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Final Thoughts

I've been reflecting on this entire Jim Henson fandom experience and I keep finding myself coming back to the same question of why this is significant and what is the purpose of picking Henson and the Muppets as a whole?  I knew I always liked the Muppets, more so The Dark Crystal, but why pick it as a point of study?  After pondering it for these many weeks I feel the best answer is because there are so many people and generations interconnected with his work this it would be a shame to do otherwise.  There are some that could say that they don't like the Muppets or puppets of an kind, but what about Frank Oz and Yoda, we can't forget how it all connects.  Another prospective is what would happen if Sesame Street was never published, or at least without Jim Henson?  We would be counting out entire generations of children and formats in which movies and shows could be made and enjoyed.  That and we can't also forget that The Dark Crystal was a heavy movie for something that was kind of for children, so you really knew who your friends were if they would watch it with you as a kid. 

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Interesting Tidbit

Learned the other day over the news that NOAA has a pair of Hurricane Hunting Lockheed WP-3D Orion's, actually the only two in existence, that are actually named Kermit and Miss Piggy respectively.  Didn't really see that coming, honestly I always seem to find the most random Jim Henson references when I least expect it.  Did a little more digging and found out that NOAA also has a smaller Gulfstream aircraft that is named Gonzo as well.  I admit I couldn't find why they were named that, but it is for the creations of Jim Henson.  I think the reason they were on the news is because they just came out of the shop after being down for over a year during a $35 million overhaul.  Makes me laugh really, the Muppets are everywhere, even in crazy techno filled aircraft that are modified to fly into a hurricane. 

Come to think of it, I think it's just the Kermit and Miss Piggy aircraft that doesn't make any sense, an aircraft named gonzo that flies into a hurricane though makes perfect sense.

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Tumblr is not helping my college project

As I'm doing my college course readings and learning as much as I can I have to admit that Tumblr is not helping in terms of content. I admit that I don't follow many users, so I'm not giving the system a lot of content to work with, but at the same time it seems to be completely random or just gives me things that seem to be popular overall with Tumblr as a whole. If anything it only gives me an impression of the user community as a whole rather than an honest recommendation based on my personal user searches and key words by experience. A good example is why I would receive a suggestion to follow Teen Vouge, unless it's paid advertising and aimed at the median demographic of users rather than any sort of algerithem. That of course I can't be annoyed at because from that point it's not a bad system, just an intentional business model, which I would admire and encourage.

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I love how the Muppets can reflect and appeal to just about everything and everyone. It's really not even about the puppets or even the love of puppetry. Sure, I got one of those sweet wire operated one's that costs a lot more than I'll even admit, but I don't like the Muppets necessarily just from a mechanical standpoint, but for so much more than that and what it represents and reflects to me. Also you have to admit that Miss Piggy is one of the funnest one's and is the perfect match for Kermits personality. I think thats the key word right there too is personality, by making the Muppets a parody of our own actions it makes it all that much closer to home. I really need to get back to watching the movies again and get caught back up on all the jokes.

Miss Piggy and her Wild Hogs.

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This was always one of my favorite parts of The Dark Crystal. The landstrider was so large that a person had to operate it from the inside. When thinking back to the special edition DVD of the movie, the producers mentioned that such a design allowed a person to move a remarkable distance with their own body power. I would imagine it would be like stilts, but more stable since you would have four of them to work with rather than two. Can't say it would be rather cool temp wise, all that detail and latex would make it an oven with legs. Beats being one of the puppeteers that worked the mystics thought, that had to be the most uncomfortable thing in the world.

Amazing Puppetry Technology was used in The Dark Crystal.

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Food and Puppets

You know as I’ve been snooping around on the Tumblr thingy I’ve been seeing a respectable amount of pictures of the various exhibits that are out there in the world to showcase the works and imagination of Jim Henson.  I would murder to get to one of those, well, maybe not since murder doesn’t get you from point A to point B like a car, but I am rather jealous since I know a good chunk of that stuff is in California and I’m in no way on God’s green earth heading there.  Nothing personal against California, but I can’t afford a plan ticket for 3 from one coast to another to a state that sells an old hoarders home for like $500,000 as a “Fixer upper”.  I would though be totally into some of this In and Out Burger I’ve heard about and puppets, stay focused.  Thinking of food again.

