“Scrooge said that he would see him—yes, indeed he did. He went the whole length of the expression, and said that he would see him in that extremity first.” – Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
…and it seemed like a weirdly appropriate film to be watching.
I love that movie and I especially love that it’s played so straight. Whole segments of dialogue are lifted from the book and said by Muppets and it works! Scenes of sincere and saddening human emotion are acted out by Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy and I never doubt it all for a minute. Honest to god, I think Charles Dickens, once someone had explained to him what a Muppet was, would have loved Muppet Christmas Carol.
Anyway. At the end of the movie Gonzo very wisely suggests the audience read the book. So, with less than a hour to go before the election results start coming in, here’s a significant bit from the book that didn’t make it into the movie (although I’m sure the Muppet performers would have done a good job with it.)
The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.
Start out perfect and don’t change a thing. Always accentuate your best features by pointing at them. And conceal your flaws by sucker punching anyone who has the audacity to mention them.
Never too old to learn from the Muppets.
And this:
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye.” – Miss Piggy
