Frog Goes Red
It's three for three on anniversaries this week, with Pokemon Fire Red & Leaf Green, Richard Avedon's 'In The American West', and Sabrina Carpenter's Muppets?
I really have kept it to the knuckle today. This is partially because I was informed by more than one person that I went overlong on Saturday but also for some other unknown reason. I have been utilising tools that I had not understood were being discussed and termed as ADHD distraction / victory tactics, whereby when your spicy brain rails against unloading the dish washer, you go and empty the litter tray instead. This avoidance feels like a victory and also has the added bonus of being really damn productive. The logical extrapolation of this of course then offers one the opportunity to unload the dish washer as opposed to hoovering the lounge that is now covered in extraneous litter. I’m attempting to dual wield this weapon alongside a Just Do One Thing mantra. It might even be working.
They’re actually gonna do it. I mean, I don’t think anyone thought for a moment that we lived in a world where they wouldn’t because money as per but yeah…it’s happening. I only ever experienced these gen one games when they were not red and green but red and blue and/or yellow and/or ‘Let’s Go’ and the catching/nix battle system in those latter, more recent games did not grab me. While there seemed little to figuratively grab, the way my brain works prevented me from walking away from doing the thing they want you to do when it would be a sensible time to do so. I got stuck and I walked away and go I did not.
Of course because of the way that time works and the way in which I have personally fallen through it in a very physical sense, I originally experienced Pokemon Blue and Yellow on the OG Greyboy, hence I never got to see any actual colours and it wasn’t until a whole age of this world later that I even got to see them on an legitimate Gameboy Colour (eternal props to Canterbury’s legendary Level Up Games) and never these vivid iterations on the Gameboy Advance because by that point I was briefly over it. All of which is to say that they have me now and I am cranked up to the nines on Kanto’s finest.
I’d happily negotiate a deal whereby I give them whatever they damn well please in return
It is preordered at what I must admit feels like a totally reasonable price point for a remaster (sure) of a twenty-two year old game and locked in. Now, if they can just find a way to make the hardware work for a HeartGold and SoulSilver, I’d happily negotiate a deal whereby I give them whatever they damn well please, first-born larva absolutely being on the table, in return for an afternoon with those games on the Switch. Honest to blog, I’d even take a Crystal port and I suspect that might be easier and therefore more likely.
We were a little mystified as to why they chose to announce/shadow drop the preorders last Friday and not this Friday, i.e. Pokemon Day and also their actually fucking thirtieth birthday? It feels like it could be a pre-teaser type situation and maybe we’re getting something else? One of those other games perhaps? Gen ten? More likely. A gen ten I actually want to play? Hmm. I need something to keep me busy for the next seventy-two hours or so. Thankfully, with this week being what it’s shaped up to be, we are “blessed” in this regard.
Pokemon’s not the only cultural touchstone in my life having a “Big O” moment right now and the card that came with this says it all. This is an exquisitely (and I do mean exquisitely) produced new publication of one of the greatest American photographic projects, if not photographic projects period, of the twenty-first century. Richard Avedon’s ‘In The American West’ (Abrams, 2025) has long been on my hit-list. Indeed, I used to have a copy, which of course I never owned, mainly because it was for sale and I had to sell it and even that was the French copy, even if it was one of the first 1985 copies?
I had basically come to terms with most likely never possessing my own copy in this reality or the next
That this is a new English edition means that I can actually get around to the foreword and background now and that might be something that needs to occur tomorrow morning over a coffee, kept at a respectful distance, naturally. Out of print for more than a decade, I had basically come to terms with most likely never possessing my own copy in this reality or the next, hence that they have actually gone back for such an incredible reproduction is a pretty big deal. If I can manifest a copy of that Tina Barney book now, I think I could find some modicum of peace…
I have heard people decry, nay cry in the streets about the fact that the last Muppet Show should always have been one more season but how in the seven hells is this only one episode? They could run this thing every single weekend and an infinite number of bums would fill an infinite number of seats. I had been meaning to take them up on that very offer for a bit but have only just properly resolved the Disney Plus fiasco…I think. Spoilerth: It was absolutely worth the wait and now I’m even more mad that this is all we get for the time being. I’ve just checked and we really are three for three today because 2025 was only the seventieth anniversary since Henson created the now moderately cursed ‘Sam and Friends’? Seventy years of muppets? Shit’s wild.
The humour is still gold AF and there was something in every scene for both my small person and I
But yeah. Perhaps especially in light of this, a Muppet Show Singular is less of a “show”, if we’re honest and might qualify more readily as a “feature”, one that does feature an admittedly very good Sabrina Carpenter and sometimes Seth Rogan? The magic is still very much there and these cameos have always been part of it when it’s been at its best. From what I can gather (and this is directly referenced early on in the show), there are absolutely plans to feed demand while keeping production value appropriately high. The humour is still gold AF and there was something in every scene for both my small person and I, which should speak volumes about the quality of the writing and the warmth with which it’s pitched, culminating in a closing number for the ages for all ages. I Stan the frog.
JD out.