So, let me tell you a little story.

When I was plotting out season four, I knew that, no matter the filming schedule, there was a high likelihood that episode 405 would be due around the time of  a big trip (in this case, my long-standing engagement to go to Edinburgh Fringe for the entire month of August). I knew in terms of structure, I wanted Milton to do the episode, and that it should be somewhat shoddy-feeling; good, but not too good. Originally I was thinking it’d be a song, but then I got this idea.

The idea being that, as I was planning to be at the Fringe for a month, that I’d like to have some tiny, portable show that I could easily perform on the street in my free time. I started thinking about toy theaters, and how neat they were. And this one title kept going through my head – “Goldilocks and the Three Kraken.”

The first problem I ran into was with the script. I had no idea what the structure would be; I’ve been doing Jigsaw so long, I’m sort of used to two-handers, quick scenes of banter. This, on the other hand, is a long story with a single narrator. Actual narration and everything. And I had the problem of what to do with all those Krakenses. So while the first four episodes of the season were written, filmed, and posted a week early, I didn’t have the script for 405 finished until three days ago.

Which leads us to the second problem: illustrations. Toy Theater requires a ton of little drawings. Each time a character picks up a new prop, you either need a new drawing of the character with the prop, or a drawing of the prop. And the drawings need to be in a certain scale, so they all match each other. And you want a degree of consistency, so the characters all look like they’re in the same world. And I decided that, all things considered, all of this would be easier if I did everything in Illustrator.

A program I hadn’t used since, oh, 2003 maybe.

Eventually, after re-teaching myself how to use the program (and getting used to drawing with the Wacom tablet, which is, after all, what I bought it for), I ended up with 12 pages of little drawings of various weird characters. Which I then had to color. And print out. And print reverse copies of. And cut out. And glue together. And then, THEN, figure out how to operate. (I’d show you the sheet, but for some reason WordPress isn’t accepting image uploads, and I just DON’T HAVE TIME to figure it out right now.)

So now we’re up to Thursday afternoon. The episode is already twelve hours later than I wanted. I’ve spent two weeks solid working on it. Also, I’m supposed to be packing for Scotland. So yes, yesterday’s filming didn’t go as expected. The words “good enough” were uttered quite a bit, as were the words “Oh COME ON” and “DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT” and “FUCK I SUCK”. By six I had all the footage in the can, having gone through about ninety minutes of tape (at one point during filming I rewound the tape twenty minutes because not one second of it was even worth looking at later). Having spent 30 of the past 35 hours doing nothing but work on the episode, I decided it would have to be a day late, because nothing I did at that point would be worth showing. I went to bed early.

This morning came the arduous task of trying to cut the episode into a decent length without losing any content (because to lose content would mean reshoots, and again, just no time). I managed to trim about a minute of weird pauses out of the performance, and added the little black bits to try and separate scenes a bit better. Then I put on the headphones and knocked out a Milton voiceover track.

I hate ADR. Trying to sync voice to a specific action is really annoying. Made more annoying by the fact that, during filming, I hadn’t had time to memorize the script, so I was constantly trying to watch the monitor, grab the puppets I needed, and read the lines, way more frantic than my normal shooting (something of an accomplishment). So there were weird rhythms and odd bounces and spots where the narration just don’t sync and can’t possibly do so. Firmly in “Just get it done” mode, I did as well as I could, and moved on.

Originally, the Milton/Kranium scene at the end was to be filmed. Once I had the toy theater show finished, I realized both a) that it was kind of nice to have just that, and b) filming a whole new scene would take way longer than I had time for. So I tried it as an audio track over the credits. For the most part, I think it works. Which is encouraging, considering one of the upcoming Jigsaw projects I’m contemplating. (teaser!)

In the end, I don’t what I think about this one. It’s better than I thought it was going to be yesterday evening, that’s for sure. I’m not sure it’s possible to do on the street in Edinburgh. I’ll take some new sheets and the updated script and see what I can put together. If it turns out to work, I’ll probably assemble all of the materials into a single pdf that people can download and construct. Even if it doesn’t work, I’ll probably do that. Why the hell not?

So to sum up:

-never try anything new
-especially if you’re supposed to leave for a different country soon
-and if you haven’t used the computer program you need in a really long time
-and you don’t even know how to do what you’re doing
-unless you plan on getting lucky and having it be kinda good anyway.

Oh, by the way, you can now buy Lump T-shirts. Right now, they’re selling at zero mark-up. So, you know, get one. Except you, Bill. I have a proposal for you that could put you in free Lump shirts for some time. We’ll talk when I get back.

See you after Scotland.

That fez was a gift from Gil Hova, like 12 years ago. You can’t tell, but it’s about to fall apart. Little, horrible bits of dry-rotted red felt were cascading out of the thing every time I bounced, getting in my eyes and turning my sweaty forehead into a gritty, bloody mess. I should probably toss it out. But it’s hard to throw away a fez.

What should I say about this episode? A lot of post production with the sound. A lot of time spent wiggling and jiggling the sounds. In the end, I’m not terribly happy with them, but you hit a point where you have to throw up your hands and say “Good enough.” Initially, I wanted Kranium to be building something, but the ratcheting noises I was doing just didn’t look right. (Noises didn’t look right? Yes. That’s what I said.) I settled on having him writing, which is not a foley I wish upon anyone with as spare and cheap a set-up as I have. As for Milton’s legs… let’s just try to retcon those out of our minds when I do finally manage a sound effect I truly like.

This episode also represents the last one of the pre-written scripts. 405 is conceptually finished, but the actual words are still… fluid? Is fluid a nice way of saying “I haven’t finished writing it yet”?  Fluid will have to do. I must admit, 405 is kicking me up and down the road with big, spiky boots. Largely because it’s a completely different kind of writing than I’m used to. Really, it’s the kind of thing I used to write decades ago, but those brainmeats are atrophied from disuse.

But anyway. Back to 404.

This was my favorite thing about making this episode:

I did first check to see if I could find an image in Google Image Search of a bear licking a kitten. But drawing it seemed somehow more betterer. And that’s when I remembered I owned a Wacom tablet. Sure, I use it exclusively rather than my crapped-out mouse. I just haven’t ever drawn anything with it before. Wasn’t absolutely sure where to start. Eventually, I’ll get to know Illustrator and do these drawings properly. For now, I just scribbled this in Photoshop in about five minutes (including color). It makes me giggle every time.

Speaking of my crapped-out mouse… okay. Back in episode 402, I discovered I had a need to cue up multiple video clips, one to start the episode with Milton watching it, one to be the weird gameshow countdown clock (that, okay, I didn’t need, because I’m not sure the joke actually works at all, although that is more the fault of my craptastic SFX job than the script, but anyhow I certainly couldn’t have predicted that as I was filming). Enter the wireless Logitech mouse.

