Thanksgiving with a side of Muppets

Just got back from Thanksgiving in Ohio, well... got back last night at 1 am. I have to say I made some damn good fudge and such over break. There will be pictures later.

Sunday morning, went to Cleveland and met up with some fine folks for brunch, but we're going to gloss over that fact and skip right to the meat. We then went to see the new muppet movie. It was Amazing. I won't lie, I actually wept through parts of it. It was so sad, and so awesome, it just pulled at your heart to watch the muppets down and out, separated, told they aren't famous anymore and that people don't remember them. It was really a comeback story and I don't know how they could do this movie and not do a new muppet show. They've set it up, and holy crap will it work. The celebrity support within the movie, the jokes, the new voice actors doing old voices, it was all there. There were great little touches that the hardcore fans will love, really touching moments, pictures of old muppet show hosts with them at times, everything. The addition of Walter is great because the older folks who grew up on it ARE Walter and all the new fans can get welcomed in by him.

I won't really give anything away but I will say one of my favorite parts is that Animal is in anger management and he is "in control" I loved it. It was everything I could hope for in a restart of the muppets. My only complaint was the inclusion of one song that just didn't fit, it was jarring, confusing and even the muppets weren't sure why it was happening. If you've seen the movie, you probably know which one I'm talking about.

Fun facts:

The banjo that Kermit plays during the rainbow connection is his original banjo from the first movie.

it's the first theatrically released muppet film not to include Frank Oz

Pixar fine tuned parts of the script for Disney

Some of the full body muppet shots use original remote control muppets that allow it to exist and move on it's own as it is controlled off screen. They chose to utilize these so they could be sure the muppets exist physically in the real world rather than being digitally animated.

A Catching up of Sorts

I think it is about time I get caught up on this thing, so here it goes. This is my first real day off in quite awhile (thank you national holidays) it has been spent inside not doing a thing, later I will play video games, currently I will update this and eat some hot dogs. Later later... chinese food. I think that is a good plan for a day off.

So Seussical went pretty well. Each night had some mistakes and issues, nothing I really could have done anything about so I didn't stress too much about them. Friday night they broke a piece of facing off of one of the front steps so I was going to cut a new piece early Saturday and paint it, but when I got there my crew had already reattached it and were touching it up. Needless to say my tradition of taking a piece of facing from every set I've designed continued and during strike the broke off piece was set aside and is now next to me in my office at home.

Of course given that during a tech week everything that goes wrong does (thank you murphy's law) my jeep stopped working. Wouldn't turn over, lights still worked, new battery did nothing, didn't work. so after a couple days of that Melanie and Roberto Mollo (Melanie is the music teacher and director) got AAA to come out and look at it and then got it towed to a place about a mile from work. The guy was great and fast, reminded me a lot of the place we go way back home, so I'm sure I'll be going back if I have any other problems. Waited around 3 hours for the tow truck to actually show up, towed it there wednesday night, picked it up thursday afternoon and now it runs like a champ. It ended up being a combination of battery, cables and shot connections. In either case I'm up and running and in good shape now with a brand new battery for winter.

So thursday was the last day of my required after school hours since we are ending the "fall sports" section and moving into winter. I decided it was time for a small project. Now that I'll actually have some free time I'm planning on making a lot of changes to the shop, stuff I had wanted to do when I showed up but hadn't had the chance to get to. First project was a desk for the shop. This way I've got somewhere to work and keep important stuff rather than trying to find it in a bunch of different places. When all is said and done this desk will have cost about $6, and none of it was my money. Between materials we already had and stuff I had picked up a couple weeks ago I did most of the work in a few hours. I just need to add drawers to the right hand side and give the whole thing a nice coat of paint. I'm toying with the idea of having part of the surface be chalkboard (mostly because we have some chalkboard paint I want to play with) I figured it'd be useful for leaving notes when we don't have any paper.

so that's it for now. Tech class is already gearing up to help ACTSA (All Children's Theatre at Saint Andrews) build the set for Pippi Longstockings. I'm also going to do a simple easy lighting design for that and pick up 2 or $300 which will be nice. One show down, another show up.... sounds about right.

