In my never-ending, tireless, four day quest to completely categorize Sesame Street (read my previous features here, here and here), it seems I have completely missed one.
Mental Floss Magazine has tapped a hidden but flowing resource of Muppets who have actually been fired from Sesame Street, characters I almost completely had erased from my memory like musician Don Music, Professor Hastings and Bruno the Trashman.
Who knew that Muppets could also fall victim to the horrors and uncaring hands of a mighty economic recession? I suppose that living in a garbage can makes you financially bulletproof.
Sesame Street did a Mad Men spoof recently, and now they're spoofing another contemporary pop culture icon: the iPod.
In this clip, the Muppets are seen wearing headphones and dancing in silhouette a la various commercials for Apple's iPod. Steve Jobs called and is going to sue PBS. Just kidding!
[via Mashable]
I'm not surprised that there's no smoking or drinking in this Sesame Street parody of AMC's Mad Men, but I still think it could be a little sharper. And why are all of the characters wearing hats?
Jeez, here I am being hard on a kids' show. The line at the end about sycophants is funny and something for us adults.
Disneyland hosted its own Disney Convention, called D23, in the style of Comic Con this past weekend. The name comes from the year Walt Disney moved to Hollywood and the event was held at the Anaheim Convention Center across the street from Disneyland . Among other announcements was that of a new Muppet movie called The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made (hopefully it's a working title). There was also a live performance by Miley Cyrus, whom Disney owns the soul of.
Admittedly, it's a pretty good idea which caters to the real Disney enthusiasts out there (having met a few, I know they certainly exist). Disney is one of the few companies that is large enough to have its own version of Comic Con. While the convention had announcements for most of its franchises, I noted the absence of any mention of the recently-acquired Marvel Comics.
On the other hand, the company already has a Disney convention open all year round. It's called Disneyland (or Disneyworld for the East Coast). What do you think of this development?
You know you've reached a certain place in pop culture when Sesame Street does a parody (Mad Men is getting one later this season). This one is a take-off on Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?
It's hard to believe the live-action-meets-puppeteering sci-fi series Farscape is a decade old, but that's the occasion that brought Brian Henson and stars of the show to Comic-Con International Friday to announce a new complete series DVD set.
As unveiled to a full, if partially groggy Comic-Con crowd during one of the day's first events, the DVD collection will include every episode of the show, more than 90 minutes of extra footage and 29 episode commentaries.
Henson joined series creator Rockne O'Bannon with stars Ben Browder and Claudia Black to unveil the comprehensive set of the show Henson repeatedly referred to during the panel as "psychotically ambitious" because of its mix of live-action, muppet technology, and then-state-of-the-art visual effects.
Everybody in television has to start at the bottom, even the Muppets.
Jim Henson's Muppets got their big break in the 1950s as two spokesmuppets for the Wilkins Coffee Company in a series of eight-second commercials featuring the most ballsy commercial concept of all time: buy Wilkins Coffee or we will shoot you in the face.
The Henson Company, along with some other entertainment companies including Singapore's BIG Communications, is teaming with PBS to create a new show called Dinosaur Train, which is intended to spark an interest from the kiddies in science and paleontology. Considering that this is the same team-up that brought us Sesame Street, hopes are high.
The series has one or two major detriments from the start. To begin, Jim Henson is long gone and it seemed that a lot of the magic died with him. All the efforts by the company since then have been a shadow of its former self. Second, the new series is CGI and not puppets. While I'm sure the kiddies pay more attention to CGI nowadays, it's still a little disappointing.
On the other hand, the Henson Company has worked with dinosaurs before. Plus, anything that gets the kids' attention that isn't owned and monopolized by Disney or Nickelodeon is fine by me.
For those us Battlestar Galactica nerdz, we're still feeling frakked up, teary-eyed and sniveling following the series' recent exit stage right. Ron Moore laid the show to rest with dignity and deserved pride, which is why our posting the following video might appear silly, childish, and self-indulgent to some.
But still, if you haven't yet seen it, the combination of Muppet and Cylon is a marriage made in LOLheaven, and we can't let Adama and co. get away without witnessing a giant Animal enacting a nuclear holocaust across the twelve colonies. While there are plenty of mash-ups floating around YouTube, this one has most definitely stood the test of time (less than two years, that is), considering that it combines Bear McCreary and Jim Henson (which is essentially something we've been waiting for since the very moment Six blew up the planets and stuff in the BSG miniseries).
