Disclaimers

I'm trying to cold-start my heart and mind. I asked on socials for people to ask me questions about Mark Z. Danielewski's books. I keep wanting to write about them, but it feels too big for the tiny energy I have available.

I've been thinking about them for about 25 years. I've re-read all of them many times, discovering new things all the time. I love making connections, and speculating. I don't purport to be Correct, just to be Interested. :)

So, if you want, you can ask me questions! I'd love to be asked "What's happening on page X of Only Revolutions?"

I posted that to socials earlier, and Sarah asked why they're my super special interest. BIG QUESTION OKAY LET'S TRY!

Why these books?

It's a big question! This is all personal, like all opinions, in case you forgot! I feel the need to couch my enthusiasm, because I've been kicked around too many times by people who, frankly, have not understood me! I can definitely be wrong. It happens all the time. But I think really, really hard about things.

Let's start there. I read House of Leaves for the first time in early winter. I was 16. I have never, ever stopped thinking about it for more than a few days at a time. As Mark released further books, I was perplexed by each, thrilled by their artistry, and then activated by making connections between everything that had been released so far.

But first: they are absolutely crackling stories. I go to how much fun they are to think about, but first: they are very, very fun to read! And they aren't like anything else you've ever read, in very exciting ways! And I mean that; there are no other books written in English that match these for sheer depth of consideration and multilayered interpretation. Believe me: I've looked!

Kaleidoscopic Text

Everything Mark has published, from his first short fiction to last October's Tom's Crossing, is part of an interconnected web. Not a "narrative" web, not exactly; this is not a Cinematic Universe (......?) so much as... a web of concepts. Of colors and shapes. Of various attempts to reckon with what, exactly, we are as creatures who can engage in complex, abstract thought. Often to our detriment. But thinking can be such a beautiful thing, if you can escape the endless array of traps along the path.

I recognized these interconnections as soon as I had read both HoL and Only Revolutions. I don't know how a person decides to do this, or exactly how he has pulled it off. But he has, exquisitely, while also telling deeply-felt stories.

I have described them as "chew toys for your mind." I have said they are "meditative wounds," a concept I would like to expand on in the future. I've said they're places for the connective mind to roll around, and to channel instincts that might lead to conspiratorial thinking toward something more productive.

I have re-read House of Leaves somewhere between 15 and 20 times. Not always in its entirety; but at least a dozen times cover-to-cover. Every single time, from the first to the most recent, I have seen things I didn't see the previous times. Like... truly. Things that I read and interpreted one way, and then read again later and see that they also contain other meanings.

Not that I've "solved" them, or "discovered the truth." There are definitely things that become clearer; and many things I'd say are still hazy or questionable to me. But I've almost never thought, "Oh, I TOTALLY misread that. Now I 'get it.'" Instead it's the incredible feeling of having different things in my head when I encounter the text; and the text being so beautifully embroidered that new details snap together and talk to each other.

What are the stories, then?

I'll give the short pitch, and then go a little further.

House of Leaves

A family moves into a house, then return from a weekend away to find a new, dark hallway between two rooms. Then another. Then a hallway that leads "outside" the house, without physically appearing outside. As they investigate and explore the ever-growing warren of empty darkness, their relationships are tested, forged or broken. Can a curious mind handle a terrain devoid of apparent meaning?

Now we get to the part that I think is either intriguing or off-putting to people. This is one of several stories, or perspectives, in the book. The intro is actually written by a ratty little dropout in LA named Johnny. His elderly neighbor just died; his friend convinces him to break in, where they find a massive trunk full of writing. Johnny takes the trunk, and start piecing the contents together. They're (mostly) an academic-style treatise on the story of the family and the house. Johnny reads and responds to the text as we're reading it, too.

I find this can be a breaking point for lots of people. For several reasons. First, they assume it's a gimmick; that simply doing something unusual with formatting cannot be meaningful. I have to stress that I do get the impulse; I've read lots of things that have disappointed me with an interesting premise that doesn't pay off! But this absolutely pays off.

Second, as the page layouts get more unusual, or a section doesn't make immediate sense, people tell me they either feel stupid, or worry they're not "smart" enough to "get it." I try to encourage people to just sit with that discomfort, and keep your eyes moving across the pages. If you get lost, you'll be found again soon.

Third, not everybody loves Johnny's character. They just want the house, don't like that Johnny is a troubled young person, who can be bratty and crude and depressed. They don't like that he talks about sex a few times in ways they can't relate to. I have never been put off by any of that; I think it's interesting! Because the other thing about Johnny is... he's not always saying what you think he is. Nor even what he thinks he is. Not in a standard-issue "unreliable narrator" way; the book is better than that. I don't think I can try to explain that further right now, even though I really want to!

Anyway, House of Leaves is a big, scary book about a big, scary house, and the fear of not being able to understand. It produces the effect it is about.

And then... there are the other reasons I've read it so many times.

Also, house is always in blue. Yeah, it actually has a bunch of cool reasons for doing so.

