Word: muppeteer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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While the lovable felt monsters of Sesame Street celebrate their 40th anniversary this year, Jim Henson's other creations, the Muppets, have been largely out of the spotlight. Let's be honest: the last time most people have seen a Muppet was in a TV commercial (and even then, it was Kobe and Lebron, not Kermit and Miss Piggy). That changed this week with an assist from Queen's songbook. The puppet ensemble released a cover of the classic Queen anthem "Bohemian Rhapsody" to commemorate the death of Freddie Mercury 18 years ago. Whether it's Muppet nostalgia...
...character, and started writing him into the scripts. And of course, then they had to find somebody to puppeteer him. Brian Muehl did it for a couple of shows, and then Richard Hunt. Richard hated it. Richard originated Statler, one of the old guys in the balcony of The Muppet Show; he did Beaker and Scooter. [Elmo] wasn't his type of character; he just thought it was too cutesy and too young...
...twist on Cyrano de Bergerac, with a ventriloquist using a friend to woo (and have sex with) his inamorata. Lalapipo (Lot of People), set in the teeming, tumescent world of the porn industry, is an agreeably demented farrago whose hero has a talking penis that looks like a Muppet - say, the Nookie Monster - and urges him to have sex with someone other than himself. If you get to see the movie, stick around for the UFOs...
...wound up doing much more. Sesame Street is now the longest street on the planet. It runs from Harlem to Honolulu; on to Obama's childhood home in Indonesia, where Jalan Sesama celebrates unity through diversity; through South Africa, where one Muppet is HIV positive; through Israel and Palestine and Egypt, where girls are told how important it is that they keep reading and learning. It creates citizens of a highly globalized, post-racial world. "The only kids who can identify along racial lines with the Muppets," genius puppeteer Jim Henson observed, "have to be either green or orange...
Burt (John Krasinski) and Verona (Maya Rudolph) are the ideal, bright, loving twosome. He has the playfulness of a Muppet; she is quieter, more solid, earth-rooted like a blossoming fruit tree. A couple since college, and now 33, they haven't run out of things to whisper to each other, secrets and aspirations to share. Their conversations are intimate, caring, leavened with sprung rhythms of cuddly wit. And now that Verona is six months pregnant with their first child, they've started to worry about their, and its, place in the world. (See TIME's Summer Arts Preview...