Mirkin says Toronto and Fraggle Rock were a perfect fit. “Given the show’s committment to interdependence and a global consciousness, I can’t imagine it being filmed anywhere else.”

Jessica Max Stein: Let’s talk about Fraggle Rock. You play a major character in almost every Fraggle sub-world: Gobo, Pa Gorg, and the Trash Heap. Unless it’s a Doozer-center episode, you are practically in every scene. Now, when two characters who are played by the same person talk to each other, like when Gobo goes to the Trash Heap, how do they do that?

JN: Well, they prerecord one of them, and somebody else does the lines.

JMS: Oh, so that’s lip-synching. Is one person generally doing both?

JN: Except for the close-ups. If there’s a close-up, they would wait until after we did what they call a master shot. That’s like over the shoulder, or off to the side, including everything. And then they would do close-ups. They could get close-ups sometimes as they were doing the master, but not always, because of the angle. The way the puppet was looking, the angle wouldn’t be right, necessarily. So they’d generally do the close-ups then after.

If they were doing Trash Heap with Gobo, I would do the Trash Heap, and I would have prerecorded both those lines. Either that, or, if it wasn’t very much, I could switch. I could do both. If it was a lot of dialogue, it would not be easy to do.

JMS: So you can be under Marjory, and then just switch voices.

JN: Yeah. [Marjory voice]: So, little Fraggle, tell me what’s the problem. [Gobo voice]: Well, Madame Trash Heap… You know, like that. So that’s possible. But it’s not possible for big speeches and a lot of fast things.

In fact, there have been several productions, most notably the Canadian productions, where we had to have Canadian content, so we would prerecord the whole show. Frog Prince [in 1971] was like that. The whole show was prerecorded, and then they would put in beeps leading up to the speech, and then you would synch to them. It’s more labor-intensive than just catching it as you’re doing it, but you have to conform to what their rules are. So we used their actors.

Now, when we did Fraggle Rock, the people we got, most of them were puppeteers. Some of them were mimes, like Rob [Mills] and Trish [Leeper] and Gordy [Gord Robertson] were mimes. [They played Junior Gorg, Ma Gorg and Pa Gorg, respectively, wearing the body costumes while the puppeteers voiced remotely and controlled the face via remote control.]

That’s why they had such a great sense of movement in those large costumes. You have to be bigger than life, because you can move, and the costume barely twitches. They had a good sense of that, all three of them.

JMS: Tell me a little more about Fraggle Rock. I know that Richard stepped up, in terms of the show. You had Jim and Frank having a lot of other things going on.

JN: They were doing other things at that time, that’s true. And that was the first show that Jim pretty much trusted everybody and knew that everybody would work to his standard. He started off directing the show, and eventually he found directors that they would use. We tried some that didn’t work very well, and they didn’t come back. We found quite a few that worked really well with us. And Richard eventually directed one as well.

JMS: “The Honk of Honks.” Any memories of Richard directing?

JN: He pretty much just would do it. He trusted a lot to the cameramen, because they know their job, so he trusted their judgment on what they did.

But yeah, Junior, and Mudbunny was a really heart-warming character. And of course Philo and Gunge. He and Davey [Dave Goelz] did Philo and Gunge. They had an episode too – their episode, where they leave the trash heap. It’s fun.

JMS: I love Gunge and Philo. There’s a way in which Fraggle Rock is very Canadian, and then all of a sudden it’s like, “Am I in Brooklyn?” And the Trash Heap – I love Marjory.

JN: She was great fun to do. I based Marjory on Maria Ouspenskaya, the great Russian actress. She played gypsies a lot, the gypsy lady. Somebody wrote an irate letter saying, “I’m so disappointed in your show. My son asked me why the trash heap sounded like Grandmother. So you’re equating Jewish grandmothers with trash.”

So for about four or five shows we went outside that. I did an English, I did a black… I said, “Okay, we’ll just offend everybody, and then I’ll go back to being the trash heap.”

They’re doing a Fraggle movie. I don’t think they’re talking to anybody who was involved [with the original series]. I don’t know in what direction they’re going to go with that. It seems strange. I think they’ve got somebody else for music too.

JMS: It’s interesting when they do the new versions, to see what feels essential about an older piece.

JN: I know one thing that bothered Richard, when they did the cartoon version of Fraggle Rock, Junior was nowhere near Junior in the Canadian version.

