Perspectives of a Writer and Musician

On the Street Where You Die - just released

2011-12-27T13:37:00.000-05:00

Announcement: I just released the first in a series of "soft-boiled" detective novels on the Kindle platform.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006Q1V2XQ

From the book's description:

Stanley Bentworth is not all that tough. Previously a homicide cop, he drank his way out of a job and now runs a one-man private eye agency finding people who don’t want to be found. He doesn’t accept tough-guy assignments, calling himself a “soft-boiled detective,” but a recession is on, and business is off, so when a wealthy financier, formerly a mob enforcer, needs an anonymous blackmailer found in a life and death situation, Stanley seizes the chance to earn a fee.

If he fails, the blackmailer outs his client to the wise guys, in which case the client gets a one-way ticket to the landfill, and Stanley risks becoming an unwilling passenger on that ride.

He knows he must not fail, no small feat given that Stanley Bentworth is not all that tough.

On the Street Where You Die

2011-12-25T13:22:00.000-05:00

Just finished uploading this "soft-boiled detective" novel to Kindle. The next job, besides writing the next book, is to get the word out. Conventional wisdom says that there are several approached to publicizing and promoting a new book:

Blog - that's what this is
Social networking - Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
Online discussion groups that address the genre and/or subject matter - Not sure.
Book signing tour - Can't sign an e-book
Send the book to reviewers.

Let's talk about number 4. There are numerous commercial book reviewers who will review books for a fee. Not an option. That's like a paid endorsement. Except the reviewers are celebrities. But there are countless review sites that do not and will not charge. It's difficult to keep up with all the different review policies and submission guidelines. We need to standardize and streamline this process so an author doesn't spend endless days and nights researching reviewers and formatting and emailing advanced reader copies.. Any suggestions?

Final Kiss at Seven

2011-11-23T13:50:00.002-05:00

The title of this article is the title to my new work in progress, the second installment in the Stanley Bentworth series of mystery novels. The first is out for beta reading, and I got bored waiting for feedback, so I started writing. This morning.

I wish successful writers wouldn't tell us that they have a quota of, say, five pages a day. Robert B. Parker said that. So did Lawrence Block. When they hit that quota, they quit for the day. So it takes them a little over three months to write a 100,000 word book. That's four books a year, figuring you can multitask editing and correcting with writing. (Don't check my math. I didn't.) That's a lot of books when you're 30 or younger. It's not enough when you're old.

At noon today, I looked down at the bottom margin toolbar and saw that I'd written 10 pages of deathless prose. Am I supposed to quit and go swimming? Or mow the grass? Or wash the car?

I know, it's November. But I live in Florida.

See what you can make of the title. It came first. I didn't write it, but I've had it for 48 years.

Then and Now

2011-11-19T13:50:00.002-05:00

Back in the day (my day, not necessarily yours) it took a while for an author and an editor to establish a personal working relationship. Usually, it was impersonal, business as usual, emails back and forth related only to the project. Eventually I settled on one editor with whom I found a personal bond. She is my daughter's age, and she mothers me. Go figure.

She works for Penguin now, but over the years she moved a few times among publishers. Where she went, I went. But, as I said, it took a while for what started as a professional relationship to evolve into a personal one. I dedicated one of my books to her firstborn.

When we got down to work, however, it was all work. As it should be. We knocked out a lot of books together, and she knocked out a bunch more with other authors. And still does. The rest of whatever teams she'd assemble for copy editing, artwork, layout, promotion, and so on, were mostly unknown to me. I don't even remember any names. We interacted, but only related to the project. I didn't know about their lives, and they didn't know about mine. Those were professional collaborations, in every sense of the word.

Things have changed substantially in publishing and probably in every profession nowadays. What with social networking, texting, discussion groups, cloud computing, and so on, the notion is that you are in a family rather than a business. And in that family, as in all families, you have to be wary of one another's idiosyncracies, personal issues, hot buttons, and such, lest some off-hand comment incites a food fight for the whole family and sometimes the whole world to witness.

It's as if Jerry Springer is overseeing the publishing business.

But solitude is the writer's friend. Drama, suspense, and conflict are necessary inside the book, but outside it, the only interaction I want is with Emma, shown here.

I neglect to give and do not require gratuitous strokes. Except, of course, to Emma.

I guess I have to work on that.

Or self-publish.

Self-Editing

2011-11-16T09:21:00.005-05:00

I'm back. They're doing the outside today. It's noisy but I can work.

The wonderful book, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003JBI2YI/), suggests that you print sections of your manuscript to review it and make notes in the margins. Using the computer, they say, tempts you to fix things on the fly. They are right. That's what I do. So I tried it their way. Instead of printouts, I use the iPad's iBook app. It lets me make notes and highlight blocks of text that need work, but it does not accept changes. Just like paper although without killing any trees. (Yawn, old homily, sorry.)

Their way is better. It keeps me from scattering my attention all over the work. Focus, focus.

Most of my writing and editing in the past was with non-fiction. With fiction, however, there is a laundry list of issues--dialogue, scenes, points of view, and so on--that the non-fiction writer does not need to address. The Browne and King book is a must-have. But don't expect to read and understand it before you've knocked out a fiction manuscript or two. You probably wouldn't relate to a lot of what it teaches, not having already made those mistakes. I find myself reading a chapter of B&K and then reviewing four work-in-progress manuscripts and highlighting areas of concern.

They're tearing the sides off my studio. I may have to go get a haircut or something.

The Studio Gets a Facelift

2011-11-16T08:28:00.001-05:00

After almost 20 years, I'm getting the studio polished up a bit. I started the project not long after we moved here in '92. It had been the woodworking shop of the previous owner so it needed an interior finish.

The last two items on the inside to-do list were a floor and ceiling. It has neither. Well, the floor is concrete, but the ceiling is nothing but exposed rafters. I finally admitted that I am not able to do ladders and hammering and spackling things that are above my head. Not without a safety net. So I hired some guys. They'll be here this morning. (In six minutes, if they're prompt.)

They'll also be repairing some siding and soffits and repainting the outside.

The downside is that I have to move all the equipment around, which means disconnecting everything, which is going to be a mess. And I'm relegated to the RV with a laptop. Oh, the suffering.

I hope they're late. (Four more minutes.)

8:27. They just got here. I'm out of here.

Simulation and Self-publishing

2011-11-15T12:20:00.003-05:00

In the scientific computing community, we used to say, "Simulation is like masturbation; some people get so much into it that they prefer it to the real thing."

We might say something similar about self-publishing. If you believe the countless blog and discussion group posts by those who are happily doing their own publishing on Kindle, Smashwords, Createspace, Lulu, and others, it's the only way to go. It's freedom from traditional publishers, aka the Evil Empire.

They prefer it to the real thing.

Usually, though, it's because they can't get an agent or publisher interested in their work. That doesn't mean their work is bad. It means only that no one thinks they can sell it in the commercial marketplace for all the usual reasons. So the authors self-publish and have either that rare event, a runaway best seller or the more common one, a book that languishes on the e-shelf or in the storage unit.

A lot of emphasis is placed on writing an effective query letter, and you can find many online articles about how to write one, but the greatest query letter in the world won't help if the manuscript is not commercially viable.

A lot of emphasis is placed on using social networking and blogs to promote your books irrespective of how they are published. But the longest list of friends and followers won't help if you write something like, "The Haunted Birdhouse" or "How Fido Met Godzilla, a Love Story."

Write a good book, one that lots of people will want to read.

Or self-publish.

What I Had for Breakfast

2011-11-14T10:23:00.002-05:00

W.C. Fields once said in an interview, "I put my long underwear on at the first frost of Autumn and don't take it off until the first blossom of Spring."

When his friend Gene Fowler asked why he would volunteer such unsolicited personal information, Fields said, "People are always telling me things like that as if they are letting me in on something."

Years ago I noticed that when in casual conversations someone mentions what they had for breakfast, it is virtually always followed by each person in the group telling what they have for breakfast.

"It's bacon and eggs for me."
"Just coffee here."
"Cereal and toast."

Whenever I find myself trapped in such a discussion, I quietly decline to contribute. And, guess what? No one turns to me and says, "How about you, Al? What do you have for breakfast?"

If it's so damned interesting, why don't they ask?

Because it isn't about breakfast. It's about them. People are their own favorite subjects.

A similar pattern shows up in books written by writers about writing and in online writing discussion groups. We get the obligatory, "How, where, and when I write" discussions.

"I set aside a fixed time every day."
"I write [insert number] words a day."
"I write [insert number] pages a day."
"I have to write with music in the background."
"I cannot write with music in the background."
"After the kids go to school."
"At the kitchen table."
"I need a stiff drink nearby."
"A big bowl of M&Ms."
"In my study."
"Outside sitting on a fence."
"In my car with a voice recorder."

Ad nauseam, ad infinitum.

Who cares where Stephen King sits and what he sees and hears? How will knowing that help us become better, more successful writers? Can we expect that having learned John Locke's or Amanda Hocking's writing habits, we could emulate those habits and enjoy successes like theirs?

How about you? What are your writing habits?

There. I did it.

The state of contemporary publishing from an old author's perspective

2011-11-12T23:05:00.003-05:00

Background: I've been publishing since the mid 1970s with books, magazine articles, newpaper cartoons, and a long-running magazine column to my credit. My book-writing career started with one NYC publisher for book 1, and then an independent small press for subssequent works. I gradually moved back into the NYC publisher realm as the imprint was passed around. I was writing books at the rate of about two a year and living on advances and my paychecks for the column. Those were the days, gone now, never to return.

While doing all that, I had a nocturnal career as a jazz musician. Don't be impressed. That's another whole blog some day, and it ain't all it's cracked up to be.

I retired from writing in 2003 and recently involuntarily retired from playing music when a small stroke made it difficult for me to schlep the equipment and remember the changes to Blue Moon, and when the economy made the world a less-hospitable planet for jazz musicians.

Take a minute to feel sorry for me, then come back. Thank you.

I'd had a story kicking around in my head for several years. It centers around the JFK assassination. With plenty of time on my hands and the phone not ringing, I decided to write the novel, which I completed earlier this year. Or was it last year? I forget. Blame the stroke.

I shopped it around keeping in mind the assassination's 50th anniversary. A release should happen in early 2013 at the latest. Unless the Mayans were right. In which case it doesn't matter. Reaching a publisher that would meet this deadline becomes increasingly difficult given the time it takes to get a publisher to read a manuscript these days. But I got lucky. Maybe.

Eventually a small press showed interest and asked for a full (short for a full manuscript). After some back and forth and R&R (no, not rest and relaxation; revise and resubmit), they made an offer. The contract they sent, however, was way out of line according to what I had been used to in the days of yore.

Given changes in the industry due to technology and the economy, and all that, since those days of yore, I wondered whether this contract was typical. I passed it by some authors whose experience is more current than mine, and they all said, in effect, run, don't walk away from this contract.

So, I sent the publisher a rejection.

Got that? The author rejects the publisher. That didn't seem all that unusual to me at the time, but it turns out that it is virtually unheard of in today's climate.

I submitted the project to a few other publishers and made a sale. A startup company with lots of promise wanted my book. The contract was extremely author-friendly with everything I had become accustomed to except that there was no advance. Even given my publishing background, I figure that since I'm new to the fiction world without a name and a following, advances, particularly from small presses are probably out of the question. I signed.

The publisher and I didn't see eye to eye on a few things, so she agreed to release me from my contracts.

I have put the manuscript in the trunk for now. I'm working on other things and don't have the time or inclination to grovel for a publisher. I figure I have a year and a half before the publication deadline.

2011-11-07T14:13:00.002-05:00

I play string bass in a local big band. Although I have a 3/4 acoustic bass, I don't like schlepping it to gigs. So

I usually use an electric stick bass.

