Big Bird: After the details of my contract dispute became public, I couldn’t get arrested in this town. There’s not much demand for freakishly tall birds with androgynous voices, you dig? I did car-wash commercials, dinner theater, Bar Mitzvahs. But after years of eating birdseed and renting a shoebox of a cage in the city, you start thinking, Maybe I should just get a nest out in the country, somewhere the air is actually sweet. It’s beautiful here in Wyoming, if you can overlook the Christofascism. I’ve gotten into long flightless hikes and bought a pair of binoculars for people-watching. Strangers sometimes come up to me on the street and say I look familiar, ask if they went to elementary school with me and whatnot. I smile and say I just have one of those beaks.
Oscar the Grouch: Turns out the dummies who grew up on me couldn’t get enough Oscar, so I started moonlighting as an insult comic. They carry me out to the stage in a covered garbage can, and I wait till the idiots are begging for me. Then I lift my head under the lid, real slow-like, and go, “What’re you lookin’ at, you white-trash motherfuckers?” They love it. A thousand bucks a night and an endless supply of Muppet groupies coming through Branson, Missouri.