The guy who did me [Gobo] was pretty close, and the people who did Red and Mokey and Boober, and Pa Gorg, they were all very close. The actors tried to give credence to the original, except for that guy who did Junior. Richard hated it. It ate at him that the guy didn’t even try to come close to the character.

So it’ll be interesting to see what they do with this, and if they try to stay close to what it was, or if they’ll just go in a whole new direction.

JMS: The AIDS crisis became a big issue during the years of Fraggle Rock (1982-87). Did you and Richard talk much about his private life?

JN: No. Richard, to me, was asexual. I think after he realized he had AIDS, he was maybe a little more outgoing with that. I have to admit that when Richard got AIDS, I was angry with him. I had never really thought about that aspect of Richard.

I used to crack him up by doing a swishy gay accent. It never failed to crack him up. I never asked why it cracked him up so much. He would just fall on the floor laughing.

In all likelihood, laughter was probably the way Richard covered up a lot of his feelings. I think that Richard laughed it off, because it was either that or cry. Richard was not a crier.

That’s the thing, as much as anything, we were trying to do when we worked puppets. We were trying to make each other laugh, or make Jim laugh. Or Jon Stone laugh. Because we knew if we got them, it was funny. [laughs]

JMS: I was wondering if you wanted to talk about your daughter Christine, anything that you want people to know or remember.

JN: Certainly when you lose a child, life changes. Your life changes.

In a way, there were a lot of different ways of looking at it, I think because both Jacquie [Gordon, Christine’s mother] and I were right there when Christine died. Although she was not conscious, I think she knew we were both there. When I talked to her I could see tears in her eyes. I’ve asked nurses about this, and they say, “Oh, that could happen, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

Jacquie wrote a really nice book about Christine. I’ve still never been able to read the end.

JMS: It’s sad.

JN: I know. I was there. And I still can’t read it. So your life changes in many ways. But in a lot of ways, too, I hate to even think or talk about the hardship for me because I know the hardship for Christine throughout her life was so much more intense.

It’s interesting to me that now I see a lot of the things that she was going through. Not necessarily the same things, because this [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease] isn’t cystic fibrosis, but it’s similar. I know that I couldn’t understand. I could try to understand, but I had no grasp of what she went through in actuality. Now I do.

But I’ve only been having a real problem with this since 2006. So I would have a long way to go before I would understand what she had to go through.

Jan [his wife] and I talked about having a child, and I said I would not want to ever take a chance on being responsible of putting another child through that.

Although now, their techniques and what they’ve done and learned is better. I just had a letter from a young man who’s 30 and has cystic fibrosis. The life expectancy for Christine was in her early teens, so we were lucky, in a way, that she lived until she was 21.

I think about her a lot, still. I still love when I can have a dream. And I do have them still. I have dreams of Richard and Jim, too. It’s a blessing when you have those dreams, some extra time. And in the dreams, nothing is ever wrong with Christine. She doesn’t have any problems.

JMS: Well, that was too sad. I’m sorry.

JN: It doesn’t hurt us to be sad sometimes. I think it’s not a bad thing at all. My mother used to sing me a lullaby. It’s called “Babes in the Woods.” [crying] I cry every time I think of it. You think, “Why would a mother sing a song that’s so sad?” And I know why. I don’t know that she consciously knew this, but, I believe, it teaches you compassion. And maybe a little humility.

JMS: On a lighter note, what was it like working with Jim Henson? Did he sleep? I mean, how did he do so much?

JN: Yeah, he did sleep. As a matter of fact, often he would stay in town. When I first started working for Jim [in the late ’60s] they had two floors. The bottom floor downstairs was Chuck’s Composite, which was an advertising and model hangout [in New York]. The Muppets had the next two floors. A floor-through which was a big office, with supplies of some kind, and upstairs Don Sahlin had a workshop where things were built. In the back, Jerry Juhl had an office where he could write. And Jim often used to sleep there when we worked late.

I remember traveling on a plane somewhere with Jim, I think it was to England. The whole flight, Jim was working and doing stuff. I watched a movie, and slept. I looked at him and I thought, “If you have to work that hard to be the boss, that long, I’m glad I’m not the boss.” Because I don’t want to work that hard.

We worked long hours too, but his hours were even longer. Often I’d jokingly say, “I didn’t want to have a 9 to 5 job so I took an 8 to 8:30 job.” 8 in the morning until 8:30 at night! Sometimes 12 at night!

