Artist Casey Jex Smith has been working on a series of works that depict people as D&D characters. Here, Mitt Romney, although unnamed, is shown as Lord Spelldyal, a 21st level warlord with 152 hit points, Boots of Speed and a Helmet of Authority.

The drawing was one of the works in the Dungeons and Dragons On & Ever Onward art show at the Soho Gallery of Digital Art in New York City. The show, which closed Jan 11, 2012, was curated by Timothy Hutchings, and featured works by Casey Jex Smith, Ryan Browning, Sean McCarthy, Rebecca Schiffman, Josh Jordan, Jeffrey Brown, Giovanni Garcia-Fenech, Chris Bors, Owen Rundquist, Andrew Guenther Jason Phillips, Ketta Ioannidou, Fiona MacNeill, Kitty Clark, Erol Otus, Steve Zeiser, Matt Brinkman, Chris Coy, and others.

And it featured historical selections from the Play-Generated Maps and Documents Archive.

More from Casey Jex Smith's D&D characters series here.

Image courtesy Allegra LaViola Gallery

[a version of this post originally appeared on wired.com's GeekDad]

In the Lucas universe, the typical stormtrooper is portrayed as a hapless soldier in service of the Empire.

Stormtroopers don’t tend to be very yummy, either … we assume.

But this footsoldier (pictured at left) was solidly-built, very tasty, and served not only Darth Vader. He also served several hundred hungry science fiction fans.

A crew from Boston-based Amanda Oakleaf Cakes worked like crazed jawas for two weeks to complete this 6-foot, 4-inch high, edible Imperial stormtrooper.

Constructed of white cake, Rice Krispies Treats and fondant (an icing made from sugar used to decorate and sculpt pastries), it weighed 300 pounds — and was devoured this weekend at the Arisia science fiction and fantasy convention by some 600 conventioneers in just two hours.

“Everyone assumes that because it’s such a crazy cake we must be ‘cheating’ in some way, but this isn’t the case,” said head baker Amanda Oakleaf. ”All sculpted and tiered cakes you see, be they ours or others, have some type of inner structure as cake simply collapses if staked over eight inches high.”

Creating the stormtrooper wasn’t easy as cake. Much like in sculpting with clay, making this massive dessert required an interior armature to support the cake. Oakleaf and her team made one from iron pipe, wrapped in plastic for food safety purposes. Every four inches (vertically), they inserted a cardboard divider to separate layers of cake, and every eight inches they attached a masonite board, secured to the iron pipe with pipe clamps.

“This does a number of things, including making the cake incredibly sturdy, but also making it easy to slice and serve,” said Oakleaf. The arms were made of solid sugar “because they were too narrow to use cake.” The lower legs below the knees and the bottom of the head were made of Rice Krispies Treats. She said the overall percentage of Krispie was 15 percent or less; the majority of the cake was, well, cake.

“The main reason that we used Krispie at all wasn’t because we couldn’t have used cake, but rather we just wanted to get a head start and Krispies stay fresher a lot longer than the cake does. Cake is a very time sensitive medium, and that is always our biggest challenge. Once it comes out of the oven the clock is running on freshness.”

Amanda Oakleaf started her cake business with her husband Tyler Oakleaf out of their bedroom apartment in 2008. Now they’ve expanded into a storefront in Winthrop, MA (just outside Boston) and currently employ ten cake artists.

Their previous best was a 5-foot tall Dora the Explorer cake for a Food Network Challenge a few years back. “Her head was massive (3 feet wide),” Oakleaf remembered. “It ended up crashing to the ground when we moved it to the judging table when the inner support slipped out of its socket.”

For now there are no plans for other geek-themed cakes. But, there’s always the possibility of a special request.

“We are a completely custom bakery so we take the orders as they come in,” Oakleaf said. “It’s always fun, and always a challenge.”

See a photo gallery of the entire construction process here at the website for Amanda Oakleaf Cakes.

And may the fondant be with you, always.

(photos courtesy of Amanda Oakleaf)

[This post originally appeared on GeekDad/wired.com]

As reported by WMUR, a New Hampshire TV station, a 12-year-old boy with a rare disease called desmoid fibromatosis was made king of his domain this week.

