Posts made in September, 2015
The Early Years
Jim and Sam and Friends
James Maury Henson was born 79 years ago today, on September 24, 1936, in Greenville, Mississippi–which, not coincidentally, was also Kermit’s home state–living there with his mother and father, Betty and Paul, and older brother, Paul, until the family finally moved to Hyattsville, Maryland in the late ’40s. He grew up loving the movies, imagination, and play. His beloved grandma on his mother’s side, affectionately called “Dear,” instilled in him a love of all sorts of arts and crafts, from drawing to sewing to making props. Throughout his childhood, Jim would often be in the midst of huge, involved projects from the aforementioned ones to assembling homemade working radios and the like. Meanwhile, for entertainment, his family would gather around the radio and listen to comedy, radio dramas, and puppeteers such as Edgar Bergen (who was a huge radio star, despite
Read MoreThe Muppets 1.01: “Pig Girls Don’t Cry”
Kermit and Piggy
As you might have guessed by this point, I am an enormous Muppets fan. In fact, I can say without any hesitation that I would be a very different person without them, and as a devoted fan, I will will pounce on any new Muppets project with the same level of enthusiasm I did when I was tiny. At the same time, as any obsessive Muppet fan will tell you, any post-Jim-Henson production also brings with it a feeling of trepidation. Without him around to guide these unique characters, will this newest iteration be able to capture his spirit and heart, and his sense of “gentle anarchy,” as Frank Oz has referred to it?
And the post-Jim track record has been a bit spotty. In most cases, I feel like they have gotten the heart right. The Muppet Christmas
Read MoreWhat is Henson Blog?
Kermit and Jim
When I was 3 years old, Jim Henson and the Muppets marked me for life. Well, due to Sesame Street, they had actually marked me earlier in a–for lack of a better word, perhaps–spiritual sense, but this was the year that they marked me physically, as well. There was basically nothing I loved more in the world than Kermit the Frog. My earliest memories involve watching The Muppet Show or Sesame Street with my mom and grandparents, playing with my Kermit doll (which I took with me everywhere), and going to see The Muppets Take Manhattan in the theatre (I still remember my mom crying at Kermit and Piggy’s wedding).
I would get so excited whenever I got a chance to see him on TV (this was slightly before VHS) that the mere mention of
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