As a huge Muppet geek, Tough Pigs is one of my favorite blogs on the interwebs and today they posted an amazing article. Recently they had the pleasure of interviewing Kathy Mullen, the puppeteer and voice behind Mokey Fraggle. I didn’t realize this, but Kathy is married to famous illustrator and frequent Henson collaborator Michael Frith and while they were interviewing Mullen they managed to snap a ton of pics of some rare Michael Frith art.

If you’re a Henson fan you need to go check this out, it’s full of awesome unused art, sketches, and ideas Frith had for pretty much all of Henson’s characters.

Hey there, it’s been a while! For some reason my vacation from this site ended up being a week longer than my vacation from work/real life, but oh well. I’m back and there’s a ton to blog about. First up is yet another attempt by Threadless to steal all my monies, the new Fraggle Rock Collection.

There’s only three designs to pick from, but they’re all pretty great. 30 Fraggle Faces is pretty self-explanatory and looks decent. Don’t be a Party Boober! is probably my favorite, because Boober. The Doozer Contstruction Co. shirt is pretty nice, too. Regardless, Fraggle Rock shirts on Threadless!. I hope the Henson company has some more cool tricks up their sleeves to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of Fraggle Rock.

Will you be picking any of these shirts up? Did I miss anything while I was gone?

We all know I love geek art, but most of the pieces in my collection are prints. That’s all fine and dandy, but there’s something awesome about having an original piece of art that you know no one else has. Our friend Alex Deligiannis sent me an amazing hand drawn version of our Sasquatch logo one time, but until now that has been the only original art in my collection.

Jeffrey Johnson, aka RedHerringJeff, is a friend of a friend, and a very talented artist. I’ve been stalking following him on Twitter and Instagram for a long time, and finally decided that I needed to commission some art. I wanted some Jim Henson art to compliment my Michael DePippo Animal poster, and I knew Jeff was the man for the job.

I already had an awesome 4×4 drawing of Fraggle Rock’s Boober from Jeff due to a contest not getting posted on the site (hey, I paid for it!), so I commissioned another 4×4, this one of Dr. Teeth, and a 8×10 of my hero, Jim Henson.
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Well that was unexpected. Leave it to Chris Hardwick to organize the return of Fraggle Rock and Ben Folds Five in a new music video for the song “Do it Anyway.” There hasn’t been any new Fraggle-related stuff in years, but this is pretty awesome. Check it out and you’ll see Rob Corddry and Anna Kendrick in there, as well as Hardwick, all jamming along with Gobo, Mokey, Red, Wembley, Boober, and Traveling Matt.

Man, what a bummer. Jerry Nelson, lifelong Muppeteer and musician has passed away. Jerry is best known for performing Floyd, Robin, Gobo Fraggle, and The Count, and he’s always been my favorite Muppeteer. He had an extremely versatile voice and I always loved when he got to sing.

Jerry had been sick for a while and passed away yesterday on August 23rd, 2012.

In the past few years, his health kept him from performing but he still recorded voice overs for Sesame Street, and even made a cameo appearance in last year’s The Muppets as the theater announcer. He was a gifted musician, and in 2010 released an album called Truro Daydreams. One of my proudest geek moments on the site was when he left a comment on the post I made about his album.

I usually pride myself in keeping my email inbox cleaned out and manageable, but I’ve never been able to archive the email I got from the site the day Jerry Nelson left a comment. I always wanted to send him a quick email letting him know what a huge fan I was, but I never did. I think I’ll keep that email around.

In addition to the Muppet movies, some of my favorite things Jerry was a part of include Follow That Bird and Emmet Otter’s Jugband Christmas. And of course, it’s impossible to think about Fraggle Rock without Jerry Nelson. He was Gobo Fraggle and Marjory the Trash Heap, Pa Gorg, and many more.

Make sure to read Tough Pigs’ great write up and leave a comment with your favorite Jerry Nelson moments.