It’s a schedule. Fraggle Rock we had to finish Friday, we had to finish in a week. We couldn’t go over into the next week. So Friday night came; if we weren’t done, we went until we were done. I think the latest one they ever had – and I wasn’t there for that one, thank goodness; I finished early – but they worked until 3, 4 o’clock in the morning on a Saturday morning to get the show done.

Yeah, it’s good when you’re young. And we were all still relatively young then. I was probably the oldest of that group. Jim was two years younger than me, and Frank was another two or three years younger.

Yeah, I never thought I’d even live this long. When I was in high school I thought, “How old will I be at the turn of the century? Oh, I’ll be 60. Oh, I’ll never live that long.”

[laughs] Just goes to show you how wrong somebody can be.

Jerry Nelson’s album, Truro Daydreams, is available at CDBaby.com and digstation.com.

I had the privilege of sitting down with Nelson in his lovely Cape Cod home for a two-part interview. Here’s part one, in which Nelson talks about working and playing with Hunt on Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, the zen of puppetry, and much more!

Jessica Max Stein: Tell me about the early days of working with Richard on Sesame Street, what he was like when he first started in 1970.

Jerry Nelson: Richard was 18 or 19. He was like a puppy. He was really bouncy and eager – overeager, really. So we had to sit on him a lot. “Calm down, Richard, calm down.”

JMS: So you and Richard did Snuffleupagus together?

JN: Yeah, we did. That was early on. ’73, maybe ’72. It wasn’t much fun for Richard. It was hot in there. Richard was good and gave him good movement. We’d work outside of the costume for dance things, because there were several times when he would dance.

They used to hang him from up in the ceiling, because there wasn’t a whole lot of studio space. One time I remember, we had this bit [a "bit" is a brief sketch]. Snuffleupagus loved cabbages, and so Big Bird got all these cabbages for him, because he knew it was such a treat for him. And he ate all these cabbages, just kept eating these cabbages, and we’d just put them in the back where the stomach is. We finished the bit, we got out – there was a seam they would open in the side so we could get out – and then they hung him up. We didn’t use him for quite a while. When we came back, the cabbages had been sitting in there for probably a few weeks. It was pretty ripe.

It wasn’t fun for either one of us, but I was close to the mouth, so I did get a little bit of air in there. They were good about it; if we were in it for a long time, they would open up the side, and blow a fan in.

Richard was very spontaneous. We had a lot of fun doing Two-Headed Monster. We had been pals for a while, and so we just really had a sense of where we were going. Usually we would talk over a bit before we did it, just outline it, and then we’d just play with it.

JMS: I heard that the Two-Headed Monster came about because you guys were just playing around.

JN: We were goofing on the set, and there happened to be a couple of writers in the studio, and they came over and asked us what we were doing, and we explained it to them, and it became a character.

JMS: Sometimes it’s hard, when watching a sketch, to tease out how much of what we’re seeing comes from the performer, what comes from the writer, and then of course from the puppet-maker, what is given off just by how the puppet looks.

JN: Well, it’s a combination of all of those things, obviously. We used to have to go in to record things, often before we would see the puppet, which is really difficult because you don’t know what it looks like. It would be very easy to pick a voice which would be counter to what the puppet looked like. But it is a big part of everything.

It also was a big part when Jon Stone was directing, because Jon had been a director, he had been a producer, he had been the head writer, so he covered a lot of territory. He would come in, and there might be a very long, wordy bit, and he would say, “This is way overwritten. We’re going to lose all of this, and here’s the idea, and just do it.” That would often be what we would do. Especially with Two-Headed Monster. With other things, the writers of course were brilliant and give you really good material to work with, so there’s really no need, often.

What often happens is, the puppet is right, you’re right, the words are right, and it just goes somewhere that you kind of almost – it’s not like you’re thinking about it, if you were thinking about it, it wouldn’t happen. It’s very zen, in a way. The target you’re aiming at is yourself, as in darts or pool or golf or any of those sports. It’s the same kind of thing. Because we’re watching ourselves. We’re performing for ourselves as much as anything, because we see what we’re doing [in the monitors], see how it’s gonna look.

JMS: Backwards!

