Things are going very slowly here in the Puppets in Melbourne house. Firstly, I’ve been extremely distracted working on this project for another puppeteer. It’s making good progress, and I should have the majority of it finished - hopefully - by the end of next week. Not being particularly hampered by holiday activities, the deadline doesn’t bother me one bit. Except for the other things.

The first is that we have had a major infestation of spiders over the last two weeks. It seems the ad hoc heat-wave meets winter flash flooding - unusual even for Melbourne weather - had created a need for the ‘occasional’ spiders to become household pets. Suffice to say we called for exterminators, but my arachnaphobia kind of prevented me from getting any puppet videos made. (Four of them in and around my work desk, so yeah… that was a reasonable yet irrational reaction)

The second thing is that my cough is back. Having never really left. … Those who missed it or don’t remember, I began having a particularly bad bout of coughing early or mid-year. You may have heard it, I’m pretty loud. The whole thing turned into a saga following the sudden retirement of my lifelong family doctor, the less-than-spectacular treatment by a replacement at the same clinic, a 6 hour wait in an ER, several tests and meds, and about 6 weeks ago, a trip to a new doctor. The cough seems to get better and worse in cycles, and I am officially now at the bad side of the cycle. I’m not only now coughing - painfully and almost constantly - but also wheezing pretty bad. I’ve got yet another doctor’s appointment tomorrow, at which point I’ll be talking to yet another new doctor… so who knows what’s going to happen.

Both of these things have made stuff particularly slow going. Now that the spiders are out, and once my project is done, I’ll definitely by working on those videos. If I can stop coughing long enough to speak, that is. In the meantime, have a good whatever-your-religion-celebrates day. If you’d like to send me a present, please send me … I don’t know, a new pair of lungs I guess.

In between my various projects this last week I’ve had the opportunity to indulge in some fun pastimes. Since Australian TV has gone digital, there’s been a huge amount of stuff to watch. (Those in the US or elsewhere: we had 5 TV channels. We’ve added another 10 on top of that) The Aus. Broadcasting Corp, the main government-run channel, added on a whole new digital station devoted to kids’ TV. Channel 7 added one, and to my surprise, has been running repeats of ALF, something I haven’t seen in oh, 20 years or so. And it’s quite fun catching up with all this stuff that no doubt those in the UK and US have been enjoying for ages. This brings me to the title of my post.

I’ve been watching lots of children’s shows - enjoying dirtgirlworld and their amazing animations, being creeped out by claymation Bert and Ernie (what’s with that?), and most recently, Bookaboo. (Side note: what is with the page for parents on the Bookaboo site being a Ning community? How lame!) When it comes to talking about puppetry on TV, it’s so hard to talk about local - ie. Australian - shows… but really, I quite enjoyed this little puppy.

The idea of the show is quite simply: Bookaboo the rock puppy can’t play in his band until he is read a story. Each episode a celebrity guest comes and reads him a book.

I saw the ad whilst flipping channels, and actually ended up watching the third episode of the whole series. At first, I wasn’t all that impressed with the puppet. Yeah, ok, we’ve all seen a muppet-type puppet before on TV - nothing new there. And it’s a gorgeous looking puppet, but you’re not about to see something crappily made on TV now are you?

But then I started getting into it, watching the way the crooked mouth moves. I noticed the flexibility of the cheeks and how they almost seem to have a natural bounce to them. And I watched the ears. Omigod, the ears are beautiful! … Yeah, I know that sounds crazy, but if you’re a puppet fan/maker/performer, go watch. Those are some fascinatingly elastic ears, extremely realistic of how a dog’s really work. They’re floppy, but not too floppy, they move naturally… and I swear they have some animatronics happening at some points.

Puppet Heap are the builders of Bookaboo, and I can see why they get so much praise overseas. The American company has worked on Veggie Tales, one of the more popular puppet shows in the US. - The Bookaboo program, as far as I can tell, has only been shown here and in the UK. (There are plenty of clips on the Bookaboo site, linked above and below. Those in Australia: check out ABC’s iView, there are episodes listed under the category ‘ABC for kids‘) And actually, Bookaboo received a BAFTA, the equal of an Emmy in the UK.

I have to give a huge amount of credit to the puppeteer too, Marcus Clarke, who does some amazing performing. (But sadly, sucks at web design) Not only is the character fun and witty, but it has an excellent report with the guests… Admittedly in the sole episode I’ve watched so far.

My only problems with the show: Julian Clary’s over-the-top makeup; the scary book that wasn’t scary at all; and the fact that broke my irony meter… the show aims at encouraging parents/families to read together … by you know, presenting the message on a one-dimensional screen.

Normally I wouldn’t mention American/Brit stuff here, but the show made me laugh, curious, fascinated, and extremely impressed. The saddest part is that we don’t have nearly that quality puppetry on TV in Australia. Unfortunately, I’ve not caught any of the other episodes as yet, but I think I’ll be setting a tape for them. It’s great to see some genuinely good puppetry on TV for once, that isn’t from the Henson Co.

Now… watch the clip: once for the enjoyment; and once for the ears. (Fair warning: the below clip seems to be the whole episode. No doubt someone will pull it for infringement at some point)

Yep, it’s that time of year again. The time during which everyone else seems to remember the upcoming holidays except for me. Generally I just plough on through as if it were July.

But anywho, December may be a quiet month for me. In order to get some money coming in the door, I am working on a couple of large projects. One is for School of Puppetry - an ebook - which will require some nose-to-the-grind making of videos and tutorials. I started one of the videos a week or so ago, but sadly all my plans went awry and the build didn’t work out well. I need to restart, and worse, I need nice weather to do it. (Melbourne being what it is, it’s sunny one week and raining non-stop the next)

The other project is something very exciting, but I can’t reveal the details just yet. (It’s really not one of ‘those’, where I go on about a super secret project only to have it cancel on me last second.) It’s a project for another puppeteer, and it should all be finished in January.

Those two things may keep me well occupied enough that not a lot else gets done. In which case, please don’t forget that I’m still migrating, bit-by-bit, all of the stuff from the Learn Online page on Puppets in Melbourne to the new SOP site. I highly recommend visiting SOP for some of the old stuff… a lot of which has been updated and improved. I can tell you that these videos/tutorials will be for building puppets I’ve never done before. Including one using everyday items bought from a supermarket to create modern version of a water puppet. … That is, once the weather turns nice and I can finish the video.