I was recruited for a new position called a Festival Insider Pro, which put me exactly where I wanted to be: roaming on Main Street, the heart of the festival. Though I could have done without the “ASK ME” hat (it kept riding up and making it look like I was a Conehead) and the 8-hour mostly outdoor shifts in below-freezing weather, I had a blast.

I qualified for free lodging, so I spent 12 nights in a decent little condo with three roommates (coincidentally all from the DC area) who are now my friends. I shared a room but got my own twin-size bed… I don’t even remember the last time I slept in a twin. The bed was okay, but I slept a lot better after I acquired earplugs to drown out the busy Park Ave. street noise. I’m used to sleeping in a quiet house in quiet suburbia where I’m usually only awakened by the sound of vomiting cats.

My check-in date and first training were on Tuesday, January 18—two days before the official start of the festival. I was exhausted from the week leading up to my travel, which was not the best way to start out the trip. But Park City was pretty quiet upon my arrival.

(Oh, and my arrival was aided by fancy schmancy Google Navigation on my Droid X! Good thing I got the little doohickey that suctions to my windshield to hold my phone at eye-level. Unfortunately, Google Navigation really only helps when you enter the correct address.)

I skipped the two available volunteer film screenings (Bengali Detective and Mad Bastards) that evening in favor of sleep. It was a good choice. Tuesday was full of meeting people, smashing a bunch of learning into my brain, receiving my wardrobe plus accessories, and participating in a trial-run tour of Main Street with the other Main Street Insider Pros. The day looked like this:

My wardrobe consisted of a Kenneth Cole-insignia’d royal blue down vest, which I knew about, and may have partially contributed to my choice of coordinating pink hair… whoops, I forgot to mention that I refreshed it a few days before the festival. It looked sort of this, and my apologies but I was tired and this is the only photo that even came out:

Anyway, all Sundance volunteers received the blue Kenneth Cole vest, a gray hat (sponsored by Chase Sapphire), and a scarf (sponsored by Acura). For my specialty position, I also received a bright pink (it matched my hair!) pin that said “ASK ME,” a dorky white “ASK ME” hat, and a black messenger bag that was printed with “ASK ME” in an orangey-red that was apparently supposed to be pink. Of course I also had a credentials pouch on a lanyard, where I stuck a few buttons over the course of the week. I accepted a special “Jeg Snakker Norsk” button to announce that I speak Norwegian… which came in handy twice during the festival. First time!

All outfitted, I looked something like this:

And you can’t really tell because all of my photos were taken with my Droid (whose 8MP camera is most certainly not as good as my 8MP Canon Powershot or my 8 million MP Canon Rebel that I did not take along) but in this photo I am wearing glamorous blue and silver eye shadow thanks to Isaac in the l’Oreal sponsor room. Well, you probably wouldn’t be able to see it even with a better camera because my eyelids are invisible thanks to genetics. But I’m wearing l’Oreal mascara, which in theory you should be able to see. And please just ignore the yellow shirt underneath because it doesn’t really match. After I saw this photo I made sure that my scarf (which was mine, not the blue-gray one that Acura provided because I actually didn’t get mine until later that week) was tucked into my vest and hiding whatever garishly-colored shirt I wore each day.

With all of these excuses, I wonder why I’m even posting this photo. I don’t know. Maybe because I went to the trouble of putting all the links in the right places, and you should appreciate the time and effort I’ve taken to write this lengthy and not really descriptive post?

Uh-oh, I’m starting to go all Meta and breaking that fourth wall. I think it’s time to wrap up this post and take a breather before starting up part 2.

But at least let me leave you on a positive note from Wednesday before the festival officially started: I attended a volunteer screening of the documentary Being Elmo, which is about Kevin Clash and the puppeteering journey that led him to become Elmo’s alter-ego and a major player on Sesame Street. As a lifelong Muppet fan, I knew I’d love it, but even so I was still impressed and loved it more than I thought I would. When it comes out, you should definitely see it. My favorite part was learning about how, as a teenager, Clash was ridiculed by his peers because he was obsessed with puppets. But he set his skills to use entertaining kids around the neighborhood and started working on a local children’s TV show while still in high school, turning his reputation around. Like most of us geeks, he never forgot what it was like to be labeled different, and that had an effect on how he and his characters developed.

