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Happy Hensonday!

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Today is Jim Henson’s birthday, which should be a national holiday where we get out our heavy old socks, decorate them with fringe, buttons and felt, stick our hands inside and start acting out stories.

I love it that he was drawn into puppeteering as a way to get into television, discovered the possibilities in textiles as part of a college class and wound up graduating from the University of Maryland with a degree that was not in communications or theater, but home economics. I wonder if his parents ever asked “what are you going to do with THAT?”

Henson was born in Mississippi in 1936. He would have been 75 today.
Google is observing the date by giving you a chance to animate their famous logo.

Here’s a look at some of Jim Henson’s work, as if you aren’t already familiar with it. The clip does point out something amazing about Henson’s fabric creations and the comic sensibility that brings time to life – namely how lasting these creations are. Is there any question that Kermit the Frog will outlast everyone alive today?

http://youtu.be/jjw7bFM8zPM

Henson argued that the frog was a lot more interesting than the guy with the beard, but we know that’s simply not true. Still, it is quite remarkable how easily we can look past the human with his arm up the back of a character.

There is something fascinating about an assemblage of talking felt.

Your favorite Muppet?

63 thoughts on “Happy Hensonday!”

  1. Ghana dale
    Jim Henson makes me blubber like a baby. Something about what he brought to the world makes me glad I got it and so sorry that he’s gone. The people he brought together to craft the message the characters he fathered have made such a difference. I am Kermit his wonder his innocence his curiosity his unjustified belief life will be better . It’s not easy being green

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  2. Morning all. Lovely topic… in addition to being wonderful on his/their own, Jim and the muppets also led the way to a television revolution for kids’ education programming.

    It’s hard to pick a favorite, but I liked Scooter a lot. He kept things rolling without too much drama. Occasionally he got a little more spotlight…..

    Happy day to everyone!

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    1. A sad oversight that, no goat or baboon muppet.

      B & E,of course. I think that I’m like Bert.
      No, you’re wring, I think that I’m like Ernie.
      Are we going to have that argument again?
      We am tired of it.

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      3. In the address for Bosko the underlining of the address hides the under score that should shoe up in the blank spaces toward the end of the address.

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  4. Good morning to all,

    I guess I would pick Cookie as my favorite. We had a Cookie puppet that I used to play with my kids. I’m kind of a cookie monster myself because I can finish off all the cookies in a cookie jar in no time. We also had some of the other muppet puppets. I enjoyed making the Bert and Ernie voices.

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  5. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    Miss Piggy. She is everything I am not–a femme fatale, a flirt, a woman fully aware of her feminine powers, obsessed with appearance. Miss Piggy is the Scarlett O’Hara of our time, in felt, of course. Deeply felt one might say.

    So here I am, an aging, pragmatic woman with her hippy jeans stowed away in the cedar chest, filled with admiration for a felt pig.

    Jim Henson was a delightful genius who brought out the frolic in each of us. The world is a better place because he was in it. It was a sad day when he left us.

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  6. I remember Jim Henson when he was the dorky guy in the breaks between cartoons on local TV. It was amazing that there was a real genius hiding behing the facade.

    I think of the muppets in 2 ways. There are the sweet Sesame Street characters and there are the edgier folks seen only on the Muppet Show. My inability to choose between the 2 groups let alone name a single favorite piece of felt and ping pong balls shows my appreciation for the duality of life. Alternatively it shows how wishy washy I am.

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  7. This lovely post is written Jim Henson’s son is on the google blog today:
    When we were kids, my brother and sisters and I were always allowed to stay up late to watch our father’s appearances on The Tonight Show or The Ed Sullivan Show. No matter how late it was or how young we were, my mother would wake us up and trundle us down to the living room television. We’d be giddy—like Christmas. When he came home, he’d head down to the garage where he had a workshop, and repair everything that we broke while he was away—or build a dollhouse for one of my sisters. Jim never stopped making things.