The back yard of his house in a small N.H. town called Epping now includes a castle.

For some five years, David Morasco has been fighting the disease, which causes abdominal tumors that can grow into and even destroy adjacent tissue, organs and  bones, and are often treated with chemotherapy.

The Make-A-Wish Foundation of New Hampshire made his day — and possibly his life — when it pulled out all the stops to create this impressive and possibly impenetrable gift.

As it turns out, the project happened to be the foundation’s 1,000th wish granted to a N.H. kid. Not bad.

“It’s mind-blowing,” the 7th grader was quoted as saying. “It’s more than I could have imagined.”

The 24 foot by 24 foot formidable fortress, which took several months to build, has many of the features you’d want your real or fantasy castle to include: heavy double doors; crenelations, or battlements, at the top of a curtain wall (made of wood); four towers; staircases; a courtyard; two rooms; and a great hall. A catwalk behind the merlons winds around the structure. It’s even made of stone (stone facing, anyway).

The unveiling was a big enough deal to attract N.H. Gov. John Lynch, who showed up, took a tour and stayed around for castle-shaped cake. (Coincidentally, young Morasco lived in the town adjacent to where I grew up, Lee.)

“The anticipation of all this when he’s been through the dark periods, this is just something that’s really raised his spirits so much,” said David’s father, Mike Morasco.

As for King David, he told the TV cameras, “I’ve already started planning wars and parties and stuff.”

Go David. And get out there and slay that dragon.

More information and a video and slideshow here.

[Post originally appeared on wired.com/GeekDad]

Bebergal’s new coming of age memoir, Too Much to Dream: A Psychedelic American Boyhood (Soft Skull Press) recounts that journey, using his own story and extensive research to explore the connections among popular culture, drugs, religion, and the craving for spirituality that America’s youth seeks, but rarely finds.

Bebergal is the also co-author of The Faith Between Us. He studied religion at Brandeis and Harvard Divinity School and writes frequently on the intersection of popular culture, religion, and science as well as reviews on science fiction and fantasy. Some of his essays and stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Tin House, Times Literary Supplement, Tablet Magazine, The Revealer, and The Believer. He lives in Cambridge, Mass., with his wife and son.

I had a chance to ask Peter Bebergal some questions — as well as happily geek-out on ’70s pop culture, D&D, Led Zeppelin and … wait for it … Freakies cereal.

Ethan Gilsdorf: Peter, why did you decide to write the book?

Peter Bebergal: At the age of 40, sober for many years, I found myself collecting psychedelic music again and reading counterculture/fringe spiritual texts, digging through the bins of underground comics at Million Year Picnic in Harvard Square. I realized that all these years later I was still drawn to this world. At the same time I started investigating and writing on the recent upsurge of psychedelic drug research and the burgeoning psychedelic subculture. I started to ask myself why my experiences led to where they had and despite them, why I still loved these ideas, this music, and these stories. I decided to investigate my own life and try to get beyond the traditional memoir by looking at myself as part of a particular cultural moment, the post ’60s generation who grew up in the shadow of that time.

Gilsdorf: What was so unique about the era of your coming-of-age?

Bebergal: The mid to late ’70s was a time of incredibly weird and wonderful fringe pop culture. You could buy ESP cards at any bookstore, Creepy and Eerie Magazine were part of a revival of horror and supernatural comics, In Search Of and books on UFOs were commonplace, but the undercurrent was a kind of spiritual dissociation. The Aquarian age never happened, but the doors of altered consciousness had been opened. There was no looking back. I began to understand how my own story was part of a much larger cultural moment. I was symptomatic of a kind of Phillip-K-Dickian-post ’60s spiritual schizophrenia.

Gilsdorf: As a kid also growing up in the same era, I remember being haunted by Leonard Nimoy’s In Search Of TV series, as well as devouring books about the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot. There are tons of examples of the weird and occult breaking through in the ’70s to the mainstream, aren’t there? Think of the X-Ray Vision glasses you could order from the back of a comic book, or plans to build your own hovercraft, or spy cameras, ventriloquist dummies, all kinds of tricks and magic. Remember Freakies breakfast cereal? All about a post-hippie commune of misfit toys who lived in a tree. What was that about?

