Weekend At Kermie’s: The Muppets’ Strange Life After Death

Muppet trailers are making the rounds of the Internet these days. There are a few spoofs: rom-com, superhero and heist parodies, and then the official trailer for the new movie, which promises “muppet domination” this Thanksgiving. Presumably, this domination will mean a return to the box-office and critical success of days of old. And I have to admit: it’s exciting. Anyone who remembers the Muppets remembers them fondly. If there’s an anti-Muppet faction out there, they’ve kept quiet.

Source: The Awl
Published: Jul 13, 2011
Length: 20 minutes (5,096 words)

The Shocking True Tale Of The Mad Genius Who Invented Sea-Monkeys

As anyone sold by the Sea-Monkey ads could tell you, it was hard to say exactly where von Braunhut was walking on the terrain between truth, embellishment and con. That was his gift. He convinced us to look at the jazz hands and lose sight of the footwork. Von Braunhut’s inventions were not quite what they seemed to be. Neither was he.

Source: The Awl
Published: Jun 28, 2011
Length: 8 minutes (2,096 words)

Life After Zionist Summer Camp

It starts at a very young age. The summer after third grade, my parents sent me to Jewish sleepaway camp. I was deeply homesick at first and cried a lot in my bunk bed, but by the end of the month I didn’t want to leave. So I went back, summer after summer—boarding the plane with a few other Jewish kids from my hometown of Youngstown, Ohio, and flying to Appleton, Wisconsin, with a stop-over at O’Hare, where a volunteer from Hadassah would meet us at the gate and try to keep us from the moo shu pork at Wok-N-Roll.

Source: The Awl
Published: Jun 14, 2011
Length: 14 minutes (3,624 words)

The End Of The Rodeo For The World’s Greatest Cowboy

The World’s Greatest Cowboy had to be peeled off his barstool and carried home the night he killed a man. The next morning, in the presence of two deputies from the DeSoto County Sheriff’s Department, the cowboy sat, elbows on his knees, face protected from the light of day by a latticework of fingers, and tried to remember shooting Edward Delaney. He sucked in air, and smelled burnt powder. He breathed out, and caught a whiff of high-proof mucus. He remembered nothing.

Author: Mike Riggs
Source: The Awl
Published: Jun 9, 2011
Length: 21 minutes (5,298 words)

May 21: The Rapture Meets My 40th Birthday

My mother, a former preacher, would call it a warning. She may not have her own church anymore, but she still believes the Second Coming is nigh. She may, in fact, actually expect to be whisked off to heaven on my birthday. I’m not going to ask.

Source: The Awl
Published: May 19, 2011
Length: 13 minutes (3,406 words)

Wikipedia And The Death Of The Expert

It’s high time people stopped kvetching about Wikipedia, which has long been the best encyclopedia available in English, and started figuring out what it portends instead. For one thing, Wikipedia is forcing us to confront the paradox inherent in the idea of learners as “doers, not recipients.” If learners are indeed doers and not recipients, from whom are they learning? From one another, it appears; same as it ever was.

Source: The Awl
Published: May 17, 2011
Length: 17 minutes (4,386 words)

I Was a Russian Tabloid Star

The Russian GQ had rented out the theater, a hideous 1990s edifice glowing at the sidestreet’s end, to hold its Man of the Year awards: “the unofficial start,” in the breathless tabloid formulation, “of Moscow’s social season.” In New York, I don’t usually get to such events without a reporter’s pad. Here, I couldn’t have a deeper cover if I tried. I was a nominee in the Writer of the Year category.

Source: The Awl
Published: May 4, 2011
Length: 17 minutes (4,428 words)

The Last Two Veterans of WWI

Nine years ago, there were 700 left alive.?? With the recent deaths of Frank Buckles, John Babcock and Harry Patch, we are left with Claude Choules and Florence Green. (Upon learning this, Claude remarked: “Everything comes to those who wait and wait.”) Nearly 10,000,000 men were killed in the conflict, 65 million participated, and now we are left with two. Think about that. Think about those numbers. What are you supposed to do when an era is inches away from disappearing???

Source: The Awl
Published: May 3, 2011
Length: 28 minutes (7,169 words)

Inside David Foster Wallace’s Private Self-Help Library

All his life Wallace was praised and admired for being exceptional, but in order to accept treatment he had to first accept and then embrace the idea that he was a regular person who could be helped by “ordinary” means. Then he went to rehab and learned a ton of valuable things from “ordinary” people whom he would never have imagined would be in a position to teach him anything. Furthermore, these people obviously had inner lives and problems and ideas that were every bit as complex and vital as those of the most “sophisticated” and “exceptional.”

Source: The Awl
Published: Apr 5, 2011
Length: 37 minutes (9,439 words)

Canada! How Does It Work?

Friday’s vote took the form of a vote to hold the government in contempt of Parliament for failing to release financial projections about its purchase of 65 fighter jets and certain proposed anti-crime measures. This is the first time in Canadian history a government has been found in contempt of Parliament. But no one who isn’t an op-ed pundit cares about that. The real issue is that our politics is paralyzed—largely by mediocrity but also by certain historical circumstances related to the party machinery in Canada.

Source: The Awl
Published: Mar 30, 2011
Length: 11 minutes (2,920 words)