Lise's Ramblings

For several weeks now, I’ve savoured one to two pages daily from Imagination Illustrated: The Jim Hensen Journal . In this book, curator-archivist Karen Falk and Jim Hensen’s eldest daughter Lisa Hensen combine excerpts from the Muppet creator’s journals with photos, sketches, script doodles and biographical notes, spanning 1954 to 1988. What a joy! While most of us know Jim Hensen’s work―ranging from Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock through to The Muppet Show and scores of other TV specials and movies―people recognized his talents well before any of those accomplishments. By the time he headed off to the University of Maryland, nobody could overlook Jim Hensen’s creativity. He had illustrated high school publications, designed sets for shows and performed from time to time. As a freshman, he secured his own TV show, Sam & Friends , and started a poster business of his own. He quickly moved on to creating funny commercials for Wilkins Coffee Co. In 1958, the ...

As much as we may joke about winning the lottery and countdowns to vacations or retirement, most of us appreciate holding down jobs, particularly for the regular pay cheques and health benefits to keep bills at bay. That’s the gainful employment part. For the safe part, I don’t mean a secure job for as long you want to work; we all know that no longer exists. No, I mean not worrying about being abducted and forced to work in unsafe conditions for measly pennies, in the sex trade, or in other undesirable situations under threat of death. Is this the 21 st century or not? By safe, I mean we enjoy the freedom to: walk in public without the danger of being hauled into an unmarked van and whisked off against our will to serve someone’s bidding; have jobs that don’t jeopardize our physical safety; make mistakes in a role without worrying that we or anyone with whom we associate will be severely reprimanded or tortured; and, accept or decline a job offer without fea...

I originally posted the rambling below as my first guest blog entry on 1000AwesomeFriends.org , but I'm also re-posting the text here, where it is searchable. (I've written so many posts that the only way I can only avoid repeats by searching my own site to see if I've written about a topic or simply thought about writing about that subject.) Has your birthday come and gone? Are there no statutory holidays on your horizon? There’s no need to wait for a day off from school or work to let loose and shake things up a bit. Just go ahead, pick a festivity from another nation or culture, then find your own way to mark that occasion. As it is, people around the world wear shamrocks, listen to Irish tunes, and eat and drink green food colouring on March 17th. Do we all have ties to Ireland? No, but that doesn’t stop us from whooping it up on St. Patrick’s Day. It’s easy to find something to celebrate. Take today for example, it’s Cinco de Mayo. That party is no longer just...

It’s odd that most of the Christmas classics tend to be ones filmed back in the 1940s through to the late 1960s. Here are some examples of the major ones: ·           Holiday Inn (1942) ·           It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) ·           Miracle on 34 th Street (1947) ·           Scrooge (1951) ·           White Christmas (1954) ·           Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) ·           The Sound of Music (1965) ·           A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) ·           How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966) ·       ...