    He also loved games—card games, board games, all kinds of games. He was one of those rare parents who was always ready to play again. He loved dogs, particularly goofy ones. And he lived for those moments when everyone laughed so hard they couldn’t talk. I often walked onto the Muppet set to find everyone just laughing hysterically.

    Although he loved family, his work was almost never about “traditional” families. The Muppets were a family—a very diverse one. One of his life philosophies was that we should love people not for their similarities, but for their differences.

    Jim often had a little lesson about the important things in life: How to be a good person. How to believe in yourself and follow your dreams. And above all, how to forgive. If anything was stolen from one of us—like when the car was broken into—he would always say, “Oh well, they probably needed that stuff more than we did.”

    He loved gadgets and technology. Following his lead, The Jim Henson Company continues to develop cutting-edge technology for animatronics and digital animation, like this cool Google doodle celebrating Jim’s 75th birthday. But I think even he would have found it hilarious the way today some people feel that when they’ve got their smartphone, they no longer need their brain.

    Jim was clearly a great visionary. But he also wanted everyone around him fully committed creatively. If you asked him how a movie would turn out, he’d say, “It’ll be what this group can make, and if you changed any one of them, it would be a different movie.” Every day for him was joyously filled with the surprises of other people’s ideas. I often think that if we all lived like that, not only would life be more interesting, we’d all be a lot happier.

    Posted by Brian Henson, Chairman of The Jim Henson Company

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    2. Thanks for that. I have enjoyed some of the recent work that Brian Henson has been doing – Sid the Science Kid and Dinosaur Train follow the joyous tradition of the Muppets. Plus Sid uses some really cool technology to animate the characters. Not quite the fuzzy warmth of real material and googley eyes – but Papa Henson would be proud I’m sure.

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    4. Thanks Beth-Ann. Brian’s testimony to his father opens a window we’re privileged to see into. I tear up when I think about how early Jim left us.

      Kermit and Grover – my faves.

      FYI – the new gravatar is sibs and I in the 60’s with 4-H calves, close to Clay County Fair time in IA.

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  8. Grover. Definitely Grover. Such enthusiasm for life. Kermit is a close second. Fozzie was my nickname in junior high (best friend then was “Gonzo”). Big Bird and Snuffy were also faves when I was a kid (Snuffleupagus especially – kinda said that everyone can see him now) – Carroll Spinney’s book about being Big Bird is great fun if you ever want a quick read. But still, there is Grover. One of Daughter’s favorite books that we still read from her toddler years is “There’s a Monster at the End of This Book” – Grover at his worrying, silly best. Here’s a little of Grover’s recent work.

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  10. I’ll take the Swedish Chef. I am embarrassed to say that I really missed the whole thing. I was without TV for most of the 70s and 80s, and saw only snippets of Sesame Street or the Muppet Show at other people’s houses. I know there’s a Muppet Movie – I think I’ll rent it – and I may be able to find some old Muppet Shows at the local video store. Any other suggestions?

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    1. Me too. Saw the occasional Sesame Street by chance, but never watched regularly.
      Is the Muppet movie worth seeing?

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      1. A Muppet Christmas Carol is a lot of fun, and we watch it every year on Christmas Eve It is pretty silly but it is nice to see Michael Caine as Scrooge

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      2. Muppet Movie is worth seeing. Very silly. There is, I hear, a new one coming out later this fall. Also there are Muppet Show episodes available on DVD (I have one lone DVD, but it has shows with Elton John and Julie Andrews…Elton looks almost like a Muppet himself sometimes).

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  12. I loved Rowlph the dog and Beaker and the Swedish chef I get annoyed by Miss Piggy I can’t use periods on my keyboard right now as the period key is gummed up and sticks and then I get line after line of periods, hence my poor punctuation I will have to dismantle it sometime today and degum it The delete key also sticks so all I can do is backspace

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      3. I know I’ve fallen in with my kind of peeps when a link to not only National Punction Day but also one to proper use of a semicolon are listed on the same day. Love you guys!

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      4. How fitting! Maybe I should use all exclamation marks and question marks? I guess I will have to tell only those things for which I have questions or are very exciting? Here goes! Husband is drying his hops in the oven and it smells like a brewery in the kitchen!