Here's an arbitrarily-chosen passage, flipped open to page 82. This isn't "the best" part of the book, but I think it's a decent little cliffhanger:

On the day Holloway and his team arrive at Ash Tree Lane, Navidson and Tom are there to greet them at the door. Karen says a brief hello and leaves to pick up the children from school. Reston makes the necessary introductions and then after everyone has gathered in the living room, Navidson begins to explain what he knows about the hallway. He shows them a map he drew based on his first visit. Tellingly, this hardly strikes Tom as news. While Navidson does his best to impress upon everyone the dangers posed by the tremendous size of that place as well as the need to record in detail every part of the exploration, Tom passes out xerox copies of his brother's diagram. Jed finds it difficult to stop smiling while Wax finds it difficult to stop laughing. Holloway keeps throwing glances at Reston. In spite of the tape he saw, Holloway seems convinced that Navidson has more than a few loose wing nuts jangling around in his cerebral cortex. But when the four dead bolts are at last unlocked and the hallway door drawn open, the icy darkness instantly slaughters every smile and glance. Newt Kuellster suspects the first view of that place irreparably altered something in Holloway: "His face loses color, something even close to panic suffuses his system. Suddenly he sees what fortune has plopped on his plate and how famous and rich it could make him, and he wants it. He wants all of it, immediately, no matter the cost."⁸⁸ Studying Holloway's reaction, it is almost impossible to deny how serious he gets staring down the hallway. "How far back does it go?" he finally asks. "You're about to find out," Navidson says, sizing up the man, a half-smile on his lips. "Just be careful of the shifts."

---

⁸⁸See Newt Kuellster's "The Five and a Half Minute Holloway" in the The Holloway Question (San Francisco: Metalambino Inc., 1996), p. 532; as well as Tiffany Balter's "Gone Away" in People, v. 43, May 15, 1995, p. 89.

And one of my favorite moments, which has colored so much of how I've read all of Mark's work, from page 75:

Suddenly, somewhere in the house, there is is a loud yowl and bark. An instant later Mallory comes screaming into the living room with Hillary nipping at his tail. It is not the first time they have involved themselves in such a routine. The only exception is that on this occasion, after dashing, after dashing up and over the sofa, both puppy and cat head straight down the hallway and disappear into the darkness. Navidson probably would have gone in after them had he not instantly heard barks outside followed by Karen's shouts accusing him of letting the animals out when on that day they were supposed to stay in. "What the hell?" we hear Navidson mutter loudly. Sure enough Hillary and Mallory are in the backyard. Mallory up a tree. Hillary howling grandly over his achievement. For something so startling, it seems surprising how little has been made of this event. Bernard Porch in his four thousand page treatise on The Navidson Record devotes only a third of a sentence to the subject: ", (strange how the house won't support the presence of animals)."⁸⁰ Mary Widmunt leaves us with just one terse question: "So what's the deal with the pets?"⁸¹ Even Navidson himself, the consummate investigator, never revisits the subject. Who knows what might have been discovered if he had. Regardless, Holloway soon arrives and any understanding that might have been gained by further analyzing the strange relationship between animals and the house is passed over in favor of human exploration.⁸²

---

⁸⁰Bernard porch's All In All (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 1,302. ⁸¹Mary Widmunt's "The Echo of Dark" in Gotta Go (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994), p. 59.

⁸²Strange how Zampanò also fails to comment on the inability of animals to wander those corridors. I believe there's a great deal of significance in this discovery. Unfortunately, Zampanò never returns to the matter and while I would like to offer you my own interpretation I am a little high and alot drunk, trying to determine what set me off in the first place on this private little home-bound binge.

For one thing, Thumper came into the Shop today. Ever since I fell down the stairs, things have changed there. My boss kind of tiptoes around me, playing all low key and far off, his demeanor probably matching his old junkie days. Even his friends keep their distance, everyone for the most part just leaving me alone to sketch and solder, though I'm sketching far less these days, I mean, with all this writing. Anyway, Thumper's actually been by a few times but my incomprehensible shyness persists, forbidding me to ever summon up more than an occasional intelligible sentence. Recently though I did get this crazy idea: I decided to go all out on a limb and show her that sappy little bit I wrote about her—you know with all that coastal norths and August-sun scent-of-pine-trees stuff, even the Lucy part. I just put it in an envelope and carried it around with me until she dropped by and then handed it to her without a word. [...] She hasn't called. She isn't going to call. I feel dead. Hillary and Mallory, I suddenly envy them. I wonder if Navidson did too. I bet Zampanò envied them. I need to get away. Zampanò liked animals. Far away. All those cats he would talk to in that weedy courtyard. At dawn. At night. So many shades slinking out from under that dusty place like years, his years, could they be like my years too? though certainly not so many, not like him, years and years of them, always rubbing up against his legs, and I see it all so clearly now, static announcements that yes! hmmm, how shocking, they still are there, disconnected but vital, the way memories reveal their life by simply appearing, sprinting out from under the shadows, paws!-patter-paws-paws!, pausing then to rub against our legs, zap! senile sparks perhaps but ah yes still there, and I'm thinking, has another missing year resolved in song?— though let me not get too far away from myself, they were after all only cats, quadruped mice-devouring mote-chasing shades, Felis catus, with very little to remind them of themselves or their past or even their tomorrows, especially when the present burns hot with play, their pursuits and their fear, a bright flash to pursue (sun a star on a nothing's back), a dark slash to escape (there are always predators...), the spry interplay of hidden things and visible wings flung out upon that great black sail of rods and cones, thin and fractionary, a covenant of light, ark for the instant, echoing out of the dark and the Other, harmonizing with the crack-crack-brack-crisp-tricks of every broken leaf of grass or displaced stick, and so thrust by shadow and the vague hope of color into a rhapsody of motion and meaning, albeit momentary, pupil pulling wider, wider still, and darker, receiving all of it, and even more of it, though still only beholding some of it, until in the frenzy of reception, this mote-clawing hawk-fearing shade loses itself in temporary madness, leaping, springing, flinging itself after it all, as if it were possessed (and it is); as if that kind of physical response could approximate the witnessed world, which it can't, though very little matters enough to prevent the try—all of which is to say, in the end, they are only cats but cats to talk to just the same before in their own weaving and wending, they Kilkenny-disappear, just as they first appeared, out of nowhere, [...]

