My favorite Muppet from The Muppet Show remains the Swedish Chef (another example of Frank Oz and Jim Henson working in tandem on the same muppet, just like Rowlf). "Bork Bork Bork!!"

Oh, goodness, he's hilarious. Even just seeing the hands surprised by the head who is surprised by the hands and all back again, without anything special going on, and yet they're still coordinated in a, well, not "crazy", but definitely unique, way? Hilarious. And that's before he actually even does anything!

I *adore* Sam the Eagle, because of his stiff self-righteousness.

Yup! And when he's with Rowlf, it's even better, because nothing bothers Rowlf.

My father is a wake-up-and-go-to-sleep-with-the-sun sort of person, and it forever puzzled him that my mom is such a night owl. All of us took somehow after her in one form or another (though I absolutely love getting up really really early in the morning, and experience the change in the air and light when the sun rises), and he's constantly amazed that we love to stay up late and become active then.

4 min 23 seconds because I can't freaking spell and I kept thinking it hadn't picked up West Virginia.

I always start with the south, go north, go west and then go up the east coast.

Oh, and I'm blaming my 3:30 states quiz result on my still learning to type with these acrylic nails, otherwise I could have gotten them all in in less than two minutes and in alphabetical order (my job deals with lots of states' lists, so I know them in order, sad to say).

I'm not sure I've ever successfully named every state in New England.

In 6th grade, we had to fill in a blank map of the states every Friday until we scored 100. Some kids were taking it all year.

I'm not sure I've ever successfully named every state in New England.

There's only six! Of course, most of them have frakking long names that are hard to spell.

I couldn't come up with two states! I had to look them up. So sad. But I still did it in less than five minutes, which I think is pretty good for using reference books.

It's easier when you don't have to remember where they go.

I usually just sing the Animaniacs "State Capitals" song in my head. Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Indianapolis, Indiana, and Columbus is the capital of Ohio. There's Montgomery, Alabama south of Helena, Montana and there's Denver, Colorado next to Boise, Idaho.

Even just seeing the hands surprised by the head who is surprised by the hands and all back again, without anything special going on, and yet they're still coordinated in a, well, not "crazy", but definitely unique, way? Hilarious.

Frank Oz (who did the hands) would deliberately do something off-script to trip up Jim Henson, who had to improvise the words to match the action. I was just reading the Wikipedia entry for the Chef and enjoying the highlight reel of his best skits (I love the strangling spaghetti), and wish I had these:

In 1980, Jones New York offered a small collection of blue and yellow Swedish Chef kitchen linens including an apron, pot holders, and toaster cover.

I love the Rita Moreno ep from S1 of the Muppet Show

Me too! I also loved how you described it.

I have a very vague memory from the episode with Christopher Reeve (sp?). Again, I was a toddler when I saw it, had no idea who he was, who Superman was, nothing. He was just a man standing there with all those lovely muppets. But I remember a moment, he had to change his clothes for going on stage, and he just went behind a door (I have no idea if they had a phone booth there, if it had been the dressing room, whatever - all I remember is that he was gone behind a door), and then emerged a second later, all in a suit and dressed-up nicely.

I had no idea about the whole "Kent changes his clothes to become Superman", how quickly and without-everybody-seeing-it-ly it's done. I figured these things later, based on that short minute that stayed in my head from "the muppet show". But it impressed me enough to remember it, in and of itself, among all those muppets and craziness and miss Piggy and my beloved Kermit. So I guess there was something about it, after all.

I guess I could go youtube-hunting for that scene. But I kinda don't wanna, especially now that I have a chance to see it pop on my tv screen as a surprise (due to some copyrights issue or other, they re-run the episodes in an almost completely random order here). I wonder how it resembles the very clear and yet minimal image I have in my mind.