Is That a Beaker Figure in Your Pocket or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

You can close your mouth now.

Yeah, it's me. I've got something else for you. My goal, believe it or not, is to actually get to a point where I am posting here, at blogzilly and at Mission: iPossible EVERY DAY.

It's totally doable, and I know HOW to do it, I just have to put the plan together and make it happen. Back in the day, when I was writing for the Palisades Toys website, I wrote multiple things for the website, and I kept a spreadsheet for it. I planned the posts in advance, I grabbed stuff I needed, I organized files, I kept it greased up like a giant pair of...um...like a well-oiled machine.

That's what I need to do. Content? I got. Ideas? I got. Time? I actually got SOME of. Skills? Debatable. The issue has been getting my rounded melon-shaped cue ball of a head uncorked from my beautifully shaped and freshly-shorn buttocks.

It was one of Fruitless Pursuits fearless leaders, Uncle Miltie, who suggested that get I back into the swing of things a wee bit as I work toward this Master Plan and post something about Jim Henson, who would have recently celebrated a birthday, since I have such a connection, especially online, with The Muppets, because of the work I did on the Palisades Toys line of Muppet action figures, playsets and other fun stuff.

I can picture that.

I checked out the post Luke was talking about, and a lot of folks were showing some of there rare antiquities, and they were extremely cool.

My position at the company afforded me the opportunity to have hundreds of pieces of stuff that other people would probably walk up behind me and stab me in the jugular for just ONE of them, and maybe it was over-saturation but the stuff part, for me, was not nearly as important when it came to the things like prototypes and shit. Though certainly I think un-produced characters like Sal Manilla are very treasured items, for sure.

Equally treasured are the things that friends I met in the online community sent to me, some Muppet related, and some not. Like the two versions of Evil Kermit that were gifted to me by GBU.

Get it? The more facial hair you have, the MORE evil you are.

And the Jedi Lilly with trusty R2 unit Little People figures that were sent to me by Quinn.

Getting stuff like that always meant the world to me. Still does.

BUT...the one thing that I treasure the most, more than any other, even MORE than jamming my fist up Coookie Monster's ass in the Henson building, is the encounter I had with Jim Henson's son Brian at the ceremony that was held at The University of Maryland, Jim Henson's Alma Mater, where a statue had been created of him in his honor.

Some of us from the company went to the ceremony and the reception, and I had the great honor of meeting many of Jim Henson's family. At the time, I was a smoker, and so was Brian Henson. After the lunch, I was outside, puffing away, and he was out there. We were talking about the line of toys and I told him about the upcoming Dr. Phil Van Neuter figure and he was like 'No Way!' and I said 'Yeah can you believe it?' and we talked about the plans for even making a Sal Manilla. (Well, at least the PHIL came out!)

Brian said that he thought that his Dad would have liked me, and he thought his Dad would have really appreciated the product we were making and the type of company we were, always interacting with the consumers online, always going to trade shows and being so open and available to everybody, essentially just being an open book where most other companies were completely closed-off to that kind of interaction.

We were an eclectic mix of people, and he thought that it was that intangible quality that allowed that line to have the magic it did, much like the Muppets themselves back in the day when they were first conceived.

All the product and the stuff accumulated aside, that is the one thing I treasure more than anything else.

Of course, some PROOF would be nice, but waddya gonna do?

OUT.