Muppet Fandom at Eleven: A Story of… well… My Awesome Obsession!
Maxwell Jessop - Throughout my life, the Muppets have been there. Whether as cameos or as one my biggest obsessions! I know I’m only eleven years old, but believe me I have much to tell!
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In my early years, I watched
Sesame Street and
Bear in the Big Blue House. I loved Ernie as a little kid, and still do! I even have a picture of me at 1 ½ hugging an Ernie stuffed toy! I was practically a Muppet fan from the beginning.
However, I didn’t know about the Muppets from
The Muppet Show yet. On a trip to Walt Disney World in 2006, I was introduced to those Muppets. Unfortunately, I was afraid of them... My parents did get me to go on
MuppetVision 3D, but throughout the show I was closing my eyes and holding their hands. Luckily two years later, at the age of 9, I went on another vacation to Disney World! This time I was still afraid, but afterward I wasn’t afraid. I actually liked it a lot! And thus a new Muppet fan was made!
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The same year, before I moved to Tennessee, I was told by my friends that there were Muppet YouTube videos (I actually had read about them on Muppet Central but I thought it would be inappropriate or fake). But you see, before this I wasn’t actually allowed on YouTube without my parent’s permission. After this I was basically allowed to watch anything on there that wasn’t inappropriate. But also because of my friends' news, I might’ve never seen any of the Muppet viral videos. Especially Bohemian Rhapsody, which is my one of my favorite Muppet viral videos and one of my favorite Muppet songs (seriously, when I got it on my iPod, I listened to it a bunch of times and memorized the words in the Muppet voices)!
Anyway, from that year onward, my love for Muppets grew. In 2009, I began to watch
Sesame Street again and saw my first Sesame Street in years: “Firefly Show.” After that I loved it again! Also later that year, I celebrated the 40th anniversary of the show and saw almost every episode of that season!
It was also a good year for Muppets; I started my Muppet DVD collection and got some of
The Muppet Show season sets! And I was also introduced to The MuppetCast podcast and got more and more interested in the posts on Muppet Wiki.
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Though, my fandom kept growing in the past, 2010 was the one of the awesomest years in Muppet fandom for me! In February, through Google, I stumbled upon a certain blog with a Kermit/Gonzo/Pepe header called The Muppet Mindset! I immediately liked the site and read a few posts. The first post I read was “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Muppet Movies,” which listed, obviously, seven habits of highly effective Muppet movies! Afterward, I read some of the “Discovering the Best of the Muppets at Their Worst” and began to read the site more and more until later that year I read it daily, as I do now!
In March, I also got more into the Muppet fan sites and, with the help of my dad, became a member of Muppet Central Forum! With the forum and the Mindset in my reach I knew the latest Muppet news. I found out about the new Muppet movie through the Mindset, though, I knew more with the forum’s help! By this time, I was obsessed! I read everything on the Mindset, looked at most things on the forum, and, by May, started listening to every new show on the MuppetCast. I sure did find my Rainbow Connection!
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Moving right along! Why did I just reference to Muppet movie songs in one post? Oh yeah! To be funny! Anyway, there’s not much to tell after that. Except for the fact that in October I met legendary Muppeteer Dave Goelz and legendary stuntman and poultry enthusiast Gonzo the Great! But what made it even awesomer is that I met the creator and head writer of the Muppet Mindset, my favorite Muppet blog of them all, Ryan Dosier! That day was awesome--Dave Goelz even signed my Muppet comic book!
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Max as Beaker |
I’m just a big obsessed Muppet fan, well, not really big… I’m only 11! But don’t let that fool you – Muppet Wiki has taught me much! But I am obsessed! I even went as Beaker for Halloween! That tells you that I’m more than a regular fan! I can’t say much else but I wanna end with saying, I love the Muppets! That’s basically my obsession!
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When Ryan Met Max |
And as I recall, Dave was also surprised and delighted to see that you knew who Digit was, and that you had included him in your AMAZING picture.
ReplyDeleteMax, Roz and I loved meeting you at the Dave Goelz thing this fall. You give us faith in the future of Muppet fandom.