I Love Kermit the Frog

I do. I really do. Even when he poses nude for Ford commercials or smiles at Lily Tomlin, he's still the frog for me.

I think this is because my favorite book to page through is a coffee-table book that I got years ago as a birthday gift called "Jim Henson: The Works - the Art, the Magic, the Imagination." If you love your inner child you will go buy it here: Click Me

All my other books have the stain of years on them, but not this one. This one I always hold gently and fuss after like it was a little plant, careful not to dent its leaves or get it too wet. As a kid I took it with me on beach vacations, had it constantly by my bedside table to read before sleep. It's a great book about Jim Henson and the people he inspired, about the Muppets, about the movies. It still appeals to me because in a lot of ways I aspire to be Jim Henson. He was a mythic hero of my childhood, the man who worked with Lucas and Spielberg, the magician whose spells cast the Muppets. He was a master storyteller, and he is part of the reason I love telling stories so much. [TMI sidenote: I actually just bought the LP of "The Great Muppet Caper" soundtrack a few months ago so I could crank up "Happiness Hotel" and dance around my apartment to it. I realized, upon listening to it, that this was some serious formative shit - that tune is total ragtime, and I loved it then without knowing why.]

And always Kermit was Jim, Jim was Kermit. So pose away, Kermie. You're the frog for me.

In other amorous tidings, Jessie is the bomb. When we first started dating those many years ago, I used to worry that our interactions could never be "deep" enough. She seemed so surface-level, so situational, and I was the layered, troubled artiste who could never possibly be understood because I was so complicated.

Tonight, though, was a warm reminder of just how keen and "deep" she can actually see. She is my best friend, so I'm a little biased, but I can honestly say that Jessie is the only person I know who can interact with a person for five minutes and instantly know exactly what to say to make them cry.

Now, this doesn't sound like an admirable trait. I think it was one of those gifts developed as self-defense to survive being a tall girl in grade school. And, yes, it has been used for evil. Sometime you have to get Jess to tell you the story about the girl in band who picked on her, so to shut her up Jessie told her "At least my parents loved me and didn't put me up for adoption."

She was sent to the principal's office, which is hilarious on many, many levels.

The gift of the ability, though, at least for me, is her ability to put people into context. She keeps me from taking things the wrong way, from worrying about who feels what or who thinks such and such, from playing the same tapes over and over in my head. You see, the great illusion about me, and I assure you there is only one, is that I appear not to take seriously what is, in truth, for me life and death (all part-and-parcel of my own unique complicatedness that you could never possibly understand... Jesus Christ when does the teen angst ever die). Jess sees through it, both in me and others. Sure, the price is that she could yank out my soul, but it's a small risk to take for a sweet, savvy morsel of genuine interaction.

I love you. Each days yields a new reason why.

Giovanni DeChiaro is serenading me. I think its Joplin's "New Rag." The trio plays like a dream. I'm off to meet him somewhere in the middle.

sweet dreams,

martin