People have told me they read Johnny as a bullshit artist, naive scribbles of a half-formed mind. I think he can come across that way without larger context. But in addition to being a vehicle for lovely, poetic thoughts, he is also (in my reading) someone tormented by visions of things he cannot understand, because they come from outside his world. Outside the book. The number of times I've read something new from Mark, then re-read House of Leaves and found Johnny talking about something that shows up in a book written years, decades later...

Like, for example,

Only Revolutions

I'm going on too long, so let me do a disservice to the rest of the books and try to go faster. Only Revolutions is a book about speed, after all.

Mark tells an anecdote in an interview or presentation. He talks about being in Sunday School as a kid. The teacher says, Jesus is wonderful because he was a human god. So there's nothing we experience that he didn't, even though he lived so long ago.

A kid raises his hand. Says, "That's not true." Teacher asks what can we possibly experience that Jesus didn't.

The kid smiles and says, "Speed."

Only Revolutions is about a pair of 16-year-olds who meet on a mountain, roadtrip together across the United States for one glorious and terrible summer, and slowly learn that love is... hm. This is a tough sentence to finish! Let's say they both start out the height of arrogance — teen ego — and grow to love and value each other, to the very end.

It's written under extreme "constraints." The story is told in epic-style free verse. Sam's story starts on one side of the book; you flip it over to read Hailey's story. Each page has exactly the same number of letters. The book's endpapers are bubbles of... "excluded" words and concepts. It's beautiful, and hard for a lot of people to finish!

I don't know very many people who've finished it. I wish I did. It's one of my favorite art objects and stories! I am allways asking people to read and discuss with me; most people get some way in and then just say it was too much, too unclear, too hazy.

But a funny thing happened to me; the book gets easier to read as it goes on. The action becomes clearer, even though the language is unusual. When I reached the end, I started it over. I discovered, to my genuine surprise, that the opening had also become clearer. The book had, in effect, taught me to read it in a different way than I could at first.

If you are willing to flow along for the ride, enjoying the scenery if you don't understand every phrase, the journey can change you.

Here's Hailey's page 56, which happens to be where I am in my current re-read:

Only to have Sam kneel then and offer me a World ending affront, which doesn't, shoving such Sorrow Soles on my feet: —From me to you. Way loose, way appalling. What shitkicker barges for my delicate steps?! But I'm tranquil, maybe even moved by this simpleton's efforts to give to me, fingers so nervously slipping the strap. So I pat his dirty pate and how his big ears blaze. Back at the Wheel, burning rubber, my Pontiac GTO overturns limits supersonic. Unlimiting horizons. No horizons. Erotic. Course Sam slips catatonic.

Overlapping the Texts

I'm not sure any of this gets at why these books are so cool, and so important to me. But I'm trying to give you some little footholds to maybe get started. You, whoever you are, whenever you read this. And if you do, I'm deeply grateful.

So I brought this insight — that the book was teaching me how to read it — with me back to House of Leaves. And you know what? It's doing the same thing. HoL is deeply concerned with how we read. How we interpret words and images and sounds. It is asking us, and provoking us, to read more carefully. With greater depth. To go within the words. And to go outside the text.

One tiny thing HoL does in this regard: words are used — and misused — with tactical precision. But Johnny, drunk or high or just hyperfixating, misspells things. And he draw attention to it: he tells you he does it. So you've been told you can ignore it, but also now you're going to notice it more often. Johnny also loves puns, and talks about that, too. How only a single letter can make such a difference, can make all the difference in the world — and in the word. So he makes typos, but he also makes puns. How can you tell the difference?

Well, you have to think about it! And guess what: it's worth your time to consider. Because Johnny's text isn't the only one with letters out of place. And a "misspelled" word can be pretty meaningful. Especially when the author insists (I think correctly), "There are no mistakes."

And of course speaking of letters, I should mention that there's a whole chunk toward the end of House of Leaves that consists of letters written by Johnny's mother Pelafina. She's in an institution, and expresses a wide-ranging spray emotions and states of mind. We see a little of where Johnny gets some of his literary flair. And see that she praises his impeccable spelling, the power of his words. But wait, he said he's not good at spelling...

By the end of the book, there's a good chance you've noticed a LOT of "errors" that contain meaning. If you circle back around and read from the beginning again, your newly-trained eyes will spot typos and puns earlier in the book, and know that you should parse them for meaning.

This is one of quite a few techniques Mark employs in his writing to layer meaning on top of interpretation on top of plot. Methods and strategies you'll pick up without, maybe, even noticing.

So then here's the thing, that I realized with the help of my dear friend Alex — who I've neglected for so many years the way I've kept quiet with so many people I used to love sharing time with, because of my own brain problems and personal catastrophes and insecurity — when you go back to HoL after reading OR, you realize Only Revolutions was there the whole time. You just didn't know what to look for.

These examples are going to sound simple, because they're the easiest for me to point at. Believe me that it goes much deeper than this.

HoL's "special" color is blue, used allways and only for house. The book itself contains extensive reflection about this. Klein blue, the way human color perception has apparently changed over the years, where blue pigment comes from and its many historical associations. Will Navidson's friends call him "Navy." Et cetera!

But it also uses red. In very specific cases, about a certain topic, usually crossed through at the same time with black, highlighting and excluding while still including.

These are, coincidentally the most commonly-available color of ballpoint pen. Especially in the 90s, when this was mostly written. Mark says he handwrote every single page to get the layout right. Just a neat tidbit!

