…aaaaaand we’re back!

The upgrades I was performing over the weekend took a little longer than I would have liked (sorry about that), but I think the new, improved look and layout will be well worth it. Aside from some cosmetic improvements, there has been a complete overhaul under the hood, which means going forward the site will be a lot easier to use and navigate. The archives are still a bit of a mess (there are a lot of old posts that I have yet to go through and clean-up so they fit with the new format), I’ll be tweaking things over the next few weeks, but overall I’m pretty happy and I hope everyone likes the new format.

Well, it looks like I’m insane lucky enough to be extremely busy this month, with not one, not two, but three film projects on the go. I was already shooting a documentary about puppetry and in development on another film (more about those projects hopefully soon!), but I’ve just had a new project land in my lap that involves making a professional short in three weeks from scratch (Ack!).

What this means for all you fine people is that I won’t be able to regularly update PuppetVision for the next few weeks, although I’ll try to get at least a couple posts up each week. Assuming I don’t go insane all goes well, I should be updating daily once again in early October.

In the meantime, have you seen this fantastic giant robotic sock puppet? I wish I’d thought of that! (link and photo via Spirits Dancing and Sons of Punch).

I did stop regularly updating PuppetVision about a year ago due to a combination of serious illness in my family, professional commitments and because frankly I wanted to spend more time doing puppetry rather than writing about it. Although I’ve tried to occasionally update the blog whenever I could until recently I just didn’t have the time.

This past year has been a wild ride for me – in ways both terrible and wonderful – and as I recently took stock of it all I realized that I really miss doing PuppetVision. I miss seeing what’s new and interesting in the world of puppet film and video and I miss the conversation with both the people creating puppet films and the people who love to watch them.

So I’m back and I’ve missed you. Well, I never really went away, but now PuppetVision is back and hopefully daily once more.

I had previously posted a couple of messages on here about some of the personal upheaval that’s kept me away from the puppetry intrawebs for so long. I’m somewhat reluctant to discuss my personal life and circumstances in a public forum like this – if anything recent events have taught me to never, ever do that again – but suffice to say I had a number of deaths and serious illnesses among my family and friends including the passing of my father and the combination of natural grief and dealing with all the mundane things you have to deal with when people die or are ill kept me away and distracted.

I owe an especially big apology to everyone who enrolled in the Puppet Building 101 course (see previous post) I was running at the beginning of the summer. Circumstances forced me to postpone the course after it started by a few weeks, then until the Fall and finally to cancel it outright because changes in my personal and professional responsibilities just don’t allow me the time to do it. Refunds to everyone who enrolled were held up because of some PayPal-related snafus, but I’m relieved to say that the last of them were issued this week.

I do want to take this opportunity to publicly and sincerely apologise to anyone who was enrolled for the cancellation as well as any inconvenience and frustration the long, drawn-out situation caused. Although the circumstances were largely out of my control, I wish I had been able to deal with the situation in a more prompt manner.

I’ve spent a long time building up a lot of goodwill with this little ol’ blog here and it’s unfortunate that it has become tainted by the fallout from my Summer from Hell. So to the two dozen or so people who were affected, please accept my unconditional apology. I hope I can find a way to make it up to you in the future.

Are you on Twitter?

Like any good early adopter/online-fad-chasing-blogger I’ve had a Twitter account set-up for quite awhile now. Lately I’ve really been getting in to it too, so follow me on Twitter. You can read my random musings, eaves drop on conversations I’m having with fellow Twitters and find links to neat/cool/funny puppet videos that for whatever reason don’t make it here to the blog.

If you’ve got no idea what I’m talking about and you don’t know a tweet from a chirp, don’t worry! There’s a handy video on YouTube that explains Twitter in plain English. It’ll tell you everything you need to know to get started.

This is something I’ve been planning for awhile and it’s the first in a series of steps I want to take over the next year to update and upgrade the site. Don’t worry if you type in the old Blogspot address by mistake though; you’ll automatically be redirected to the new one.

• Patrick Algermissen has made a short film called Pupsock & Wendell in The Gallery of Doom that sounds really interesting. It’s a mash-up of live-action, puppets, 2D animation, and 3D animation and will be screening at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. as part of the museum’s Jim Henson’s Fantastic World exhibit.

• Sid and Marty Kroft are in their 70s and still going strong according to a recent article in the L.A. Times.
• Avenue Q opened in Toronto last week. As part of the media/promotion effort, Rick Lyon spoke to the National Post’s Allison Broverman.
• David Beckham is coming to Sesame Street. He’s just one of many celebrities beating a path to the show recently.
• Pinocchio’s Marionette Theater in Orlando was forced to close last January after founder David Eaton was diagnosed with leukemia. Thankfully, David’s prognosis has improved along with a number of other prominent puppeteers including Heather Henson and Sean Keohane he’s trying to reopen Pinocchio’s and pay down its $30,000 debt.

I’ll be back with more soon!

I’m fine and going to be taking it easy for awhile. Can’t promise I’ll be updating daily for a little while, but I’ll try to post a few times a week for the rest of the summer. While I go tackle the 200+ emails waiting for me in my inbox, why not check out puppetry-loving Canadian singer Feist on Sesame Street singing (what else?) 1-2-3-4.

Update: Not sure why graphics are missing from the page, but that’s one of the things I’ll get right on.

Happy Birthday Canada!

Today is one of my favourite holidays…the day Canadians celebrate a bunch of British colonies being brought together as “one Dominion under the name of Canada” by going to BBQs, rock concerts, festivals, fairs and watching stuff blow up in the sky at night. Like all nations our history is imperfect, but I’m very proud to be part of a country that for past 141 years has striven to build a society based on the principles of freedom justice and tolerance for all.

It’s somehow fitting that our national pride was once best summed up in a beer commercial:

Happy 141st Canada! You don’t look a day over 30.