Muppets and SciFi

So, we’re trying to save money. Aren’t we all?

Yesterday evening, the Webmaster, Ane, Tad and I met up with Friend, Doc, the Brain, Head and baby Rupert and took advantage of Seattle’s First Free Thursday program at the Experience Music Project and the Science Fiction Museum (they share the same weirdly ugly building) to see the traveling Smithsonian exhibit “Jim Henson’s Fantastic World.”

It was definitely worth free admission. I am glad that this program exists, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to justify spending full admission prices on myself, the Webmaster, and Ane (Tad, being under 5, would have gotten in free anyway). But it was a fun exhibit, and I think the kids really enjoyed it. The only down part was that we couldn’t film or photograph any of it because of preservation issues. We were allowed to snap a few pictures in certain spots, and I’ll post them later. (And just because I couldn’t take pictures doesn’t mean that none exist… you can see a few good photos here from a local news site.)

The highlight for me was seeing Gobo and Cantus from Fraggle Rock, which was one of my favorite shows when I was growing up. Ane, the Brain, and Head enjoyed the rare video clips of commercials that Jim Henson did with specially designed Muppets from the 1960’s, and Tad loved the fact that the exhibit featured walls covered in colorful Muppet fur that were soft and fuzzy. Tad spent a lot of time flat against them with his face buried in them and arms splayed out. “Hug wall, hug wall,” he kept saying.

After we’d seen all we could see (and the exhibit was getting really crowded), we wandered over to the Science Fiction Museum, where nerds of all stripes could rejoice at the amount of Star Trek and Star Wars memorabilia and props behind glass cases. I discovered, to my great amusement, that a poster of the movie Rollerball that was hanging up behind glass is a battered duplicate of the much better quality one that my dad has hanging in the den (formerly the Captain’s room). Someone obviously didn’t store it as nicely as Dad did… hey, Dad! You have a museum piece hanging in the house! Who’d of thunk it?

Tad was in love with a collection of 1980’s era Star Wars action figures that someone with a complete personal collection in mint condition has on a semi-permanent home at the museum. We finally had to drag him away – he was fogging up the glass. Other highlights for him were a replica of a Yoda puppet, a Death Star model that would light up and play the Imperial March when you pushed a button (guess who kept the button well pushed?), and an old R2-D2 on display next to Robby the Robot, the Lost in Space robot, Muffit, and Twiki.

Ane was enthralled with the Star Trek corner, which is Paul Allen’s personal collection of Star Trek items, which includes Captain Kirk’s chair from the set of the original series. Did I mention that I was raising a couple of nerds?

I bought an R2-D2 patch for Tad at the gift shop. I think I’m going to sew it onto his school backpack next fall.

After we’d seen all there was to see, and realized that we were all starving, we went to Ivar’s for dinner, where Tad ate almost all my clam chowder and then ate most of the Webmaster’s as well. Ane stuck to the fish and chips (Tad had some, too), and then we had to get home because even though Tad doesn’t have school tomorrow, Ane does. And it’s her last day of preschool. *sniff*

I can hardly believe that come next September, I will have a kindergartener in the house.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 5th, 2009 at 1:54 am and is filed under Children, Group o' Friends, Life in the Pacific Northwest, Media.
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