Telly the Truth

Just a quick note to wish a belated happy birthday to my pal Marty Robinson. You’re the best.

I had a hunch the issue of my identity might come up, and a comment on the last post confirmed that hunch. I want to clear up any confusion before this goes much further.

I’m Telly. I’m a monster. Full name, Telly Monster.

“The Man Behind Telly” is actually Martin P. Robinson (mentioned in previous post). I know how to be a monster. Marty knows how to help a monster be accessible. And he’s better schooled on what children’s TV is all about. All the monsters on the show, and all of the monsters in the industry to my knowledge, have a Marty. Marty is the Marty for more than one of us on Sesame Street. And we all think he’s a pretty good Marty.

When I started on the show, some of you may remember that I was pretty different. TV-obsessed. Sporting antennae. Marty came on and saw something different. He recognized something in me, the real Telly, that he thought would make a really suitable character. I took off with it, and it really worked. And it happened at a time that could not have been better for me, in terms of personal therapy. I wasn’t terribly happy doing what I was doing before, and probably owe the bulk of what has turned out to be a long career on the show to Marty. He knows his work well and we have a great working relationship. I like to make fun of his hair, he picks on me for gaining a few. It’s all good.

So if anyone was wondering, the Telly you see on TV - the one that worries all the time and can’t keep seem to figure out how to keep control over his sense of terror with regard to everyday life - that’s basically me. I mean, I crank it up a notch for the show usually, and the things that I get upset about on the show are not the things that really bother me. But I’m a high-strung guy. Always have been. A therapist many years ago got me on this kick of really trying to use it to my advantage in my acting. To embrace roles that would allow me to not only exploit my natural ability to feel fear where there should be no fear, but to realize just how silly my real episodes of panic were. In some ways, it really worked. I’ve come a long way in recognizing that panic is a beast that feeds itself. But the Telly on TV doesn’t exactly have problems that are worse than mine, so looking at my own personal episodes and trying to make them pale in comparison just isn’t going to happen.

Take 9-11. I was a complete wreck. I mean we’re right there, New York City. On some level, I’m still in recovery. And it really made me resent the character I play. I mean, when the world is literally crumbling down around you, how are you supposed to go to work and pretend that it’s within reason to be totally neurotic about matching shapes or whatever? It’s not reasonable. It’s pathetic. It’s embarrassing.

I’m not embarrassed about my job. I love my job, I love the people and monsters I work with, and it makes me happy to have fans, and to do something good for kids. I think we all have lots of reasons to be proud of what we do. Still, over the years I’ve had a number of episodes where the “what the hell am I doing” bug bites me just a little too hard, and that self-feeding beast decides to sit down for a feast. Buffet style. This is what happened yesterday.

I was doing a music bit with a couple of the kids and Bob. I had a triangle (why don’t I get to rock the brass and woodwinds as much anymore?) and two takes in a row I accidentally clanked it against the side of the picnic table, kinda loud, while Bob was trying to deliver lines. The first time I apologized and he just ran it again from a good edit point, but the second time he lost it. He walked away mumbling to himself and grabbed his coat. When the director, Ken, asked him where he was going and told him we had to bang this out to get the show to editing on time, Bob got right up in his face, pointed at me, and said, “Then you can tell HIM to get control of himself. Until then, you can just run a ‘BEST OF MISTER NOODLE’ or something. I’m out of here.”

Everybody just wrapped, there was nowhere to go from there. But I was frozen. I started to get all clammy, which causes my fur to matt, and I just start to look like hell really fast. Marty could see me freaking out and walked me off set to sit down. He got me some water and I told him I was OK, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t believe I had just been bawled out for making a noise with a dang triangle. Then I started thinking, making a noise with a triangle *did* screw up my job at that particular moment. And if I can screw up my job by making a noise with a triangle, WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING? It was all downhill from there, I mean, I wish it ended with worrying about my career. Next thing you know I’m recalling every worry my mother ever had about fulfilling her hopes and dreams, wondering if I’ll ever connect with the right girl, have kids, have grandkids - oh, and while I’m thinking about EVERY LITTLE THING that REALLY STRESSES ME OUT… Do I have cancer?

I don’t even remember a lot of the episode, that’s what they’re like. It eventually becomes a blackout, whether I remain conscious or not. Marty told me that I never passed out, but my breathing was way out of control so he grabbed me a couple of Xanax from my bag (I tell all the staff what to do if this happens - it used to be considerably more often). He took me for a walk, and somewhere in the middle of that is where I sorta ‘came to’.

