(Hat tip to Lee Moyer)

In case you wondered why I was a ham… I come by it natural.

His name is Neil and he’s an exceptionally friendly and intelligent pencil-necked little weasel.  While he can be a little grumpy in the morning he’s quite playful the rest of the day.

Now, I do want to point out that he is a pencil-necked little weasel as opposed to his cousin the pencil-necked greater weasel which is native to Argentina.  The primary difference is in the length of their necks.

In this closeup, you can see that Neil has quite a short neck. While the pencil-necked greater weasel has a larger body-mass, the longer neck means that they aren’t as good in a fight.

The pencil-necked little weasels, on the other hand, are incredibly good at taking down snakes in the grass.  They have a ferocious bite when provoked.

Friendly and curious fellows, the pencil-necked little weasel is also handy to have around the house when you need to compose a shopping list.  Most of the pencil-necked little weasels are quite good writers.  This photo is from one of Neil’s competitions where he won best in show.

We are very proud and fond of our pencil-necked little weasel.

The Serenading Unicorn was created by the Henson Company and performed by Allan Trautman.

via puppeteers unite

Our neighbors were going out of town so we offered to take care of their pets while they were on their trip. Two cats, one dog. Our neighbor stopped by with Nick, the dog, to ask us a question and we invited them in. We were a little curious about how Harriet would behave with a dog, since we’d never seen her with one. She’s a friendly animal, but we did not expect her response. Not by any measure.

She was curled up on the couch and when Nick came through the door, Harriet jumped down and ran up to him, mewing like he was her long lost best friend. She rubbed against him. Followed him. And the purring…

The video below is the third time they’ve met.

Love at first sight. It’s so hard. Every time she’s thrown herself at him, begging for attention. Poor cat. He doesn’t even know she exists.

So I wrote, When he left the room, Cora slapped her palm against the wall. “[exclamation]!”

And then after I finished the scene, I trotted off to the Oxford Historic Thesaurus, courtesy of my Multnomah County Library card, to look up oaths.  While I think she is likely to say “thunder!” or “hang it” these were some of my favorite other oaths from other periods.

• By the mouse-foot!
• Dash my wigs!
• Gog of heaven!
• Od’s lifelings!
• Nouns!
• So help me salmon!
• By the pody cody!
• By the great horn spoon!
• Rabbit!
• By the hokey fiddle!
• Bread of wheat!

I just ran across this video which I sort of love because it pokes fun at Portland with so much love. Watch it and if you live here you’ll know exactly what I mean.

Apparently it’s promoting a t.v. series called Portlandia.

A friend just said that he needed to buy a hat while he was here. I started to cite John Helmer Haberdashery downtown, which has a wonderful selection of hats.

He then clarified that he was looking for a Ducks baseball cap hat. [Edited to add: He says that he called it a hat. La! See me be snooty and disdainful.]

I think that a baseball cap is not the same thing as a hat. He thinks that they are.

Now arguably, hat might be used as an umbrella term for headcoverings, but it’s like saying, “I want some fiction,” and then clarifying that you really meant you wanted a movie.

So! Internet debate. Are hats and caps the same thing? Discuss.

(By the way, if the folks who read my blog on Facebook and LJ don’t mind commenting at my website I’d appreciate it. That way my friend can see the full range of responses in one location.)

This polar bear is so adorable that it’s easy to forget he could rip my head off without thinking.  How cute is he? That’s Willie, from the North Carolina zoo. He used to be in a circus under very poor conditions but was rescued and lives at the zoo now.

He’s still apparently a bit of a ham as you can see from this video. Also, note the scale. That’s a really, really big bear.

If you miss the morning celebration, you can still enjoy the evening unless you think the 24 hour clock invalidates it. Meanwhile, you can make plans for next year and 11:11:11 11/11/11.

This video just makes me laugh and laugh. And I thought Harriet had an issue with drinking water.

(Thanks, -e-!)

Via EpicFTW

Donate to animal rescue at http://www.okgo.net/dogs

See? Here it is!

Note: The crackle on her horn/ear things annoys me but at a certain point I have to recognize the procrastination for what it is and step away from the paint program.

(hattip to Jennifer Pelland for spotting this beauty.)

Let me repeat that: The Jane Austen Centre. Likes. My. Novel.