I don't play a bass guitar. Everything's in the wrong place.

My stick bass is a Steinberger NS. On our last gig as I tuned the bass, there came a loud boingg! and I found myself holding the upper end of the E string in my hand. I have the bass strung with acoustic bass strings because it sounds and feels more like the real thing. I do not have a spare set of strings. Those suckers are expensive.

So, I had to work the evening on the top three strings. It's a reading gig, so it got to be a challenge whenever the note written went below low A. Obviously, I played those notes an octave up, but sometimes it would be a passage in which every other note was down there.

I got to exercise my hearing chops that night.

2011-11-06T12:00:00.000-05:00

I finished the first draft of "On the Street Where You Die," a novel that has a PI going all over town. The plot, dialogue, and characters are in place. The next job is to fill in those places where brief narrative descriptions of the scenery will be.

There are many locations where the PI spends time: his office, the police station, the courthouse, various houses, the security office at a high-fashion department store, and so on.

It's a ficticious town, with elements taken from many places I've been. But I realized that inconsistencies could creep into the narrative about his travels. Such as the direction and distance between points, proximity of one location to another with respect to which side of the tracks, the routes between locations--Interstate, over the river and through the woods, across the tracks, and so on.

My other fictional works are set in real places. Nothing to create. But this is a town of my own imagination. Towns typically have downtown, industrial areas, upscale houses, shopping districts, middle class houses, and the projects. Urbs and burbs.

So I drew a map:

The map shows four quadrants of a town separated by an Interstate and railroad tracks with a river running diagonally through. Little boxes for the locations helped me get all the scenes consistent with one another.

Doing this gave me two advantages: First, it is a baseline on which to describe the things mentioned above. Second, it gives me a mental image of where things are and helps me make it more believable.

I need to establish a general location, too, to make the foliage, buildings, weather, and clothing fit the time of year, and such. That's next.

I hope this exercise doesn't lead to floor plans.

A phoenix

2011-11-05T14:07:00.003-04:00

It's been a while since I posted here. I spent the summer pounding on several manuscripts.

The Absolute Write forum ran an anthology project. Members were invited to submit short stories in the speculative fiction genre. They had to be new, unpublished works.

First I had to learn what speculative fiction is. I'm not sure I ever learned.

"A Place Called Nowhere"
I submitted a short story that was immediately rejected. It's based on the lyrics to a song a wrote a long time ago. I'm not sure what I'll do with this story.

"The Mulpies"

The AW anthology folks liked my second submission, at least they told me so, but eventually they decided not to include it. It "didn't fit the project." I never learned what was needed to fit, but I guess that will become apparent when the anthology is published. The outcome, though, is that I have a story, probably now of novella length, that I can sell elsewhere, or at least self-publish.

"The Shadow on the Grassy Knoll"
I had submitted my JFK assassination novel to Reck House Press. The editor asked for a R and R, which means "revise and resubmit." She made some suggestions, which, as far as I could see, improved the story. I R'd and R'd and, after a time, she sent me a contract to sign. It was the least author-friendly contract I've seen in 25 years of book publishing. Thinking that maybe times had changed, I asked some fellow AWers whose experience is more current, to look at some of the terms. They gagged. I turned down the offer and submitted to a fledgling publisher. They asked for a final almost right away and then a final, and within a week of submission I had a contract. A friendly contract. I signed it.

"Nursing Home Invasion"
This novel is about crime in a nursing home. All the characters save one are elderly. There's no sex in this book, Viagra notwithstanding. I submitted it to Carina Press, an imprint of Harlequin. After several weeks they rejected it, I suppose because it's not fantasy or romance. It's a so-called "cozy mystery."

"On the Street Where You Die"
This one's almost finished. It's about what I call a "soft-boiled" detective. Might be a new genre there.
Other News
I've been working on an article series about self-publishing. Depending on how that pans out, I might post the articles here. But there are a kazillion books on the subject, and the rules keep changing.

I've been thumping string bass in a big band. Other than for that, nothing is happening musically.

I'm designing book covers for all my upcoming books. That's the job for the publisher, but I like fooling with Photoshop, and I'll have covers ready for anything I have to or decide to self-publish. Plus they will be a starting place for the publisher's artists.

Drop a comment and let me know you're tuned in.

Al

The End is Near

2011-05-20T20:46:00.000-04:00

The world comes to an end tomorrow at 6:00 pm. I have a gig at 7:30. I wonder whether I should bother going.

AT&T Ripoff

2011-05-19T10:47:00.001-04:00

Is AT&T ripping you off? Do you have an iPhone or 3G iPad? Read this article:
Lawsuit accuses AT&T of overcharging iPhone, iPad customer data use
My iPad, which I use to proofread manuscripts and read books, is the wi-fi only version with no monthly connection fees. And I don't have a iPhone. So, they aren't getting me. But how about you?

A better keyboard

2011-05-18T11:54:00.000-04:00

Earlier I talked about my disappointment in the aCase keyboard that I bought online. I returned it, and learned that the vendor, CTCStore, has a 25% restocking fee plus they charge the shipping charges, which had been included in the sale. So, take heed. Before you One-click anything on amazon, find out about the seller's return policies. These are unreasonable and should be revealed before you are allowed to buy anything.

I visited the sites of several other iPad Bluetooth keyboards and read their reviews. I chose the ZaggMate keyboard/case combination.

http://www.amazon.com/ZAGGmate-Aluminun-iPad-Bluetooth-Keybaord/dp/B004FG16MG/

It arrived a couple of days ago, and I am happy with it. Because it has a narrow keyboard--about the size of the typical netbook--speed typing is less than optimum. But I have small hands and can adapt.

I am diligently working on two manuscripts. One has been ongoing for about two years, the other I started this year and have it ready for publication now pending a blessing from my writing coach.

Every writer should have a writing coach, someone who'll tell you no holds barred when your writing sucks and how to fix it. Here's mine:

http://www.caroljose.com/

Working with a Turner figure

2011-05-12T14:57:00.000-04:00

So, what has all this got to do with writing? Nothing. But I haven't been doing any writing that bears talking about. Except writing this blog. My friend Elsie says most writers' blogs are boring, anyway.
    The Turner figure that I showed last time has been waiting for an overhaul. I started to do that recently so I could take the dummy to the convention. It's what they call, in the vernacular, a reak piece of work.
    I don't know a lot about Turner, the figure maker. Bill Demar's first professional figure was a Turner, and I've seen several of them over the years. I cannot say whether this one was ever overhauled, either, but whoever did the most recent work on it was clueless about figure making and fixing.
    It's carved out of pine. I guess that's okay, but it makes for a heavy head. It's no Michelangelo, either. The head is kind of square and flat in the back and the neck is way too thick in the front-to-back dimension. There's enough excess wood there to trim the neck and make the head rounder, which would make for a lighter head, but I don't like carving pine and would probably compromise whatever value it has to collectors. Not to mention cutting off a finger or two.
    (Why do people say, "not to mention" when they are about mention what they said they would not mention?)
Other criticisms:
    It was painted with glossy yellow house paint. I had to get John Parisi to strip the paint. I can't work with chemical paint stripper, and, short of sandblasting, I don't know how else to get that stuff off. John took it down to bare wood for me. That's when we learned we were working with pine.
    Most of the head was nailed or screwed together. The ears were screwed on. The eyes were nailed in place. The vertical sections of the head were held together with wood screws. Didn't they have glue in those days?
    And, oh, yeah, this one. For a jaw axle the figure had two finishing nails driven in through the sides of the head. It looks like there might have been a cabinet hinge in there at one time, so maybe the nails weren't Turner's idea.
    The hands and body are nice, but they're pine, too, and way too heavy.
    So, if you want a nice wood-carved figure to perform with, ask Conrad Hartz or Brant Gilmer to build you one.

2011-05-05T13:49:00.000-04:00

I got this guy a little over two years ago, dismantled him and set him aside.

He had paint that I couldn't strip because what the chemicals do to me make Mr. Hyde look like Mr. Rogers. But lately I got to thinking about him and sent him to John Parisi to strip for me. So now he's a box of parts.

He'll get an ethnic transplant. He'll become an illegal alien. This all came about because I wanted to write a politically incorrect script about what's been happening in Arizona. It's not easy material for a gringo to write or perform.

He will be properly attired for the role. Anyone know where I can buy a child-sized serape?

Oh, yeah, his name will be Juan. If I have him finished in time, I'll take him to the convention in July.

Come meet Juan and me at my book signing.

Ventriloquism: Art, Craft, Profession

lulu and others

2011-05-03T14:11:00.000-04:00

I started a lulu project for the nursing home book. (Sounds exciting doesn't it?) I wanted to see what it would cost to publish a hardback, dustcover edition. Createspace doesn't have that option. Author copies on lulu cost $14.48 a copy for a 190-page book. That's really up there. There are quantity discounts, but you have to buy a lot of copies to get that. And they won't publish hardcover books on Amazon. Or so they say, but you can you choose to publish on amazon, in which case the price per book goes up to $27.60. What's that all about?

Then I decided to use Createspace to publish an audio CD of some of my music for personal distribution. I wanted to see what it would cost per copy. Guess what? Unless I can't find it, you cannot get a quote for artist copies until you've uploaded your audio tracks and artwork. What's that all about?

Is it just me, or are these POD giants trying to make it difficult to POD?

Maybe they are all PODs from Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

2011-05-01T18:01:00.001-04:00

It's Mayday. Every year on this day I think about the leader of this band.

Wild Bill Whelan is the cornet player. I knew him from 1958 when I was a senior in high school trying to play Dixieland jazz. Years later I played in many bands with him. I'm the piano player in this video, made in 1975.

Why does today make me think about Wild Bill Whelan? Every year since I knew him until he died in 2003 he'd call me up on May 1st and recite a simple 2-line poem. Then he'd hang up. The poem?

Hooray, hooray for the first of May,
Outdoor fucking starts today.

I sure do miss him. I'll be outdoors a lot today in remembrance.

Words, words, I'm so sick of words...

2011-04-30T21:39:00.000-04:00

I'm up to 58,000 words in Nursing Home Invasion. I have a character who is a kind of comical old guy. Everybody knows a guy like that. When he was young he was considered a pain in the ass, and everything he said was irritating. Now that he's old, he's irascible, and everything he says is funny. He says the same things, but because he's old, he gets away with it.

It's something to look forward to if you were a pain in the ass in your youth or are one now. (I know an old guy in his eighties who is still a pain in the ass. He didn't age well.)

Anyway, this old guy in my book spends some time on the witness stand in a murder trial, and he doesn't particularly like the prosecuting attorney. So, I put some text in there where he needles the lawyer, goes off on tangents, forgets the questions, and so on. I got a bunch of words out of that, and it doesn't detract from the story.

Word bloat can be a problem. Usually, however, if you look at the beginning of a chapter, there are more things that can be said to get it going. Not "the sun hung low in the western sky" kind of thing, but action lines that lead up to what's going to happen next.

I made a joke yesterday that I'd like to use in the book. We were going somewhere, and Judy was driving. She had the car backed out on the driveway, and I said I had to go lock my office. Judy said, "You already locked it. I saw you from the car standing in front of the door facing it and doing something with your hands. What else would you have been doing?"

Without thinking I said, "I was scratching my balls and didn't want the neighbors to see."

I shouldn't say stuff like that without thinking. I should've thought. Or maybe if I wouldn't have laughed so hard. I hope the swelling goes down soon.

Finishing a Novel

2011-04-29T17:59:00.001-04:00

"Nursing Home Invasion" is almost ready to publish. Except that, for a novel, it's too short. I formatted as a standard small paperback with a 10pt font, and it's only 200 pages. That's about 55,000 words. I need more words. Trouble is, the story is told, there's nothing to add, nothing that would add substance or meaning to the story.

