Monday, May 23, 2011

Oscar the Grouch



Oscar always makes me think about Garbage's "I'm Only Happy When it Rains"
 
I've been feeling sort of uninspired lately--blah, cranky and generally unproductive. After giving in and wallowing in my lousy mood for a while, I finally got to work and ended up with one of my favorite Muppet/Sesame Street balloons so far and am feeling much perkier.

I guess it's ironic that this story about Oscar's miserable origins (from the Muppet Wiki) makes me really, really happy:

According to Sesame Street Unpaved, "The character of Oscar was inspired by a nasty waiter from a restaurant called Oscar's Tavern in Manhattan. Jim Henson and Jon Stone were waited on by a man who was so rude and grouchy that he surpassed annoying and started to actually amuse both Jim and Jon. They were so entertained that going to Oscar's Tavern became a sort of masochistic form of luncheon entertainment for them, and their waiter forever became immortalized as the world's most famous Grouch." In the Ask Henson.com web column, Jim Henson Company Archivist Karen Falk said that the restaurant was named Oscar's Salt of the Sea -- and went on to say, "Some of the designs that we have in the Archives were done by Jim Henson on Oscar's paper placemats!"

Now SCRAM! (And, uh, come back soon. I'm thinking of trying Oscar's buddy Slimey next.)

8 comments:

  1. Thats AWSOME!!! think next you can make bert???

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  2. I'm in the planning stages with Bert right now--he's on the way!

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  3. That is wonderful!!
    Put "Super Grover" on your list... complete with cape!! ;)

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  4. ACK! You HAVE done Super Grover! Should have look at the archives before posting! ;)

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  5. Do you remeber how many balloons the oscar took???

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  6. Fewer than most of the Muppets--about 15 or so.

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