The Midnight Diaries of Catty Wampus

Howdy folks!

You may have noticed that the past few Fridays have been quiet here at the Midnight Diaries. That’s largely because I’ve just returned from a five-week road trip around the country. Some of you have been following my exploits over at The Road Trip of Catty Wampus. For those who haven’t–and who could blame you, really, it’s a lot of reading!–I thought I’d recap some of my favorite moments here as a way of putting a cap on the entire adventure.

I took a microphone along with me on my travels, intending to interview many people along the way. I’ll also be including some of my favorite interview clips here. I hope you find it all entertaining, and perhaps it will even inspire you when you’re thinking about your next travel destination.

So, without further delay, I bring you The Highlights of the Road Trip of Catty Wampus (of Portland, OR).

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DAY 1
Tuesday, July 15 2008
Portland, OR to Garberville, CA

Just south of Gold Beach, Oregon I met Eric. Eric was hitchhiking down the US101, and I decided that it would be nice to have some company along the way for a bit. He was a scrawny young man of 26, with dark red hair and a backpack full off whatever items he had found along his travels–a flag for a high school football team, a plastic yellow flute, etc.

Eric is a recovering drug addict, and working very hard at separating himself from the people he has been surrounded by; the people who are drug addicts as well, and make it very difficult to leave that lifestyle behind. I really applaud his determinism to get rid of his addiction and start on a new and productive way of life. He certainly seems smart and driven enough to find his way once he decides what he’d like to do with himself. He’s taking his time this summer, hitchhiking and biking and riding up and down the coast to find what his passions are.

Although it is something he is trying to leave behind, Eric has no trouble talking about his past drug use. With mystical hand gestures and eyes bugging out, staring off into infinity, he told me the story of an acid trip he and a friend took last year up on a hill in the Haight area of San Francisco. I’ve never been on an acid trip and it was fascinating to hear Eric tell his story. He has a calmness and a cadence to his speech that completely pulls me into his world. The full story is 20 minutes long, and I plan to edit it into a more cohesive piece later on. For now, enjoy this little snippet, which is one of my favorite parts of his trip:

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I dropped Eric off in Eureka, California, where he told me he knew of a good spot he used to sleep when he lived in the area. I thanked him for the interview, he thanked me for the ride, and I went off in search of my own place to fall asleep before the next day’s drive.

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DAY 6
Sunday, July 20 2008
Los Angeles, CA

Sunday, July 20 2008
Los Angeles, CA

If I had a nickel for everyone who said to me “While you’re in LA, you have to interview people on Venice Beach! There’s some real characters there!”… I’d have, like, at least three or four nickels. So on Sunday morning I headed down to Venice Beach. Down at the far end of the boardwalk, I met a tribe of post-hippies hanging out on blankets under an umbrella in a parking lot. The space belonged to a a lanky and grizzled man named Dreamcatcher. He had dirty blond hair (maybe dirty dirty blond?) hanging down in dreadlocks against his weather-worn face, and a half mustache/goatee thing (you know, the kind that doesn’t really connect at the sides? it’s like the mustache doesn’t talk to the goatee, and the goatee doesn’t talk to the mustache? they each just do their own thing). Dreamcatcher shared the space with Rebecca, who he referred to as “my first black lover.”

The moment I sat down with Dreamcatcher, I was caught in a bit of an awkward situation. We were approached by a large Mexican man, pointing and threatening “You stay away from me, Dreamcatcher! Don’t cross me, Dreamcatcher. It will be your downfall.” Dreamcatcher looked pretty confused about this, and after a few times insisting that he didn’t know what the man was so upset about, the Mexican said “You put too many fuckin’ people in jail, bro!” Apparently, the man believed that Dreamcatcher had been ratting out many of the Venice Beach regulars to the police. After the Mexican man left, Dreamcatcher was indignant:

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I didn’t quite understand the bit about how Dreamcatcher smokes marijuana but doesn’t smoke pot. If any tokers out there care to enlighten me, I’m all ears. (do they still say ‘toker’ these days?)

We were soon joined by Jules (”Jules of the Nile,” she explained), a mousey woman with salt and pepper hair cut into a bob, sunken eyes and sunken cheeks. I was intrigued by her story because the common perception is that homelessness is something that happens to you, either because you have made poor decisions, or bad luck has looked down unfavorably on you. Jules found this lifestyle in another way:

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The most interesting thing in all of this, aside from her gigantic decision to give up her entire former life, is how she says “I used to be a real person.” I’m not going to analyze that too much for you–but just let it sink in under that context.

