Contrary to what many people might think, Sesame Street is not my favorite show on PBS. My favorite is Between the Lions. It’s a show about a family of library lions that love adventures in books. The format is similar to that of Sesame Street with repeating characters and skits, but Between the Lions has a bigger emphasis on reading. While Sesame Street focus on letter and number of the day, Between the Lions would focus on a vowel or a consonant, what words are spelled out and how they are used. I love all the tongue-twister-ish writing and silly puns. And it’s a also a plus that they used many types of puppetry.

There are many recurring segments. For example, there’s Cliff Hanger that can never seem to get off the cliff:

There’s Monkey Pop-up Theater:

There’s the very mindless Dot and Scot, and Chicken Jane who always winds up in some kind of disaster:

Aw… poor Chicken Jane. And here’s my favorite song of all time from this show, When Two Vowels Go Walking:

Ah, this show puts a smile on my face. Up till about two weeks ago, this was my favorite show on PBS. But over winter break, a relatively new show became my new favorite and she sure stole my heart. Do you watch PBS Kids? Can you guess which show it is? I’ll reveal the answer in a later post. (Unfortunately, this show is relatively new so it hasn’t been picked up by that many PBS stations yet.)

I’ve seen a few puppet videos online parodying president candidates John McCain and Barack Obama. Unfortunately many of them are just people putting a light color puppet and a dark color puppet next to each other and calling them McCain and Obama. This one, however, actually looks like John McCain. I think it’s the shape of the head. My favorite part is the eyebrows. They certainly made the puppet a lot more expressive.

The election is in a few days. As for this blog, I’m planning to put up an episode that has to do with the election, and I’m planning to write a post about presidential debate moderators… if I finish in time, that is.

This is a little song called “Please Don’t Call Me Dummy” by Puppet Scraps. The lyrics are heart-felt and really depict the social issues faced by puppets everywhere. Carry on, puppet. Live a good life.

For those of you not familiar with Joe the Plumber, he is this guy that questioned presidential candidate Barack Obama about his tax plain. His name was subsequentially brought up numerous times throughout the presidential debate as Obama and John McCain talk about their visions and plans. Under media scrutiny, there are also other facts revealed about him, such as his real name and the fact that he wasn’t a licensed plumber.

Anyway, I was thinking, somebody (let’s not look at me for now) should make a puppet show where Joe the Plumber, Joe Six-Pack, and Hockey Mom would sit down to discuss politics and economy. I think that would be hilarious.

And then I happened to come across this yesterday… not quite what I was picturing but it was amusing nevertheless.

What do I like? If you’ve been coming here for a while, you know the answer: kung-fu fighting puppets!

Just for the trailer for Fist of Oblivion, which is a web series produced for Scion coming this November. According to Puppeteers Unite, it’s about “the story of Ricky, an ex-cop and kung fu master who’s on the hunt for Bjorn, Ricky’s former friend and partner who framed him for a crime he didn’t commit”. The trailer looks promising. This should be an interesting series to watch. I’m looking forward to it.

And here’s another trailer for it.

(Via Puppeteers Unite)

Parking: The parking was across the street from the actual theater beneath the AT&T building. When I got there and told the parking booth attendant that I was there for Miles Theater, she directed me to to level P3. I didn’t see many cars there, so I’m guessing that many people didn’t know about the free event parking there. I guess they didn’t check the playhouse website like I did. When I crossed the street to get to the theater, I realized that most of the street parking in the surrounding streets were taken, so I guess it was the right thing to park in the structure.

The Audience: I got there close to show time so most people were already seated. The show was for ages 3 and up, so the audience members were mostly parents with little kids. (I don’t know if they are actually 3 and up, because I didn’t see bouncers carding those who look like 2-year-olds.) I was probably one of the few adults in the audience that didn’t come with a kid or two. It was attended by about 80 to 100 people, but I’m not sure how accurate this count is, because one, I suck at estimating, and two, some kids were sitting on their parents’ laps or blocked by backrests, making it harder for me to see and count. The stage was pretty much empty. A guy went up, started welcoming the audience and talked about what other events are going on for the rest of the puppet festival, and after that, show started.

