Friends, I would like to take a moment here to address something that may seem non sequitur. But believe me when I tell you it is of the utmost importance that you read these words and truly take the time to weigh their meaning.

Wired is currently taking nominations for the sexiest geeks of 2006. It is imperative that you consider putting your support behind Garrick T. Pass.

But don't just do this because I asked you to. Get to know the man, the legend the geek himself.

See, I know what you are saying now, what makes Garrick so f--king good? I don't f--kin' know, and I don't like it! I stay up going F--K! Why can't everybody f--kin' have it?

Cause this is the thing... Some people learn it on the streets. Some people learn it in the schools. Garrick was f--king born with it, homes... Check it out.

This is a man who put his life and kidneys in desperate peril only to snag a free Playstation 2. Did he stop drinking Diet Coke once he had accumulated enough points? No sir. He stayed on the path. This is a man who plays a werewolf/underwear model in Werewolf: The Forsaken!

But he's no poser. No sir ... he got the goods. He's a tech extraordinaire, dispensing useful hacks on his blog, as well as cutting diatribes about the state of I.T. The man debugged a Windows issue via e-mail from two thousand miles away! He is indeed a tech ninja ... nay, a tech Jedi.

All those smarts, and he's got a great wife and kid.

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

We will keep in mind and remember that Garrick Pass has faith in us. He has faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny.

Thank you very much.

-- Andrew Moore

[Please note that this blog entry contains passages from "Cosmic Shame" by Tenacious D and Ronald Reagan's 1964 speech to endorse the candidacy of Barry Goldwater.]

Why I Love Living in Los Angeles



I remember watching the above video on YouTube. I was sort of randomly searching around to see what puppet videos I could find. This really stopped me in my tracks because 1) I love and respect street performers, 2) I used to live right around the corner from where this was taped, and 3) it's an absolutely stunning performance.

So imagine my delight when I saw this performer over the holiday! Pamela and I went to see Tenacious D in "The Pick of Destiny" (very funny, and directed by Liam Lynch of Sifl and Olly fame) at the Los Feliz 3 cinema. Approaching the long line for the box office, I heard the mournful sound of "St. James Infirmary." The crowd shifted slightly, and I saw the puppeteer.

This very talented performer is Eli. What I find most fascinating about his work is that it doesn't have a narrative! It's an improvised character study -- and it's absolutely riveting.

If you see him, tip him well. He earns it.

(Thanks to Pam for snapping the picture!)

UPDATE: Eli has a YouTube account and a posted video. Check it out!

DAHT - Season Two Beckoneth
pt. 2 of 2

look kids! it's a new background!

I painted up a couple of new backgrounds over the holiday. If you kind of squint, the above looks like red drapes. My painting 'style' is very gross and theatrical. Fortunately, "gross and theatrical" works with DAHT.

the ensemble is hanging out, ready to perform!

Pamela and I visited the Los Angeles Zoo for our wedding anniversary (zoo trips are our tradition.) I was in Disembodied Animal Head Heaven! I blogged about this earlier, but I finally increased the ensemble from two heads to seven!

this is Jones, a totally new ensemble member courtesy of my good friends Pete and Sierra.

Then my good friend Pete chipped in four additional heads! The Wolf you see above, and three dinosaurs, including Von Boneyface:

Von Boneyface, also a gift from Pete and Sierra. Check out his performance on The 5 Minute Show!

I am currently rebuilding Tex to have practical wings. It's not the Tex 2.0 I once boasted about, more like Tex 1.5, but he looks dashing with a new pant job. The only trouble is, his rubber is starting to degrade, and I haven't been able to find an exact duplicate! The rubber chickens I have found don't look as nice as Tex. The beaks don't look like chicken beaks, the rubber is thinner, the chickens are floppier, etc. Tex is conducting a poll over at www.daht.blogspot.com. Should he keep the trademark bow-tie or change into a smart ascot?

The new season will see the first introduction of built-up set props! Tex will be hosting the show from the comfort of a 'leather' side chair. The set prop in question is on my back porch, awaiting painting.

The first episode of the new season will most certainly cover "The Taming of the Shrew." Episode two will be a "The Tempest/Lost" parody.

DAHT - Season Two Beckoneth

pt. 1 of 2

So at this time I would like to review why in god's name I first started this thing. ("This thing" referring to Disembodied Animal Head Theatre.)

