Month: March 2016

K is for Kermit the Frog

The great thing about Kermit is his every-man (every-amphibian?) quality.

Kermit_the_FrogI have been a big fan of the Muppet known as Kermit the Frog, at least since his first appearances on Sesame Street in 1969. But the character has a much longer history.

The earliest iteration of Kermit was on local television in the Washington, DC area, on WRC-TV’s Sam and Friends beginning in 1955. Here’s Kermit with Harry the Hipster from 1959, e.g. SamuraiFrog has clips of many appearances of Kermit, and the other Muppets in his blog Electronic Cerebrectomy, many of them quite early in the frog’s career, such as this video from 1966.

The Muppets Character Encyclopedia – yes, I own the book- establishes that Kermit was born in Leland, Mississippi alongside approximately 2,353 siblings.

The great thing about Kermit is his every-man (every-amphibian?) quality, where he fit in quite well in Sesame Street, which I watched, even though I was in high school and then college at the time.

But he also fit well on The Muppet Show, which aired 120 episodes between 1976 and 1981. From the Wikia: “Kermit the Frog and the Muppets put on a weekly musical/comedy revue at the Muppet Theater. Unfortunately for them, things never quite go according to plan, for the Muppets or their weekly guest stars.”

Kermit has appeared in a number of Muppets movies over the years, a few of which I have seen. He’s also been a guest or guest host on a number of talk shows over the years.

As of September 2015, there’s a new Muppets TV show, done in a “mockumentary-style series that follows their personal and professional lives,” including the romantic breakup, after a number of years together, of Kermit and the porcine diva Miss Piggy.

Kermit was voiced by Muppets creator Jim Henson, from the beginning of the frog’s career until Henson’s untimely death in 1990. Since then, Steve Whitmire has done the job.

Kermit is particularly known for two songs. Bein’ Green, a/k/a It’s Not Easy Bein’ Green, a/k/a my theme song, was written by Joe Raposo, was originally performed on Sesame Street and subsequently on The Muppet Show. It was later covered by Frank Sinatra, Van Morrison, Tony Bennett, and many other performers.

I so relate:

Having to spend each day the color of the leaves.
When I think it could be nicer being red, or yellow or gold-
or something much more colorful like that.

It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things.
And people tend to pass you over ’cause you’re not standing out like flashy sparkles in the water-
or stars in the sky.

Listen

The Rainbow Connection was written for the 1979 Muppet movie The Muppet Movie. Music and lyrics were written by Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher. The song reached #25 on the US Billboard Hot 100 in November 1979, with the song remaining in the Top 40 for seven weeks total. Williams and Ascher received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song at the 52nd Academy Awards.

Listen

abc18
ABC Wednesday – Round 18

Movie review: Eddie the Eagle

Eddie the Eagle is one of those “feel good” stories, like Cool Runnings

eddie-the-eagle-official-posterThe Wife and I saw Eddie the Eagle, the movie about British Winter Olympics athlete Michael “Eddie” Edwards, back in late February at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany.

It’s the story about a boy with a dream to be in the Olympics, much to the disdain of his father. Because of childhood illness and/or injuries, Eddie (Taron Egerton) doesn’t have the skills to do the Summer Games sports and is eventually cut from the Olympic ski team.

With the support of his mother, Eddie travels to Germany to see if he can become a ski jumper. He, almost literally, runs into Bronson Peary (Hugh Jackman), a former ski jumper who now works as a snowplow driver who holds his liquor quite well. He too dismisses Eddie’s dream but eventually changes his mind.

This is one of those “feel good” stories, like Cool Runnings, the movie about the unlikely Jamaican bobsled team, the story of which is briefly mentioned. My favorite thing about seeing Eddie the Eagle in the movie theater is this brief snippet of dialogue with Egerton and Jackman thanking us for seeing the film in a cinema.

My maybe-it’s-a-problem is that it so uses the caveat that the story, while based on a real guy, is largely fiction. For me, the story is compelling primarily if he had to win over the British sports establishment, other athletes, the fans, the totally fictional Peary, and especially Eddie’s father. Reading the Wikipedia entry about the athlete, it’s a very different narrative.

More distracting is this book that Eddie carried around with the face of Peary’s former coach, Warren Sharp. The guy on the cover looked very much like Christopher Walken. And, of course, eventually, we meet Sharp, who of course IS played by Walken.

Eddie the Eagle works much of the time. My wife liked it more than I, but I think it’d not be a waste of time to see it as a rental.