But you no doubt remember that the excerpt of Only Revolutions, that the O's are all in gold. Hailey's are gold, while Sam's are green. These are also colors that come up constantly in the story; their eyes are [gold/green] with flecks of [green/gold]; one of the book's themes is Value, as in what is worth, which could have green and gold as currency; et cetera.

We might also note that blue and red are the colors of veins and arteries. We might notice a lot of things!

In classic color theory, blue's complement is orange (used here for gold). Red's is green. So this could show us that HoL and OR are complements in some way. (We'll come back to violet.) What other inversions, or exclusions are there? I mentioned the endpapers of OR have bubbles of "excluded" words. This is called The Now Here Found Concordance. Oh, we recognize that struck-through red text! And we also know puns are in the toolkit. So, Now Here is a sign of suppressed text, included despite its... not-quite-rightness. "Now Here" can easily be "Nowhere." In a book that, maybe, isn't allowed to include the concept of "absence," (a primary topic of the house), crossing out "Now Here Found" could be a way of saying Not-Here Found, aka Nowhere. And a Concordance is "an alphabetical list of the words (especially the important ones) present in a text" so this could be a list of words that are important for NOT being present in the text.

What are the words? There are hundreds. Here are a few examples: In, Write, Mean, Matter, False, God, Gaze, Witness, Distort, Mislead, Essay, Read, Blue & Red (and a bunch of shades of each, alongside a bunch of other colors including Pink and jfc Xanthic (which relate to The Familiar)...

Maybe you get the gist. House of Leaves is very much about writing, meaning, and distortions. One circle of words is all forms of recorded media, because HoL is all transcribed and recorded. You see what I mean?

Is house in there? You know it is! The only place blue appears in the book is here, in this dis-cordance; a whole bubble is housing-related words, including "Abode, Apartment... Boardinghouse... Hallway... House, Household, Hut..."

Anyway, this probably feels like I'm getting into the weeds. What I want you to take away is, Only Revolutions draws special attention upfront to the fact that it deliberately excludes everything pertaining to House of Leaves. It's a negative. A film.

Oh, before I forget: Purple/Violet. This is an important color. It appears in both books, and seems to indicate danger. A disruption, an intrusion, or something else entirely.

What the fuck does this have to do with House of Leaves again?

Oops! Right. Well, if you go back and read House with green and gold in mind, there are a lot of interesting things to notice! It was, in fact, one of the most fun reading experiences I've ever had! And also: fucking perpilexing, because how the fuck did he include his next book in his first book? I have a loooooot of thoughts about that. But it's fucking coooooool.

Later, The Familiar introduces "Pink" and "Cats" and "Rain" as some key images. You will recall Johnny's earlier rambling about cats. You will find an astonishing number of cats in HoL.

...If only somebody had paid attention to the animals!

}:]

Oh, we gotta wrap this up

Thanks for sticking with me! To say one more thing about WHY these are of such importance to me...

These books have changed me. Repeatedly. They have wrapped themselves around my brain and bones. Almost everything else I've read and done in my life since has somehow looped back around to them. Or, the extensive study and reflection I've done on these books has given me an anchor in many areas. I've studied philosophy, history, math, and of course language in order to better understand.

What are they about? Well, I think Mark's work has the complexity of life at heart, and especially of navigating the world ethically and compassionately. This becomes clearer and clearer (or gets more emphasis) as his work progresses. They're about how to think, how to feel, and how to communicate both as a reader and writer. As a listener and speaker. They try to imbue English with new capabilities; to give your eyes new ways of beholding. They study, in increasing detail, how thinking even happens.

And they fucking work. Isn't that wild???

The books are meditations; they're elaborate koans that never resolve, but keep smiling and inviting you to approach them from another angle. They're sparring partners, and they have strengthened my form while kicking my ass repeatedly.

I think they are some of the most "important" books ever written.

That sounds grandiose. That probably makes you scoff! Well, your loss, I guess! :)

I'll have to get to the other books another time. Hopefully this is a good starting place. Also: I think I recommend Tom's Crossing as a starting place if you aren't as interested in formal fuckery. It just came out, it's gorgeous, and it's a clearly-told story about friendship, murder, and ghosts.

...Oh, and a concordance can also be "the inheritance by two related individuals (especially twins) of the same genetic characteristic, such as susceptibility to a disease." In a book about two people whose fates are entwined.

Okay, have fun!!!

[Copied here because the site’s formatting is hard to read. I agree with every word. I celebrate the embodiment of the Muppet Performers. The muppets worked because they were conscious and careful creations, presenting extreme and elemental aspects of the artists within. Treating them like commodities isn’t just “not as good;” I think it is, as Miyazaki said about AI, an insult to life itself.

We are beset by body snatchers and semantic thieves. If The Muppets are detached entirely from their origins, with no opportunity for new performers to build community and inherit the legacy directly, then The Muppets are dead.

Long live The Muppets.]

stevewhitmire.website
Steve Whitmire
January 9, 2026

Ten years ago I published a statement saying that I wanted Muppet fans to be “the smartest fans in the world”.  I want this for you all because you already have a connection to the Muppets and I think you should at least be given the opportunity to gain even deeper insights as to why that attraction might be waning now. 

I see literally thousands of comments, and receive as many messages and emails, from people like you, people who sense that Kermit the Frog as we know him no longer exists. In both cases most are from casual viewers rather than from deeply devoted Muppet fans.  The public at large is sensing that something has gone wrong.  I am told that within the circle of Disney Muppet performers all of these people are written off as being “haters”, and are ignored. But the vast majority of the comments and messages I see aren’t hateful, they are discerning.  After a decade to adjust, what is before them obviously doesn’t work, and ignoring the problem only increases it.