I wrote it with only one point-of-view (POV), that of the protagonist. Everything that happens in the story is in view of him or in his memory. There are no scene breaks within chapters and no need to change to a different POV. Except to make the book longer, and I don't like doing anything just for that reason. Words for the sake of words.

Both my proof readers said the same thing: It seems too short. And so I must think about that. I'll probably insert some scenery here and there and see where that takes me.

ACase iPad Keyboard

2011-04-27T12:39:00.001-04:00

I have an iPad and use it a lot for proof-reading. I wanted an easier way than the glass keyboard to make notes, so I ordered this:

http://www.amazon.com/Acase-Bluetooth-Keyboard-Case-Black/dp/B004HHMPFA/

Seven out of eight buyers gave it high marks. The eighth did not but only because the item never arrived.

It took a long time to get here. It arrived yesterday. I worked with it a lot last night. It goes back tomorrow. I cannot understand why so many people like it. It doesn't do the job, which is to say, it isn't any easier to use than the glass keyboard.

Here are my complaints:

There is only one Shift key, the one on the left. Speed typists will not be able to use the keyboard because of that one feature.
The quote key (' and ") is in the wrong place. Awful design for writers who use a lot of contractions and quotations.
Likewise for the plus/equal key.
The del key and the Backspace key do the same things. They delete the character to the left of the cursor.
It doesn't work in portrait mode unless you take the iPad away from the keyboard.
You close it by inserting a flap into a slot above the iPad. Difficult to do and a wear problem built in.
When you fold the flap under the keyboard to get it out of the way (such as when the device is in your lap,) it raises the keyboard at an awkward angle.

Other than for that, it's fine.

I'll be checking out other iPad keyboards soon.

Vent Book Print Edition is Published

2011-04-27T00:21:00.001-04:00

The print edition of my new book on ventriloquism is now online:

https://www.createspace.com/3586427

It should be available on amazon soon.

The Kindle edition is also available now.

http://www.amazon.com/Ventriloquism-Art-Craft-Profession-ebook/dp/B004W0NMFO/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8

"Self-publishing on the Cheap"

2011-04-26T01:38:00.000-04:00

I started a new project this week. Yet another book on self-publishing. I decided to write it after having read countless books on the subject and finding most of them saying the same stuff, most of them out of date, all of them lacking humor, interest, just taking themselves way too seriously.

Although I am well into the narrative, I took my usual cart/horse side trip to the cover. Specifically a picture on the cover.

I want the cover art to show a Kindle and a paperback book alongside one another. The Kindle will have pages from the book displayed on it. That's no problem. But the cover of the book will also have a book alongside the Kindle, and the book on the cover must be of the book. So the picture of a book will have a picture of the same book, which will have a picture of the same book, and on into infinity or until the picture of the book is one pixel. Like pointing a mirror at a mirror.

I bet Salvadore Dali would have known how to do it.

I'll be starting on the cover soon during breaks from writing. Here's how I will start trying to make the effect I want:

1.Place a book with a blank cover next to the Kindle.
2.Take the picture and load it into GIMP twice. (GIMP is a free image processor.)
3.Make image #1 smaller, rotated, etc, and put it in image #2 as a layer covering (replacing) the book in image #2.
4.Close image #1.
5.Duplicate image #2 as image #3.
6.Promote image numbers. 2 becomes 1, 3 becomes 2. (Just for the purposes of this explanation.)
7.Iterate steps 3 - 6 until image #1 is what I want.

I think it's going to drive me nuts. Post a comment if you have any ideas that might help.

A Paradigm Shift (or Shift Happens)

2011-04-25T12:23:00.003-04:00

I've changed the emphasis of my life, and thus the emphasis of this blog, to the pursuit of the written word and the improvised note. I made writing and playing music my livelihood for many years, wrote mostly about computers and computer programming, and played jazz in saloons and gin mills. I've switched my writing to other genres, fiction and non-fiction, and to self-publishing. I'll talk about that as things progress. I've stopped playing music out for a while, too.

Oh, yeah, I am a ventriloquist, too. It is not unexpected, then, that one of my first self-published works should be about ventriloquism. See recent postings on this blog about that book. And click here to view the website dedicated to that book. At this time, only the Kindle edition of the book is available. In the next week or two the print edition will be posted on amazon, and copies will be available from Tom Ladshaw at the Kentucky ventriloquist convention in July. If I make it, those copies can be autographed.

The vent book project is ongoing, and this place will mention it from time to time. There are three other books in the works, and we'll talk about them, too.

I had announced earlier that I am taking down the blog. Some of you expressed your wishes that I not do that. So, at least for a while, I'll leave those articles in place in the archives.

I have a book, a real book...

2011-04-14T08:06:00.002-04:00

The proof copy of the print edition of "Ventriloquism: Art, Craft, Profession" arrived yesterday. This is my first hands-on experience with a POD (Publish on Demand) book. From Createspace.

The first thing I noticed was that I could have used a smaller font. 12pt is okay, but 11pt would have delivered as readable a book with fewer pages.

The next thing was that many of the old pictures don't print very well in the digital POD format. They're okay, given what they are, though. For the Kindle edition I made many of them larger and tweaked the brightness/contrast setting to make them readable on the smaller, monochrome Kindle. I could have done that with the print edition, too.

Then, the publishing model does not use "signatures," which is a 32-page bundle of 8 folded sheets. It's an advantage because you don't have that cluseer of blank pages at the end to make the page count evenly divisible by 32.

I found only one major typo. The heading for Chapter 1 doesn't say "Chapter 1." like all the other chapters. That bugs me.

I look at it and see things I'd do differently. And I can do that if I want to re-layout the pages and submit for another proof copy. I didn't want to do that. But it kept me awake last night. I'm too much of a perfectionist. I'll decide in the next couple of days.

Guess what? Even though the proof copy cost me the same as a production run copy will cost, they printed PROOF in big letters on the last page. I guess they didn't want me to sell the proof copy. Go figure.

Kindle Edition Available Now

2011-04-13T13:06:00.003-04:00

The Kindle edition is up and available now.

http://www.amazon.com/Ventriloquism-Art-Craft-Profession-ebook/dp/B004W0NMFO/

Because of the many pictures, I prefer to read this one on the iPad, which you can do with iPad's Kindle app available from amazon or apple.

I am working on the description, but it takes amazon forever to post changes to a listing.

And I have to get busy on the accompanying webpage for the book.

Still waiting for a proof copy of the print edition.

A New Project

2011-04-10T09:55:00.010-04:00

Okay, I've changed my mind. I'm not ready to shut down this blog. There really is something else to talk about.

For the past several months I've been working on one vent-related project: My book.

I started writing this book about ten years ago. My goal was a book with wall-to-wall coverage of not only technique, but marketing, the business, the offstage creative processes, equipment, and so on. Not just another book about how to talk without moving your lips.

Eventually, however, I realized that ventriloquism as an entertainment art form was in a decline. Interest in it was not what it had been. This realization was reinforced in 2006 when Clinton and Adelia Detweiler closed the doors on the Maher Ventriloquist Studios, an iconic business that had served the art for as long as I could remember. I asked Clinton about his decision, and he told me that the level of business had dropped off such that it would not support the endeavor. I put my book project on hold at that time.

Then, something happened. Seemingly all at once. Jeff Dunham's work started to catch on big time. Terry Fator won America's Got Talent. Dave Letterman featured not one, but two special "ventriloquist weeks." Clinton kicked off an online version of his business. Ventriloquism was rising from the ashes and the public was aware.

And there was another major development not related to ventriloquism. "Publish on demand" (POD) became a new model for print edition book publishing.

Originally I had wondered whether I could interest a publisher in my book, given its relatively small potential marketplace. At that time an author wishing to self-publish had one avenue--the vanity press. You paid a publishing house to produce your book, and you sold it, hopefully, out of the trunk of your car.

With the advent of digital publishing (as opposed to typesetting), books can now be printed one at a time. It no longer requires a minimum number of copies in the 100s to justify a print run. They print books as they are ordered.

The other obstacle to self-publishing was finding sales outlets. The bookstores are not interested in self-published books. There was no formal outlet for such a book. That has changed, too. With POD, your self-published book, good or bad, is listed on amazon.com, the leading online bookstore.

So, given all that, I decided to resuscitate my vent book project. The manuscript needed a lot of update to reflect changes taking place in the industry. Not to mention all the unfinished chapters.

I got a lot of help from Tom Ladshaw, ventriloquism's acknowledged reigning expert and entrepreneur. Tom proofread the first draft, submitted countless corrections and suggestions and wrote a foreword.

Yesterday, I got the book finished and uploaded to the POD publisher. Copies will be available on amazon as soon as I receive and approve the proof copy. Tom will have copies for sale at his dealer's table at this year's ConVENTion in July. I hope to make it there, too, in which case we'll have a book signing one afternoon.

Keep watching this blog for announcements about the book and a link to the amazon listing.

Closing this blog...

2010-12-18T20:15:00.002-05:00

Dear readers,

According to the click counter, some of you still check in here occasionally to see if I have anything to say, even though I haven't posted anything since July. I thank you for your loyalty.

Very soon I will delete the content from this blog and change its emphasis to discuss my writing projects. I'll be launching a new book soon, and you can get a sneak preview of what it's all about here:
http://www.theshadowonthegrassyknoll.com

In the meantime, if you want to capture any of this vent content for private use, you have my permission to use your clicker skills to save it to your computer.

I'll miss having the old articles at my beck and call. I had to periodically link to some of them whenever someone disrespected us so-called "adult entertainers" in other online places and for other reasons, such as when someone posted one of the seven jokes about ventriloquists as if they'd just discovered something new and clever.

I'll raze this site sometime after the beginning of the year. Please don't come to me later to beg for copies of things you neglected to download. I won't have time for that. I'm busy arranging for promotional tours, book signings, guest spots on Larry King -- oops, too late for that -- and writing the sequel.

But, lest you worry that I've abandoned ventriloquism, don't. I book about three shows a year in a local jazz room.

About the Rollo project...

2010-07-12T18:19:00.003-04:00

I probably spent more time on this project than on any other original figure I've built. Because he is so unique, many of his features are products of experiments. Trial and error. Observe from the first post about this project that even his torso is different than it was then. Not to mention his name.

The electronics took most of the time. And the biggest part, his light panel display, isn't even finished yet and won't be for his debut at the ConVENTion.

One electronic feature took a couple of days to design and install, and it is for only one joke in the act. I won't describe it because that would give it away. But if it doesn't get a laugh, I'll regret having put in all that time for one bomb.

His windup key, which makes a loud ratcheting noise, is a key from an old wall clock that I bought in Germany in 1969. It's not the clock's key. It doesn't fit anything. It was just in the clock when I bought it along with the one that fits the clock. So, it's been in the clock for 41 years. I finally found a use for it.

Because of my haste to finish Rollo in time for the conVENTion, The key is permanently attached to his belly, which kind of gets in the way of closing his case. The next version will have a removeable key.

The plan was that I would bring him onstage and assemble him as I did the opening monologue. You know, bad jokes about batteries not included and some assembly required. But I'll have to postpone that bit. He's too difficult to get together. I could use my entire alloted time for General Open Mic just trying to get his legs connected to his body.

I still like the idea, though, and I'll design the next version with that in mind.

Design? This guy wasn't designed. He evolved. That's what prototyping is all about.

Now if only I could get that metallic buzz sound for his voice.

So join me at General Open Mic this week and try to laugh at whatever lame electronic joke you hear. It will make me feel better.

Rollo is ready

2010-07-11T22:26:00.004-04:00

He doesn't have all the features I wanted, but he is ready for his debut. Come to the ConVENTion and meet Rollo the Robot.

