Rob’s mom sent us a care package recently. In it was a packet of roasted and ground Wattleseed, which is an Australian product that apparently has a coffee, chocolate and hazelnut flavour profile.

While researching what to do with it I ran across what has to be one of the worst beverage names of all time: Wattlecino.

If any of you folks down in Australia for WorldCon run across a wattlecino, let me know what it tastes like.

The fellow who is doing the special effects for the Shades of Milk and Honey book trailer is a BAFTA award winning special effects supervisor who I know from Lazytown. Remo Balcells has worked on films like The Fifth Element and Final Fantasy. He’s currently doing FX for Hawaii Five-0.

Tonight he emailed to say that he was “quacking off the renders.”

You know… I didn’t think there was a profession out there that made puppetry phrases look completely prosaic. “Quacking off?” I have no idea what it means, but it sounds fantastic.

I was talking with a friend of mine and he said that my blog read like “Mary’s Greatest Hits,” because I never talk about the things that go wrong. This surprised me since most of my best puppetry stories are of shows that go horribly, horribly wrong. But he’s right. When I talk about television I’ll say “Oh, this shot was really hard, but we got it in the end.”  And in fiction, the stuff that goes wrong usually gets fixed in private.  I realized that it’s because I never think about things in television or fiction as going as horribly wrong in the same way they do on stage. I mean, things in stage will go bad in rehearsal, but you rarely tell stories about it. That’s part of the process and the only things that matter are the things the audience sees. In television, I screw up and we do it again. In fiction, that’s what the delete key is for.  It never really seems to me like things go wrong.

So, I will now tell you the story of the Worst Show I Ever Did. Continue reading Things that go horribly, horribly wrong OR The worst show I ever did

Due to the delayed flight, I am once again ensconced on the porch of Merrie Haskell’s lake house and working on revisions to Glamour in Glass. While I am thus engaged, allow me to present to you Emma Thompson’s speech at the Golden Globes when she pretended to be Jane Austen.

My most grateful thanks to Miss Ellis for sharing this video with me.

This makes me giggle. Particularly at 2:14.

The National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O’Neil Theater center is one of my favorite things. It’s a ten-day intensive workshop focused on performance and the development of new works. At the end there are performances.

This is from a couple of years ago and a fine example of puppeteer humor. Every person at the O’Neil had a control attached to this marionette. We all focused on the puppet and moved our controls with careful intensity but our goal was to not move the puppet. At all.

Trust me. If you are a puppeteer, this is hilarious.

You know how you can tell when someone on tour has gone insane? It’s when they make something like this.

So hard to look away…

These are not the horse puppets you are looking for…

Everyone needs a break sometimes, so I took some time off to go fishing for kitties. Here’s a demo video.

This is very funny and painful and my big fear.

So, um, there’s a list of dates of my book tour, plus other sightings, over in the left sidebar. Come see me?

Also, I am totally going to see Parnell Hall the next time he’s on tour.

I need someone to get one of these so I can ride in the car with them.

No, really. It’s not a joke. Darth Vader really does GPS navigation. What do you think the Force is for?

I have safely arrived in Troy, MI for Penguicon and will shortly turn in but I just had to tell you about this one thing.

My plane was flown by Captain Kirk.

Is there a better transportation to an SF convention? I think not.

Rob and I went down to our storage locker to drop off some things and also so I could look for some juvenila to read at Wiscon. While there I opened a box of old photos and found the Glamour Shots that I had taken when I was 23.

So for your amusement, compare and contrast.

Me at 23

Me at 41

In answer to questions I am anticipating… Yes, that’s my original hair color. No, I don’t perm my hair now. I just spent most of my life thinking it was straight but unmanageable.

Also, thank God for getting me past the stage where I thought mall bangs looked good.

My dad sent me this video with the subject heading “What passes for news in Chattanooga” and a link to the local news station. Now I share the video with you.

I love Beaker… Poor guy.