I think it's best summed up in a post from 3/2/06: "It's easy for me to comment on what I have planned with The Felties. Carving out the time to do the things that result in an actual product is a bit more difficult."

Sometime at the beginning of this year, it occurred to me that I had be in "pre-production" on The Felties for almost a year. The puppets hadn't even been finished! I was depressed.

Meanwhile, there were some really good puppet shorts popping up online, and it occurred to me that I really didn't know much about doing a "video podcast."

So it was I found myself searching around the house for something vaguely puppetlike to put in front of a camera. I had a two "animal snapper" heads, a flamingo and a giraffe. Cool. A title materialized from the creative ether, carried on gossamer wings by the muse: "Disembodied Animal Head Theatre." What would I do on this show? Something in the public domain that I can easily make fun of ... Ah, Shakspeare! All I needed was a host.

Elsewhere I've explained why the rubber chicken. In short, he amuses me. And thus I come to the point of this blog entry.

Doing this series is fun. And it's educational. Sort of like Bill Nye the Science Guy, or looking at nudie pictures. Going all "Robert Rodriguez" and wearing every hat simultaneously is difficult. The quality suffers, to be sure. I don't have an extra pair of eyes to tell me the top of my head keeps popping up, or that my puppet keeps slipping down out of frame. (I have a monitor now, so expect that to change for the better!)

For season two of this humble little experiment, I will continue to improve the quality of the show and keep pushing out the boundaries of my own understanding. Oh yes, and have fun. I intend to keep having fun.

(And I encourage anyone and everyone to join the party! It doesn't matter if you're using an archaic camera, or posting everything as .wmv files. The important thing is to do something!)

NaNoWriMo, Plays, and Writing in general (myriad project update)

You know, I'm not all that great at narrative fiction. I have no patience for writing it. I'm behind in my word count (based on where I should be according to the NaNoWriMo book No Plot? No Problem!) and I feel as if I'm running out of book to write! 'Point A' and 'Point B' are about to meet up in my book ... and then what? I have no idea. I guess they start heading out toward a 'Point C' together.

I know, I know. More adjectives, more description. Yadda yadda. This is why I prefer dramatic literature (i.e. 'plays.') I hate having to describe everything.

Speaking of plays, I have a play in 'drydock' right now (Sonny) and a couple of plays in the 'research' stage. You think I don't update this blog enough as it is? Just you wait. I'm planning on writing much more dramatic literature in the next year, with a goal of winning as many national playwriting contests as possible. It's all part of my plan to eventually publish a modest "how to" book on the subject of 'hack' playwriting. I've been blogging about the stupid little writer tricks I have learned/developed over the last decade at Mad Theatrics. I hope to pull a Seth Godin with this. Part of my evil plan is to use my own playwriting advice and win at least eight national playwriting contests in one year. (I may wind up defining "year" very liberally.) I'm off to a good start.

Finally, because I don't feel really alive unless I'm biting off way more than I can chew, I'm 'scripting' some shorts for The Felties and a TOP SECRET music video project with my lovely wife. I'm going to make an attempt at doing this all John K-like and storyboard the scripts, rather than write them out. (This on the heels of my assertion that animation and puppetry are "cousins, Identical cousins all the way. One pair of matching bookends, Different as night and day." Sure, animation is done shot by shot and is unhindered by earthly physics and ugly arm rods. "Still, they're cousins, Identical cousins and you'll find, They laugh alike, they walk alike, At times they even talk alike -- You can lose your mind, When cousins are two of a kind.") I'll post some of the storyboarding here for all seven of you to pour over.

That's all.

(Okay, it's not. I can hear a couple of you out there - "whither goest Disembodied Animal Head Theatre?" I hope to pinch off a couple of episodes of SEASON TWO sometime in the next week or so. For now ... have you seen "Tex: In Studio" yet?)

There's an interview with my friend (and occasional puppety co-conspirator) Ron Yavnieli over at Frederator. You should read it, and check out the graphic showing the puppets he built of Cal Arts instructors E. Michael Mitchell and Cornelius Cole. Oh hell, here it is:


Animators make excellent puppet designers, and puppetry has much in common with animation. Andrew of the PuppetVision blog and www.PuppetBuilding.com has been beating this drum for a long time, and a couple of months ago blogged about using the Preston Blair book to learn puppet design fundamentals.

