A little Up Over news

Taking a break from Ventriloquists Down Under Week (actually, it's now Ventriloquists Down Under Week: The Month!), let's have some Up Over news.  I almost indulged myself in my second-most favorite vocation - logo making - for Up Over news, but I know it brings some comfort to my piteousness* of regular readers who ache to see some of their favorite regular features, like No Logo Thursday.

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I am absolutely hooked on checking my gadgets (yes, I know - they're actually called widgets**) on my blog that tell me where I get hits from. And down in the "recent hits from" gadget, it looked like this.

I am very sure that:

• My dear friend and the first regular reader this blog ever had keeps regularly reading from somewhere around Ballwin in big MO. Hi, Sue!  Party on!
• The hit from the Asian/Pacific region was someone who is probably hooked on Ventriloquists Down Under Week.  I can just tell. They'll be back.
• From the post they went to, the visitor from the Netherlands is a Glee fan.
• The President of the United States uses bing.com as his search engine.

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* A piteousness is a group of turtle doves.

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** A widget is not supposed to be a real thing, gosh darn it! 

It's suppose to stand for a fictitious product to explain principles and theories of production. It's not supposed to be a gosh darn real thing!  Who do I write to about this violation of proper word use before it's too late?  Before it leads to peace without honor or something?

It's too late already, isn't it?

Another dinner for stew

Yet another big Washington "see and be seen" event - The White House Correspondents' Dinner - has come and gone.  It was like a state dinner - with jokes! And everybody was there.

It wasn't just the political people. Sure, President Obama was there, and the whole cast of the real West Wing.

It wasn't just the press people. Yes, there was the old network people, then there was the new faces, like Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezenski from MSNBC's Morning Joe show.

It was people like Steven Spielberg and Matthew Morrison.

Who's Matthew Morrison? Duh! He plays Will Schuester, the Glee Club Director on Glee. And why is it important that Matthew Morrison was there? Because Matthew Morrison, by virtue of the fact that the entire cast of Glee was awarded "Face that belongs on a ventriloquist dummy list" honors, is the closest thing to a ventriloquist to attend.

Yes, Rachel Maddow was there and is on the V-Face list, too. But she's from the press. She's talked to the President for work. Morrision is from the entertainment community. That means he got an optional invite.

Granted, when this blog presented the Budding Ventriloquist Winter Olympic Coverage (TM) - and covered it well, I might add - I was a member of the working press. So there was more than one reason for me to get an invite to the fancy-schmancy dinner.

Where was the invite to ANY ventriloquist? Or budding ventriloquist?

This is another one of those "would help if you were a Mason" things, isn't it?

Toad the Wet Dummy?

Hi, I'm Dan. I'm a parent of teenagers.

Yes, that pause was to let all of you say, "I'm so sorry to hear that. Would you like a Pez?"

No thanks. But thanks for offering.

I keep trying to figure out, like so many parents do,  how I can bond more with my teenagers. To be honest, I thought the ventriloquist thing would bring the whole family closer together. Wouldn't you?

But my daughter's friends think my ventriloquist dummy is creepy. Apparently, this is not as uncommon as we in the vent biz would like to think.

And I think my son is simply humoring me. I was telling one of his friends about Budding Ventriloquist (which my kids kind of wish I'd keep secret... go figure), and my son said, rather flatly, "Yea, it's real groundbreaking stuff." I smiled. The look on his face appeared that he couldn't quite believe that I was smiling.

Having said that, I have a great new idea for bonding. To play off my son's fascination with heavy metal music, I'm working on a ventriloquist act that's me and my dummy and my monkey puppet as a metal band. He's going to love this.

I want to call it MegaSpleen. That's got some gusto.

There isn't already a band called that, is there?

Maybe I'll take that Pez now.

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My daughter, my Broadway-bound child,  is equally unimpressed with my concept of the all ventriloquist performance of A Chorus Line. She didn't, however, vehemently object the way I expected to my putting the entire cast of Glee on the "Faces that belong on on a ventriloquist dummy" list. (December 12, 2009)

Then again, I think when I told her, she said, "Shush, Dad, I'm trying to watch Glee."

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Last night, my wife became a trained weather spotter.  That's no job for dummies, either.

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Perhaps it's best that I just stick to music I really love, like the classic romantic standards. Maybe Max and I could do a Cole Porter Night and Day duet, or the rougishly handsome dummy, Steed Hideaway, could do a little Frank Sinatra, like The Very Thought of You.

No. Those are songs I want to sing for you straight and clear and with feeling. Too beautiful for silliness.

Max and Steed can do old Everly Brothers. I just know I can figure out how to vent in tenor harmonies. I am, after all, *sigh*... a tenor.

Too obvious

With apologies:

• For running this picture two days in a row,
• To a couple cast members who are only "totally guilty" by association, and
• For noticing this amazing phenomenon only by happenstance...

... Could it actually be that virtually the entire cast of Glee - face after face - ALL belong on the "great face for a ventriloquist dummy" list?

Just look at them one at a time. Then think about it.

Amazing, huh?  Did I just hear a universal "true dat"?

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To the wonderful cast of Glee:

Lots of actors get Emmys. You've just achieved something that's much more special.

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Bet the casting director knew exactly what he was doing?  I'm in for a fiver that there's a dummy in his/her closet.

Imagine my Glee

Having rapped up a very successful premier season launch, Fox's singfest - Glee - was pretty engaging to us folk who enjoy dancin', and swingin', and movin' to the groovin'.

You also need  to find enjoyment in (or at least tolerance for) the drama-filled lives of high schoolers. According to my daughter, the show's trials and tributations are topically pretty realistic - a thought which should frighten a rational parent. To think my daughter finds ventriloquist dummies frightening but this show ... okay?

The show really does deserve applause for its approach to diversity. There's whites and blacks, hispanics, jews and gentiles, gays and straights, even a disabled kid in a featured role on a show about dancing and singing. Jocks, preppies (do they say that anymore?), cheerleaders, nerds, geeks, bullies, and all other groups are there, and there's reasonable dialog about all this. The differences are not ignored or resolved, but are simply present and (kind'a) real. Not bad for a show basically about kids doing pop music covers.

Oh yea, the tunes are pretty much fun, too.

After nine or ten inaugural episodes, the show has gone into hiatus for four months.

******SPOILER ALERT******

When the show returns in April, the club struggles to broaden their diversity when a ventriloquist wants to join.  Faculty advisor Will Schuester searches the rule book to find out whether the ventriloquist would count as one or two voices.  Quinn thinks the dummy might actually be the father of her child, not Puck.  Kurt is worried that the dummy is making a move on Finn. Rachel has a panic attack when the dummy sings better than her. Artie accidentially gets the dummy's arms stuck in a wheel of his chair, tearing one off.  Mercedes keeps trying to explain to the rest where the dummy's voice is actually coming from. Sue Sylvester continues to be a bitch.