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      6. Renee,
        Your kitchen smells like an oasthouse (the building where hops were dried in the past). To seal my Cliffy I need to tell you the reason I can describe the scent. There is a rare genetic metabolic disorder called homosystinuria where the urine of affected children smells like an oasthouse after methionine loading. My only regret is the lack of a semi-colon in this posting.

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      7. Beth-Ann, I think that is fascinating! The hops are papery and dry. We are going to give them to a friend to make tea. I got the period to work by really slamming it. Tomorrow I need to clean all the keys. I hope to get a new computer and keyboard for Christmas, so I need to make what we have last until then.

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  14. When my son worked in game spin-offs of children shows, he studied the Muppet Show, which he bought.

    30 years ago I led a group of HS kids who did a puppet ministry. I had lots of misfit sort of kids from a few churches, who did not quite fit the mold in school or church. We wrote the scripts and did a lot of improvisation as we delivered the shows. All of our lives moved on and a woman wanted to take over, which she did with purchases tapes to which the new puppeteers mouthed the words. Flat flat flat. But Jim Henson was always there in the background of everything we did.

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  15. Many famous folks made their breakthroughs by having that single brilliant original observation and acting on it. Jim Henson had far more than that going for him, but some folks think his biggest contribution was the notion that little puppets could be huge stars in the new medium of television. In the real world, puppets are pretty much doomed to be so small you have to be right on top of them to see them. On TV, a bird-sized puppet can fill the screen.

    But of course, Henson was hugely talented in many areas, plus he was a golden human being.

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    1. thanks, B-A that was fun. no uke playing here, but i haven’t given them the opportunity. i wonder if that was the same goat as in the clip VS put up. talented goat. not alpine, however. 🙂 generic mountain type?

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  17. My first impulse, like Barb in Blackhoof, was to say, “AN–I–MAL!!” But then I thought, choosing your favorite Muppet is like choosing a favorite child. All so different, but you love them equally for themselves. So in that case, I might have to say Jim Henson is my favorite Muppet. Truly one of the great creative geniuses of the 20th century.

    Chris

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  19. I would have said Grover or Cookie but Steve changed my mind to Rowlf. How adorable. I’m weak for pictures of puppies.

    There was a long span of time between the early ’70s and the mid ’90s that I didn’t watch television or movies at all. I’m afraid I missed the prime muppet years. I never saw a muppet movie. I only saw one Star Wars movie too. When Holly, our intern, said that Pippin looks like an ewok, I had to use Google to know what she meant. So, I’m a little out of touch in this regard and I’m sure there are other characters that I would like.

    Well, I re-sprained my left ankle. The walnuts have it in for me. This time I started with ice and now have it wrapped and elevated. Sheesh. I skinned both knees too. Can walnut trees know when a person hates them?

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    1. They’re a hard nut to crack. Hope your ankle mends quickly – once and for all. If you could use a smile while the foot’s up, check out the latest installment of out to pasture.

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      1. Thanks, Donna! Do you have walnut cracker?

        Thanks BiB and Steve! Wonderful photos, Steve. I feel a lot better already.

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      1. HON-great suggestion but don’t you think Krista will be able to see the movie better with her eyes than with her wounded foot?

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      1. Evening everyone–

        I’ve been busy. But just today I collected a bag full of Horse chestnuts from the tree in the back yard. Is it just me or do they seem huge this year!? And I thought they looked like barnacles since I’m doing ‘Little Mermaid’ this fall… Anna; think I can glue them onto the set or will they mold / rot or smell? Bugs come out? Hmmmm…..

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      2. How long do they need to be up? I’m guessing they would last long enough for a college show. I’d think. A little rotting will just add, um, verisimilitude. That’s it. Verisimilitude. If you shellack ’em, I’d think that would seal them well enough to keep anything nasty from happening. Or try Rosco clear acrylic – I have used that to seal in a multitude of sins (though it’s less good at sealing in stinks).

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