Animation guru (is that an adequate description?) Eddie Fitzgerald has posted a few things about animation acting (here, here and here) that now have me interested in the book he reviews, "Acting for Animators" by Ed Hook.

Animators and puppeteers - the Patty and Cathy Lane of visual artists?

Why I Love Living in Los Angeles

Last night I watched a double feature of Amelie (my favorite movie) and The City of Lost Children at the Aero in Santa Monica. Oh yeah, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet (one of my favorite directors) was there for a Q & A between screenings!

Oh yeah, and the tickets were $10.

I was all by myself (Pamela had class to go to, and they have an upcoming showcase early this December, so she couldn't take off) which sucked, and the Aero doesn't serve coffee, but those are my only complaints.

Amelie is a great movie. It's a work of art. Everything is in its proper place, every character engages. It's filled to the brim with whimsey, and tugs at the heart strings without ever becoming mind-numbingly sentimental. Visual effects abound, but they are never extraneous to the narrative. The Color palate is lush and dream-like, and the whole thing makes me want to move to Montmarte and scoot around to odd jobs on a moped while Pam waits tables at The Two Windmills. If you haven't seen this film, what the hell is your problem?

The print was fairly clean. There were only a couple of places where damaged celluloid jarred the pace of the film.

The City of Lost Children was my first Jeunet film. I remember seeing the trailer for it before ... Waiting for Guffman? It was startlingly beautiful. Pam was in the next room, and I rewound the tape and made her watch it. The film stars Ron Perlman as One, a sideshow strongman whose little brother is kidnapped by a mysterious cult. One's search for his "petit frere" is joined by the precocious Miette (Judith Vittet). The movie is not as easy to experience as is Amelie; City plays like a nightmarish children's story. You really have to stay on top of what's going on. But it is really worth the investment to experience. I've seen City a few times, but not very recently. It was a joy to discover that the film is much better than I remember! And I for the first time realized that little nine year-old Miette is absolutely in love with One. (Jeunet manages to pull performances out of his child actors that M. Night Shyamalan would envy.)

The print for City was absolutely gorgeous. It was either a new print, or the Aero has a digital projector.

The Q & A was pancaked between films. Jeunet is a very approachable, affable man. He spoke enthusiastically about his films and his up-coming projects. Here's stuff I learned:

• His next project may be an adaptation of Life of Pi, but he indicated that it's still stuck in development.
• He has plans to shoot a movie after Life of Pi similar in tone to Amelie, but showing another side of Paris, and featuring a male lead (maybe I should brush up on my French.)
• When Fox signed up Jeunet to direct Life of Pi, the first requirement he had was that Dominic Pinon (who has been in all of Jeunet's films) would have a place in the movie.
• The episode in Amelie with the suicidal goldfish is drawn directly from his own childhood.
• He said he hates realism, and could never shoot a film where the camera is just locked down on two people having a "real" conversation.
• He primarily writes only the visual content of his films. His writing partner handles most of the dialogue.
• Wishes he could cut out the shot of Amelie, dressed as Zorro, carving a "z" in Collignon's door.
• Jeunet lives in Montmarte, and frequents The Two Windmills. After Amelie, The Two Windmills became a popular photo-stop for tourists. Every now and then a tourist would ask Jeunet to step out of frame so they could take a clear photo! Sometimes he'd say "you know, I directed that movie" but they would never believe him. (I like to imagine a group of rowdy Americans unwittingly asking Jeunet to take their picture in front of the cafe, never wise to the fact that the auteur himself was framing them up!)

I almost forgot: At the very beginning of the night, we watched a short film entitled Foutaises ("Things I like, Things I Don't Like.") Shot before his first feature, Delicatessen, this black and white film is a sneak peak at some of the narrative tricks he would later employ in Amelie. Dominic Pinon addresses the camera and narrates a laundry list of things he likes and things he doesn't like, while stock footage intercut with new footage displays illustrations of each thing. Nine minutes long, and the whole house was rolling with laughter.

Did I mention tickets were only $10? If you're interested in this sort of thing and you're local, I highly recommend you check out www.americancinematheque.com and search their schedule with a fine-toothed comb for future coolness.

