Have you been keeping up with Tongue Magazine Online and their exclusive on-set photos of Up Late with Miss Piggy? I sure have! When they post a new batch of pictures, I obsess over every single one, and usually I download them and zoom in about 24 times and then look at each pixel individually.
Not long ago, I noticed something intriguing in some of these shots. Take a look at this one:
Do you see anything interesting? No, not how nice Uncle Deadly’s fingernails look. I’m talking about that little penguin he’s holding. What’s a baby penguin doing hanging out with a TV star and her wardrobe specialist? On reviewing some other photos, I noticed the same little critter popping up over and over again, always in the vicinity of Miss Piggy and Uncle Deadly.
So I put on my Investigative Reporter socks and asked around, and after sending a few e-mails to anonymous insiders and shaggy monsters, I got the answer. The penguin’s name is Gloria Estefan, which is supposedly also the name of a singer, and Miss Piggy brought it home from her vacation to Argentina. I say “it” because for some reason none of my sources were able to tell me definitively whether the penguin is male or female.
But wait a minute! As we all remember from our Introduction to Penguins class in college, you need to apply for and receive a Special Permit to Import an Aquatic Bird Over International Waters in order to adopt an Argentinian penguin. And my sources say — are you sitting down? — Piggy has received no such permit. Yikes.
As if that weren’t not crazy enough, get this! Some of those behind-the-scenes photos show the Up Late folks engaging in questionable activities with the penguin. Just look at this shot, which has since been deleted from the Tongue website:
Uncle Deadly is letting the penguin have ice cream — and I have it from a very reliable source that this photograph was taken before the penguin had eaten dinner. Do ABC and the Up Late producers advocate spoiling a young bird’s appetite?!
But that’s nothing compared to this next one:
No, your poor, stupid eyes aren’t playing tricks on you. That’s an obviously underage penguin drinking an alcoholic beverage! WHAAAAAT?! And sure, you might say it seems unlikely that the penguin is actually taking in much of the drink with that stubby little beak, but that’s not the point.
Look, I’m a fan of Up Late. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt here. Maybe this situation isn’t as black-and-white as it seems. And to their credit, they haven’t put the penguin to work, at least as far as we know. That, of course, would break the Chilly Willy Law regulating penguin labor. But after this article blows up all over the internet — as I assume it will — I hope a spokesperson for the show will contact me to explain the demarche of the penguin.
I want to believe there’s nothing suspicious going on here. But if there is, it’s not going to fly.
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by Ryan Roe – Ryan@ToughPigs.com
