It's National Grouch Day!

[MrsPepper]

October 15th is National Grouch Day (in Canada at least!) I found this great article with a cute story about our grouchiest friend.

Check out the full article at Canada.com:

Misty Harris , CanWest News Service
Published: Monday, October 15, 2007

[....]
For many Canadians of a certain age, their baptismal splash of snark came courtesy of Oscar the Grouch. Sesame Street's trash-can-dwelling Muppet, who incidentally inspired National Grouch Day, may be the most prominent example of how society is taught to humour those with little humour.

"The characters (on Sesame Street) could be viewed as deliberate attempts to foster appreciations for different types of personalities in real life," says Richard Graham, chair of the children's TV division of the Popular Culture Association.

"Oscar exemplifies what psychologists call oppositional defiant disorder. He's the archetype that teaches children to tolerate this kind of individualist in society."

It seems fitting then, that a real-life sourpuss informed Oscar the Grouch. The story goes that Jim Henson and a friend went to a Manhattan restaurant -- varyingly recounted as either 'Oscar's Salt of the Sea' or 'Oscar's Tavern' -- where they were waited on by a server so grumpy as to be comical.

According to the book Sesame Street Unpaved, Henson and his companion were so amused by the man's behaviour that they made trips to Oscar's a regular form of "masochistic entertainment ... and their waiter forever became immortalized as the world's most famous grouch."

mharris@canwest.com

© CanWest News Service 2007

 

[Ilikemuppets]

Wow! I wish we has something like that here in the states.

 

[D'Snowth]

Hmm, that may explain why I feel a little irritable today?