Bebergal: Freakies cereal is an amazing example of the fringe making it into the mainstream. But it was so giddily counterculture, almost like a hippie practical joke, and yet it seemed to have this deep mythology, replete with individual characters with their own personalities, and even the great mythic trope, a world tree where all the Freakies gathered. I had to have it! I recall it was hard to find though, and that it actually tasted kind of horrible, but they came with a terrific prize, a magnet in the likeness of one of the characters.

Gilsdorf: Yes, even to be a “freak” was celebrated, and money was to be made from that. I saved up whatever it was, 17 proofs of purchase from Freakies cereal boxes, to get my own “Snorkeldorf” T-shirt. There was a kind of vast commercialization of the unknown, of the weird and the unexplained. Big change from the 1960s, huh?

Bebergal: The end of the 1960s was the end of a grand narrative, one that was both political and spiritual, and that spoke to a young person’s rebellious instincts. By the 1970s all the ideas of the ’60s were now part of the popular imagination, and lost their edge, could no longer inspire the next generation in the same way, and church/temple hadn’t changed since the hippies showed the emperor had no clothes.

Gilsdorf: So where did one go from there, in the wake of this disillusionment?

Begergal: Many like myself turned to more fantastical narratives to fill the void. Marvel Comics, for example, contained an entire fully imagined universe. Characters from one comic appeared as guest stars in others, and their lives were linked by not only common cause, but by familial relationships, and strange genetic connections and mystical connections. The complex and cosmic Marvel Universe was all about the connections between one hero and another. I was obsessed with the Magneto/Wanda/Quicksilver family tree that also, inexplicably, involved the High Evolutionary [Editor's note: I didn't know who High Evolutionary was; turns out he's a superhero with extrasensory powers of clairvoyance, cosmic awareness and astral projection, among others. -- E.G.]

Gilsdorf: Somehow I missed drinking the superhero comic Kool-Aid. But I discovered D&D big-time. In Too Much to Dream, you talk about the connection between D&D and fantasy fiction and then the occult and psychedelics in your life. Can you explain it here?

Bebergal: I think D&D was the perfect early antidote to what had been an entire childhood filled with magical thinking and a kind of spiritual unease. D&D gave me a healthy channel to express these abstract feelings. It was a concrete manifestation of the imagination, but it had rules and structure. When I started reading the books about psychedelic experiences written in the ’60s, they were as wondrous and exciting as any D&D game or Silver Surfer comic, but they spoke to that deeper existential need. I put down my maps and rule books and picked up sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.

Gilsdorf: Being a huge Led Zeppelin fan, I have to ask: Where does Tolkien and Zeppelin fit into all this?

Bebergal: In the ’60s and ’70s there was a resurgent interest in Tolkien. Publishers put out encyclopedias of his world, linking the books to this vast mythology that by the sheer immensity of detail felt somehow real and maybe even a little “true.” This is what happens to the richest kinds myths, how they take on a quality of truth. Even Led Zeppelin sang about Mordor as if it was place they had visited and returned from. And for all of this, the new phenomena of role-playing gave you the tools to act out these stories, to create new worlds drawing from Tolkien, comics, even rock ‘n’ roll music.

Gilsdorf: I love that idea that, in their music, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page were essentially role-playing characters who had gone on an adventure in Middle-earth, interacting with Black Riders and Gollum. Great concept. Any other musicians that did this? Styx? Kansas? Blue Oyster Cult?

Bebergal: That era was a wonderland of rock as hero quest. Styx sang about a great voyage by sea that turns into a journey into space, Kansas wrote about sky gods, prophecy and mystical insight, and my personal favorite Rush’s Farewell to Kings was an entire fantasy epic that ends with a journey into a black hole. And then of course there is the great 1970s science fiction band Hawkwind, who collaborated with and were inspired by Michael Moorcock.

Gilsdorf: What do you think makes some people look for meaning so desperately they are driven to the point of madness?