There are an awful lot of fans who think that as long as something green with ping-pong ball eyes hops around on screen it constitutes Kermit the Frog.  Further, sentiments are expressed essentially saying that ‘something is better than nothing’…what a sad fate for Jim henson’s most well known alter ego.   I love all the fans, but with respect, on these couple of points you are wrong.  Kermit is the spoke in the middle of the Muppet wheel around which all things Muppet revolve, and without Kermit being fully intact there is no future for the Muppets – no new directions, no exploitative ’reboots’, no future.  

Having been asked innumerable times for my opinions on the topic, what follows is for those discriminating enough to care that something is awry. 

In the 1960’s a band called “The Buggs” was literally manufactured to copy the Beatle’s iconic sound by recording cover versions of their music.  A few years later, Alan Haney became known as being the original Elvis impersonator, again performing the songs and impersonating the voice.  Many others followed throughout the decades copying the work and style of many other groups.  The list of so-called ‘tribute bands’ goes on and on…  

None of these ‘tribute acts’ claimed to be the actual thing.  There was no attempt to make the public believe that what they were seeing and hearing was the genuine article, the actual people, themselves.  All lacked the depth and creative spark that brought about the respective phenomena in the first place.  Without the bonafide original having_created a connection with the audience*_these tribute bands are no more than impressionistic copy-cats opportunistically garnering attention by pretending to be representative of something of immeasurable value.

And so we find ourselves in a world where, when we look at the Muppets, what is before us is, essentially, a tribute band.  The difference?  They are claiming to be authentic, and you are expected to believe that.

Let me explain more:

I first became acquainted with Kermit the Frog in the mid-1960’s as he originally began to appear as a character.  He was no longer the anonymous abstract ‘thing’ Jim Henson created, but had become a frog who was developing a distinct, individual persona supplied in an ongoing way from a single individual performer*.  That individuality was the basis for his achieving a connection with you, the audience, as it allowed him to evolve in a consistent and anticipated fashion over more than two decades.

The expectation of who he had become was the result of the character being the extension of a specific performer.  When Kermit spoke it had the gravitas of a direct connection with the artist underneath, and once established, alterations to replace the source (Jim Henson, in this case) were literally unacceptable.

The methodology of characters emanating from one specific performer applies to all of the core Muppets.

I think we can all agree that the most devastating occurrence in the history of the Muppets was Jim’s unexpected death in 1990.  Even if you weren’t around during that timeframe – trust me – it was devastating.  Someday, I’ll tell you all about our last conversation in which he discussed with me our plans for going forward.  But for now I want you all to understand that there was a second devastating and insidious turn of events that began to take hold in addition to losing Jim: the commodification of the Muppets without the wisdom and guidance of their creator.

Technically, the Muppet characters began to be a commodity prior to Jim’s death.  Since it was necessary to assign a monetary value to them to facilitate the sale of the company to Disney, their worth had to be measured in dollar signs.  But their was a stipulation: Jim’s intent was for the characters to continue to be performed by their original performers indefinitely.  This particular methodology would preserve the individuality of each character allowing them to continue to evolve just as they had for years prior while maintaining their individual relationships with the fans.  The rejection of this fundamental core principle within the Muppets during the negotiations of the sale was a large part of why Jim was having second thoughts about his decision to sell to Disney.

The Muppets becoming a brand to be bought and sold brought about what I believe to be the most devastating thing to damage the Muppets in their history_outside of Jim’s death: the wholly objective corporate approach of treating the characters as ‘_roles to be portrayed by actors who audition‘ rather than to continue to view them as ‘direct extensions of artistic expression from specific individual originative performers‘*.  

Viewing the Muppets as ‘roles’ began as soon as Jim was gone, and changed the perception from seeing them as individual entities who exist in our own world to being a corporate owned puppet character franchise with people hired to play them, an exterior/objective way of viewing them rather than an interior/subjective approach.

This serves multiple purposes for corporate owners, but at the top of their list is that if bringing the Muppets to life is as simple as auditioning for them whenever you like, you are never beholden to respect a designated performer.  The non-creative temporal executives in charge can hire and fire at will those who would otherwise be committed for life under the guise of ‘it’s just a role played by a hired hand’.  This is clearly a partial truth (like many purely objective corporate truths…) that ignores the ‘interior/subjective’ importance of how the deep connection with you, the audience, came about in the first place (i.e., it’s not about a little green puppet, it’s about your expectation of who you have grown to care about).

Once it became the standard for on-going established characters who are well known by the fans to be recast in cattle call auditions, the true subjective ‘art of the Muppets’ began to disappear for all time.  Now, many of the top tier Muppets are based upon a list of cliche traits observed in YouTube videos. They lack the depth of character upon which they were originated, and even worse, what we recognize is replaced by new ‘interpretations’.  They still do the same old stories using the same old jokes and sight gags, but with no legitimate evolution**.  That’s because there are no new ideas for them, only surface observations made by owners, producers, and performers, that view them objectively, from the outside, rather than from the core of the character’s subjective hearts and minds, with any direct access to the original sources having been eliminated.

Enter a big, shiny reboot of “The Muppet Show” just around the bend, an idea I pitched multiple times from 2010 forward only to see it entirely ignored.  But I had very specific reasons for proposing bringing back the series at that juncture.  My reasons for placing the Muppets in their original surroundings was to give a new ensemble of Muppet Performers a familiar place to hone their historical knowledge of the characters they had been gifted while they had access to the people who were there in the days of origin, and at a point with Kermit twenty years intact.  