JN: Well, yeah, but you tend to forget that. I forget who said it: “When you do something 320 times, it becomes muscle memory, and when you do it 3000 times it becomes a part of you.” Sort of like that, as far as working with the backward image.

But it really is a combination of everything, of everybody, because also the puppet builders and the costumers give you so much to work with, so it’s easy. Our part is easy. We just show up. [laughs] Really, all of these characters are just elements of ourselves. I think there tends to be a part of us in everything, and we see that, and then we expand that, blow it out bigger than it actually exists in us.

JMS: So would you say there are some characters that feel more like you than others?

JN: Well, I would say probably Floyd and the Count, and there are a couple of others that are probably more like elements of me than others. I don’t think that was necessarily so at the beginning with the Count.

I think in regards to anything we would do, often it was a struggle to find it. Kevin [Clash] probably told you the story about how Richard just threw him the Elmo puppet, said, “Here, you do this, I don’t want to do it.” Richard was very generous. I have a funny story about that.

Richard went somewhere with some friends for dinner. They got there a little late; the restaurant wasn’t closed, the kitchen was still open, but not for long. And so they ordered. There was a group of them, so it was kind of unruly. They got the order in, and they ordered drinks, and the waiter was slow. Eventually the steaks came, and half of them were not right for some reason or another. Richard had been complaining about this waiter every time there was an episode. Finally, he said, “That’s it. Not a penny over 15 percent!” [laughs]

Richard was generous. He’d get something, and he’d just give it to somebody. He took his family to Hawaii, and he bought all the women black pearls. That was just his nature. He had a big heart, Richard did.

JMS: Tell me about filming The Muppet Show. Did the performers live in London?

JN: The first year [1976], Richard and I both took rooms in a hotel called the Portobello Hotel [in London]. It was a hotel where a lot of show people would stay. It does not still exist in the same guise as it was then. Then it was a lot of creative people.

The rooms were tiny. I stayed in rooms there that if you wanted to watch television, the television was often just over the bed, on an arm or something. You couldn’t have more than another person in there. If another person was in there, one of them had to be on the bed. But they weren’t all like that. We had some rooms that were a little better than that.

We had some funny times in there. There was a concierge, or a desk guy, that Richard had conversations with. The concierge was sitting with some people in a lounge area back behind the reception area. He said to Richard, “I want you to meet some people,” and it was the Sex Pistols. Richard, in his genuine way, said, “Oh, what do you guys play?” and one of them said, “Hard-drivin’, kick-ass, f-ckin’ punk rock and roll, like it or not.” And Richard said, [pauses] “Oh.” [laughs] Sort of typical of the Sex Pistols, I guess.

Yeah, a lot of people stayed in that hotel. Patti Smith stayed there, Loudon Wainwright the Third, a couple of science fiction writers. After that we all got apartments in various parts of town. And then he lived in Hampstead Heath, the Vale of Health.

JMS: So that’s about ’80 and ’81.

JN: Yes. He stayed an extra year, because he worked on The Dark Crystal, I didn’t.

As a matter of fact, I was coming back and I wanted to rent his house here [on Cape Cod]. It’s funny when I think about it, because when he was buying that house, in ’79, he said, “They’re selling these houses, you wanna buy one?” I said, “Richard, I’m not going to buy a house in a place I’ve never been!” He said, “But it’s really reasonable, you should buy one. I’m buying the one that I stayed in when I grew up.”

That’s where he is in that picture. That was his favorite place to sit and read, and look out over the Cape Cod Bay. Provincetown is right over there. That was the house he bought. And I didn’t, fool that I am.

I have rented Richard’s house a lot of times. That’s the house we prefer to stay in, because there’s always a breeze through there. Very rare, when there’s not a breeze. Anyway, that’s where he is there. That’s his favorite place to sit.

JMS: To go back to the Muppet years, everyone has these amazing stories about Richard’s parties.

JN: Richard knew how to throw a party. One I remember specifically was a champagne party. One of the guys at the studio knew where to get a good price on Dom Perignon, which at the time was Richard’s favorite. Vintage Dom Perignon. So he had a party, and invited all the cast of the show, the puppet builders and the costumers. This would have been ’77. He had a couple of cases of Dom Perignon. It was a good party.

