The Monkey King's Used Primate Emporium and Book Reviews

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Jim Henson, et al., "The Muppet Show Book"

Started January 21 � Finished January 21; 200 pages. Posted 22 January 2002

As a child, I wasn�t allowed to watch anything but PBS programming until I was nine years old. Even then I�m pretty sure the rules of television-watching entailed no more than six hours a week or something close to that. But I�m not sure my parents knew how subversive some of these shows were, and I can now safely state that I got my entire philosophy in life from a skit performed on Sesame Street (later rebroadcast on The Muppet Show).

The skit was a musical number entitled "Manahmanah," and it entailed a huge monster surrounded by two birds (later scaled down on The Muppets to a smaller monster and two alien-type bird-things). The introductory music starts and when it hits the end stanza, the monster in the middle says, �Manahmanah,� to which the birds who are dancing from side to side sing �Do-do deedodo.� The monster says �Manahmanah� again, and the birds sing �Do do de do,� which leads to another �Manahmanah,� and the birds sing a longer chorus that goes like �do-do deedoodo, dedodoo, dedodo, de doo-dedoo do do do do do.� (C�mon, you all know this song!)

Then the monster decides to bust out in a solo and starts shouting, �Manahmanah, manha! Mah mah mahnama! MAH! Mahmahmahnamah!" In the meantime, the two birds stop dancing and look over him in with an expression (well, with as much expression as you can get with googly eyes, anyway) that says, �What the fuck is this guy doing?� The monster notices that he�s being stared at, gets nervous, and then goes back into the song.

�Mahnamanah.�

The birds get happy again and resume dancing. �Do-do deedodo.�

When the song reaches the end of the stanza, the monster again tries to sing his solo. The birds stop dancing and look at him again, shaking their heads in shame. The monster notices again, and resigns himself to going back into the regular chorus. The birds again become happy and dance.

This continues for a while, and you can tell the monster is getting really tired of singing this stupid fucking song. Now when he says �Mahnamanah,� you can hear the contempt in his voice.

So, the monster in the middle represents the individual. The birds on each side represent society as a whole. The monster wants to sing his own song, but it brings about the contempt of society, which wants him to continue doing the same thing. So what happens at the end?

The monster eats the birds.

They tuned this down for when they showed it on The Muppet Show, and the monster ends up leaving the theater, still a good message in itself.

Socrates? Bah. Descartes? A drunken fart. Give me Sam the Eagle, Gonzo, and Super Grover any day.

And before anybody tries to make fun of me, I�d just like to point out that Alan also owns this book.


Rating: Despite how much I love the Muppets, this book is kind of lame. Flea market prices. Mahnamanah.

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