I got Blueberry Mango I found.
I found it the other day. I was like, all right, group, Yeah, blu.
Group remember those Intel commercials icons?
Group Group is coming?
Is that on your list? Blue Man Group?
It's not, but it's just an added blue group ship.
Yeah, Blue Man groups definitely Blue Man Group.
Oh yeah, there's nothing funnier than a Blue Man Group revealed. There's like a literary fiction writer who I really like. I was on her Wikipedia page and it was like she was formal she's divorced from a blue Man and you're like, oh wow, You're like that's who that book was about.
That's crazy because they're all like these like art dudes from New York. Is how it started, and then it just turned into like a Vegas It was like such a New York thing.
I felt like, Yeah, they're like like ex Brooklyn guys who like needed work. And I was like, wow, she got her heart stomped on by a blue Man that I hear.
You ought to know is actually about bloom Blue Man. Yeah, that's right. A lot of the founding Blue Man.
Hello the Internet, and welcome to this spinoff episode of Guys, which we're calling the Iconograph. Instead of looking at the zeitgeist through current events. We're looking at it through the lens of the powerful pop cultural hore cruxes that are our icons. We use these characters to create meaning, to build identity, to learn conversational French, to know the appropriate sound to make when beating the shit out of our long term boyfriend, which is there?
It is hell, that's right.
In this episode we're talking Piggy's Miss Piggy, if you're nasty, and that's why I did leave it for you, Miles, with apologies to Kermit the Frog and David Bowie's codpiece, maybe the most famous and beloved of Jim Henson's creations, Miss Piggy, to be joined, as always by my co host, mister Oh.
I love this. I love it. I love it. Starting off and I'm like, it's this, that's not you know, we're.
Habitual, habitual doing the show one way. That's great, great. I love the topic, dude. I love a good love a good hy Yah. It's like an earworm. It's like an earworm of a thing when you really get it like that, it's smart, that's right, it's hitting it tingles the brain a little bit.
Little tease. It is the first thing. It's the thing that crystallized the character for Francos when he did, like he improvised that, and it was like, oh, this is when I understood the character for the first time.
Drugs with this guy. Wow, oh fuck, yeah, this is a character.
I found it well.
That who you heard in the background in our third seat? One of the very faces on Mount Zeitemore an Emmy nominated writer, artist, comedian behind many of the most acclaimed podcasts like Cast, Ghost Church, The Bechdel Cast, Sixteenth Minute of Fame. She's the New York Times best selling author of Raw Dolgh.
It's Jamie Loft, Jamie.
Hell yeah, hell yeah. Feels good, right good, I feel good.
I don't think I've ever hit someone with the high yah.
You know.
Yeah, just like a cute thing to do to your partner, as long as you don't like fucking smash.
Actually she's like a powerful attack she had, Like she was like, yeah, his arms, have you seen his arms?
Oh my god, he goes There have to be ones where he just goes flying, right.
Yeah, there is there, yeah, where he just goes flying like it's a fucking explosion and a mission impossible, Like.
And I get a YouTube.
If there's like a basic Piggy compilations just her fucking ship up.
I don't like it.
I found one earlier. Guys, thank you so much for joining. Jamie so so excited to have you here for this. I did hear your Bechdel Cast episode about the Muppet Movie, so I was like, gotta have Jamie on for Miss Piggy because you're you're a Piggy Stan.
I'm a Piggy Stan.
I wish, I wish I was more like her, but I feel like everyone has their inner Miss Piggy. But yeah, I really need to start, uh, you know, really hitting people more.
I think that's that's what we're learning.
The main takeaway, yeah and.
Whatever vo She doesn't really understand French, but she sprinkles it throughout and that's cute. Do you guys have like a singular like, oh, that's when I when Miss Piggy was crystallized for me in your memory. Like I was looking back and I was like, oh, I think the first time I encountered her was on those like reading posters in elementary school classrooms like she was, and then that was the first time I encountered grown up Miss Piggy. Because I knew Miss Piggy from Muppet Babies.
Right right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think for me it probably starts like anyone I was like, it was always Kermit and Miss Piggy in my mind.
Yeah, so I a couple.
I can't think of, like even if I knew Kermit before Miss Piggy. I feel like to me, they entered my brain at the same time, even though I think, what Kermit she didn't? It was always Kermit first. But look, I was a kid, it was the eighties. I didn't know shit, we're going to get into it.
I think my entry point to Miss Piggy. I think the first Mubbet thing I remember seeing is Muppet Treasure Island. I have a vivid memory of getting into a big fight with my cousin because we were fighting over because the kid who plays Jim Hawkins, we both had a crush on him and we were fighting over who gets to marry him, and it was.
The marriage right and we start.
We would do that over every like boy protagonist in a movie. We also did it over There's a movie called Casper A New Beginning, and there was an identical looking boy that we would just we would hie out each other for this, like you know, mysterious child's hand in marriage.
So I remember miss pegging that Muppet Christmas Carol.
I feel like I saw the movies before I saw the ever saw the TV show right.
Real quick, some kind of icon bona fee D's because last week we talked about how popular Arcle was that you know, every season from season two through seven of his show like destroyed. What the most watched TV in modern times is? I think it was like pulling in twenty to twenty seven million viewers a week. The most viewed show currently is Monday Night Football at like sixteen million people. I just want to read this description of
the Muppet Show when it was on. It aired in over one hundred countries and had a weekly worldwide audience by nineteen seventy eight of two hundred and thirty five million people. No fucking way stop, because it was everywhere. It was like so global.
I feel like maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like it Up until fairly recently, I feel it was sort of difficult to find old episodes of the Muppet Show.
I didn't see them until I was in college, and the guests they were pulling was like, yeah, so I don't know, I feel like whatever, we don't have monoculture at all anymore, but particularly like monoculture that was pulling so many different kinds of people as the hosts, like I've I had the Rudolph narre Of episode had a very strong impression of me, like they would have like Ballerinas hosting, Yeah, shock culture.
To two hundred and thirty five million people, that's nuts.
It is a weird mix of high and low. And then just for for my example, the thing that proves to me the lasting power, like how iconic them up? That's are. Something we were talking about was there's that LCD sound System video for Dance Yourself Clean that like every white guy is like, have you seen this?
Have you seen this YouTube video? It's like for Dance Yourself Clean, but it's got.
Muppets in it, and the video like objectively sucks.
It's not a good video. Was a few days ago.
You brought it up and we started watching it and I was like, I had never seen it.
I was like this.
Brian was just and brought it up and was like every white guy just like I've been shown this by three different white guys, and I was like me too, and then we watched it and we were like this sucks.
Yeah, guys, the City Puitier, like the guests they would have on the show were absolutely like yeah, and everyone is having the time of their lives, because how could you not, like, it's just so cool.
Harry Belafonte another really good episode.
Just really, I just said, made that up, rich. I just thought the image of acting trash cans funny, believable. He'll do that, right, he was.
You know, it's like Sidney getting a fucking trash can.
Now we shouln't believe anything you say in the chat Right ship. Wait, okay, I feel like I remember that. Yeah, New Mandelac the City More when they had Nelson mandela on.
After he died. Was right, Yeah, it's just the Benstein bears.
Well, the Harry Belafonte episode is genuinely great.