Another one he had at the Vale of Health. We had gone to see Yes together. We went backstage and met the band. Rick [Wakeman, the keyboardist] told us how at some concerts, he would take a puppet of Rowlf, and he would duck down and play the organ like Rowlf was doing it. Richard and Steve Howe [the guitarist] became friends, and Steve came to that apartment with his wife, and a couple other people. That was a bigger party, because Richard knew a lot more people then, London people.

We did some fun moving around in London, met some neat people. We also went to a Little Feat concert, with Tower of Power brass. That was hot. There was always a lot of stuff happening in London, a lot of stuff to do.

JMS: What did Richard like to eat? You talked about the champagne a little bit, but somebody who lived so joyfully and enjoyably must have loved food, too.

JN: Yeah, he liked good food. On one of our breaks, we had a break from The Muppet Show, and somebody knew somebody at the studio who had a houseboat in Beaulieu sur Mer, which is in the Cote D’Azur of France. So Richard and I took it for a week.

We went to a restaurant in a town back towards Nice. It was a fantastic place, it looked like a big mansion. It was a three-star restaurant. Richard and I went, and we had a bottle of wine, and ordered entrees. The entrees came, and we had them, and they were so good, we had another entree each. They weren’t big American portions. They’re sane in their portions. But it was so good. I think first we had stuffed sea bass, and then we had some steak, probably filet mignon. And another bottle of very expensive wine. It was really expensive, the whole meal. This would have been in the 70s, and it was like $200 for the two of us. But we were living large in those days.

I also remember another party in England. One of our designers on the Muppet Show, Malcolm Stone, he played Old Boys Rugby. So he asked Richard and I if we would do a puppet thing. We did Scooter and Pops, and he gave us all the skinny on everybody, like who was having an affair. So the puppets knew everything about all these guys, and so we took the mickey out of all of them. And then there was what in England they call a big pissup. It was dinner but it was mostly drinking.

During that party, my daughter [who was in America] had a bad episode. Christine had cystic fibrosis and was in the hospital a lot. But she had a bad episode and started bleeding, internal bleeding in the lungs, while we were at this party. So we drove back, and Richard drove me out to my house so I could pack a bag, and then we went back to his place. While I was there I made a reservation on the SST Concorde for that morning. We went back to his place and went out in the park and just talked, sat and talked, until it was time to go to the plane.

JMS: I’m surprised you made the plane. I hear so many stories about Richard being late.

JN: Oh, I’ve got stories. Usually, when we were working, it was uncanny, he would come in just [snaps] at the time. It was hardly ever, “Where’s Richard?” He would come in just in time to rehearse the bit and do it. Once in a while he’d come in and wouldn’t rehearse the bit and still do it. Yeah, he was phenomenally late.

I could tell you more stories than you’d want to hear about Richard being late. As a matter of fact, this has to do with the SST, too. Richard and I were supposed to catch the SST from JFK, going back to London.

This had happened a lot. Richard would say, “I’ll pick you up at such-and-such,” and he was always late. And I was always having to run for planes at the last minute. This time I said, “Richard, I’m going to get myself to the airport. I’ll meet you there, okay?” So he said, “All right, okay.” So it came time, and I’m looking for Richard, no Richard. Boarding the plane, boarded the plane, still at the gate, waiting and waiting, thinking he’s going to run in at the last minute – he missed the flight.

He missed the flight, and this is what burned him afterwards. We had flown over once before, and had talked to the stewardess, and she was interested in what we did. So we had invited her to bring some friends to the studio to watch the taping. She came with three of her pals, all stewardesses, and they watched the show.

So I get on this plane – Richard missed it – and it’s this stewardess. She recognized me, and said, “Oh, it’s good to see you. Thank you again so much, we had a great time, the girls are still talking about it.” Then she says, “Would you like to see the cockpit?” I said, “Sure!” She said, “After we get up in the air, after we get out to sea. The pilot is a friend and he loves the Muppets.”

So I’m sitting there doing the New York Times crossword puzzle, and she comes right back, and she says, “Come now, come now, they said you can sit there for the takeoff.” So I get to sit in the cockpit. There were four seats: there was a pilot, co-pilot, navigator, and an empty seat.

So I’m sitting there, strapped in, and they took off, and after we got out over the sea at Mach 2, he said, “Well, you might as well go back to your seat and have dinner, it doesn’t get any more exciting that than that!” I don’t think that helped Richard be on time in subsequent traveling.

JMS: Any more Muppet Show memories of Richard?