Being Elmo hasn’t been picked up for distribution yet to my knowledge, but when it comes out, trust me that this is a documentary you have to see. I dare you to not get teary-eyed.

Free Comic Book Day is an annual nationwide event sponsored by  industry representatives in publishing and distributing comics. If you haven’t been in a comic book specialty shop in a while (or *gasp* NEVER!), this is the day to go.

If you’re thinking to yourself that comics are just for kids and for those socially inept guys who live in their moms’ basements, well, you’re partially right. Comics are for them. But there’s a good chance that you’ll like some of them, too. Aside from the forever-ongoing Marvel and DC comics like Spiderman, X-Men, Batman, and Superman, there are a lot of literary and entertaining gems in the comic world.

The FCBD site has some basic information for those new to comics, but if you’re a “mature reader,” i.e you don’t mind the F-bomb or mature themes like sex and violence, I would recommend that you start out with the following Vertigo-imprint series that are now available in (multi-volume) book form: Fables, The Sandman, and Y: The Last Man. Fables is the only one that still has new issues coming out.

Want to start with something a little more tame but still really good? Try the complete collection of Bone comics. I would personally steer you away from ye olde Archie comics, though new ones are still being released on a regular basis.

If you have the opportunity to start some kids out on comics, or even just reading in general, there are lots of kid-friendly options including Pixar movie spin-offs and The Simpsons. I recently nabbed the first issue of The Muppet Show at Dragon’s Keep in Provo. It’s nothing spectacularly literary, but it’s fun and I’m a sucker for anything Muppet-related (even if I end up panning it).

So get thee to a local (participating) comic book store on Saturday and get thine free comics!

Unfortunately, the special wasn’t as good as I’d hoped. It was more painfully contrived than any other Muppet special I’ve seen and in that way it felt a lot more Disney than Muppet. Still, there were a few cool things in the 44-minute special.

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

Things I didn’t like: The script—the plausibility, the writing, and the pacing. Most of the songs. The little girl’s acting—she was cute, but could have benefitted from better direction or a more believable script. The Swedish chef’s cameo was horrible—he’s a chef, not a waiter, and needs cooking-related improv time if he’s going to be used at all. Statler and Waldorf’s heckling was lame, which is really saying something.

The casting choice of Richard Griffiths as Santa Claus was weird—with an otherwise all-American cast, it threw me off that Santa had a British accent and especially in the familiar voice of Harry Potter’s Uncle Vernon. Beaker outsmarts Bunsen—that’s just one of those running gags that shouldn’t be messed with. Charlie Brown never kicks the football, and Beaker should always be the victim in Bunsen’s experiments. I’m also not sure how I feel about Beaker presumably getting some.

Things I liked: The opening sequence had some neat animation featuring some of the actual Muppet postage stamps from a few years ago. Beauregard had more on-screen time than I’ve seen for a while, and the Electric Mayhem members all have at least one line. Uma Thurman was a great North Pole Airlines representative, even though her role could have been written better. Sam the Eagle reminded viewers that opening someone else’s mail is a federal offense. Nathan Lane as a bully TSA agent. The Tudor palace architecture of Santa’s Workshop.

I wish that Whoopi Goldberg’s cameo as the cab driver would have been expanded… but as it was, it called a couple things to mind.

First was David Johansen’s role as the gravely-voiced, taxi-driving Ghost of Christmas Past in Scrooged. Second, and maybe I’m reaching, is the fact that Whoopi played God in A Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie (which was probably the last good Muppet special we’ll see now that Disney owns the Muppets), and George Burns’ God character drove a taxi in the 1978 movie Oh, God! Coincidence? Or am I the only one who grew up imagining that if a holy apparition appeared to me it would be in the form of cigar-puffing George Burns?

Rowlf has one line at the end, when during the closing medley he sings “Let’s take a moment of thanks for the dreams that are coming true.” I understand that that’s supposed to be a shout-out to Jim Henson, but given the quality and execution of the rest of the show, it made me wince rather than cheer.

Another thing that made me wince was the title: “A Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa.” Who was the genius to green-light that grammatical error? It should either be “A Muppet Christmas” or “The Muppets’ Christmas.” I don’t care if Disney is trying to brand “The Muppets” in the plural sense—that title is making my eyes bleed.

There’s a line at the end of the show that I think sums it up well. Statler says to Waldorf, ” I don’t know about you, but I think this is my worst Christmas yet!”