Bebergal: It starts with what is a fundamental part of the human experience. Religion and myth are attempts to contain this pursuit, to give it some symbols and ritual, to give it language. But for some people, the more structure you try to impose, the more they see it as an empty gesture, that God or whatever you want to call it cannot be contained by any hierarchy or imposed regulations. Occult or esoteric traditions are attempts to get beyond conventional wisdom to something more experiential, but in the modern world, they have become bound up with every kind of paranormal and fringe idea. Go into any New Age bookstore and conspiracy theories about Freemasons are on the shelf below Aleister Crowley, right next to the books on UFOs. Of course it can weigh you down. I have come to love this stuff with a bit more critical distance these days.

Gilsdorf: Have you ever thought, OK, all this spiritual stuff makes some sense, but maybe I just liked getting high?

Bebergal: This is, in many ways, the central question. There is no doubt that at the bottom of all this is my drug addiction. It ruled me for sure. But like all things, it too did not exist in a vacuum. All the expectations I had for what these substances would do for me were intimately tied into all things that drove my psychology; Fantastic Four comic books, the writings of Timothy Leary, the music of Pink Floyd. My expectations could never be met. I would always be let down, and therefore always be looking for the next high. At some point, though, that is all there was.

Gilsdorf: To me it seems geek culture — sci-fi, fantasy, gaming, etc. – is increasingly replacing traditional culture (church, parents, government, community) as a source of  moral or spiritual guidance to a whole generation of folks. Think of the wisdom received not from priests but Yoda and Gandalf. Can you comment as to why this phenomenon exists?

Bebergal: I think that there is this amazing intersection between geek culture and Wiccan/pagan communities. Even geeks need spirituality, but continue to turn to non-traditional places to find it. These traditions also speak, of course, to an interest in the fictional worlds of magic and old gods, etc.

Gilsdorf: What lessons do we learn from geek culture?

Bebergal: I seek the divine now in more mundane places; playing Legos and Minecraft with my son, watching a heron take flight from an inlet on the Charles River, looking at Saturn’s rings and moons through a telescope, listening to John Coltrane.

Gilsdorf: What about gaming. Have you returned to the fold?

Bebegal: The truth is, I am playing D&D again these days, another attempt to recapture some of that adolescent adventure without the drugs. But never, I must say, without the rock ‘n’ roll!

Gilsdorf: Yes, and rocking out to Zeppelin, I hope. “So I’ve decided what I’m gonna do now | So I’m packing my bags for the Misty Mountains | Where the spirits go now, | Over the hills where the spirits fly | I really don’t know.” I’ll pack my bags too, and see you in Middle-earth.

For more information about Bebergal and his book Too Much To Dream, visit  toomuchtodream.net.

Bebergal: I think the best recent example of this is the comic Hellboy, a devil spawn struggling to maintain his humanity and his goodness. His is the great lesson that we are more than our genes, more than our destiny even, be it familial, cultural, political. Most recently he had to sacrifice himself to save the earth. Pro sports and American Idol cannot tell this story. Only a comic book on cheap newsprint somehow has access to the deepest layers of myth and can make them modern and relevant.

Gilsdorf: Do you still crave mystical experiences? How do you access them?

Bebergal: At first I was worried any mystical search would lead me back to the self-destruction, but despite myself, in the years past I have had deep spiritual experiences. They did not singe the hair off my head, but they were profound and have been a reminder that our normal waking consciousness is capable of experiencing so much more. Whether or not psychedelic drugs are a positive catalyst for this, I cannot say. Some people, particularly those ingrained in traditions that use them as part of their religious rituals (the Native American Church for example), have found deep spiritual significance with them. All I know for sure is that they are not meant for me.

Gilsdorf: So where do you seek safer transcendental moments?

[this post originally appeared on GeekDad/wired.com]

As reported on TheOneRing.net and elsewhere, a handwritten note written by J.R.R. Tolkien that he’d addressed to a couple he and his wife Edith had met on an unfortunate holiday just sold to an anonymous internet bidder for £1,700, or about $2,700.