This mouse has been with me for quite some time, and the rechargeable battery on it was about dead, meaning I’d have to charge it every four hours or so, which is no way to compute. The battery death led to the Wacom purchase eventually, and since then the mouse usually sits in its charging cradle for the rare occasion that I need to use a mouse for something (you can often see the mouse in the background of episodes shot in the main lab). Last season, I used it once to press play on a video clip before filming. For episode 402, I remembered that I could completely remap all of the buttons to different functions.

So I opened up VLC and made a playlist of the two videos I needed for the shoot. I remapped the left and right mouse buttons to flip back and forth between playlist items, and mapped the middle button to pause and play. I taped the mouse to the floor by my foot. So, while filming, I was able to start and stop the video playback with my toe, and skip to the track I needed, all without having to get up.

Except I would have to get up occasionally, if I let the last video finish playing, because then VLC would revert to neutral and I’d have to open up the videos again and resize the window to fit the lab monitor cut-out. But it did save a bunch of work, and meant I could cue up multiple videos during filming. Even if the edit meant I only actually needed one up at a time.

Sigh.

BUT I WAS TALKING ABOUT 404.

This script started out a lot longer, if you can believe it. I’m not used to having these characters have heavy moments. Kranium’s monologue is very much the thing that runs on repeat inside my head whenever I’m not creating things. Maybe minus the alien invasions. The sentiment is real, at any rate. It also touches upon my thoughts on the value of entertainment. It’s hard, sometimes, to justify wiggling dolls in the air in front of a video camera when the world is so filled with horrible things. I could be feeding the hungry, or cleaning oil off of pelicans, or building homes with Habitat, or protesting mountaintop removal in the coal industry. But frankly, I’m better at wiggling dolls in the air than I am at any of those things. And I may not have a huge audience, but presumably those of you watching this (many of whom ARE feeding the hungry, saving wildlife, building things, preserving things, protesting things) find some value in what I do. A five-minute respite from the heaviness and importance of the world and the work we do in it. Even if it’s just five silly minutes about a robot shouting a lot, if it makes someone’s day easier to handle, I have to believe that’s worth the time and effort I’m putting into it.

So. On to 405, where Milton will put on a puppet show of his own. It should be up at the normal time. Provided I can get it built. And filmed. Before then. Yikes.

If it turns out well, I’ll be taking Milton’s puppet show to Scotland with me. More on that next week.

My video host, blip.tv, have some really cool features for their users. One thing you can do is look at viewership stats second by second, to see where people tend to stop watching, or to see what bit people, upon rewatching, skip to. And sometime last year, I went through the videos and collected a rough list of “Things That Seem To Hurt Ratings.” The list included:

-songs
-long explanations of stuff
-title cards
-Milton shouting

So as you can see, I’m working my way through the list and putting everything in there.

This was a fun episode in terms of exploring some new camera set-ups, trying to use a few basic set pieces and create multiple spaces out of them. It wasn’t my initial thought going into season four, but it seems that this season I’m going to be trying to get away from my patented one-shot look. It’s been so long since I’ve thought in terms of multiple camera angles that I’m having to really think about how it all works. This is going to be more obvious in 404, where I needed to match turns and compose over the shoulder shots that didn’t distract and still have angles that allowed important action to be visible. You know, stuff filmmakers have to worry about. Anyway, it’s an interesting experiment.

One nice thing is, of course, I don’t have to try and get through three pages of dialogue without a mistake. I don’t know if my performances are getting better on the puppetry side of things yet, because I’m still getting used to the monitor. But by the end of the season, it’ll be interesting to look back and see if there has been any improvement.

My character voices are out of shape, though. That much is for true. They’re all slowly drifting back towards my voice, and it’s something I need to work on.

The other thing I really need is a double-jointed right arm. It can either be a transplant, or some bionic upgrade, but I’m finding with these weird camera angles that I’m not physically able to get all the movement I want out of both puppets. Yes, the answer would be to hire another puppeteer, and put the stage more than four feet off the ground. Sure. That would be the SMART way. But I’m too full of myself for that. Clearly.

And yes, I am strangely obsessed with Hell’s Kitchen. I hate the format, I hate the way reality shows twist all human interaction into a horrid middle school cafeteria incident, but Ramsay… there’s just something about Ramsay that I can’t deny. His passion for food and complete intolerance for incompetence is strangely comforting. Sometimes, when I can’t yell at all the idiots surrounding me for fear of social repercussions, it’s nice to let Gordon do it for me.

Let me just offer my sincere apologies to everyone who actually thought I was ending the series. There was a surprisingly large number there, judging by the comments across the internets.

Let me also thank Andrew over at PuppetVision Blog for his exceedingly warm and encouraging post welcoming back Jigsaw. He’s been a great supporter over the years, not to mention an amazing resource for new puppet work online and off. I’m thrilled that his hiatus has also come to an end.

Now. To the episode at hand. What should I talk about.

In my quest to push myself to do new and different things with every season of Jigsaw, I have made some alterations that you may notice, and some you may not. On the list of obvious things is the new secondary set; you saw it in 401, behind Lump, you see bits of it in the montage here, and will see it again in 403. It’s nice to have a monitor-free set to shoot against once in a while, both because I wanted to be able to have a standard secondary location, and also because it’s sometimes a pain to come up with stuff to put on the lab monitor.

Side note: why do all the new Apple products have to be so damn shiny? The old lab monitor, a c.2006 iMac, had a lovely matte finish to the screen, so when I was shooting, you got almost no reflection. Now it’s like I’ve put an obsidian mirror on set. It took me maybe two hours just to light the lab for Milton & Lump’s scene, because the screen was throwing things off. No grood. Anyway.

One thing you may not consciously notice but that I think will come across over time is that I’ve started using a bit more of a professional monitor technique while filming. Up until episode 401, I have only ever been able to see my performance live by squinting at the flip-out viewfinder on my camera. That meant a lot of rewinding and rewatching and resetting scenes, not to mention the fact that it was mirrored, so the thing I was barely watching didn’t match the final film. But recently I bought a little Toshiba portable DVD player that has a line in, and now I have a large screen that sits right in front of me and shows me what I’m doing. As any TV puppeteer will tell you, monitor work is tricky, because you have to train your brain to go right when you want to go left, or rather go right when your brain thinks going right means going left, or something. To get an idea, open up a webcam and flip the image so it’s showing you as you really are, rather than a mirror image. Now, try and comb your hair.

Yeah. That’s the trick.

Point being, you get a much better sense of your own performance watching a live feed. You also get a better sense of screen composition, so you can make the effort to balance the shot while you’re shooting (instead of my old method of watching the take afterwards, then trying to adjust from memory during the next take). At least, that’s the idea. It’s still a pretty new skillset, and I don’t pretend to be great at it yet. Hopefully, you’ll be able to see the end result in better puppetry and better overall look for the show. Or it’ll look basically the same, only it’ll take me less time to film. As a worst case scenario, the latter ain’t bad.