Back in the Saddle

They say that when you get thrown from a horse, it is vital to get back on the horse. I'm not sure why. To show that horse who's boss? Anyway, I futzed around with puppets for pay this past weekend. Pamela joined me and three other puppeteers in a walk-thru haunted house at this big, impressive Beverly Hills Halloween party. Our job was to direct people through the maze, and keep the mood light (there were a lot of little kids at the party.)

Here is Tex, decked out as a vampire:


And here is Emo Clown:


Emo Clown make look familiar to some of you. He's basically a spare Mimey built originally by the great and powerful Russ Walko. I was going to bring Clownie as an "Evil Clown" but didn't want to risk damaging him. So in desperation I searched the house for a puppet to bring, and fell upon the box of discarded puppet corpses Russ gave me. Pam designed the Emo overlay. She told me that Emo was far scarier than Evil, and I have to agree.

The hair is leftover marabou from a play we did. He's wearing a baby's inside-out Chicago White Sox sweatshirt. The highly-posable pipe cleaner eyebrows are lashed to the bridge of a pair of Stan's discarded glasses. I added the pom-poms and voila!

Pretty impressive, considering I threw him together over an hour, hanging out in the car while Pam attended a big, important theatre meeting!

Pamela performed Emo Clown, saying such frightening things as "I love Weezer!" and "Rivers Cuomo is the bomb, yo!" and singing "The Sweater Song."

Tex mostly just popped out and threatened to bite people. Great fun!

Oh yeah - I also updated www.daht.blogspot.com over the weekend with an actual video! How novel of me!

Saint Kricfalusi on Form

In the 1970s form began to be considered uncool. It represented the rigid establishment. So everything started to become vague and mushy. These toys are just one example of the horrible thing that has happened in all walks of modern (post 1970) life. Nothing has form anymore. Music is rambling non melodic nonsense. Jorge's pants aren't the same shape as his legs. Movies and TV are vague, dark and shot with wobbly cameras. Form has since been replaced by meanness, ugliness and "attitude".

Pamela and I routinely visit The Getty. Speaking for myself (and possibly for her) it recharges my artistic batteries to be surrounded by true masterpieces of art. After reading Kricfalusi's blog posting entitled "The Death of Form," the reason why I feel drawn to The Getty has come in focus. I am attracted to form.

I take pride in my appreciation for chaos. I love Sun Ra, Pollock, and children's theatre. Hell, I love cartoons. It occurs to me that all that chaos hangs ever so delicately on a wire hanger of form. In other words, it takes a lot of hard work and practice to make something look so disorganized. Sloppy hacks who envy the success of something like ... oh, I don't know, let's say Ren & Stimpy ... try to "figure out" the popularity of the thing, and observe only the surface chaos, not the thought and effort that went into it. So they try to emulate the thoughtful chaos, and produce only mud.

We are absolutely inundated by this thoughtless mud. It's on t.v., on the radio, on the web. It fills magazine racks and bookstores. For instance, everytime a show like "Lost" hits, a half dozen copycats spring up that try to duplicate the "gimmicks" of the show without ever grasping the heart of the thing. "Surface" anyone? Or take Justin Timberlake's new single ... please.

As John K. demonstrates, there is much room for chaos within well-established guidelines. (Anyone who's ever watched a really good game of football has seen this.) Form must be present, if only so there's something to push against. Sort of like how some of us rebelled against authority in our younger (and not so younger) days.

Sun Ra was an accomplished musician and arranger before he started skronking with wild abandon. Jackson Pollock studied under Thomas Hart Benton long before "action painting." And children's theatre ... I've got nothing. It's just chaotic.

So I go the the Getty to be surrounded by works of art created by folks who pay heed to form. It's refreshing to know such a thing as form exists.

The Future of The Felties

I had a very interesting meeting last week with a very talented accquaintance of mine. He is interested in throwing in on The Felties, and had some very interesting ideas on how to accomplish what I hope to ultimately accomplish. I'm sorry I can't go into too much detail on this, but in fairly short order you will see this new angle take shape.

Wow. Is that vague enough?

Seriously though, this is a great idea. It's going to make The Felties an actuality, not just a felt-upholstered pipe-dream.

Okay, here's a hint: I recently blined ("blogged" and "whined" at the same time) about how I live in L.A. and should really shoot an actual t.v. pilot and try to sell this series to some cable network or something. What my friend (David) suggested was the exact opposite: go smaller.

