Recently Comfortable and other bits...

Two Broadcasts under our belts and we think we'll come back for more
Well, we got through another broadcast of the Psychic Puppet Story Hour and the Psychic Sidekick still had fun so I guess we will have at it again in a couple of weeks. Friday December 3 happens to be First Friday and visual art needs to be attended to, so we will take a break in the broadcasting and return on Friday, December 10 at 7 pm (EST).

Hansel and Gretel and the bleak outlook of Human Trafficking
The fairy tale retelling this past week (November 26) was based on the tale of Hansel and Gretel. As I was thinking on how to retell this story, I was driving home from work and heard this story on PRI's program "The World." This sort of thing (the selling of one's children) has also happens via the internet over and over again. Human trafficking is an old concept as is greed. However, so too is kindness.
At any rate, the version of Hansel and Gretel that I told last Friday was based on the prevalence of human trafficking that unfortunately is still going strong today, even in our plush suburban backyards. I felt it was rather dark, but if you look at many of the Brothers Grimm's retellings of fairy tales, they are equally as dark. Cartoons and corporations have a tendency to sanitize stories that should be seen for exactly what they are: peeks into the problems and the possible fixes of humanity.

Toy Test Drive from 11/19: Rice Bin Poetry

Psychic Sidekick worked on her toy test drive poem a bit this week as well. The previous poem the one she pulled from the rice bin looked like this:

Minimum covering equipment
Recently favorite owned
Warm building
Perfectly business and
Comfortable
Best batteries your tough covering
The accessories tasty
Outside chargers opens soft
Motors
Gift combinations
Car truck, airplanes build systems originals
Track to ready to fly
Wash fuels
Adventures almost great
Engines big fatwood
Realistic on best tough A
Creations

In her opinion of the rice bin experiment, there was too much stuff in the bin and not enough word variety. She felt very confined by the word choice that she pulled from the bin and also felt that it made very little sense. She took some of the words and reworked them into this poem, which is a fake commercial:

Can trucks build systems or best building fuels?
Fatwood Motors says, “YES!” And will gift equipment, ash, batteries, chargers, accessories, ready-to-fly airplanes, track covering and the outside world!
Our soft combination is recently comfortable.

The bit about "recently comfortable" set our puppet friend, Chico into a tizzy. He went into a tirade about gym equipment and bus seats. I had no idea that puppets even went to the gym or rode buses.

Of Dust Bunnies and Navel Lint...
Our next show, as I said at the top of this post, is on Friday December 10 at 7pm. To listen, go to the Maine Radio Project and click on the appropriate device for yourself under "listen." You might also want to check out the other programming on the Maine Radio Project while you are there because anybody who decides to give a woman like me and my ten year old sidekick a radio show has to be something else.
The Psychic Sidekick will be working on stories involving dust bunnies and navel lint. I will be looking for more proof about the Cat Collective Uprising. And Chico...well Chico is just hoping that he receives no hate mail from Lady Gaga or Queen Elizabeth II.

First Show...Chicken Foot Rockets are Scandalous.

Hey Kids!

Well we had our first show. The psychic sidekick and I were very nervous, but I think we got over it. Chico, however, was not nervous at all...cheeky puppet!

We were going to post pictures from the toy test drive, but alas alack, we left the camera at the studio...so you're gonna have to stay tuned.

Also to be posted soon is tonight's telling of Baba Yaga. I want to get some images to accompany it so...

Also also...Next week will be a telling of Hansel and Gretel, maybe. There seems to be a lot of wicked step mothers, absent fathers, dead mothers and cannibalistic grandmothers in these fairy tales...hmmm.

Also also also...to be posted soon will be the psychic sidekick's rice bin poem words. If you'd like to have at them and make your own poem to be read next week, do it!

Also also also also...thanks.

Day and Time

Hello puppets!

We have been assigned our day and time for broadcast...
Hopefully, starting on November 19, the show will go on at 7 pm.

Hopefully you will tune...http://www.maineradioproject.org/

This is gonna be fun! And it will be even more fun, if you send in your feedback, funny stories, kooky words, and dreams!

Chicken Feet

The Psychic Sidekick and I have working out what will happen on our show once we go "on air." We have been reading a lot of Baba Yaga stories. These stories usually include the Old Woman helping out a young lost child (Sometimes Ivan, sometimes Vasillisa) win an object that is necessary for them to find "home." Baba Yaga only helps these children because they act both intelligently and couragously.

A rather modern retelling of this story with the courageous and clever youth is Emily and Baba Yaga. Please note that this vid clip has some rather dark images in it. However our young Emily is a top notch machinist and is quite handy with tools and construction as fact that she uses to her advantage while trying to keep herself out of Baba Yaga's oven.

Baba Yaga also shows up to help out Ivan in some tellings of the Firebird story. Ivan gains Baba Yaga's trust simply because he is kind to the animals in the forest as opposed to Ivan's brothers who either ignore or try to kill the animals they encounter on the road to the Firebird and Baba Yaga. Perhaps that suggestion that our grandma witch is just another facet of the life cycle: the crone in the maidenmothercrone cycle.

The Word of the Week for October 30 to November 5 is...

EPHEBIC

An ephebe was a young male in the Athens just about to enter training to the military. An ephebic youth was then someone in the thick midst of puberty or adolescence. A requirement to gain citizenship was to graduate from school (yes, yes military school and also there was most likely a class structure in place as well as a gender issue which barred young girls and women from citizenship...BUT let us look beyond that antiqued ideal and use the word and the salvageable structures of the word's concepts) and swear an Ephebic Oath.

Telemachus saw her long before any one else did. He was sitting moodily among the suitors thinking about his brave father, and how he would send them flying out of the house, if he were to come to his own again and be honoured as in days gone by. Thus brooding as he sat among them, he caught sight of Minerva and went straight to the gate, for he was vexed that a stranger should be kept waiting for admittance. He took her right hand in his own, and bade her give him her spear. "Welcome," said he, "to our house, and when you have partaken of food you shall tell us what you have come for."

He led the way as he spoke, and Minerva followed him. When they were within he took her spear and set it in the spear- stand against a strong bearing-post along with the many other spears of his unhappy father, and he conducted her to a richly decorated seat under which he threw a cloth of damask. There was a footstool also for her feet, and he set another seat near her for himself, away from the suitors, that she might not be annoyed while eating by their noise and insolence, and that he might ask her more freely about his father. from the Odyssey by Homer Book 1

Oh Goodie!

Stay tuned pets...we'll be posting some juicy tidbits soon for your mental nourishment!
In addition PPSH will soon be assigned a time slot on the Maine Radio Project. Join me with my Psychic Sidekick (who provides a refreshing amount of kid credibility), random weekly-ish guest and various psychic puppets as we embark on story-telling tirades! This is gonna be fun.