(S08E05) After four episodes that have ranged from the pretty-decent to the almost-classic, we start this week's double-shot of Scrubs with the season's first real clunker. Which is odd, because you'd think the presence of everyone's Sesame Street favorites in J.D.'s fantasies would have made for a funnier show. But I'm starting to wonder if it's becoming less funny because it's nothing we haven't seen from this show many times before.
I remember watching Sesame Street when I was little, but I do not remember it being this awesome. We're used to celebrities appearing on the Street, but it's not very often that we get to see Muppets portraying our favorite TV characters. I for one, never knew that the denizens of Sesame Street were so good at impressions until I saw the Muppet version of Jack Donaghy. Oh, you read that right. Jack Donaghy.
Sesame Street has done a take on30 Rock called "30 Rocks." In it, Liz Lemon, a lemon with glasses, has to figure out how to make sure that the 30 rocks she ordered for a sketch are all there. Jack (who, unfortunately no longer has a chin) comes out to help her with the solution, which consists of passing off the work load, "I'm the boss Lemon; you count."
Wow, is this right? Jesse L. Martin was on Law and Order for nine seasons? How could that be? Where has the last decade gone? I feel really old.
Martin was indeed on the hit NBC drama for that long. He left last season, in a storyline involving a gambling addiction, a murder, and a court trial. But now he might actually be coming back to the same network. Martin is in negotiations to play the James Purefoy's sidekick on the midseason replacement series The Philanthropist, about a rich man who helps people with his dough. The character's name is Philip Maidstone.
Martin must really like NBC. He's also going to be in a new Muppets movie this Christmas season on the network.
It will be interesting to see how big this sidekick role will be, because you would think at this point that Martin would be getting or going for the lead roles, not the buddy ones.
It looks like the Muppets will be back again for Christmas. The NBC television special will star Whoopi Goldberg, "The Sopranos" alums Tony Sirico and Steve Schirripa, "Harry Potter" regular Richard Griffiths and Madison Pettis as well as your favorite cast of colorful characters created by Jim Henson.
I'm a huge fan of the Muppets, but the passing of Jim Henson did somehow lessen the franchise. The stuff they've produced since has been hit-and-miss. I liked Muppets Tonight and It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie, but most of the other stuff (especially the theatrical films) have fallen flat.
I do hope that Jason Segal and Nicholas Stoller will be able to breathe new life into the franchise. I did enjoy Forgetting Sarah Marshall (particularly the puppet musical), but I'm not sure how well that translates to the Muppets. My fingers are crossed.
How dare Jim Henson leave us all like this! I'm sorry. I still haven't gotten over it.
Man, oh man. I love counting. Sometimes I do it just to do it. I know I'm often alienating some of my less-educated friends (toddlers) when I start spitting those numbers, but I can't help it! Counting is wonderful.
In fact, the only thing I love more than counting is the sound of a breathy Canadian singer. Imagine my delight when I was sent this video of Feist singing a special version of her famous "1 2 3 4" (aka "That song from the iPod commercial where there's a chick in something blue and sparkly") with some lovable faces on Sesame Street(as we mentioned a few months ago).
The future is insanely hard to predict. For instance, when DARPA first created what would later be called "the internet," all they were trying to do was build a communication infrastructure that could reliably deliver porn after World War III. Had they known that a) World War III was only going to happen in 80s nuclear war movies and b) the internet would eventually bring about a disastrous television writers' strike, they might have dumped the money into some other crazy 60s idea. Weather control, maybe.
They couldn't have guessed where their research would lead, however, so here we are in 2007 with a vast interconnected network that exists pretty much so that people can argue as to the exact point The Simpsons stopped being good. As the internet evolves, though, it's beginning to realize its potential as a content delivery system.
In my never-ending, tireless, four day quest to completely categorize Sesame Street (read my previous features here, here and here), it seems I have completely missed one. 
Disneyland hosted 
It's hard to believe the live-action-meets-puppeteering sci-fi series 
The Henson Company, along with some other entertainment companies including Singapore's BIG Communications, is teaming with PBS 
For those us 
(S08E05) After four episodes that have ranged from the pretty-decent to the almost-classic, we start this week's double-shot of Scrubs with the season's first real clunker. Which is odd, because you'd think the presence of everyone's Sesame Street favorites in J.D.'s fantasies would have made for a funnier show. But I'm starting to wonder if it's becoming less funny because it's nothing we haven't seen from this show many times before.
I remember watching 
Wow, is this right? Jesse L. Martin was on Law and Order for nine seasons? How could that be? Where has the last decade gone? I feel really old.
It looks like the Muppets 
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