You guys! THE MUPPETS ARE BACK.
New movie. New album. New screen saver. Nobody – and I mean nobody – does satirical slapstick puppetry better than the Muppets. I barely missed being alive for the inaugural run of The Muppet Show, from 1976 to 1981, but I was raised on the Kermit method. I saw every single Muppet movie loyally, in a theater, on VHS, on DVD, on a plane, on a train, in a car, on a boat, with a goat . . . Wait.
I’m mixing my childhood metaphors.
The point is, in anticipation of the release of the new Muppets movie, aptly named The Muppets, Muppetophiles are inundated with a slew of new Muppetalia to assuage their Muppetmania. The most exciting of these releases is The Green Album, a compilation of Muppet covers by artists such as My Morning Jacket, OK Go, and Weezer. In one of the many delightful surprises on the album, The Fray records its most lyrical song yet, a cover of Animal’s “Mahna Mahna.” The whole album is streaming for free on NPR.
I already have the Muppet theme song in my head, but it’s not enough. I need a pure dose of straight-up Muppetonic to feed the addiction. Promotional materials for the upcoming film supplement my multiple-DVD set of The Muppet Show. To wit: I just spent three hours watching Muppet teasers and clips on YouTube. I’m guessing the forthcoming film is only about 90 minutes. The teasers for the new film are so much fun, though! Check out this one, a parody of Green Lantern:
The new film was written by, and stars, Jason Segel, of Forgetting Sarah Marshall fame. He’s been an avid Muppet fan since childhood, and bringing his labor of love to the big screen brought him to tears. I can relate.
As I mentioned, I watched all the Muppet videos I could as a kid, but the television show was always their crowning achievement, the crème de la crème of the Muppets’ oeuvre. It showcased all of the Muppet personalities and their signature pop culture irreverence in ways the confines of a narrative feature simply couldn’t. However, those old shows were basically unobtainable in the days before DVD reisuues and YouTube. So when, in the mid-90s, ABC brought the familiar characters back for an updated variety show called Muppets Tonight, I was over the moon. I would finally see the Muppets in their natural habitat: “live” television.
Unfortunately, Muppets fans alone could not bolster the ratings, and the show only lasted ten episodes on ABC, before moving to the Disney Channel, which was out of my demographic, and cable package, at that point. Though a few more movies were released over the years, they didn’t live up to the quality of the first films, The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper. I definitely skipped The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz. Despite easy access to Muppet media over the years, my devotion to the Muppets remained strong. It is now rather embarrassing to admit that, during my freshman year of college, Kermit the Frog parody posters graced every square inch of my dorm room’s walls, including:
and
and
It would be even more embarrassing if I admitted that Kermit Clein was the only shirtless male who graced my freshman dorm room. BUT I WILL NEVER ADMIT THAT. And if I did, any correlation between the two facts would be censoriously rejected. An ardent devotion to the Muppets is no turn-off. Just ask Jason Segel.
The Muppets hits theaters on Thanksgiving. Until then, I’ll be rehearsing my pitch-perfect Beaker impression, WHICH MEN THINK IS SEXY.