Duh. And I'm the one who snobbishly quotes Seth Godin ("Small is the New Big") and Chris Anderson ("The Long Tail") at ice cream socials and coffee klatches. Just goes to show maybe I should talk less and practice what I would otherwise preach more often.

The Felties done smaller gets back to something I had posted early on in the history of this blog. That's the idea of The Felties as a webcomic. Specifically a comic strip. Gags. David suggested concentrating on one or two characters in brief (45-60 second) gag-driven videos. The audience investment is nil (there are ad bars with animation loops that last longer than 45 seconds) and we can crank out a handful of these bits in a day on a shoestring. Compare that to the much more lofty goal of shooting 22 1/2 minutes of pilot!

Well, we'll see what happens.

DAHT Update

What was it John Lennon said again?

So I was planning on building Tex 2.0. Then life happened.

I want the new incarnation of Tex to be uber-Tex. Tex-1000. Head movement, eye-blink, better mouth control ... bells and whistles!

There's not a whole lot of space in a chicken's neck/head for what I want to do. And let's face facts: I'm not all that great a puppet builder.

So the next few agonizing weeks will see me struggling with engineering, sculpture, polymers, vinyl, glue, a few rubber chickens and bicycle brake cables and levers. I feel a bit like MacGyver.

Just in time for FESTIVUS!

Here is the rough artwork for the dvd cover of Disembodied Animal Head Theatre - Season One.

I'm thinking $8, through the kind folks at www.lulu.com. All five of the original episodes in slightly better resolution than you get at YouTube or Google Video, commentary for each episode, and a gag reel (mostly it's just me talking to myself. What a hoot!)

I may even put the full version of the theme music on over the menus. (If you've ever wondered what that catchy tune is, it's the scherzo from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by that rock and roller Mendelssohn. I use a public domain recording from 1917.)

I may do a sneak peek at season 2 video.

Anyway, that's a whole lotta loving for $8! What d'ya think?

This just in . . . I found footage of Groovy David's Dance Party on YouTube!

This was my first pilot shoot in L.A., and my left arm is featured prominately. Keep an eye out for the dreadlocked, purple D.J. Beat (performed by the multi-talented Ron Yavnieli). I'm his left hand.

I also did arm rods on occasion for the other two puppets. I remember doing Gina Jam's arm rods when she's in the flamingo costume, and Cool Cat's arm rods when he's wailing away at his guitar.

This shoot was fun, professional and remunerative. Yay for paid work!

BTW - you may have noticed I changed the name of this blog. That doesn't mean I've killed off The Felties, it means I've finally accepted the fact this this blog is more far-reaching. "The Felties" blog will be reactivated once the thing goes into actual production.

Andrew Moore - Successful Internet Salesman!

Well, sort of.

I haven't made a big secret of my desire to sell merchandise emblazoned with my various intellectual properties. Hell, I'm proud of it. I have six Cafepress shops. Six! Half of those shops are practically nothing more than bookmarks. Empty shops with one or two items that I intended at one time to expand on. The other three shops are the "main" shops and have much more going on:

• Dal Motion Pictures features the DAHT merch, the Mimey t-shirt, and various items carrying the Dal Motion Pictures logo.
• Picture of a Dog is home to Doodlebug merch and Kung-Fu Dog.
• Nude Beach was started to help promote the as yet uncompleted short documentary "My First Trip to the Nude Beach."

You read that last one right. The documentary was actually Pam's origination, and it's a straight-forward educational piece on the benefits of clothes-free recreation. We have some pick-ups to do, graphics, yada yada, and hope to have it out there for broad public consumption just in time for winter.

The Nude Beach store is incredibly lame, even by my standards. However, it has proven to be the most profitable store this year. In fact, here is our most popular item:

The "Happiness is No Tan Lines" Jr. Spaghetti Tank. In the description I wrote "The great thing about this one, is you can show off the tan by dropping one of the shoulder straps!" It sells for $18.

When I put this store together, I was in a pretty funky frame of mind. I was disgusted by the number of cheese-ball, thrown together on Microsoft Word t-shirt designs on CafePress, that I decided to do my own. So I made up a few cheese-ball slogans, fired up Microsoft Word, and voila . . .

. . . success. Well, in a very limited sense. I'm not buying a yacht or anything. Maybe a sixer of Sam Adams Octoberfest.

