The Secret Life of Grover

Until well into my adulthood I could do a pretty mean impersonation of Grover and Cookie Monster. So good that in High School, I had friends who would call me up so that I could do Grover over the telephone to their young siblings. I still own the record pictured above, and don't need to play it 'cuz I know it by heart.

I am blooo-oooo-oooo!

Oh so blooo-oooo-oooo!

I am Blue because I don't know enough about yoooo-ooo-oooo!

*Sigh* Frank Oz was a hero of mine before he started directing movies.

I still own all of my Muppet hand puppets. Some of them are better than others. The Cookie Monster is too small, as is the Kermit, but Miss Piggy is pretty good and Animal, Rowlf the Dog and Grover are absolutely great. The day I got my Grover puppet he hugged me and I felt complete.

At Christmastime I tied a big patch of cotton under his chin and swiped a Santa hat off of one of my mother's dolls, and when my mother walked in the door Santa Grover went "Ho Ho Ho!" at her and she completely lost it. That year Santa Grover had to hand out the Christmas presents.

It got so that I spoke as Grover an awful lot. This is because I knew what Grover would say in any given situation, but I certainly didn't know what I would say in most every situation.

Asperger's. We do the darndest things.

I can't tell you exactly how long this went on. But one day I just stopped and it's been so long that I'm not sure I could do the voice if my life depended on it. Grover just left me one day, never to return. 

-- Freder.

The Migration Habits of the blogger

The business of removing the things that belong to me out of the main part of the house is mostly done, that is, insofar as I am willing to go.

I'm not going to pull the computer out of the office, or clear the desk of my books and papers, I¹m not going to take the television and DVD players out of the kitchen, after all I do still live here and I have to be able to function as normal.

But most everything else, the books that were mine, a few puppets that I played with as a kid, a Steiff clown that was mine, things that I bought or was given -- most of that is now in my rooms.

It's getting crowded.

[Note to self: don't forget Pierre the Bear, or the Steiff Snowman puppet. They're yours, too.]

To make room for all of this meant clearing out my walk-in closet that has not been walk-inable for some time. Thanks to the VHS project that has opened up lots of shelf space in my bedroom, I was able to move all the DVDs in the closet out to other places.

But there were things that just had to go. Three enormous boxes of the comic book that I self-published way back in the early '80s had to be taken out. They are sitting in the barn right now, awaiting a judgment on their fate. I do not know if Goodwill would take them. If not, the only other option is for the recycling man to carry them away forever. There's the fruit of another dream going down the drain.

Like my mother, I had piles and boxes of magazines and newspapers, and it was time to give myself the same treatment I¹d given her in the kitchen. All my old MacAddict magazines, all my old issues of The Buyer¹s Guide for Comic Fandom (later morphed into The Comics Buyers Guide when it was bought out by Krause), catalogs and many other things of equal status, all had to go.

This time it was eight big, heavy garbage bags full.

When it was done I could walk into my closet again, and I had room for my things from the house.

I have also started choosing some artifacts from the estate that I cannot bear to part with. For the most part, these are not so much valuable as they are important memories to me. A set of oversized Babar books, and a doll of Babar as Father Christmas that I gave her as a present. A small, modern Mickey mouse figurine in Halloween gear. Her very new Sock Monkey Jack-in-the-Box. A couple of fanciful figures that she bought from Dollmasters. A Mickey Mouse soft car that I gave her for her birthday years ago -- she laughed and laughed. A Popeye lamp. A Halloween lantern and some other cheap Halloween things that we shopped for together in the last years of her life -- Halloween was always a fun time for us, more on that later.

These things and my own are slowly mixing together in my closet. They will go with me wherever I go from here.

But it's all come with a price. I was doing well emotionally until the last meeting with my lawyer. Reality is coming to Wonderland, and the two things are mutually exclusive.

Lately, I find myself crying all the time.

Let's Get Small

Photo thanks to the Kuklapolitan website, http://kukla.tv/

With a move most likely in my future, I am "slimming down" the things on my shelves and in my closets: books and VHS especially. The books were relatively easy to get through, but harder to part with. Despite donating two big boxes of books that I know I will never read to Goodwill (and a third one ready to go), I still have shelves overflowing with them and stacks of them against the walls of my rooms. Not to mention all of my mother's books, some of which I will want to keep.

But the VHS tapes are a process, and a productive one -- I'm duping everything I can to DVD and getting rid of the bulkier tapes. Already there is much more elbow room where the tapes are stored. My Laurel and Hardy collection is saved for posterity, and it takes up about a half-inch on the shelf instead of two feet!

As a part of the process, this week I got to revisit some old friends: Kukla the Clown, Oliver J. Dragon, Fran Allison and all of the Kulapolitan players.

How would a kid react to this today? No special effects, no CGI, very little in the way of sets -- but also no preaching. no condescension, no potty jokes. Just one man standing behind a screen, talking and singing with one women through the cast of dozens that he wore on his hands.

Most of the characters don't even have articulated mouths or eyes. Like the Punch and Judy shows from which Kukla, Fran and Ollie derives, this is street performance -- in a studio.

It's hard to find anything so charming on the airwaves today. And it was good to revisit these kind-hearted friends from my childhood. I'm glad that I've finally got them in a permanent format, though I will miss the colorful box.

-- Freder.