Yep. Thanks, Disney, for ruining my Muppets. In the same way that the over-merchandising of the live-action Grinch movie missed the point a few years ago, I think that Disney just doesn’t get the Muppets. Maybe someday that will change.

I’m not holding my breath.

But the house finally has some lights up in electric holiday fashion, and the tree is also up in the living room. Ben wants to add some more lights before we put on the ornaments… but it’s very pretty even without ornaments, as it turns out. Usually we start decorating the tree as soon as it’s up so we rarely leave it partially naked like it is now.

Yesterday we took in our friends’ three girls so that their parents could get some Christmas shopping and wrapping done without them around. We probably fed them too much sugar, but we had a lot of fun playing the Wii and watching one of my favorite Christmas specials that they’d never seen: A Muppet Family Christmas.

The only copy I have is a VHS tape that I bought in college because my taped-from-TV version had worn out… but unfortunately the “flashback” scene of the Muppet Babies singing “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” is edited out because of licensing issues. Bummer. And now that Disney owns the Muppets, the chances of seeing them on DVD together with the Fraggles (still owned by Jim Henson Company) and the Sesame Street Muppets (now owned by the Sesame Workshop) are pretty slim.

The girls have grown up watching the Fraggles on tape and, more recently, DVD, so they were really pumped about seeing some new Fraggle material. (Um, unless the fact that it was actually made 21 years ago disqualifies it as new.)

They were extremely disappointed that there wasn’t more Fraggle interaction and that they weren’t discovered by any Muppets except Kermit and Robin. They also thought that the Christmas Carol medley at the end went on a little too long. But they loved the rest of it, and the oldest (who is 13) recognized Jim Henson’s cameo at the end. That made me happy.

Here’s a new clip with a Sam the Eagle who, despite sounding weird because he’s not being voiced by Frank Oz, is still a bumbling ball of blue Muppet joy with his Declaration of Independence: “We the people, in order to form a more perfect unton, establish justice, and keep the world safe from weirdos…”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDA9NbPAK8o

And here’s an oldie but goodie: a 4th of July/Christmas Medly with Hal Linden from The Muppet Show Season 5.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wehnMHeVzE

I don’t really have any plans for this weekend, except for trying to pry Ben away from working on the house for long enough to barbeque some large slabs of meat and fresh pineapple. Have you ever tried grilling fresh pineapple slices? Seriously, even if you’re the most serious meat-eater, there is something delicious about sweet, juicy pineapple with grill marks on it and the heady flavor of charcoal. It probably wouldn’t taste the same on a gas grill, but I’ve not tried that so I don’t know.

Now if I could build myself a Sam the Eagle muppet, he might not have the same opinion about grilled pineapple. He might be inclined to say that it’s un-American (in what would definitely NOT sound like Frank Oz’s Sam the Eagle voice) because it doesn’t sound like traditional American fare.

But pineapples are from Hawaii, right? Which became the 50th state in 1959. So pineapples are, therefore, QUITE American.

In conclusion: Grilled Fresh Pineapple = Magically Delicious, and possibly Patriotic.

What surprised me is how long it took the interviewer to hang up on Steev during their (videotaped*) phone interview.

This is the same guy who used to torture telemarketers when they called by speaking gibberish (or saying "poopie") to them for as long as he has free time. The nature of their job made it h difficult for them to hang up on him, and he got the biggest kick out of that. Maybe he’s stopped by now?

Nowadays, if you’re in the Chicago area, you should go to see his live Saturday night game show called "Don’t Spit the Water" or one of his other Blewt! productions.  Puppets by Noah Ginex, whom I revere as an even greater fan of The Muppets.

*Is is still okay to say videotaped if the thing was recorded on a DVD or hard drive camcorder? What else can I call it? 

I like the simple look of that blog. I need to reformat my blog at some point. Also, I need to fix the forum. Still. I know, I suck. I remind myself that every time I think about the lameness of having anything out-of-date on my site. Hopefully next month, when a “real” web person goes full-time at my place of employment, I’ll be motivated to look at some code and fix up the site a bit. Right now I can’t do anything at work, and coming home the last thing I want to do is go to my computer. I must be sick, right?

My first priority is to fix the hellish, spam-infested forum.

smp and Stardust are awesome people, for what it’s worth.