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As my research into the Jim Henson Fandom continues I learned how there are other ways he connects to just about everything that is fluff and wire.  Really this particular connection wasn't though Tumblr first, but by curiosity and a seemingly out of place picture at the local mechanic shop I go to for my job.  Nothing out of the ordinary really, typical shop owned by the nicest thick accented American Greeks you ever meet with a wall calendar always on May 2013 when you walk in, it's always the same and never changes.  The picture though sits on top of a tan filing cabinet right out the 80s with that sort of air and light about it says it's was placed there when the cabinet was at a time when 1 hr photos at Walmart were not yet everywhere,  Simple picture really, from the 6.5 feet to the walk in area it seems to be a little girl with the character Zoe from Sesame Street.  Makes me wonder what the connection was to the girl, the event and the mechanic shop.  Birthday I'm sure, but you can never tell.  It made me think if Jim Henson had a hand in that as well and a good old Google research session confirmed my thoughts. It's amazing sometimes when I think that all the things I like are more or less from the same thing.

Big Bird (One Time Appearance) and Gonzo The Muppet Show.

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I've decided to add this as one of my field notes for week five of the class because it really gives you an idea how big the world is that Jim Henson touches. By this picture we understand that Frank Oz and the power of the Muppet were strong in the Force back in 1980 with the making of The Empire Strikes Back for Star Wars.  It's interesting to note that this was immediately after making the Muppet Movie and not only did he work the puppet Yoda, but also provided the voice.  After all was said and done he went on to do The Great Muppet Caper with Henson in 1981 and after that proceeded to direct my personal favorite movie The Dark Crystal with Henson in 1982.

One leads to another in some ways not wholly unexpected, but perhaps not always realized.

Frank Oz and Yoda Behind the Scenes Photos from Star Wars - The Empire Strikes Back.

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Still Fresh, Still Happening

I think the interesting thing about this whole college project in terms of researching Jim Henson and his works is that one realizes that even if he is long gone, there is many thinks that are still fresh or still being created.  I learned the other day that they are making a prequel to the Dark Crystal on Netflix, not all that impressive when you think of it as just another show on the internet, but at the same time all the more impressive when we realize that we are taking about a prequel that won't be out for another year in the future that is based on a movie that came out before I was born, hell after doing some quick math in my head my dad was barely old enough to vote when that movie came out.  Something like that makes you realize how alive a fandom is and that once something is formed the life that is in it and that community may continue long after it was originally intended.  Of course they are going to be using notes laid out by Henson when the first one came out I'm sure, but how much of this will be new created material from the minds of people that just wouldn't let it die.  What roles were not explained in the movie that need to be expanded on or what places and events did we only cover ever so slightly to keep the original movie time limits in check? I think it's interesting that despite it all, its still fresh and it's still happening.  

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I feel that this literacy artifact is important and critical to the Muppet fandom, because it embodies everything that is the Muppet fandom.  It is Jim Henson in his simple suit and iconic facial hair with Kermit the Frog looking directly into the camera.  One is the creator that started it all, the Muppets, Fraggle Rock, Labyrinth and the Dark Crystal.  The other is the created, but almost equal in stature because Kermit is not merely a single creation of many, but an extension of Jim Henson, acting as his representative in the world of fantasy and imagination where flesh and blood cannot go. 

Good Morning Everyone, Have a Great Week !

“ Do everything at 100 percent of its potential and never accept second best.” - Jim Henson

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Man or Muppet

I've been thinking about this whole Jim Henson thing again.  I've been wondering if perhaps the Muppets are Jim Henson or Jim Henson is the Muppets, not like an actual Muppet where he is being controlled on a string and Mr. Henson is merely a concept thought up by beings made out of fuzz and big goggle eyes, but if the love of the Muppets is really a love of Henson and his work.  While exploring this tumbler website, I've realized that there are just as many pictures of Jim Henson as there is any other puppet, except maybe Kermit the Frog. Even when thinking about that last post I put up with the news article about working with his so many years ago, it was all about his energy and fluid natural movement in the world that he worked.  A seamless effort between one world of fantasy and another in reality and I'm uncertain exactly which one was the source and which was the canvas.

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Ran into an article on Jim Henson today, relatively unremarkable being that they make one about every once in a while due to his legacy, but this one struck me because I wasn't looking for it and that it would be posted on a main news feed from Yahoo. I think the idea I'm trying to get out is that it is amazing how timeless the man and the world that he created seems to be. Unlike a lot of things to study, Jim Henson has the disadvantage of being dead since 1990, but yet his work lives on. In actually it has grown beyond him and has a life of its own, a life we enjoy reading about and when a person thinks of something that connects to him or his work we think back to something that makes us smile and yet move forward to something new that was inspired by, but perhaps not created by him. It's wonderfully pleasant and I think a lot of people could really use that sometimes.