I asked Jules what it was about Venice Beach that spoke to her the first time she saw it. This is what she said, along with a little history of the area:

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A few minutes later I was introduced to the concept of Spiritual Tourette’s Syndrome, or STS. It’s an idea Rebecca had with a friend in Boston years ago. Jules and Dreamcatcher helped to explain. (note “the beeping” that Rebecca mentions refers to a car horn that honked a moment earlier)

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Dreamcatcher often speaks in riddles and puns. This was his reaction to something as mundane as me talking about the weather, when I said I liked the atmosphere:

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All in all, I really felt a lot of my own preconceptions and inhibitions being challenged while I sat with these folks. As straight-edge as I am, I bolted from the room the last time someone offered me a hit off of a marijuana pipe. So it was a big deal for me to even be able to hang in there while Dreamcatcher and Jules rolled and smoked a joint. Dreamcatcher even offered me a hit, and I didn’t feel any of the kind of judgement that I would have expected coming from him when I refused. I know I’m a square, and it was nice to have the feeling among these folks that it was okay.

A lot of this is all wrapped up in my own insecurities about who I am, and who I would like to be. I think about these things a lot, and when I come face to face with such a different way of living than I’m used to it can really send me off into a heap of questioning myself.

On the walk back to Erik and Lauren’s, I saw one of Venice Beach’s vendors with a sign that read:

If you worry, you die.
If you don’t worry, you die.
So why worry?

It seemed to speak directly to what had been filling my mind at that moment. Maybe there’s something to this Spiritual Tourettes after all.

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DAY 11
Friday, July 25 2008
Denver, CO to Wichita, KS

While I was driving through Kansas, the sky turned completely gloomy and I saw a gigantic bolt of lightning reach from the sky to the ground out on the horizon! It was probably the brightest and thickest lightning I’d ever seen. It was one of those things that makes you say “If that was in a movie, I’d say it was a poorly done special effect and not very realistic.” Just goes to show you what we’ve come to expect from our world based on movies and television, and how it can still surprise us so very easily.

I grabbed my video camera and hoped there might be some more demonstrations of this amazing phenomenon. Here’s a little of what I caught in a four-minute period: (don’t worry, I’ve edited it so you don’t have to sit through the non-lightning parts)

Believe it or not, these were the babies that came before the real storm began, reaching down in fingers of lightning for the next forty-five minutes! I would have caught it all on the video, except that I’m pretty sure I would have crashed the car if I’d tried to hold the camera in one hand and steer with the other too much longer.

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DAY 16
Wednesday, July 30 2008
Dallas, TX to Austin, TX

In the late afternoon I arrived at my friend Rick’s house in Austin. I got to speak to Rick’s 4 year old son Adam. Adam was told me about some of the geography he had learned about in school, but I think he was a little confused:

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I love how quickly Rick and I were able to turn him around. Very suggestible, that one.

Rick told me that he and Adam play fight sometimes:

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In case you didn’t quite catch who Adam likes to be when he’s fighting his dad, here’s a little clue:

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Yup, that’s right. But even though Adam loves Spiderman, don’t pigeonhole him. He likes lots of things. Take a listen to this meandering ramble of a list:

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Gosh, I love talking to kids. Is there anything more entertaining that that?

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Note: gigantic post today–hang in there!

DAY 18
Friday, August 1 2008
Baton Rouge, LA

I stopped into a grocery store to get a little snack, but by the time I was ready to go the weather had changed from sunny to absolutely pouring. I’m talking about rain that comes down in sheets–sheets, blankets, pillowcases, and duvets! I have rarely seen rain like this. I believe it must have been the beginning part of the storm and hurricane that hit the area after I left, but at the time it just seemed like “Holy Cow, this is a lot of rain!” Many people were standing in the entrance to the grocery store, too timid to even run to their cars for fear of getting drenched. I stepped outside under an awning, and figured this would be as good a time as any to try to talk to people. I saw an older gentleman with big, muscular arms (one of them in a cast and sling), and asked if he would be interested in speaking. I’m so glad he was–I am super happy to have captured an extra-rich Louisiana accent.