“It’s a complete mystery how it turned up,” said Adrian Rathbone, an associate at Richard Winterton’s, the UK auction house where it was sold. In another report, Rathbone said the person who sold the letter had unexpectedly found it in the most unlikely place — tucked into a book the seller owned. One day, the letter fell out.

“It dropped out of a book they had,” Rathbone, said. “It wasn’t even a Tolkien book. We’ve brought in several experts who say it is real.

The letter, written in Tolkien’s script recognizable to anyone who has pored over maps in The Hobbit, dates to 1963.

“Rather a disgusting and costly holiday, but for us it was at any rate made memorable by your company and kindness,” Tolkien writes to the couple. “We thought of you yesterday, and hoped your journey home would be less unpleasant than our icy winds and snow have foreboded.”

Included with the letter was a Christmas card and a photograph of Tolkien and the couple the Tolkiens met on the trip (who are named Wilfrid and Nora). The couple the letter was addressed to wasn’t related to the seller, apparently, and the seller was also unnamed. So how that letter ended up in the seller’s hands is a mystery only a few people know — the seller and the auction house, perhaps. And the ghost of Tolkien himself.

[This post originally appeared on GeekDad/wired.com]

A review of "11/22/63"

Time travel is tricky. Problem number one: You probably don't have a time machine parked in your garage. Not yet, anyway.

But let's assume you do. You rev up your metallic silver Chronos 1000. But the future doesn't interest you. You're tempted to visit the past. Because who can resist mucking with history? Nobody.

Depending on which rules of time travel are in effect, the outcome of your meddling will differ. If history is fixed and unchangeable, nothing happens. If alternate parallel histories can coexist, you may visit 1912, warn the Titanic's captain to watch for icebergs, and save those doomed passengers. Unfortunately, they'll still perish in the original timeline. Not a terribly satisfying save-the-day scenario.

Or as Stephen King posits in his new science fiction thriller "11/22/63," there's theory number three: history is flexible. Your backward travels can warp the course of future events (as long as you don't create a paradox, like challenging yourself to a duel).

King wonders what would happen if you time-trekked back to 1963 and killed the assassin before he got to President Kennedy. Would changing that watershed moment have prevented the country’s military escalation in Vietnam, saved the lives of RFK and MLK, yadda, yadda yadda -- in short, prevented many of the latter half of the 20th century’s ills? Those questions frame the basic premise of King’s book.

Assassinations and rifts in the space-time continuum are not foreign concepts to America’s King of Pulp. In “The Dark Tower’’ series, magical doors link far-flung worlds. In “The Dead Zone,’’ the clairvoyant protagonist shoots the president to avert nuclear Armageddon. Here, to kick-start the plot, King builds a wormhole in the pantry of a diner in Lisbon Falls, Maine. Like an express train, the time tunnel connects two destinations in history: the present and Sept. 9, 1958. Al, the diner’s tetchy proprietor, has been there and back a few times, mainly to buy hamburger at 54 cents a pound so he might sell 2011 burgers for $1.19. “Turns out I’m no longer tied to the economy the way other people are,’’ he jokes. Then Al finds a higher cause: Surveil Lee Harvey Oswald, determine whether he is the lone gunman, and take him out.

King ups the stakes with his own twists. Every visit back in time, no mat ter how long, takes only two minutes in the present. While in the past, travelers age normally. To accomplish his mission Al would need to go back to 1958 and stay five years. But his lung cancer would prevent him from lasting until 1963. The solution? Recruit Jake Epping, a 35-year-old high school English teacher, divorced, no children, and our first-person narrator. Jake takes up the quest, chucking his cellphone - “Keeping it would be like walking around with an unexploded bomb’’ - to live full time 53 years ago, pseudonymously as George Amberson. Jake/George soon discovers history is resistant to change, in direct proportion to the size of the event he wants to bend. “Obdurate’’ is the refrain. But the past can also be redeemed. If Jake kills Oswald and returns to 2011 to find the world ain’t better, a journey back restores history. “Every trip is the first trip,’’ Al says. “Because every trip down the rabbit-hole’s a reset.’’