The irony here is that a week before the first sale, I logged into CafePress with the intention to close the store. I'm glad I didn't.

IDEA GRAVEYARD

One fall, I checked out "The Beat Generation" cd/book box set from the library in St. Louis. This is a great set, full of wild jazz, music by beat musicians, radio interviews with folk from the whole Greenwich Village scene, etc. I was inspired.

So grab a cup of joe and pull on your trusty old beret! Here are . . .

The Crazy Rules of Writing Beat Poetry

(it's rules-city cats!)

1. Treat words for emotions and all non-physical concepts as physical objects.
Ex.: "Drink Down Hate"
"Shovel Love off the Driveway"
"Wash all the Infinity off of Your Hands"

2. Use colorful, exotic nouns as adjectives.
Ex.: "Take Dragon Steps"
"Kiss Flamingo Lips"

3. Mix metaphors artfully. In Beat poetry things that are similar are quite often treated as if they are identical.
Ex.: "Swing your Bat in the Cave at the Shadows on the Great Wall of China"

4. Twist relationships.
Ex.: "Drug Addict is a Money Pusher,
Drug Dealer Addicted to Dealing."

BEAT HAIKU -

1942
Soldiers marching in where
Angels fear to soldier
And devils do their laundry
Fear moistens the brow

* * *

An old van is the brothel
Hell on cement blocks
Wheels retired
She's barely attired
I just can't bear the
Bare skin whore

DAHT Update

So the ensemble has officially arrived! Recently purchased at the L.A. Zoo:

• wolf
• hippo
• zebra
• alligator
• polar bear

. . . plus the giraffe and flamingo I started out with, the ensemble is now seven characters strong!

It's much easier to come up with ideas now that I have the players to play with. Season one was more about the show itself rather than "bringing the arts and culture back to the internet in a [tongue-in-cheek] dignified fashion." The best episodes were the ones that dealt more directly with Shakespeare (ep. 1 - Othello, ep. 2 - Hamlet, ep. 5 - Measure for Measure.)

In a couple of weeks I'll pick up a new rubber chicken to tear apart and put back together again for Tex ver. 2.0. I'm also devising more of a set for Tex . . . sort of a Masterpiece Theatre/A&E Biography type thing.

Oh yes . . . and the DVD. This may turn out to be too much work for a handful of crappy episodes, but what the hell. I need to recapture all the footage and re-edit at a higher rez. I may even shoot some new footage. So I'm thinking "Disembodied Animal Head Theatre Season One: Special Edition" for the title. I haven't decided if I want Greedo to shoot first or not.

Happy Anniversary, Pam!

I consider myself very lucky to have you in my life!

You rock!

IDEA GRAVEYARD

I'm a pack rat, and in recent years I've learned how to (sort of) organize my random scrawlings. For some time now, I've been packing composition notebooks full of whatever passing fancy comes my way. Sometimes the idea develops into a Torrid Affaire or a "Disembodied Animal Head Theatre." Sometimes the ideas wither on the vine, never to be heard of again.

I thought it'd be fun to air out a few of the dead-end ideas I've had over the past few years. Fun for me. Maybe fun for you, I don't know.

So anyway, here's a little blast from the past. I was developing an idea for a Mr. Rogers-esque children's show. I had some sort of a line to local television (a friend of a friend of a friend) and thought I could pull something together. At the time, I was babysitting my wife's nephew, a very sweet autistic boy who got me hooked on "Grandpa's Magical Toys" a direct-to-video gem. In fact, he wore out his first copy of the tape, and my sister-in-law bought a new one just after I started working for her.

I had also just built (with the assistance of my lovely wife Pamela) and sold my first "professional" puppet! Okay, I sold it to my dad. He was a minister back then, and he used it (a goat puppet with wicked awesome horns and ears) to teach Jesus to the kids.

Anyway, that's what was going on in my life at the time. Here's the idea in all of it's rough-hewn glory, taken more or less verbatim from my notes at the time:

"Pandora's Garage"

TITLE -
Needs to convey scope and intent. It needs to express the feel of the show.

PILOT -
A taste of things to come? Crazy quilt episode. Cover a mess of things.

SETTING -
I'm sure it's just the residual effects of the poppy seeds, but I'm seeing a neutral space with a counter top of some sort. [I was really into poppy seed bagel dogs at the time.] I had thought a living room would be cool. Platforming up for puppets? Nah, too costly. Kneel, boy!

