I Am Big Bird. OK, I’m not actually Big Bird but I saw his new movie at least!

Not the right Hillary but you get the idea. (Photo credit: The U.S. National Archives)

This Saturday, I dragged my husband to the US premiere of I Am Big Bird, a documentary about Carrol Spinney, the man behind Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch. The film itself is fantastic and not in wide release so, if you hear about the chance to see it, take it! You will not regret it. They found some amazing behind the scene footage including some home video shot during the filming of Muppet Family Christmas. I don’t care how casual a Muppet fan you are, seeing everyone run through that beloved special WITHOUT PUPPETS ON THEIR HANDS is just too cool for words. I really hope they include more of that video on the DVD which, needless to say, I will be buying.

The filmmakers, Carrol and his wife, Deb, all did a Q & A later and Carrol busted out Oscar. I didn’t stay to get a picture with him for reasons I explained here. But it was an amazing event and something I would have happily paid much more for which is why it was extra sweet it was only $15. Still not as cool as that amazing Carnage Hall Jim Henson tribute with every Muppeteer ever (almost) that only cost $7 we saw a few years ago, but a good time. 

I’m really looking forward to when I can start bringing the little miss to these things. I would have definitely taken her to meet Oscar, though she would have hooted at him because she’s under this confused impression that Oscar is an owl. (This is because she has a humidifier that is shaped like an owl named Oscar.) Sometimes I think about all the things we’ll get to do together when she’s older like events we can go to, projects we can do and, most especially, books we can read, and I’m just so excited to share the stuff I love with her. Not that I want to rush things because I do not. At all. She’s growing up too fast as it is.

ANYWAY, until the little one is of age for some geek tomfoolery, I drag my husband to these things. This is one of the funny things about marriage to me. How, in the beginning, Steve wasn’t a fan of things like MST3K, Weird All or Muppet stuff like I was, he was just coming along to keep me company. And then, bit by bit, he’s started to join the cult. I made him watch Of Muppets and Men (the whole thing is on YouTube) with me after we got home from the Big Bird movie and he was totally into it. We’ve gone to see RiffTrax and Cinematic Titanic live. We see Weird Al in concert every time he goes on tour. We were at the Symphony of the Goddesses concert with bells on. If there’s some weird nerdy thing going on, chances are we’re in on it.

I’m slowing turning him into me, basically. And we’re having way too much fun for grown-ups.

I think the moment that best sums it up was when he got me tickets to see Weird Al for our anniversary one year. I was a big fan but he didn’t really care for Weird Al one way or the other. We watched the concert and as we were standing on the subway on the way to go home he was excitedly saying without irony, “People think that Weird Al is just some novelty act but the man is a musical genius!” and I was all, “Shhhh, calm yourself.  You’re scaring the New Yorkers.” But from that moment on, he’s almost been a bigger fan than I am and that’s just plain fun!

Over time, I’ve felt less and less like these dorky things I like to go to are things I’m dragging him too and more things we’re attending together because we both enjoy them. But at many of these events, particularly at the Muppet ones such as the documentary, there are a lot of nerdy looking guys there alone. And I just can’t help but marvel at the fact that, at least in the beginning, I was having to drag my guy to these nerdy things while, the rest of the world over, nerdy guys are desperate to find a date who’d be willing to come to a random Muppet thing with them.

The takeaway there is that I’m a PRIZE damn it. Does he know how many of those guys wish they knew a girl with as many random obsessions as me? He should focus on that when it’s midnight and he’s trying to sleep and I’m recapping the last 20 issues of the BtVS comic to him. 😉

What can I say, I’m the Ernie to his Bert.