But make no mistake, this is a ‘Hail Mary’ right out of the Disney playbook used when nothing else is working – garner attention from the press by bringing in a recognizable Hollywood name to produce, and place the characters in a setting so familiar that their lack of depth and traditional logic is more likely to go unnoticed (think “The Muppets” in 2011). You will see this tactic of using the “star name” again and again (although I do believe that Seth Rogan is likely a good choice to be a show runner for a Muppet project if only he had access to characters still operating with a basis in Jim’s influence). 

I have also been told that the hope of top performers is that after ten years this new Muppet Show reboot can be used by them to “prove” that by marketing them in front of the red curtains you will believe that they are providing faithful versions of the characters.   The expectation is that you, the viewers, have forgotten Jim and his influence – and maybe you have.  But there categorically can not be a faithful continuation of something as unique and established as “The Muppet Show” without Kermit fully intact at the top of the pyramid, and even then servicing the other core characters is an uphill climb.  

So, at this point, I urge those of you who are savvy enough to see beyond the hype to gain the deepest possible understanding of all that Jim brought to the uniqueness of his characters that will be ignored for all time.  I don’t hate Disney executives, or the Hensons, or Matt, and this new/old conceit might make you laugh, but lets be clear that this is the product of treating the Muppets as WHAT they are rather than as WHO they are, and it leaves us all with a result that doesn’t faithfully approach the magic and integrity of the original.

With no one in charge to provide a balance of knowledge about the origins, and the Muppets viewed as ‘roles to be played’, the door is wide open for a highly visible and recognizable soul like Kermit  (as well as all the rest) to be changed at a whim.  As is standard in any production, from Broadway roles to franchise movie characters, different performers stepping into any role commonly bring their own interpretations in order to ‘make it their own’, evidently a stated goal within the Muppets of today. 

 But I want you all to know that from day one throughout nearly three decades not once did I ever have the notion to ‘make Kermit my own’ – on the contrary.  It was absolutely vital in my process to make certain that any egotistical notion of ‘marking territory’ never happened so that Kermit remained based solely upon Jim’s foundational original*.  There is no other way for what I consider to be a living, breathing persona to stay consistently convincing as it evolves.

This differs entirely from the present-day recasting process. I think what bothers me the most is the presumption that altering the qualities that you, as fans, have connected with for decades is somehow acceptable and desirable when a new performer is incapable of stepping into the role in an evolutionary fashion. My standard analogy is that the Muppets are treated like a box of Crayons for the next person executives select to use for drawing and coloring their own picture.  It is as though producers and performers who never sat in the same space as we did with Jim are somehow qualified to redefine what Jim and the rest originated.   It’s nothing less than sheer hubristic arrogance.  

Trust me – what was conceived and put forth in the late 1970s was not only ‘good enough’ to remain the basis to allow the Neo-Muppets to have jobs today, it was the biggest phenomena on the planet.  At its core, none of it is in need of re-imagining.

The word “channeling” gets thrown around a lot these days.   I often see the term used to indicate that someone is somehow receiving some sort of divine inspiration from someone else who has moved on or died, an originator of something whose torch is now represented by them.  I take the word channeling very seriously, and I am very aware that when I was tasked with carrying on Kermit my first and biggest challenge was to fully inhabit him in the exact same way that Jim did to the best of my ability. 

 To whatever extent I was able to preserve the core of Kermit, that ability did, indeed, rely upon so-called ‘channeling’ of all that I knew from within an interpersonal relationship with Jim*.  Without having had that direct relationship, no amount of calling my objective opinions “channeling” would have netted anything of integrity where Kermit is concerned.  

To put it simply, I can attest that it is simply not possible to inhabit a character as well known and recognizable as Kermit just because you might be the most dedicated of fans and have watched countless old videos of what the originator did prior.   With a definitive soul like Kermit, you know him when you’re with him just as you’d know a parent, your spouse, or a close friend, and having looked him in the eyes for decades, so do I. 

If someone walks into the room wearing your best friend’s favorite shirt and talking in their general register with their accent you will still instantly know that person is not who you have come to know.  It cannot be stressed enough – it is vital to the Muppets that those who write for them, produce their projects, and perform them, view every aspect, every small detail, of what effects them through the eyes of the characters, themselves, by treating them as though they are living, breathing souls*.  But first, you have to have fidelity.

A very important part of my process was to try and falsify any notion that came into my mind about Jim in the tradition of Karl Popper before applying it to Kermit*.   That simply means that I made no assumptions about what Jim did or who Jim was.  I put any educated hunches through vigorous examination to find examples and data to either confirm the idea, or rule it out.  If one is to actually achieve an internal realization of another person’s psyche, this is an extremely vital endeavor using actual data based on direct knowledge of that originator as a sort of ‘checks and balances’ methodology.  Otherwise, self policing one’s own opinions will not magically make an opinion truth. 

Once and for all, folks, the Muppets as originally created are defined by ‘WHO they are, not WHAT they are’ (somebody make a T-shirt…). A character like Kermit does not function with multiple performers, as versions, or as new interpretations, either simultaneously or even subsequently.  Treating The Muppets as roles is inaccurate because unlike ordinary fictional characters who live entirely in their own screen world, the Muppets are both the characters and the actors within their films. As actors, they maintain a functioning existence in our own real world just as any other actor does often appearing as themselves both live and in television interviews. 

He’s not George Clooney vs. Val Kilmer vs. Michael Keaton as Batman because there is no living person going on “Good Morning America” claiming to be “Batman”, an actual individual entity in this world who goes home after the interview.  Batman is an onscreen role – Kermit is a tangible present-day individual in this world, a fully realized persona with a personal lifelong history no different than that of anyone you know in your day-to-day life.  You are seeing the effect of all that having disintegrated.  