JN: On the second year, when we were going back to England to do the second season of the Muppet Show, we all went back on the QE2. It was Bernie Brillstein, Jerry Juhl and his wife, Jim [Henson] and Jane [Henson], and Frank Oz, and Joe Bailey, who was another writer, and Richard and I. Joe and I hung out together. There wasn’t much to do for us on the boat. We’d get dressed in our tuxes for dinner, go to dinner, and then find a nice bar somewhere, stand around and look elegant with a glass of scotch.

But Richard, on the other hand, Richard got to know everybody on the ship, like down below decks. He went to all the bars – they even had a gay bar. He went back into the bowels of the ship, where no passenger has probably ever been to before. That’s just how Richard was – so open and magnanimous, people were just drawn to him. He was just so friendly.

And yet he kept that kind of innocence. Guileless is a good word. So, on that trip, he knew that boat inside and out by the time that trip was finished. That’s who Richard was.

Stay tuned for Part Two of my interview with Jerry Nelson, in which he talks about working on Fraggle Rock, losing his daughter Christine, the early days of performing with Jim Henson, and more!

That Count/countless pun is the brainchild of Joe Hennes, from Toughpigs’ interview with Nelson. Thanks Joe!

A few hundred people attended the conference, with exhibitors ranging from the Feminist Press to Butt Magazine, an all-day poetry salon, book readings and signings, and a plethora of panels.

My panel, about LGBT biography and history, put me alongside the esteemed Brad Gooch, biographer of Flannery O’Connor and Frank O’Hara, and the marvelous Joan Schenkar, recently nominated for a Lambda for her doorstopper biography of Patricia Highsmith. We talked about how to enter the character of the subject, recreate a historical period and find sources, among other topics. The hour flew by.

The last question was, “Did you have a seed moment when you knew you had to write this biography?” I replied that while I started writing the zine because I was intrigued by Richard Hunt’s participation in dual worlds, I committed to the full-length biography because I came to really care about him through what I found out. As Gooch had said earlier, writing a biography really is like a relationship.

Then Gooch chimed in: “Yeah, it’s like marriage! There’s infatuation, but then you have to live with this person every day. You have to wake up with them every day!” We all laughed, and it was a nice illustration of our differences as an emerging biographer and a more established one. So much to learn!

I also caught the queer playwrights panel, where Sarah Schulman was her usual droll, blunt self. She made a intriguing distinction between entertainment and art – entertainment tells people what they already know, while art expands what they know. Not sure it’s that simple, but fun to think about. Also Tom Leger was charming.

Other highlights included meeting people like Jordan Schildcrout and Adam Baran; seeing excellent queer YA author Rigoberto Gonzalez on the LGBT youth writing panel; winning the rigged raffle; and, of course, running into everyone I know. Good times!

In other news, the Muppet Madness Tournament Round 2 results are in! Some of these are a real surprise.

First, in The Show category, Fozzie took a shocking 67 to 33% victory over Miss Piggy. Kermit took a predicted win over Animal, 57 to 43%, so Fozzie and Kermit meet up in round 3. Will the sidekick edge out the frog? It’s anyone’s guess.

In The Rock, as predicted, Steve Whitmire’s characters won both matchups — Wembley edged out Red 52 to 48%, and Sprocket beat poor Boober 62 to 38%. My guess is Sprocket will triumph in Round 3.

In The Rest, Skeeter beat Hoggle, 58 to 42%, while Bear won out the La Choy Dragon, 55 to 45%. Bears seem to be doing well in this tournament!

The Street was possibly the closest watched category, with Bert and Ernie edging out Elmo, 55 to 45%, in the last days of the round. It was close there for a while! Cookie overtook Oscar, 53 to 47%. I was rooting for Oscar, but Cookie’s good enough for me.

Round 3 has a wild card category — you can vote to bring back your favorite character eliminated in previous rounds! I’m not-so-secretly hoping Beaker makes a big comeback…

Stay tuned for Round 3, and more Muppet- and zine-related news!

The contest divided the candidates into four categories: The Show [The Muppet Show], The Street [Sesame Street], The Rock [Fraggle Rock] and The Rest [various]. Full results are here. You may want to consult this page, as I’m not discussing every single result. This is a gleefully biased commentary.