I spent so much time building Rollo that I neglected to rehearse his act. I have some serious practicing to do. He employs vocal tricks that need work. T'will drive my road partner crazy. Thirteen hours of robotic verbalisms? Bring your earplugs, Donald.

Rollo the Prototype

2010-07-09T09:12:00.005-04:00

My hope is to have Rollo ready for the conVENTion. His head is completed, his script is completed, and his body is ready.

But there is the control panel.

Many of the jokes depend on features on a control panel I designed for on his body.

There will be more simulated controls. Switches, lights, etc. But I don't have time to finish it before hitting the road for Kentucky.

One of the problems is that a gas can wasn't designed to have electronic components installed on it. Another is that the inside of a vent figure body doesn't need wires and connections getting in the way of a headstick.

The original plan was to make the control panel itself a self-contained component that I could simply bolt to the body. That's still a better idea, but I didn't have time to build it.

The gauge won't stay in place. Nothing wants to stick to the aluminum paint that coats the body.

The light panel assembly is fragile. It doesn't want to work when bolted in place.

And my bench technition skills are rusty and impaired by the vision and motor skills I surrendered to a stroke earlier this year. It can take me a half hour to get a nut started on a bolt. Or hit the right spot with a soldering iron. Frustrating.

Oh, well, whatever is ready goes with me. After all, that's what prototypes are for.

2010-07-04T14:18:00.003-04:00

Here's Rollo's headstick. It includes a battery pack, wiring, and a momentary blade switch to flash Rollo's eyes on and off. Not your typical cheeky boy.

And here he is with ears. Shazam!

Here's a closeup of an ear. If you drink GatorAde, you'll recognize it.

Observe the barcode. I couldn't bring myself to remove it.

A new name

2010-07-02T22:29:00.004-04:00

The robot puppet is almost completed. And he gets a new name. He will be known as Rollo the Robot in memory of my friend Dean "Rollo" Keenhold who died last year. Here's Rollo:

He still has to get a control panel with switches, knobs, meters, and flashing lights on his belly. His eye circuit is still on the drawing board, too. He needs ears, too.

The script I wrote for him depends on all those features. If I make it to the conVENTion in time to sign up for General Open Mic, you will see Rollo and hear the script.

I have, so far, remained loyal to my plan to use household items to build him. His head is a paint can, his hat a funnel. His eyes are flashlight lenses and bulbs, his ears will be bottle tops. His body is a mineral spirits can, his arms are dowels. His hands and feet are small fish tins. His legs are spray paint cans.

So far, I've used no glue in assembling Rollo. Everything is bolted on. The only paint I've used is a chrome spray paint to make all the metal look the same.

He is one noisy, clanking puppet. I like him that way.

"Tubby the Tuba" and Farnsworth the Frog

2010-06-07T12:34:00.009-04:00

The two-part video presented at the bottom of this article is my first performance ever with a soft figure. First some background.

I was invited to perform the narration of "Tubby the Tuba" with the Community Band of Brevard yesterday. The composition includes a part for a frog. They asked me to bring one.

I don't own a frog, so I asked John Parisi to build me one. I got the frog about two weeks prior to the concert. I named him Farnsworth. And I practiced with him at home as time allowed and at one rehearsal with the band.

The video demonstrates all the things one should not do when working with a soft figure. These videos could be used in a seminar or workshop as examples of lame manipulation.

Now for the excuses. I've already made one. I am inexperienced working with soft figures. The parts of the show when I am just talking with the frog are okay. Not really what you'd call good, but okay. The segment where I am reading the narrative and the frog is inactive are terrible. And that's the longest part of the presentation.

Here's why:

I am reading a musical score that synchronizes the narrative with the music. I am reading words and notes. The words are really tiny on that score in order to fit everything onto only eight pages. And my vision is impaired. Which means I am concertrating on the score and not paying any attention to manipulation.

Nobody grilled me with the information that a soft figures jaw is normally open as opposed to a hard figure's which is normally closed. Consequently, the frog spends much of his quiet time sitting there with his mouth open. Judy, my cameraperson, trying to make me feel better, said it looks like Farnsworth is sitting in euphoric awe of the beautiful music. Yeah, right.

Tin can body

2010-06-01T20:57:00.005-04:00

I thought I'd use a paint can for the robot figure's body. I thought that because that was what I could find. But I disliked the round shape. Then, while I was looking on one of my shelves for something else I found a can of mineral spirits.

Exactly the right size and shape. The same as the one-gallon gasoline cans we used to be able to buy. Before everything went plastic. Exactly what I had dreamed when I was but a mere lad.

But what to do with the half gallon of mineral spirits still in the can? I hate to waste anything, particularly if it's going to kill my weeds, er, grass. And I don't want to pour it down the drain. But where to store it? Well, where else? How about that new, shiny round paint can I won't be using for the body? Done. Necessity is a mother.

After pouring the mineral spirits into the paint can and storing it on a shelf, I cleaned out the residual mineral spirits from its old can. (Flammable, don't you know? And inflammable, too.)

Next I set out to remove the pour hole and handle. Upon close inspection I saw that they are soldered on. I took out my handy soldering torch and hit the solder joints. Even with the residual mineral spirits washed out with water, some fumes lingered inside that can. I saw some fireworks. Don't try this at home. Especially at my home.

Both pieces came off cleanly leaving me this to work with.

Then a few swipes with the electric hand sander removed the paint.

This will be the perfect body. For a robot, that is. The dull metallic finish isn't going to do it, though. I'll deal with that issue soon.

2010-05-25T13:57:00.004-04:00

Here's a prototype of Andrew the Android. The head and body are paint cans. You can buy empty ones at Home Depot. The eyes are flashlights cut down to fit. These flashlights sell at Home Depot for something like six bucks apiece. I found them in the Dollar Store for $1.09 each. Always go to the Dollar Store first.

I got that funnel at the dollar store, too. It fits perfectly.

Arms and legs will be beer cans. Hands and feet will be anchovie and sardine tins.

This project isn't rocket science. But don't tell Andrew.

Return from the idle

2010-05-15T21:00:00.004-04:00

It's been a long while since I posted here. I've had to stay out of the workshop until I got better. Better at what? Building? Designing? Sculpting?

No. Walking. And standing up. And seeing.

When I was about nine years old, I wanted a ventriloquist dummy. There was no money for that, though. One night I dreamed that I built one from tin cans. The head was a number 10 coffee can, the arms and legs were jointed soup cans, and the body was, I think, a gasoline can. And the figure was, of course, a robot.

Now how a kid in 1949 knew anything about robots is beyond me. Maybe I saw one of those Flash Gordon serials. Anyway, that was the dream.

I never made it, though. But I always thought about it. Now, I've decided to make it. In my dream it had a control panel on its stomach. Switches, lights, guages. I'm building that now by using some of my long-since-abandoned electronic skills. Do you know that guys my age made their own computers in the 1970s? We had to. All you could buy was a kit.

Anyway, I'm cobbling together a mockup of a panel with lights and switches now.

(That title should say, "Mockup." Not seeing as good as I should. I missed that one. I'll fix it when I replace the video with version 2 of the panel.)

But guess what? It's hard to find stuff in tin cans anymore. Everything's plastic. I might have to root around at the land fill and dig down about 40 years.

And, of course, such a figure needs material. The script is finished. That's the hardest part, anyway.

If I get it done in time, I'll have it at the convention. See you there.

2009-10-11T14:51:00.003-04:00

I managed to make it to Peter Hefty's gig last night after my own. I walked in just as the three performers were saying goodnight. It's a new comedy club venture that they are promoting, and the Cape Canaveral Radisson was the first venue they tried out. This is a different concept. They promoted it and conducted it with a PG-13 theme. The room was large and almost full. This event was well-promoted, and the attendance seems to indicate that there is a market for a family-oriented comedy club.

I visited with Peter afterwards. Many members of the audience stopped by and congratulated him on his performance. He was on a roll.

We went from the show venue to the Radisson lounge. I worked there several years ago hosting a jazz jam session, and had a nice reunion with Tina, the bartender. Peter's colleagues were already there and we visited until Tina threw us out.

Peter and the boss tried to recruit me for their shows. Well, they encouraged me to give it a try. I don't know. What with George Bush leaving office and only PG-13 allowed, my one-hour show would be cut down to about half. Half a minute, that is.

Someone asked...

2009-10-10T17:10:00.002-04:00

Why did I use a picture of Steve Axtell with Edna instead of a picture of me holding Edna. Well, that's a good question. Several cameras were snapping away all during the festivities, but apparently no one took one of me. At least, I don't seem to have made the party picture gallery posted on the club's website.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FLVents/

Well, maybe one where I had my back to the camera. It's understandable. Those cameras are expensive. Can't risk breaking one.

Taking some time off

2009-10-10T15:21:00.005-04:00

I haven't added to this blog in a while. Nothing much has been going on around here with respect to ventriloquism.

I have a couple of projects on backlog in the workshop. Allergy problems are holding me back.

I attended a meeting of the Florida Ventriloquists Association last week and had a good time there seeing old friends and making new ones.

They asked me to perform. I had the Uncle Sweeter figure with me. You might remember him. I used this blog to describe the process when I built him three and a half years ago. I used a cheat sheet with outlined notes to remember some of his material. It's been a while since I worked, and the memory ain't what it was. Second thing to go.

Margaret Davis, our hostess, has a new Axtell figure. It's a middle-aged lady figure named Edna on Ax's website.

http://www.axtell.com/

Here's Steve with Edna:

Margaret is looking for some material to use with Edna and asked for suggestions. Edna has an expressive face. She reminds me of Mrs. Hickson, my seventh grade teacher. None of the boys liked ol' lady Hickson. Particularly having just come out of sixth grade with Miss Beverly Smithie, who was 22 years old and hot.

I picked Edna up and started ad libbing some lines. I think I was getting even with Mrs. Hickson by putting outrageous words in her mouth. That'll teach her to cancel my recess and make me clean the blackboards. Old bat.

Everyone including Margaret laughed at the lines, but they all agreed that Margaret couldn't use them. Margaret entertains in churches and at family functions. Oh, well. I tried.

I met ventriloquist Peter Hefty at the meeting. It was his first time at one of the meetings. He performed for us. He used a traditional hard-figure little boy character. Very funny.

Peter is working tonight at the Radisson in Cape Canaveral. That's near where my piano gig is tonight. I'm doing a single at a private party in a condo recreation room just down the street from the Radisson. If there's time afterwards, I'll stop in and see Peter on the way home.

2-axis Eye Movement, Part 3

2009-08-07T16:36:00.003-04:00

In the next step, I trim the excess dowel from the backs of the eyeballs, drill holes in the dowels for the syncro bar, and insert brass sleeves in the holes to minimize friction when the eyes move from side-to-side.

Next I will glue the left vertical frame to the platform, shape the blinker linkage, and install a return spring and stops to control blinker movement.

After that there will be a long pause in progress reports while I repeat everything I've done to one eye for the other eye.

Nobody said this was going to be easy.

2-axis Eye Movement, Part 2

2009-07-31T10:00:00.003-04:00

Before finishing the eye assembly I painted the eyelids. Once the eyeball is installed it cannot come out from between the lids, and painting the lids could result in some unwanted paint slopping onto the eyeballs themselves.

Here are the two lids painted and ready for an eyeball.

Observe that one vertical support is not on the platform. That will be glued in place when the assembly is complete.

Following are two views of the eyeball resting in the lower lid. You can see how it will move in all directions.

This view reveals the details of the iris as handcrafted by Tech-Optics.

The backs of both eyelids must be trimmed to allow the control post to move in a circle wide enought to allow the eye to move to its extremes on both axes but not so wide that the eyeball will fall out. It's a process of trial and error. Making small cuts at a time I was able to trim the eyelids without overdoing it.

