Does this movie have Muppets in it?

How good is the internet? Today I felt like it existed just for me.

First, NPR is streaming the new My Morning Jacket album, Circuital. There’s some weird sounding stuff in there but the more I listen, the more I love – and these songs are going to sound awesome live. “Holding On To Black Metal” is so irresistibly random.

Then this trailer was released for Green With Envy. But much as I adore Jason Segel, there’s something not quite right about this by-the-numbers rom com...



“Whoah wait, wait, wait, STOP. Does this movie have Muppets in it?!”

!!!

So, to recap. New songs from my favourite band and a first taste from the new Muppet movie I’ve been obsessing over for so long. Surely things can’t get any better?

Whoah wait, wait, wait, STOP. Does this My Morning Jacket album have Muppets in it?!

Um. Just about. What I thought was just a rumour I had dreamed, but figured I should google just to be safe, turned out to be not so far-fetched at all. I mean, if you’ve ever seen the Jacket live you know that Jim James is basically a human muppet, and there have long been those who’ve compared his voice to Kermit the frog. But, quoth James to Rolling Stone earlier this year:

Some of the first songs written for the disc, including "Wonderful" and the power-poppy "Out of My System," were originally intended to be played by Muppets: An exec recruited My Morning Jacket to record music for a new version of the Electric Mayhem band (the one with Animal on drums), promising a Gorillaz-style tour where MMJ would play behind a curtain while Muppet holograms bashed away onstage. The psyched band began writing and demo'ing, but the exec got fired and the project disappeared. (In any case, the lyrics of "Out of My System" — "They told me not to smoke drugs, but I didn't listen" — probably wouldn't have worked out.)

James also got a call to write a couple of songs for Jason Segel's new Muppet movie, but they didn't use those either. "So now, twice, Muppet glory has been within my grasp," says James. "It's pretty heartbreaking, but it did propel us just to kick into high gear and finish our own record."

Dear people of the internet: Please, can we start some kind of campaign to make the My Morning Muppet collaboration a reality?

Whether you're high or low...

I'm way late on the Janelle Monae bandwagon but this song has been making grape picking bearable for the last few weeks. The video is even better. How good is it to see a hip hop video that's not all flesh and ostentatious bling? (I'm looking at you, Yeezy) And more importantly, where can I get some of these shoes?



I tip on alligators
And little rattlesnake-uhs

The "classy brass" and the ukelele fade-out are just gorgeous. And how great is Big Boi in this? He was always overshadowed by Andre 3000 in Outkast, but by all accounts his 2010 solo record Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty is the business. I love the chorus to his song "Shutterbug" (now party people in the club it's time to cut some rug / and throw the deuces in the sky just for the shutterbug / I'm double fistin and you're empty you can grab a cup) and it has a great video - including some muppets! But I think I prefer the song mashed up with the Black Keys:



Perhaps most of my pleasure in this comes from the phrase "cut a rug"... So reminiscent of the rum-sozzled discos they used to hold at the agricultural college my friends attended just out of school. I didn't turn eighteen until almost a year after we left school, so I spent a lot of my first year in Brisbane bussing out to Gatton and Forest Hill for weekends - where my mates were studying things like "agribusiness" and "animal studies", and where the publicans never bothered to check IDs.

They had the best parties out there - pigs on spits, bands on the backs of trucks, and the aforementioned Wednesday night discos where there were always random themes. And there, dressed as rednecks or Hawaiians or whatever, we'd bust out all our best moves. "The shopping trolley", "the sprinkler", even "the worm" for those with gymnastic leanings and no fear of writhing in the rum spilled on the dancefloor.

Oh my god, that reminds me. Around this same time I was, as I remain, laughably naive about drugs. And I remember someone telling me about how everyone on ecstasy does the same dance - this kind of jerky robot, all elbows and angles, a stylised mime of filling boxes and stacking them.

Years later, shortly after moving to Sydney, I was having drinks with some new friends and desperate to appear urbane. A number of beers in, I was tuning in and out of the conversation when they started talking about pills. Thinking of the box stacking dance, when they mentioned "shelving" I enthusiastically brought up my own experience in this area, to the surprise of the group. It was months before I realised what the process of shelving actually involves (kids - and Mum - please don't click that link). Suffice to say I have never done it, and I hoped fervently that conversation was forgotten...

Things I Love Thursday: January 6

The Bureau of Meteorology have downgraded their predictions for flood levels in the George, so things are feeling less frantic around town. Channel Nine have sent out the big guns though - Bruce Page is here - so I hope they don't know something we don't! At any rate, the biggest thing I'm grateful for this week is that our place hasn't been threatened by the flood at all. That said, many people face terrible losses, not just here in St George but throughout the state. So our thoughts are with those returning home to face massive clean-up efforts, and those who are still stuck in evaucation centres waiting for the waters to reside.


Other highlights of this week include:

Baking biscotti... The insane patterns in the pool surface when it's raining... Wonderous words from across the seas, and discovering ee cummings... Vicarious glimpses of Milan from a talented photographer... Long phone chats with old chums... Afternoon naps on rare days off, and the crazy dreams they bring... Pesto made fresh with basil from the garden... And forget the boring official video for Kanye's "Monster" (to which I am ADDICTED) - clearly what's really needed to visually complement that song is muppets.

Playing dress-ups

Well, it's only taken me half the week to recover, but I've been hanging to post about my first Halloween. In Australia it's a holiday that's only observed by a handful of candy-greedy kids and uni students looking for yet another excuse to party, particularly in slutty costumes. Here in the States, though, Halloween is a big deal. More than a few people have told me it's their favourite holiday, more precious to them even than Christmas. And now I get it. I'm sure for children it's a magical occasion - the costumes, parties, and forcing strangers to give you treats. But for big kids it's a night where the bars are alive with drunken monsters, historical characters and pop culture icons, all united by a camraderie that is equal parts nostalgia and the chance to pretend to be someone else. A chance to wear your Marvel-comics obsession or ironic sense of humour on your sleeve. And your back. And your head.