Oh, and to answer some questions you might have about the final sequence: no plans, about a day, gaff taped to the hood, twelve or so, the lost and found bin, melodica, yes, GarageBand, two, advert and chunkfive. If I missed an answer, leave the corresponding question in the comments.

I’ll let you in on a little secret, since you actually follow this rather sad little blog:

This isn’t actually the last episode of Jigsaw.

Yeah, I know. Shocker. If June hadn’t decided to heat up to Dave’s Syndrome levels early on, I would have had this episode up and posted just before heading off for the O’Neill Puppetry Conference, meaning it would have been sitting up for two or three weeks, alone, lingering and sad, making people wonder about the actual future of the show. Part of me wants to milk the suspense. The rest of me wants to actually get work done.

So we’re rocking the Thursday slot again for Season Four. It’s been so long since there was a regular Jigsaw season, I don’t even remember what day of the week was normal. But I’m pretty sure there were Thursdays involved at some point in the past, so that’s what I’m going with.

In the meantime, I don’t think it’s severe spoilerism to tell you that Season Four will be the full 20 episodes you may have come to expect. The first five episodes are already completely scripted, and the back fifteen are outlined. You’ll get at least the first five a week at a time. There may, or may not, be a lull between 405 and 406; I’m heading to Edinburgh Fringe for the month of August, so it will depend on how many episodes I manage to get in the can before I need to get on a plane. No matter what, episodes will resume production in September, and the season will finish up before Xmas. There are no plans yet for another Xmas special, but we all know how much I adore Xmas, so odds are decent enough.

Although episode 401 isn’t the last episode, I am allowing for the possibility that this may be the final season. Or at least, the final season of the show in its current form. To be honest, the puppets aren’t in great shape, and I’ll need to get with some serious builders in order to figure out how to reproduce them in a sturdier form. Kranium, while not terribly hard to rebuild, will involve some financial investment to make him out of better (lighter) parts. Lump, well, I need to find the right fur and deconstruct the existing puppet somehow. For a rather shapeless puppet, Lump is surprisingly specific in his look. It could take some time.

Milton, of course, is in fine shape. Some cosmetic blemishes, but the puppet is a few years younger than the rest. Should Dr. K and Lump have to take an extended medical leave, Milton will be on hand to entertain in one way or another. But all of this is very far in the future, and nothing is set in stone by any means. The season has only begun, after all.

Next Thursday will see episode 402, tentatively titled “That’s My Lump”. I just wrapped the edit on one video sequence that makes me giggle rather unexpectedly. And I’m staring at Lump’s costume right now, wondering what twist of fate brought all of the elements into my possession without even having to think, let alone actively look for them. There’s just one incredibly tricky thing I haven’t sussed yet, but I’ve got some ideas. I’m hoping I don’t have to learn green screen in order to do it. All these years without resorting to chromakey, it would seem like cheating to start now.

Anyway. Welcome back. All seven of you.

I was just going to have an episode suddenly appear next Thursday, but when I saw this video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

…I knew Kranium had to respond.

So yeah. New season starts next week. Yay.

I see that Roger Ebert has once again decided to play the old man and shake a stick at video games. I can’t blame him too much; it must be incredibly difficult for his fans to reconcile his obvious intelligence about film with his utter ignorance and seeming intolerance of video games. So, no doubt, they (the fans) pester him constantly to revise his flippant dismissal of the form, prompting the occasional sleeve-breathing sarcasms we see today.

In his defense, Mr. Ebert isn’t saying that video games aren’t fun, or worthwhile, or interesting, or valid. He is merely claiming they can never be art. Which, yes, is incredibly myopic, but a view I can dismiss pretty easily. While my views on the subject have not substantially changed, Mr. Ebert’s assumptions strangely focus my own views in such a way that my opinion of video games as art is heightened. More on that in a bit. (And in checking out the above link, be sure to read James Ford’s particularly erudite comment.)

Oddly, what really gets my fire up is the TED talk from Kellee Santiago that prompted Mr. Ebert’s recent fun-pokery. Ms. Santiago is the co-founder of thatgamecompany, whose games (most notably, flOw) often come up in discussions of “games that might actually be art”. Granted, the fact that the games they produce are arguably the brainchildren of her business partner Jenova Chen might cause some to wonder why exactly it was Ms. Santiago giving a presentation on art theory, but… okay, I can’t actually think of any reason why Ms. Santiago should have been giving this presentation, apart from the nice ad she managed to wedge in at the end for their newest game on PS3.

I have to side with Mr. Ebert when he rightly takes Ms. Santiago to task on most of her assumptions about art. Indeed, the “first” cave paintings were, perhaps, crude by Renaissance standards, but Mr. Ebert is right in pointing out that they still possess artistic beauty more than the “chicken scratches” Ms. Santiago claims them to be. That Ms. Santiago should begin a defense of a maligned art form by dismissing another does nothing to win me over.

Then she presents her first example of games as art. Waco: Resurrection. Now, I’m not saying the game isn’t art. I would start by saying it was intended to be played as part of a larger installation piece, and that the game was never intended to be art by its own merits. One could argue that it attempts a perceptual shift akin to a second-person narrative conceit in order to contrast viewpoints blah blah blah point is, it’s a really stupid game to pick to back up your argument.

Braid is a better, or at least more obvious choice, but will win over no converts because it is art specifically for video gamers. I have the same problem with Braid as an example of art-worthy video games as I have with Watchmen being suggested as a comic book to give to non-comics readers. Braid, like Watchmen, derives most of its semantic and emotional weight from the semiotics of the artform within which it resides and exemplifies. Which is to say, without a schooling in superheroes, you don’t get why Watchmen is a big deal; likewise, without a solid background in platform gaming or, at the very least, Super Mario Bros., Braid loses a lot of its impact. These pieces of art work so well because, although we are familiar with all of the pieces that make up the works, we are shocked and delighted by the innovative and beautiful ways they are put to use. Which isn’t to say new gamers can’t like Braid, nor that new comics readers can’t enjoy Watchmen, merely that as an argument for the inclusion of their respective crafts into the pantheon of Arts they are, perhaps, too dependent upon foreknowledge to be terribly impressive to those not already on the bus.

