The Ultimate Holiday Parlor Game: The Muppets Hunt for Red October

So it's 1870, you are in Victorian London, and you and your guests have just finished eating a heavy Christmas meal of goose, pastries, and a vat of wine.

What now?

There is no NBA and their annual spate of Christmas games.  There are no movie theaters to go to.  "The Christmas Story" hasn't even been written yet, much less filmed and shown for 24 hours straight on TBS.  You might go to a football match, but the game is still squarely a lower class past time and has not yet been made sexy and acceptable to the rich by the gloss of money and the power of Russian oil Moguls.  There is no Nintendo, no Playstation.

So what do you do?

You play parlor games!  Charades, Are you there Moriarity, Tiddlywinks, Biddlywinks, Squeek and Tickle, Tickle and Squeek, Bunky McBunkBunk, Let's Tell Stories about Famous Bridges, Confuse the Cat. Games that can be played indoors without equipment on foggy, dreary, soot filled English nights.

The English Gentry Spent Many Hours Simply Bored to Tears.

And among my favorite Parlor Games is one that my wife and came up with:  "Recast The Hunt for Red October with Muppets".

It's a simple game.  You just try to figure out which Muppet should take which role in the classic 1990 Family Christmas masterpiece "The Hunt for Red October".

The game always starts with the question "Which Muppet should play Ramius?", the renegade Soviet Submarine captain who intends to defect to the United States and hand over the new Typhoon Class submarine "Red October" with its silent caterpillar drive.  It's an important question, because it from here all the other dominoes fall into place.

Naturally, it seems that the most important role in the film should go to Kermit the Frog, and for many years that is how the game was played, just filling in the other roles with the other Muppets.  Sam the Eagle makes a good Real Admiral Painter (commander of USS Enterprise Battle Group), Swedish Chef is naturally KGB spy (who is also chef), Gonzo fills in for sonarman Jones with Rizzo the Rat as his trusty sidekick.  With Kermit out of the picture it is tough to figure out who Jack Ryan would be -- Fozzy Bear is a choice, as is Rolf the Dog.  Miss Piggy would work except that there are virtually no women in the film.  But if it is a Muppet movie, Miss Piggy must have a role....I would perhaps put Miss Piggy by Kermit's side as the XO of the Red October (the man who wanted to see Montana), but I don't think Miss Piggy would ever play a character who dies.

There is of course the Sesame Street variant, which allows characters from the street to be brought in too. All this really does is let you have Cookie Monster, the greatest Muppet ever created.  Where to put him is a great mystery, because .  I could see him as Jack Ryan (Son of Cookie!  Ramius trying to defect!), but I think his contemplative googily eyes make him a good choice for Ramius as well.  With Cookie Monster as Ramius that would allow Kermit to be Jack Ryan (which I think works) and....yes, Miss Piggy as Allen Greer, the CIA Deputy Director of Intelligence.  That's a nice large role for her, and I am sure that we could work in a musical number for her about....something.  Bacon?  Maybe.

Look, all I am saying is that with 26 cast members in the movie and at least that many Muppets to choose from, there must be thousands upon thousands of combinations, each one of with their own merits, all of which are ripe for discussion on an endless Victorian Christmas night.

It has to be, the ultimate parlor game.  My wife and I invented it, and it is my greatest pleasure to give it to you on this magical Christmas Eve day (which in our case down here on the Tidewater is actually foggy and rainy, warm and gross).

Merry Christmas!