My Week with Everything – Friday

Radio Free Muppet
Friday, April 5

In my dream, Charlie Rivkin gives me a huge gift-wrapped box. I ask him, what’s this for? He’s surprised I don’t remember. It’s our twenty-fifth anniversary, he says. Just open the box. I tear through the wrapping. The box is full of action figures and playsets, polystone busts and a Christmas special. And deep down at the bottom of the box… there’s a new Muppet TV show. I pick up the new show and look at it. You’ll have to take good care of it, Charlie says. It’s edgy and audacious. I tell him that this show looks a lot like the last show. He says this time is different. This one’s going to get a chance to grow up. I look down at the new show, which is squirming in my arms like a puppy. I give it a little cuddle. It would be great to watch it grow. But I have to be strong. Forget it, I say, and I hand the show back to him. I just don’t believe it anymore. You do this to me every time. You give me all this stuff, you make me all these promises, but you never, ever follow through, Charlie. I could spend the rest of my life listening to your pretty lies. It’s never going to happen, Charlie. I think we both need to accept that. It’s never going to be the way it used to be.

I wake up from yet another bad dream. I can’t stand this anymore. Luckily, today I have a therapy appointment.

I go to see my new therapist. I had to stop seeing my old therapist when she asked me who the two old guys in the balcony were. I sit down with my new therapist, and I tell him that being an adult Muppet fan makes me feel like a freak. He says that Gonzo felt like a freak too, until he found his alien family. I ask what it means when you have recurring dreams about Charlie Rivkin. He says it means I should stop waiting for the Featured Creature to change on Henson.com. I love my new therapist.

He asks about my childhood. I tell him about my earliest childhood memory. It’s Chanukah, and I’m three years old. I’m sitting cross-legged on the living room rug. My parents put my Chanukah gift down in front of me — it’s a huge Cookie Monster doll, and it’s exactly my size. I throw my arms and legs around Cookie Monster, and I give him a big hug. I can still remember the thrill of it, how excited I was to get a Cookie Monster as big as I was. Now I’ve grown up, and the toys all got smaller. Sometimes I think I’m just collecting Muppet toys until I find another Cookie Monster as big as I am, and then I can stop.

My therapist asks about my family. I admit that I always felt a little out of place. My family, to be brutally honest, didn’t really have a sense of humor. My parents and my older brother are really smart, and they’re really earnest, but they’re really, really boring. I’m not giving away any family secrets here. It’s obvious. My parents’ favorite story about my brother is the summer he spent every day on the bus to camp reading the complete works of Shakespeare. That’s a true story. That’s just the way my family is. They like classical music, and Italian renaissance painting, and taking night classes at the New School. There’s nothing wrong with that. They’re just amazingly dull people is all.

And then I arrived, this nutty little guy, and I have to say that my family never really quite got me. I mean, you know how I am. I like the funny. The funny speaks to me. Comedy is how I learn, it’s how I see the world. Whenever I don’t know what to think about a complex situation, I try to figure out what’s funny about it — and that usually helps me figure out what’s true. I’m the kind of person that thinks The Dark Crystal is too much of a serious art film.

So there I was, this goofy little alien, stranded on the Planet of the Highbrow People. And my family’s response was to try to change me. Don’t worry, this isn’t like a child abuse story or anything. It’s just a weird fact about my life. My parents really, sincerely saw my sense of humor as childish and weird, and they were so earnest and worried about it that they convinced themselves that they could talk me out of it.

I’ll give you an example. I loved The Muppet Show, obviously, and I used to tape all the episodes with a portable tape player held up to the TV speaker. Then I would listen to those tapes all the time. Whenever my parents or my brother would walk by my bedroom, they’d hear Kermit and Miss Piggy. It drove them nuts. They told me that it was time for me to grow out of Sesame Street. I told them that The Muppet Show wasn’t the same thing as Sesame Street. Adults liked The Muppet Show. They had no idea what I was talking about. As far as they were concerned, adults liked health food and art history.

So when The Muppet Movie came out, my parents made a deal with me. They’d take me to see The Muppet Movie, but only if I promised not to tape-record any more Muppet Show episodes. Of course, I did what any normal child would do in that kind of situation. I lied my face off, and made whatever promises I had to make until I got myself into that movie theater. Then, after I saw the movie, I went back to taping The Muppet Show.

Now, there’s something important about that story, which is this: The Muppet Movie came out in 1979. I was eight years old. Who makes deals like that with an eight year old about the thing he loves most in the whole world? My family, ladies and gentlemen. Let’s give them a big hand.

So this is my actual point. My family was perfectly nice, and smart, and loving. I just didn’t happen to belong there. I was basically alone, this funny little boy with nobody to joke around with. And the Muppets — this is the point, right here — the Muppets were like Radio Free Europe, broadcasting across the Berlin Wall. They were sending me transmissions from the free world, talking directly to me, telling me all about the big funny world outside. The Muppets told me, There’s vaudeville out there. There’s pratfalls, and production numbers, and bears driving to Hollywood. I would tape the broadcasts, and in the privacy of my own room, I would listen to them, over and over again.

In some kind of essential way, I was like Tarzan the Puppet Boy, raised in the jungle by frogs and pigs and googly-eyed monsters. My family couldn’t teach me how things could be funny even when I was lonely and afraid. Grover taught me that. They couldn’t teach me about how making jokes gives you power over people who are mean to you. Miss Piggy taught me that. They didn’t understand how you could learn and grow and solve problems with songs and fantasies and jokes. But Kermit knew that. Jim Henson knew that. And I knew it.

So I tell my therapist that being a Muppet fan makes me feel like a weird outsider freak, and he says, So what else is new? You’ve always felt that way. That’s where you live.

And he’s right. It doesn’t matter, really, whether the new Muppet TV show does well or not. It doesn’t matter whether I’m the only person buying a ticket for the next Muppet movie. I mean, it matters to the Henson company, obviously, but it doesn’t really deep down matter to me — because the most important Muppets, for me, are the Muppets that live inside me. The ones that raised me. And those Muppets are never going to go away.

After my therapy session, I go home, and I look around my apartment. The shelves are full of toys I never dust. There’s a pile of Muppet Show videos on my coffee table. And The Muppet Movie — the movie that I scammed my way into back in 1979 — I’ve got it on DVD now. I can watch it anytime I want.

And then there’s my Muppet website, where I broadcast my own version of Radio Free Muppet, going out live to the people, twenty-four hours a day.

And I think, yeah. This is where I live. I mean, it’s a mess. It’s weird and hard and scary sometimes. But that’s freedom for you.

So this is Radio Free Muppet, going out live to the lovers and the dreamers around the world. You’re not alone, funny kids. No matter where you are, no matter what’s happening. There’s vaudeville out there. I promise.

by Danny Horn