What I said

1. I need a mounted woodcock.
2. Someone stole the bag of extra body parts.
3. Why are you puckering?
4. I had to unplug the time machine.
5. Where are the monkey balls?
6. It’s between the barfing panda and the orange fuzzy man.
7. I’m really looking forward to mounting his head.
8. I just need to cut the baby’s face off and it should be ready to go.
9. My… that’s a lot of decapitations
10. “Oh no, I’ve lost my eyeballs!”

What it actually means

1. I was looking for a taxidermied bird.
2. Aside from being puppet parts, that’s exactly what it sounds like.
3. Fabric on a puppet was bunching unpleasantly
4. We use a standing hair dryer with the brand name, “time machine.”
5. I needed some wicker balls that we had used when building a set of monkeys.
6. Er… this one is hard to explain, except both descriptions are accurate and refer to toys.
7. I was looking forward to being finished building a puppet’s head so I could install it.
8. I was making a bloody child for a production of MacBeth.
9. A friend was working on project making thirty custom dolls. She had a whole bunch of headless bodies laying on her desk.
10. A friend was doing a sculpture and couldn’t find the eyes she needed to embed in it.

By request, this time, it’s a quiz. What do you think I really meant when I said each of these things?

1. I have to go repair the moose, sew some curtains and carve a donut. Not in that order.
2. Are we inside him?
3. When he comes, I’ll grab his britches.
4. Do you want the tumor to talk?
5. I can’t keep his head up. He’s limp.

Things I say

1. I’m moving back to Shimmer land. Screw the gods.
2. Just be sure you aren’t screwing when the actors get there.
3. Can I get a stiffer rod?
4. I can retain his rods if I hold them between my pelvis and his head
5. May I touch your dead animal head?
6. He couldn’t get it up.
7. All I have to do is buy this moosehead and then pick up some KY jelly.
8. I think I can give you a donut but I’ll have to sacrifice a baby bunny
9. Give me a second to wash the blood off my hands
10. All right. Who wants to be tied up?

What it really means

1. I had been painting Greek gods for a show all day and needed to get back to layout
2. Discussing set construction at a theater.
3. The metal rod had too much spring in it for the weight of the puppet’s hand.
4. I kept dropping the arm rods of a puppet that stood waist high.
5. I was moving some taxidermy heads
6. At the end of a long day, a puppeteer was too fatigued to lift his arm, and heavy puppet, over his head.
7. I needed to complete a purchase of a taxidermied moose head on e-bay to be used as set dressing in a show about Teddy Roosevelt. The next item on my to-do list was to pick up KY jelly for another show. It goes in the bottom of ashtrays as a fire safety measure.
8. We needed a donut to appear magically on stage. The only foam that I had that had the right density was part of a baby bunny prop.
9. I was mixing stage blood and had it all over my hands
10. I needed to test a trick rope that had a quick release.

Things I’ve said, or friends have said at work lately.

1. Where did I put my lady belly?
2. Catch the fish eyes!
3. How many bird kebabs do you want?
4. I think the crocodile is going to eat us alive
5. My skull is supposed to arrive tomorrow.
6. RiteAid is the mother-lode of Emilys
7. I’ve lost my arm
8. Go ahead, put your finger inside. It’s really good. So snug and smooth.
9. His rod isn’t stiff enough.
10. The logical way to get vaseline off a Galumphus head seemed to be to take in the shower.

What it all means.

1. We were making fish and I couldn’t find the pattern for the female fish’s belly.
2. The eyes for the fish were made out of a lightweight plastic and were put outside to dry. A stiff breeze came along and the fish eyes went sailing.
3. Birds puppets stacked on top of one another with a piece of steel running straight through them. Really. What else would you call it?
4. The process of building a crocodile puppet was not going well.
5. I ordered a dog skull for a dead dog I was building for a show.
6. I needed a 42″ doll, which happened to be called Emily, that was available at the drugstore.
7. Couldn’t find the puppets arm
8. Checking the fit of a puppet sometimes makes one say unfortunate things.
9. Really, this was too easy. We needed heavier gauge spring steel.
10. This is part of a friend’s hilarious story about making puppets for a Seuss show.

Today was a banner day for things I get to say at work. I’m forgetting some of them and am not even going to try to explain what all of these mean.

1. Do you want me to sew his ass shut or should I use hot glue?
2. I wish I could get him to spread his legs.
3. Sorry, I’ve got a lap full of monkey.
4. Is that your arm or mine?
5. I think the pig is eating her.
6. Let me finish screwing him, and then I’ll get to her.
7. What are we going to do with these extra monkey balls?
8. Hang your monkey up; I have a new job for you.
9. We need to sew so many mini-monkeys. (Say this out loud)
10. I can’t find my tail.