The historical novel is already a well-established literary time machine, and King, who was 16 when JFK was shot, has done his homework, setting his characters on plausible collision courses with actual people and lovingly populating his “Land of Ago’’ with period details: drive-ins, pop songs, pep clubs, and finned convertibles. King balances his nostalgia on the cusp of tumult, just before this more naive world would be homogenized by television and strip malls and its smaller mind would wake up to racial injustice and military quagmire. As the author said in a recent interview, “11/22/63 was our 9/11.’’

No overt evil or supernatural presence haunts the novel, but buildings like an abandoned factory in Derry (a fictional Maine town readers of “It’’ and “Bag of Bones’’ will recognize) feel menacing. The Texas School Book Depository, where Oswald erects his sniper perch, emanates red-hot historical radiation. “The past harmonizes with itself,’’ Jake says, feeling more wraithlike than human. All through “11/22/63,’’ coincidences - often violent ones - ripple and accrue the longer Jake hangs around.

King’s thriller is full of suspense, and yes, you’ll want to know whether Jake gets to Dealey Plaza in time to stop the assassin’s bullet. If you’re not turned on by JFK conspiracy theories, the painstaking details of Oswald’s every move might feel tedious. You’ll also want to overlook how resourceful King makes his teacher, who conveniently knows about guns and surveillance techniques, and how to smooth-talk FBI agents.

Yet, uncharacteristic for Stephen King, a love story overshadows Jake’s creepy rendezvous with destiny. While in singular pursuit of Oswald, our hero settles in small-town Jodie, Texas, where he becomes a schoolteacher, falls for a clumsy librarian named Sadie, and starts accumulating his own cause-and-butterfly-effect. Helping a football player blossom into an actor, Jake/George finally sheds his ghostly trail - “It was when I stopped living in the past and just started living.’’ “11/22/63’’ ends up shining brightest as a metaphorical journey about “stupidity . . . and missed chances,’’ the perils of memory and regret, and the fantasy of starting over. To redeem America’s wounded psyche, Jake may or may not save the president. To redeem himself, he merely has to decide where to be present, and how to be present, in time.

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms.’’ He can be reached at www.ethangilsdorf.com.

[this first appeared in the Boston Globe]

To reprint this or one of Ethan Gilsdorf's other articles, contact sales@featurewell.com or visit http://www.featurewell.com

Muppet evolution

A timeline of key moments in Muppets history.

1955: Jim Henson debuts Kermit the Frog on Washington, D.C.’s WRC-TV’s program “Sam and Friends,’’ in black and white. Henson goes on to perform Ernie, Rowlf the Dog, the Swedish Chef (Henson did the voice and Frank Oz did the hands), and Dr. Teeth.

1963: Frank Oz, age 19, is hired by Muppets Inc. His first role is playing right hand for Rowlf the Dog. Oz later is the voice and hand inside Bert, Grover, Cookie Monster, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Sam the Eagle, and Animal.

1969: Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) premieres “Sesame Street.’’ A generation learns to count and spell thanks to a giant yellow bird and a grumpy monster who lives in a garbage can.

1976: “It’s time to play the music, it’s time to light the lights’’; “The Muppet Show’’ debuts, running until 1981. Set in a fictitious vaudeville theater, the variety show totals 120 episodes, and features hundreds of guest stars and musical comedy sketches.

1979: “The Muppet Movie,’’ the first of seven Muppet theatrical films, opens in theaters. The soundtrack single, “The Rainbow Connection,’’ stays in radio’s Top 40 for seven weeks, eventually reaching number 25 on the Billboard Hot 100.

1980: Frank Oz performs as Yoda in “The Empire Strikes Back.’’ The voice is, essentially, Grover mixed with a little Gonzo. “Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try’’ schools a generation of geeks.

1990: Jim Henson dies of bacterial pneumonia at age 53. Big Bird sings “It’s Not Easy Being Green’’ at Henson’s memorial service.

1999: The sixth feature film, “Muppets From Space,’’ is released, the first since Henson’s death with an original screenplay (1992’s “The Muppet Christmas Carol’’ and 1996’s “Muppet Treasure Island’’ were adaptations.)