While we were standing under the awning, Phil started to tell me a little bit about his background hanging out with hippies in the late ’60s, as well as a little bit about his brother. You may want to turn down your audio around the one minute mark of this audio clip: there are two loud thundercracks that nearly made my heart drop into my shoes. I could adjust the volume here on my end, but I feel like it’s really important to give you a taste of the untreated audio, so you can experience a little bit of this surprising thunder yourself. Just like that Kansas lightning, this was a kind of thunder I have never heard before:

P.S. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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Seriously, that second thunderclap literally knocked me off-balance, and I had to catch myself. So, um…. yeah. We stepped inside. Normally it’s mundane to simply talk about the weather, but I was in absolute awe. I asked Phil if this kind of weather was normal:

P.S. You can return your speakers and headphones to normal volume now.

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Again, I love that accent! I also got a little bit of local jargon thrown in there, too. Here’s a little more weather talk:

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I wanted to get back to Phil’s history from when he was hanging out with the hippies. I’m intrigued by the idea of what I think hippies were like based on what I’ve seen in tv shows and movies made decades later, and what it was actually like to be there. So I figured Phil would be an ideal person to ask:

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Ahh, that accent! I love it! I love how I couldn’t even tell he was saying “drinking parties” until he repeated it two or three times! I also like how he doesn’t know if he would have been classified as a hippie or not, because it just goes to show the blurriness of a culture. According to Phil, a lot of what distinguished hippies from non-hippies was whether or not you had a job. You couldn’t be a hippie and have a job because the hippie lifestyle had a very loose attachment to time and responsibility; and you couldn’t have a job and be a hippie because having a job required you to fit into a specific mold and reliably perform your duties. Phil floated in and out of the hippie and job cultures, but it sounded to me like he had a higher percentage of his footing in keeping down a job and earning money for himself than in drinking and partying.

At one point, Phil and I were talking about food. He doesn’t really fancy himself as much of a cook, but he enjoys cooking for himself and his wife. He was telling me about the different dishes he makes, but I had to stop him when he mentioned something I’d never heard of before. This is Phil explaining to be what a roux is:

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The topic turned from food to politics, and from politics to religion. Now, politics and religion are two things I have avoided speaking to people about because I pretty much assumed that my beliefs wouldn’t be the same as the people I’d meet–especially in the south. And you know what? I was right. But I also assumed that those differences, if they were out in the open, would lead to argument and bitterness. And that’s where I was completely wrong. I guess I’m just so used to being surrounded by people who, for the most part, believe the same things I do, and it’s so easy for us to caricature everyone else into a picture small-minded bigotry. Phil and I disagreed on a number of issues, but we simply included those issues into our conversations without either of us trying to convince the other to see things our way. Very different from what I would have expected, and I feel sheepish to even admit that that is what I would have expected.

Here is Phil talking about his Presbyterian beliefs, and explaining how they differ from Catholic beliefs:

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Near the end of our conversation, Phil told me how the Lord saved him in 1975. I’ll let Phil take it out from here and finish this section of the interviews with his transformation:

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DAY 30
Wednesday, August 13 2008
Indianapolis, IN

Today I went to the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. It is known as one of the most exciting Children’s Museums in the country, with wonderful hands-on exhibits and plenty of fun ways to learn about trains, Egyptian mummies, space, and dinosaurs.

Upstairs at the museum is an area called Story Avenue, a collection of life-size scenes (a bank, a barber shop, a dining room, the back of a car, etc.), where you can hear recorded stories from the experiences of Indianapolis’s African American community. This is where I met Portia Scholar Jackson, who helped create the Story Avenue exhibit. Portia is a professional storyteller, as well as a teacher of storytelling to all ages. I’ve recently become fascinated with the idea of storytelling technique (and I regularly listen to stories from The Moth), and I was fortunate enough to hear some of Portia’s stories of her Aunt Janice–you can tell that although these stories have a strong foundation in memory and fact, they have been crafted to enhance their ability to keep the listener entertained. The story begins when Portia’s supervisor at the museum asked a series of questions, designed to figure out what the Story Avenue exhibit should include:

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See what I mean? I mean, clearly Portia is already starting off as a memorable personality and just hearing her tell a story would almost certainly be engaging in and of itself. But when she adds on top of that her craft and skill, well, I could have sat there listening to her all day.

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DAY 32
Friday, August 15 2008
St. Louis, MO

I had a long walk and quite an adventure through St. Louis. My first big stop was the St. Louis Arch. Here are some photos I took of the monument:

And here’s one of the Arch’s reflection in one of St. Louis’s other buildings:

I happen to think those are some pretty cool pictures. But before I pat myself on the back too much, I have to say that one of the genius parts of the Arch’s design is that it is nearly impossible to take a bad photograph of it! Pretty impressive.

