Okay, we admit it. We are helpless before our addiction. Jack Kirby meets Jim Henson with Kermit as Mister Miracle and Miss Piggy as Big Barda. I presume Oberon is the janitor who cleanes up backstage at The Muppet Show theater.
via My Junk Drawer – Miracle Frog and Pig Barda. Commission. 8×10”.
In the late 1960s, Jim Henson and cartoonist Johnny Hart teamed up to produce a pilot for a TV series based on Hart’s and Brant Parker comic strip The Wizard of Id. According to the Henson Company blog, the response was pretty positive, but by the time ABC made the decision to move on it in 1970, Henson had already moved on himself to work on Sesame Street.
Take a look and see what you think. Although it does remind me a bit of King Friday XIII from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, it works suprisingly well, doesn’t it?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDeAuq44XKQ[/youtube]
Hat tip: cartoonbrew.
Alongside his not-as-famous pals, Kermit the Frog was donated to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History by Jim Henson’s wife, Jane, this past Wednesday. Originally cast as a post-news puppet show, Kermit and the original Muppets debuted in 5 minute sketches, usually lip-syncing to popular music, after the local news.
While most today won’t recognize the other puppet-cohorts of Kermit, the museum plans to show clips from early appearances, and help promote the new display in the Pop Culture Gallery, set to debut in November. Curator Dwight Blocker Bowers (say that three times fast) said the Muppets would be a welcome addition to the museum’s collection. “It certainly shows the Muppets at the beginning of the career of a large family of entertainers,” he said. “More than anything, I think it shows the genius of Jim Henson.”
In order to hype this donation, and future installation, a road show has been set up, with a first opening in the Windy City, opening on September 24th at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.
Jane donated this first batch of Muppets, with plans to continue the donation in the years to come. We hope in time to take out own children (when we have children, mind you) to the Smithsonian to see some of our favorites from Henson’s workshop, including any Muppets who made their way into Bill Cosby’s show. You know that episode we’re talking about. Doc eats the sausage sandwich, and have some weird dreams, ala Muppetland. He’s visited by the Hippocritic Oaf, and eventually opens the fridge to find all the contents to have been transformed into puppetry. But we digress… At very least, expect Kermit’s longtime female companion, the far-from-kosher Ms. Piggy to join her lime-green romeo soon (in tow, we’re sure, with other actual major Muppet players). In the mean time… Expect Kermit and his pals to enjoy the sans-pig-silence.
Tip of the hat to artdaily, for sharing. Cause sharing is caring.
As found over at People @ Parks…
After years of badgering wandering kids on Sesame Street, Big Bird and Snuffy had enough. Thanks to a connection they had through Jim Henson’s workshop (trust us, it’s like six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon) they got a hold of a phantom zone projector. With the projector in tow, Big Bird and Snuffy confronted Oscar about his general grouchiness around perspective customers kids.
Seventy-one years ago today, James Maury Henson was born in Greenville, Mississippi. Over his fifty-three years, Jim Henson left a legacy that touched almost every child in two generations through his creations, from Kermit to Yoda to the Fraggles to Bear and the Big Blue House.
The sheer amount of output from Henson is staggering, winning multiple Emmys, BAFTA awards, a Peabody Award or two, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for both him and Kermit the Frog. Heck, if you’re like most people, all you have to do is think of his voice saying "Mahna Mahna" and you’ll instantly respond "Doo Doooo, Di Doo Doo". (And now that tune is going to be stuck in your head for the rest of the day. Sorry. But at least you’ll be smiling.)
He was even nominated for an Academy Award for something that had nothing to do with puppetry, a short film that he wrote, directed, and starred in called Time Piece, released four years before Sesame Street hit the airwaves.
We invite you to take a look at it here, odds are you’ve never seen this side of Jim Henson before.
Seventeen years ago today, it got just a bit less easy to be green.
Here’s to you, good fellow. (Hat tip: Lisa Sullivan.)
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
Stephen Colbert, we have your writer for “The Chronicles of Amber”!
January 20, 2023
The Law Is A Ass #460: Those “For Life” Sentences Are Nonsense
February 24, 2022
