Upsetting Day: Before You Leap

We're all sick of those celebrity autobiographies that tell us "nobody wants to work anymore." All you need to do to be successful is wash your face, smile, and work eighty-seven hours a week. Just do that, and the log flume of the American dream will shoot you out of Uncle Sam's butthole into a four bedroom house in the suburbs. We don't need another major celebrity spoon-feeding us this saccharine and demonstrably untrue bullshit, yet we have one. That celebrity is Kermit The Frog.

This hybrid memoir/self-help novel is nothing more than a Gordon Geckoesque tribute to naked ambition. In the beginning of the book Kermit constantly hypes up how hard he worked to get to where he is today, but the stories he tells form a different picture, a finger painting of a frog who made it to the top with a combination of luck and a willingness to exploit those loyal to him.

Kermit likes to pretend he's from humble origins. Much is made of his time in the swamp where he was born, yet he claims distant ties to such prominent historical figures as Leonardo Dafrog, Imhoptep The Frog, and Marco Tadpole. Which is it, Kermit? Are you from humble swamp origins, or are you the great, great, great, great, grand nephew of a rich Venetian merchant frog?

Never in my life have I seen such brazen lies in a book, and I read a bootleg copy of Andrew Dice Clay's I’m a Nice Guy I Swear, You Can Trust The Dice Man, Come Sit On My Lap which had some of the most ridiculous advice on home refinancing I’ve ever encountered. But the spurious claims in Kermit's book are almost too many to count. He says that when he first moved to New York, he was briefly employed as a waiter in a restaurant called "Jambes De La Grenouille,"  which loosely translates to frog legs until he spotted his own picture on the menu! This is an anecdote Kermit loves to retell, but as far as anyone who has ever looked into it can tell, Jambes De La Grenouille, like so many things in Kermit's background, is just a figment of his imagination.

If you're hoping for dirt on his fellow muppets, look elsewhere. This isn't the down and dirty celebrity tell-all that was advertised. All he has to say about his years on the street is that Oscar The Grouch was a "great neighbor." He refers to  Animal as "An angel with a heart of gold," even though later in the book, when Animal is a guest writer in the romance section, he answers every dating question with "want woman!" Want woman!? Sure, frog, the sexual harassment muppet is an angel.

Meanwhile, the woman he's been romantically linked to for most of his life takes the harshest criticism Kermit has to offer. "Piggy really does know more about being famous than anyone in the world. And believe me, she'll be the first to tell you that, over and over again." He says in the exhausted tone with which he always writes about Piggy.

Kermit swears he's ready to disclose his relationship status in this book after years of speculation, retraction, and misdirection; he says he's ready to speak openly and honestly about Miss Piggy. Then in the most gratuitously backhanded move he could make, he sticks a cease and desist from Miss Piggy's lawyers on top of the chapter. Passive aggressive much, frog?

We all know people who like to play Kermit's little relationship game. He's all-loving to Miss Piggy when they're together, but when Dr. Teeth And The Electric Mayhem is in town, and Janice is available, suddenly they're just good friends. Kermit doesn't want to define his relationship with Miss Piggy because it serves him not to. I understand that, but the way he drags her name through the mud, AND THIS IS NOT A PIG PUN, is completely unacceptable.

Miss Piggy isn't the only one Kermit seems to have trouble defining his relationship with. At various points in the book, both Rowlf and Fozzie are referred to as his best pals. Which is it, Kermit the Snake? You can only have one best pal, but yet again, Kermit dodges the difficult questions in favor of deflecting, spewing general platitudes about friendship and self-improvement.

One of the most telling stories in the book comes from the early days of The Muppet Show when Kermit found the theater the show was supposed to take place in was infested with rats. He put them to work, but not for a reasonable rate which later resulted in a strike led by Rizzo.

Does Kermit believe in fair wages for the less popular but hardest working muppets? Or does he crush the proletariat under his webbed feet? This cute little anecdote provides some of the only insight in the book to what I believe is the real Kermit. The Kermit of the one percent!

Now that Kermit has thoroughly disillusioned everyone about his views on union labor, his memoir is done. Only a third of this book is a memoir because there's only so much Kermit is willing to reveal. What he's trying to hide, we may never know. Could it have something to do with those rumors about tongue extending plastic surgery? Probably.

His advice for living well is the most out of touch stuff you could expect from a man who's been famous for most of his life. Kermit says it's important to find something to do with your free time because "If you don't, someone else will." That's the most threatening advice I've heard from a self-help book. I feel like if I don't relax after reading this book, Kermit is going to send Sweetums to my house to make me.

Among the many hobbies Kermit suggests readers enjoy, he mentions golf, the opera, tennis, and collecting. That's right; this frog is so rich his hobby is buying stuff. Ok, he claims that he collects "rainbows," which sounds adorable until you learn that Kermit owns 80% of all rainbow NFTs, including Nyan Cat, which he purchased for a cool seven hundred thousand dollars. He hopes to eventually trademark the concept of rainbows and charge people anytime one appears over their home.

What other sage words of wisdom does Kermit have to offer? There's a section on dealing with difficult personalities in which he disparaged "conniving rats" some more. If I were Rizzo, I'd be sleeping with one eye open. His advice for dealing with money is, "easy come easy go," because "money is not a big issue with frogs." I suppose that's true, but most frogs aren't wearing a leather jacket in their author photo and listing "opera" as a hobby.

If you're looking for advice, let me give you some for free. Don't pick up this book! Some may say I'm too harsh, but let me add that though I don't recommend it, this book will forever have a place in my library, one of my bookshelves is wobbly, and it's the perfect thickness to hold it up. Stick to acting Kermit. You're pretty good at acting like a good person, and if you stop, you certainly won't sell any more copies of this wretched thing.

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