A garage? (i.e. Dad's garage?) Lots of junk in storage, handy counter space. Acoustics? Lights? Garage lends itself well to erratic nature of show - boxes of junk can be rummaged through for fun stuff.

TALENT -
I wonder what Brad is up to? [Most likely I meant Brad Parker, an old high school chum and current teacher of at a arts magnet school in Texarkana. Great guy.] Can I snag Pam? Pam - only if everything is in place.

It would be quite swell if I had a costar who assumed different personas as required by the show. [Reminiscent of Speedy Delivery?]

PUPPETS -
Think about Jumpy and Skip's abode [Jumpy = dalmatian puppet, Skip = mudskipper puppet.] Apartment over the garage? "I wonder who might live up there?" Figments of the imagination?

Puppet sequences do not have to be logical, just loosely related to the main focus of the particular episode.
AGE RANGE -
5 - 13, but enjoyable by all.

GIMMICK -
A chest (old, ancient, enticing) full of relics which get the ball rolling. Sample list of items:
- Clown figurine
- Dinosaur model
- Magic wand
- Drama masks
- A book
- Toy blocks
- etc.

Chest doesn't have to be very large - one item at a time may fit. [The idea was for a simple idea to spark off a wild goose chase, lateral-thinking adventure.]

If I tire of chest, switch to a big cardboard box of my dad's hats.

HOST -
Audience/host relationship: casual, informal. Audience members are "friends" who like to come over to hang out with host.

VOCAB WORDS -
Figure out how to work in vocab word each episode. Maybe an old, out of date (phony) "word a day" calendar. [I had read something at the time from Mensa that said there was a direct connection between the size of a person's vocabulary and their IQ.]

PREMISE -
I just moved back to town after college and come back to get some of my stuff that I stored in my dad's garage. "Neighbor Kids" (audience) come in to han out as I rummage for my lost box. Dad is a pack rat, so I manage to get sidetracked every time. After 30 minutes or so I have to leave (go to work/pick something up/meet someone, etc.)

[When I'm rummaging and discovering and having a little adventure, I'm little more than a big kid who has a bunch of cool stuff. But each episode begins and ends with me as an adult with adult concerns.]

There you go! Tune in next week when I share my unrealized plan for a cold fusion generator!

DAHT Update

It seems like I'm always selling something these days!

I'm throwing around the idea of making available the first season of DAHT as a limited edition DVD. The first five episodes, with commentary tracks, in a higher resolution for viewing at home. I'm thinking $10, plus shipping. I recently fixed the framing bug that plagued episode 5, and started feeling really good about the work I did on the first 5 eps.

Oh yes, and I've decided that the first 5 eps are "season one". This coming fall I'll be starting up "season two". Hopefully, it will be uploaded on a more consistent basis.

One thing for sure, the puppet will be better - I'm designing Tex 2.0 at present. Tex 2.0 will have more bells and whistles - practical wings (arms), a practical head, a more eloquently controlled mouth mechanism that eliminates the visible mouth wire, and maybe - just maybe - an eye blink mechanism.

Part of me thinks that Tex could become a minor celebrity, in a "global microbrand" sense. (If anyone else out there can point to another time someone has used a rubber chicken as a puppet, I'd love to find out about it.) I may be getting ahead of myself, but I could probably job Tex out. Seeing him on "The 5 Minute Show" really sparked the idea. Tex could do commercials . . . maybe do interstitial bits on a network like A&E or PBS. The key is expanding the Tex brand.

Tex actually fits into the universe of The Felties as I envision it, as a puppet celebrity who lives with other latex "snobby" puppets at the fancy condo complex "The Palm", just down the street from our main characters. I imagine Mimey and the gang will watch DAHT from time to time. If Tex really took off as a "global microbrand", I could use that leverage to help launch The Felties.

Well, that's all very nice and forward-thinking, but it depends utterly upon shooting more and more episodes of DAHT, and striving to improve the quality.

This is what they call "bootstrapping" but I prefer to call it "pegboarding", in reference to those pegboards P.E. instructors use to torture kids:

You have to keep placing the pegs up a a notch and pull yourself up to the next level. This sort of thing (building a "global micro-empire" if you will) is done in gradients, not overnight. It involves much strain, sweat, and cursing, but like Coach said, it builds character.

I hope.