![\"Kermit](\"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/images\/jim_and_kermit.jpg\")
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SamuraiFrog reminds us<\/a> that today is Jim Henson’s birthday… he would’ve been 72 if he were still here. Strange to think of him that old, even stranger to think he’s been gone for nearly 20 years (according to the wikipedia<\/a>, he died on May 16, 1990).<\/p>\n I don’t know if kids today feel that kind of affection for the Muppets, or if, like Star Wars<\/i>, they’re just another fading pop-culture phenomenon beloved by we aging kids of the ’70s and mostly irrelevant to the younger generation. The last time I caught a few minutes of Sesame Street<\/i>, it seemed to have lost much of the gently subversive spirit I remember, as well as the double-pronged humor that worked for adults as well as children. And it was totally dominated by that annoying little prat Elmo, but that’s another rant. As for “the other Muppets,” the well-known stable of classic characters from The Muppet Show<\/i>… well, they just don’t seem right to me anymore without being performed by Jim and Frank Oz and the other folks who created them but have since retired or passed on. It isn’t just the different voices, although that’s a big problem. There’s just something a little bit… off… with them now. The way they move and even “stand” is different. The humor and attitude is different, too. They’re like body snatchers who look<\/i> like our old friends, but are somehow missing<\/i> something. It really makes me appreciate the men and women who bring these creatures to life and imbue them with such a living spirit that you can easily tell when there’s a new spirit animating the body.<\/p>\n I guess I understand the various powers-that-be wanting the Muppets to continue, and generally I’m okay with it. I really enjoyed the recent viral videos that have been making the rounds, and it does bring a smile to my face to see the old crew, even if they’re not quite the same anymore. But if I’d been in charge of things after Jim’s death, Kermit the Frog would’ve died with him, because Kermit was<\/i> Jim. I don’t know who does Kermit now, but Kermit’s not Kermit anymore. I miss the real<\/i> Kermit, and the sweet, funny man who breathed life into him.<\/p>\n (Incidentally, this whole post was largely an excuse to post that photo up there at the top. I’ve seen it before many times and just love it…)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SamuraiFrog reminds us that today is Jim Henson’s birthday… he would’ve been 72 if he were still here. Strange to think of him that old, even stranger to think he’s been gone for nearly 20 years (according to the wikipedia, he died on May 16, 1990).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-glass-teat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nI can recall the day he died almost as clearly as 9\/11, if that’s not too sacrilegious to say. I was in college at the time, and it seemed like everyone I passed on campus had a long face, and no one needed to ask why. Jim and his Muppets were such a huge part of every Gen-Xer’s childhood; it felt to us as if a very big piece of what made the world good<\/i> had just been stolen from us.<\/p>\n