IT GETS BETTER / CLASSISM / KERMIT

IT GETS BETTER. The It Gets Better Project is an online video website whose goal is to "prevent suicide among LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) youth by having gay adults convey the message that these teens' lives will improve." Most if not all gays have experienced harrassment, intimidation, and assault. Some have been tortured or murdered. In recent years the suicide rate among gay teens has risen (or perhaps we are simply more aware of the numbers). I would submit that as important as it is for gay adults to reach out, it is equally important for straight adults to reach out. I have a number of gay and lesbian friends, and they know that I'm as closely allied to them as I am allied to any minority, any other cause of social justice. Our children are our children, period.

President Obama lent his voice to the movement in a video release on October 21, 2010, in which he said, "We've got to dispel this myth that bullying is just a normal rite of passage, that it's just some inevitable part of growing up. It's not. We have an obligation to ensure that our schools are safe for all of our kids. And for every young person out there, you need to know that if you're in trouble, there are caring adults who can help."

Here is the website for the It Gets Better Project. Take a look at the videos, and consider adding your voice to the call for humane treatment of all people, regardless of sexual orientation.

CLASSISM. Imagine this -- the profits of the Fortune 500 companies rose 81 percent between 2010 and 2011. Income inequality in America is higher than at any other time since the Great Depression. Taxes on the wealthy are at their lowest level in decades. And those corporate profits? -- they do not trickle down to produce more jobs. As union membership decreases, middle class income shrinks. Meanwhile, the average salary of any given CEO in this country was $11 million last year, while teachers and Navy SEALs are lucky to eke out $55,000 a year.

Tax reform on the wealthy and on corporations would erase our national debt, balance our budget, and return us to being a nation of the people, by the people, for the people. Is it likely to happen? Not while Wall Street controls government, and not while 5 percent of the population controls 80 percent of the nation's wealth. All of you who consider yourselves to be "middle class" need to realize that the middle class is fast becoming a myth. If you hesitate, view this video showing graphs and figures which leave no room for doubt.

KERMIT. On this day in 1955 (the same year my younger brother was born), everyone's favorite frog made his first public appearance. Puppeteer Jim Henson's most famous muppet, Kermit the Frog, went on to host The Muppet Show, and to appear many times on Sesame Street. He was the Grand Marshall in the Tournament of Roses parade in 1996, the same year he was awarded an honorary doctorate in Amphibious Letters at Southampton College, NY. The cheerful and modest Kermit even has his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Happy birthday, Kermit -- may you cheer us, young and old, for many years to come.

The Dark Crystal Read-Along

Thanks to RedSpy from the Power Records Yahoo Group for uploading this album originally. Bob

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BLOG UPDATE

I just Posted the CD Reissue Of Muppet Babies Rock It To The Stars In the original post HERE Enjoy!!!!!

Kermiphobia

We all have phobias. Right? I have and have had for years a love-hate relationship with Jim Henson's Muppets and Sesame Street. I loved the show growing up, and my favourite channel was the Kermit Channel (the takes they did on the Fine Young Cannibals' 'She Drives me Crazy' and Surfari's 'Wipeout' were amazing, not to mention Manamana!). I always thought Oscar the Grouch had the ultimate bachelor's life, that Bert was a banana, that Miss Piggy was gross and that Big Bird was a girl. Yet, the Cookie Monster, that purple Count von Count, Snuffleuppagus and the rest of the crew kept me up at night. Indeed, one of the earliest nightmares I have is of Big Bird in a terrorist's bandana jumping out of the screen at the cinema and machine gunning my friends and I. And strangely, this is before I even knew what a terrorist was (subliminal messages ARE that powerful).
Why do I have this irrational fear? Because Muppets have NO EYELIDS. They don't blink. Their eyes bulge out (which is a characteristic they share with fish, of whom I also am slightly afraid). In fact, what I dread the most is being locked into Jim Henson's warehouse at night. All the muppets are staring at me like zombies, like they'll come to life any minute. Imagine that, and you won't be so quick to laugh at me.
The reason this came up all of a sudden is because the other day, my friend came to uni wearing a Cookie Monster shirt. And there they were, those HUGE goggly eyeballs. Now I was in a pickle. I'm trying to become a better Muslim and hence try to lower my gaze when talking to members of the opposite sex, in accordance with the Quranic injunction. But the problem is, everytime I'd look down, the Cookie Monster would stare back at me…with those eyes. So I'd look back up. Then down again, and so on. Now, my friend wears that shirt just to piss me off.