2004: Excluding the “Sesame Street’’ characters, the intellectual property rights to all other Muppets are sold by Henson’s heirs to the Walt Disney Company. Children’s Television Workshop (now called Sesame Workshop) also loses rights to Kermit the Frog.

2009: The Muppets are featured in a hilarious parody of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,’’ proving their old “Muppet Show’’ mojo is still conjurable. The video attracts 23 million views on YouTube (and counting).

One fear: that the Muppets might not be ready for 2011. Or that we’ve grown up and don’t need them anymore. And then there’s the reality of our evolved techno-savvy: To pass off the shared delusion that is the Muppets - to make a new generation of fans believe in a world where googly-eyed cloth puppets and humans overlap - would require a CGI Kermit interacting with a motion-capture Fozzie.

“I know there are some Muppets purists who have some concerns,’’ said Cooper, who plays the film’s dastardly arch nemesis Tex Richman. “But I think I can say with some accuracy [we’ve] kept it pretty pure and not pushed the envelope.’’

“The Muppets,’’ which opens nationwide on Wednesday, is their comeback story. Fans can rejoice: Their purity - their wholesome, G-rated and pun-filled, slapstick-style comedy - remains intact. As does their low-fi, sock-puppet technology.

“These Muppets are . . .’’ Cooper said, pausing for effect over lunch near his home in Kingston. “. . . Muppets. There was no special effects. This is an old, old process going back to the late ’60s and ’70s.’’ In early rehearsals, Cooper said he first wondered how he was going to act opposite a hand shoved inside brightly colored cloth. “My imagination gets the better of me,’’ he recalled, munching on a panini, and without a trace of the smirk that dominates Tex. “On the first day of work, with all these handlers and Muppet characters, it took about a half hour [to fall for the illusion].’’ As soon as a performer put his hand in a Muppet, “he became that character,’’ Cooper said.

Ever since “Sesame Street’’ debuted in 1969, no one batted an eye when a man-on-the-street journalist wielding a microphone was actually an amphibian, a stand-up comic was a bear, or a pig could beat out “real’’ lovely ladies to be crowned a beauty queen. “The Muppet Show’’ (1976-81) further blurred that fuzzy fringe between fantasy and reality, asking: What if the Muppets had to stage a weekly variety show and we were privy to both the musical-comedy numbers and the chaos backstage? The first “Muppet Movie’’ in 1979 provided additional layers, giving us back stories and exploding beyond the confines of a puppeteer’s maneuvers and the soundstage. It gave these creatures’ dreams.

In the new movie, Muppets still inhabit our world. But the larger question remains: Are they at odds with the current times? Will audiences be unfazed by the old-timey villainy of Cooper’s character, who wants to raze Muppet Studios and drill for oil? “Those Muppets - they think they’re so funny,’’ Richman sneers. “We’ve all moved on. The world is a cynical place.’’ In the words of the jaded TV executive Kermit and Co. try to convince to give them airtime, “In this market, you guys are no longer relevant.’’

Maybe. Or maybe their sweet, dream-catching credo is just what our money-grubbing planet needs.

To share in Muppet aspirations, we’ve always had to extend a rainbow-colored bridge. “The Muppets’’ adds the logical next step in the illusion, making the question of their cultural relevancy part of the plot. Time has passed since the 1970s and ’80s and the hippy-dippy humor of Dom DeLuise, Madeline Kahn, and Mel Brooks. Some assumed the Muppets were dead when Henson, voice of Kermit, died of bacterial pneumonia at age 53, and Frank Oz, the lifeblood of Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear, retired in 2000. The last full-length Muppet feature, the made-for-TV “The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz’’ (2005), was considered a failure. Their influence has lapsed, evidenced by their last theatrical feature, 1999’s “Muppets From Space.’’ Aside from appearances in YouTube parody videos, the Muppets have largely disappeared from America’s cultural radar.

“I guess people sort of forgot about us,’’ Kermit laments, in his empty, Beverly Hills mansion.

