When I was on College Humor yesterday, marveling at the creativity and twisted sense of humor of my generation I saw this video of Kermit (the Frog) and his reaction to the infamous 2 girls 1 cup
of course I found it shocking and funny but also I thought "Poor Kermit" because I remembered a similar parody of Kermit singing "Hurt." Now with the Nine Inch Nails' version* I get really depressed, the Johnny Cash version leaves me feeling sad and quite sorry for him, but with Kermit's version I feel sorry for us all
And I wouldn't doubt that there are hundreds of other similar parodies lurking in the alley of the internet. It's all so much I was tempted for about half of a second to post this Chris "14:58" Crocker parody. But that ship has sailed (and hopefully sunk.)
I'm sure Jim Henson must be spinning in his grave (assuming of course that there's a hand up his rear and twisting) but then I remembered this article by Virgina Heffernan about how Sesame Street was never that innocent.
From the article
According to an earnest warning on Volumes 1 and 2, “Sesame Street: Old School” is adults-only: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups
Man, was that scene rough. The masonry on the dingy brownstone at 123 Sesame Street, where the closeted Ernie and Bert shared a dismal basement apartment, was deteriorating. Cookie Monster was on a fast track to diabetes. Oscar’s depression was untreated. Prozacky Elmo didn’t exist.
Which brought Parente to a feature of “Sesame Street” that had not been reconstructed: the chronically mood-disordered Oscar the Grouch. On the first episode, Oscar seems irredeemably miserable — hypersensitive, sarcastic, misanthropic. (Bert, too, is described as grouchy; none of the characters, in fact, is especially sunshiney except maybe Ernie, who also seems slow.) “We might not be able to create a character like Oscar now,” she said.
Snuffleupagus is visible only to Big Bird; since 1985, all the characters can see him, as Big Bird’s old protestations that he was not hallucinating came to seem a little creepy, not to mention somewhat strained. As for Cookie Monster, he can be seen in the old-school episodes in his former inglorious incarnation: a blue, googly-eyed cookievore with a signature gobble (“om nom nom nom”). Originally designed by Jim Henson for use in commercials for General Foods International and Frito-Lay, Cookie Monster was never a righteous figure.
Damn, they were all screwed up, not to mention Miss Piggy must have had horrible self esteem, always chasing a man who doesn't want her (I kinda think Kermit was gay- here are the lyrics to It's Not Easy Being Green; look closer.) and that Animal was based upon a rock star who died young because of a drug overdose. And people wondered why Generation X was so "whatever."
And of course all of this reminded me of that great Dave Chappelle stand up bit from Killing Them Softly
*I really feel like my first exposure to that sing was while playing Mario 64 and listening to Howard Stern as he was, in the same manner of Bruce Springsteen's Secret Garden interspersed with dialogue from Jerry Maguire, was attempting to splice dialogue from the movie Private Parts and the miscarriage scene into Hurt. And I wonder why I'm so screwy... Sphere: Related Content
