I can’t pinpoint the exact moment that it happened, but it might have been when I walked into Tower Records this afternoon. Now, I don’t know what the Tower Records stores are like where you are, but in Center City Philadelphia, Tower Records is like the old-time general store for skate-punk pop-consumer urban sophisticates. They sell everything a scenester needs, from black T-shirts to tiny transparent backpacks, Hello Kitty temporary tattoos and magazines called Bang! and Face! You can chart the rise and fall of the latest twenty-something face-mutilation trends — eyebrow rings, neck tattoos, alarming earlobe-stretching devices — by surveying the wreckage staffing the information desk. It’s like the Army-Navy store for the never-ending teenage revolution.
So my first clue that I’ve somehow slipped into an alternate band of reality is that I walk into Tower Records, looking for the new Muppet Show CD, and right there by the checkout line is a free-standing four-shelf display of… Muppets.
Kermit’s Swamp Years videos and DVD’s… Muppet Show videos and DVD’s… Muppet Labs playsets… Kermit figures… Piggy figures… They even had two copies of the last issue of ToyFare, with the Animal figure on the cover, one on each side of the display, kind of framing the whole deal with neon-yellow-and-pink words screaming MUPPET MANIA!
And that’s not even the best part. This is the best part. I don’t see the Muppet Show CD on the display — not an unusual experience in my life as a frustrated Muppet fangeek, that the new Muppet thing isn’t on the shelves. So I go to the information desk and I ask a skinny girl with pink hair if they have the Muppet Show CD. And this is the best part, right here — she doesn’t even look on the computer for it. She just says, oh, yeah, isn’t that coming out today? I can’t speak. My mouth opens and I just sort of nod and make gulping noises. Yeah, she says, I know I just saw it. I don’t think it’s on the shelves yet. Hang on, I’ll get one for you.
And then the skinny girl with pink hair goes away, and comes back a minute later with my Muppet Show CD.
The last time that kind of thing happened to me, it was 1982.
The guy at the cash register is a scruffy looking early-twenties slacker type with creative facial hair. As he runs my credit card through, he stops to look closely at the CD case. He actually turns it over and checks out the track listing while I’m standing there. It’s excellent.
Oh, and the album’s good, too. I’m sorry, this is actually supposed to be a review of the CD, but I’m experiencing a little jet-lag from the trip from my home universe. You see, in my timestream, where I lived up until about mid-afternoon, they couldn’t care less about the Muppets. There hasn’t been a “Muppet Mania” since before my bar mitzvah. Now, you were probably born in this strange new world I find myself in, so you’ll probably find this hard to believe, but in my universe, the last time the Muppets had a TV show, it was cancelled after six weeks, and the last time they made a movie, nobody went to see it. I know, that must seem very strange to you. (“What is this thing you Earthlings call ‘direct to video’?” I hear you say.) But it’s true, I was there.
So, more clues that I’m experiencing some kind of quantum-theory “light is a wave and a particle” Twilight Zone type deal: The CD booklet has page numbers, and it’s full of tiny little words. It’s got an 11-page essay in it, with a little history and commentary on every single song. It mentions The Great Santa Claus Switch and Hey Cinderella, and it tells us who wrote “Happy Feet.” It points out that the version of the “Muppet Show Theme” on this CD is “the actual show version, not the altered album version heard on various other Muppets records.” For the paragraph about “Lady of Spain,” it quotes Frank Oz about the inspiration for Marvin Suggs’ accent. Seriously. Craig Shemin went and asked Frank Oz about Marvin Suggs, and Frank gave him an answer, and Craig went and wrote it down, and now it’s printed in a little booklet that comes with the CD that I got from the pink-haired girl at Tower Records.
Apparently I woke up this morning on a planet where Muppet fangeeks evolved from men.
And it isn’t just at Tower Records that things have changed, no no. My next errand was to go to the comics store, where I bought the new issue of ToyFare. (In my old universe, admitting that I go on regular shopping trips to Fat Jack’s Comicrypt to buy toy magazines would probably make me sound like a total loser. It’s a good thing I don’t live there anymore.)
Now, ToyFare is a very funny magazine for sarcastic man-children who like Star Wars and He-Man, and who spend their disposable income on plastic trucks that turn into robots. In other words, it’s a boy magazine. It is in fact such a boy magazine that they don’t even print Maxim-style photos of supermodels in wet T-shirts, on account of ick, they’re girls. But check out this sentence: “The Palisades Toys Fan Club was started this year in response to the immense popularity of the new Muppets line.” Then this, in a totally different article: “Since the Muppet figures are so popular, we have not really found the right groove to deal with the show exclusives yet.” On the month’s Top 10 Hottest Action Figures list, #6 is Invisibility Spray Fozzie, and they say: “This marks not only the first appearance of the upcoming Wave 2 Fozzie, but it’s also Palisades’ first toy based on a Muppet movie (the under-rated Muppets From Space).”
Now, in my home universe, sarcastic man-children don’t refer to Muppets From Space as under-rated. They don’t refer to it at all, under any circumstances. Actually, in my home universe — and I know you’ll find this hard to believe — the company that owns the Muppets is going bankrupt, and the Henson Company is laying people off. I wonder who runs the company in this timeline. It seems like they’re doing a great job.
As I’ve been writing this article, by the way, I’ve been checking the Muppet Show CD’s Amazon sales ranking every once in a while to make sure I don’t drift back to my own reality before I finish. It’s been steadily climbing the charts all day, and as of right now (11:30pm), it’s hit #101 out of every CD available for sale in the whole entire world. 101! It’s unbelievable. The listing for the Kermit’s Swamp Years video on Amazon actually says “Only 3 left in stock — order soon (more on the way).”
Oh, man. “More on the way.” Are those the sweetest words a refugee Muppet fan ever heard or what? I hope I get to grab some more of this cool stuff before I get sucked back through the wormhole to my own universe. All my friends there will be so impressed.
by Danny Horn