The Puppets: The curtains opened and revealed an owl in the tree. That’s our narrator. And then the princess came in and started talking to the king. And… why do I bother telling you the story? It’s based on the English (probably) fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk, so you know what it involves, like the cow (yep, named Betsy, of course), the giant (Fee! Fie! Foe! Fum!), and the magical beanstalk (though in this case, it talks and flies). The puppets are cute and there are a variety of them in terms of controls. Most of these puppets are marionettes, except for the narrator and the giant. The giant is a human-sized puppet that shares his legs with the puppeteer. And then the puppeteer used one hand to manipulate the head and the other for the right hand. Most of the time the giant was either eating or sleeping so one moving hand was pretty sufficient. I was wondering how they were going to do the giant falling down from the sky part. It was a pleasant surprise when they brought out a screen and started doing that part with shadow puppets. I liked the way it was handled.

My Favorite: My favorite puppet of the whole show, though, was the magical harp that played itself. It was a marionette. The puppeteer used wires to control it a few feet above it and it actually looked like it was playing. It looked very natural too. Instead of just having a bunch of strings moving around, it looked like invisible fingers were plucking the strings, and then the strings would snap back into place and oscillate back and forth. I couldn’t figure out how they did that but it looked awesome.

The Sound: This show used a pre-recorded soundtrack, which cut out the possibility for improvisation but also made the tech part easier and smoother. The voice acting and the sound effects were good too. The puppeteers could focus more on the puppeteering without worrying about who was saying the next line and where. So that’s good too.

The Kids: The reactions from the kids were typical. There were kids really captivated by what’s going on on stage and stayed focused on the story the whole time. There were kids that were too young to really pay attention or understand the story but they were just happily watching all the colors and movements on stage, while the parents whispered into their ears. And of course every now and then a kid would start crying and the parent would need to take him/her outside.

For Parents: Just like taking young kids out on a trip, sometimes it’s more for the parents than for the kids. Young kids might not even remember going to these shows or places, but it’s quality time the parents spending with the kids. Besides jokes that would be understood by kids, there were stuff that probably took someone older to understand. Nah, there were no sexual language or jokes, but there were references to elevators, the game show Family Feud, and an explanation of photosynthesis when the magical beanstalk was asked why he grew so tall so fast.

The Puppeteers: When the show was over, the six or seven puppeteers came out and took a bow. The event website only mentioned Doug Seymour. I recognized Bob Baker from an interview that I previously watched previously but I don’t know who the rest of them are.

It was a good show and I enjoyed it. I am not going to urge you to go see it though, simply because I don’t know when they will be doing it again. But yeah, I am gald that I went to check out the show. And of course, I also encourage everyone to check out some local puppet shows!

PS. Also, the theater was located inside Christine Emerson Reed Park. It looked pretty nice and I totally would’ve walked around some more if lunch wasn’t waiting for me. Hm, overall I just like Santa Monica a lot and that’s why I’ve also lived there before even though rent was generally higher there.

PSS. I had some problems charging my camera so I wasn’t able to take pictures. These pictures are of the original production from the event website. The puppets looked like the same ones used in the show I watched, except the giant. The giant looked bigger (giant-er?) in the one I watched.

JellyTelly is a new kids site that’s about to launch this fall. It’s created by Phil Vischer, who is a writer, actor, animator, puppeteer, and best known for co-creating VeggieTales. There’s a video trailer on the website right now with Phil explaining why he’s creating JellyTelly and gives a sneak peak of the kind of videos that’s going to be on it.

Basically, the idea is, while kids are spending many hours every day in front of the TV exposed to Disney channel and Nickelodeon, many are only exposed to Christian values and stories one day per week in church. And one problem is that there are not enough easily accessible Christian kids programs out there, so JellyTelly is created. Some of the content will be user-generated, and some of them will be generated by Phil’s team and other video makers that will also work to generate content.

After watching the trailer on the website, I have even more respect for the man. This is a man that has a vision, and is dedicating himself to making the world a better place. He had some success with VeggieTales, and now he’s thinking about how to give back even more. What a great man!

As for the content, from what I’ve saw in the trailer, I’d say that they are definitely not as big production as those Disney and Nickelodeon shows. Like he said and demonstrated, you just need a camera and some ideas. Many of the segments that I’ve seen in the video are just really fun and I would seriously rather watch this stuff over Disney channel and Nickelodeon. And I’m not even Christian! From watching these short segments, I learned something about the Bible and how Christians look at the world… even though I don’t necessarily agree with everything they teach.

And we’ll see how sustainable this is. At this point, he is asking parents to sign up for an one month trial. And then after that one month, you start paying what you think it’s worth, whether you can only afford one dollar a month or ten. That’s basically a model relying on donations and sponsorship. Will it work? I think so.

There are two kinds of people that I have a lot of respect for: One is the people that do what they can to give back to the society, and another is people that can create great work out of simple things and small budgets. Phil is both and that’s rather inspiring to me.

