Tomorrow is my last day of "working" at Puppetland. I go with the Tiny Bandeleros up to the San Francisco Improv Fest on Wed. There will still be a few days of wrap after I come back from the holiday weekend, but hopefully all puppets will shove themselves out the door on Friday, never to return.

When you think it couldn't get any worse- last Monday I ended up scrubbing the women's bathroom until 9pm. Puppetland refused to hire a cleaning company and it had gotten so disgusting that a mutiny was afoot amongst the womenfolk. So I cleaned it. On overtime. Then on Thursday, they ask us project managers to "defer our paychecks" because they couldn't make payroll. Normally, that is the point where I walk out the door, but we all decided to stick by them. By Friday, we had to can half the staff. The writing was on the wall for that, as half the puppets had gone out the door, and we needed to get rid of people, but they could have had 24 hours notice, and a day for clean up, sorting and notes. Aka as wrap day.

We made it through the week somehow. The fact that the bosses were away all week helped keep things on schedule. Not perfection, but finished, and shipped.

This afternoon the bosses who had been away came back, and immediately started changing things. At 4:30pm I had to take apart a finished head because the ears weren't quite in the right place. A little too on top of the head. He had a point visually, but he had seen this head for a month when it was nothing but ears attached to a skull. And said NOTHING. Now that it is a finished fuzzy head with 20+ man hours invested into it, complete except for eyeballs, a touch of air brushing and a kiss goodbye, now is the time to rip it apart? How about MAKING YOUR FUCKING PAYROLL????

I can't even use my mantra of "they pay me, they pay me" because they haven't. I know that they will eventually, but I am now eyeing what supplies will be coming home with me at the end of this job. I expect (and will demand) one of the industrial irons as interest on the loan of my paychecks, but I plan on at least a new heat gun, and half of the dyeing supplies to "fall into the trash." I will also not skimp on replenishing my kit. We all brought in supplies and tools from home that have been used up, lost and trashed.

Never say never, but at this point, it is highly unlikely that I will work for Puppetland in the future. I still like them as people, but this is bad business.

On a lighter note, the Eminem "Ass Like That" video came out this weekend, starring all the Crank Yanker puppets. I worked on this in April- it was all hush hush and stuff. The video and song are actually really funny. I made the Janet Jackson breakaway "costume malfunction." It had a giant (anatomically correct!) nipple that had been taken out in post. Even when it is fleece on a dolly, you can't see a woman's areola. I also made a bunch of other clothing pieces.

Puppetland is kicking my ass and taking names.

The entire production as whole is an absolute Spinal Tap** mess, so in comparison, our stuff is actually going fine. It's just not finished by the Pretend ship date. Stuff will be finished much closer to the Realistic ship date. The Puppetland owners have to go back east for some other job next week, and will be out of our hair for at least 5 days. The main problem on our end (besides the Pretend ship date) is the owners keep looking at every piece as a Masterpiece, as opposed to "done is beautiful" which should be everyone's mantra when you can count down in days and hours instead of months and weeks. They still think in film and close up, instead of "I'm dancing, I'm dancing...and I'm off." You can have it perfect, or you can have it finished on time. Make up your minds. We have been telling them this would be the scenario since day one.

They added a bunch of new staffers, but they are rank and file, and just more people I need to move around Barbie Scene Shop. I'm sure it's great that they will work for $12 an hour, but since they need to be supervised so closely and work much slower, how practical is it? On Saturday, I worked 5 hours at time and a half. I did about 1 hour of my actual work. The other four hours were spent supervising, and that included at least one hour of playing Find It which culminated in dumpster diving through two days of garbage. The missing bag of already prepared stuff was not ever found.

This show is the biggest vanity project that I have been involved with in 15 years. I hate the show's director/creator with every fiber of my being, and I keep hoping that a meteor crashes through the roof of her glass church.

Also, no comp seats or a dress rehearsal show for the workers. Traditionally, even Broadway shows will have seats available during the tech week. The show isn't finished, but you get to see something. It's the theater equivalent of a Cast and Crew screening. But the show staffers at the church did a $1 off coupon in their paychecks.




**We had a scenic person come through about a month ago. Her company was just about finished with the 4 foot tall stage rocks that the animals hide behind. The smallest animal is an 8 foot kangaroo. She was not happy with the "communication skills" of the "production design team." Now that the rocks are the right size and the you can see the animals in all their oversized glory, there is reportedly will be only FIVE FEET of stage left in front of them for the actors.

Here is a very interesting blog about design and the philosophy behind it. It gives you permission to appreciate, love and purchase based on esthetics. You are smarter to like something because it is "really cool looking." The blog seems to be written by a group of folks who work for the company that makes Java software.

I have become a World of Warcraft Widow and I love it. First, Steve plays this video game on his own computer. This means I get to watch the tv again, and watch whatever I want. A couple of Tivo'd episodes of Sex in the City, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Issac Mizrahi's talk show...doesn't matter now. It's All Chick Programming, all the time. The second thing, is that playing the game online is his Smoking Substitute. I don't care how many hours he plays, because He's Not Smoking.

Life is good and peaceful here in Echo Park.

Not so much in Puppetland, where we swing into the last few weeks of the project. The overtime starts next week. Nothing is even remotely finished, the owners of Puppetland have started to make design changes on items that we are trying so hard to finish, setting them back. The frames are bottlenecked because we can't get a welder who welds aluminum. No frames, no puppets. We all saw this coming in January and questioned on a DAILY BASIS why we weren't getting started until the end of March. They want to hire more people, but no one is available because every single qualified person in Hollywood is already working on something else. Or Puppetland has some back beef with them. Or they will never work for Puppetland again. My mantra has gone from "I Don't Care, Stop Caring" to "They Pay You, They Pay You, They Pay You." I dream of unfinished puppets, and wake up every night at 3am to my mind racing about unfinished puppets.

Other puppet news... The Countess and Stinky the Sock will be appearing together again. Not seen on the same stage since 2003's Club Puppet at The Palace in Hollywood, they are shooting a music video together for a cover of The Carpenter's "Rainy Days and Mondays." It will be for their never to be released fake album called "Two Halves of a Broken Heart."