they are original to her! I cannot tell you how often I see Flatsys dressed in another Flatsy’s clothes.” And you think you have problems.

And then there’s the big tied-to-the-liner scam. “Often I will see a Flatsy for sale, still factory tied to the liner. No cello, but still tied down. Clean and in perfect condition. At doll shows, I’ve seen people eagerly buy the set, paying too much, because they are getting a perfect, mint Flatsy, still tied to the liner. On the auctions, I’ve seen the price shoot to ridiculous heights for the same reason. In both cases, I sit back, shaking my head, and wonder if the buyers ever noticed that Trixy was missing her hat? That the steering wheel was missing from Rally’s car? (Been there, done that. Argh!)”

There’s more. “That the entire fabric piece was missing from Kookie’s hammock? That Candy was missing her shoes? That Cookie was missing the little rooster that sits atop her stove? That Sandy was missing the bows at the bottom of her pigtails?”

So what I’m saying is this: I need you to tell me if I ever get to this stage. The woman who runs the Flatsy site seems like a perfectly nice, intelligent person, but she’s getting really, really upset about the bows at the bottom of Sandy’s pigtails.

I mean, how do you know when you’ve crossed that line? A few months ago, I wrote a whole article where I was angry that the Muppet Family Christmas DVD cut out Fozzie’s duet with the snowman. I was really, sincerely upset about it. I still am. Is that on the same level as Sandy’s pigtails?

I need you to be honest with me. I trust you. Just tell me when my hair starts to come loose.

by Danny Horn