A Sordid Business...

Somehow or other one of Mike's latest posts got us around to the seamy side of Sesame Street and, by extension, the Muppet Show.

Please, folks, can't we keep any innocent illusions? I know, I know, there was Miss Piggy's scandalous tell-all bestseller followed by her trip to, and subsequent escape from, rehab.

There was Gonzo's conversion to Fundamentalist Christianity and his cable tv show, and then the scandal when it all came crashing down after the 60 Minutes story about the week he spent in that hotel room with 3 Albanian hookers...

Did anything prepare us for the revelation about Kermit and Scooter? Yes, Kermit was Scooter's "uncle", but not the kind we thought...

I will never forget the sadness I felt when I was clicking around cable one Sunday morning and found Cookie Monster selling excercise bikes on one of those low-budget infomercials.

And don't get me started on "Big Bird -the Fragrance" (available at K-Mart).

It's all very sad. Especially Miss Piggy. I mean, what was she thinking when she agreed to go on last year's taping of "Survivor -Stranded on a Desert Island"? Did she stop to think about what might happen if somebody upset a raft and all the food was spoiled?

Did she suspect anything when they started building the barbeque pit?

I suppose her memory lives on in her epitaph. How many of us, when the Final Bell rings and we go to that Big Barbecue Pit in the sky, will have it said of us that we were "crispy and delicious"?