Yes, all right, So Miles, to your point of like, Kermit was first, and then Miss Piggy she was invented in nineteen seventy four, Kermit came around in nineteen fifty five, Ralph the Dog nineteen sixty two, and then Miss Piggy is like the next kind of iconic character. But Ralph the dog was like invented for a dog chow commercial. It seems like a lot of these things were like invented on an as needed basis. They were like, I don't know, we need a we need a girl one,
let's do it. Let's do a pig. And then they like kind of iterate on it. But it's Kermit as old as fuck. First of all, like the borderline problematic that they had a relationship. But uh, then seventy five animal Sam the Eagles, Statler and Wald or the Swedish chef. Seventy six we got Fozzy, which we can talk about Fozzy, but yeah, they just seem to do it on an as needed basis. And then you know, now that puppet exists and now we can like do stuff with that puppet.
But I want to talk before because.
You know the interesting phrasing, interesting phrase. Now we can do that, we can do stuff.
Yeah, we can do that. We can think about it.
We can create backstories as we'll get into you can get it. Yeah, now we can.
Do Now we can do stuff with that puppet. We think about it. I feel like Ralph the Dog has fallen off in the public, like.
Falling off.
I don't dislike Ralph as I dislike other muppets.
Yeah, we'll get to that, but I think he's fallen off a bit.
Not a not a huge Fozzy fan from what I've.
Heard, not a huge Fozzy fan.
Fozzy's triggering for me.
Uh, Miss Piggy for some reason, this tax stand up comedian is triggering to somebody.
I could see Fazzy. Whenever I look, I can see Fozzy. If I look in the mirror, I can't see. I can't be around Fozzy. I see five fozzis a night.
It's all Fozzies. Miss Piggy wasn't actually a Jim Henson creation. She was actually designed by Bonnie Erickson, who this is somebody that I didn't know about coming into this. Uh. She also like she's invented a bunch of the mascots that are like still roaming NBA stadiums to this day.
Maybe her like it right up.
There with Miss Piggy, depending on who you're talking to, the Philly Fanatic mascot. She designed.
The Philly Fanatic. That makes perfect sense because that rocks.
The Philly Fanatic does feel like something off a Henson show.
Yeah, it has Henson vibes. I mean, she was I think like the director of the workshop. But on designing the Philly Fanatic, she said, the managers approached us to design a mascot who could encourage fans to bring their families to the games. So we had to design a character who was child friendly, was playful and a little irreverent, but not too silly. We'd heard from the Phillies that
their crowd had booed the Easter Bunny. Was the challenge to come up with something that was not going to talk down to their audience, Like that is what you think about it. In fact, she created a silly billy child muppet mass Scott that Philly has just completely embraced. Is such an accomplishment that we just like take for granted.
And then when did the Philly Fanatic launch? Was it like around the same time.
Around the same time.
She kind of she was just like fucking on fire for like four years. She created I mean, she created Statler and Waldorf, she created a bunch of like really iconic characters, and she created Miss pig So Miss Piggy's name was originally Miss Piggy Lee as a reference to Peggy Lee, who was a jazz singer who I wasn't that familiar with. I went and listened to like her top songs on Apple Music, and they're either Christmas songs or like wildly depressed.
Oh yeah, like rocking around the Christmas Tree? Is Peggy? Is that Peggy Lee?
And I was like, am I confusing? Who's you?
Is that Peggy something Fever is her? So that's her?
That's her. But then she has this one called is That All There Is? Oh?
I love that song.
Oh it's dark. It's like it tells the story of like being at a Christmas party or at a birthday party when you're young and like is that all there is? And going to a circus and being like is that all there is? And then she's like and I know what you think, I'm going to kill myself. But I know if I killed myself as I was like going to the Pearly Gates, I'd just be like, is that all there is?
It's a really.
Dark shit, which there's there's a lot of like dark stuff in Piggy like written into her backstory that I was not familiar with didn't read to me.
I wonder if peggyly ever like got like met her, because I get it I get why they didn't keep them.
That's why they had to.
Yeah, she's threatened to sue over the puppet, so Miss Piggy Lye became simply Miss Piggy.
Like, now, you'd be honored to have Miss Piggy associated Kelly untested if they're like, so there's this pig on TV.
And yeah, I get hair like you.
Are already depressing, right, boyfriend.
She started out she's incredibly abusive.
Uh.
She started out like as sort of a background character. She was in like a sketch about Planet of the Apes where it was like Planet of the Pigs, and she was just like one of the characters. She had like little button eyes. She didn't have her big like beautiful colored iris.
Eyes like.
A doll's eyes. And she didn't sound like herself yet it was she was at that time played by Jerry Nelson doing just like a real standard guy doing a girl voice. It was just girl. It's just like that. Well, yeah, I know it wasn't quite that good. Sorry I'm a professional voice man, but yeah, but it does. I mean, like I was saying the so eloquently before about how they create the puppet and that puppet exists and now they can do stuff with that puppet.
I do.
It's it kind of reminds me of like SNL talent, Jamie. One of my favorite of your obsessions is like when an SNL person like shows up on the thing and then two years later they look completely different.
They got the Veneers, they got.
The Veneers, they got the glow up.
They literally I like to like, Lord Michael slams your head against the table and thought, he was like, I guess you need.
You need new teeth now.
But I feel like if you can make their eyes bigger, he probably would, right.
Oh yeah, yeah, give him the watch call what's that movie the Clockwork Orange?
Yeah, but also this is second week in a row where we're covering a character who became arguably the most iconic thing from their world and who starts out in the background, and then we watch as they just like grow and grow as the public responds more and more
to them. But yeah, I just I do think in terms of like why we have Miss Piggy, it's like having the multiple projects iterating, and then when they needed a female character, they went to a woman who just like happened to be a genius and was like inventing huge chunks of popular culture in like just a few short years.
That's so I still can't get past two hundred and thirty five million people.
Yeah, thirty five million people.
That is just like, wow, Okay, that's everybody. That's isn't every person? That's everybody.
That's everyone in the war people, everyone in the world.
So people watching puppets on TV, Like, that's that's nuts.
I mean because it is also I mean, like when you think about it, Rkele had twenty something million for a few years in America versus two hundred and thirty five globally, and you're like, oh, that's why. Like I feel like children now, Like you show a kid and wherever most places like do you know this character? And they'd be like miss Piggy and I'm like do you know who this is? And They're like, that's a man with suspenders on? Right, So I'm like, that's curcle, but
that's fun. You're just not cultured.
Well, I'm also sure I'm guessing.
I mean, I don't know much about like muppets internationally, but it must be like there's so it's like such a double bowle show that it's got to be super easy to adapt to it basically anywhere.
Yeah, puppets, upets are great.
Puppets are Puppets are great. Is also one of my conclusions that I come to, like I was saying. Her breakout moment came when oz improvised her trademark karate chop during a scene with Kermit. Originally the script called for a slap, but he decided to go with a karate chop, which then allowed him to his quote is the script called for Piggy to slap Kermit. Instead of a slap,
I gave him a funny karate hit. Somehow, that hit crystallized her character for me, the coyness, hiding the aggression, the conflict of that love with her desire for a career, her hunger for glamour image, her tremendous out and out ego. Which it's just interesting that that was so foundational for him because it's also the first thing, like my brain spits out when I like think of miss Piggy. If I like have to think of her doing something, it's the karate chop.