…Which goes a long way to proving that video games must be some sort of art, some transcendence of mere craft or structure or system of rules, because unlike football or poker or chess, video games are capable of commenting upon themselves. The simplest argument for the presence of art in video games (and I do think that this is perhaps an easier point to concede, not that an entire video game is one piece of art, but that a video game consists of varying degrees of art, craft, game, chore, simulation, &c, and that it is the combination of these things that makes video games so hard to pin down) is the fact that they can do things not because they are necessary, but just because. The game mechanics of Passage, or The Path, are very simple. Both games can be played by holding down a single key. This is not the point, of course. (Here, had I another hour, I might attempt an explanation of the experience of both games. But I have not the hour, and you’re all smart enough to use Google.) The point of both games, though very differently expressed, are in the things you can do in video games that have nothing to do with achieving a goal. Exploration. Immersion. Discovery. The emotional connection between player and avatar. The different paths that lead to a foregone conclusion. The internalization of the concept of the futile choice. I’d argue that video games, when done well, allow a non-artist to not only experience art, but also to know, in some respect, what it is like to be an artist. (Not to say that every video game that wants to be considered art has to do it just this way, merely using these two as games that have low entry requirements, and still manage to create an experience no other medium can approach.)

It is to Mr. Ebert that I owe this particular epiphany, thanks to what I believe, in the end, is merely a semantic frission; his focus, his stumbling block, appears to be on the “game” aspect of things. A video game for Mr. Ebert, I gather, is nothing more than an animated version of a board game or sporting activity; merely a set of rules, automated, with some pretty pictures thrown on. Admittedly, the vast majority of games are, indeed, just that, no art to be seen, but there is certainly artistry possible there, and it is perhaps impossible to see where the art comes in without experiencing it. You can’t look at Portal and think it’s art any more than you can hear a description of a Picasso and understand its impact. You can only experience it, and then walk away, and recognize that your entire view of the way the world works has been permanently altered, purely because of the experience.

In the end, I would maintain that Roger Ebert should not comment on the artistic status of video games any more than he should review a movie without seeing it, though I also concede that video games may not be his cup of tea, and in the end he should perhaps just say as much. And Kellee Santiago should perhaps revisit her art history notes before her next lecture to avoid looking like a complete twit.

Thoughts, comments, rebuttals, &c, are, as always, welcome.

Basically, impossible.

But it’s actually worked out quite well. Here’s a few shots from GYPSY, which happened some time in the past, I don’t actually have any memory of exactly when anymore. It was in the last eight months, to be sure. It would take consulting some sort of temporal grid system in order to discover the exact point in the past when it was. If only such a system existed…

Anyway. Photos, with commentary All photos by the fantastic Will Kerner. Click em a few times and they should get bigger.

That’s Chowsie the dog. Like most of the puppets in the show, Chowsie is made entirely out of paper and tape, painted roughly. Chowsie got a lot of lipstick on her head during the run of the show, which I thought added something.

Chowsie had to be passed around from actor to actor during the course of each scene, usually starting with Mama Rose and ending with one of the kids. In this first scene, she was handled by four or five people in as many minutes. The handbag Chowsie lives in was essential to making this possible. In the background, you can see some fake kids.

Kids and animals. That’s why I was brought on for this show; GYPSY’s first act is filled with kids and animals. Live Arts didn’t want to fill the theater with actual kids and animals. So I made them. For most of the kids, we used simple bib-style puppets with velcro quick-releases, since the adults playing the parts needed to be adults ten seconds later. These went through several design concepts before finally being thrown together at literally the last moment with scrap cloth and hot glue. The paint marker detailing was still drying on opening night. Ah, the theater.

Animals. Look closely, you can see a dog, a lamb, and a monkey. We cut two cats, several dogs, and a bird from the scene.

A close-up of the lamb. The lamb has to run around the stage a lot. Knowing how hard it is to train someone to do marionettes, I opted to attach springy wires to the shoes of the actress, wired to the legs. As she shuffled, the lamb wobbled around, leaving the operator’s hands free to move the head.

…and then get the lamb into position for a song. The wire rods slid out of the shoes and became handles to move the lamb into position. Man, I wish I’d gotten video of that lamb.

A cow. The script calls for a full cow suit, as well as recurring use of the cow head throughout the show. I knew the costume change would never happen, and the actress’ face while performing the cow was too priceless to cover up, so we went more… abstract. The cow’s mouth was articulated, so it could smile and moo. In the background, a tiny masking tape ventriloquist dummy that was requested at the eleventh hour. Perhaps one of my favorite props from the show. That and the udder. Which I believe has been turned into a chandelier.

It was a hard show. But ultimately a fun show to have worked on.

She had seen an old educational film from the 1950s that compared the circulatory system to a series of pneumatic tubes, carrying vital documents from one end of a modern office building to the other. Being a child of the 1980s, she had had no idea that there had been a time when capsule pipelines were common infrastructural items in most modern cities. Being three years old, and having never seen such a thing, she misunderstood the metaphor. She thought, as a child, that the circulatory system actually worked on the same principles described in the film. She thought that blood was a gas, pressurized, flowing through tiny tubes running up and down the body, sending oxygen to all the cells.

When she was four, the headaches started. Sudden onset migraines, sometimes lasting for two days, sometimes three. The headaches brought an extreme sensitivity to light. The doctor told her parents that it was a common early warning sign for an oncoming migraine. Her preschool teacher, Mr. Abrams, kept a pair of dark glasses in his desk with a post-it note with her dad’s cell phone number. She knew that when the light started hurting, she should ask Mr. Abrams for her sunglasses. When she asked for her sunglasses, Mr. Abrams knew to call her dad to come pick her up. She never told anyone that she could tell when a headache was coming even before the fluorescent bulbs in the classroom forced her to squeeze her eyes shut. The first symptom was never light sensitivity. The first symptom was the pressure.

It was like the gaseous blood in her pneumatic circulatory system was forming clouds. She pictured a deep black cherry Kool-Aid cloud drifting up from her back, up into her neck, and thickening in the base of her head. More and more gas, more and more pressure, her head like a balloon, but like that time when they made a piñata in arts and crafts by covering a balloon with papier-mâché, the blood cloud didn’t have room to expand anymore. There was a big, fluffy cloud of blood expanding in her head, and soon the light would hurt, and soon the pressure would grow until it started causing cracks on the inside, and then there’d be pills that didn’t help, and the vomiting, and the throbbing, and applesauce with cinnamon served in bed, with the lights off and the curtains drawn.

On her fifth birthday she was learning how to ride her new bike when she fell off the curb into the street and scraped a large chunk of skin off her leg. She had never seen her own blood before, and was so confused she forgot to cry. It wasn’t whistling out of her shin like steam in a teapot. It was oozing, thick, syrupy. Her mom soaked it up with a washcloth and sprayed something on it that made it feel like she was melting in acid. She had a faint scar for years, but it faded.

When she was seven she was in the car with her mom when they visited a bank drive-thru teller, and she watched her mom put her deposit slip into a canister and slid it into a chute that made a whooshing sound. She saw the canister fly up a tube, and then saw it fall inside the bank window. Nobody, not the bank tellers nor her mother, seemed to think this was as amazing as she did. “That’s like the blood stream,” she said. “Like in that film, yes,” her mother replied. For years after, whenever her mother went to the bank without her, she would sulk in her room.

