Muppet of the Fortnight: Frazzle

Welcome to the second installment of Muppet of the Fortnight, my biweekly spotlight on one of the many Muppets.  After starting with one of the more popular of the gang, this go 'round we're going to take at someone from the opposite end of the spectrum: Frazzle.

 

[There's the sexy fella]

Alright, so at this point you're probably asking two questions:  

First, "mth, are you only going to talk about red/orange Muppets with pointy teeth and bushy black eyebrows?"

 and second, 

"Who the hell is Frazzle?"

Fair questions, the both of them.  

Here are your answers: No, and he is a monster who's made a handful of appearances on Sesame Street and in its various books and such.

So if you're asking a third question, "Why Frazzle?", let me answer that one, too...with a bit of a story of sorts.

Way back when I was a just a wee tot bumbling about like an idiot (as opposed to now where I am that but taller and with a beard), I had a book.  I think it was this book:

Anyway, at that point, I knew most of the Seasame Street characters and maybe some of the regular Muppets, perhaps.  But I knew them to be a friendly bunch with friendly faces, happy faces, non-threatening, child-friendly, huggable, likeable faces.  You get the idea.  But then, somewhere in this book, amidst the smiling doe-eyed Muppets that would never hurt me, was this demon from hell:.

Frazzle was a Muppet who looked like he would eat my face right off.  Look at him: curving devil horns, firey red and yellow eyes beneath a furrow brow, probably the most threatening predatory-looking teeth of any Muppet, and the protruding tongue of a madman.  Here was a true monster among monsters.  The devil walked among them.  Dude was legit scary to tiny mth.  And yet...oddly intriguing.  He stood out from the rest, he caught my attention, his image was one that left an indelible mark on my still developing brain.
It's quite possible he's one of the characters that sparked my interest in monsters and I don't mean those like Grover.

Now, I should probably take a moment to clear Frazzle's good name.  Despite his appearance, he is not a satanic beast looking to devour the flesh from your bones or the soul from your body or any of that lovely stuff.  He's just a regular dude like you and me who happens to be a fairly scary looking monster.  He's got parents, he gets sad, he goes to the dentist, he just wants to fit in.  He's just a dude trying to get by in this crazy world.  With choppers like a damn T-Rex.

So decades go by from little tyke mth to big adult mth and that face never left my brain.  I did some research and I was able to put a name to the face.  I was able to learn more about this guy and about the character behind the scary face.  So in the end, I guess there's some sort of lesson we could take from this.  Of course, if we stick too close to that lesson, we might just have our faces eaten off by a demon from the pits of hell who is legitimately as dangerous as his fangy, flame-eyed puss would imply.

Let's let Frazzle and friends wrap this up:

That's a pretty damn good jam.