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.

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

I still missed two on that states quiz.

Aww. From Kathy's link

The Swedish Chef recently appeared on Cartoon Network's Robot Chicken, a show using toys and Mego dolls to create sketch comedy scenes. The sketch involved the Chef running into various people and things that rhyme with "bork" including Björk, Mork, a dork, a poster for New York, Quark, Peter Tork, a guy playing Zork, a man selling pork, a fork, a spork, and an Orc. The sketch ended with the Chef returning home and yelling at his wife, "Get the Hell off my back, woman! Can't I get a moment of fucking peace!?" for asking him about his day. Seth Green, the series' co creator, is a Muppet fan.

I think my favorite Muppet moment ever is from "Sesame Street." And YouTube has it!! It's seriously adorable, and shows how the kids (well, and everyone else, too!) completely interacted with the Muppets as beings in their own right.

Kathy, I knew even before clicking what that would be.