Tag: Muppets

As so often happens, one random encounter leads to another…and next thing you know I’ve gone off on a tangent. Or series of tangents, like now.

A few days ago my blog post was about Beaker (of the Muppets) and his (very) interesting rendition of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.

Now, I’m not quite sure how it happened, but I was completely unacquainted with the Muppets until seeing Muppet Treasure Island on DVD in 2004.

I was living in Switzerland at the time and have no idea how I came to own the movie. Perhaps I read a good review or something, because we barely had internet then and movies were still something we either rented or bought. All I know is that I loved it and couldn’t believe I had never seen anything of the Muppets up to that point.

I mention this to explain why I got so caught up in watching video after video of musical scenes from the original Muppet Shows. My goodness, but they were brilliant, hilarious, and musically spot on!

So finally I ended up watching a video of Kermit the Frog singing The Rainbow Connection. I recognized the melody from my days performing it as a flute and harp instrumental with my friend, Vicki. But now I found it deeply moving, especially finally hearing the words.

Which made me want to know more about the songwriters. Didn’t find all that much interesting about Kenny Ascher, but Paul Williams was another story altogether.

I’m still going to write a blog post about The Rainbow Connection and Paul Williams, but for now I’ll just mention that he had a blog, and also co-authored a book, titled Gratitude and Trust. That tells you something right there.

Meanwhile, all these tangents caused me to miss my publishing deadline for tonight. Argghhh!