It's so good. I love hearing like actors talk about like they're silly ass character because it has to be so, I mean, and it is important that like it has to sound so important. My favorite example of that is, do you guys remember when Bill Nihi played mewtwo in Detective Pikachu.
No, I mean, I know, well he.
Did, and I love sometimes I'll go if I can watch his interviews about that movie for fun, because he's just like when I folds about Mew two and you're just like, You're like, yeah, man, you sound like an idiot, but that is your Like I just loved it.
Yeah, Like frank Oz is like, how how does the pig think? Where's she coming from?
Yeah, we're gonna be like and then this is it her frustration.
She's trying to balance it all, her career, her love life in this high Yah.
I'm like, did you really think that at the time? Did you know it's just sort.
Of a performer that's okay, Yeah, Because I think a lot of the cases, these moments of inspiration for these that kind of characters come when they're like like in this case, it was just like I needed to do a thing, and I did this instead of the thing
that the script called for. And then like it like kind of all comes together with Rkle like we were talking about he like at the audition, he was like, I don't know, like I went out of body, like I blacked out and like came to and I was like everyone was laughing, right, Like that's also like Elvis, the character of Elvis, which like wasn't how he actually was as a bit because he was like tanking this like he was like trying to sing a song and
it was like all serious and sad, and everyone's like, this guy fucking stinks. And then he like started goofing around and doing the Elvist voice and people were like.
Do that, Like I think I.
Want this guy, but I feel like it's like the creator needs to get out of their own way or something to like then have it all like come together. But yeah, so Frank Oz ends up being the person who plays Piggy. I always thought it was because Piggy and Fozzy fucking hated each other, but Oz actually plays both of them, and so that's why they're never around at the same time. Jamie, do you think there's any way this is the reason you hate.
Fozzy Because if Fozzy's on Screenzzy.
Like literally getting in the way of Kermit and Piggy.
More, Missy, I just think Fozzy like needs to hang.
It up, Like I just it's hard for me. You think it's because he fucking sucks? Is that why? Well?
I think he's really he really stinks up the place for a number of reasons. But like if all, like a lot of the early Muppets movies are about them trying to make it big, and it's like Fozzy is an active hindrance. I'm not rooting for his success. I like, he's not gonna make it. He's not going to make it, and he's getting in everyone else's way, and I need him to move back home. Where did they where? Because I forget in the Muppet movie where you know.
He gets start from Yeah, I forget. Yeah, it's like somewhere isn't he along the way? Don't they like he find him somewhere along the way, Like.
Can I just be Yeah?
And it's like go back Elselezo Cafe, I think is what it was called.
And realistically, Fozzy's got to go to grad school and like he just has to pack it up.
He bums me out.
I just love you would be a character in him up at film who plays like the bad Hollywood manager who's like, look, Kermit, you got to get rid of Fozzy. He's getting in the way. He's an active hindrance to your career. Kid, Hey, he's a star. You've got a natural charisma.
My friend of God. Get rid of this fuck the manager.
Isn't that like where managers come from, is they like fail and then they're like, well, I didn't hang out with these people.
Let's get Fozzy an internship at w m E. Let's just figure something in the mail room.
Yeah, work your way up.
He could be Turtle Fazzy. I bet if you asked Fozzy which entourage character he was, he'd be like.
Oh, I'm kind of evinced type.
Fucking not dude, are you?
Yeah, Fozzy and and and I don't know, I think especially if I don't care. If you like Fozzy, if Fozzy is your favorite, let's talk, because what does it mean.
Fozzy can't be anyone's favorite.
Point No, no.
I remember, because Fozzy to me was like bummy. I didn't like his energy. I didn't like his fucking tie or like scarf thing there was just didn't appeal to me.
Like I was Kermit Gang from the beginning.
Yes, absolutely, Kermit has there there's something about him.
There's just something about that.
We do ask on every episode, like if they actually existed in reality in our world, would this icon have been on the Epstein flight logs? And as we've already covered, Miss Peggy not on the flight logs. But take another look for Fozzy Yes, Sam, like there's it's only a matter of time, like a failed comedian, like.
He would be on fucking kill Tony.
Who refuses to be in the same room as Miss Piggy, as the woman in the group.
Fozzy would do a private event at mar A Lago. He will, Yeah, he would have no issue about it. And then he would say business is business.
He's exactly.
He's like, welcome to the Foston, Texas comedy scene, is what you'd be telling people.
Yeah, yeah, he's lawless. He's like like all bad.
Comedians, he's gonna have to he's gonna, you know, the only way for him to be successful is by going full fascist.
Oh yeah, yeah, well and even then they're like this guy fucking stinks.
Yeah, it's big game season. We're taking down.
Fozzy Fozzy Bear put his head on my wall. So to your point about how seriously sometimes performers take their roles frank Oza says that like Piggy is his. He thinks Piggy was so successful because she's like got the most depth and the most going on. And he wrote a four page Stanislavskian analysis of Miss Piggy's life that is like so dark.
Oh wait, does she have like a Charles entered him and Cheese styles story?
Yeah, she has kind of a fucked up backstory, all right, frank Oz. Although Miss Piggy is essentially humorous to me, she's had a sad, difficult, painful life. This is not for the audience to know, but the puppeteers should know the background of any good character in order to be able to improvise. I thought we would get like an extensive martial arts background, but it's actually like depressing dust bullshit. According to Oz, Piggy grew up in a small town.
Her father died when she was young. Her mother wasn't that nice to her. She had to enter beauty contests to survive. She has a lot of aggressiveness, but she needs a lot to survive, as many single women do. She has a lot of vulnerability which she has to hide because of her need to be a superstar. He also said the miss Piggy's father chased after other sows and her mother had so many piglets she never found time to develop her mind. I'll die before I live
like that, Piggy screamed. She then left for the city and got a job wearing a sandwich board for and this is where it gets like really fucked up for a barbecue stand, and entered a beauty contest under the name Laverne. Her big break was a bacon commercial, which led her to a job as mascot for a local TV sports cast called pig Skin Parade. And then she got on The Muppet Show. Just like so much cannibalism packed into the last like two paragraphs.
Oh my god.
This isn't for the public to know. This is the performer on the flesh of her own mom.
Was so busy breeding that she didn't have time to develop her mind, her mind. Oh, oh my god, I thought I was gonna end like fucking grapes of wrath.
It's like and she had a breastfeed a dying man.
That really took a turn.
That told me a lot about frank oz I.
Where he was at that time, where.
He was at that is It's so brutal. I do like that. I I rewatched a little bit of it this morning, like a really good video essay about miss Piggy by be kind Rewind on YouTube.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love her channel.
I like rewatched the first couple of minutes and I was like, I gotta save it for the pod. I was just hyped on the pig today. But like, yeah, like how that story is, like that's way darker than I was aware of. But it does feel like mapped on like an old school like I'm just a little girl from a little town and I had a hard time and here at you know, it was like a Marilyn Monroe kind of like sure I took some pictures when I was a young Sure pig I wasn't proud of.
So what Yeah, And I mean maybe that's what the like cannibalism is, you know, or the like having to sell yourself out. Like I think there's probably like some metaphors in there that are just like incredibly dark.
I love the I don't I don't have an issue with that. Her mom catching astray like that, that was really hard.
My mom's a dumb bitch.
That was really fucking to figure anything out anyway. So Fazzi's actually what if his back is like, So Fozzy's like actually a sick comedian dude, Like everybody loves him. He's so fucking funny. When he enters a space, he lights up.