picture of jim hensom

 

James Maury “Jim” Henson (September 24, 1936 – May 16, 1990) was an American puppeteer best known as the creator of The Muppets. As a puppeteer, Henson performed in various television programs, such as Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, films such as The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper, and creator of advanced puppets for projects like Fraggle Rock, The Dark Crystal, and Labyrinth. He was also an Oscar-nominated film director, Emmy Award-winning television producer, and the founder of The Jim Henson Company, the Jim Henson Foundation, and Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. He died of Streptococcus pyogenes on May 16, 1990.
Henson, who was born in Mississippi, and educated at University of Maryland, College Park, was one of the most widely known puppeteers in history. He created Sam and Friends as a freshman in College Park. After suffering struggles with programs that he created, he eventually was selected to participate in Sesame Street. During this time, he also participated in the comedy series Saturday Night Live. The success of Sesame Street spawned The Muppet Show, which featured Muppets created by Henson. He also co-created with Michael Jacobs the television show Dinosaurs during his final years. In 1992, he posthumously received the Courage of Conscience Award from The Peace Abbey, and on June 16, 2011, he posthumously received the Disney Legends Award.

 

Early life

Henson was born in Greenville, Mississippi, the younger of two boys. His parents were Betty Marcella (née Brown) and Paul Ransom Henson, an agronomist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He was raised as a Christian Scientist and spent his early childhood in Leland, Mississippi, moving with his family to Hyattsville, Maryland, near Washington, DC, in the late 1940s. He later remembered the arrival of the family’s first television as “the biggest event of his adolescence,” having been heavily influenced by radio ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and the early television puppets of Burr Tillstrom (on Kukla, Fran, and Ollie) and Bil and Cora Baird.
In 1954, while attending Northwestern High School, he began working for WTOP-TV, creating puppets for a Saturday morning children’s show called The Junior Morning Show. After graduating from high school, Henson enrolled at the University of Maryland, College Park, as a studio arts major, thinking he might become a commercial artist. A puppetry class offered in the applied arts department introduced him to the craft and textiles courses in the College of Home Economics, and he graduated in 1960 with a B.S. in home economics. As a freshman, he had been asked to create Sam and Friends, a five-minute puppet show for WRC-TV. The characters on Sam and Friends were forerunners of Muppets, and the show included a prototype of Henson’s most famous character: Kermit the Frog.
In the show, he began experimenting with techniques that would change the way puppetry had been used on television, including using the frame defined by the camera shot to allow the puppeteer to work from off-camera. Believing that television puppets needed to have “life and sensitivity,” Henson began making characters from flexible, fabric-covered foam rubber, allowing them to express a wider array of emotions at a time when many puppets were made of carved wood. A marionette‘s arms are manipulated by strings, but Henson used rods to move his Muppets’ arms, allowing greater control of expression. Additionally, Henson wanted the Muppet characters to “speak” more creatively than was possible for previous puppets – which had seemed to have random mouth movements – so he used precise mouth movements to match the dialogue.
When Henson began work on Sam and Friends, he asked fellow University of Maryland freshman Jane Nebel to assist him. The show was a financial success, but after graduating from college, Jim began to have doubts about going into a career as a puppeteer. He wandered off to Europe for several months, where he was inspired by European puppeteers who look on their work as an art form. Upon Henson’s return to the United States, he and Jane began dating. They were married in 1959 and had five children, Lisa (b. 1960), Cheryl (b. 1961), Brian (b. 1962), John (b. 1965), and Heather (b. 1970).

 