Ignoring the intervening Muppet movie capers, Christmas stories, and trips to Treasure Island and outer space, the plot is in keeping with the nostalgic theme, focusing on the characters’ “real’’ lives, just like their movie debut. Muppet super-fans and brothers Gary (Jason Segel) and Walter (a new Muppet character) must persuade Kermit to stage a telethon to save the endangered Muppet Studios. Cue the “let’s reunite the gang for one last show’’ road trip: Miss Piggy works in Paris as the plus-size fashion editor at Vogue, Gonzo is a plumbing magnate, and Fozzie is a member of a cheesy Reno casino tribute band called the Moopets. Dr. Teeth’s Electric Mayhem Band may or may not have smoked controlled substances back in the day, but Muppetland is too wholesome for any rehab narrative. Instead, Animal has to be sprung from the anger management recovery program he’s joined, led by Jack Black. (His trigger word - “drum’’ - must never be spoken.) Wakka wakka wakka.

A Muppet fan since he was five, 39-year-old British director James Bobin, creator of “Da Ali G Show’’ and “Flight of the Conchords,’’ was eager to introduce the joy and irreverence of what he called a “national treasure’’ to his own children. Knowing what fondness older fans have for these felt and foam beings, he didn’t want to disappoint. “My inner child told me make sure this is good, do it justice.’’

Bobin felt that his work on “Flight of the Conchords’’ was the perfect training ground. “Both are musical comedies,’’ Bobin said via telephone from Los Angeles. “ ‘Conchords’ is a very warm-hearted and gentle and positive comedy. Never mean spirited.’’ And both share a tongue-in-cheek, self-referential sensibility. “It can be surreal - the world where puppets and humans coexist. But it has a very positive feel.’’

While neither Bobin nor others involved in the film wanted to change the essential Muppet psyche, they did want pizzazz. One, A-list cameos are again in abundance. Two, Segel, as massive a Muppet fan as the character he plays, co-wrote the script. If you recall, Segel’s “Forgetting Sarah Marshall’’ ended with a Muppet-like musical. Writing and starring in that movie got Segel fired up to update the Muppets for a new generation.

For younger fans to glom onto the new goofy antics, the music and comedy needed to reference current, edgier pop culture. Which explains the hip-hop send-up Cooper raps and hoofs to: “Let’s Talk About Me.’’

“I have an early background in song and dance. The opportunity to do that was terrific,’’ said Cooper. “I have a huge new-found respect for hip-hop.’’

The new movie also makes sure that the Muppet blend of satire and silliness endures. “The great joy of the original series was that Jim [Henson] never wrote down to children,’’ said Bobin. “It’s for everybody. Grandparents can watch it, kids can watch it, parents can watch it. Everyone can get something out of it.’’

Henson may be gone. Oz may have hung up Piggy and Fozzie (Steve Whitmire now performs Kermit; Eric Jacobson takes on Oz’s roles). Fans may be jaded since Henson’s heirs sold the Muppets to the House of Mouse. But the new movie’s riff on the highs and lows of fame is an argument for, and proof of, the very relevancy of these creatures. “The Muppets’’ also doles out sentimental moments, including a reprise of “The Rainbow Connection,’’ that remind us why we loved these characters so much in their heyday, which might be our heyday, too.

Perhaps nothing’s changed. Including the hokey, obsolete, yet necessary need to fall under their spell - lovers, the dreamers and, as Piggy would add, Moi.

Ethan Gilsdorf can be reached at www.ethangilsdorf.com.

[this article originally appeared in the Boston Globe]

THE ROAD TO FREEDOM 

Directed by: Brendan Moriarty

Starring: Joshua Frederic Smith, Scott Maguire, Nhem Sokun, Tom Proctor

Running time: 93 minutes

Rated: R (violence to bodies and normal speech patterns)

During the Vietnam War, film star Errol Flynn’s son, Sean, gave up an acting career to become a photojournalist. He went to Vietnam, where he helped break the story of the My Lai Massacre. In 1970, on assignment for Time magazine, he talked his way across the Cambodian border with fellow journalist Dana Stone. The two men disappeared, probably captured and killed by the Khmer Rouge.