She was eight when she cut her hand. She was in the woods with a friend and he had a pocket knife and she was using it and somehow the blade folded in on her fingers. She had seen blood enough times by now not to be surprised, but it was a hard image to shake, the idea of blood as a gas. She stared at her fingers, three deep gashes across her knuckles that looked like little mouths. Flexing her fingers, the wounds opened and closed, and it looked like her fingers were breathing blood. Straighten, close, inhale, blood stops. Bend, open, exhale, blood gathers, like a bubble, until it gets too heavy, falling off the fingers, through her other hand cupped beneath, spattering the oak log they sat on.

Blood seemed so heavy to her. If she was full of blood, she felt she should be heavier, weighed down with iron and sludge. It was her secret truth she carried, that her blood only turned to liquid when it met with the air. The rest of the time, she knew, it was light. She could hear it whooshing around inside when she plugged up her ears. She could still feel the pressure building up, the blood rising to her head in a dark red cloud, just before her headaches started. Filling her head to bursting.

When she got her first period, she giggled. She never told anyone why.

She wondered what happened to the sled.

She had felt the pressure building, the cloud forming, funneling up her spine and filling her skull from back to front. She’d said “Not now, not now.” She’d left her sunglasses at home. She’d forgotten how snow reflected light back in dozens of angles, so it was like the sun was in the ground, in the trees, on the roofs and sidewalks and buried cars. She closed her eyes.

Floating. She couldn’t hear anything but the quiet sound of snow hitting snow, a gentle hiss, almost a sound by virtue of not being a sound at all. Almost sounding like a tiny leak in a balloon. Gas escaping slowly through a tiny hole. She stared up at the trees, and felt warm.

Anyway, that said, let me tell you about this dream I just had, skipping all the bits that don’t matter. In the dream, I walked into a hardware store to buy some glue and duct tape and a few other things, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that fully two walls at the front of the store were devoted to comic books. I was thrilled to find a new issue of Phonogram, as well as a Phonogram CD featuring tracks from the bands referenced in the comics (as well as an all-new Los Campesinos track recorded specifically for the compilation). So I got my glue, and I got some comics, and I got a CD as well.

[As an aside, I recognize fully that the point of this essay could well be that I think about Phonogram too much for someone who isn't Kieron Gillen. Or Jamie McKelvie. (There are probably days I think about it more than McKelvie does.) In reality, I just like comics about bands and the music scene way more than I actually like bands and the music scene. Hell, most of the comics I've written (still sitting in the drawer, likely never to be seen again) are about bands, going to see bands, watching bands break up, and all the common experiences in the music scene. So it's only natural that Phonogram fills a particular vacant spot in my brain, namely standing in for an entire genre of comics I've always thought should exist but could never get off my ass to make myself. But that is, most definitely, another story for another day.]

Now, for whatever reason, this dream got me thinking about a discussion that was first becoming popular on the WEF (and other comics discussion sites) ten years ago; namely, what comic book stores should be doing to get new people in the door. Then, like now, the most intriguing answer to this question, at least for me, is that the question is wrong; comics don’t need more people walking in the door, comics need to become ubiquitously available. [I should probably tell you straight away that this whole conversation, while certainly an important, even necessary conceit, bored me, then and now, about as much as hearing about other people's dreams. Even then, when it was "the important" discussion. It seemed to me then, as it does now, that the way to get people into a comic book store is to have the best damn comic book store known to man, and pimp the hell out of it. Over the past ten years, people like James Sime and Andrew Neal have proven that formula. But again, another story for another day.]

So, I was thinking about how hard it is for non-comic stores to get comics on their shelves. And, because in my dream the example was being set by a hardware store, I thought about things I buy in hardware stores, and how I would go about getting them on my shelves (my rhetorical shelves, seeing as I no longer own a comic book store). And I thought about ULINE. Over the years, I have placed several orders with ULINE, both as a store owner and as a private citizen. They sell boxes and tape and shrink wrap and displays and trash cans and, well, primarily hardware and supplies best suited to a shipping company or warehouse. Important stuff. They deal primarily in large, bulk orders to businesses. Yet the process of getting an account with them was as simple as filling out an order form, entering my credit card information, and clicking “submit”. They don’t care who they sell to — money is money. They do have a check box in their order form that will tell them if the order is being shipped to a residential address, but that’s so they know the best way of shipping (and know not to send a large pallet on a tractor trailer when you don’t have a loading bay).

But here’s where ULINE excels, at least in this argument — they have tiered pricing. Order small amounts, it costs just about retail price (usually a bit less, but not by much). Order in larger amounts, and the price goes down. Order in huge bulk amounts, the price goes WAY down, to the point where it would be perfectly practical to use them to order stock to sell at retail.

Comics should be like that.

You know how hard it is to get a DIAMOND account? It involves credit scores and business IDs and phone calls and certified checks (seriously, when I ran my store I would have to go to the bank every week and get a certified check in order to get my order; after, I think, a year DIAMOND allows you to switch to a regular business check). As any comics retailer will tell you, the DIAMOND website is just about the least intuitive site ever created, and ordering from it (or even just finding a product on it) is mind-numbing. And that’s for the people who have decided to focus their entire business on selling a product they can only get through DIAMOND. (This is where the argument of ten years ago would devolve, justifiably, into a discussion of how terrible DIAMOND is. That discussion can be found anywhere else online, so I won’t go into it here.) So while there might be plenty of non-comics stores that have some interest in stocking a selection of comic books, most would run up against DIAMOND and decide against it.

[Here I should mention that for the first two years of JIGSAW, when it was a comic shop and art gallery in NYC, I didn't have a DIAMOND account, and instead got all my comics through COLD CUT and private small press distribution, as well as the occasional "fell off the truck" deal with friendly creators whose books I couldn't get because they were published by Marvel, DC, or Image, who are all exclusive to DIAMOND. It was, in fact, impossible to keep a broad selection this way, and one of the motivating factors for moving the store was so I could afford to get a DIAMOND account, and have enough space to put it all.]

As this is stretching on a bit longer than I’d intended, I’ll skip the bit where I contemplated the perfect match that is comics and hardware, what with single issue comics being cheap, disposable, and the perfect length to read on a break on a construction site (how great would that be to see a line of guys in hard hats reading comics on their lunch break?). I fully recognize that the comics industry is so far in the hole in terms of “how things are done” that changing the system is next to impossible. And I know that the business is built around pre-ordering and exclusivity and all sorts of things that, while idiotic, are just status quo. And I know that DIAMOND can barely get their distribution correct as it is, so adding customers would cause more problems than it would solve. And, and, and.

But picture a different world. Where there was a website where a customer could go and buy the new issue of PHONOGRAM for full price with nothing more than their credit card. A world where that very same website could sell 50 copies of the new issue to James Sime at his normal retailer discount. A world where the owner of that hardware store could decide to try having a selection of comics for his customers to read, and could get a good discount without having to jump through hoops. A world where the ubiquity of comics wasn’t such a weird idea.