Struggles and projects in the 1960s

Despite the success of Sam and Friends, which ran for six years, Henson spent much of the next two decades working in commercials, talk shows, and children’s projects before being able to realize his dream of the Muppets as “entertainment for everybody”. The popularity of his work on Sam and Friends in the late fifties led to a series of guest appearances on network talk and variety shows. Henson himself appeared as a guest on many shows, including The Ed Sullivan Show. This greatly increased exposure led to hundreds of commercial appearances by Henson characters throughout the sixties.
Among the most popular of Henson’s commercials was a series for the local Wilkins Coffee company in Washington, D.C., in which his Muppets were able to get away with a greater level of slapstick violence than might have been acceptable with human actors. In the first Wilkins ad, a Muppet named Wilkins (with Kermit’s voice) is poised behind a cannon seen in profile. Another Muppet named Wontkins (with Rowlf’s voice) is in front of its barrel. Wilkins asks, “What do you think of Wilkins Coffee?” and Wontkins responds gruffly, “Never tasted it!” Wilkins fires the cannon and blows Wontkins away, then turns the cannon directly toward the viewer and ends the ad with, “Now, what do you think of Wilkins?” Henson later explained, “Till then, [advertising] agencies believed that the hard sell was the only way to get their message over on television. We took a very different approach. We tried to sell things by making people laugh.” The first seven-second commercial for Wilkins was an immediate hit and was syndicated and reshot by Henson for local coffee companies across the United States; he ultimately produced more than 300 coffee ads. The same setup was used to pitch Kraml Milk in the Chicago, Il., area and Red Diamond coffee.
In 1963, Henson and his wife moved to New York City, where the newly formed Muppets, Inc. would reside for some time. Jane quit muppeteering to raise their children. Henson hired writer Jerry Juhl in 1961 and puppeteer Frank Oz in 1963 to replace her. Henson later credited both writers with developing much of the humor and character of his Muppets. Henson and Oz developed a close friendship and a performing partnership that lasted 27 years; their teamwork is particularly evident in their portrayals of the characters of Bert and Ernie and Kermit and Fozzie Bear.
Henson’s sixties talk show appearances culminated when he devised Rowlf, a piano-playing anthropomorphic dog. Rowlf became the first Muppet to make regular appearances on a network show, The Jimmy Dean Show. From 1963 to 1966, Henson began exploring film-making and produced a series of experimental films. His nine-minute Time Piece was nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for an Oscar for Short Film in 1966. The year 1969 saw the production of the NBC-TV movie The Cube – another Henson-produced experimental film.

 

Sesame Street

In 1969, Joan Ganz Cooney and the team at the Children’s Television Workshop asked Henson to work on Sesame Street, a visionary children’s program for public television. Part of the show was set aside for a series of funny, colorful puppet characters living on the titular street. These included Oscar the Grouch, Bert and Ernie, Cookie Monster and Big Bird. Henson performed the characters of Ernie, game-show host Guy Smiley, and Kermit, who appeared as a roving television news reporter. It was around this time that a frill was added around Kermit’s neck to make him more frog-like. The collar was functional as well: it covered the joint where the Muppet’s neck and body met.
At first, Henson’s Muppets appeared separately from the realistic segments on the Street, but after a poor test-screening in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the show was revamped to integrate the two, placing much greater emphasis on Henson’s work. Though Henson would often downplay his role in Sesame Street’s success, Cooney frequently praised Jim’s work and, in 1990, the Public Broadcasting Service called him “the spark that ignited our fledgling broadcast service.” The success of Sesame Street also allowed Henson to stop producing commercials. He later remembered that “it was a pleasure to get out of that world”.
In addition to creating and performing Muppet characters, Henson was involved in producing various film and animation insets during the first two seasons. During the first, Henson produced a series of counting films for the numbers 1 through 10, which always ended with a baker (voiced by Henson) falling down the stairs while carrying the featured number of desserts. For seasons two to seven, Henson worked on a variety of inserts for the numbers 2 through 12, in a number of different styles – including film (“Dollhouse”, “Number Three Ball Film”), stop-motion (“King of Eight”, “Queen of Six”), cut-out animation (“Eleven Cheer”), and computer animation (“Nobody Counts To 10″).
Concurrently with the first years of Sesame Street, Henson directed Tales From Muppetland, a short series of TV movie specials – in the form of comedic tellings of classic fairy tales – aimed at a young audience and hosted by Kermit the Frog. The series included Hey, Cinderella!, The Frog Prince, and The Muppet Musicians of Bremen.

 