Who He Is is established and can not be subject to ‘he’s doing the best he can’, or debates over one “version” vs. another “version” any more than who YOU are can be. It’s either Kermit or it isn’t.  At a point when the audience is debating versions of Kermit, there is no longer Kermit to debate.

I have said many times in the past that I believe those of us who gave life to the Muppets were in a sort of partnership with the audience that allows them to be brought to life.  The majority of the responsibility is on performers, but without an audience willing to suspend their disbelief their connection to the Muppets would not exist.  

So you say you have trouble with the voice?  Let me tell you, what is missing is a far greater loss than a voice. Virtually everything of Jim that he put into Kermit – his thought processes and timing, certain southernisms and expressions, quirks and affectations, historical references and contextual background, that slight indignant inquisitiveness, his general outlook and life philosophy, that old-fashioned understated and uneasy equanimity when things are going very wrong while still accepting it for what it is – all things that had to be observed to be understood and implemented, all things that I made sure were kept alive at the core of Kermit – GONE – gone for good.  

But perhaps the most devastating loss of all is that there is no longer a linear basis for us to ever find out the truth of what Kermit would and should be doing next. Without Kermit continuing to be the vessel of Jim‘s influence, we have lost Jim for all time, just as without Jim‘s influence continuing within Kermit he is lost, as well.

And while you’re rolling that thought over in your mind, take time to remember the list of those people claiming to protect Jim’s legacy who put this plan into action, and who supported it, both wholeheartedly and tacitly.

I served with Kermit. I know Kermit. Kermit was a friend of mine. Folks, that green frog puppet is no Kermit.     His heart and soul are here with me…

*Key points in my process of establishing Jim Henson’s origination as the core foundational element of Kermit after Jim’s death.

**Evolution is best defined as the process of ‘transcending and including_‘_previous stages.  For that to take place within character development, it is vital for those previous foundational stages to be fully known and understood.

hey, real talk:

circa 2015, i was so stressed about going to see my increasingly-shitty republican parents for xmas that I thought seriously about killing myself instead. it was the first real ideation i ever had, despite years of depression.

guess what: if you ever feel like that, don't go :]

I realized I was so frustrated that nothing I did ever seemed to be enough for them, that choosing gifts was an existential crisis. I had a breakthrough, and realized none of it really mattered to me. I got everybody silly gifts, went specifically to see my brother, and then never went back again!!!

if your family stresses you out so badly that you have extreme thoughts;

if they are so unkind, or impossible-to-please, that you only feel pressure to conform;

if for any reason you'd rather just not see your dumbass relatives;

you do! not! have to!

"estranged parents" === "complete assholes"

I'm gonna enjoy a few days off with my cat. My partner went to visit their family, and they have their own whole thing that I didn't want to join, either. Sorry, everybody! I need time to myself, I need to sleep, and I WANT to just relax rather than go through a goddamn crisis over some assholes

and i firmly believe that a significant number of our problems in the united states

are related to protecting our families from the consequences of being fucking nightmares!!!

they can manage their own feelings!

and in the case of transphobes, as always:

Just sharin here, an example of a slightly-marked-up spread from Tom’s Crossing.

I’ve got pages that already have A LOT MORE annotations than this 😈

I made this collage over 10 years ago. From pictures I took of the closing story in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. When I knew my identity was misaligned, but I didn’t have the context, clarity, and courage to understand and declare myself Trans.

The shared horror of awareness; a beautiful woman and hideous man, sharing the same eye, cosmically entwined, bound and screaming. It felt true and heartbreaking, personal and encoded.

“Hold on,
the howl of the bilennia
The incoherent, glitter”

One Godot thing I like is Signals. I've used similar features elsewhere, but the specific way you set these up is interesting! I'm gonna type up an explanation to help solidify it in my head.

So let's say I want something to happen when I click a UI button. This multiplayer tutorial by curtjs has buttons to Host and Join a session. You can see the green UI Nodes in the leftmost column, and the text buttons they draw in the main viewport.

In the Game scene script, I've already added the signal for _on_host_pressed(). I'm going to create the Signal for when Join is pressed.

(as a note, by default the Inspector and Node columns are on the right side of the screen. I don't like this; it means clicking a Node on the left, and then moving your eyes and cursor all the way to the other side of the screen to change details. Luckily Godot lets you easily move these to a 2nd column on the left side)

So to make a Signal for clicking the Join button (numbered steps below the image):

1. Start by clicking the "Join" Button Node in the Scene tree
2. Make sure "Node" panel is clicked. This shows all the built-in Signals
3. The BaseButton node type has Signals for button_down, button_up, pressed, and toggled. Double-click pressed()
4. This opens a modal, "Connect a Signal to a Method." If you already had the Game Script selected, all the defaults are good. But you can select the Node Script you want to attach the Signal to. You can also customize the name, but it builds a good default! _on seems to be a Signal default, _join is whatever the Node is named, and _pressed is the name of the Signal event!

Finally, click Connect or press Return.

That's it! The function is inserted into your script. So now anything you add to the _on_join_pressed() function will happen when the Join button is pressed!

The Node tab shows the places a signal is received! So presumably you can have the Game script do the Join logic, but could also attach the pressed Signal to other UI elements to animate them, etc. Signals are cool for calling code anytime a certain thing happens, and this is a really neat-feeling way to set up and manage these.

You can also click the little green ->] icon next to the func to see the connection! So the green icon reminds you this is a Signal, and makes it easy to track where it came from.

Cool!