All I’m saying is that it was kind of a nice dream.

Gentlemen of the Lab,
–by which I mean Milton, Lump, Frank, and Regibor, should you all find the distinction of “gentleman” to be as spuriously applied to you as I–

I had cause to contemplate a chronometric device today in the course of my studies. Drat, I should start earlier. Transcription start again.

Before I attempt to detail the results of a seemingly casual observation I undertook this afternoon, I must first recount the situation I found myself in upon waking this morning. As you all well know, my robotic spider legs require recharging from time to time, and I often find it convenient to park myself over the wireless charging station just before bedtime and simultaneously gather a few REM cycles. Well, last I recall, I had done this last night after clearing up the mess left from our Jigsaw π experiment. So you can imagine my surprise and confusion upon waking, finding myself lying on my side underneath a workbench in the lab, covered in maple syrup and — no, actually, I think I’ll leave that bit out. Transcription, delete the previous sentence.

So you can imagine my surprise and confusion upon waking, finding myself not in the charging dock but under a workbench in the lab. I likely don’t have to tell you my first thought was of shenanigans, that one or more of you were pulling some sort of hilarious jape to blow off steam following our difficult month of videos. Indeed, I myself had contemplated substituting hydrogen for helium in our planned celebratory event as a mischievous joke — imagine the subtle difference in the buoyancy of the balloons! But soon I ruled out pranksterism, as it was then I caught sight of the surveillance feed from outside the building.

Doubtful I have to tell you gentlemen that there appears to be a great deal of snow sitting outside these walls. Snow that, by Feynman, I swear wasn’t there when I went to sleep.

It was, of course, at this point that I had cause to seek out and examine the lab’s chronometric devices in some detail. At first this brought merely confusion, as the date clearly read “February Third”. In several different languages. I was momentarily terrified that the completion of the Jigsaw π experiment had been a horrible dream and that we would have to undertake the daily video project all over again. Granted, this thought gave some comfort, for I also recalled a very vivid dream about pancakes, and thought that this might explain the maple syr– dammit. Transcription, delete that last sentence as well. Mustn’t talk about the maple syrup. It’s not as embarrassing as the feathers, but– DAMMIT. Transcription, delete THOSE two sentences, please. Must remember the recording. Okay.

But though the thought of having dreamt the entirety of Jigsaw π was disturbing, it was nowhere near as alarming as the moment when I noticed the year. Brace yourselves, gentlemen, for if you have not yet discovered this, I promise it will come as quite a shock. The year is currently 2010. 2010! I, for one, found this very upsetting, and was determined to find all of you to aid me in undertaking a grand experiment to uncover the manner by which we were delivered eleven months into the future.

Here I fell over, as my spider legs, sensing low battery, ejected me rudely and ran off to recharge. Rather undignified. It’s cold here, on the floor. When constructing this new lab, I really should have put in underfloor heating elements. I seem to recall seeing them on an old episode of This Old House. Something to keep in mind for the next time we renovate. Transcription, file the previous sentences regarding underfloor heating under Kranium’s personal notes, and remove them from this memo document.

So, gentlemen of the lab, I put it to you that we have been asleep for eleven months. To think of all the technological advancements we have missed in that time. The cultural events. The political developments. To think, we weren’t even here when the year changed from 2009 to 2010. It must have been horrid; not being around to correct the misapprehension that we were entering a new decade, countless websites and magazines must have published “Best of the Decade” lists. We could have stopped it, gentlemen. But alas, Lord Somnus had other plans for us.

Getting to the point, gentlemen, I propose that we set about the purpose of discovering what happened to us. Was it some horrible accident? Some toxic fumes leaked from the sublevels? Perhaps an old experiment come to haunt us? Or some other outside force? Gentlemen, we cannot even be certain of our safety until we have clearly assessed the forces behind our Rip Van Winkle activities. We must gather together and set our minds to this discovery, by whatever means — oh, my legs have come back. You certainly took your sweet time. Transcription pause. I really must reprogram you to let me down more gently in case of emergency recharge. Better yet, I should just place a passive induction station under this spot near the lab monitor. Help me up, front right leg, just bend there — hrmph — get the — hurgk — must have put on weight while I was asleep, it’s a bit — no, there we go — okay. Well, at least now I can review the transcription –

Dammit, transcription, I told you to pause. PAUSE, I said. No, stop — stop taking down these — dammit, Milton is the only one who can get this damn program to work correctly. Milton! Right, if I could find Milton, I wouldn’t need the blasted note. TRANSCRIPTION, PRINT NOTE. I’ll just hand-correct the — PRINT MEMO. PRINT. PRINT NOW. PLEASE. Dammit. MILTON! COME FIX THIS TRANSCRIBER PRINT

Granted, I mostly just wanted to avoid school. I enjoyed playing in the snow to an extent, but even then I would contemplate wet, clammy socks, runny noses, sharp, tingling fingertips, the blindness that comes from glasses fogged up with my own breath. It was an act of will to play in the snow, even then, though one easily made. Because it happened so rarely.

After I spent several winters in Boston, the magic of snow wore off pretty quickly. In Virginia, snow was typically a novelty. In New England, it is far more ubiquitous, a given that inches will pile up every few weeks, and cars will get frozen into large, gray cocoons of ice. It didn’t take long to start hating the stuff, especially when I was riding my bike in a blizzard to go open the video store, passing cars the whole way, fishtailing and cursing my fingerless gloves.

Once I left Boston, I left behind my hatred of snow. I didn’t live in snowy regions. Even when I was in New York, it was hard to hate the stuff, though that might have something to do with my being drunk on red wine and bourbon almost the entire time I lived there. I’d actually forgotten what it was like to hate snow until two feet of it dropped on Charlottesville last month, leaving me stranded at home, alone, with no shovel, and a gammy foot, threatening to cancel Xmas.

So what’s that got to do with creating things? I have no fucking clue. It’s snowing again. It’s supposed to accumulate. More snow on top of the snow we got last weekend that canceled plans, and more snow coming this weekend that will cancel more plans. I sat down to write about my own stalled-out creative process, and out came three hundred words about snow.

Maybe it has something to do with The Shining.

I was actually just thinking about that as I was getting out of the car with my milk and bread. (Which, by the way, I was going to buy anyway today. It’s not like I panicked and went to the store; I was going to the store, and it started snowing before I could get there.) The snow has definitely made me pretty stir crazy. Not just the snow, but the relapsing problems with my foot that prevent me from walking great distances sometimes. Before, walking a couple miles in the snow wouldn’t be a problem. Now, it is. Or can be. Or maybe it’d be fine going out but coming back would be hell. It’s not knowing, I think, that has gotten to me, has built a mindset where I feel completely trapped. I shouldn’t walk, so I can’t walk. And the snow means that confines me to my house until the plows come down my cul-de-sac. Trapped.