Now, I’m afraid of heights. But it seemed like it would be a shame to be so close to the Arch and not go up to the top. So I entered the underground ramp (after more security than I’ve even ever been through at an airport, by the way!), and found my way to the tram lines that run up either side of the arch. I shared an elevator with a family of four who were making a pilgrimage from Florida to Minnesota. And when I say “elevator,” I really mean something that’s a lot more like a space-pod, with room enough for five people to sit and stare at each other as the space-pod is brought up the Arch’s slope to the top. (a bank of eight pods run up and down on either side of the Arch)

At the top of the Arch are some thin, rectangular windows to peer out of. But even though the view from many of the windows was pretty cool, the most memorable thing I saw at the top of the Arch was an Amish family who was taking the tour as well! I was flabbergasted. I mean, I don’t know much about the Amish, but it seemed completely counter-intuitive to find them at the top of the St. Louis Arch. I decided that as much as I would have regretted not going to the top of the Arch, I would regret ten times as much if I didn’t try to get an interview with at least one of the family members once we were back on the ground. Thankfully, I was able to talk to Samuel Borntrager. Samuel told me that it’s not so uncommon for the Amish to make it outside of their community:

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Do you hear the way he says “Souzwest Missouri”? I don’t think that this is a speech impediment, I believe it is the way that the community pronounces their ‘th’ sounds. Unfortunately I didn’t get to speak to anyone else in order to confirm this, but I am pretty certain that many Amish have different speech patterns than Standard English.

I asked Samuel about the differences between how people like me are taught to think of the Amish, and what the Amish are actually like. For example, how it’s jarring to see them out in the city. I am certain that I was absolutely insulting in the way I presented my question, but Samuel was kind and patient in explaining:

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This got us onto the topic of religion which, if you’ve been following this blog, you’ll notice has been a pretty common theme among many people I’ve spoken to. But I will not go much into Samuel’s and my discussion because, frankly, it was a little heartbreaking for me to reveal to him that I don’t believe in Jesus. I could see such compassion and pity and concern for me, and by extension for America (and he said as much), it’s a little difficult to reflect on still.

So I’ll give one more clip from the man, if only to demonstrate what I think is another fascinating linguistic artifact. This is from when he and I were discussing certain theosophical doubts:

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This is something I’d read about in other dialects of English, but I’ve never heard first hand. “It’s always been a world.” “It’s always been a blue sky.” He’s using the pronoun it’s where the Standard English uses there’s. When you think about it, there really isn’t any real meaning specific to there that requires us to use it in constructions like this. I love thinking about how language develops in different places to find that one word instead of another has made its way as the pronoun in these kinds of phrases. Forgive me for getting all language-geeky on you.

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My final stop in St. Louis was the City Museum. I had been told by some friends that I absolutely needed to check it out, but they didn’t really tell me what to expect. I suppose I thought it would be a museum about St. Louis with some great exhibits, kind of like the ones at the Indianapolis Children’s Museum. And I was dead wrong. In fact, “museum” doesn’t really seem to be the right word at all.

The City Museum used to be a shoe factory (in fact they take pride in the fact that Tennessee Williams worked in the factory, and even paid homage to the factory in The Glass Menagerie), but has long since been closed down. So the gigantic building was left abandoned until an urban revitilization project came along and decided to turn it into what I can only refer to as nothing less than the best treehouse ever!!!

Re-using all kinds of industrial beams, scaffolding, scrap, and other metal, the City Museum provides kids (and some adults, if you’re small and nimble enough) with twisty-windy ways to crawl through, slide through, run through, explore, and discover. And kids love it! This is just a small sample of the things I heard kids shouting throughout the museum:

“Follow me!”
“Where are you”
“Where does that lead?”
“We’re lost. Have you seen the Dragon’s head?”

I think it’s nearly impossible to get an idea for what the City Museum is like–how vast it is, how much fun it is–unless you actually see it. Nonetheless, I’ve tried to capture some video of a small fraction of the City Museum’s wonders. Tell me, if you were still 7 years old, wouldn’t this be the coolest place to be?

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Those are the parts of my trip that I’ve been sharing with all of my friends. Again, you’re welcome to delve into more of my travels at The Road Trip of Catty Wampus.