The following four pictures show the eyeball and eyelid in various positions.

Before the assembly is ready to install in the head, there are several things to do. I must bend back the long horizontal brass rod that protrudes from the vertical support. Then I will trim it and bend its end into a small loop for the control linkage and return spring. Also the dowel that protrudes from the back of the eyeball must be shortened and drilled to accommodate the synchro bar component of the linkage.

Oh yeah. One more thing. I have to do all this a second time for the other eye.

2-axis Eye Movement, Part 1

2009-07-30T18:45:00.015-04:00

This project began on two fronts. When I repaired Chuck Norwood for Bill DeMar, I was fascinated by Ray Guyll's ingenious design for eyes that move on two axes, side to side and up and down.

The following article discusses my thoughts about building such mechanisms.

When he saw what he had done...

The second front is my own main figure, Dexter Dorsey, built by Tim Selberg in 1987.

Dexter has moving eyes, but they move only from side to side. He also has no blinkers. I decided to try to install 2-axis eyes similar to those of Chuck Norwood but with shell rather than leather blinkers.

First I needed some eyes. Dexter has large beautiful blue eyes, larger then usual irises with realistic detail. I contacted Tech-Optics, the folks who made Dexter's eyes. Here's a link.

http://www.tech-optics.com/

Jim at Tech-Optics made matching eyes for me. Here is one of them.

Notice no vertical hole for an axle. That's how I wanted it. I decided that using two axles would be too complex. I wanted something simpler. It seemed to me that if a figure had upper and lower eyelids, the eye could rotate freely inside them. I drew this sketch.

Next, I needed upper and lower eyelids. The upper lid will raise and lower. The lower lid will be out of sight, serving as a concave tray in which the eyeball turns in all directions.

I know how to make upper shell eyelids. I explained that process several years ago in this page:

http://www.alstevens.com/ventriloquism/vacuum.html

Making a lower eyelid is the same process. Just put the second lid on the bottom. Here are two lids I made held in place with some painter's tape to ensure that they fit and that the eye will indeed rotate on all axes.

The lower lid is permanently mounted on a wooden tray shown here.

And here is the eyeball in place in the lower lid with the upper lid resting on it.

To complete the assembly, I built an eyelid frame for the eyelid linkage to raise and lower the upper eyelid. The frame is made of 1/16" brass rod. I used a jig that I made specifically for this purpose.

Here's the frame ready to install in the assembly.

I used a wooden sphere to guide and shape the eyelid frame into place. This was to avoid getting too rough with the real eyeballs. Also, the sphere has a hole drilled to allow precise fitting of the frame into two upright braces in which the frame mounts. Here's how I did that.

Here's the frame mounted without the eyelid.

And here's the eyelid glued to the frame.

We're getting close. At least on one eyeball. The next installment takes us to the next level. Check back later for more details.

Protected Internet Photos

2009-07-30T16:59:00.002-04:00

Would you like to know how to add pictures from websites to your picture collection? Usually it's easy. Right-click the picture, choose "Save picture as..." and save the picture to your Documents/Pictures folder or wherever you want it.

But some websites won't let you do that. They employ netfoolery to disable the right-click function so you can't grab their stuff. Their proprietors think that works, and they even pay online services to provide the protection.

My websites used to have such protection measures built in. I implemented them myself because I can. Then I realized that no matter what I did, some smartass like me could get around it. So, I removed the thinly veiled protection.

What it comes down to, is if you can display it in pixels on my screen it's mine if I want it. Kind of like stealing satellite signals. If you bombard my house with electrons, and I am smart enough to decipher their meanings, I can and might.

So, here's how to circumvent picture protection on a PC, fellow libertarians.

Open the webpage that has the picture you want.
Make sure you have the highest resolution copy of the picture fully in view on your screen.
In the upper right corner of your keyboard, find the key that says, "Print Scr/Sys Rq" or something similar.
Hold down the Shift key and press that key. You have just copied an image of the entire screen into your computer's clipboard.
Close the webpage.
Open Start/Accessories/Paint
Choose Edit/Paste. The Paint accessory now has an image of the webpage's screen.
Use Paint's rectangle tool to define a rectangle around the picture part of the screen image.
Choose Edit/Copy
Choose File/New. You can discard the previous file, the one with the entire screen in it.
Choose Edit/Paste

There it is, the picture you aren't supposed to have as a Paint document. Now save it into your Documents/Pictures folder.

My good deed for the day.

El cheapo styrene

2009-07-30T12:18:00.003-04:00

Some of you know of my procedure for making blinker shells from sheet styrene by
using a vacuum table:

http://www.alstevens.com/ventriloquism/vacuum.html

I buy styrene in small sheets from a hobby store about 30 miles south. It's a
popular material that model railroaders use to make scenery, buildings, etc.

A few weeks ago I went to buy more, and the hobby shop had closed. Another mom and pop store bites the dust. Rats. I'll have to buy styrene online. That's cheaper (no
60-mile round trip), but I have to wait. Usually I don't realize I need styrene
until I need it.

Back home I went out to get the mail. I walked past the recycle container in the
driveway. An empty cat litter container was in there to be recycled. Hmm. I took
it into the workshop and measured its thickness with a micrometer. Very close to
the .060 size I use for styrene blinkers. I cut a square out of the side of the
container and stapled it to the frame just as I did with styrene. I cooked it
and vacuum-formed it and guess what. It works.

I can make blinkers now for virtually zero cost. (We have a lot of cats.)

Other plastic product containers might work, too. I'll have to experiment some.

The FLOP system: Learning what the competition charges

2009-06-24T12:31:00.004-04:00

Today is my birthday. I use the occasion to announce the release of a product that every ventriloquist in the world needs.

Everyone knows that ventriloquists won't tell other ventriloquists how much they charge. Or if they do quote a fee, they lie.

(This is the secret shame of the business. No one would have thought that ventriloquists, of all people, would ever be less than truthful about anything. It pains me to let the cat out of the case, er, bag.)

This circumstance is an impediment to novice ventriloquists trying to break into the business. They cannot determine the going rate. They don't know how much to charge. It is also a competitive disadvantage to the professional performer who wishes to underbid the competition.

To solve this problem I developed a system called the Fee Learning and Outing Program (FLOP) with which you can instantly learn the highest and lowest rates charged by your fellow ventriloquists.

Development of FLOP involved extensive research. For ten years a team of data collection specialists have been calling agents and ventriloquists around the world pretending to be looking to hire a ventriloquist. Each specialist had a performance type in which they specialized. Birthday parties, banquets, libraries, etc. The specialist requests and negotiates for a quote.

From this research we developed the FLOP Online Storage Data Interchange Cooperative (FOSDIC), with which subscribers can instantly retrieve the fees quoted by ventriloquists, and, in many cases, the amount finally agreed upon. This additional feature reveals to those wishing to hire a ventriloquist the extent to which many ventriloquists will negotiate.

To implement FLOP, we hacked the websites of all active ventriloquists. Hacking websites was the least challenging part of the project. It seems most ventriloquists use one of two passwords to access their servers. They use either their main dummy's name or the word, Farfel. Our team of twelve computer hackers was unable to determine the origin of this odd word.

To access FLOP, a subscriber opens the website of the ventriloquist in question, places the mouse over the crotch of the dummy, and simultaneously triple-right-clicks the mouse while holding down the minus key on the numeric keypad, the Caps Lock key, the F12 key, and the door to the 5.25" floppy diskette drive.

(Remember, FLOP software was developed ten years ago on a home computer. We're working on an upgrade.)

If the dummy's crotch is not visible, use the ventriloquist's.

A popup window appears.

(There might also be a popup advertisement window for Victoria's Secret, particularly if you put your mouse on the ventriloquist's crotch. Ignore the popup. So to speak.)

Enter your userid, password and the cube root of your hat size. (Sorry, you'll have to compute that number on your own. Our team of programmers has not figured out how to compute a cube root.) Once you are granted FLOP access, the window then displays the ventriloquist's fee structure, adjusted for inflation.

It also includes links to any and all published reviews of the ventriloquist's past performances, including those printed in church bulletins, written on venue restroom walls, and posted on the blogs of left-wing extremists.

If you are a Premiere VIP Member, you can display a graph showing how the ventriloquist's rates have changed over the years. Note that the graph does not go past October, 2008. Contemporary screen resolutions do not support increases such as Jeff Dunham's or drops such as recorded for the entire rest of the community.

An additional link downloads the complete library of issues of Barker Magazine including all text and graphics from the entire run of the publication. If you have a 1200 baud modem, be patient; it takes approximately 12 seconds to download the zip file.

The FOSDIC archives are available in a data dictionary titled, FLOP's Yesteryear Dictionary (FLOPYDIC).

The success of the FLOP project will determine its future. If enough folks subscribe, we will add to it other performance types. We've already begun prowling the web in search of mime, balloon twister, and face painter websites.

(Did you ever listen to the audio clips on a balloon twister's website? Makes my skin crawl. Lucky for us there are no audio clips on mime websites.)

Footnote: I began the FLOP project almost ten years ago. The question of performance fees came up on the then-legendary and contentious, monopolistic ventmail discussion group. No one there would post their fees, except one member who quoted $7.42 for a five-minute act with a Juro doll. The Doll did not move or speak during the act but merely sat still while the performer read all the lines from cue cards stolen from Col. Bill Boley's garbage can.

(It turned out that not only was the fellow not really a ventriloquist, but the doll's jaw string had retracted into the head, and the fellow did not know how to retrieve it. The ventfigures discussion group did not exist then, and he had no one to ask.)

The act was named Herman and Herman. Those who had seen the act reported a certain degree of confusion as to which character spoke which line. Most requested a refund. Herman and Herman are not included in the FOSDIC data collection research. They were deleted when Herman retired from show business to become caretaker of the family's pet memorial garden and strawberry business.

Good news, etc...

2009-06-17T14:35:00.000-04:00

The bad news is twofold. Small businesses around the USA are having trouble making ends meet. Postal rates have gone up.

The good news is that the appearance of junk mail in my snail mailbox has gone to virtually zero.

Has anyone else noticed this?

A day in the life of a semi-retired musician...

2009-06-15T14:22:00.002-04:00

Our community band played an outdoor concert yesterday for Flag Day. It's Florida. It's the middle of June. It was hot. No clouds. For most of the concert the band was shielded from the sun by the bandshell roof. The audience was not shielded. When the sun lowered, neither was the band.

The band had the audience outnumbered. We had to be there. They didn't.

(If God had meant for people to go outside in June this close to the equator, He would not have invented air conditioning.)

As I unpacked my tenor sax, I realized I had no mouthpiece. Dummy. I'd taken it out of the case and put it on a horn in the studio. There was barely time to drive home, get the mouthpiece, drive back, pull charts, and make the downbeat.

There was time only because the program began with the obligatory speeches by all the local potentates. As they spoke, I watched the audience dwindle in numbers. Obviously they had sense enough to come in out of the sun.

As could be expected, there were more speeches than we planned for, and they were too long. Plus the bagpipe player who played more tunes than he ought to. I didn't realize you could configure that many tunes from only five notes.

No surprise, then, that we got out of there an hour late.

At the end of the concert I had to hustle over to north of Orlando for a rehearsal with the Altamonte Jazz Ensemble. That included schlepping a keyboard and setting it up just in time to start the rehearsal.

My plan had included a stop at home to change clothes and grab my drug stache. No time for that.

When the rehearsal was over, several of us went to Hooters for burgers and beer. That was the highlight of the day. I came home afterwards and crashed and burned.

I slept until noon today. Because I'd spent yesterday without getting a hit off the ol' needle, my fasting blood sugar was above the national debt. I'm paying for a lifetime of excess and debauchery.