When Muppet fansites the Muppetcast and Toughpigs first unveiled the Muppetcast Tournament – a sports contest for the rest of us – I thought it was going to be a small, fun poll. But I soon found myself riveted as over 15,000 people voted and the tournament was discussed everywhere from the mental_floss magazine blog to the San Francisco Examiner.

Richard Hunt had only two characters in the tournament. Yes, sadly, “had,” past tense.

First, in The Show, Beaker lost narrowly to Animal, 57 to 43 percent. Joe Hennes of Toughpigs had said he expected Beaker to win due to his recent internet popularity with videos such as Beaker’s Ballad. But Animal won out, as he always seems to do. He must have insta-grow votes! Beaker has been played by Steve Whitmire since Richard’s death, so technically they would have shared the honor.

Second, Richard’s Junior Gorg was trounced by Whitmire’s Sprocket — everybody’s favorite dog besides Barkley — in The Rock. This was the widest margin in the election, 81 to 19 percent. Ouch. I think people don’t like Junior Gorg because he was mean to the Fraggles. Also some fans swear Sprocket is a real dog.

I love Sprocket and Animal, but I’m sorry to see both of Hunt’s characters eliminated in the first round. Maybe next time – this is going to be annual, right guys? – we can have a Richard/Richard pairing, like the pairings of Cookie/Grover (both Frank Oz) and Big Bird/Oscar (both Carroll Spinney) in The Street. I’d particularly love to see a Nelson/Nelson pairing – perhaps Floyd/Lew Zealand in The Show, or Pa Gorg/Marjory from The Rock.

Three Jerry Nelson characters lost by very slim margins. First, on The Street, Bert and Ernie beat The Count, 52 to 49 percent. That one I don’t begrudge so much because, well, it’s Bert and Ernie, the gayest Muppets on Sesame Street (besides Gladys). But I am sad to see sweet, indecisive Wembley strike down brave, companionable Gobo. I love Gobo, especially the song “Follow Me” used in this touching Henson tribute.
Finally, in The Rest category, Nelson’s character Emmet Otter lost to Noel MacNeal’s Bear, which, I must admit, broke my heart. This contest pits modern vs. old-school Muppets; Bear is the lead in The Bear in the Big Blue House, which ran from 1997 to 2003, while Emmet is from “Emmet Otter’s Jugband Christmas,” a delightful 1977 Christmas TV special with music by Paul Williams (who also wrote “The Rainbow Connection”). Bear’s narrow win – 52 to 48 percent – is a little too symbolic in my eyes. Go watch Nelson, Hunt, Henson and Dave Goelz harmonizing here and understand just how excellent Emmet Otter really is.

Another triumph of new-school over old-school is Elmo’s (Kevin Clash) tiny victory over Telly (Martin P. Robinson) in The Street – by 74 votes. That one was so close it almost should have gone to the Supreme Court. I enjoy Elmo – I think he has some direct line to my biological clock – but I love Telly too, so I’m glad this was so close, that classic Sesame gave the modern World a run for its money.

Predictions for Round 2:

The Show
Kermit vs. Animal, Piggy vs. Fozzie.

Crank the Black Sabbath, this is an Oz-fest. Kermit – the only non-Oz character left in this category – is favored to win the tournament. I predict a pig vs. frog showdown. I hope the pig will win. Let’s take this one for the ladies.

The Street
Oscar vs. Cookie, Elmo vs. Bert and Ernie.

Cookie vs. Oscar will be tight, but I hope our resident Grumpy-Pants wins, if only so he can enjoy being annoyed at how many people love him.

If Bert and Ernie do not beat Elmo, there is no justice.

The Rock
Wembley vs. Red, Boober vs. Sprocket.

I am rooting for the underdog in both categories here. Red Fraggle (Karen Prell) is a spunky, spirited tomboy; Boober (Dave Goelz) is a morose, loveable weirdo. I want both to win, but neither is favored. Probably this category will go to Whitmire, who has 2/4 characters here, and is currently leading in both categories.

The Rest
Hoggle vs. Skeeter, Bear vs. the La Choy Dragon

Skeeter, from Muppet Babies, is a tip of the hat to Richard’s character Scooter, so she’s getting my repeat vote.

Bear vs. the La Choy Dragon is another battle between classic and modern, this time even more so. Henson invented the La Choy Dragon for chow mein commercials in the mid-sixties. Henson did the voice and Oz wore the costume;
Oz hated the costume so much he subsequently performed few full-body Muppets. Did Frank Oz suffer in a puppet suit for nothing? I think not. Go look how awesome The La Choy Dragon is. Then go vote for him.