Expansion of audience

Concerned that the company was becoming typecast as a purveyor of solely children’s entertainment, Henson, Frank Oz, and his team targeted an adult audience with a series of sketches on the first season of the groundbreaking comedy series Saturday Night Live (SNL). Eleven “Dregs and Vestiges” sketches, set mostly in the Land of Gorch, aired between October 1975 and January 1976, with four additional appearances in March, April, May, and September. Henson recalled that “I saw what [creator Lorne Michaels] was going for and I really liked it and wanted to be a part of it, but somehow what we were trying to do and what his writers could write for it never gelled.” The SNL writers never got comfortable writing for the characters, and frequently disparaged Henson’s creations; one, Michael O’Donoghue, memorably quipped, “I won’t write for felt.”
Around the time of his characters’ final appearances on SNL, Henson began developing two projects featuring the Muppets: a Broadway show and a weekly television series. In 1976 the series was initially rejected by the American networks who believed that Muppets would only appeal to a child audience. Henson was finally able to convince British impresario Lew Grade to finance the show, which would be shot in the United Kingdom and syndicated worldwide. That same year, he abandoned work on his Broadway show and moved his creative team to England, where The Muppet Show began filming. The Muppet Show featured Kermit as host, and a variety of other memorable characters, notably Miss Piggy, Gonzo the Great, and Fozzie Bear. Kermit’s role on The Muppet Show was often compared by his co-workers to Henson’s role in Muppet Productions: a shy, gentle boss with “a whim of steel” who “[ran] things as firmly as it is possible to run an explosion in a mattress factory.” Caroll Spinney, the puppeteer of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, remembered that Henson “would never say he didn’t like something. He would just go ‘Hmm.’ That was famous. And if he liked it, he would say, ‘Lovely!’ ” Henson himself recognized Kermit as an alter-ego, though he thought that Kermit was bolder than his creator; he once said of Kermit, “He can say things I hold back.”
Jim Henson was the performer for several well known characters, including Kermit the Frog, Rowlf the Dog, Dr. Teeth, The Swedish Chef, Waldorf, Link Hogthrob, and the Muppet Newsman.

 

Transition to the big screen

Three years after the start of The Muppet Show, the Muppets appeared in their first theatrical feature film, 1979′s The Muppet Movie. The film was both a critical and financial success; it made US$65.2 million domestically and (at the time) was the 61st highest-grossing film ever made.
A song from the film, “The Rainbow Connection“, sung by Henson as Kermit, hit #25 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1981, a Henson-directed sequel, The Great Muppet Caper, followed, and Henson decided to end the still-popular Muppet Show to concentrate on making films. From time to time, the Muppet characters continued to appear in made-for-TV-movies and television specials.
In addition to his own puppetry projects, Henson also aided others in their work. In 1979, he was asked by the producers of the Star Wars film The Empire Strikes Back to aid make-up artist Stuart Freeborn in the creation and articulation of enigmatic Jedi Master Yoda. Henson suggested to Star Wars creator George Lucas that he use Frank Oz as the puppeteer and voice of Yoda. Oz voiced Yoda in Empire and each of the four subsequent Star Wars films, and the naturalistic, lifelike Yoda became one of the most popular characters in the Star Wars films. Lucas even lobbied unsuccessfully to have Oz nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award.
In 1982, Henson founded the Jim Henson Foundation to promote and develop the art of puppetry in the United States. Around that time, he also began creating darker and more realistic fantasy films that did not feature the Muppets and displayed “a growing, brooding interest in mortality.” With 1982′s The Dark Crystal, which he co-directed with Frank Oz and also co-wrote, Henson said he was “trying to go toward a sense of realism—toward a reality of creatures that are actually alive [where] it’s not so much a symbol of the thing, but you’re trying to [present] the thing itself.” To provide a visual style distinct from the Muppets, the puppets in The Dark Crystal were based on conceptual artwork by Brian Froud.
Crystal was a financial and critical success, and, a year later, the Muppet-starring The Muppets Take Manhattan (directed by Frank Oz) did fair box-office business, grossing $25.5 million domestically and ranking as one of the top 40 films of 1984. However, 1986′s Labyrinth, a Crystal-like fantasy that Henson directed by himself, was considered (in part due to its cost) a commercial disappointment. Despite some positive reviews (The New York Times called it “a fabulous film”), the commercial failure of Labyrinth demoralized Henson to the point that son Brian Henson remembered the time of its release as being “the closest I’ve seen him to turning in on himself and getting quite depressed.” The film later became a cult classic. Henson and his wife also separated the same year, although they remained close for the rest of his life. Jane later said that Jim was so involved with his work that he had very little time to spend with her or their children. All five of his children began working with Muppets at an early age, partly because, Cheryl Henson remembered, “One of the best ways of being around him was to work with him”.

 

Later career

Though he was still engaged in creating children’s programming, such as the successful eighties shows Fraggle Rock and the animated Muppet Babies, Henson continued to explore darker, mature themes with the folk tale and mythology oriented show The Storyteller (1988). The Storyteller won an Emmy for Outstanding Children’s Program but was canceled after nine episodes. The next year, Henson returned to television with The Jim Henson Hour, which mixed lighthearted Muppet fare with riskier material. The show was critically well-received and won Henson another Emmy for Outstanding Directing in a Variety or Music Program, but was canceled after 13 episodes due to low ratings. Henson blamed its failure on NBC‘s constant rescheduling.
In late 1989, Henson entered into negotiations to sell his company to The Walt Disney Company for almost $150 million, hoping that, with Disney handling business matters he would “be able to spend a lot more of my time on the creative side of things.” By 1990, he had completed production on a television special, The Muppets at Walt Disney World, and a Disney World (Later Disney’s California Adventure as well) attraction, Jim Henson’s Muppet*Vision 3D, and was developing film ideas and a television series titled Muppet High.