And I wouldn’t be surprised to find that there were some new interview clips popping up here at the ol’ Midnight Diaries from time to time, now that I’ve got a feel for pointing the mic at someone and trying to get good stories from them. Stay tuned, folks, I’m not going anywhere!

The spam just keeps on a-comin’, and the spam poets are still finding new ways of using language and structure to get us interested in their products.

Seriously, if anyone reading this blog knows anyone who writes spam, I would love to start a correspondence and maybe even interview them. These things are clearly not computer-generated–at least many of them are not. So I figure there may be some copywriter somewhere who dreamed of writing jewelry ads, or car commercials, but was forced to take any job that came along while breaking into the business. I am dying to learn their story.

In the meantime, with thanks to my friend Randy Wakerlin for contributing some text from his own spam folder this time around, please enjoy the current crop:

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Subject: haste yourself

1. Find a girl
2. Invite her to your appartments
3. Use subject product V (or C)
4. Have fun
5. Take her number
6. Profit?

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Setting aside the idea that you may actually invite this lucky girl to any of your several “appartments,” I like that Step #6 isn’t a complete guarantee. Also, Step #3 is referring to (I’m guessing) Viagra or Cialis; but using those initials really calls to mind much more vulgar words, don’t they? Well, the C anyway.

Next!

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Subject: hi long island

Like that drink?
Does not matter!
Our patented patch will help you
to grow a whole MOUNTAIN in your pants!

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That’s right, folks. A mountain! In your pants!!

Thanks again, Randy, for the contribution. See you all next time with more Spam Poetry!

(For more creative literature from the junk mail filter, check out the whole Spam Poetry catregory)

I saw this license plate on my way to work, and it tickled the twelve year old inside of me. (and I mean that in the least creepy way possible)

I don’t know if 154 is the goal, or a total up to a certain point, or what it took to earn the car… I’m going to try not to think about it too much.

I think this is a message about over-developing an urban area. But the lack of an “s” on the end of “condominium” adds a bit of charm, and also a question about what the sticker was originally intended for.

In addition to that, you can just about make out a “the” underneath the left side of the sticker, and there’s not even enough left of the second word to speculate what the original graphitist had written.

To see all of the posts in this collection, just click on the link for the Stop Me category

If you see any stop signs like these in your travels, feel free to take a picture and send them to eric@sabudesign.com. I’ll happily include them in a post here. If possible, make the pictures as large as possible (I’ll take responsibility for setting the right size and framing), and let me know the city and street crossing you took the picture at.

This one was a tough call. I haven’t been taking pictures by any of the stop signs (and there are many) that have been tagged with graffiti names. I haven’t seen this one around, though. In addition, even though some of the letters bear a little resemblance to some tags I’ve seen, most tags aren’t this legible.

So it leaves me wondering: who are the Outlaws?

To see all of the posts in this collection, just click on the link for the Stop Me category

If you see any stop signs like these in your travels, feel free to take a picture and send them to eric@sabudesign.com. I’ll happily include them in a post here. If possible, make the pictures as large as possible (I’ll take responsibility for setting the right size and framing), and let me know the city and street crossing you took the picture at.

THE BREAKFAST CLUB

There’s a lot to like about The Breakfast Club, I swear there is. But there’s something about it that just doesn’t allow me to get close enough to enjoy it fully. I think a lot of it has to do with John Hughes, who seems like he can almost write a great script, and almost direct a great movie.

I recently got to see The Breakfast Club on the big screen, and I noticed some things about the movie I had never really seen before despite having watched it maybe a dozen times on television and my laptop. The framing of characters in a scene, and the editing between each shot were much more noticeable on the big screen–sometimes it was distracting, but a lot of the time it did a lot to enhance the movie. It made me think about all of the movies that get seen on tv and computer screens, not to mention on portable DVD players, iPod, and cell phones.

When DVDs first came out, many of them had the option to watch movies in widescreen format, rationalizing that the wide aspect ratio was how the director originally intended the movie to be seen. (yes, I can hear the A/V nerds out there grumbling that laserdiscs and even some VHS tapes had widescreen before DVDs ever came along, but I believe that widescreen-awareness really flourished with the advent of DVD–so there) But that just accounts for the shape that directors intended for their films. There’s still the issue of size, and it’s not an insignificant issue. Even a movie that isn’t meant to be full of stunning visuals, like The Breakfast Club has a lot more presence when seen at “actual size.”

All I’m saying is that I can’t wait to get a digital projector for my home.