The wishes she could get with Fozzy, But unfortunately on both of them, the.
Comedic voice of a generation isn't always recognized right away. Sometimes it takes some time.
My hope is that posthumously Fuzzy will be recognized for his uh, his contributions.
But he's really the Venco.
I don't really Ozz.
His parents are like puppeteers, like kind of like renegade puppeteers too.
Yeah, oh, puppet nepo.
That's fun.
That's fun.
They like escaped like like Holland or something in World War two, and like his parents had puppets that mocked eight off. Hitler was just reading like some of his They were like about that ship puppeteers.
Yeah, yeah, shit, Okay, the puppet is mightier than the sword, as they said, you know, the best way to criticize to make a fool of people in power. One cool detail that I think I actually got from the be kind Rewind episode was that the reason she always wears pink and purple and like aqua and like those colors is because based on this backstory as psychological aversion to the earth tones that she lived with on the farm. Wow, that's like the sort of thing I was looking for,
you know. It's just like and here's like a fun design detail that like we explain with and it's like she was in a commercial for bad right wearing a sandwich board.
Yeah.
Frankaus is like the coolest, one of the coolest people to ever do anything. I was like the fact that he co created Miss Piggy and then like directed Little Shop of Horrors and like bow Finger.
Like it's just nuts. Wives that movie.
Okay, maybe not that one, that one, there's a couple wee can skip a few.
But but like Little Shop a Horror.
Come on, that's great, that's good stuff.
It's amazing.
Oh yeah, and Yoda.
I guess the fact that Yoda's number three on the list is impressible.
Oh yeah, yeah.
Behind this Piggy and Fozzy, I think that, like I want to get to this later, but the fact that they are one of the few fictional characters that can like show up to Prince Charles's coronation and it like makes sense, which kind of makes sense, but like I feel like the Henson Company like treated them as if they were real, which is maybe why they're like the only fictional characters will accept as real.
Almost.
I was thinking this this morning, so like there's a new Miss Piggy movie coming out and at some point, which is like super excited about that I didn't know about before today.
I was so excited. I was talking my colaskl Yes and produced by Ammastone on the Stone and Jays.
It just it just makes sense.
But I was like, Okay, so we're assuming if we're gonna say that movie's gonna be nominated for a.
Lot of Oscars, right, Yeah.
Does Miss Piggy get nominated for an Oscar? Miss Piggy is still voiced by a man? Miss Piggy gets nominated for the Oscar? Right, It doesn't work if Miss Piggy's not nominated for the Oscar. But I mean the gender lines and award categories are ridiculous anyways.
But like this unique case, You're.
Like, what do we do? It is funny.
It's like a Supreme Court case that changes everything. It's like and in this scenario, how do we move forward?
We've actually there is precedent, speaking of the Supreme Court, there is president for this because while so, yeah, she really becomes the superstar with them up a movie in nineteen seventy nine, you know, does the karate chop moment of like realization. Frank Oz goes back and like writes horrifying backstory, and suddenly she's this fully formed character. And the Muppet Movie comes along and everyone is like, who
is that? Like they I mean, they knew her from the show, but like she really Like I was watching the Ciskel and Ebert review of The Muppet Movie and Ciskel was like, I only liked the movie when she was on screen, Like he was like so smitten with Miss Piggy. He also like he's also like the part where they like flip her upside down and you see how bigger thighs are. It's like, oh my gosh, okay man, oh cool. There was a fan led campaign to get
Miss Piggy an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Two fans in Cincinnati launched CAMPO, which stood for the Committee to Award Miss Piggy and Oscar. They received thirty five thousand letters of support and delivered them to the Academy
of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In response, the Academy made this statement, which I just have to include for like just a massive l. While the Academy does not participate in the pork barrel campaigns, which are an unfortunate part of the annual OSCAR campaign, we do wish you appropriate success with your commendable support of such a weighty candidate of Academy honors. Oh, guys, get fucked honestly fast.
That's sasty.
She I mean, miss Piggy has to have been gone to the Oscars before.
She has, so she at those Oscars presented or I think introduced Rainbow Connection, which was nominated that year, and like did a bit about how she couldn't fucking believe that she wasn't nominated, which was like, really good it was her.
Johnny Carson and insult her in the same I.
Know that's saety backhanded then she So nineteen seventy nine, Big Year was on the cover of People magazine, which referred to her as the Muppet Movies New section. Scottis the late seventies were like so weird. I don't know, so she's she talks about how the Queen tried to fix her up with Prince Charles better than Prince Andrew. Thank god, I don't think.
That would be a real stand on that would that would not bode well for the flight log side.
Yeah, that would have been she wouldn't have been on there.
Man.
She would have chopped the ship out of him.
That's true.
Yeah, he wouldn't have made it. Maybe she could have. She would have killed him. Yeah.
The article also suggests Elliott Gould suggests that he fucked Miss Piggy in it. He says, I turned down Miss Universe, but I couldn't turn down Miss Piggy.
That actually that pairing. I feel like Elliott Gould does have like a little bit of current about him.
Like she's got a type, Yeah.
For sure, a type. You got that frog in him, He's got he got that frogs early eighties. She has such a weird Yeah, good guy who fucks. But everybody, I feel like everybody in the late seventies had like guy with a ponytail from a documentary about like Orgi's Energy, where they're just like we're just here to enjoy each other's bodies and like yeah, it's just like I don't that.
Guy's always there and he's like, oh god, it's yeah, it reminds me of that there.
It's like a kind of an older video now.
But Chris Fleming made a great song about Polly Couples years and years ago, where it's like, it's never the person you want to be Pollie, who's Polly, it's a guy being like I have one hundred board games at my house, like.
No, no, But in this case we're talking about Elliott Gould, which I would I'm on board with miss Piggy and Elliott Gould.
I love that rumor.
Yeah that would make Kermit jealous too.
Oh hell yeah.
Yeah.
We'll get to their relationship. But it's I don't know, going back and rewatching some of the stuff. I was like, I don't love how he treats her, like obviously, like there's a big like re examination of her, like hitting him, but also he's like kind of a dick sometimes to her, like.
Trying to put a wedge between him so you can move in on this, like I don't know, girl, like I feel like she could do better.
Well, you're like like me for example, So I'm just saying.
Like I don't know, I don't know. I got like one hundred board games back in White Place.
I haven't taken my hat off yet, but I'll let the ponytail drop out.
A little bit.
That would be a ponytail.
Reveal, shaking it out. Yeah, this is who I am.
Like when the nerdy character takes the pencil out of their hair and like an eighties like, oh god, like whoa long hair.
But it's kind of like kind of perpetually wet ponytail, just.
Like a greasy as ponytail.
It doesn't really like flare out, it's just stuff together a little bit like a pig's tail.
People, Magsie.
I also just like this detail from the article because it was the late seventies and they said the gossipis plan that Piggy might be pregnant or had a drinking problem, or perhaps a coke addiction, because certainly she has the equipment to be snorting something I do just like the coke was a fun drug back then, Like they're just like we're all doing it. Wouldn't it be cool to snort choke with giant pig nostrils?
Oh my?
I think if your people pulling out that puppet like at parties and being like, yo, dude, let's fucking do a line with Miss Piggy.
They're like, guys, I really shouldn't.
It's really for performances to like, come on, dude, pull her out of the case.
