LOS ANGELES 一 A flock of 60 chickens who work on the The Muppet Show have come forward to accuse Gonzo, the show’s eccentric stuntman, of creating a toxic workplace due to a series of incidents involving inappropriate comments, unwelcome plucking, and a cannon, anonymous sources have confirmed.
“The so-called ‘Great Gonzo’ made frequent comments about how delicious the chickens’ legs looked on a regular basis,” said a representative for the aggrieved chickens, speaking through a chicken-to-English translator developed by Dr. Benson Honeydew of Muppet Labs. “During musical numbers, he would always give solos to chickens with ‘the juiciest breasts.’ If anyone complained, he would hold up a feather duster and say, ‘You know what this is? The last chicken who disagreed.’”
In a particularly disturbing incident, Gonzo allegedly fired chickens repeatedly out of a 17th century cannon in an attempt to retrieve a toilet he had absent-mindedly glued to the ceiling during Muppet Show rehearsals. When one of the chickens’ heads became lodged in the toilet, Gonzo reportedly berated the chicken for “using the ceiling-toilet backwards.”
When pressed for comment, Gonzo insisted that the toilet fiasco could be considered standard workplace behavior on the Muppet Show lot. “There’s nothing dangerous about cannons in the workplace. I’ve used that cannon to blast myself to sleep every night since the 1970s. If it was dangerous, don’t you think I would have brain damage? Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go play the bagpipes on a tightrope above a tank full of enraged sharks.”
Gonzo’s longtime girlfriend, Camilla, claims that the chickens accusing Gonzo are simply jealous.
“The Muppet Show is a family and an American legacy, and those fairweather hens should be deep-fried for trying to destroy that legacy,” said Camilla, again through Dr. Honeydew’s translator. “If Gonzo hadn’t given them an opportunity to sing, they’d be rotating in a Boston Market right now. They should be grateful to that beautiful whatever-he-is.”
At press time, in an effort to be sensitive to the Muppet chicken community during the ongoing investigation, Muppet Studios have announced they will no longer be broadcasting their classic segment where Gonzo rides motorcycle over a bridge of chickens above a bubbling volcano.