Which is all well and good when you don’t have to be anyplace. Like when I was a kid, and looked forward to being trapped, because I didn’t really want to go to school, and it’s not like I had anything else that had to be done. Trapped can be a great excuse for a party, or for a day of rest, a day of meditation. Trapped can be happy, peaceful, fun. But me, if I have the least amount of work that needs to be done Out There, even if it’s days away, the snow now gets me feeling a little paranoid and nuts. The Whatif monster hides behind my chair and whispers at me. Whatif I can’t drive? Whatif I can’t get to work? Whatif I get trapped here and can’t get anything done?

I haven’t been writing much. To be fair, I haven’t been writing at all. I wrote a way-overdue thank-you note to my aunt today, and I think it was the first time I’d done anything more than update Twitter since the Richard posts. I… I have been feeling trapped. Creatively, I mean. Stir-crazy. Like I can’t go anywhere or do anything. Like a part of me isn’t working correctly, and it prevents me from getting anything done. I suppose there’s some hope if I figured out a way of turning a long, contemplative journal entry about snow into a metaphor for my lack of product, but then, I always did have a weakness for such things.

Jigsaw Season Four was halfway written. Ten episodes scripted, albeit in need of polish. This is past tense. I kept on not writing, and not writing, and doing everything but write. It finally dawned on me why — it wasn’t that I was lazy, it wasn’t that I was lacking discipline. It was that I didn’t think the new episodes were funny. Oh, they’re interesting, and ambitious, and the structure is way better than previous episodes. They push my writing to a place I’ve never gone, and the plot is as detailed and intricate as I’ve ever written. But they’re just not funny. Like, at all. To me, anyway. There are jokes, and there are moments that are quite good. But overall, I look at what I’ve got and I just don’t care.

It dawned on me that, as nobody was paying me for these things, I could just throw them out. Sure, I was quoted in the paper as saying the new season would start… nowish. Sure, it’s been a year (!) since there was any sort of regular Jigsaw thing. These are facts that make me feel guilty, pressure that certainly ups the stakes in my brain. But I’d rather be late than suck. Actually, I don’t even care if I suck. I just want to suck in a way I enjoy. Right now I have the luxury of doing that.

Although, that may just be a justification. At this point, I’ve been trapped in the snow so long (metaphorically if not literally) I don’t remember what it’s like to… not wear boots? (Feel free to leave better allegories in the comments.) For better or for worse, I’m going to force myself to write more. Starting today. With this. That you have just read.

I don’t pretend to know if anybody is paying attention. But then, I’m used to that with the show. For now I’m going to force at least 1000 words out every day on this blog. Some of it will be Jigsaw related, some of it may be media reviews, some may be short stories, some may be random head-pounding, and much will likely be utter crap. But I assure you, after a few weeks, I’ll have a better idea of when the new season is actually going to happen, and what it’s likely to be.

For now, I think I’ll go drink some red wine and watch the snow.

Sara makes with the awesome. Also, how’s that for a price, folks? One drink and then whatever you feel is fair AFTER you’ve seen the show? I mean, it’s just ridiculous! You were gonna drink ANYWAY. Our biggest problem will be if people drink their entire wallet and can’t pay us anything for the show. So folks, for the poor, sleepy actors, save back a couple bucks. If you hate the show, you can always get one last beer at the end.

Click here to view the embedded video.

…we thought it only appropriate to take measures to ensure the audience is too drunk to notice any textual missteps or random theatrical inconsistencies. To that end, we have taken a moment from our panicked line memorization to create a Richard the Third Drinking Game. This document will evolve over time as inspiration (or desperation) hits, culminating in horribly rushed, typo-ridden copies being distributed at the venue.

RICHARD THE THIRD THE DRINKING THE GAME [sic] (R3DG)

GENERAL RULES

…Any mention of husbands, wives, or marriage, married people must drink.
…Any mention of God, Heaven, or such matters, all atheists must drink.
…Whene’er a Messenger enters, anyone looking at their phone or laptop must drink.
…At any mention of Saint Paul, anyone and everyone named Paul must drink.
…Any mention of the Tower or imprisonment, anybody who has ever been arrested must drink.
…Whene’er anyone makes a misogynistic comment, all men must drink.
…Whene’er anyone double-crosses another, drinks must be switched with the person next to you.
…Every time someone is killed, everyone must drink.

CHARACTER RULES
Players shall each be assigned a character to follow; each character shall have a specific set of rules to be observed.

RIVERS
Those players assigned to follow Rivers shall drink whene’er he…
…manages to get through a line without asking a question.
…is sickeningly deferential.
When Rivers is killed, the remainder of the drink shall be consumed. These players now follow DERBY.

*DERBY
Only those players who had been following Rivers unto his death, or likewise latecomers who thus were not assigned a character, shall follow Lord Derby. They shall thenceforth drink whene’er he…
…uses an excessive number of personal pronouns; e.g. “Pray God, I say, I prove a needless coward!”
…delivers expository information.
…pledges his support to someone.
When Derby crowns Richmond King, all followers of Derby must rise and shout “HAIL RICHMOND!” If any follower of Richmond at their table is without a drink, a follower of Derby must offer theirs as substitute.

CLARENCE
Those players assigned to follow Clarence shall drink whene’er he…
…talks about his brother. Or his other brother.
…happens to mention his royalty, or others’ lack of it.
When Clarence is killed, his followers must cry out in alarm, then finish their drink. These players now follow THE PRINCES.

*THE PRINCES, EDWARD AND YORK
Only those players who followed Clarence until his brutal end shall follow these, the sons of King Edward. They shall, hereafter, drink whene’er one or both of them…
…offer discourse upon their stature.
…complain.
…mention any of their uncles.
Followers of the Princes are advised to take small drinks, as befit the children they present. Once receiving news of the Princes’ death, they must finish their drink without anyone else at the table witnessing, and thereafter follow RICHMOND.

ELIZABETH
Those players assigned to follow Elizabeth shall drink whene’er she…
…wails, weeps, laments, or mentions wailing, weeping, or lamenting.
…speaks of her children.
…flees to sanctuary.
…prophesies doom.
When, at the end of Act IV, Elizabeth flees once more to sanctuary, abandoning her players, all those following her must now finish their drinks and swear allegiance to RICHMOND.

BUCKINGHAM
Those players assigned to follow Buckingham shall drink whene’er he…
…says something negative.
…says he will follow/wait upon someone before exiting.
…dotes upon Richard.
…doubts upon Richard.
When Buckingham is killed, all drinks must be consumed. These players now must align with RICHMOND.

