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My day job is in the world of high-tech. No, I’m not a brilliant engineer who designs all kinds of innovative, life-changing products. I only sell to them. For a fairly normal bloke, trying to relate to such people can lead to all kinds of challenges.

You have to understand, these are people who don’t see the light of day very often. Most of their time is spent on computers, whiteboards, and in dark laboratories concocting the next bit of technology that we normal folk can’t live without. They often spend sixteen hour days in their precious lab and forget to eat, sleep, shower, or have any useful form of human interaction. These people are completely devoid of emotion, but can chart its theoretical development in sixty-three different types of graphs. I am talking about the type who can build his own robot to maintain his house yet can’t waste enough mental energy to hit more than three of his seven belt-loops.

Now you know the kind of people I deal with on a daily basis. It can be fun. They look down on my intellect, but can’t understand even the most basic joke I throw out. When I rattle off something witty, I typically get a blank stare or an uncomfortable chuckle.

We have a small office in this world of technology. Ours is in the back corner of the building and on my trips to the lavatory, I frequently run into these geniuses – sometimes quite literally as they are too preoccupied with vast equations to look up when they walk. There is a door I walk past that leads to what I call, The Muppet Factory.

I don’t know what goes on behind that door because it has one of those coded locks  with a scanner on it. I’ve tried punching all kinds of numbers on it, but it is probably some precise code that average people don’t have enough memory to retain. All I know is that the people who come in and out of it resemble cartoon characters come to life. The first one I saw was a dead ringer for Beaker. A Keystone Cop emerged one day followed by Animal. Several other characters have been spotted lately. Olive Oil works there, but we have yet to see Popeye. It is simply fascinating.

Now, when I walk down that hall, I go very slowly and sing things like, It Ain’t Easy Being Green, and Mahna Mahna to see if I can lure one of them out. No dice, thus far. They stay in their lab building more Muppets or stealing people for their evil machine that does it.

In this world of High Tech, I wonder what the goal of their Muppet Factory could be. Is this fandom run amok? Or is it a demented project to design a more colorful and aesthetically pleasing exterior for engineers and programmers? It is beyond my intellect to know, but I remain curious. So if you see people walking around who look suspiciously like cartoon characters, be wary. They my just be plotting something that we won’t understand until we are all subject to the vain whims of our new dictator, Miss Piggy.

I like what’s going here with Erin Hunting’s Muppets. Kermit’s wall-eyed stare works for me. 

While the message is encouraging in and of itself, Joe Sabia’s TED talk on The Technology of Storytelling is also a brilliant example of how to do an iPad presentation with skill, humor, and facts.  I can’t imagine how long this three minute, fifty-one second talk took to put together, but it’s kinda worth it.  Inspires one to punch up their presentations, it does.  Thanks to @145lewis for the link.

Meanwhile, when it comes to children’s literary scholars it’s a good idea to remember Michael Patrick Hearne.  Whether he’s annotating A Christmas Carol or The Wizard of Oz (the man knows his way around an Alice in Wonderland too) this is a go to guy.  That’s probably the reason the BBC spoke to him when they came up with the piece Wizard of Oz’s Dorothy was ‘first feminist role model’.  That title’s a touch misleading (Dorothy is actually considered to be the first American feminist role model in children’s literature) but the background is interesting:

I’m working on another librarian preview at the moment (suckers take a bloody long time, I tell you).  There are some previews I don’t write up, though.  Why?  Because you can view them at your leisure on your own time from the comfort of your own home (always assuming your home has an internet connection, of course).  Case in point, the Scholastic Spring 2012 Librarian Preview is up and running.  Should you wish to check out what those folks have on hand, get your one stop shopping done here:

Wanna see me sit on a floor?  I mean, seriously, who  can resist that alluring sight? The second of my two About.com videos is up and running. This time I recommend early chapter books for new readers. Everything from Anna Hibiscus to the Bad Kitty books. Those About.com folks are splendid editors. Check out all the floor sitting action here:

And for our off-topic video, I know I’ve posted this one before but with the release of the new Muppet movie I feel it ties in so very well.  One of my favorite movie mash-ups:

By way of Jim C. Hines (aka jimhines)

(Read more ...)

No Muppet renaissance would be complete without a Muppet alphabet — illustrated by David Vordtriede.

muppabet:

K is for Kermit the Frog

For Kermit as with all of these guys, I try to capture them the way I picture them best in my mind. Whenever Kermit would introduce the next guest on The Muppet Show it was one of the few moments each night where he let his excitement get the better of him. 

You can jump over to the Flickr page to see them all by clicking here.

Muppabet_Kermit (by David Vordtriede)

By Mark Peters

With the arrival of the new Muppet movie, Kermit, Miss Piggy, Beaker, and our other felt friends are everywhere. There’s no escaping Jim Henson’s creations, and few of us would want to (unless the movie happens to suck, which is doubtful, given the stewardship of Jason Segel, who showed major Muppet mojo in the heartbreaking and spit-taking Forgetting Sarah Marshall). It’s a good time to look at the history of the word Muppet, which has some meanings that would make the Swedish Chef bork with outrage.