Let's do a couple of rails with Miss Piggy.
She I feel like she she would do it as in the seventies she did it as a party trick parties.
Frank Oz was definitely doing It'd be like, oh, I.
Like and I don't And is that a fun energy to bring? I think it sounds fun. But when it actually happened, you're like, yeah, man, this is not good.
We got to get home.
And it's after as the high is wearing off, You're like, damn, what the fuck am I doing?
Man, you can't do.
A pigs do Folks, I'm looking at the Muppet wiki is.
Unbelievably thorough.
I just like, yeah, it's got its own it's like Woki Wikipedia, like it's its whole universe over there.
Because I was curious, I'm sure we'll talk about it, like how like Miss like the Academy Award, think like the way that people talk about Miss Piggy's body is so like charged and uh, but like she never talks about herself that way, which I love about her. She's like so confident and amazing.
But there's a whole page on muppet Wiki this is Miss Piggy's weight, and it's just a list of hundreds of references. I was like this, who did this?
H did this?
And and can I I don't know for certain Wikipedia pages. You're like this is against God.
But but I.
Do appreciate that the all yeah, yeah, yeah.
She was introduced to a whole new generation with Muppet Babies. Did you guys watch Muppet Babies?
Was that before your time?
Yeah?
I did babies, missus the miss Piggy. Muppet Baby is like a little too sexy for me. Yeah, what's going on there? Did you guys like Muppet Babies? I didn't. I didn't watch it. Grow it now.
I was like, I mean, I was so. It was one of the first cartoons I remember watching Watch Baby.
I remember it.
Yeah, And then there was.
The cartoon I remember there was like a kind of there's like a reference to Star Wars and like the opening that I really liked that.
I was like obsessed with other than that. Yeah, it was the opening is the thing is the iconic thing. And then Nanny's legs, like they had a overseer who you only saw her like stockings.
Yeah, oh yeah, like Charlie Brown.
Style, right, yeah, yeah, you just saw her like calves and it was like very mysterious.
I love that they did that on Cow and Chicken too. That was like when I really loved Yeah, when it's just the legs.
That was a Marvel joint. By the way, Marvel Common Animation Department technically made the Muppet Babies, so that's the first because it was like the.
Cheap o animation style of of Yeah.
Probably they were probably like already making you know, a Spider Man comic and we're like, what about what about this?
We made the Muppet Sexy Babies.
There's a lot of weird continuity stuff in there, like there's a reveal that Statler and Waldorf are the muppets uncles, but like, I don't I don't think we need to like get too into continuity because I don't, like I think the premise is that like the Muppets are all actors, Like this is just a SNL style like thing where it's like they're just playing different versions of themselves and you like never know what's real, so you don't have to like worry too much that Statler and Waldorf for
actually just the worst uncles of all time? Right worried?
Did you worry that Scott Gardner cartoon Tiny Buppets?
Yes? Oh yeah, it's so good.
It was like the Brazilian Mummy Babies when it was called like Cormet and Gonzor.
Was just called I think it's miss woman or something.
Shit it Miss Piggy is probably the best case scenario of like the missus Lady character right like there, it.
Really isn't right.
I can't think of them where because it's like they try to emulate it a bajillion times or like I don't know, I always go back to chuck e cheeselare as I want to do and they have a missus Lady, like you always have to have one girl, not even because you care, but so you can make pencil boxes for girls, right right, But miss Piggy, like they just there was something in that coke that was special.
Yeah.
Uh, Brian, I'm gonna have to ask you to stop putting pictures of a fazzy var next to Burt Kreischer in the.
Chat.
It's too distracting. They do both wear brown hats and no shirt.
Well, I don't sell Brian's hard work short. He's finding exact poses that are identical. It's like, it's alarming.
That's crazy.
Bert Crasers just modeled his career off Fuzzy. That's wild.
No fucking have a backstory, man, gotta have a backstory.
So Miss Piggy is seen as an lgbt Q plus icon, which is wild because it started from a place where Frank and and We'll get to a quote from Marlon Brando that I think will kind of put some of this into context. But he once told reporters about how Piggy takes over and when he talks about her, he will become her, using her voice and even adopting her personality, and then added, but let's get it straight that I'm straight. It's like, okay, all right, man, cool, Okay.
He keeps telling on himself.
Really, I know other artists were like, I sculpted the David out of appreciation for the human body. Just because I sent three weeks on the dick doesn't mean I'm not straight.
Yeah, look at his biceps though. Look at those things. Man, sick, right, sick.
I'm sure a straight guy could do.
Got to be straight, understand, dude, dick like that.
After he became a successful film director, he was still associated with Miss Piggy. When he directed the two thousand and one crime movie The Score, an annoyed Marlon Brando would reportedly only refer to the director as miss Piggy. Just like, Okay, that's brutal. I just like the seventies, just any anyone who was like famous in the seventies was just like broken by toxic masculinity.
They're just like never recovered.
That's yeah, that's a bummer. Yeah, man, I I don't I don't know. Maybe there's something I don't know very much about Marlon Brando, and it's kind of like none of my business when I see Marlin.
We're good here. It's not for me. That's not really for me.
I don't need to know about all of that, especially if he's bullying Frank Gaws to the Frank Oz has to.
Respond in a toxic way to the world, right exactly two thousand and one, Brando, Dude, that's like, oh that's a yeah, that's doctor Moreau, you're talking.
That's tough.
But Eric Johnson, who's been playing Piggy since Oz stepped away from the part in two thousand, said in an interview that Piggy is a drag act. It's where some of the comedy comes from. He did not go on to clarify I've slept with like twenty three women of them have said, I'm like, good, it sucks. But he cited Oz's early description of Piggy as a truck driver in a woman's body, and then argued that the character breaks down genderbearers, which I think is.
Right, all right, Eric, nice. Eric.
People have also pointed out that Chapel Roone seems to pull a lot from drag and also Miss Piggy, Like there are a couple side by side pictures where it's like, oh, yeah.
She might have literally Miss Piggy style.
Man, Yeah, it's perfect. Miss Piggy also has a wide variety of wigs. Yeah, she's just she's maximal.
She loves animal print, you know.
But yeah, that that be kind rewind video it's called Miss Piggy. Camp and the Death of the Movie Star has a really good quote from a camp theorist talking about Camp as this like pure surface level celebration of like the kind of hoops we have to jump through to live our lives. They say, to appreciate camp and things or persons is to perceive the notion of life as theater being versus role playing reality and appearance, which I think is like kind of a perfect frame to
think of Miss Piggy and kind of the Muppets through. Yeah, yeah, it's a good video. Miss Piggy as a feminist icon. That's just you know, a lot of people talking about body positivity role model who subverts, Like the original punchline of her origin is like a you know, lipstick on a pig like that sort of thing. But she just like I didn't even I hadn't ever even thought about that being the original joke until somebody like reading about
the origin is like, oh yeah, I get it. But it's like no, she's just like so glamorous that like you don't even. She just like owns it. She's completely confident. I feel like you don't like have that initial like she's ugly but pretty type thing. It's just like she's her own character, that extensive backstory.
I also like that, like I guess the Miss Piggy era I most associate her with, and I like the best is that her like kind of nineties Miss Piggy where she's kind of like girl boss single a little bit like she's a she's a career girl, and she's also like a ruthless kind of quite evil career girl. And I love that.
Which one is that? What is that in the ruthless?