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Odd Jim Henson Confession

So after looking at this Tumbler (the “e” stays) news/concepts/discombobulated eye candy feed I’ve remembered a thought from years ago, I didn’t realize that Jim Henson died long before I was old enough to conceptualize the idea of death or being gone.  I grew up watching The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, as such the idea that perhaps he had passed before I was old enough to realize it just never came to mind.  I understood that “The Jim Henson Company” produced movies so I never thought to question the idea that Jim Henson was in charge of the company.   I suppose it would an understandable mistake being that my formative years were relatively low tech, so the biography of any and all individuals I happen to think about at a given time were not at my finger tips to skim and acknowledge with a resounding “Hmmm” before looking at cat videos.

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Late night thoughts percolated

I was pondering a thought that bothered me today while doing training for the upcoming exercise.  Do i like movies that Jim Henson had a part in, like The Dark Crystal, because it has puppets in it and I do not feel that CGI has the same depth or do I like the concept of certain puppets being an incorruptible personification of the various character traits that humans can exhibit?  A person could argue that CGI does the same thing, it’s something non human that can be programmed to show whatever emotions and dialog that true humans can, of course I would be one to agree with you, but it doesn’t solve the original issue that cutting edge CGI is essentially great mirror of human emotion and therefore flawed. 

Let me explain my thought process here, as human we are a mess of thoughts, emotions, experiences and any number of other factors and things, as such I feel it would be very impossible to express a single thought or emotion at any single point in time for any amount of time.  Think about any respectably recent movie, perhaps Avatar, the characters were deep and engaged with the non-human CGI characters perfectly human in ways, but essentially also mixed, flawed and emotional.  A character that has the capacity to express an emotion that is human like due to direct connections to the actors during CGI creation will inevitably come into conflict with all other capable emotions simultaneously vying for control with the factual recognition of the actor.  Could any living person or CGI character in Avatar truly be able to express “happy” or “mad” or “fear’ without conflict with another emotion?  You could smile I suppose if someone said to “show happy”, but you truly couldn’t show only “Happy” because behind your face there would be other thoughts that would race and remind you of something other.  I’m not implying that people are incapable of being truly happy, just incapable of expressing a single base emotion without conflict due to the complex and flux-like nature of the human as an organic being.

A puppet on the other hand is a construct of human imagination with minimal capacity to “express” emotion or feelings expect by what can be provided by a hand or wires.  Of course a puppet is inanimate and therefore anything it shows that is human is only perceived, but what is perceived is the distilled concept of what the expression being presented would be. An example would be the character Jen from The Dark Crystal, though he deals with “emotions” throughout the story, each one is only presented at a single time such as “fear” or “sadness”, but not necessarily simultaneously as a human would.  An actor could express “fear” if told too, but they might also be remembering they forgot to pay the trash bill or realize they are getting paid a million bucks for a 30 sec commercial.  I feel that perhaps that is why I find such works to be comforting, because they allow the onlooker to perceive the degree of the emotion they wish and are not given any other material to go off of for simultaneous emotions due to a natural lack of humanity and human nature in an inanimate object.  In essence, a single emotion can be processed as a single time.

Of course I could be full of some serious crap, but I suppose if we look at the cosmic scale of things we can all agree that life is a puff of smoke and earth, along with the people on it is arguably a speck of salt in an endless ocean and perception of any kind will never be more than just that.

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I cannot unsee

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a huge football fan, but since I'm currently living in NJ I feel that watching the news about the Eagles winning the Super Bowl is not something I can choose to skip out on. They aired a news report a couple weeks ago about sending out volunteers to grease the light poles in Philly, but people still climbed them. I hope one day I can have that much driven focus. To commemorate the occasion I've written a haiku about this seemingly impossible event against the odds of physics.

