(insert loud cursing here.. Myspace at my blog at this point after I’d completely typed it in… the rest from this point is retyped as best I can remember it)

Where was I ?? Oh.. I think I was talking about my day.. not much special there… though. I had back to back meetings this morning.. then ran to Champlain at 1 for an afternoon of working with Ann and Ray on the Good Games media application we’re developing. We had a great brainstorming session about the content of our media application..

I also spent a few minutes talking to Kris,  the Champlain’s media relations person, about the project.

Then  i spent a few minutes working with Lauren, one of the students who’s working with us.. She’s an ultra-creative programming artist… or artistic programmer.. She’s very good at Flash programing. She can take a goofy idea and making it work beautifully on the screen in minutes. Watching her work reminds me how much of an artist I am not.

Speaking of artistic.   after yoga tonight I came in the house to find a present from friend Abbot. Abbot is taking welding at MMU. A couple of days ago I sketched out a picture of a ram’s head that I’d learned to make in blacksmithing when we lived in England 20 years ago. From those junky drawings he made this in class today. 

The idea now is to flatten the other end and sharpen it into a knife to make a ‘buttering ram’ .

We’re all feeling pretty low energy tonight. We decided to hang out and watch a movie in Sam’s room. We were watching the Matrix III

I’m proud to say that I still don’t understand that movie.. but it was fun to hang out and watch something mindless.

Speaking of hard to understand movies.. Gabe just pointed me at this out on YouTube.. It’s Gabe’s principal, Mark Carbone doign the ‘Crank dat Soulja; dance with his hair died pink. He did the dance and the hair after the kids at CHMS collected more than 2000 cans of food for the local food shelf. Now that’s a good guy.. if not a good dancer 🙂

– On building new material – he suggests writing down little sections of ideas whenever they come to you.. .. At some point sit down and explore different orderings of the ideas.. I like this idea of slicing and dicing.. I tent to do all my thinking in one linear  shot.. which makes  changing it hard..

‘m thinking about revamping my show for ’08.. I’m currently scheduling no more than 2 shows per month.. but some of my friends fill in .. so I’m guessing we average about 3 per month overall.   As I have said here many times before, reaching out to kids with this geeky science is the thing I do professionally that really feels most kharmically right.

Anyway.. As I said yesterday,. I was so impressed with Zaloom that I bought a standing room ticket to the show at the Flynn Space..  The show was so amazing.. It was also impossible to describe.. It started with a monologue on Zaloom’ trip to a biker festival then transitioned to a bizzare and amazing shadow puppet show.

The show was basically an hour long shadow puppet show with amazing articulated cutouts casting shadows on a small sheet. The hero of the show was Karagöz, the Turkish equivalent of the English character Punch. The story was incredibly goofy., twisted and fun . In Zaloom’s telling,  Karagöz in trouble with the law in Syria for being gay..He ends up escaping from jail and ends up accidentally blowing up the Statue of Liberty and Mount Rushmore.  The whole thing was full of wonderfully gross humor.. uh… anatomical exaggerations.. and .. uh… excreta of all kinds,   and .. oh forget it.. I can’t retell the story here because of the family audience.  Just trust me it was amazing to watch and hear. Zaloom is a magician with puppets and sound.

There were several of the workshop folks in the audience and we hung out for a little while after the show talking..   As we were standing there, my buddy Gina came in and invited me to catch the last part of the Bottine Souriante show that was still going on in the Flynn main stage. Bottine Souriante is  a famous Quebecois folk band with amazing dance and stomping rythyms. They play and dance so hard that you get exhausted just listening to them. It could not have been more different than the show downstairs.. It was a pretty eclectic evening .

Afterward there was a small reception for the Flynn members  and the band.. I hung out for a short bit talking to Gina.. then headed home.

One of the and members was wearing this shirt which I thought was cool. I never did learn what it meant.

Today .. was really peaceful. Max had a Voices movie recording session . Gabe was up at the mountain.. so Diane and I got a chance to hang out and putter around the house, which was just what both of us needed.

Mid morning, Diane, Chai and I headed out for a snowshoe up the long trail north of Bolton Notch road. We wanted to take in some of the powder before the thaw projected for this week sets in.  I always think it’s funny the way that Chai sits in the front seat.

It was beautiful out in the woods.. I loved looking at the bark on some of these trees.. looked like eyes to me.

Especially when you put two of them together in photoshop 🙂

We found lots of bear and woodpecker  markings too.

Here’s some more beautiful scenery  – my girls..

The rest of the day was very quiet..   Around 6 we went up to Tim and Jen’s for a great dinner.

Gabe was playing with Crunk-beast the cat… which inspired Tim to lend us the Alien Trilogy.. Wonder why…

Greetings from the upstairs coffe shop area at Borders Books in Burlington.

I’m sitting here killing time as I wait to see the Paul Zaloom show at the Flynn at 8. I got one of the last standing room only tickets. I just decided to catch this show after spending 4 hours at a small workshop that Zaloom gave at the Flynn this afternoon. Zaloom was the star of the 90s show ‘Beekman’s World’ that presented science to kids in a gloriously goofy way.. The workshop I attended today was called ‘The Theater of Trash’.. and it was about puppeteering using everyday objects as props. I actually joined the workshop by accident.. I had hoped to attend a workshop Paul did for teachers on fun ways t teach since. That workshop was on Jan 2nd… and I completely forgot about it. I was bummed..

Our buddy Gina at the Flynn had suggested that I drop into the Puppeteering workshop that Paul was teaching today to see if I could get the notes from the workshop I missed.   It turned out that I had the day free.. Max and Diane were ate a  Reiki workshop, Gabe was up at Bolton.. so I decided at the last moment to sit in on the whole workshop today..   I’m so glad that I did..

It’s kinda hard to describe what we did today.. but it was such a hoot. The whole workshop was about improv theater using everyday objects.

One by one we had to get up and do an unplanned story using the objects as the actors.. What came out was amazing.. we had comedy, drama, physics.. etc..   After each act we all discussed what was goign on..

Paul was amazing at pointing out the beauty of each piece.. and making cool suggestions as to how to improve the puppety-ness of the piece.. It was very cool to see his thougthful/serious side after only seeing his playful/goofy side on the Beekman show. He really has given the idea of spontaneous improv a bunch of thought. I would love to think as freely as he does.. or as many of the folks at the workshop  .. did.    I think there were about 9 of us in total . Most of the folks there were artists and/or performers.. but not all.   Mnay of the folks in the room new about Sam.. Paul nee the story from goign to Talent ! He just bought a cool watch there !

Afterwards I had a great short conversation with Paul. Turns out that he’s still doing Beekamn’s World science stage shows and is doing a complete new rev right now. We talked about the possibility of me helpign with soem of the sciennce content.. now that would be cool !.. Who knows..

I’m still absorbing all that I heard and saw today.  .. but I was inspired enough to buy the SRO ticket to his show tonight. I understand it’s pretty wild.. ‘adult’ entertainment.. .. He has a very cool mind.. I can’t wait to see what he does

Ooops.. I gotta run to nake the show.. more later (maybe) .
TTYL folks.. TTYL Sam
-me