John Ottinger writes about the book in detail and wraps up by saying:

Shades of Milk and Honey could easily fit into Austen’s canon, except of course for the inclusion of magic. Kowal has captured both the style and content of an Austen novel, adding her own speculative fiction twist, and readers who enjoyed such novels as Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell will find this novel appealing as well. Readers of period romances have a crossover novel into the speculative fiction genre, and casual rather than critical Austen readers have a book that hits all the high points of Austen’s dialogue and plotting while still having its own identity. Highly recommended reading for everyone and one I suspect will garner award nominations from several genres.

You can read the full review of Shades of Milk and Honey at the Jane Austen Center. I hardly need to tell you what an honour it is to have the Jane Austen Centre like the book.   Their website was indispensable when I was writing the novel.

So you may imagine my further delight when Laura Boyle, who edits the online magazine, let me know that this month’s issue was quietly themed around ideas from my novel, including an article on what Tableux Vivants were like in the real world’s Regency.  I didn’t make them up, I just reimagined them with glamour.

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.

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.

So, I will now tell you the story of the Worst Show I Ever Did.

Jodi is my creative partner in Other Hand Productions. He and I had been invited to take our production of Snow Queen to the Northwest Regional Puppetry Festival. This is a show that I am extremely proud of and really enjoy performing.

This is part of what makes this performance so bad. There are other productions that I’ve been in that were poorly conceived or plagued by other problems from the outset, but this show was one I went into actively liking.

But…  for a variety of reasons it had been in the box for about a year. Sure, Jodi and I had pulled it out six months earlier to do a single show and it had been like getting on a bike. We had rehearsed once and remembered the show like we’d never left it.

For this festival, Jodi was in another show which was debuting. We wanted to run through Snow Queen, but the other show took all his free time. I was also the workshop coordinator for the festival.

Mistake Number 1: We didn’t run through the show.

To accommodate my schedule, they put our performance on the last day when most of my duties would be finished.

Mistake Number 2: Both of us were exhausted and sleep-deprived.

Add to this series of judgment errors, a theft. Our sound system had been stolen the month before the show. Tears of Joy Theater used the same sound system we did and kindly loaned us theirs.

Mistake Number 3: We didn’t fully test the equipment.

And now… the results of those three mistakes.

The day of the show arrived. Rob and I had been dating for about four months at this point and I really wanted him to see this show. So, this means that for the performance we faced an audience of professional puppeteers and my audio engineer boyfriend.

We walked onto stage to the largest squeal of feedback I’ve yet experienced. All I could think of was that I was dating an audio engineer. I tried to shake that off and keep going.

The first sound cue came up and I stepped on the foot switch to turn it on. No sound emerged. I stepped on it again. Still nothing. A third time produced sound.  Odd.

There’s this thing that happens when performing in a show like this. One part of your brain is engaged with acting while another part is engaged in the technical aspects. It feels like having two selves in some ways because I continue performing while internally going WTF?

I decided that what was probably happening was that the TOJ footswitch was a double-click pedal. Back when I toured for them, we’d had some of those and they were a pain. Basically, you had to click twice to turn on the machine.

So the next cue came up and I clicked twice. Nothing. Again with the clicking. Eventually the sound played but on stage there was this awkward pause in which we were trying to act fill the unexpected silence and diagnose the problem at the same time.

So we were continuing along, with all of our sound cues bizarrely late, and I saw Jodi start to bring the Goblin onstage. I thought that he’d been badly thrown by the sound cues because it wasn’t time for the Goblin’s scene. So I waved him off.

He put the puppet away and brought out Kai and we proceeded with the scene. As we were going along, the next thing that was supposed to happen was that Kai and Gerta were supposed to dance, and while dancing Kai would get a piece of glass from the Goblin’s broken mirror in his eye.

The problem was… the mirror hadn’t broken yet. I had been wrong when I waved Jodi and the Goblin off. Wrong, wrong, wrong. In fact, if we hit the footswitch for the characters to dance, the cue that would play — if it ever played — would be the sound of the mirror breaking.

Of course, we’re miked so we can’t talk to each other and we’re wearing hoods so we can’t make meaningful eye contact. So I ad libbed, to try to get us out of this scene and back on track. The scene went something like this.

Kai: You wouldn’t be so cold if you were moving around. Why don’t you try dancing.

Gerta: No… I think I’d like to go inside now.

Kai: Oh come on! You love dancing.