The website hasn’t officially launch as of the day that this post is written, but there’s a video (about half an hour long) with Phil talking why he’s doing this and some of the contents that’s going to be on it. It’s a simple production but the sketches are better written than many kids stuff I see on TV nowadays. Take a look and it just might be what you are looking for if you are a Christian parent.

The installation is sort of confusing. Actually it wasn’t that confusing, but my trying to fit the VCR into the chain complicated the matter. Anyway, it was done now. There were more digital channels than the analog ones, so that I do appreciate. And there were no blurry channels. What was annoying was that some channels were broadcasting in 16:9. Since we have a 4:3 screen, you see black stripes above and below the 16:9 image. However, how does a 16:9 channel sends out signals for old programs that were produced in 4:3? Yep, they have black stripes to the left and to the right of the signal. Compound those two effects together, you get a 4:3 program that was shrunken, with huge black borders around it. That’s kinda annoying.

I do appreciate the extra channels, especially the many more PBS channels. What’s really awesome about this digital channel thing though, is that I get Qubo. Yeah, yeah, it’s a children’s channel, but guess what’s on children’s channel? Yep, you guessed it, puppet shows.

I watched Lamb Chop’s Play-Along, and although I had fun watching it, it really really bugged me. How did they control the arms of Lamb Chop? Where are the rods that moves the arms? That really really bugged me. If it’s not shown, then it must be hidden inside the puppet. But the arm movements are so fluid! I looked up some live performances of Lamp Chop on YouTube, but the puppeteer focused on the mouth and didn’t do much with the arms, so I didn’t figure out much from it. I was pretty sure that the rods have to be hidden in the puppets, but damn, the motions looked good. How did they do that? I totally wanted to find out.

And then there’s Nanalan. I had to step away from the TV at the moment so I couldn’t really watch it, but hey, that’s another puppet show that you can watch on Qubo. Man, Qubo is awesome. It also shows Veggie Tales. Aw man, Veggie Tales is awesome. I can’t get that “Where is my hairbrush” song out of my head and that Sheerluck Holmes story is hilarious. Oh man, I’m so glad to have that extra channel.

Correction (07/20/2008): It turned out that I saw Nanalan on a digital channel of KLCS (a local PBS station) instead of Qubo. No wonder that I couldn’t find it on the Qubo online line-up. But, Qubo is still awesome nevertheless.

For some reason, Vietnamese puppetry reminded me a lot of Taiwanese puppetry. In fact, I found a lot of elements in Vietnamese culture to be similar to that of Taiwanese culture. Maybe that’s because both are near the southeastern region of China and are influenced because of the geographical location. Both kinds of puppetry features wooden puppets dressed in clothes as opposed to foam puppets. In both cases the control mechanism are hidden under and beneath the puppet, as opposed to European marionettes and Japanese style Bunraku. In both cases the puppeteers monitor their own performances by watching from behind a curtain that they can see through but the audience can’t (because where the puppeteers are standing are darker than outside). The music also has some similar quality to it. But oh look, another big similarity that catch my eye: fire and smoke!

Apparently they enjoy these special effects as much as we do. It seems more difficult, because you do not want to wet the mechanism causing the fire and smoke effects to fail. At the same time, it’s probably also safer, since according to my dad, back when he was a kid a famous theater was burned down because of an accident during a puppet show. But either way, it’s very interesting to see them both utilizing effects to make the audience ooh and ahh.

What seperates this kind of puppetry from other kinds of puppetry I’ve seen though, (other than the water of course), is how the puppets are rigged to do specific motions. In many other types of puppetry, the puppets seem to remain more generic in terms of the range of motions they can have. For example, in Taiwanese puppetry, a puppet showing off his martial art moves would have the same control mechanism as one rowing a boat. In the case of Vietnamese water puppetry, however, the puppets seem to be more specialized for the motion they will perform. For example, the puppet with a fishing pole battling a fish would be rigged differently from the one rowing a boat. In one of the video, a puppet seems to be fixed onto the boat (of course, I’m no expert so don’t quote me on that) and that kind of rigging is something I don’t see as often in other kinds of puppetry.

It’s good to watch different kinds of puppetry and gain inspirations from them, but hey, it’s simply fun to watch them because they are entertaining! (Yeah, I do that.)

The film is by my friend Mandel Lum with the help of people from the LCC Theatre Company. I enjoyed it and I hope you will too!

PS. I am still in Pittsburgh and only online for about half an hour each day. I have a new video that I am done with the rough cut. Will add music and upload the video once I am back in Los Angeles.