Lisa Mantchev posted this video of You Think You Can Dance and I clicked on it because usually Lisa is smart about these things.

At the 1:34 mark, the male dance did a move that I specifically teach new puppeteers to avoid because it is physically impossible. Let me repeat that. Physically impossible. He stands up, rolling over his toe, in a way that makes it look like he’s being pulled up and back by a string.

He does it three times during the course of the video — which also includes a fantastic dance and is worth watching on its own — each time, I backed the film up and watched it over and over.

Now, the thing is, that clearly, he’s a very strong man and that he’s getting a little boost from his partner, but STILL if I did that with a puppet I’d be accused of breaking every rule about Muscle and gravity in the books. Granted, there are times when we break the rules on purpose, but if one is aiming for realistic movement, what this man is doing would be avoided because it looks impossible.

The funny thing is, that it’s like fiction. There are all sorts of things that happen in real life I could never get away with in fiction because because it defies belief. It fascinates me that the issues involved in creating verisimilitude on the page and on the stage are same. It doesn’t matter if it’s true if it doesn’t look real.

I arrived home today to a flurry of compliments about the art issue of Shimmer and a slip from the post office saying that they were sorry they’d missed me. Curses! Now I must wait still longer to see this issue.

Sure, sure… I’ve been looking at the galleys and such, but it’s different when you get to hold the smooth pages in your hand and fondle the glossy cover with art by John Picacio.

le sigh.

I made these. So what did you do at work today?

Folks, I have more work than I have time, which is lovely, but it means that some of my own projects are falling by the wayside.

I need someone to set up a shopping cart for me. I know how to do it, but I lack the time and have hit the point of being willing to pay someone else to do it.

Drop me a line if you are interested.

I’m starting by using a real skull for the dog head. I’d planned on just getting a resin dog palette, but lo! There’s Skulls Unlimited has a giant collection of dog skulls.

Now, I’m not going to be using the Chihuahua skull in this picture, but had to share it with you. Does that not look like an alien? No wonder they so often look creepy.

I ordered a large B-quality domestic dog skull. Once it arrives, I’ll enlarge a picture of a dog’s skeleton to match the skull and use that for my scale rendering. It should be an interesting process.

I dropped the moth off today and they loved it. As I was leaving they were having trouble with one of the other effects in the show. A key plot element revolves around a young man who has, um, trouble with his manhood becoming alert when he isn’t expecting it to do so. The member in question was difficult to control… funny how common that is.

So, I’m going back down to deal with the erectile disfunction. My job is so very, very strange.

You have to imagine me and the director, also a woman, kneeling in front of the young man who is wearing this prosthesis and discussing the concern at hand. It swings to the left. He’s getting some chafing. It gets bound up in his pants. All the while, we are manipulating the existing prop trying to see if we can fix it or if we need to start fresh.

I just got the final art for Charles Stross’s book, Toast, coming out from Wyrm. I’d already done a preliminary layout using the rough draft of the art, so it was easy to drop the final art in place, make a few tweaks and send it over to Neil.

The art is by the talented and very easy to work with Steve Montiglio. I have no understanding of how he works as fast as he does with as much intricate detail. He just delivered the final art weeks before his due date. It makes a girl very happy.

Besides– Giant octopus ships in space! What more could you ask for?

I collect etiquette books, so if you ever need to know what kind of gloves to wear to an afternoon wedding in 1851 or the proper way to say goodbye to a guest in 1907, come to me. One of the prizes in my collection is The Jolly Book of Funcraft by Patten Beard in 1918. It is a book of ideas for parties and the table of contents includes such things as:

• The Party Made From Almost Nothing At All
• The Thanksgiving Fun Making
• Carrot Fun
• A Plasticine Party
• The Faggot Party

Oh yes, my dears. What could be more fun, than a Faggot Fun Party.

The thing that makes me laugh most, is the stunning poem at the end and the way it shows just exactly how much words have changed.

Obituaries: Publishers Weekly today has an obituary for Madeleine L’Engle.

Author Madeleine L’Engle died last night in Connecticut, at the age of 89. Best known for her 1963 Newbery Award winner A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels, L’Engle was the author of more than 60 books for adults and young readers, most of which were published by FSG. This spring, the Square Fish imprint of Holtzbrinck reissued L’Engle’s Time Quintet in new editions.

This is so spare; it does nothing to talk about a woman who wrote a book that absolutely shaped who I am. Wrinkle in Time is one of those books that I still keep reading. I think I might need to read it now, then I can imagine that she’s just on the other side of a tesseract.

Edited to add: The New York Times has an enlightening article about her.

