Morning Adorable: Backstage on Sesame Street With Elmo and the First Lady

Fun fact: Most Muppets (the ones with articulate fingers, at least) are left handed. The (usually right handed) muppeteer operates the head with their dominant hand and uses their left as the puppet’s left hand. A second muppeteer gets the right hand. This is true for Fozzie, Rosita (seen in the video above), Rowlf, Telly, and Big Bird (who can only appear with a secondary muppeteer in blue-screened scenes, so his right hand is otherwise either pinned at his side or shown holding his teddy bear Radar*).

This, however, does not apply to the Swedish Chef, who not has not only articulate but fully shown human hands. Originally, Jim Henson provided the voice and head movements, with Frank Oz‘s hands. Now go back and rewatch those old clips and see if you can’t see parallels to Helping Hands from Whose Line.

This is also the reason why most muppet guitarists and bassists play left handed. And now you will never not notice it.

*Named after the M.A.S.H. character

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Susana Polo

Susana Polo thought she'd get her Creative Writing degree from Oberlin, work a crap job, and fake it until she made it into comics. Instead she stumbled into a great job: founding and running this very website (she's Editor at Large now, very fancy). She's spoken at events like Geek Girl Con, New York Comic Con, and Comic Book City Con, wants to get a Batwoman tattoo and write a graphic novel, and one of her canine teeth is in backwards.

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