Being Green :: The Jim Henson Generation

Of course, I haven't seen the new Muppet movie yet. But I come from that generation sometimes referred to alternatively as "The MTV Generation" or "Generation X" and a few other less salubrious titles. But really, we're the Jim Henson Generation.

And don't you ever forget it.

My generation was the first that never knew a time when it wasn't perfectly acceptable for a bunch of monsters to teach your kids how to share and get along with people who don't look just like them. I learned my numbers and letters from my sister, but she was backstopped by Kermit the Frog and company.

She didn't have to teach me it was okay to be green. Jim took care of that one.

Since Sesame Street first aired in 1969, by the time I was old enough to sing the song, it was already a cultural institution. I remember when no one believed Big Bird had a woolly mammoth buddy named Mr. Snuffleupagus. I remember when Grover was the monster at the end of the book and Elmo was just another red monster in the chorus of many. Ernie was my favorite, followed close by Grover and Oscar the Grouch.

Alas that mom refused to buy me a trash can to hang out in.

But it wasn't Sesame Street that makes me think of myself as living in a world that Jim Henson created. It was the Muppet Show, which ran from 1975-1981 and then lived on in reruns through most of my life.

As much as anything else, picking apart that show taught me how to write comedy.

‎"One thing that happens with comedy writers is that they are all really good at coming up with beginnings... really good set ups, but they can't figure out how to pay them off. What my father figured out was, if you can't get out, you just either blow something up, or eat something, or just throw penguins in the air."                                                                                               - Brian Henson

And the writing on the Muppet Show was nothing short of brilliant. At times, it was entry-level Monty Python and at the same time hearkened back to the vaudeville impresarios of yesteryear. They channeled Groucho Marx and Jack Benny and Bob Hope without pausing to see if you got the last joke before moving on to the next. Sometimes there wasn't a joke, just an absurd situation devolving into chaos.

On some level, we knew that the show was trying to appeal to our parents. Going back and watching the shows now as an adult, I find new appreciation for just how much Jim was pitching over our heads to hit the adults on the sofa behind us.

The Muppets introduced me to Peter Ustinov and Zero Mostel, as well as the madcap brilliance of Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan. Henson and his writers delighted in wordplay and snappy patter. It's quite possible that they're responsible for my fondness for puns, but don't hold that against them. The Muppet Show was the first time I saw John Cleese. They also taught me a new way to think about comedy and led me, by way of Spike Milligan to the Goon Show and on to Monty Python and the rest is history.

A couple of weeks ago, I got the chance to watch the Muppet Movie again on the big screen. The Seattle International Film Festival has been having an entire month of Muppet-related shows and events.

Sitting in the darkness of the SIFF cinema, surrounded by children and their parents, I was astounded by how well it held up. Leaving aside the six year old behind me who whispered to his mom "Why are people laughing at the waiter? He hasn't said anything yet!"

How do you explain Steve Martin to a six year old?

Wherever I went, I was always the "different" kid. The outsider, and not in a cool way. But it didn't matter because I lived in a world where it's getting easier to be green.  And we have Jim to thank for that. When I grew up, I wanted to be Jim Henson.  I still do.  In the meantime, I'm having fun being someone that he inspired.
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UPDATE!

SIFF's celebration of Jim Henson "Muppets, Music, and Magic: Jim Henson's Legacy" continues through the end of November! Click here for show times and ticket information. http://www.siff.net/cinema/seriesDetail.aspx?FID=253

(Note: I am unaffiliated with the Seattle International Film Festival, et al. This is genuine enthusiasm, not a bizarre scheme to boost ticket sales.)

The Legacy of Jim Henson

 

There's a Monster At the End of This Post

A mixed bag post, because I haven't done one in awhile... 


 Lost & Found I don't usually report on the whereabouts of missing library books or the people reluctant to return them and pony up the fine. Neither does the Times of London. Nevertheless, the Times reports that Harold Pinter's overdue library book was finally returned after 59 years. It wouldn't be that big a story, even considering the Nobel laureate status of the borrower, except that it happened to be a rare first edition of Samuel Beckett's Murphy and apparently Pinter had no intention of ever returning it. At that point, I think a man of lesser celebrity would be accused of stealing it rather than borrowing it. 

The bookseller handling the sale of the playwright's library returned it in order to buy it back so that Pinter's library would be complete and without the sort of provenance problems that crop up when one of the books in the collection didn't really belong to the man in whose home it resided. Read the whole tale, including the sort of oddly happy ending that could only occur in the bookworld at the Times website.

  Can I Make you a literary mix-tape? WIRED continued its coverage of the transition from ink to electrons with a profile of a grad student who MacGyvered his own book scanning equipment to digitize his textbooks and is now teaching others how to do the same. Now Daniel Reetz is at the eye of a copyright kerfuffle (which was inevitable) about whether or not what he's doing is a high crime or a misdemeanor. So the question is begged... since the inception of the computer, it's been possible to digitize your library either by laying the books on a scanner, photographing them or just typing them into a document file. There's even court precedent from the days of audio tapes that says you can copy your collection for personal use as long as you're not trying to profit. But those arguments got gutted in the Napster fight and are further eroded by decision after decision that creates a legal difference between the laws governing tangible copies and digital copies.

Right now, the world over, libraries are digitizing their collections, effectively turning them into e-Books. From national institutions like the Library of Congress and the British Library to the libraries of Harvard and Yale to the commercial ventures like Googlebooks and the Intenet Archive, the physical is being tranferred into a digital format. . . but who owns the bytes? Is it legal for me to copy my extensive library if I'm not doing so to turn a profit? I think it meet that we reflect on the outcome of the Pinter-Beckett affair and remember that the bookworld is a universe of its own creation where the outcomes that might be expected as we recall the chaos that surrounded the digital translation of music are not fait accompli.

  Digital Monsters There's no end of monsters on the internet. From the trolls that lurk beneath blogs and comment threads, spewing vitriol to the sort that players fight in online roleplaying games, and many others, the internet seems overrun by monsters of all sorts. So when I tell you that I am ecstatic to report one more monster on the internet, it may sound strange. That is, until I tell you that it's none other than the legendary blue monster that watched over my childhood... Grover. The Children's Television Workshop has put one of my favorite books of all time online as a free e-Book for new generations of parents and children to enjoy. There's a Monster at the End of This Book was more than a children's book, it was a watershed moment in my literary life. It's the first children's book I read (besides perhaps Where the Wild Things Are) that delivered something wholly different than everything else put in front of me. It's entry-level suspense fiction of the highest order with a twist ending sure to delight everyone. Re-reading it as an adult (or rather having Grover read it to me) was an eye-opener, and no lie.

 Now, I'm off to do some Christmas shopping. Good reading, everyone!