Is your act not getting booked? Try this...

2009-06-15T11:35:00.002-04:00

Terry Fator got hot by way of national exposure. He has a lot of talent, but it takes more than talent. Terry got lucky with a hot reality TV contest that just happens to feature entertainment.

Jeff Dunham took a different approach. He exploited youtube (or rather let youtube do the exploiting) to build a huge fan base among young people. (That's not all he did, but it helps make the point.)

And the point is: Two practitioners of a relatively minor and obsolete entertainment artform used modern technology with its own built-in fanbase to build themselves a huge constituency. They had to do it without being paid for it, but it really worked for them.

Here's my idea. Over the past several months I watched the popularity of Karaoke grow. A group of my friends gathers every Wednesday evening at an Applebee's. About a year ago they introduced Karaoke on Wednesday nights. (We're not there for the Karaoke. We were there first.) At first it seemed to be a fizzle. But as time went by, the crowds of young people grew. Now, it's wall-to-wall young adults every Wednesday night cheering on whomever has the cajones to take the mic and sing off key and out of meter.

There it is. A built-in high-energy audience (fully loosened up by beer and looking for a good time) and a professional sound system. Cut a deal with a Karaoke operator. Ask for 5 minutes (which is the length of the average singing participant's performance) to take the mic.

Introduce yourself with heavy references to Jeff Dunham and Achmed. Virtually everyone there knows who Jeff is. Associate yourself with what Jeff does in their eyes. (Hey, why not? Everyone else there associates themselves with Elvis and Madonna.) Do a killer five minutes with your funniest, most off-the-wall figure. Finish with you and the figure singing (badly or not, it doesn't matter; they don't know the difference) a tune along with the Karaoke machine.

Make sure everyone there knows your name.

Hit every Karaoke bar in town. You'll see a lot of the same people in the audiences. It's a culture. If you are good, they will start yelling out your punch lines.

Build a following of young people who are old enough to drink and young enough to want to go out at night. And young enough to have parents they can tell about you.

Get the media to cover it if you can. Get someone to record it wih their cellphone for your next youtube upload. The grainier the better.

When everyone in town knows who you are, your more traditional marketing efforts should begin to work, and the gigs should start piling up.

More about breaking and entering

2009-05-26T17:03:00.000-04:00

In case you are thinking of getting a combination lock that can't be picked, think again. I just learned how to crack the combination to the typical combination padlock you buy at the hardware store. I bought one to test and had my wife remove the package and hide the instructions from me. It took about five minutes to decifer the combination. It could have taken longer, maybe a half hour, but I got lucky.

Like lock-picking, the method I used is widely available on the Internet.

Picking a lock for real

2009-05-13T09:30:00.004-04:00

I learned how to pick locks over the weekend. Yesterday I had to use that skill. It was a sad day.

I visited a friend now home from a stay in a rehab facility following surgery. We sat in his house and chatted. The doorbell rang.

A distraut woman was at the door. She was frantic. She checks in on my friend's neighbor, an elderly lady who lives alone, once every couple of weeks. The lady was not answering the door or the phone and hadn't for several days. She asked about a ladder to look in the garage to see if the lady's car was there.

My recuperating friend was not able to participate. I took his ladder next door and saw that the car was indeed in the garage. The woman had already called 911, but no one had responded. The woman did not have a key. The doors were locked.

I went to my friend's workshop and found a small screwdriver and a heavy-duty paper clip. I picked the lock to the neighbor's front door, went in, and found the elderly lady dead on the floor next to her bed. The younger woman freaked out. I told her to call 911 with an update. A deputy sheriff was there within five minutes.

Now everybody involved thinks it was some kind of weird irony or fate that I learned to pick a lock two days before I needed to pick a lock to find a dead body. Except me, that is. I believe in coincidence over weird irony and fate.

I told the deputy how I got into the house, just so he'd know. He wrote it all down. He said there was no problem because the situation called for extraordinary measures. She might have still been alive.

Locks and Security

2009-05-12T19:55:00.003-04:00

I'm doing research for a writing project. I remember stuff from my youth about how to pick locks but did not recall the details.

A google search turned up numerous sites that explain how to do it. Picking common pin tumbler lock is a very simple procedure using two homemade tools.

Out of curiosity I made those tools from some scrap brass in the workshop.

Sunday I picked the padlock on my workshop door. All my power tools are in there.

Yesterday I picked the deadbolt lock on my studio where I keep all my figures and my musical instruments. It's the same kind of lock that's on all the doors on my house.

Each time it took less than a minute to get the lock open. Criminentlies!

And how to do it is available to anyone with internet access. They even show you how to make the tools with a bobby pin and the pocket clip from a ballpoint pen. Wait until you read about "bumping" a lock to open it. That's really scary.

On one site a locksmith advises that people spend the extra money (about $150) for locks that cannot be so easily picked. Tomorrow, I'm going to see about getting deadbolt locks from this maker, one of the ones the locksmith recommends.

http://consumer.schlage.com/

I think until then I'll sleep on a chair in the studio with a shotgun in my lap.

Define yourself. Take the vent test...

2009-05-08T11:02:00.012-04:00

Ventriloquists are a diverse bunch, a motley crew. We typically have only one thing in common, the ability to make inanimate objects seem to talk. But our differences define us as ventriloquists.

What we lack, however, are pejorative names. Ways to look down upon one another by how we refer to our differences. Putdowns. Nicknames.

Other professions have that. They get to call their own members names associated with their specialites. Pill pushers. Bone crackers. Shrinks. Empty suits. Numbers crunchers. Pipe jockeys. Ambulance chasers. All in fun, of course.

Consider our differences as ventriloquists:

The kinds of ventriloquial figures we use:

hard figures
soft puppets
latex and vinyl figures

The characters those figures represent:

people
animals
inanimate objects (jalapenos, e.g.)

The content of our shows:

family comedy
adult comedy
gospel
message (drug use, safety, reading, etc.)

The audiences we target:

children
family gatherings
church-goers
night club patrons

Venues:

comedy club
private party
church
corporate
schools, libraries

(None of these lists is meant to be comprehensive.)

Now choose one element from each list that best defines how you practice ventriloquism. Then choose from these lists the corresponding putdown to arrive at the way you can be insulted by members of your profession who make different choices.

The kinds of ventriloquial figures we use:

blockhead
rag doll
rubber ducky

The characters those figures represent:

store dummy
fuzzy bunny
talking carrot

The content of our shows:

goody-goody two shoes
dirtbag
bible thumper
boring lecturer

The audiences we target:

rug rats
homebodies
the holier than one 'nother
drunks

Venues:

dive
backyard
tent meeting
office orgy
day care

Based on all the above, I am a dirtbag vent who uses blockhead store dummies to entertain drunks in dives.

Who are you?

Is Ventriloquism a part of Magic?

2009-05-08T10:09:00.008-04:00

This question was asked recently on one of the ventriloquism discussion groups. Many members answered yes. Their position was based on the element of illusion that the art forms have in common. I suggested not and explained why. However, having taken a position, most folks find it necessary to defend that position even in the face of logical and reasonable arguments to the contrary. It stops being about the issue and becomes about being right. Human nature. Right or wrong, here is a synopsis of why I took an opposing view. So, decide for yourself and be right. Or not.

Ventriloquism and magic are like singing and acting. They are separate entertainment art forms that have some elements in common such that they blend well when practiced together in a coordinated presentation.

Ventriloquism and magic have in common the element of illusion, the latter involving mystery and secret, the former not.

Singing and acting have in common the use of voice to convey a story, the former involving melodic and harmonic components, the latter not.

But is a good actor automatically a good singer? Anyone who saw Michelle Pfeiffer in The Fabulous Baker Boys knows better. And is a good singer automatically a good actor? Anyone who saw Keely Smith in Thunder Road knows better.

So is ventriloquism magic? I think not. Nobody knows how Houdini made the elephant disappear, but virtually everyone knows how Bergen made Charlie speak.

Ventriloquism is more like juggling than magic. The audience readily sees how it is done but most cannot do it themselves. The element of message (comedy, typically) vs the element of surprise (Where did that elephant go?) is what entertains.

When you pull the dummy out of the case and he begins speaking, no one in the audience gasps and says, "Holy cow, that wooden object is actually talking! How does he do that?" Anecdotal testimony to the contrary notwithstanding.

But...a quote often comes up whenever musicians try to define music or a musical genre:

"Talking about music is like dancing about architecture."

...which suggests that we cannot adequately describe some things to those who have not experienced those things. Thus you cannot use words to explain that which defies description, particularly to the satisfaction of all the experts.

(When asked to define jazz, Louis Armstrong said something like, "If you have to ask, don't mess with it.")

Paper mache

2009-04-22T17:08:00.002-04:00

I'm working on two replica projects. I had the original figures in my workshop last year and made rtv molds of the heads for owner insurance. The owners want copies, so I am casting shells.

The rotocaster approach won't work because neither mold is rotocaster-friendly. They are in two halves each, designed to be cast as front and back halves independently.

I would like to avoid the toxic chemicals associated with urethane and fiberglass. And I am alergic to MagicSculp and Epoxy Sculpt. So I decided to use paper mache.

I have some experience casting in paper mache. I built Renfield that way several years ago.

Rather than go through the tedious and messy paper strip and glue routine, I tried some of those products from the craft store that are supposed to be good substitutes. Forget it. The most promising such product was Paperclay. It must be good for something, but it is unsuitable for casting shells from molds. The medium shrinks as it sets up and pulls away from the mold and from itself. Also it is very expensive.

So, I reverted to the old tried and true method. Newspaper strips and a 50-50 mix of Elmer's white glue and water. Cheap, strong, lightweight. But time-consuming and messy.

A paper mache cast needs several layers. To make it easier to keep track of where I have applied strips in subsequent layers, I always alternated between black and white newsprint and the Sunday comics.

Guess what? Our prestigious local newspaper, Florida Today, does not have a Sunday comics section. A sign of the economy? Or the declining tastes of the current generation? Whatever. I used car advertisement pages instead which are plentiful and colorful.

But guess what? The news sections have lots of color pictures, too. Eye candy for that generation that needs instant gratification and can't be bothered to actually read words, I suppose. I had to use the financial section to get strips of paper that I could distinguish from the car ads.

My parents and grandparents used to grouse about the younger generation, my generation. They were wrong.

Preparation for a show

2009-04-09T12:12:00.007-04:00

The subject of preparation for a show was recently raised on the Worldvents discussion group. As I began to address it, I realized that my answer was becoming a candidate for a blog article. So here it is.

There are different approaches to the issues of how you prepare for a show and how you deal with your patrons before the show.

My preparation is probably less conventional than that for most vents because I combine comedy with music. I typically perform as a musician with a house band. The first set is music. The second set is comedy.

Setup
Setup is easy for the vent part. It has to be. I have several different instruments to unpack, tune, and put in place on the bandstand. That takes most of my setup time.

For vent, I have a rollaround case that Clinton Detweiler built to my specifications. It contains everything I need for the vent part of the show. Clinton did the case itself. I build inserts from thin plywood to hold my stuff in place.

The figures and other items travel in the case ready to be pulled out during a performance. They are held in place for traveling with Velcro straps, which I release before the show starts. The figures sit on small shelves in the case.

The case stays either onstage if there is room for it and elsewhere nearby if there is not. It holds three hard figures and the performance stand. (I rarely use props.) Setup involves finding a place for it, rolling it from the car into place, and removing and storing the lid. If the case has to be offstage or backstage, I roll it onstage at the beginning of the show, usually during intermission before the comedy set. If a bandstand has no room for the case at all, which often happens, I go to and from the case wherever it is between figures.