Cult Hero of the Week: Jim Henson comments

 

 

Who doesn’t have childhood memories of Jim Henson?  These days, if you’re under 40, if had a TV growing up,  and if you actually watched anything as a child, chances are good you know and adored at least one of his creations.

I personally grew up on Sesame Street.  I adored Cookie Monster, the Count, Bert and Ernie, Big Bird, Oscar… the whole crew.  And thirty two years later I started watching again, only to find so many of the same things I had loved as a child.  (Seriously- Gordon and Maria are both still there, as well as all of the puppets.)  And my kids love most of Sesame Street just as much as I did.  But more than that, it’s television that educates, that teaches kids about fairness, tolerance, and just generally that people are people, no matter what.  And it does it without being preachy or talking down to children, which is more than most TV shows can say, believe me.
I also remember watching the Muppets, and I remember certain Muppets scaring the living daylights out of me.  And now, years later, we own the DVDs, and can I just say that those shows were NOT written for children?  I mean, it’s downright tame, but still- some of the jokes are just… yeah.  Kids aren’t getting them.  And when that video of the Muppets doing Bohemian Rhapsody came out, both my sister and I showed it to our children, who all burst into screams and tears.  Either Queen or Animal scared them – we’re really not sure which.
While I think most people would first associate Jim Henson with Sesame Street, the Muppets, or Fraggle Rock (which I never watched), his puppets extended beyond children’s entertainment.  I don’t think I’m informing anyone at MRFH of anything when I mention he was one of the minds behind The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.  And I’m definitely not saying anything new when I say “Yoda.”  (And if I am, although Jim Henson is not the puppeteer or the voice of Yoda (Frank Oz is), he was heavily involved in the inception of the character.)
Henson’s death in 1990 was sudden and sad, and it’s one of the few celebrity deaths that ever truly affected me.  I mean, death is always sad, but this was one of the few where I felt like I lost a friend.  I think millions of people who’d grown up loving the characters and creations of Jim Henson felt the same way.
Jim Henson’s Creature Workshop continues.  Sesame Street episodes are still being put out, and the Muppets are advertising for Habitat for Humanity.  Farscape, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and Mirrormask have all worked closely to create beings that didn’t have to be human or computer animated.  And DVD and PBS continue to ensure that this generation of children will grow up loving the work of Jim Henson as much as we did.

Come with me, leave your yesterday behind and take a giant step outside your mind.

Beards: William Holman Hunt

William Holman Hunt was a colorful character. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, alongside John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Millais was an elegant and sophisticated prodigy of the Royal Academy of Art, while Rossetti was a stunning and sensual English-bred Italian of infinite artistic potential. Hunt, like Millais, was a member of the Royal Academy, though he had been previously rejected. This led Hunt to be rebellious, garnering the nickname 'Maniac'. Defying the rationalism of Renaissance artists like Raphael, the brotherhood sought the spiritual qualities of medieval art. It was Hunt who would remain truest to this notion. Millais happily fell into domestication with Effie Gray, formerly Effie Ruskin, and their eight children. Rossetti gradually lost his mind, holing up in his Chelsea home with his growing brood of wild animals. After a tumultuous attempt at converting a siren barmaid, Annie Miller, into a wife, Hunt dedicated himself to religious art. (Though he found time to controversially marry his late wife's sister.)

Hunt had a vivid eye for color and detail. As Hunt grew older, his eyesight grew weaker, leading him to give up painting. He insisted he simply couldn't obtain the quality he aspired to. As Hunt grew older, his beard also grew increasingly unruly. This earns him an instant spot in my continuous thread of beards, joining the ranks of parts one, two, Roy Harper, and Jim Henson. Beardy genius is always coveted.

Though I've gravitated more toward the unapologetic sensuality of Rossetti's work and the stately elegance of Millais', Holman Hunt was the first Pre-Raphaelite I loved. His 1905 interpretation of The Lady Of Shalott hung proudly as the centerpiece of my childhood home. I continue to be spellbound by its vibrant colors and varied patterns.