But most of all, have fun! See you next week to discuss Round 2!

The Mean Genie is one of Richard’s one-time Fraggle Rock characters (episode 309). When sweet, indecisive Wembley Fraggle (Steve Whitmire) lets the genie out of his bottle, the genie immediately takes advantage, testing the limits of his temporary escape, teasing, stealing, lying and committing other egregious breaches of community conduct.

I actually think the Mean Genie is less mean than he seems. He’s been shut up in that tiny bottle all his life (“So small, I didn’t even have enough room to change my mind!”), with no freedom, no autonomy, no choices. Little surprise that when finally released from the bottle, he pushes at the boundaries. He is a genie, a magical creature, with different powers than the rest of us. He can move through walls.

The Mean Genie’s power reaches its apex when he hypnotizes all the Fraggles but Wembley – a spell-binding scene for the viewers as well as the Fraggles – and leads them in singing “Do You Want It,” an anti-authoritarian anthem right up there with Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out.” This is the Mean Genie’s rock star moment, high up on stage, his gold hoop earrings and chains glinting in the dramatic manic lights.

I fell asleep and I started to dream,
Dreamed I was trapped in a nightmare machine,
Everyone giving me good advice,
Everyone saying be neat and be nice.

They want you to leap through the hoops and the rules.
They want to creep through the groups and the schools.
Everyone there in the same old show.
Everyone scared to say “No”.

The Fraggles become both audience and participant, the chorus a kind of call-and-response.

Well, do you want it?
No! Get out of our way!
Well, do you need it?
No! Just take it away!
Well, do you want it?
No! Gonna live for today!
Well, do you need it?
No! Get out of our way!

Then I woke up and I started to see,
Everyone yells when you try to get free.
Nobody cares if you laugh or cry.
Nobody cares if you live or you die.

Ironically, the Genie’s cry for individualism comes at the expense of the Fraggles, who by this point in the song resemble a veritable army, standing in rows, wearing identical brown uniform-type tunics and hard hats. Their dancing is a sort of soldiers’ march.

People got rules for the night.
That’s right!
People got rules for the day.
Hey!
Time to get angry and fight.
Start a fight!
Time to get angry and say,

Well, do you want it?
No! Get out of our way!
Well, do you need it?
No! Just take it away!
Well, do you want it?
No! Gonna live for today!
Well, do you need it?
No! Get out of our way!

But when the genie knocks down a Doozer tower, Wembley, horrified and beside himself, finally exclaims, “Stop! This has gone far enough… I let you out of that bottle and I wish you’d stop all this!” And the genie – being a genie – has to grant the wish.

Wembley manages to emblematize the message of the song, yet in a healthy way that considers both the individual and the community. “I wish I could make you understand the difference between standing up for yourself and just doing what you want to do,” he says – and because it is a wish, the genie suddenly does understand, becoming instantly penitent, volunteering to go back in the bottle.

But Wembley uses his final wish to grant the genie his freedom. What strikes me here is how the genie is genuinely surprised. “You wish that for me?” He seems truly relieved and gladdened. “Your command is my wish!” Finally, after eons of granting everyone else’s wishes, someone has granted his own.

I think we see a little of Richard in the genie, in his playful pushing at the boundaries. This same spirit is what led him to cold-call the Muppets from a pay phone at only 19, to ask if they could use his puppeteering skills. It was a wild, brave thing to do – may we all learn from his example to believe in ourselves.

I see this spirit too in how he “lived for today” – in the stories people tell of his perpetual lateness, how he would streak into the theater minutes before the curtain, how he would read the newspaper until seconds before a performance, put down the newspaper as the camera went on. I see it in his love of fine dining and wine, his deep appreciation for beautiful places like the outer edge of Cape Cod and London’s Vale of Health and the canals of Venice, his great generosity to his family and friends and lovers.

This spirit also made him a brilliant performer, unafraid to ad-lib, to upstage, to push the envelope, to go for the laugh. He was an artist. He was an entertainer. And he created many characters, like the Mean Genie who is perhaps not so mean, that are immortally entertaining – and realistic, and complex.

I have faith in the genie. Now that he’s free, I think he’s going to clean up his act. But I do hope he never forgets to have a good time.