When I want to use a figure, I reach in from behind the case and pull the figure out and sit it on the stand. When I am finished with the figure, I put it back on its shelf.

My original design for the case made it just tall enough that it could be the performance stand, too. Because so many venues don't have room onstage for it to be next to me, I abandoned that idea and opted instead for the additional storage space I got by making it a little taller.

For shows that are comedy only and don't involve a house band and don't have house sound, I take my own sound system, which I set up before the party begins.

Mingling
As a musician, I cannot avoid it. It's a different dynamic than comedy. It involves taking breaks, going to the bar, talking to the patrons, selling CDs, etc. Those venues are usually saloons, the patrons are mostly strangers to one another, and I wear normal clothes to perform--nothing flashy to signal, "Clown!"--so I can blend in before showtime if there is no green room to hide out in.

For comedy only, I stay out of sight until I am announced. If it's a corporate group, I've already learned from the planner who I can mention during the show and what I need to know about them.

I don't call volunteers onstage, so that is not a concern.

For comedy and jazz club type shows, I just pick on people nearest to me with generic putdowns or flirtations from the dummy.

Dinner
If dinner is included, I ask to be served in the green room. If eating with the guests is unavoidable, I try to blend in and be nondescript. That's not always easy because in many situations they saw my promo picture and know that I am not one of their group. If they ask what I do, I just say, "I'm in the show." If they push it, I say, "It's a surprise."

Mental Preparation
I don't do anything to psych myself up. No meditation, yoga, or anything other-worldly like that. I try to completely forget about the show's content the day of the show from the time I get out of bed in the morning until I am announced onstage. If I don't know it by then, I never will.

Before going onstage, I take a peek at the audience. I pick out someone to play to, usually a pretty girl or an elderly person.

Welcome to my world

2009-04-03T18:36:00.002-04:00

This thing greets me in my workshop each morning.

No, it's not a mummy puppet or even a dead terrorist. It's an armature, the skeleton, so to speak, of a clay sculpture. I needed the clay for something else. This is what remains of the genesis of a couple of the figures I built over the past several years.

I kind of like it.

What's happenin'?

2009-03-31T16:57:00.003-04:00

Not much is happening. I need to finish making molds to try in the rotocaster. But I need some adequate mold release for where places on one half of the mold touches places on the other half of the mold.

I would have ordered the stuff from Smooth-On with their online order process, but they require a minimum order of twenty bucks. I don't believe in ordering something extra just to get the order up to some arbitraty minimum. And don't tell me about credit card minimums and all that. I used to have a merchant account and know how they work. That's all a lot of BS to get you to order more stuff.

So I called their Pennsylvania office to order by telephone. When the nice lady learned where I live, she told me about a store in Orlando that carries Smooth-On products. I called them yesterday and ordered one can of Ease Release 200 by telephone. It should be here today or tomorrow.

So, maybe I'll have some rotocasting progress to report soon.

I have made progress on the alergy front. I find that if I properly use surgical gloves and don't touch my face until I've washed my hands, that I can work with the stuff that made my eyelids swell and get flaky. I have yet to try casting anything though. We'll see what happens when I start pouring urethane into molds. If I start to look like Freddy Kreuger again, I'll know what causes it.

In the meantime, have you noticed what wack jobs many ventriloquists are? Me, too.

No more slack

2009-03-23T21:16:00.003-04:00

I found and fixed the problem with the rotocaster's intermittent pauses. It was a loose nut. Well, actually, it was a carriage bolt that was not holding onto the wood the way a carriage bolt is supposed to. Tightening the nut on the other side of the frame fixed it.

Now I'm rebuilding some molds to make them rotocaster-friendly. Here's the first one.

Guess who this is.

Replicating a Legend

That's right, I'm giving it another try. As I said many times, I don't believe in rushing into anything.

2009-03-22T13:26:00.008-04:00

The homebrew rotocaster is completed.

Here's a video of the device in operation. It looks just like many of the other rotocasters you see on youtube.

I made one change to the original design. The gear and pulley mechanism make the device topheavy on the vertical rotation. The designer suggests positioning the mold to balance the load. I chose instead to glue a block of wood to the other end of the outer frame.

The original design is found at this link:
Rotomold Machine

Observe in the video that rotation speeds up occasionally and then pauses briefly. This is a balance and friction problem. It almost seems to go into neutral then restart. After shooting this video, I rebalanced the load. The pauses still happen, but not nearly as often.

One clue is found in the motor's behavior if you grasp the outer frame and stop its rotation. The motor changes direction. Microwave ovens might need that feature. If your turkey bumps into the wall, you don't want the plate to stop rotating.

There is no easy way to declutch the mechanism to balance the load. I have to remove the motor from its connection to the axle. Which means I have to unscrew it from its wooden mount. That's a pain. If I ever make another one, I'll consider that requirement.

The infrequent pauses should not compromise the casting process. I've cast by doing the rotation manually. No way was I less erratic in my rotations than this machine will be.

Next step is to actually cast something and see how it works. That means I have to remake the molds. The ones I have now leak. It was bad enough getting urethane all over my clothes. I don't want it gumming up my cool new machine.

2009-03-21T11:38:00.002-04:00

The workshop is cleaned and orderly again. Again? When was it ever orderly? Never mind, it is now. I don't know how long that will last, but at least now I have room to work and can find things.

The rotocaster project is well underway. The motor arrived in the mail a couple of days ago, completing the collection of parts I purchased online. I thought I had a tap and die kit hidden away in all that clutter, but when I cleaned the workshop, it did not surface. I need a 5/16" tap to thread the mitre gears. Right after I buy one, I'll find the tap and die set. It's probably in the garage, which is in about the same condition the workshop was in. Are you beginning to understand my cluttered mind?

Did you ever wonder how those guys on public TV keep such neat workshops when they show you how to build a cabinet or restore a chair? I bet if you visited them when the cameras weren't due in, you'd see a different picture.

Back to the project. There migh be some clearance and binding problems as the contraption gets closer to completion. I am expecting that. Unless you buy really expensive wood or have a joiner/planer, you can't get perfect wood. And measuring for precision holes is a challenge when your eyes are past their prime. We'll see. In the meantime, here is the frame assembly, which I temporarily assembled to see if it will even turn.

And here is the base with one of the supports clamped on and setting up.

Off to the hardware store to get a 5/16" tap.

Where did the time go?

2009-03-16T13:04:00.005-04:00

I had to take a day off from building my rotocaster. Well, it might turn out to be more than a day.

I cut some wood, and it's ready to be drilled and assembled. Here it is.

I moved to the part of my workshop where I do the drilling. At that point I realized that there is barely room to move around in the workshop, the metal shed where I do all the dirty work, sawing, sanding, and so on. The workbench is piled with clutter. I can't find anything.

That shed is also where I store the lawn equipment and a lot of junk. Every cardboard box that the UPS guy ever brought here is in that shed. Every computer monitor and printer that ever stopped working is there. I have stored there a ton of obsolete computer books and software, too.

It's time for spring cleaning.

I spent most of this morning hauling junk out to the curb. This is Florida and it's hot. It's maybe thirty yards to the curb. Some of that junk is heavy. Consequently, I've also spent a lot of time resting.

That's not all of it. Most of it is still in the shed.

Time was a job like this would take maybe a morning. Time was. Where did that time go that was? It was only, what, twenty-five, thirty years ago?

I asked my wife what that wet stuff is on my back, face, and under my arms. She said, "It's sweat. Don't you remember that? Get used to it."

Excuse me, I have to go for a nap now.

About being back...

2009-03-15T12:20:00.003-04:00

Thanks to all who sent email to welcome me back to blogging.

Someone asked why my blog morphed into being mainly about building ventriloquist figures and less about performing with ventriloquism. The answer is easy. Virtually everything that can be said about the craft of ventriloquism has been said countless times.

Maybe that's why the discussion groups frequently descend into politics, religion, personal health, and inspirational stories.

More rotocaster progress.

2009-03-14T17:57:00.004-04:00

I went to Home Depot today and finished out buying parts. I have everything except the motor, which is on its way. The picture shown here does not include a few tools I bought, which don't really figure into the cost of the project since I'll use them for other projects. It also does not show the two boards. I don't need to show the two boards. Everybody knows what a board looks like. You'll see them after they're cut into the wooden pieces for the stand and two rotating frames.

Don't count the nuts. One of them fell off and rolled under the table. I'll get it later.

I'm tired after all that shopping. Maybe I'll start building tomorrow.

Yet another update

2009-03-13T20:28:00.004-04:00

Not much happened since my last post. But the roller skate bearings arrived in today's mail, which adds to my collection of unassembled parts.

I don't need that many bearings, but that was the minimum quantity I could buy. Maybe I'll take up roller skating.

Tomorrow it's off to Home Depot to buy wood and hardware. At which point I can begin building. The microwave oven motor will be here next week. I hope to have more progress to show by then.

Parts for the rotocaster project

2009-03-12T16:43:00.003-04:00

The UPS guy came yesterday. This time the package was for me rather than for my quilting, crafting first lady. He and I were amazed that it was for me this time.

Here's what I got.

The four white round things are miter gears. I need only two of them, but they come in a package of four. The two black round things are timing pulleys, and the black belt has teeth that fit the pulleys.

In case you want to build one along with me or just want to understand how all these components fit into the project, here's a link to the website with plans and directions.

Rotomold Machine

Rotocaster Status Report

2009-03-11T09:55:00.007-04:00

Here's where I am on the rotocaster project that I introduced earlier.

I'm baaack! With a new and challenging project

My friend with all the tools says the project should be easy to build.

I ordered parts online

A microwave oven motor from Martin Microwave
A box of 16 skate bearings from skates.com
The miter gears, belt, and pulleys from sdp-si.com

I have yet to buy the wood and hardware to complete the assembly.

So far I have spent $88.48 on the project including shipping and have nothing except optimism to show for it.

It looks like an investment of around a hundred bucks will do it. If you have an old microwave or rotisserie oven with a working motor, some old roller skates, unused shelf board, and miscellaneous hardware, you can do it for less.

More to come.

2009-03-09T09:58:00.003-04:00

Almost two years ago I built a figure for a client to the client's specifications. I describe the project in an article titled, DeadEye Albert and Friend.

Here's what he looked like.

The client decided after a year using the figure that the dead eye was disconcerting to his audiences. He asked me to retrofit a regular eye. So I did. Here he is now, looking meaner than ever.

So, which one do you prefer? Send me an email.

Back to Troy

2009-03-07T00:28:00.003-05:00

Last July I asked in this blog for a Florida ventriloquist to get in touch with me. I had his dummy and couldn't remember his name or email address. The owner, Tom Dahl called me, and the project is completed. Here is Troy following a facelift and with a new wig, new hands and a new body.

He needed a haircut, that's for sure, so Tom took him to the barbershop.

Here's Troy all trimmed and ready to go home.

An update on Sonny

2009-03-06T08:17:00.005-05:00

Last summer I rebuilt Sonny for Michael Harrison. You can read about Sonny. Scroll down to Previous Posts at the bottom of this page, start with "Not Far From the Tree," and read that article and the ones above it. If that article has scrolled off, use the archives and start in March of last year.

Some of you asked me to post how that project turned out, so here he is.

The new Sonny holds the original Sonny's noggin in his lap. All I did to the original was replace the leather patch under his jaw and give him a new hairpiece.

Michael uses the new guy in his shows. He tells the story of his great-grandfather and how he came to be in possession of Sonny.

About Michael Harrison becoming famous. He appeared on "America's Got Talent." He made it to the second round. The judges seemed to blow him off in that second session, but actually they liked him. Some creative video editing gave him about two seconds of airplay followed by some dismissive comments as the judges seemed to be commenting on his act. Actually, they were talking about someone else. I guess they didn't want another ventriloquist getting a shot at the big time. Who knows?

