May 23, 2007

Jim Henson? Crazy, And Thank Heavens For It

No word on whether he was vegan, but the evidence is incontrovertible: Jim Henson was crazy. A crazy genius.

Who else would go on The Johnny Carson show with three rubber bands, a roll of Saranwrap, a slide projector, and a flashlight, and perform a four-minute surrealist tour of the organizational principles of some dude's brain?

And speaking of brains, what other children's brains were colonized by this 1969 TV show, The Cube, where Regular Office Guy is unable to escape the confines of his gridded up virtual world, besides the Warchowskis and the ones who went on to invent the holodeck? 1969 was the same year Sesame Street started, by the way.

The 1971 IBM training skit-turned-Ed Sullivan Show bit where Cookie Monster eats a computer is on YouTube. But does anyone know where to find a copy of Henson's Oscar-nominated 1965 short film, Time Piece? The one where he used his toddler daughter as an extra in the stripper montage?

Oh right, strippers. Henson took the backgroud music from an Italian softcore film about Swedish wood nymphs and turned it into the theme song for his children's show.

Limbo - The Organized Mind, 1974 [youtube via boingboing]
Time Piece, 1965 [muppet.wikia.com]
Previously: Apparently, "Mahna Mahna" means "Into the sauna, ladies!" in Italian

1 Comment

Is it just me or did Johnny introduce Jim Henson in the first clip as Jim Jenson?

[you're right. I stand corrected. Jim Jenson is crazy, Jim Henson's just a funny puppeteer. My bad. -ed.]

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