I feel like, I mean most of them I'm thinking of. I think it's maybe a Muppets take Manhattan where she's really rallying for parts and she'll like lie to get parts. She just like she's you know, she's a diva, she's an Yeah, And I like that, Yeah, it would be it would have been easy to keep the focus on her like obsession with Kermit, which like it always does.
But I feel like her her passions of Kermit and uh, you know, being famous are like in Lockstep, So it's like almost weird that she had, Like they haven't like adapted her to the modern era very frequently.
I guess maybe this Coloskull and Miss Piggy.
Yeah, written by col Skull who made o Mary for people who aren't familiar but so so funny. Yeah, like it could really like get into brilliant dark shut.
Which what if it's a dust bowl? He's like, I look, I went to the source and I just had to adapt this.
Frank Gus in fact doubled down when I brought up the Stanoslavskian brief.
Jennifer Lawrence did say that the Miss Piggy movie is fucked up and really dark, which wow, maybe it is just a straight up adaptation, all right, But yeah, I feel like this, like one of the things driving her career throughout has been just the will they won't they of Kermit the Frog. Like there was a more recent I forget what it was, but I remember it hitting the news cycle when they like broke up and everybody
was like, oh, like Piggy and Kermit broke up. That was the second time they had tried that, and the first time they did it was actually like called off because like they like, to your point, they were going to break up. She was going to be single throughout the nineties, and it was there was like this whole book planned, and then Jim Henson died like that week, and so they just like quietly like pulled back on it.
I said, She's been through enough to see her. We can't put her through a breakup.
Oh because then because he was Henson was doing Kermit's voice up until he passed away.
Basically, yeah, he had been so his last TV appearance was on The Arsenio Hall Show in nineteen ninety.
So funny that there was like seriously, yeah, we got Kermit the Frog on tonight, godless.
And he was like not feeling well at that and then he was refusing to like take time off and then so I didn't realize. I thought he like died of cancer or something. He died of like basically strep throat and just like not getting it taken care of.
God.
Yeah, it's like a really crazy like a bacterial infection that just like got worse and worse. And he was at that time talking to Disney about selling, you know, the Muppets to Disney and Frank Oz this is frank Oz's quote on it. The Disney deal is probably what killed Jim. It made him sick.
Oh wow, Oh.
Yeah, good good for him for saying that. I guess I mean because Disney is I went to my for my last birthday. My boyfriend brought me to the Henton studio like dirty Puppet night. Have you guys ever been No, Yeah, Yeah, it's cool. It's like Brian Henson gives the audience a tour of the studio beforehand, and then it's like puppet improv basically, it's the it's the best way to see improv if you absolutely have to is puppet improv you must.
But it was.
It was really cool. But I don't even know if they're still at that studio or they won't be for much longer because Disney has like sort of slowly dismantled. I hope maybe the Miss Piggy movie will save it, but it seemed like they were going to have to leave the studio and you know, go to sort of more standard corporate offices, which I have to imagine is Disney's fault.
Yeah, yeah, because it's like they were also like you could like lease office space out of there, like I remember in the last few years, like yeah, because the place on LaBrea right like that.
Yeah yeah, yeah, but like everything Kermit yeah yeah yeah, there.
Was like see a little Kermit statue out front.
I remember going like back in the day, like meetings with startups like that were like like a startup was based back.
There, like you Richard the Hinson Studios, and it was that company excess more than seven.
No, they shouldn't have.
To do fally bummed out that. I was like, what but you got like I'm looking at the original.
Dark Crystal Puppets in here, and you guys are fucking talking about some dumb streaming platform that's not gonna do fuck.
They're like, yeah, the frog's broke.
What k he do he do? Man? And make him do whatever you want guys. Yeah, and you want.
Watch this, I can ash on his head right now. Won't do shit.
But yeah.
In nineteen ninety, they appeared on The Today Show announced they were officially breaking up. This is part of a publicity stunt called the Pig of the Nineties that where she was going to like be an independent woman and.
Then she's gonna girl boss it up.
Yeah, she was gonna grow boss it up. And then that was in May, and just days later, Jim Henson died of Yeah. It's a crazy sort like he literally just worked himself to like he wouldn't He like woke up at two am in the morning and was like I can't breathe and was like coughing up blood and he was like but I don't want to cancel work tomorrow, so I don't know, for as a warning to anybody, like, don't don't work that hard.
Yeah yeah, yeah alone.
This is dark, but it would be funny if frank Oz was like, yeah, I think it was the breakup that.
I didn't believe in love. After that, he just really.
Find this new new direction with Miss Piggy right that we're thinking about.
Yeah, He's like, you could just really affected him.
And he really wanted to say something, but he could.
It was just like a plot, an idea that he didn't like at work, so he like blames it. He's like, yeah, I don't know, Yeah, yeah, I killed Jim.
What do you guys think? Huh hit off? Maybe I'll pitch that next time.
I will watch basically like any like of the bajilion documentaries that there are about Jim Henson, and anytime I see even a shred of his like televised funeral services, I started bawling. It's so sad.
I was so upset.
That was like one of the first celebrity deaths I remember as a kid.
Did you guys know that, like that's how he died? That it was I thought you just cancer. Yeah, cancer, because he wasn't that old, right, was he in his like fifty something?
Yeah, I thank god.
Yeah, but yeah, I just remember I was so deaf because I just felt like he was the Muppets truly, even like as a kid, I knew they were fucking puppets, but I still could connect that, like all things were possible through his work and the other people he worked with.
But yeah, which is like not that they wouldn't have been anyways, but it like almost makes it necessary for kids to have the Muppets at the funeral, so you know that they're like still, oh my god, Oh it's so sad.
Yeah, man, they're laying flowers on this.
It's too much, so much. I was like, no, I've never been as set. Well that's not fair, but like I've never been stunted at a funeral as I am watching like low res clips right right right, funeral from nineteen nineties. So sad.
Yeah, So I do feel like that does like get a kind of one of the things that I think is truly unique about them, which is the way that they exist both in reality and in like the fact that they were at King Charles's coronation. I feel like they're the only fictional characters who can like show up to real events, Like they occupy a weird space between worlds for everybody, Like you couldn't just have like like Deadpool show up at the royal wedding.
And we've got Deadpool here.
You know, what is that the coronation.
I mean a fascinator on.
I feel like that they because like other characters I guess, do show up places, but it always you can always tell it's an ad And then when the Muppet Show, you're.
Like, oh, like, oh, the Muppets are there exactly? Yeah, like damn, oh they were in town.
Yeah.
When uh so Edgar Edgar Bergen Candice Berger from Then
in Black died. Now when Edgar Bergen, Cannis Bergen's father, who was a famous like puppeteer ventriloquist, died, his widow and candisberg And asked Jim Henson and Kermit to like speak at his funeral, and they said Jim Henson said, uh, there seems to be something strange about having a puppet in this situation, and Kermit said, I have never appeared at a funeral before, and then Henson was like, but the family asked if I would bring Kermit and Charlie
would have liked it. He said about like his Charlie and Mortimer were his two characters, and like everybody just like burst into tears because they realized like Charlie and Mortimer were gone, like at that.
Oh wow, But yeah, it's sad.
