FuzzyCoT

First off, thanks so much to all the audience members who braved the redonkulous storms to come and see some puppet shows.

Anyway, over seven minutes? Really? Dang, I thought I was running a tight four minutes there. Oops. Also an oops (and here's your little behind the scenes insight) -- Bindlestick Joe was supposed to have the high squeaky voice and Can O'Beans Joe the low voice. So when I made Can O'Beans Joe have the squeaky voice, I knew I was sunk. And, indeed, I messed them up all through the piece. And I really want to publicly apologize to Garrett for fussing at him at the end of the piece -- frankly I was panicking a little as I was out of material and I didn't want to drag it on any longer. Why I didn't just break character and say "that's my piece" I'm not sure.

This week's Apes challenge was to build a puppet and then do a comedy routine with it. (I think the challenge exactly said "a standup routine" which I kind of stretched.) I used to make a lot of puppets with my mom when I was a kid, but I haven't made any in years. But I've had hobos on the mind lately, because of John Hodgman's The Areas of My Expertise and then Apelad's Laugh Out Loud Cats (we own, by the way, the original of this one). And I've certainly played multiple characters plenty of times in both my Sybilization pieces and in Bare shows. So I decided to make the multiple puppets and have them do most of the talking and kinda leave the hobo out of it. You can watch the video above or check out photos Erica took.

In any case, despite all of my kvetching above, the judges were impressed and I came away with a score of 35 (out of 40) which has put me in first place. (And the 35 points tied with Amanda for the high score for the week.) It's still a tight competition, as only 8 points separate me at first from seventh place. (Or fourth, depending on how you look at it, as four people have the same score.)

Our challenge for next week is to simply tell a story. It should be an interesting week, as the contestants include the winner of WNEP's 2007 Acorn SKALD story-telling competition (Jarrad Apperson) and the winner of the 2007 MAELSTROM improvised story-telling competition (humble cough, me).

The other contestants and their puppets:
Amanda and Matilda
Brady and Bear Child
Erin and Marty the Dirty Sock
Jarrad and Anna
Jenny and Gorgamott
Kristen and Ralph
Margaret and Billy