Fred bewitches the creatures of the night. Summer is here, and so are the mystical beings that frolic in the warm and magical pre-dawn dew. Pictured above is one such animal, the Double-mouthed Komodo Rabbimander. These fictional aquavores migrate to warm climates and subsist on water-only diets. They are nocturnal, stealthy and love to party. They also love Fred, who is like a god to them. An approachable god that sometimes crashes on their couch. Btw - check out the awesome video from last week's LVHRD party here.
Biggie Snapes and the Hog-tang Clan. Here’s a new PSA promoting Arts education in the wizarding schools. Not the Dark Arts, mind you. We’re talking the Visual and Performing Arts, like breakdancing and pottery. Will these skills help you dismantle an enchanted pipe-bomb? Of course not. But they will help you score Cho Chang under the Quidditch bleachers. Like most magical beings, she has a weakness for wizards with dope rhythm.
Many moons ago, a young William E. Ocean went down to the local record store with his older brother. William bought Stryper’s To Hell With The Devil. William’s brother bought Metallica’s Master of Puppets. When they got home, William took one look at the Master of Puppets back cover photo and realized he was a wuss. These guys were tough. He removed the album sleeve and saw Metallica bassist Cliff Burton giving him the finger. William’s brother told him that Burton had just died. William shuddered. He understood completely. This was heavy shit. Two decades later, William is still recovering. He’s also wondering why he chose the “clean” version of the Stryper record instead of the version with the controversial cover art. God, what a wussy.
The FBI's Most Wanted... puppets. They're notorious, diabolical and made of felt. You may know some of these faces, you may have at one time owned them as a plush toy. Yet it's a sad truth: they're all puppeteered by a red right hand. posted by Arthur Beard
5. Bletch Operates the underside of New Zealand, dealing in drugs, prostitution, and extortion. Conversely, it's New Zealand so he's not much of a priority.
4. SkekSil Wanted for espionage, sabotage and a general air of creepiness.
3. Kim Jong-il Terrorism, nuclear proliferation, human rights violations, really bad fashion sense, arms dealing, etc., etc.
2. Ernie Despite numerous court appearances due to harassment and a series of escalating restraining orders, Ernie will not leave one Bert J. Bertold alone.
1. Yoda 850 years of back taxes will catch up with anyone.
Honorable Mention: Godzilla Massive amounts of vandalism, reckless endangerment, willful destruction of both pubic and private property, and public defecation. All of this is in Japan which is why he's outside the list.
Puppets move to DUMBO. There remains a very special place in my heart for puppets. It may have a lot to do with growing up in the 80s. That was when Jim Henson was king, and his creations were showing up everywhere you turned. More than that though, puppetry is to theatre what animation is to film. It's a medium that's all about imagination and limitless boundaries. Puppet theatre, while usually small in physical scale, manages to be large in theatrical scope. The problem is that there simply aren't many places to catch performances. New York may be the American capital of theatre, but puppet shows remain scarce. Which is why I love St. Ann's Warehouse.
The exoskeleton of the Kerminator.
St. Ann's loves puppetry. Each season, the DUMBO-based theatre space always seems to have something to offer, and as with all of their programming, that offering is usually offbeat and compelling. For this season it's their annual Labapalooza, a mini-festival of new puppet theatre. The Labapalooza is an event that's been going on for the past ten years. Back in September, various artists, designers, writers, filmmakers, architects and others submitted their proposals. The most interesting were accepted into the program. Those accepted then incubate their performance ideas for nine months, then premiere them at the end of May. These pieces run the gamut of style and genre - comedies, tragedies, satire, biographies, absurdist, anything and everything. Every style of puppetry is represented as well - marionettes, shadow puppets, hand puppets. Some performances have no puppets but instead have elaborate props and stage setups. The variety is boggling. All the performances are considered works in progress, so some are a bit more fragmentary than others. Yet all the works are intriguing, from a marionette eating the sins of others to a businessman and a frog taking an elevator to hell. Labapalooza is quite unlike anything else you'll see on a New York stage.
