What do Harry Nilsson and the Muppets have in common? Turns out, a lot more than The Muppet’s Show iconic 1979 scene, in which Kermit and a few other Muppets sang Harry Nilsson’s “Coconut” (with alternate lyrics.)
Even in its earliest season, The Muppet Show featured Fozzie Bear and Scooter performing “Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear,” a song featured on Nilsson’s third album, Harry, but written by his idol, Randy Newman.
“The Rainbow Connection,” performed by Kermit in the opening scenes of The Muppet Movie, was also written by Paul Williams, a friend of Nilsson’s from his management firm, eventually earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Song in 1979. (Williams also wrote a tune called “Nilsson Sings Newman” to commemorate Nilsson’s love of Randy Newman.)
This unspoken link hasn’t faded in recent years. Take Brett McKenzie, Flight of the Concords member, music supervisor of The Muppets, and writer of “Man or Muppet,” an Oscar-nominated song McKenzie once described as “mostly me doing a Harry Nilsson rip-off. Sorry, I meant to say ‘tribute.'”
Just last year, in 2014, the Muppets reunited with Nilsson once more as part of Lipton’s “Be More Tea” campaign, which featured Kermit walking through the city streets—overflowing with “animals”—to Nilsson’s voice singing “Everybody’s Talkin’.”
While there’s no proof of a direct collaboration between Harry Nilsson and Muppet creator Jim Henson, there’s still something that makes us believe they were cut from the same cloth. (No pun intended.)
GIF via Giphy
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Amal Clooney Steps Out in Tome for Date Night
Photo credit: AKM-GSI
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Rebecca will do anything to win back the love of her adolescent life…even if it means kissing men who aren’t. YouTube sensation Rachel Bloom stars in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, premiering October 12 at 8/7c on The CW.
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Gaeltacht - Ireland by Gareth Wray - 7 Million Hits - Thank You on Flickr.
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The Bell & The Knell
There was no harbor bell in Margie’s Cove, but a harbor bell rang, nonetheless.
Lindy bobbed, chin deep in the water, scrubbing along the waterline of her family’s fishing boat, remembering her dad’s stories about the harbor bell. Connor had always laughed them off, but she was a year younger than Connor, and had grabbed her father’s hand tight as her dad spun suffocating tales of tentacled sea monsters, pulling the bell rope from below. According to the grizzled regulars at the marina, the occasional ringing heard in Margie’s Cove was just the barnacled buoy bell in Cri De Coeur, six miles down the coast.
A wave slapped her gently, sloshing over her head and stinging her eyes, but she spit out the salt and scrubbed faster, knowing it was the last time the boat would get a good wash down the all the boats were winched aloft, keel down, a gallery of guillotines hanging over the pier.
She wondered if her parents would sell the boat this winter, after the summer they’d all had. Lindy looked up the hill to the cemetery, where graves had overlooked the marina since before there was even an established town. Connor was up there now. Lindy wondered if her brother could see her, doing his job, swimming around the boat, scraping all the crud off.
She could still hear the pealing bell out of her left ear-her right was filled with salt water and gurgled along with her heartbeat. The ringing sounded a little closer.
On deck, Chaser, the family Lab, watched the horizon. Lindy turned to the mouth of the harbor too, expecting to see a boat coming in, or maybe some gulls chasing the tide. But there was nothing; no whitecaps, no wind, no birds. Just the sing-song bell and oily, dark water.
Lindy scrubbed up to the paint patch on the fore, which she had left for last. My Connor was slickly airbrushed over the old nameplate-it was her mother who insisted they rename the boat. It was in the first days after they had found Connor’s body, and her mom, unshowered and hobbling through grief, had, in a singular moment of cool demand, insisted they rename the boat after Connor. Renaming the boat was the only way to keep her mother from drowning the rest of the family in her screams. Lindy shivered, remembering her mother’s screaming. A gull swooped low and gave its own little scream. Lindy had heard some of the marina staff call the renaming unlucky. Shouldn’t give’d boat a dead boy’s name, muttered one cod fisherman. Should’a christened that boat before taking it back out in the water, said another.
The day they found Connor floating in the marina, her mom had fixated on an open soup can in the galley, Lindy remembered. Who does that? wailed her mom. A person who opens a can of soup and walks away, that person is coming back! Lindy secretly thought her mom was a little right. But the police were certain it was a suicide. There was the additional matter of the brutal rope marks around his ankles. They hadn’t found the anchor Connor had used, but that hadn’t bothered the police. He had gone to the bottom of the harbor on purpose. He didn’t want to come back.
The bell seemed to be pealing a little faster, chasing her heartbeat and filling her ears. She put her brush in the bucket and, arm-over-arm, circumnavigated her way around the waterline of the boat to the aluminum ladder, hanging off the back. A fish slipped past her bare foot like a feathery whip, followed by a cold eddy.
She threw the bucket and brush over the rail, barely missing Chaser, and grabbed the handles of the ladder to step up into the boat.
Her reflexes recognized the wet, fat noose of rope around her ankle before her mind could. She yanked her leg, trying to pull it out of the knot but the rope was bristled, and heavy. It pulled harder and harder and Lindy’s grip was slippery on the aluminum. The buoy bell was ringing non-stop now, as Lindy struggled to keep her hands on the rails, and when she lost her grip, she tried to keep her head above water, pulling against the rope tugging her under, getting stronger and tighter with each yank.
After a few minutes of wrenching and squirming with muscles she didn’t know she had, she took her last breath. Lindy opened her eyes. Blood slithered up past her eyes like eels. Clawing and struggling had worn the skin on her ankle down to the bone and opened the vein. She looked up through the water where she could see Chaser, barking at the bubbling surface where she had disappeared. He vanished into a pinpoint of shimmering light. As she sunk deeper and deeper, his bark faded away.
But as she sank into the cold deep channel, Lindy could still hear the bell.
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Dad jokes will be the death of me
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What makes a meme so successful? Is it the inclusion of a hilarious animal, or a clever amount of wordplay? Follow our guidelines on the language of memes, and you just might be able to topple Grumpy Cat from his unparalleled grumpy throne.
Image: “Grumpy Cat’s twist on the State Farm motto” by Meme Binge. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr
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Not the best way to sell your product. Infomercial host’s phone shows HSN director’s shit-talking texts. [x]
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The Dunlewy Church ruins, overlooking the Poisoned Glen in Ireland.
Read more at http://acidcow.com/pics/56502-abandoned-places-25-pics.html#mtXcT7MKVBCDpALz.99
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