Another Quick Update

I'm tired, but the light at the end of the tunnel is getting closer.... which means I'm either out of this soon, or dead. In either case we had the preview performance of Seussical on Wednesday and it went almost perfectly. I have a couple of things to fix tomorrow but nothing major, a couple of lighting cues and we're good to go. I have to say that this may be one of the best things I've done. Now let me go back on what I just said. Not all of the construction is the finest that I've done but it works and is "good enough" to get us through what we need. I have certainly done better construction at BG BUT I had help and a shop staff of hardworking, intelligent people who understand how to build things then. Now I have high schoolers who don't know much. Also I had to do lights, and paint and all of this was in a super short time frame. My class and after school students certainly worked hard but I did 90% of the work on this monster. It is by far the biggest set I've done alone, and it looks great if I say so myself. Children of Eden at Scott was about the same amount of work, but I had Meghan and Erin to help out, at the same time I actually had a shop for this show, so it is assembled better than COE was. I still have a soft spot in my heart for Burning Patience at BG though because that in my opinion was sort of the perfect storm of awesome. Great design from Jim, great crew to build it (and it was beautiful) and with Steve's lighting design, my sound design and Sara Chamber's direction I think it really nailed the poetry in the language and the beauty of everything that was going on. It's hard to decide but I think I might be prouder of this set. It just works, it looks like it was ripped right out of the books.

SO... three performances this weekend and maybe 1 for the school on monday and I can put this damn show to bed and have some time off to relax. Then it's on to the February show "Mill Girls" which I'm really looking forward to (more details on that later). Other than that the Jeep has proven to be a nightmare as of late. A couple of weeks ago I caught a rock on the highway which cracked the windshield. So I started to look into getting that fixed. Then a couple of days ago it decided it just won't start. Don't know if it's the battery or what but it won't take a jump and just won't turn over. So when I get a chance there will be more looking into that. For now it throws a wrench into a lot of things. That's life so far I'll get back into posting more frequently here after this weekend.

 All of these were from the Preview performance on wednesday. Hopefully this weekend I'll grab some better pictures with the big camera, but this pretty much sums up the show. We also realized that with the curved rainbow on the center stage portion, we've got what we are referring to as the "acid man" it curves up on the facing for the stairs to make his rainbow eyes and then curves down the center stairs to make a smile. It's a little unsettling to see the stage smiling its big drugged up smile at you while you're sitting at the board in the house. But hey, every part of this show is on drugs in one way or another.

Until later.

A Bit Behind

As the title says, that's my life right now. Updates will be coming soon. For now a quick run down. working every day on Seussical now (picture below) and still trying to keep up. Classes are ok, doing stage combat makes life easier because its fun and I don't have to lesson plan for it. This Saturday I have to be on campus from 9am till 9 pm because of rehearsal and then a stand in the background as TD for a benefit concert with some guy named Danny Rivera. The upside is once I am done with rehearsal apparently they are paying me extra to be there for the concert. So some extra cash will be good. Especially since Sunday is the trip to King Richard's Faire in Mass. for a nice, enormous ren faire. I'm excited and will likely walk away with a newly purchased weapon. ALSO, monday I'll be driving my class in a mini bus (while another teacher drives her class) 3 hours to go visit Lowell Massachussets and check out the program they have about old new england mills and the child labor that was used etc, as a day long field trip to prep our classes for the February show "Mill Girls"


too much work, not enough time, and boy am I tired.

Weddings and Catching up

I haven't had a real urge to update this for a little bit, mostly because I've been trying to recover from last week's drive to Ohio and back. I managed to get a couple of extra days off so I was able to head towards Ohio sooner for Alex and Becky Bean's wedding. Because I had the extra time I managed to get out to Cedar Point and see some awesome Halloweekends folks. This was both great and depressing. I loved being able to see everybody but it wasn't long enough and I really wanted to go out there with them. Sadly I picked a terrible night to go and it was dripping wet and nasty, but the zones rocked and I got to see the Garter show which was enjoyable.

Friday night I ended up at Carrie Williams house in Cleveland which was great since (now) Sergeant Barlow was staying there as well. None of the Bowling Green folk were sure when Pete told everyone he was going to the army, but it seems to have worked out really well for him. So Saturday morning I get up and the problems start. I was to make cider for the wedding but couldn't get the keys to Lauren's place, then I did get them but Alex had given me the wrong keys and I couldn't get in. So I get to the wedding and I had to borrow Russ Katona's pants for the wedding. Wedding went pretty well and then we moved on to the reception and the real fun began. The band they had was Hepcat Revival which has always been a favorite of the BG crowd so it was nice having them, also open bar. So that was quite enjoyable as well. I was probably drunkest bridesmaid, but I couldn't fit into any of the dresses so that is a good thing (that's the tradition, though it doesn't always happen) The upside is I had some really good conversations and had some really good drinks as well. It was really nice to see people and that was something that was greatly needed after having been out here for about 2 months now.