The storytelling in The Breakfast Club, at any size, feels a little disjointed. I don’t quite buy the progression of the characters relationships with each other. It often feels like the movie has had some bit of development edited out of it and we’re only seeing the aftermath: now the characters are feeling closer emotionally, and now they are very cold towards each other, all without any real clues as to why. The exception to this comes in a conversation near the end of the film, when we do get some really great emotional connection, but it doesn’t feel quite deserved. As an audience we go along with it because we feel the movie is asking us nicely, not because it feels natural.

Other random thoughts about the movie include:

Am I the only person who doesn’t find Anthony Michael Hall’s scratchy black guy voice funny? I mean, John Hughes has included it in three of his movies and it does nothing but get on my nerves. It’s not even a good imitation of someone doing a bad imitation of a black guy. It’s just bad. I mean, isn’t it?

Speaking of things that John Hughes puts in his movies, between this and Sixteen Candles, there are two really interesting appearances of sushi. It’s difficult to remember a time when sushi wasn’t accepted and found everywhere in the United States. There are even some grocery stores that make a decent sushi roll. But in the 1980’s, John Hughes was able to present a person eating sushi as a way of indicating that they were a bit stuck up and full of themselves (as in The Breakfast Club), or simply quirky and wacky and willing to do something as woo-woo crazy as eating raw fish and seaweed (as in Sixteen Candles). It’s interesting to note that sushi in a movie today hardly has any statement to make at all.

As a fan of the television series The West Wing, I find it incredible to see the similarities in acting choices and facial gestures made by Emilio Estevez and his dad. Emilio Estevez seriously looks exactly like a young Martin Sheen. Curiously, a young Martin Sheen looks like a young Charlie Sheen.

This isn’t my own observation, but it bears noting: The Breakfast Club contains one of the most egregious demonstrations of “Marijuana makes you go crazy” propaganda since Reefer Madness. It’s impossible to believe that no one on the set of a Hollywood movie had ever smoked pot before, so you just have to imagine that there were many crew members (and perhaps even actors and the director) filming Emilio Estevez’s scene thinking “This is sooooo not what pot makes you do.” I’m not advocating or disadvocating drug use here, but seriously… that scene is a bit more than ridiculous.

As you’ve seen, I normally don’t post more than one stop sign at a time, but these seemed to go together so naturally.

The first one is another double-up. I can only assume that the “foolin’” came first, but the addition of “Bush” turns it into a really interesting statement.

The second actually appears on all four corners of these two streets intersecting. Someone really felt strongly about getting the word out.

This messages are, of course, very nearly outdated. So enjoy ‘em while they’re still relevant, folks!

To see all of the posts in this collection, just click on the link for the Stop Me category

If you see any stop signs like these in your travels, feel free to take a picture and send them to eric@sabudesign.com. I’ll happily include them in a post here. If possible, make the pictures as large as possible (I’ll take responsibility for setting the right size and framing), and let me know the city and street crossing you took the picture at.

(note: this post is part of the Here Come The Puppets category here at the Midnight Diaries. Be sure to check out the full category for other selections from this spectacular program)

This is going to be a fun post. Most of us got our introduction to puppetry through the Muppets. We were probably so young that our child brains didn’t even register the Muppets as anything other than living and breathing people, animals, monsters, and whatevers.

One of the great things about the following clips is that they were all performed in front of an audience of puppeteers and puppet fans. This gives the performers an opportunity to play around with the conceit of the art form:

I remember that when I was a kid “He’s got a beard” was just about the funniest thing I’d ever heard.

I love that Kermit is entirely self-aware while Fozzie just doesn’t seem to be able to reach that higher plane of understanding. It’s a wonderful contrast between the two characters: Kermit is smart without trying, and Fozzie just can’t be very smart no matter how earnestly he tries.

This is also a great demonstration of the rhythm that Jim Henson and Frank Oz have when they’re working together. They’re like musicians, trading off the character’s moments, reveals, and stretching out single phrases. Watch how Oz makes Fozzie’s “There is somebody…” into an entire showpiece by separating the words with gestures, repetitions, and pauses. I love that look downward that he does–all of it makes Fozzie such a real, living character… which, of course, adds to the comedy of him being controlled by someone else.