Thanks to interviews with Muppet creator Jim Henson, we know Muppet is not a blend of marionette and puppet, though that theory has been appearing since 1959, just four years after Henson invented the crew, who appeared in pre-Sesame Street and Muppet Show fare such as commercials for Wilkins coffee. I love this part of the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of Muppet: “Any of a number of humorously grotesque glove puppets.” That phrasing seems humorously grotesque itself, but if it helps a Martian understand a Muppet, I guess it’s worthwhile.

In the eighties, the word took on several meanings. Since 1983, a muppet has been “A lure made to resemble a young squid.” I don’t want to give my enemies (arch or mortal) any ideas, but since calamari is squid, I’m pretty sure this kind of muppet could lure me anywhere. In British prison slang, a muppet is “A prisoner with psychiatric problems; a vulnerable inmate liable to be bullied or harassed by others.” As this 1998 use shows, Muppets aren’t the only Henson creation to carry this meaning: “Their favourite targets are the fraggles, the nonces and the muppets. But anyone showing tell-tale signs of fear is a target for Britain’s jail bullies.”

A muppet can also be an idiot, though I have no idea why, since the Muppets are among the least idiotic members of the puppet community (Elmo excluded). However, this part of the OED’s definition sort of rings true: “someone enthusiastic but inept; a person prone to mishaps through naivety.” With the exception of curmudgeons (RIP Andy Rooney) such as Oscar, Statler, and Waldorf, the Muppets are brimming with optimism from their pieholes to their puppetholes. Green’s Dictionary of Slang also has examples of muppet meaning a child or a cop.

These Muppet meanderings are similar to the meanings smurf has taken on over the years. While most know Smurfs as blue elves with a disturbingly low female population, other smurfs or smurfers make smurf dope: blue crystal meth. A smurf is also “an inexperienced or short prison officer,” as Green’s puts it, and a gay man who’s youngish and blonde. Plus, smurf is one of the most awesome euphemisms for the f-word in the known universe, as seen in words like clustersmurf, mothersmurfer, ratsmurf, and fan-smurfing-tastic. If I didn’t know better, I’d think smurf has an acronymic origin, like fubar and milf. Despite the PG origin, something about smurf feels blue in the naughty sense.

When a word is as fun to say as Smurf or Muppet, there’s no stopping how people will use it. Now that the Muppets are back, who knows what this mega-appealing word will soon describe? I have no idea, but let me suggest a meaning, Urban Dictionary-style, that I’ve used and suspect others use: “A harmless, lovable person.” I used this sense when I called my friend Neil a Muppet a few years ago, as Neil was stuck giving a presentation that typically made students reach for pitchforks and torches. This pernicious presentation made presenters long for a force field, or at least student-proof chicken wire. In calling Neil a Muppet, I

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We all will have a new reason to look forward to the holidays this year!

While I know so many
people who shiver with excitement at the first chill of fall and rush to remove their woolly sweaters from their closets, I am a self proclaimed "summer person". Usually I dread this change of season, but this year I have a reason to rejoice with the rest of you cool weather fans.

The reason? Let me see, Kermit the Frog, Gonzo, Fozzie Bear, Animal, Rolf, Sweetums, Rizzo, Janis, Scooter...and who am I forgetting? Oh, of course! The very glamorous Miss Piggy!

Yes, this November after digesting Thanksgiving dinner, which usually takes me about a week, I will be rushing to the theaters to see "The Muppets".

While I am sure my young patrons recognize Jim Henson's brain children, not many are as familiar with them as my generation had been. It has been 12 years since the Muppets graced our big screens and if the previews are any indication they will be returning with their full glory.

This new film is to be written by television's Jason Segal who is a huge fan of the original films and I am pretty confident he will do justice to the revival of the franchise.

So let's get our children ready to meet "The Muppets!" If you haven't already come on down to the library and check out our DVD section where we have several Muppety discs to choose from including a few seasons of the original series, "The Muppet Show". If you don't I cannot be responsible for Piggy's reaction.

-Posted By Miss Jessikah

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In the late 1960s, Muppets creator Jim Henson collaborated with comic strip artist Johnny Hart (the creator of B.C. and The Wizard of Id)–planning TV show based on The Wizard of Id with puppets and animated sets. The duo created the trailer embedded above.

Here’s more from the Jim Henson Company Archives: “Jim loved comics and cartoons and collected books of Pogo, Peanuts, Dennis the Menace, L’il Abner, Charles Addams, Jules Feiffer, Roger Price, James Thurber, and Johnny Hart. During the 1960s, Jim pursued several projects based on classic fairy tales, but the Wizard of Id project was the first time Jim sought out a creative collaborator with an existing character group. The snarky humor of Hart’s B.C. and Wizard of Id appealed to Jim, and he saw how his sensibility overlapped with these funnies.”

A few years later, Henson started work on Sesame Street and his first Muppet projects, so the show never happened. Last summer, biographer Brian Jay Jones sold a biography of Henson to Ballantine. (Via i09)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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