It's so hard to pick a favourite costume of the night (and I'm here I mean Saturday night, though Sunday was the actual day of Halloween and the hectic parade through West Village), but I think mine was a merry band of muppets we kept bumping into as we bar crawled through the Lower East Side. There was a Swedish Chef, a chicken, Gonzo, Fozzie, Ralph, Beaker, Kermit and two yip-yip-yip-yip aliens. I'm not sure if all of them made their own costumes, but this lass dressed as Kermit made that amazing headpiece herself from fabric and a bike helmet. Well played.

Inspector Gadget was another well-executed costume that scored extra points for being one of my absolute favourite childhood cartoons. On that note, sadly I didn't see a Danger Mouse. But I did see a number of Kenny Powers (cf newfound Eastbound & Down obsession, get on board people!)... and high-fived every one of them. "You're fuckin out!"

There was a Ron Burgundy (Anchorman), a number of Kim Jong Ils, a very impressive Che Guevara T-shirt (the guy made himself up as Che and put a cardboard shirt around his head), and a heroin addict with a syringe dangling from his arm. He said it made saying no to beggars on the street much more entertaining. There was an awful lot of goose-pimpled female flesh on show in the inevitable slutty-(insert character here) costumes, so it was nice to see the objectification balance redressed occasionally. For example, there was a giant cock-and-balls sighted. And there was this guy (stilts and top hat sadly cropped out):

Everybody on the L train was trying so hard not to look. NB bare bottoms on the subway = not hygienic for anyone

A mini-trend was social media themed costumes. My friend went as the "sad FourSquare mayor" which is something I do not understand but proved a hit for more social-media savvy New Yorkers. At one point she had 10 people "checked in" to her and I believe it was the highlight of her night. For Twitter fans there was a great Fail Whale, and my favourite of all was an ostensibly uncostumed guy who was Mark Zuckerberg. He was even handing out business cards that said "I'm CEO, bitch". (You have seen The Social Network by now, right?)

Then there are those costumes that are just plain cute. Like French Toast here....

I opted for warmth and an excuse to smoke by dressing as Margot Tenenbaum. Unfortunately many people didn't get it because I struggled to maintain the requisite surly expression because I was having too much fun! I wish it could be Halloween every weekend..

Muppet madness

Dropped into FAO Schwarz today - y'know, only the best toy store ever. And guess what? You can design your own muppet. It's called the Muppet Whatnot Workshop - "whatnots" being the random muppet extras that people muppet-world. Best of all, because let's face it, some of us are unemployed and can't be dropping a Benjamin on a personalised puppet, you can mock up your muppet online endlessly.


Pick a body, add some eyes (complete with chunky lashes, or cats eye glasses), a nose, and hair - options include Williamsburg standard issue beard-n-tache combos. Then there are outfits ranging from hoodies to monster fur to showgirl sequins. So, in theory, you could create a felt version of Katy Perry infinitely preferable to the cups-runneth-over real one who was recently axed from Sesame Street. Here's one I prepared earlier:


On a muppet bender, I went searching for further updates on the new muppet movie Jason Segel is working on. There's not much news to be found, but it seems the title may be The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made. Also, this July GQ interview has some lovely insights from Segel on how he got the project rolling (he's writing, producing and starring) and why he's passionate about muppets:

What happened was, Henson Company created the puppets for Sarah Marshall. And I was there, and I said, "Hey, while I'm here, can I maybe see a Kermit and a Miss Piggy?" And they got this kinda sad look, and they said, "Um, we don't have Kermits or Piggys. We sold everything to Disney." [incredibly serious now] And it all sorta made sense, why the Muppets have disappeared. That's something that really has to come from an individual person's passion. There's CGI now, and there's all these things that are theoretically cooler, but you'll never be able to replace the actual, tactile thing. Like when Kermit scrunches his face? You can't repeat that with CGI. I think when you can sit and make it perfect to the degree you want, you lose some of the humanity of it.

OK, one last Segel thing. Did you know he had a teeny role in the classic 90s teen movie Can't Hardly Wait? Playing the kind of character coveted among thespians, "Watermelon Guy".

And all the above, ladies and gentlemen, presents a compelling case for why I need a job. Hark, employers!

Skins

Our IT guy at work is an ex-roadie and has a pretty encyclopedic knowledge of music, particularly the hard rock kind. I wandered down to his dungeon with a vaguely pathetic tech query but got completely distracted by videos he was watching of crazy drummers. He showed me this amazing drum battle between Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich:



Just bananas. Rich is considered possibly the best drummer of all time. You could blame his parents - apparently he started drumming in vaudeville as "Taps the Drum Wonder" at just 18 months old... But in my opinion, which to be fair is gleaned from approximately four minutes of research on Wikipedia and YouTube, his entire career led up to a single, ecstatic performance: in 1980, on The Muppet Show.



"When I play a theatre, I PLAY the theatre!"

You do the math

The more I hear about the new muppet movie that's in development, the more I am worried that I am just a fictional character being manipulated in some god-like author's meta-universe, a la Sophie's World. Because, seriously?

Written and starring Jason Segel - comic genius, puppet fetishist and all-around tall drink of water

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Directed by James Bobin of Flight of the Conchords

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MUPPETS, MOTHERFUCKERS

If the movie consists of the muppets bouncing on waterbeds, singing Serge Gainsbourg songs and eating peanut butter from the jar with a spoon while Segel cracks jokes naked, then I'll know I'm somehow psychically manifesting this whole thing.