Speaking of contrast in character, sometimes it really can be just as simple as “big” and “small.” And sometimes that can be enough to imply a lot more. This is a sketch commonly known as Java, or The Javas, named after the title of the song performed by Al Hirt. You can see this sketch on the Muppet Show Season 1 DVDs (episode 22), but there are subtle variations in this performance, and I like knowing that it was performed live here:

I wonder how these puppets are controlled. They seem deceptively simple–if you watch them carefully, however, you’ll notice that the big Java does some dance moves that are pretty complicated if it was just a straight-forward puppet. I especially love the way his eyes roll upwards during one section of his dance.

Now, let’s get back to Henson and Oz. Here they are again, riffing off of each other:

While Kermit’s and Fozzie’s relationship shows contrast between smart and not-as-smart, Kermit and Miss Piggy’s relationship is a little more complex. Piggy has a big contrast within her own character: She sees herself as elegant and classy, but she’s actually crude and selfish. One of Kermit’s big flaws (and it’s a great one) is that he always buys into Piggy’s own image of herself until he recognizes and remembers her true boorish (not boarish, though) self. The comedy in this clip, for me, doesn’t come from Piggy as much as it comes from Kermit’s growing discomfort. Kermit is a great straight man, and he plays his part perfectly here.

Finally, a bit of fun that shows off how innovative Jim Henson and his team were when designing their puppets and thinking of new ways of performing. The puppeteer you’ll see here is Carol Spinney in a costume/puppet he designed himself in order to make Oscar the Grouch more mobile. Think about where his arms are as he performs here–you might need a second guess:

The end of this clip is a perfect way to go out. I am very taken with the way that Jim Henson talks about his role in the history of puppetry. There are so many labels that could be applied to Jim Henson: entertainer, entrepreneur, innovator–but all of these fall below his personal satisfaction as a puppeteer. Most puppeteers won’t achieve the notoriety of Jim Henson, but they all belonged to the same fabric of tradition he belonged to. And he belongs to the same fabric of tradition as anyone who picks up a puppet. There’s something incredibly humbling and charming about that, isn’t there?

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This concludes my series of posts and thoughts taken from “Here Come The Puppets.” I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing this material. The posts will continue to be accessible through this blog, specifically in the Here Come The Puppets category here at the Midnight Diaries. Feel free to read and comment–I’d love to hear what you see in these puppets as well.

Cheers!

Stop signs deliver you a clear and direct message: “You Must Stop.” Other signs serve more as warnings than orders, but that doesn’t mean you can’t interpret them any way you want to.

To see all of the posts in this collection, just click on the link for the Stop Me category

If you see any stop signs like these in your travels, feel free to take a picture and send them to eric@sabudesign.com. I’ll happily include them in a post here. If possible, make the pictures as large as possible (I’ll take responsibility for setting the right size and framing), and let me know the city and street crossing you took the picture at.

(note: this post is part of the Here Come The Puppets category here at the Midnight Diaries. Be sure to check out the full category for other selections from this spectacular program)

One of the things that fascinates me most about puppetry is that the puppeteer, in addition to the puppet, is part of the performance. Some techniques call attention to it more than others; bunraku puppeteers dress in black and are in full view of the audience, while the Muppets are and marionettes tend to have their puppeteers work from off-stage. But whether you see them or not, there’s a part of your consciousness that’s aware of the puppeteer in a way that an audience is almost never aware of an animator.

In 1982 Bruce D. Schwartz opened his show, “The Stage That Walks.” The entire show was performed while Bruce was encased in a mobile-puppet theatre. Even though his body was completely out of sight, this helped keep the audience aware that this was all just one man performing everything they saw before them.

In this first example, I have to admit I have no idea how he’s pulling it off. Clearly one hand is in each puppet. His fingers must be working the puppets’ hands on their recorders. What I can’t figure out is how in the world he’s performing the music!

I love watching the interplay between the two characters. Even though they are roughly the same size and in practically the same pose as each other the entire time, you get the idea that one of them is a practiced musician, old and steady, while the other is equally talented but much more inclined to let the music carry them along into dancing. Another wonderful example of movement demonstrating the main contrast between two characters’ personalities.

The duet is a fun little piece, but what I really want to examine is this next clip from ‘The Farmer’s Wife’:

This clip makes me think about the idea of ’status.’ Now, as shaky as I am about the ground I’ve covered before, I’m even more of a novice in the area of acting and scene negotiation. But I’m going to try to analyze this scene the best I can, and if you feel like jumping in to add, or correct, or completely disagree, I welcome you to do so.

