Thursday, September 24, 2009

A Muppet tale from yours truely

Well, I know that if a lot of Muppet fans actually knew my blog was out here, they'd read it. And I do know plenty of Muppet fans via the internet but I have the distinction and honor of possibly being one of the few Muppet fans to actually have the opportunity to stick their arm into a real, authentic, Muppet Workshop-built puppet.

Actually, I didn't get to perform the mouth but I did get to be on left-hand duty with the super-friendly Tyler Bunch. That picture you see at the top of this post is a then-13 year old BobThePizzaBoy exactly four years ago at the Museum of Television and Radio. It was a Henson Company-sponsored event celebrating the company's 50th anniversary. I still  look back on this whole day with extreme fondness. I had been to other Henson events beforehand but this was something that has just always stuck with me four years later.

In a nutshell, highlights of the day included a screening of the pilot episode of Henson's series Frances (which didn't even show up elsewhere until two and a half years later). After a few minutes, I had my wit's end and left the auditorium showing it (to this day, my family still uses the "bread and jam" bit in mocking Frances) and moved upstairs to a special screening of the second-to-last episode of Fraggle Rock and the 1987 behind-the-scenes documentary. Considering the first season of Fraggle Rock had come out a few weeks before, I was on a complete Fraggle kick and more than happy to see these guys highlighted so much. Then I met the lovely Cheryl Henson, someone who got a kick out of my self-deprecating Muppet fan humor (I always joke about how I seem to have nothing better to do than obsess about Muppets, calling myself a "Muppet freak" to Ms. Henson). She wrote in my book "To John - thanks for being a Muppet freak! (or fan) Best wishes, Cheryl" There was also a Gobo Fraggle walk-around character, which was a very well-done costume. It's too bad I haven't seen it elsewhere.

Then came the moment this story is really about, Tyler Bunch's puppeteer demonstration. I was right up front and as Tyler showed the audience how to perform a rod puppet via a Whatnot puppet the audience helped contribute to via color requests. He could tell I was getting into it when I pointed out the puppet looked like Roosevelt Franklin. I could tell he was surprised a kid my age knew who Roosevelt Franklin ever was. When he got to the live-arm puppet, he pointed at me calling me "Kermit" due to the shirt I had on. We introduced ourselves and I helped him perform the puppet you see the picture by pointing to it's body parts ("Now, John, I asked you to just point NOT POKE IT OUT!"). It was such an exciting experience to get to work alongside this guy with such a huge crowd.

I haven't seen Tyler since, even thought I have him as a Facebook friend, but really, it's rare you meet people as friendly as the Muppet performers are and I'm proud to say that being a small, small part of such an event was the opportunity of a lifetime.

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