*RICHMOND
Such players whose characters have abandoned them through untimely death or unseemly cowardice shall align, at last, with Richmond. Newly reborn as Tudors, these players shall drink whene’er Richmond…
…mentions his tent.
…makes a stirring speech to rally his troops/retainers/office supplies.
…insults Richard.
When Richmond is crowned King, all players must rise, shout “HAIL RICHMOND”, and finish their drink.

Feel free to leave more rule suggestions in the comments.

And by all means, come to The Southern on January 14th (at 8 or 11pm) and take part in the game yourself. Oh, and also see some Shakespeare performed by ridiculously brave, talented, sleepy people. Go, go, dispatch.

My desk. My set. My life.

The Jigsaw monitor is my computer, or was; with the purchase of a new, larger iMac, the facing panel I constructed for the old machine is too small to be of any use.

Eetsa too SMALL, you see?

So pretty much the thing keeping new episodes from happening was the lack of a piece of spray-painted foamcore with holes cut in it.

An over-simplification, perhaps. But more embarrassingly true than you might think. Still, this strange hindrance got me to focus on the show a bit outside the realm of structured improv it was sliding into, and also made me remember my mission statement for the show, which I’ve talked about in bars but have yet to overtly state here.

For me, Jigsaw is a constant challenge to myself. With every season, if not every episode, I push myself to try something new, to explore new techniques, to learn new skills. Jigsaw is the place where I can push the boundaries of my comfort zone, secure in the knowledge that even if the end product isn’t as entertaining as I would hope, it’s free, so I can ignore any complaints I might get at least I have done something new, with the hope of becoming a better craftsman.

I could go through the past episodes trying to list everything I was hoping to accomplish, but I think we’d all be bored to tears. Instead, I’ll just let you know ahead of time the focus of Season Four: Writing. Over the course of the show, the content has been getting more and more improvised. Rough outlines taped to a tripod and revised over the course of shooting. It was fine, although it makes my friends in production grind their teeth a bit.

I finally broke the story for Season Four, and it is abundantly clear that this method won’t work. So it’s time to challenge myself in a new way. I’ll have to write the entire season before I shoot a single frame of footage. Twenty episodes, three to five minutes a piece, four arcs, one giant story. Pretty much the equivalent of four half-hour episodes.

Two hours of content. That I want to have completely written in time to start shooting in January. Which, my calendar informs me, is less than a month away. Oh, and if I want to start posting content in January, I’ll need to have most of the shooting done, because the interaction between the four mini-arcs requires me to film episode 401 at the same time as episodes 415 and 419, and 416-418 have to happen before then, and probably 417 and 408 need to be shot concurrently, and…

Well, you can see it’s a big mess. Oh, and I need to build at least two new puppets before I can start filming. Maybe three.

But you’ll be happy to hear the new monitor face is just about done.

Needs glue. And ink. And battle-damage.

With that in mind, I’ll be shooting a video before Xmas. A very short one. Doing triple duty as an apology for downtime, teaser for s.4, and holiday thing. Of course, it would be unprofessional of me to admit that I just got that idea as I was writing this. So I’ll pretend instead that the idea came to me in the shower earlier. Sounds way more writerly.

As I start banging my head against scripts, I will also be forcing myself to add content to this space (“writing begets writing” and all that). I will also likely be posting build videos for the new puppets, so all my new friends in puppetland can look at my process and realize I’m way more clueless than they thought. Hi, puppetfriends.

Okay. That’s a bit of prelude, and I’m out of time. Must run to the wine shop before work, as I’m cooking a chicken later. I will not be blogging about the chicken.

Similarly, if you were registered for this blog and you no longer are, that means your email/username combo was waaaaay too much like a bot and/or not incredibly amusing. If you really have some pressing comment to make, contact me, I’ll make it right.

To answer a question from months ago and only a few posts back, no. No I have not started blogging again. What can I say? Most of my thoughts are 140 characters or less, and therefore Twitterable.

I have a cold. I need to go to bed now. The only thing preventing me from signing up for Netflix right now is the fact that the computer next to the bed is too ancient to do On Demand movies. Instead, I will probably watch some old zombie movie I already own. Which, really, isn’t that bad.

I’ve said too much. Landshark.

*edited to add Oh yeah, and by the way: the show isn’t dead. It really really isn’t. Milton and Kranium are now making demands of me. It’s like a labor dispute of sorts, and when we all can sit down at a table and hash things out, we’ll start up with Season Four. I will not, however, promise that it will be worth the wait. It might be. But I don’t know yet.

NOW I’ve said to much. Noonan.

“I’m sorry?”

“The sausage guy. He’s usually at this table on Wednesdays?”

“Oh, he’s in the hospital.”

“Well, shoot. Is he okay?”

“Don’t know. He probably won’t be coming back.”

“Is he that sick?”

“I suppose that’s a matter of opinion.”

“…I don’t, what–”

“The farmer’s market has ‘disinvited’ him from returning.”

“Why? His sausages were incredible.”

“I probably shouldn’t talk about it.”

“Is there any way we can start a petition, or–”

“They found out he was cording, alright?”

“Cording?”

“It’s… it turns out that sausage guy had an umbilical fetish.”

“I don’t know what–”

“He was taking the sausage casings and attaching them to his belly button.”

“What? How did he–”

“Then he would hire men to… well, to provide nourishment. Through the tube.”

“Provide–”

“They found pictures.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Believe me, you’re not the only one. Anyway, it seems he thought he could actually make a real umbilical.”

“A real–”

“They found him in his bedroom with an Xacto blade, trying to pull his intestines through his belly button.”

“Oh my god.”

“He almost bled to death.”

“I… I just…”

“Yep.”

“…his sausage was so good.”

“Breaks yer heart, doesn’t it?”

This thing appeared in my head this morning. I am of the opinion that, somewhere in England, Warren Ellis is thinking about funny robots and doesn’t know why.

Meanwhile, I think my favorite puppet thing on the web is fast becoming “Patrick Duffy & the Crab“, wherein Patrick Duffy hangs out with a giant crab. Simple premise, solid writing, ultra low-key performances. Makes me cackle, then laugh silently, then wipe tears from my eyes.

Have I started blogging again? Hm.

I haven’t seen these episodes for a while (I really should get Jay to burn me a copy one of these days). It’s weird, because at the time, the production values were so far above anything I’d produced — this is in-between seasons 2 and 3, mind you. It still looks a bit slicker than the current stuff. I’m not totally sold on the writing, though, at least the first episode; I spent a long time on these scripts, long enough that I may have lost some of the spontaneity that comes from when I just wing it. Or it could just be that I’m looking back at stuff I made a year and a half ago. I’ve doubled the number of episodes since then. Naturally I’ll be a bit better at it than I was.

Enough babbling. I got the email today that AT&T were finally going to go live with the episodes. Might as well, seeing as how they paid us for them and everything. Episode 1 is up today, the rest should be up over the next few weeks.