Interesting bit'o' Muppet knowedge - Rowlf the dog predates even Sesame Street. He used to be a guest on some chat/variety show (Hec would probably know this).

My favorite Muppets are Beaker and Dr. Bunson Honeydew. Poor Beaker - he was pretty much the Mr. Bill of the Muppet world.

Rowlf the Dog on Wikipedia

He used to be a guest on some chat/variety show

The Jimmy Dean show (as in the guy who later sold sausages)! Henson also did a bunch of TV spoofs for local DC television, including one segment I saw on a PBS show on Henson that was a spoof of Murrow's Person to Person.

Do you at least have a good theme song for Sesame Street, Nilly?

I need to listen to the original one. The Israeli one is nice, but it never became a classic like other songs (some for Israeli original tv shows). The lyrics you quoted are somewhat similar to the Hebrew ones (asking the way to the street, the air smelling sweet, but there's no sweeping the clouds, for example).

Frank, wikipedia says:

Henson's sixties talk show appearances culminated when he devised Rowlf, a piano-playing anthropomorphic dog. Rowlf became the first Muppet to make regular appearances on a network show, The Jimmy Dean Show.

[Edit: of course, an x-post. Yay! A Rowlf x-post!]

My favorite Muppets are Beaker and Dr. Bunson Honeydew. Poor Beaker - he was pretty much the Mr. Bill of the Muppet world.

From the Christmas CD: "On the eighth day of Christmas/mee mee mee mee mee meeeee/Eight maids a milking (mee mee mememe)..."

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:

Hee. That reminds me of the hysterical Justin Timberlake/Kermit duet from SNL a few years back.

I always love watching when the Muppets go on talkshows or parade commentaries, and you can see the humans they interact with totally get sucked under the Muppet Spell (which I've never seen duplicated with any other puppet performance, except for maybe Kukla and Ollie). I've read interview with various Muppet performers who say that, when they're in rehearsals with actors, they have to remind them to direct their off-camera questions/comments to the performers under their feet, and not towards the Muppets themselves.

Here's the Timberlake one: [link]

I always forget how much I like him.

Okay, seriously, WTF? Will Republicans stop repressing themselves and have healthy gay relationships so that you can stop embarrassing yourselves and your party by getting arrested?

Brown County Republican Chairman Faces Sex Charges

of course, this particular stalwart of the party was abusing teenage runaways, so he's a real peach.

I skipped. Will probably catch up.

Spent the holiday in migraine hell, but there were lots of opportunities to lie around, inside, outside, with alcohol, without, so it worked out. I mean, I was paying plenty of money to not be responsible, so I flopped a lot. Father was happy to see me, and his birthday celebrations were a lot of fun.

And then Polgara picked me up from the airport and took me straight to the ER, which was especially kind since she'd pretty much just gotten back into town herself.

But I'm much better for the sledgehammer that was thrown at the pesky nut that is my noggin.

Everyone can promptly stop having my symptoms now. I'm back.