A Fuzzy Memory

Everyone loves The Muppets, it's just a fact. There's a few things in this world in the realm of entertainment that everyone just adores. Dr. Seuss, Peanuts and The Muppets are among those. But I'm willing to bet, even if you call yourself a fairly big Muppets fan, that even you don't know about this one. Released in 1972 as a 50 minute television special, it's an adaptation of the classic story of the Town Musicians of Bremen. If you don't know the story, allow me to sort of clue you in here, through this adaptation. There's 4 animals, Leroy the Donkey, TR the Rooster, Catgut the Cat and Rover Joe the Bloodhound. Each lives in a horrible environment, often abused by their owners, and each, for some reason that's never really explained in any way, seems to be extremely well versed in an instrument. Eventually, Leroy runs away and meets the others, one by one, and they form a group for play music together until finally facing down their former "owner...

I generally don't like to focus on one company back to back, like I'm doing with Disney these past two weeks, but since it's October now, I'm going to forgo my own rules and discuss one of the first things that came to mind when I created this blog, and that is Disneys Halloween Treat.  The special is a 1982 Halloween themed episode of the television anthology series "Walt Disney" which originally aired on October 30th. It's a fairly simple thing, chock full of Disney's "spookiest" bits from old cartoons and movies, including Night on Bald Mountain from Fantasia and Ichabod Crane & the Headless Horseman, which, if you can find to watch, I highly suggest you do. It's a wonderful lost piece of classic animation.  There was also, in 1981, another special titled A Disney Halloween, a 90 minute Halloween special which originally aired as part of the Wonderful World of Disney on October 24th. For the sake of nostalgia, I'll be covering ...

Despite being a beloved corporate overlord of the entertainment industry, every now and then there's just a Disney project that just sort of becomes...lost to time. Perhaps it's due to timing, perhaps it's due to lack of availability, but whatever the reason, some things Disney makes are just lost in the shuffle, never to be seen or heard from again. Until I come along and remind you all they exist, via this blog. This weeks post is one of those times. When I was a little girl, I caught a movie on TV. To be fair, I didn't even know it was a Disney movie for the longest time, and also, I was never really an enormous Disney fan to begin with, so. Either way, I caught a movie on TV, and that movie was called Susie Q. What makes Susie Q extremely interesting to me is not actually how lost it is, though that's interesting too, but more so that it's a Disney movie. Well, to be fair, it wasn't actually a Disney movie proper, they were simply the distributors of it ...

    Nostalgia can make you love even the most baffling things. Nostalgia is the best liar that we have, quite honestly. Something truly terrible you might adore, simply because it came to you in a part of your life when you needed it, or when you enjoyed it for what it was, instead of seeing it for what it truly is. This is why people still like certain shows they grew up with, despite a good handful of them being just trash. When I was growing up, I really only had a select few things to watch, because for a good while when I was little, we didn't have cable. Because of this, I wound up renting movies a lot, and a lot of those are, admittedly, still movies I love today. Some of which have since then become all time classics. Stuff like Nightmare Before Christmas, Hocus Pocus, or Beetlejuice. But some of them, even I'll admit despite my fondness remaining, are pretty terrible, honestly. And none is a better example than what the spotlight will be shone on today; The New Advent...

In the 90s, puppets essentially became the overlords of educational television. Sure, Jim Henson really solidified this back with the creation of Sesame Street, but it wasn't, in my opinion, until the 90s that it really took hold. Suddenly, there was an influx of edutainment that was bursting at the brim with puppets. Whether it was something like Mr. Rogers, where the puppets were more of side characters, or something like Lambchop, who was the star, puppets teaching kids became as normal as 80 year old women with bad hairdos teaching kids. But none stick out in my mind as such a fever dream as Timmy The Tooth. I can't remember who it was who originally gave me the Timmy The Tooth VHS I had, it may have been my mother, it may have been my grandmother, that knowledge is forever lost to me, but I can say that whoever was responsible for it shouldn't have been involved in childcare, because Timmy The Tooth is simultaneously completely fine and absolutely horrific. Looking bac...