Gerta: Yes, I know. But I really would like to go inside. Now.

Kai: (thinking I’ve forgotten, Jodi kindly feeds me Gerta’s line) But you’ve always said dancing makes you feel light as a feather!

Gerta: Yes. That’s true. But I would like to go inside. Now. With you.

Kai: (reaching for the foot pedal) But I know you’ll be warmer once you dance.

Gerta: I’m going to get some hot chocolate. (exits)

Jodi later reported thinking, “Boy, her leg must have broken or something. I’ll stall here to give her time.”

So I stood there, waiting for him to come off stage while he did an admirable job playing in the snow and trying to be entertaining after one of the most senseless scenes ever.

I finally turned off my mic and crossed behind Jodi. Leaning forward I whispered, “I was wrong.”

This is what the audience saw.

Kai: (playing in the snow) Whee! I love the snow. That Gerta is so sil– … … Hot chocolate does sound good. (exits)

We continued on, did the goblin scene, then Gerta and Kai came out and danced with numblingly late sound cues. Eventually we learned what was happening but by this time the show was staggering as if it had run into a wall and become badly dazed.

Basically, our minidisk player had to be stopped at the end of each cue. Because of that we had three seconds of silence at the end of each cue. The TOJ minidisk player automatically stopped itself at the end of each cue. So what we were doing was turning the sound off during the three seconds of silence after a cue, as usual. Then, when we started it again, it would roll to the end of the three seconds of silence and turn itself off. So we’d double-click, which would turn it off and then on again.

There were also issues with scenery getting stuck. I remember having to actually break a set piece to get it off stage because it got stuck so badly

This was the only time in my life where I didn’t want to take a curtain call.  The audience was polite but I was mortified. Afterwards, a puppeteer who I really respect tried to find words in which to acknowledge that they’d seen the show without having to admit that they hadn’t like it.

We use phrases like, “I’m so glad I got to see you work,” or “I would never have thought to do it that way,” or “What an interesting show.”

I stopped her in the middle and said “That was a terrible show. It’s fine.”

All the tension went out of her and she said, “What happened? I didn’t think it could possibly be like that.”

Now, I’ve had set pieces fall down on stage and the audience thought it was part of the show but this… this show was just broken all the way through.

To this day, when I screw something up I compare it to that show and usually think, “At least no one had to go get hot chocolate.”

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

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.

So hard to look away…

These are not the horse puppets you are looking for…

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.

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

My plane was flown by Captain Kirk.

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

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.

I love Beaker… Poor guy.

I know exactly how Mr. Puppeteer feels. In fact, there are parts of this conversation that could be a direct transcription of my life.

You should check out the Montreal Caffe Art Java youtube channel if you want to see amazing things done with foamy milk and coffee.

via epicftw.com

via Eric James Stone

Not surprisingly, I had trouble finding the restaurant.

Once there, a ninja led us into the bowels of the building where a “feudal” Japanese village had been recreated.  Because I was late, Iwound up following a family with three little boys into the restaurant.  The ninja asked, “Do you want to go to your table the safe way or the ninja way?”

“Ninja way!” Three little boys, and I, chorused.

The ninja way was through a twisty and extremely dark passage built into the wall that led you up and down stairs back to a few feet from where we started, albeit on the other side of the door.

Dinner was fun, mostly because I think we were all determined to wring every bit of fun out of the experience. Otherwise… well, you know, ninjas are not trained to be waiters. Ours said that he’d majored in Forensic Astronomy and Ninja.  He was pretty funny all evening, but more of the ironic, hip version of ninja.

When I left the restaurant and got on the subway, my car and the car in front of it had no passengers.  For three stops, the train would stop, the doors opened and no one got on.

I couldn’t help wondering if the ninjas had gone out and slaughtered everyone while we’d been in the restaurant.

via SF Signal

YesButNoButYes: Elmo Meets Ricky Gervais.

Yes. Lambchop’s puppeteer, that beloved ventriloquist children’s entertainer wrote “Star Trek” The Lights of Zetar

This is the show that boldly goes…

Edited to add: The picture is photoshopped. The idea amused me, but I’ve just had three people respond as if it were real. Shari Lewis evidently lobbied for the role but was not cast. Lambchop never appeared on the Enterprise.

via Chris Hansen

Be afraid. Fear the wrath of the Puppet People!