1. I will switch over to the pelvis until he gets back
2. My second try at the crotch gave the bear the biggest package in the world.
3. Let’s see if they have bigger balls.
4. If we can’t find anything else, let’s get the Chinchilla chew toys for the monkey balls.
5. Then you can put the kitty in the microwave!
6. I’d have to say that anus is the best. It’s got the right sort of wrinkling.
7. “I kept wanting deer and getting doberman.”
   “They’re very similar, but it’s almost impossible to train a deer to kill.
8. I’m stuck in a baby seal.
9. I’ve got five heads for you.
10. “Go ahead, slip your hand in her.”

What it means.

1. You can read it in context here.
2. You can read it in context here.
3. We were shopping for wicker balls that needed to be 2″ and found some that were 1 1/2″
4. Again, shopping for wicker balls for monkeys we are building, which it turns out make great Chinchilla chew toys.
5. One of those microwave heating pads called the kitty.
6. Well…he was building an anus for a puppet and needed an opinion about which looked best.
7. I was talking about sculpting a deer and having the sculpt look like a doberman. The other woman was just insane.
8. Another sculpting gone bad conversation.
9. Suggesting that another puppeteer try on a puppet.

1. Can you spread your legs for me?
2. Who wants to stick it to the wall?
3. The director said, “Don’t stop! I can stick anything I want in your mouth.”
4. Nice! Great handjob.
5. Do you think it might be better if he killed his wife?
6. I’d give you a ride, but the car is full of bear.
7. Let me just slip inside and I’ll show you how to do him
8. I spent today boning the bear.
9. His head isn’t getting hard.
10. Next up, the pelvis.

What it all means.

1. I couldn’t see a monitor, and asked the puppeteer standing next to me to widen their stance so I could look through their legs to the monitor on the floor in front of them.
2. There was a prop that needed to be attached to the wall. Why does it sound so dirty?
3. A puppeteer flubbed a line in an otherwise perfect take and stopped. The director wanted the puppeteer to continue, and he would just fix it in ADR.
4. A puppeteer did a beautifully complicated pass, combined with acting. What else can you say?
5. Talking with another writer about a plot.
6. I’m building a giant polar bear. The parts were in my car.
7. I was demonstrating a body puppet
8. I was installing dressmaker’s steel boning into the underskeleton of a bear costume.
9. I was making a fiberglass head and misjudged the amount of hardener to put into the resin.
10. Said while discussing the to-do list on the polar bear I’m constructing.

To kind of shake things up a little, I thought I’d explain what these things mean this time.

Things said at work.

1. I need to get his head in my lap.
2. Will it be faster if we just take her arms off?
3. What kind of head do you want?
4. Our director said, “I need more red in the blue zone.”
5. Will you put the car on top of him?
6. I’m already looking under my own armpit.
7. He’s twitching. Is that normal?
8. Another puppeteer said, “The problem with going up his ass is where to put my head.”
9. I’ve done better balls than that.
10. “Head, head, head! Come on, squirt it. Now give me a good cherry.”

What things really mean.

1. In this shot I was doing live hands for a character and we were working on the floor. The only comfortable position was if the lead puppeteer used me as a cushion, but because we were between two set pieces it took a bit of wedging to get into place…that explanation doesn’t really improve things, does it?
2. We needed to change a puppet’s clothes, and the arms velcro in place. Because the puppet had rods in his hands, it looked like it would be easier to unvelcro.
3. The puppets have two types of head, one where the puppeteer enters through the neck and one where they enter through the back of the head.
4. I work there and I have no idea what this meant.
5. If a puppet is in a car, it means there’s a puppeteer under the car.
6. Frequently while performing with live hands, the only way to keep my head out of shot is to bend it as far forward and down as possible. With my hands over my head, this means that the easiest place to see a monitor is if it’s positioned so I am looking under my own arm.
7. There was a remote control puppet on set. Sometimes radio signals will override the control and cause a puppet to twitch.
8. The discussion was about a puppet sitting down on a bench, which means it would have legs and a seat, where the puppet normally truncates at the waist. So the puppeteer could get his hand inside the puppet but then his head would appear to be chopped off and on the bench next to him.
9. I was throwing balls, and it went wrong in a take. The ones before had been better.
10. This is what happens when puppets make cakes.