Editor’s note from the future – Many of the links mentioned in these articles are dead. Follow them at your own risk. Or invent a time machine. Either way is cool with us.
Nubbin.com
Thursday, June 20
Nubbin.comFor the uninitiated, the world of fandom is a strange one to come to grips with. Most people don’t spend any of their actual spare time thinking about Muppets. They might watch, they might enjoy, but once it’s over, and Zoot plays that last note on the sax, they just don’t have brain space devoted to it. And when one of these people — let’s be honest with ourselves, and call them Normal People — when they become aware of the existence of Muppet fans, their world changes. They have to adapt to the idea that for some reason — unknown and unknowable to them — we actually do spend spare time thinking about Muppets. And arguing about them, and fretting about them, and bidding on auctions for ceramic statues of them. And whatever.
So, that’s weird. But if they look closer, they may begin to notice subgroups. There are Collector Fans, and Non-Collector Fans. There are Fraggle Fans and Sesame Fans. There are Detail Fans, who know the difference between recording dates and air dates, and have a list of all the guest stars’ birthdays. There are Lip-Syncher Fans, who grew up playing with puppets, and sometimes find themselves subconsciously lip-synching to a radio song, without even being aware that their hand is moving. There are fans of individual Muppeteers.
Somewhere in the world, there is even a Jack and the Beanstalk fan.
It gets to the point where you start finding subgroups of subgroups of subgroups, until everything’s categorized and subcategorized down to a nubbin. And that’s when it gets interesting. Today I’m going to look at those specialist fan sites, the nubbin sites.
These aren’t just sites that some kid threw together back in the mid-90’s when it was cool to just make a website in your spare time. [ Editor’s note: Um, it is still cool to make a website in your spare time, isn’t it? Just checking. ] These aren’t slapdash efforts hidden somewhere in Geocities or Tripod with text saying “I like the Muppets Show. Some of my favorite character is Kermit. Here are some quotes [ COMING SOON ].” These are sites by people who really, really care. And they are alarmingly specific.
Nubbin sites for Muppet performers: There’s a Louise Gold site. There’s a Richard Hunt site. There’s a Caroll Spinney site. There’s a site which, for no readily identifiable reason, provides documentary evidence of Muppeteer cameos.
More Nubbin sites: There’s a site for Fraggle Rock. There’s a site which effectively time capsules all that is glorious about Sesame Street in the seventies. There’s a site all about the many international versions of Sesame Street. There’s a site for Janice, because she may be a puppet, but by gosh, she’s a babe.
But this is possibly my favorite Nubbin site of all. For its obscurity, for its specificity, and for its level of detail, I award the Tough Pigs Nubbin Site of The Week to… This MuppetVision 3D site, made by a 22-year-old kid who not only saw MuppetVision 3D a whole lot more than the recommended dose of, say, maybe three times, but also took notes. (Taking notes at Disney World is one thing. But doing it with 3D glasses on, well, that takes something special.) I love that he thought of doing this, I love that he could then be bothered actually doing it, and most of all, I love that he did it in the sheer blind Nubbin hope that somewhere out there lurked somebody who might want to actually read it. Frog bless you, MuppetVision 3D Nubbin man.
There’s no need to actually review any of these. Most of them are small, many are incomplete, and — due to a lack of resources or just the scarcity of available information, a natural consequence of their very nubbinosity — some don’t really tell you all that much. But the point is, they’re trying to exist. Like those incredibly primitive life forms you sometimes hear about which live inside volcanos, or so deep under the sea that they have no access to light, heat or reliable long-distance operators — they’ve evolved against the odds, defying the laws of probability, mainly through sheer bloody-mindedness. And they’re a symbol, my friends, of the endurance of fandom, through good times and through bad.
There are plenty of other hardcore fan communities out there — your Star Trek, your Buffy, your Simpsons, your Stargate — and they, too, produce major-league fan sites and little league Nubbin sites, tiny microcosms of obsession, but there’s one important difference: All those shows are still on the air. Muppet fans, well, from time to time we’ve kind of run on our own steam. Sure, we’d all love it if we didn’t have to — I’m sure Henson would love it too — but it’s nice to know that when push comes to shove, we can keep the dream alive.
And that’s a testament to the power of the dream as much as it is to the power of the fans.
by Kynan Barker