Drove home sunday without any major problems and I made it through another week. I'm still not comfortable with a lot of this stuff but I'm getting into the swing of it at least and it goes easier and faster. I still don't like middle schoolers though. blargh. Plans for this weekend are... absolutely nothing, so as to recover from the driving last week. Next post will include some pictures, better stories, and some entertainment.

Big update post concluded.

Weddings, Money and Swords!

Well... the upsides to this week. Tomorrow we're fleeing to the Cleve to attend the BeanTona wedding which should be awesome. Because of that... Tomorrow is my last day teaching for the week. Thats about it for the plus side.

Negatives. Money continues to be way tighter than we would have hoped. I'm tired of worrying about money. I'm a grown ass adult working as much as the full time faculty I teach with but you consider me a part time employee. Teachers ask me what I'm teaching and I list off four classes and my after school responsibilities and they say all that and you're part time? yeah... it gets old. It's bullshit because they essentially did this to make sure I'd stay around because they want to keep me but they've gone through 6 people in like 7 years so they didn't want to waste the money if I choose not to stay next year. But I plan on it so it's frustrating. I can't be too upset because I knew this getting into it. Though the extra work required of me is a bit more than they said originally. I'd just like to get paid like an adult and have the money to occasionally splurge on things or buy myself something nice every once in awhile. Such as getting the ipod that I've been putting off for 3 years.. or I don't know, something simpler, like food. Or presents for friends who are getting married.

Don't get me wrong I've liked the job alot, minus the parts that I dread which are pretty common, but mostly relate to my not feeling comfortable as a teacher yet. and I'm really looking forward to this wedding. Living in Rhode Island has been great but we're the only ones out here. Again, we knew that getting into it, but it's lonely and we miss our friends and it sucks knowing this is the only wedding we can go to this season because A. We can't afford another, and B. we can't get off for others, and there are a lot that I'm missing that I really wanted to go to, Sorry Erin, Aimee, and company. I don't have a problem making the tough decisions, it's part of life, I understand that, I'm just tired of waiting for that point where it gets a little easier. You should in theory be enjoying yourself. We can't afford to get some things framed yet, we have books in boxes still because we can't spare the extra $20 for a book shelf. I'm tired. We are both working grown adult, full responsibility jobs, and neither of us are getting paid to our abilities or our worth. I'd just like one moment of vindication where someone says you know what... you should be getting more, what were we thinking. And until that point happens I've decided I'll be bringing in my swords and teaching combat to one of my classes because that makes me cool to them, nobody else can do it at the school, it's intimidating and hopefully if I train them well enough they will fight and die for me at my command and I can unleash my student army upon the campus and begin my rule of blood, Joffrey Baratheon (Lannister) style.

and now I leave you with some entertainment after that heavy post.

This one goes out to Yozo.... for some reason.

 

And last but not least a video that is pretty awesome. Those who enjoy My Drunk Kitchen should like this, I'm impressed that she's a good cook, entertainingly funny and happens to be a really good singer on top of that as it turns out.

There Aren't Enough Words

Today would have been Jim Henson's 75th birthday. There are very few people in this world that I would truly call my hero. Jim Henson is one of them. The amount of joy he brought into the world ended far sooner than it should of but I am forever grateful for what we do have and the continued legacy the Henson name imparts. He touched the lives of millions of people through the Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock, Sesame Street, not to mention all of the movies and experimental work he left behind. There is something to be said about the impact he left on the world and on me. The first picture I hung up in my classroom at school was a picture of Jim and Kermit on set.

But it wasn't just him, the reason the legacy remains so strong today is because of the work of countless others from his physical family to his "fictional" family, Jerry Juhl, Frank Oz, and all the unnamed people who ever played a roll in his work, the love and attitude he brought to the table and made others feel remains strong enough that my generation still cares and will force 30 or 40 year old muppet show episodes on our children. We care enough that there is still a demand for a new movie and hopefully a new tv show, there simply are not enough words to adequately convey the feeling and impact he left.

This video has already gone around some amongst my friends today, but with something like this I have no problem with reposting it because I'll gladly watch it every time