The other day, Rob and I went to see part of the Silent City series at the Film Forum. The evening started off with NYC Treasures from the Library of Congress, which was a collection of short subject from 1898 to 1906. They had a live pianist providing accompaniment. Seeing the city bustling around in some ways made me feel as if only the fashions have changed. Granted, they’ve changed a lot, but watching these people in unguarded moments of laughter or frustration made me really aware of how little human nature changes. The fashions though…people definitely dressed better then. One put on a suit and tie to go to Coney Island.

After that collection, we watched Lonsome. Again, set at Coney Island, this film from 1929 is your standard boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl and they live happily ever after. The male lead, Glenn Tryon, was out of the same mold as Stefan Karl, quite delightfully so. One of the things that fascinated me was how modern the text cards appeared. I’m so used to faux silents with their old timey text, that I’d forgotten how recent these films actually were.

At one point, Our Hero followed the Girl to the beach. He tried to gain her approval by feats of acrobatics and then finally settled down next to her and said, “Hello.”

In sound.

I tell you, the entire audience gasped. It was as if we had never heard a talkie before in our life. This film, which I had thought was a standard silent film, had three minutes of dialogs in it. The moment when he opened his mouth and sound came out was electrifying. I can only imagine how much more it must have been for people who didn’t even know that such things were possible.

So, that thing I said about only the fashions changing isn’t completely true. Technology has given us a lot more possibilities. But it’s awfully nice to know that the sense of wonder can be regained in the right context.

Gah. I’ve started the build of the real Coralines and the first one I put together had that same gap under the chin. I set it aside and started another–same gap developed. So, the problem is in the pattern. I finished that one and then cut it apart to make a clean pattern. The new heads are going much smoother now.

Oooo! More Chaucer’d treats at Michael Livingston’s. This time he’s done Jay Lake’s Mainspring.

Seventene degrees latitude approchynge, Hethor sawe th’Equinoccial Wal for the first time on lyve.

I’m not sure why I find this so endlessly fascinating. Even with such short snippets, I’m starting to feel like I can understand Middle English more, like it’s becoming just an accent.

And yes, that is another cover by me using the Historical Tale Construction Kit. It’s a nice break from the real job. Er, jobs.

Rob sent me the link to this article called, “Science of Magic” in the New York Times It is fascinating and worth reading, even if you have to register.

A sample from page three:

Retreating to a bar at the Imperial Palace, we talked about a different mystery he had been pondering: the role words play inside the brain. Learn a bit of wine speak — “ripe black plums with an accent of earthy leather” — and you are suddenly equipped with anchors to pin down your fleeting gustatory impressions. Words, he suggested, are “like sheepdogs herding ideas.”

That is one of the best definitions I’ve ever heard.

Finally, we got our futon. Whew. We also picked up a gorgeous bookcase from the early 1900s. The folks that sold us the futon said, “Need anything else?” And we said, “Bookcases?”

Behold, for reasons that are unclear to me, they wanted to get rid of this glassfront bookcase which had belonged to the husband’s grandparents. It’s beautiful! I am baffled but was very, very happy to buy it from them. Naturally, it was not a dimension that we had planned on having in the apartment, but so pretty that we went into make-it-fit mode. Actually, I think this will be better all around. So, what we are doing is using it as a divider in the living room and giving Rob a micro-office there.

Clearly, painting is still happening, but I hated the color I put up on the wall behind the lamp. It’s a purple that does not play well with anything else in the room. It is not at all the color that the photo makes it appear.

I am taking over the entire room that we had set aside as an office. Though my workbench was supposed to be temporary, it’s becoming pretty clear that I will always need something like it. I made this floorplan when we were moving out, to figure out what furniture would fit. It’s been very handy so far. Like when we were trying to decide if we could, in fact, make the bookcase fit. So far, we only have one piece that we don’t have a good home for. It’s a Japanese kimono rack, which is normally a lovely piece, but the right spot hasn’t presented itself yet.

I need to reorganize the office, which we are already starting to call the “workshop” but that will probably wait until Coraline is finished.

My business and creative partner, Jodi Eichelberger, has been doing some podcasts. Here’s the description of his latest:

From August of 1994 through the spring of 1997 Mary and I toured a production of “Pied Piper” with Tears of Joy Theatre. We were particularly close to this show because Mary designed it and I wrote the book, music, and lyrics. We had lots of adventures during this tour: towing a truck through a blizzard on the Bear Mountains, being taken from a hotel room in the middle of the night by Officer Monty, losing my big toenail during a performance…but be careful when dealing with the Piper; you never know what might get charmed away. On the morning of April 16, 1996 the “Pied Piper” disappeared, along with our van and all its contents.

He invited me to relive memories of our tour with Pied Piper. You should listen to find out who stole the Pied Piper.