Yeah, it's just kind of this weird like you know, puppets have been like a thing, and like they they hold the like the muppets hold this like load bearing place in popular culture because they're like our main muppets are our main puppets, you know, right, Like there's a quote from Bonnie Erickson where she's saying they've been a tradition across the world for thousands of years as a form of storytelling, but until recently, they haven't been appreciated
in the United States. We owe allot of that to Jim Henson's vision, and so like there's something like sort of magical about puppets that like these being the main pop culture puppets like allows them to just like occupy this weird space where we're like Piggy and Kermit canna like get together together at any given time.
Right right, and now, Jamie, I bet you'd feel terrible if you read that. I've read that Fozzy odd after a bad open mic gig or something.
Wouldn't you just do it?
Look, you know my dark Fozzy movie is Fozzi's in aa uh and like, who's Fozzy's sponsor? I do feel like Fozzy can't drink anymore?
Yeah, I can't drink. I feel like almost might sponsors. Yes, Almost Dad is almost.
Dad like kind of has like old you know, musician vibe a lot of ship.
I was drinking hand doing heroin. They're like, oh fuck, all right, man, all right, almost Dad.
Yeah, almost Dad has seen ship. You don't just raise a kid like that, like Elmo. Yeah.
Yeah. It also makes a lot of sense that you see the dad. You're like, oh okay, yeah, yeah, in.
The grand context Elmo. Actually it comes into sharp focus.
Yeah.
I do wonder, like what the drug seems like with the Muppets, you know, just generally.
Yeah, I mean like the band, the band has to Oh yeah that is I love the band so much.
Yeah, I don't think they're doing intravenous drugs, but a lot of acid in the band i'd have to assume r Yeah, yeah.
Keep it fun, they keep it fun.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, stuff that just kind of makes them more muppetty if.
That's a.
Yeah, something makes you like taste colors?
Nothing, Yeah, I will say just the last thing I have about Miss Piggies. I feel like to encapsulate the weird place that she occupies. I don't think any other children's character could have simulated an orgasm.
Did you have you? Guys?
Do you remember that thing where she was like doing a parody of when Harry met Sally with Billy Crystal?
Oh no, wait, when did that happen?
They it was the early nineties and she did it as like a fake sneeze, but she really like it was. It was a long time and it was on the Disney Channel too, Yeah, and Muppets tonight. Yeah, so dressing.
What happened with you last night was as so she canceled she had a bad cold.
Are you sure she had a cold, Yes, I'm sure she had a curl. I heard a sneeze twice.
Your Kniven taste amusing.
Did you ever think she may have faked the sneeze to get out of the date with you?
Fake the snaze, no way ticket.
Most women, at one time or another have faked a sneeze, take it out of a date?
Really well, excuse aim moa, miss I'm jealous of babe.
You don't think that I can tell the difference between a real sneeze and a fake sneeze. No, so good killing it with the performance.
Oh oh my god, that's about how people sneeze.
Oh yo Channel, No god, this is your titus.
I love the Disney Channel logo just hanging out down.
Yeah.
Wow, way that all have what cheese having less?
Peppa hey.
Ship.
That was when you said it was a fake sneeze. I'm like, okay, they'll play with it. I didn't expect her to be daggering the table like that under.
Her feet, the little thing she.
Was pumping the even a part where like Billy Crystal starts like doing a weird what do you do?
That stopped that man gets so weird about Miss.
Piggy, I mean, are weird about Miss Piggy.
This ciscal thing. This ciscal thing really says it all. Where he's like, oh, she's so amazing, she's and did you see her legs? And you're like, oh, like there's there's the line. I remember. I never watched it, but I'm always like one small illness away from watching. Do you remember Lady Gaga and the Muppets did like special together? It was like maybe ten years ago, but Lady Gaga
and the Muppets did a big thing together. And I never saw it, but I feel like she and Miss Piggy must have really been vibing, because that's a brain of Carpenter is going to be in a Muppet special.
Wow and lo it was a holiday spectacular, is what they did.
Yeah, oh yes, twenty thirteen with Oh God, twenty thirteen with guest stars Joseph Gordon Levitt.
Of course he's.
He's not fucking like that these days. I mean, Jameson Siegel briefly had custody of the Muppets and then he had to give them back, and that's that's for the best.
Probably, that's true. That's true.
That was a wild time when we were just like, let's see what Jason Siegel does with it. It's like, oh, just have him and a new Muppet he made up be on screen.
Yeah, the new Muppet, Like, what the fuck was that that? But the songs were great.
The songs were really good. I thought that movie was like pretty fun and the and the music was good.
He just didn't need the new guy.
No, what was his name, Walter? They didn't even give him a cool name. I don't know Walter, I work in it. What the Miss Piggy, Kermit, the Frog and Walter, which I guess was kind of the point. But that point that sucks, all right? Any anything else about Miss Piggy.
You guys want to talk about before we get out of here. No, I was just I think before the recording, I was just.
Saying, it's funny that how how much of a cultural mainstay Miss Piggy is because we had like Donald Trump.
Calling people piggy.
There's like TikTok videos I'm seeing talking about Miss Piggy not being in the Epstein files. And then there was a story about the woman who allegedly hit a child on a plane because the child called her Misspeaky.
Couldn't have been the first time a child has called her miss.
Marland woman is facing charges after police in Florida said she hit a child who made fun of her on a flight from Orlando, holy that she slammed the child's head into the window of the plane for corner Miss to say a lot energy a legacy.
You can look like anything a legacy you can look like, Yeah, I'm just happy that, Like I mean, it's like the fact that kids still know who she is even though Muppets haven't really like put out a successful project in.
Like fifteen years.
Yeah, for their whole lives is like crazy.
You's got to be like, I mean, the same way, like I show my kid that stuff because I'm like, yeah, you're gonna love this bullshit. I love these freaky fucking muppets. You're gonna love them too, Yeah, And they do, and they fucking do. Like it's it's like it feels like one of the few things of like I've tried to show my son like other shit like I thought was cool from my child, and he's like this shit like
you can just tell. I mean, he's like not even three yet, but it's very clear when something captivates him or not. And I showed him the Muppet Christmas Carol. His attention was there the entire time. I could not believe it.
And I'm a man of taste, A man of taste. Yeah, that's the best Christmas movie. I think it is, like truly my favorite Christmas.
He loves Michael Kine. He loves Michael.
Knee, Jamie, where can people find you? Follow you all that good stuff?
You can find me on the back.
To cast every week, Yeah, every Thursday from now till the end of time. Mark my words. Caitlyn Toronto and I are gonna cover movies from an intersexual feminist perspective and uh then mostly I think Instagram Jamie Christ Superstar.
Yeah, I.
Haven't been posting as much. I'm starting to feel too healthy, So maybe I'll start.
You gotta get back in there, I gotta get call you back, let it summon you back into the pit.
Miles.
Where can people find you?
Everywhere? Wow? Perfect? All right, all right, that's it.
Sorry, that's stick around University.
Yeah, university.
Yeah, I think it comes out on Christmas or Christmas Eve.
Nine?
Have we been doing this for that many years?
Hasn't gotten any better? And and this year is not going to be different? Wow, just keeps getting longer. You Santa U x oh yeah, X is gonna be God.
We're gonna do like a live performance like the Disney Theater, the Disney Hall or something.
I've started to apply for grants because we got it. We gotta get this in the Dolby. We gotta get in the Dolby, I think, or at least Gromans. We gotta get Gromans.
Yeah yeah, yeah, that's easy. That's easy.
Let's figure it out.
