January 7th, 2010 by soullldiva

This video was making the rounds about a month ago. It has over 11 million views on YouTube.

Awesome, right? Pure genius.

When Jim died in 1990 from pneumonia (a tragic, needless death), my brother and I rented The Muppet Movie and cried. The intro with “The Rainbow Connection” is such a tear-jerker. For those of you who don’t know, Jim did the voice of Kermit and that is him singing the song. They tried to have his son continue with Kermit The Frog’s voice, but it just wasn’t the same and that’s why you don’t see Kermit much anymore.

What a special person Jim was. He gave us Kermit, Miss Piggy, Sesame Street (40 years ago!), The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock, The Dark Crystal, Yoda, Animal and a pantheon of puppets (he named them Muppets by combining the words marionette and puppet and was the first to combine a puppet form with marionette-type strings and sticks for the hands and feet). And the Muppet technology today is quite amazing, just rent any new Muppet movie (like Elmo’s Adventure in Grouchland) and you’ll see what I mean.

That’s the legacy that Jim Henson left us. Bless him!