Marionnettes need bailout....

Whaaa--? The headline says it all: "Forget Citigroup and Lehman, Puppet Show Needs a Bailout."

Near a freeway overpass on a decidedly scrappy edge of downtown Los Angeles is a marionette puppet theater that has enchanted children over nearly five decades, several recessions, two riots, at least four failed urban renewal plans and an earthquake or two.

The Bob Baker Marionette Theater’s shows, employing an eclectic selection of Mr. Baker’s 3,000 handmade puppets prancing about a shoebox-size theater perpetually decked out in gold garlands, are a staple of a Los Angeleno childhood. It is the cultural equivalent of the annual march by the nation’s third graders to the neighborhood firehouse.

But the struggling California economy and some bad business decisions by Mr. Baker have left the Bob Baker marionettes in a deep financial ditch, and Mr. Baker, a rather unheralded Hollywood legend, with an uncertain future. “We have all kinds of problems that have come up recently,” Mr. Baker said. “But we’re not going to close. We’re going to fight this out to the very bitter end.”

Custom muppets???

Photo by Craig Silverstein

Augh! Ronnie here. it's an outrage! An outrage, I tell ya! I can't believe it, but the world is filling with mad muppets!

Or soon will be.

Check out "A Muppet That Is Entirely Your Own," by Jennifer Lee:

The drawers are full of eyeballs and noses. The shelves are stacked with Crayola-colored torsos. And the workers conduct scientific “tug tests” on their creations (if you tug and something comes off, time to add more glue).

...Last month, F. A. O. Schwarz opened a make-your-own Muppet service in its flagship store on Fifth Avenue, the “only place in the world” where you can get a customized Muppet, though it will be soon joined by an online shop. For $130 plus tax, you can walk out with a Muppet of your very own — not the Miss Piggys, Kermits and Gonzos of the Muppet world, but Whatnots, the generic everyman Muppet.

Gag. I'm already feeling suffocated. Some say, "Let the fake fur fly!" Okay, that was Fuzzy and Dookie Bird who said that. They're excited, of course. But so is a cockroach when he finds a load of bread crumbs.

Enny-hoo, just had to vent. Vent! Get it? "Vent-trikolist." Ha! Okay, back to the suitcase. I need to sulk alone. Or whatnot.