We'll do the Mantlebond easy.
I'd even take the roof, come on, yeah.
Yeah, I definitely take the Montalban roof. It's beautiful up there. Anyway. Stay tuned, Stay tuned.
Stay tuned. Stick around for the No No No notebook dump where I get to stuff that I didn't get to in the episode. And bye bye bye. All right, that was our episode. Always great to see Jamie loftus. This is the No No No notebook dump where I get to stuff that I didn't get to in the
main episode that I wanted to. On the subject to Bonnie Air, miss Piggy's designer, this has nothing to do with Miss Piggy, so I didn't bring it up in our conversation, but a quick anecdote that I discovered during research that my brain couldn't put down, so I wanted to pass it along to your brain, like the supernatural std from It follows. So Boddy Erickson, this accomplished designer.
She's created Miss Piggy and the Philly fanatic, and she gets asked to design the mascot for the biggest sports franchise in the world. I think the New York Yankees. I think it's them or the Dallas Cowboys, but you know they're near the top. And so she creates this large pinstriped bird like creature with a mustache. The mustache is designed to look like the most beloved Yankee on the team at the time, maybe of the decade of the seventies, Yankees catcher Thurman Munson. He got a big mustache.
Bird has a big mustache. Win win. So as his debut as Dandy the Pinstripe Bird's debut is approaching, two things happen. I'm gonna pull from the Wikipedia here Bonnie Erickson's Wikipedia. On July tenth, nineteen seventy nine, the San Diego Chicken, who was then working for the Seattle Mariners. Apparently mascots can be like kind of free agents and move between teams, which I didn't realize, But so the San Diego Chicken put a hex on Yankees pitcher Ron
Gidry during a game at the Seattle Kingdom. Yankees outfielder Lou Panella, who had gone to manage baseball teams responded by chasing the mascot and throwing his glove at him. In response, the Yankees owner George Steinbrenner said that mascots have no place in baseball, which despite the imminent release
of Dandy, who's supposed to be their mascot. So Dandy does in fact debut in late July nineteen seventy nine, weeks after the incident in Seattle, and then Thurman Munson dies in a plane crash on August second, like a week after Dandy is introduced. Dandy's immediately put on hiatus. They eventually let him come into the stadium, but he's confined to the upper deck area like the cheap seats, and it doesn't work out. Ericson and her partner Harrison
declined the Yankees' request to sign another lease. They feel the mascot didn't receive the necessary support from management. So yeah, you win some, you lose some. She goes on to design plenty of other mascots, has a bunch of mascots still roaming stadiums in the NBA. She describes her mascots as all being gentle anarchists, which fucking rules but I think that speaks to the power of puppets and mascots.
Back to Miss Piggy, a couple ideas I wanted to get at but couldn't quite get right in our conversation. One has to do with Miss Piggy's relationship with Kermit the Frog, which obviously a very part of her mythos and iconography. I didn't spend enough time talking about it in the episode because it's kind of confusing, Like they're together, they get married in either Muppets Take Manhattan or The Great Muppet Caper I forget, but then like that gets
retconned out. They say the priest was like actually defrocked, like sort of that, so that is no longer canon. But they're just always back and forth. They say they're life partners who live together. Kermit has said they've never
been together. It's the ultimate will they won't they, which makes sense from a narrative perspective, But you know, beyond the obvious narrative hook, I think there's another way that it's important to her status as an icon, because so my working theory of the icons we've covered so far is that it helps to have some contradiction at the core of like our perception of you, you know, like so our brains can't just like put you down. That's
what that's what my brain wants to do. When I'm introduced to a new famous person or a character, I just want to put him down. There's too many famous people and characters. I'm already holding all this shit. I don't want to I don't want to have to know another one. So if a character or like a person is what you expect, if it's like a jock who seems like a cocky dick, or like a nerd who seems like he lacks confidence, I'm like, I know who that is. I can just put them away in a
drawer and forget about them. But so all of these characters so far, or you know, real people with Einstein who become iconic, have something unexpected, like some contradiction. So with Einstein, a super genius who looks sloppy as hell, like can't remember to put his clothes on before he walks out the door, and we pretend he was a slow child because that's important to us. We want that contradiction.
He's not like a Benedict Cumberbatch character who's a genius he's like an absent space see is that guy on something type genius rcle nerd. But he's also extremely confident and unflappable. And then with Miss Piggy, beyond the central contradiction of like glamorous pig lipstick on a pig as a businessman like to say, you know, that joke never
even really occurred to me. But the contradiction that I think is important is that she's a motivated career woman who can and will beat the shit out of you to like get to the top. She's also primarily driven by her romantic love of Kermit the Frog, Like she'll cozy up to a producer to get a role, but ultimately she just wants to marry this mild mannered, multi talented absolute ten. But then she'll also just like bail on him repeatedly in order to put her career first.
She's also sweet and sensitive, but a fucking straight up cannibal. So that's one idea that a contradiction is helpful to build an icon. And then another idea about why she's so iconic is where we were when she was introduced, with our relationship to puppetry and just sexual politics at that point in history. I think Miss Piggy stands out among muppets for some of the reasons we talked about.
She's a superstar in the narrative, but then she reads as a superstar on screen to the point that she made Gene Siskel come in his pants, which probably wasn't that hard to do. But I do think like the way that she was imbued with this kind of outsized energy that just like leaps off the screen and gives Gene Siskel a boner, is she really like gave Frank Oz an outlet for what turned out to be a very developed and interesting feminine energy that he wasn't really
allowed to express in any other way. I don't even know if he knew that he was looking to express, and people couldn't really get that anywhere else in like super mainstream culture at the time, and obviously we wanted it. Look at how people have reacted to the freeing of
drag culture and like the mainstreaming of drag culture. So Miss Piggy comes along at a time of like toxic masculinity in the late seventies, at a time when like Frank Oz has to disclaim that he's straight when he's talking about playing her, and she's just like bursting with the divine feminine and like could express confidence and body positivity and horniness, and she could get away with it
because she's a puppet, you know. And again, like puppetry is this ancient alchemical art that wasn't being used so ingeniously and with like such mainstream success anywhere else. I quoted Bonnie Eeric cent Er Henson talking about I think they've both talked about how humans have used puppets for thousands of years in like religious rituals and healing and witchcraft. Look at how lou Panella reacted to a chicken mascot
putting a curse on their picture. Like you could say he was being an idiot, but he was also reacting to this ancient, powerful human connection to this art form. And then Henson comes along and reconnects these jaded, pop culture drenched minds around the world with this ancient, deep yearning to watch someone breathe life and fully formed characters
into inanimate objects. And also officially it's kid stuff. People consuming mainstream culture don't have their guards up, so ideas and energy comes through that they wouldn't usually let through. This world of mainstream culture that was just getting used to the idea of like strong women let alone drag.
Acts allows through this new.
Dimension of like confident divodom that people weren't ready for, and it turns out we're deeply ready for at the same time. All right, that's going to do it? Or the Miss Piggy episode next week. An icon who I don't think really fits with that conflict at the core of the icon rule that I just made up. I think he kind of takes your expectations of the type of person he would be and takes it like thirty steps further, just like maximalism all the way down. We're
talking Arnold Twartzenegger. So we have a great guest for that one. So I will talk to you then, or I'll talk to you in a few hours if you listen to the regular episodes of The Daily Zechast.
Bye bye,