It’s been said that every scene is a negotiation for status. Not necessarily a negotiation for high status, but a status change. And it seems to me that there are many different types of status that you can examine. There is professional status as exists between a boss and an employee, there is moral status as exists between Superman and Lex Luthor, and there is intellectual/philosophical status as exists between two opposing participants in a debate. There are probably many other types of status that I can’t even think of, but this should be a good enough place to start.

We start off here with The Farmer’s Wife, who we’re told is a bit of a shrew. She is low status but thinks of herself as high status. How do we know this? Her attitude clearly suggests that she believes that she is a better and more worthy person than her husband, The Farmer: we can see that she believes her personality status is high. But we can tell that she is a bit of a complainer and possibly not very nice of a person: as an audience, we know that she is pretty low status. Also, since she’s doing her husband’s bidding, it’s clear that her status in her marriage is also low. The comedy is that, despite the fact that the audience knows that she’s low status, she acts high-status because that is how she thinks of herself. This gets even funnier later.

By the way, all of this talk of the wife being low status isn’t to say that we don’t enjoy her. She is not an annoying or bothersome character to the audience. We like her enough to laugh with her, instead of at her. Her little dance after the horrible “missing link” pun is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. Even though we know she deserves a bit of a comeuppance, we’re delighted when she treats others as if they deserve one. Which leads us to…

The Devil. Now, the Devil is arguably about as high of status as you can get in every way but morally. (and even the morals in this play may be on his side) So when he is treated as low status, as a sausage or as a cow, by the actual-low-status-but-thinks-she’s-high-status Farmer’s Wife we get even more comedy.

As a brief side note, consider again the contrast in the way these two characters move: The Farmer’s Wife is frantic and moving all over the place, and the Devil is very still and calm and his gestures are sharp and direct. To tie it back into status, look at the calm, sure way he nods when the Farmer’s Wife notes that “It’s as dark as Hell down here.” Think of this moment taking place with the Devil nodding quicker–the literal meaning is the same, but notice how that would change the context and the character. It makes me marvel at all of the little choices that have to be made in order to realize a well-rounded performance.

So the Devil puts up with all of the Farmer’s Wife’s nattering on and on, and even tolerates his nose being tugged almost clearly off of his face. He finally loses his temper (but not his manners: he still calls her “good woman”) when she won’t stop slapping his shoulder in jest. And then there’s a moment that I love: the Devil makes the entire earth quake. This is a wonderful use of Schwartz’s one-man stage. In a conventional puppet theatre there may be some effective ways to shake the earth, but somehow having the entire set, puppets, and stage itself stomp and jump around adds a power to this moment that I can’t imagine being equaled any other way.

This earth tremor is the first thing to really stop the Farmer’s Wife from moving about and feeling so cocksure of herself. You can see her shaking in fear. Up until this point, we knew that the Devil was high status and the Farmer’s Wife was low status, but the Farmer’s Wife believed herself to be high status and the Devil (in her mind, the cow) to be low status. This is the first moment when the audience and the Farmer’s Wife are both on the same page about who is in control. And the Devil takes this moment to calmly (again, always patient and calm–even though he’s shaking with anger, I almost wonder if he doesn’t feel somewhat ashamed of having lost his temper briefly) explain who he is.

But after a moment’s thought and recognition, the Farmer’s Wife appeals back to the audience and regains some of her own high status by making a joke of the situation.

Back and forth, back and forth, the characters seem to say to each other “I have the status” and “No, I have the status.” It’s left up to the audience (or the performer, or the playwright, or all three) to decide where the status really lies. But what makes the scene interesting is what the characters believe about their own status in the scene, and how successful they are at achieving or maintaining those beliefs about their own status.

I could watch this scene again and again. And I have. I love it. Bruce Schwartz is clearly a master of his craft. He is still around, though my preliminary research seems to indicate that he doesn’t do much puppetry anymore. As talented and renowned as he was, it appears that there came a time when he decided “That was fun. Now I’m going to do other things.” As funny as it sounds, I really like that way of thinking about things. I know that it’s easy to fall into the trap of wondering how much wonderful puppetry we’ve been deprived of, but I really like the idea of being really good at something and not running it into the ground.

The most recent information I came across tells me that Bruce Schwartz is now a yoga instructor with his own yoga studio in Southern California. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he still had some puppets that he brought out every now and then, even if only for close friends and family. In any case, I hope that he is happy in whatever he is doing right now. I hope that much for everyone.

Next week: the big finally to the Here Come The Puppets posts. You won’t want to miss it!