Yesterday evening Bob called me and apologized. I’m not sure if Marty talked to him or what. He didn’t mention the panic attack so maybe he didn’t know. But Bob totally owned it, he said it was a really stupid thing to freak out about and he’s just stressed about the direction the show is going, and yada yada. I told him we’re all stressed, we all have to vent, etc. He’s taking me out to lunch Monday.

These things are embarrassing though. I mean it’s one thing to get yelled at on set. It happens to everybody. But making everyone wonder if you need an ambulance - that’s not cool.

There’s been a lot of chatter over at Muppet Central about a Muppet “mockumentary”. I hinted at knowing something about it but not really being able to say anything. This post isn’t going to amount to much more than that, but here goes:

A Muppet mockumentary has been “in the works” for nearly 30 years. It was really actually born around the time the Muppet Movie was in production. There were bits in there that dipped into “behind the scenes” territory, like scripting in stuff that was made to seem off-script. Meta-movie stuff, you know? People on the crew were really into that, and it definitely worked. To lots of folks, it was the next logical step - something akin to what those VH1 “Behind the Music” stories ended up doing so well, but about the production of the Muppet Movie. Well, things dragged, the Muppet Movie took off and kept peoples’ attention for a little longer than expected, and next thing you know, This is Spinal Tap thoroughly destroys any sense of novelty such a project would have brought with it. One could easily argue that Muppets, as a concept, are novel enough to carry it, but when you think about it, Guest, McKean, and Shearer were themselves really Muppets. They were better at it than we were.

The idea wasn’t dead then, and still isn’t. It just keeps getting trumped and put on the back burner. “The Office” came out. Later on, “30 Rock”. And a bunch of cheap knock-offs. The truth of the matter is, nobody needs the money badly enough to burn Muppet enthusiasm out with a pathetic lump produced and released at the wrong time. Ill-conceived mistakes have been made before, and the powers that be seem to understand now that it is possible to cheapen the Muppet name.

But nobody denies it’s a killer idea. It just needs its time. They’ve dropped hints here and there to feel out public interest from time to time, and the folks over at Muppet Central appear to be keeping it alive (from what I can tell, anyway - I’m new there). Also I should note that as an actor I really don’t have much to do with this stuff. It’s all grapevine knowledge to me. Besides, if there were such a show, I probably wouldn’t be in it, except maybe as a cross-production attraction, kind of like when a “Cheers” character would show up on “Frasier” (see Figure 1, the item that is to my knowledge the boldest attempt at getting my image out there: a friggin’ Beanie Baby). So, at the end of the day, this thing could be happening under my nose. I’m not what you’d call an authority on the topic. But the fans should know that when they talk, people hear them.

Being a fan of ye olde Apple and their many fine products, and as well one who knows a good satire when I see it, I can often be found stopping by Fake Steve’s blog. And out of the blue a couple days back, he drops this bombshell: Focus.

Anyone else even remember these guys? Like I said over there, I was lucky enough to catch them live in 1975 (yeah I’m that old, ok?) in Denmark. Dutch guys who were weird, but just unbelievably tight. At the time, I didn’t know what I was seeing. I knew it blew my mind, that much was clear. But it was one of those formative moments, you know? Like, I might not be collecting records today if lightning didn’t strike that day in Denmark.

After work yesterday I went over to Fifth Avenue Records. No offense to the proprietors, who have always been very kind to me (I pay them well enough, after all) but this place is … difficult. They know it. Everyone knows it. It’s something you learn to accept. It’s not the kind of place you go to looking for a Focus record, it’s the kind of place you fall ass-backward into a stack of Focus records. But go there looking for one I did. And I didn’t fall into a stack of them, no sir. But I was told in no uncertain terms that there was definitely a copy of Focus 3 in the building. It had come in as part of a big used stack earlier that week, and was sure to be found unsorted somewhere… oh, let’s see… somewhere over… there (imagine the completely non-specific hand wave you wouldn’t want to see accompanying a sentence like that).

It was an adventure. My dust allergies took hold and didn’t let go until well into the evening. But 90 minutes, one claritin, and two annoying concentration-busting conversations with unusually rude “fans” later, I, three Chinese take-out boxes, and seven new platters of vinyl made our way back to my apartment - among us, an absolutely pristine copy of Focus 3. Delicious. I popped it onto the Kuzma (don’t get me started, that’s another post) and was taken waaaay back for the rest of the evening.

Truth be told, it’s rare that I’d really get off on a record like this. When the mood hits right, you can’t beat it. But those moods are blue moons, you know? Still, it’s one of those collection-makers, the kind of record that is worth its price in the images it conjures alone. That describes a lot of your proggier rock, I guess.