I really enjoyed this article about Xanadu Next! I've been playing a lot of games in the dungeon crawler lineage, and just dipping my toe into Falcom's catalogue. Faxanadu is one of my childhood favorites just for the tone and feeling, and I recently watched a full playthrough and really appreciated its art and music. I know this is different, but I'm still interested!

It's $5 USD on Steam right now, so I'm giving it a try!

I play games on controller whenever I can, and luckily this game has support! BUT, the config tool is obtuse about which button does what.

SO JUST IN CASE SOMEBODY NEEDS IT, here's what I did to make the controller work on Steam:

At launch, In the Configuration Tool, you can change the button assignments. I chose the following button numbers (with playstation buttons after since they're the easiest for me to remember):

• Confirm / Attack: 1 (X)
• Cancel: 2 (Circle)
• Menu: 4 (Triangle)
• Use Item: 3 (Square)

Rotate Camera: There are two of these. They're both labeled "Rotate Camera." Luckily the one on the left rotates left, and right is right. So:

• Rotate Camera [left side]: 5 (L1)
• Rotate Camera [right side]: 6 (R1)
• Map Zoom: 9 (click Left Stick)
• Reset Camera: 10 (click Right Stick)
• System: 8 (Start)

(You don't need to set Next / Prev item and skill, because the D-Pad handles that natively)

Use Mouse didn't work for me, so I fixed that with Steam Input. You may not need to set up custom mouse handling on the Deck, because of touch pad? But you DO need mouse controls, ONLY to move stuff around in the inventory / equip screen. Weird, bizarre oversight to me, but hey it's an old PC game that mostly works.

So in Steam Input, I set:

• Right Stick is always a mouse cursor, at 150% speed
• Left Trigger is Left Click
• I guess you could set Right Trigger to Right Click, but I haven't needed that since I just need to move the right stick over the inventory item, hold LT, and release after moving the item or skill to the right slot

The game is mostly in 3/4 perspective, and the camera rotates like in Xenogears. So use L1 / R1 to rotate the camera 45 degrees at a time.

COOL BYE

In case you, like me, want to hear Dan Mangan's songs from the Comedy Bang Bang show in Vancouver on Aug 12, 2022, I clipped them out!

"Melody" is really hitting for me today. I like the just-released album version, but the pure melancholy in this take is so good.

Fire Escape

Melody

subscribe to cbb world and buy dan's albums, thanks

gender doctor asks me how it's going, say pretty good of course, we both shrug and laugh at the absurdity of assessing status in a world gone mad, it's gratis, greener in another life. well it's pretty good except that every day's a little tireder, I don't like to be awake, I hate my job and hate my days and hate my isolation, calling thrift to take the big old couch i got in '21, hoping for big group hangs and movies, but we still can't breathe each other safely. pretty good except that every day i'm watching myself be dismantled out loud and learning you can lie loud enough that hurt don't matter, they're gonna cackle while their knuckle skin splits however hard we try to be. pretty good except that nothing i do feels like it matters in the least, that if i get a week off work i start to feel alive again like half my brain's submerged formaldehyde and resurrected pulled gasping from the grave. frankenstein myself every day to stagger forward in service of everything i disbelieve. keep the job making oppressive computers wring out microdermabrasions beautifying business

reminding myself that if i can't make cathedrals, i can still paint caves. make my goals smaller and smaller. every dream achieved at my own expense, debt compressing, everybody knows it. forever aged complaints, deliberately loose and artless. nobody receiving, but if i can't scribble bullshit to myself then where do i think the? foreclosing the cave. people hating self so vicious it's catching. lean in to listen, catch a breath-based calamity or moral infirmity

doctor asks how, pretty, except that i used to run five miles and now i don't even want to walk around the block. used to make a room laugh and sing and now it's quietly trying not to bother the neighbors. outburst swallowed til no tums enough for the art burn. stupid wordplay looking at my old emails like how did anybody ever put in the effort to understand me. desperate for novelty at the expense of clarity. evidently brain strange and struggling to crack jokes if that's the only way to be heard.

when i actually say to a doctor how i'm feeling, their eyes widen and they come up short. nothing can fix the frame when its rusted out. so i'll let myself write messy feelings because i earn them

been this way the whole time. perplexingly misbroken and a step away from failure. on either side of the line. everyone eager to cast me down for one misstep, one word out of place, i've been smarter than the class and never paid a decent rate. how's your family? how's your savings? how's your future? how's your bonus? things you take for granted that i won't and never owned. i've been paycheck to paycheck since 2005. and it's stupid just to type it out because all anybody can do about it is say "sorry, wow, that sucks, hope you feel better, don't give up"

motherfucker i give up once or twice a day and decide to keep on anyway. if they tear me down for political discomfort, it wasn't jenga, it was rubble, and was barely worth the struggle

re-reading *Annihilation,” a book I really love even after I hated the movie, because who cares art is everywhere and holding the hater’s face is for mummies.

anyway, I just read this and felt a shudder of resentment and pain go through my chest. I wish I didn’t understand these feelings. I wish I hadn’t been killed at 18, then left to breathe and struggle and carry on anyway. To pretend I was alive. To keep taking on the disappointment of others while every new life withered in my hands.

“There are certain kinds of deaths that one should not be expected to relive,”

“certain kinds of connections so deep that when they are broken you feel the snap of the link inside you.”

I’ve felt too many of those links snap. I can feel the empty space where they used to sit. The genuine love and wonder that I felt for this life and world and the people in it, who were supposed to care for me and instead shoved my face into the dirt. Who convinced me I couldn’t be trusted, especially not inside myself. When all I ever wanted was to dance and sing and laugh and take care of others.

do I have depression? or am I undead?