Today was a very long day. Not bad. Just very long. The kind of day where, when I got home from work, I just wanted to sit down, eat a creamsicle, and watch the Muppet Show.

So, that's exactly what I did. (I had to nip out to the store to get creamsicles first. They make them in raspberry flavor now. I don't think they had raspberry when I was a kid.)

I had a best of the Muppet Show disc, courtesy of Netflix, with three episodes featuring Elton John, Julie Andrews, and Gene Kelly. The show is perhaps not quite as funny to me now as it was when I was eight years old, but it's still pretty funny. And there are some jokes that I get now that I didn't get then (like when Sam the eagle spoofs McCarthy). And I still think that Elton John and Miss Piggy doing "Don't Go Breakin' My Heart" is one of the coolest things ever done on television.

Also really cool is the bit where Kermit gets a dancing lesson from Gene Kelly, and we get to see a full figure Kermit - courtesy of the fact that the two puppeteers operating him are clothed entirely in black and standing in front of a black background. It works uncannily well, and it's such a low tech special effect.

The Muppet Show seems so oddly quaint now. It's hard to imagine, in today's television climate, that a successful prime time TV show consisted merely of famous people doing silly things with puppets.

On the other hand, I suppose it's no odder than reality TV.

Speaking of TV, Daniel wonders why so few anime series have satisfying endings. Any anime fans here have thoughts?