It’s 2016’s first Ask Roger Anything

you may ask me ANYTHING, or ask for advice, or whatever you’d like

It probably because I’ve gone to the well too often with this, but the last time I did ask Roger Anything, I got a lackluster response. Which is to say, none whatsoever.

The drag of that was a struggle to keep generating content. I’d become increasingly dependent on your collective curiosity to engage in answering questions that I would otherwise not have considered. Or maybe I’m just a lazy blogger who thinks he can continue to blog 365 days a year (except 2008 and 2012, when it was 366).

Perhaps I should look more to reposting from previous years; Ken Levine and Mark Evanier have done so from time to time.

To remind the masses: you may ask me ANYTHING, or ask for advice, or whatever you’d like, and I will answer, reasonably soon, generally within thirty days. I will answer, to the best of my ability/memory/flashback honestly, though if I didn’t do a little obfuscation, what fun would that be?

You can leave your comments below. If you prefer to remain anonymous, that’s OK; you should e-mail me at rogerogreen (AT) gmail (DOT) com, or end me an IM on Facebook (make sure it’s THIS Roger Green, the one with the duck) and note that you want to remain unmentioned; otherwise, I’ll assume you want to be cited.

Music Throwback Saturday: On Broadway

A young Phil Spector played the distinctive lead guitar solo on The Drifters’ recording.

ClaudeMckayI’ve been involved with an office JEOPARDY! game. A recent clue: “A hundred shouting signs shed down their bright fantastic glow” in Claude McKay’s “On” this NYC street. No idea, but because of a question I’d missed earlier, I take a guess, and it’s correct.

Here’s On Broadway by Claude McKay, a rather melancholy piece:
Upon the merry crowd and lines
Of moving carriages below.
Oh wonderful is Broadway — only
My heart, my heart is lonely.

Claude McKay was born in Jamaica on September 15, 1889, and became an early key figure in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

I wonder if the poem inspired a song a few decades later:

New York City-based composers Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil wrote On Broadway “originally recorded by the Cookies (although the Crystals’ version beat them to release)”…

“Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller liked the song but felt that it was not quite right [for the Drifters] and the four held an overnight brainstorming session which culminated in the better-known version of the song, now with a rock-oriented groove and with a more bluesy feel… A young Phil Spector played the distinctive lead guitar solo on The Drifters’ recording.”

LISTEN to On Broadway

The Cookies

The Crystals

The Drifters, #9 pop, #7 soul in 1963

Dave Clark Five

The Chipettes

Bobby Darin

Percy Faith Orchestra

Neil Young

George Benson, #7 pop, #2 soul

“George Benson’s version… from his 1978 album Weekend in L.A…. won a Grammy Award for Best R&B Vocal Performance. The song appeared in the films Big Business and American Beauty, and… was used in the 1979 film All That Jazz in a sequence that featured dancers on stage auditioning for a musical similar to Chicago. George Benson also performed “On Broadway” with Clifford and the Rhythm Rats for the 1994 Muppet album Kermit Unpigged.”

Disconnected

THAT’S why I didn’t read your blogs, or respond to your emails

time-warnerThat recent annoying 23-hour day, I was up early contemplating a blog post. Suddenly, around 8 a.m., the phone went out, as did the Internet. This meant I was feeling disconnected.

Oh, I have the cell phone, but it’s strange: it doesn’t work very well in this house. I can be walking down the street talking to one of my sisters on the phone, walk into my home, and the sound just drops out.

I’ve had enough experience troubleshooting the Time Warner box that I rebooted the who-zee-what’s-it. When it STILL wasn’t working, I called TWC on the aforementioned unreliable-in-my-own-house cellphone. They had no openings until the next day between 3 and 4 p.m.

I COULD have gone to the library, or the local coffeehouse to access my email, but I was tired. And I wanted the opportunity to see how well (or badly) we could operate sans connectivity. We did OK, but I must admit that the youngest of us was a little grumpier than usual not being able to get online.

At the very end of that one-hour window, the TWC guy showed. He had to go out to the street a couple of times, not merely fuss with the device. Within a half-hour, service was restored. My spouse asked, at my urging – I was still at work – whether the outage had anything to do with the TWC truck that was in front of our house just before the service went down. He was unwilling to say, of course, but when the inevitable customer service follow-up robocall came, I was happy to share my theory of the outage.

Anyway, THAT’S why I didn’t read your blogs, or respond to your emails or Facebook comments that day. If you called my landline, it didn’t work. And the world did not end. Still, as soon as I got to work, I quickly perused my 188 emails, all except about a dozen which I quickly deleted.

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