Today, Þor and I were trapped in the pizza cave.

In this scene, Ziggy gets trapped in his room by the sheer volume of pizza (don’t ask where they came from) which meant that the set and props department made a mountain of pizza (foam) that they lay over an elevated set. Þor and I crawled into the pizza cave below, so Þor could work Ziggy as the remaining pizzas buried the puppet. I was working Ziggy’s left hand. Frequently Þor can do that himself, but due to the supports for the elevated set he couldn’t get Ziggy’s rods placed the way he wanted them without sprouting a third arm. That’s my job.

That and clearing the pizzas away from his monitor as they dropped into the pizza cave. It was a very silly and very fun scene to shoot.

Bed.

Today was fairly dull at work. But I did finish the final edits of Shimmer and it’s going off to the press. Whew.

Well, this amuses me.

Science-Fiction Novel Posits Future Where Characters Are Hastily Sketched | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source

OREGON CITY, OR—Science-fiction author Morgan Richards announced Monday completion of his long-awaited novel, Zeppelins Of Phobos. The swashbuckling tale of the battle for control of the solar system depicts a terrifying future filled with virtually indistinguishable characters who only communicate through stilted and shallow dialogue.

I just imported all the old journal entries from my blogger account to this website. All of the pictures were lost, because of that lightning strike last year, but at least you can still read about my adventures last time I was in Iceland.

We weren’t called until noon today and then didn’t wind up doing any performance until probably three in the afternoon. Today’s sentence is: Let’s shoot him now now.

Pretty much everything was run of the mill today. I did live hands for two of the characters–this was actually the first time ever that I’ve live-handed for one of them. Funny how that happens. Actually, I guess today had a number of minor firsts. There’s a floating thing in this episode and I worked it during the finale song. This is the first time I’ve worked a puppet solo in the finale. Now, I say “worked a puppet” but really, this was a disc on a stick and my job was to roll through at specific point in the music. Very complicated…ha. But it was still nice to be doing something where I wasn’t attached to someone else.

Stanislaw Lem, Author of Science Fiction Classics, Is Dead at 84 – New York Times

Stanislaw Lem, a Polish science-fiction writer who, in novels like “Solaris” and “His Master’s Voice,” contemplated man’s place in the universe in sardonic and sometimes bleak terms, died yesterday in Krakow, Poland. He was 84.

The cause was heart failure, his secretary, Wojciech Zemek, told The Associated Press.

We had today off because they were shooting actors…you know, I could really do a top-ten list every week. Anyway, I took the time to get some writing done and to send out some actual mail submissions.

Until today, I’ve managed to avoid submitting stories except to markets that allow e-submissions. Yikes! It’s expensive to mail things from Iceland. I had the foresight, at least, to pick up international US stamps before I left home, so I don’t need to get the IRC for the responses from the editors. But still! Each submission costs about $8 in postage. That’s crazy.

The cover art for Apex Digest’s Issue six has just been unveiled. This is the issue which I will be in. Neat.

The artist who’s illustrating my story also sent me a rough draft because he thought I’d be interested. It turns out he’s a fan of the show. Small world or what?

We slept in. It was lovely.

Then, Rob made waffles. Lovely.

We walked downtown; the sun was shining but it was still cold enough to bundle up. Our goal–well, Rob’s goal really, I was just along for company–was to find a thrift store. There are three that Rob knew of, but we only found one of them. It was closed. I knew of one other, which was open but didn’t have anything we were interested in. We did buy some chopsticks at Tiger, the Icelandic version of the dollar store. Then we ran into Sarah, Julie and Emily and joined them for coffee at Tíu Droppar. There I experienced a miracle.

Tíu Droppar has decaffinated coffee.

Almost nowhere in Iceland has decaffinated coffee and I have serious caffeine issues. I shake and sweat. This isn’t really surprising since caffeine is, after all, a neuro-toxin. Still, I love the flavor of coffee and suffer when I watch other people enjoying it but can’t have any myself.

After coffee, we all went our seperate ways to get ready for the production party tonight. It was fun to see people outside the work routine.

This kind of day is the hardest of all. Thor and I came in at 9:00 today because his character was in a scene at the beginning of the day. The other puppeteers were on standby and arrived at 11:00, but we still hadn’t shot a puppet scene yet. In fact, none of us were used until 6:30 and the end of the work day is 7:00 pm. So although I got some good work done on a website I’m designing for a friend, my day was otherwise totally dull.

After work a group of us went out for a girl’s night out. We saw the new movie version of The Producers and then went to Enrico’s for soup and a glass of wine.

I wish we had taken a picture of this, so I’ll attempt to provide a word-picture of the endeavor. The Mayor, normally played by David Feldman, had to enter a scene with hedge clippers, talk to Ziggy and then exit. Because of a number of variables, including that darn bicycle, we had to be on the floor instead of in an elevated set. David must have know this was coming because he had arranged to be on a plane heading back to the U.S. for the weekend. Ron Binnion had agreed to cover David while he was gone, so I went in to be the Mayor’s live hands.

When we are on the ground and the puppet has to travel, we work on rollie carts in a partially reclining position. Live hands, by contrast are performed in an upright position so that the assistant puppeteers arms are in the same plane (or as close as possible) the lead puppeteers arm (which is functioning as the spine of the puppet). Does this make sense? It means that these two things, on the ground and live hands are incompatible.

Ron and I had to try several positions before we found one that worked–remind me to add that to the top ten list. Basically, I knelt on the cart at the back and Ron lay back on the cart using my legs as a back rest, in the partially reclining position that the carts normally allow us to do. I then leaned forward, under the puppet, with my arms lifted up in the puppets sleeves. My torso passed to the right of his arm and on top of Ron’s torso. Someone else pushed the cart to get us in and out of the scene.

Got the picture? Basically, what it comes down to is this: Never play Twister with a puppeteer.

Today one of the puppets had to ride a bike through a scene which involved screwing three of our rollie carts together. Two of them supported Thor, and one had a kids bike screwed to it. A twenty-foot pole pushed the whole shebang through the frame. The only problem was that we couldn’t back the puppet far enough out of shot, because of the pole, for him to be in the right place for one of the live actor’s eyelines to make sense. So in order to create the idea that the puppet came from far away, they handed me a pink bathrobe to hold at the height the puppet’s head would be, and then had me run with it and touch the puppet’s back, at which point the puppet would move forward at the same speed I had been travelling. I’m sure to an outside observer it was very strange.

My brother said that one of the reasons he likes talking to me is because stories about my job include sentences that no one else can say. (Clearly he hasn’t been hanging out with enough puppeteers.) So he suggested that I start a top-ten list of things I can say at my job that you can’t.

10. Make that rod go really deep. Yeah. That’s good.
9. If you want Elvis, we have to take the Mayor’s head off first.
8. Remember that time when we were ele­phant’­s?
7. The Emerald City fell on me.
6. I’m going to need talcum powder to get out of Ziggy’s hands.
5. I’m sticking to the leather.
4. We need to spend more time with the Harpy.
3. Head! I see head!
2. I spent all morning riding his rod.
1. C’mon! The rats are getting heavy.

Our massage therapist came today. I love massage day. The only drawback to today’s is that I finished the massage and went straight out on set to work the mayor’s hands. I feel like I haven’t had a massage at all.

They’ve just released us for the day and it’s only 2:00. We’re all running away as quickly as possible.