Irish's tote board 1993

Kudos to my brother Pat who happened to have videotaped the infamous whiteboard where we tracked Irish's kill count in 1993-1994. He sent me a shot of it overnight, here 'tis:

The Disney Muppets: why that just isn't funny

This Article in the Times of London on the purchase of the Muppets franchise by the Disney corporation caused me to attempt to buy the The Best of the Muppet Show on DVD from Amazon, my fear being that the DVDs will disappear shortly to be re-edited and re-issued, regurgitating the corporate claptrap that Disney will feel is appropriate, removing all humor that could possibly be remotely offensive to any person, group, and amoeba.

The Muppet Show, by contrast, had an unmistakably American take on psychedelia.

It centred on optimism, modernism — no passing fad, from roller-skating to Star Wars, was ever overlooked — and things such as Elton John singing Crocodile Rock surrounded by crocodiles, rockin’. The Muppets would take off into space, sail the theatre out to sea as a pirate ship, turn into Hell’s Angels, or all get murdered; albeit in an amusing way, and by Liza Minnelli. Furthermore, the show, in an excess of energy, would often deconstruct itself as it went along, whether it was Sam the American Eagle’s neocon analysis of the acts (This is degenerate) to Statler and Waldorf’s sour running commentary (Just when you think this show is terrible, something wonderful happens — it ends!).

The problem is that Disney — as one must expect from a global business enterprise — tends to think of its intellectual properties in terms of merchandising opportunities, rather than the opportunity for some great chicken-gags. It’s telling that the announcement about the Muppets’ relaunch mentioned that Muppet ringtones and screen-savers would precede any actual artistic content.