I cannot unsee

A large man climb greased street poles

Though gone, I see still

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150 words was my limit

So I’ve been doing these readings for this class and I’m really struggling, to give some background here, I’ve completed several English courses throughout the years by the good graces of a military paycheck and have been able to experience some wonderful times as a result, namely a field study I got to do in Paris studying writers of the 1920’s for a week because I was stationed in Germany at the time and a one way train ticket to the heart of France is sure as hell a lot cheaper than mumsy and daddy rocking the bill for an international flight though some kind of “money is like water” school program.  Anyway, we covered a lot of ground and it’s worth noting that Hemingway is my favorite writer, but through close analysis of his love life he usually met his next wife through his current wife and I really feel that his first wife was hands down the best one, an inspirational independent free spirit that deserves a statue?  I don’t know, but when a man is more or less making crap money through newspapers and all of a sudden decides “I’m going to be a writer and damn the torpedoes”, while he still has a wife and child to provide for is usually extremely confident or blatantly winging shit.  I feel a wife that would go along with this plan in Paris clearly must be of a loving supportive caliber not to be underestimated and perhaps can we argue she may also have understood the vast difference in value of the post war French Franc to the post war U.S. and Canadian Dollar.

Among other things learned on this trip is that public consumption of wine and other select beverages is not against the law as far as I was made aware of and when one makes mistakes in calculating post deployment finances and really screws the pooch it is worth understanding that you can always afford a baguette and the cheapest cheese you can clumsily pronounce in French.  I felt to understand the writers of this time better, one must think as them, drink as them and wander around in the AM thinking thoughts about life like them. Did I mention drinking?  I do not believe such often mentions make me a borderline alcoholic, truth be told I simply do not have the dedication required, in essence I was what I feel to be “historically in the moment”.

Another thing worth mentioning is that Gertrude Stein was wonderful at collecting art, but I struggled to understand the book she wrote that followed her age with the vocal writing style of that particular age, I get where she was going, but still. Speaking of struggle, after getting through the reading assignment for this class I can hardly understand a good portion of it, I wouldn’t say the oxygen would be sucked out of the room and kill me if I read it aloud with the windows closed, but if I had a quarter for every time the magic key word was mentioned I would have enough money to retire and make moot the entire purpose of the course, but still I struggle on because momma didn’t raise no quitter and my wife is one of those “A” student types and heaven forbid we raise our daughter with the concept of a grading curve by family unit size.

On a lighter note I just got in touch with the college bookstore and luck with have it that I can highlight the ever loving goodness out of my textbook and they will still accept it as a return, the down side to this is that I am required to show up in person with said book to take advantage of this particular policy.  A small problem for some, but I live a couple thousand miles from this particular bookstore, so I feel the best course of action is to thoroughly enjoy this textbook to the fullest I am able and when I am done with it to turn it into same many paper cranes, or perhaps a hat. As long as I get $62 worth of entertainment out of it, I do not care.  

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Class project with Gonzo flair

Ok, so a little disclaimer with this Tumbler account.  I started this as a requirement for a class and I know what you people (by that I mean like 3 I’m sure) must be thinking, “Ugggh, this blog is going to be so boring and I’m most certainly not going to be seeing any fan art and sexualized reimagining of the Harry Potter series here”, well cyber space you may be half right. I indeed will not be drawing art as a part of this project due to a serious lack of artist ability, but can we not all agree that since my chosen fandom for this class will the works of Jim Henson that The Labyrinth was really a movie about David Bowie’s codpiece and all the other nameless characters were really supporting roles to fill empty space in the script?  I mean think about it, every time David Bowie’s codpiece showed up something significant happened in the movie’s plot and things really only went south for the rest of David Bowie in the final scene of the movie when Sarah realizes he has no power over her because we see the upper 50% of his body 95% of the time.  Coincidence?  I think not.

Also getting back on the Harry Potter train, am I the only one that gets hyper confused by whether or not Emma Watson is attractive because I have to stop and think about what movie in the series I’m watching and count back on my fingers so I know whether or not I’m a pedophile and going to jail even though we’re pretty much the same age?

What a minute, there’s something I’m forgetting.  I’m supposed to be talking about my class, on that note, why is a used text book so expensive?  I’m taking a single class this semester and I’ve racked up a bill to the tune of about $1300, to include of course the $774 in fees that cover the community center or something to that effect.   It’s worth noting though I’ll never see the thing since I’m an online student that is stationed about 2000 actual miles away from my college, but I’m sure it’s nice. Current news articles pointing out the high cost of education have noted that even if we drown in a sea of unpayable debt with compound interest that that floor in the community center and gym will be just as shiny by the time you graduate.  It’s the little miracles in life you know?  Also my major is finance so bear with me, the numbers seek me out and haunt me in my dreams.