I'm baaack! With a new and challenging project.

2009-03-05T23:44:00.006-05:00

It's been quite some time since I posted here. I've been busy with other projects not related to ventriloquism.

I also have been dealing with an allergy problem with the chemicals I use for casting, and that has kept me out of the workshop. I think I might have the problems solved. Time will tell.

The point of this post is to announce that I am about to undertake the construction of a small rotocast machine, one big enough to cast heads and hands. I got the idea from discussions with fellow figuremaker Les Lamborn. He sent me a link to a website that tells how to do it. I also read everything else I could find on the Internet and watched every youtube video I on the subject.

I have not decided whether to motorize it. A hand crank would be acceptable if I did not plan to make a lot of casts. But then why bother making a rotocast machine for only a few projects. I'm back and forth on this one.

I made a commitment to the project to the extent that I have ordered all the parts I need. The other materials—wood, hardware, special tools—will come from the local Lowes or Home Depot.

It looks to me like the woodworking and hardware installation requires a certain precision that I might not be ready to undertake, both in skill and tool inventory. This contraption cannot be allowed to bind up as it spins around. Not to worry. I have a close friend who builds radio controlled model airplanes. He has every woodworking tool imaginable and is skilled in their use. I will tap into that resource as the project proceeds.

And, of course, I will let you know how it goes.

Troy's owner: Send me an email, please

2008-07-04T09:54:00.003-04:00

Two days ago the hard disk on my main computer was snuffed out by a lightening strike. Most of my data files are okay; I keep copies on a removable hard disk device. However, I loat my email address book.

So, if we have been regular or even occasional correspondents, please send me an email message so I can get your address again. Members of worldvents need not do that. I can reach you through the list. Judy has all the family members in her email, so I don't need messages from family members, either.

There is one fellow whose address I need. I can't remember your name, but I'm working on your vent figure now. The figure's name is Troy, I think. (It seems I lost some brain cells, too.) You live in Florida, and you brought your old figure to my workshop a while back for a restringing, repaint, and to replace the hand that your dog chewed up. That ought to be enough information to narrow it down.

I hope you read this. Please send me a short email so we can communicate again.

My email address is: al@alstevens.com.

Head to Head

2008-06-03T13:37:00.002-04:00

Sonny's new head is completed except for the wig, which is on order. Here are the original Sonny and the new Sonny side by side.

The new Sonny has several improvements over the old, as follows:

Side-to-side self-centering eye movement
A precision jaw fit in place of the leather neckpatch
Sculpted, painted palate instead of the red cloth in the original
Ball and socket neck
The seam between the head's front and back is filled in
Contemporary paint job
Contemporary headstick controls.

About the controls. Here are pictures of the old and new controls.

The old control, which was a mouth lever only, is made from two lengths of stiff coat hangar wire bent to form the lever and interface with the jaw.

The new controls are positioned the way Micheal decided he wants them. He uses soft figures in his act and wasn't sure what would work for him, so he stopped by the workshop one day and tried out the figures I have here. He liked Dexter's controls with the jaw lever under the forefinger and the eye control in front for the thumb, so that's what we emulated.

Here's a heads up. Watch for the name Michael Harrison in the days to come. He's about to be famous, and he's about to add significantly to the credibility that ventriloquism has gained in the past couple of years.

Sonny's Paint Job

2008-05-16T17:38:00.003-04:00

I've been shut down for a few days while the fires passed through. Florida had about 80 brush fires last week, several of them within a quarter mile of my home. We had the RV ready to roll and our irreplaceable things ready to load. That includes my current dummy projects, my own figures, and some musical instruments.

The fires seem to be over now, although we're still without rain. I'm taking projects back into the workshop one at a time. Today, I set up to paint Sonny, the replica dummy that I am building for ventriloquist Micheal Harrison. He has his base coat and is ready for the details. Here's a shot of Sonny I and Sonny II.

You can see the challenge. Sonny II needs to capture the essence of Sonny I, the figure with which Michael's great-grandfather performed. Yet he also needs a more contemporary look, one that looks better in closeup work. We'll see how I do. One good think about paint—if you don't like what you've done, you can start all over.

Face to Face

2008-04-08T10:58:00.006-04:00

You'll recall that I wondered about Sonny's origins. We now think we know who made Sonny. At first we thought he might be a Mack figure. There are similarities in the paint blending that resemble Mack's work. But the control linkages are unlike any Mack I've seen, so we wondered. Ventriloquist, collector and historian Tom Ladshaw suggested that Canadian figure maker Len James might have been the builder. This kind of fits because Frank Merryfield, the ventriloquist who originally owned Sonny, was a Canadian. Tom dug into his picture archives and came up with this picture of James working on a figure.

The similarities in carving and paint details are close enough to Sonny's that we can safely declare Sonny to be a Len James figure. Mystery solved.

Sonny's new face is cast and under assembly. Here's a picture of the old Sonny alongside the beginnings of the new Sonny.

There are some changes to the plans. Originally, I intended to make the copy as close to the original as possible. First, I decided not to replicate the under-the-jaw leather patch on the copy. They are difficult to install, look shoddy up close, and, over time, wear out. I had to remove the patch from the original Sonny to make the mold, so I'll have to replace it. Every indication is that the patch I removed is not original. It and the neck has been repainted. and the paint does not match the other flesh tones.

Figure makers in the old days used that neck patch to cover the hole under the jaw on woodcarved figures. Mack, Marshall, and others employed the patch device. It worked fine because ventriloquists worked onstage under bright lights. Audiences did not notive the patch. But you can see it in closeup snapshots of Jerry Mahoney and other vintage figures. Precedent exists for replacing the patch with a sculpted neck when making a cast replica. The Jerry Mahoney replicas made first by Ray Guyll and now by Jerry Layne have a sculpted neck.

Observe the necks of the two heads in the photo. The original has a gaping hole where I've removed the patch. The replica has a sculpted neck.

Michael Harrison, Sonny's owner, asked that the replica have moving eyes. The original does not. Thus the eye assembly in the photo.

There are other changes that become evident as the project continues. I'll discuss them later as the project continues.

Debugging Sonny

2008-04-03T13:12:00.005-04:00

Since I had to mix urethane to cast Sonny's jaw, I decided to do the whole head that way. The molds are in two halves, front and back, so slush casting is tedious. I had to slowly slush the wet urethane around each half being ever so careful to keep it from spilling over the rims until the urethane set up. That takes at least a half an hour per cast. If you set the mold/cast down before that, the stuff is still flowing enough to settle in deep pools in the low spots.

I don't have the patience for this kind of work, but I did it.

Here are the casts in the molds ready to be de-molded.

No matter how many times I do this, the cast is never thick enough in places. It can be paper thin and pliable even to the point of tearing. I had to add layers after I thought I was done. Even then, the edges will need to be reinforced before I assemble the two parts.

Here are the casts, demolded and ready for some finish work.

You might wonder about that black spot under the right ear. That is a small moth that got into the process sometime during the molding and casting processes. Here's a closeup.

Something makes me want to leave that moth there. It would be hidden by the wig, but I'd know it was in there, representing the many years that Sonny lay silent in an attic storage trunk with only moths to keep him company.

But I'll probably allow pragmatism to prevail over sentiment and debug the figure.

Sonny's Mother Mold

2008-04-01T22:07:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I made a mold of Sonny's two head halves and the jaw. The mold material is RTV rubber, which is flexible and doesn't stick to anything except itself. But because RTV is a flexible rubber, you can't cast into it unless it has a rigid foundation. That foundation is called a mother mold.

Mother molds can be made from any medium that is pliable when wet and sets up hard. You can use plaster of paris, plaster bandages, paper mache, fiberglass, and so on. I chose a product called Plasti-Paste for this project. It has all the properties needed for a mother mold plus it is non-toxic and sets up in only 90 minutes. Normally I'd use something less expensive for a project that involves only one casting, but I'd never used Plasti-Paste, plan to use it for my Ricky-Tik project, and wanted to learn how it works. Here's Sonny's head parts with the mother molds added.

After the mother mold hardened, I removed the original head sculpture from the molds and put them away. Here are the molds themselves flipped over and ready for a casting to be added.

I have several choices for a casting medium. Paper mache, MagicSculp, Epoxy Sculpt, fiberglass, and playurethane. I am certain to use urethane to cast the jaw since its inner details, such as teeth, would be difficult to get to using a hand-cast medium. The jaw needs to be poured.

I slush-molded two head halves with urethane in the first stages of the Ricky-Tik project, and it isn't easy. Consequently, I haven't decided whether Sonny's head will be urethane or a medium that is easier to work with.

More to come...

Preparing to Replicate Sonny

2008-03-30T16:51:00.004-04:00

The first step in replicating a ventriloquist figure's head is to prepare the original head for a mold. Any cracks, screwholes, crevices, and other openings must be filled so the mold material does not flow into them and be difficult to remove.

Sonny's new head is to look just like the original, flaws and all. Which means the seam separating the front and back will be exposed. Rather than trying to fill that seam with something temporary, I decided to mold the halves separately. Here are the head halves and the jaw ready for me to pour a mold.

I taped the eyeholes over with painters masking tape and filled the jaw hole with modeling clay. I put screws in the screw holes and filled some nail holes with Plastic Wood.

Then I poured the mold. Here is the head fully encased in RTV mold-making medium.

The next step adds a mother mold to the three pieces before I remove the original head from the molds. That step must wait for the mold medium to completely set up. I'll report more after I've done that.

Not Far From the Tree

2008-03-24T19:16:00.005-04:00

Michael Harrison is a professional ventriloquist who has been working cruise ships. You can read about him at his website by clicking here.

Michael has been working the Disney Magic for several years. The ship docks every Saturday at Port Canaveral, about 10 miles from where I live. Michael contacted me with an amazing story.

Many years ago a Canadian ventriloquist named Frank Merryfield performed under the name “The Cornish Wizard.” That ventriloquist was Michael Harrison's great-grandfather.

Michael never met Merryfield, but he heard stories about him all his life and had pictures such as this one of his great-grandfather performing.

A while ago Michael was visiting a magician friend, Don Robinson, who told him he had something that Michael should probably have. From a trunk in the attic, the uncle pulled out Sonny, the dummy that Merryfield performed with.

Michael took Sonny home and thought about how he could use it in his shows. Sonny's story is compelling, and Michael thought he'd like to do a bit where he tells the story and then introduces Sonny to the audience.

Except that he did not want to expose this personal treasure to the rigors of performing. He did not want to risk its damage or loss. So he decided to have a copy made.

And that's where I came in.

Michael brought Sonny's head to my workshop disassembled. Here's what I got:

We discussed the various options and agreed that I will build a new body and make a replica of the head. Michael will perform with the replica and the original can stay at home safely in storage.

Sonny should look about the way he looks now. But it's difficult to see what a dummy looks like based on a grainy old snapshot and a pile of parts. So, my first job was to put the parts together and see what we have. Here he is.

Guess what? He works!

His jaw mechanics are unlike anything I've seen with a complex linkage made of a stiff spring and two moving lengths of stiff coat hangar wire twisted to form a lever action. It looks like the work of someone who has never seen the insides of professsional ventriloquist dummy. My guess is that Merryfield either made the dummy himself or had it made. Of course, given the times, it could have come from nearly anywhere. He might have found it in a pawn shop. Who knows? I am not an expert on vintage ventriloquist dummies. Perhaps an expert out there can shed some light on the mystery.

In the meantime, this little guy named Sonny is mounted on the workbench and about to get a twin brother.

Replicating a Legend

2008-03-22T13:49:00.010-04:00

Over a year ago I took on the project of restoring a Frank Marshall Ricky-Tik figure for a ventriloquist client. This particular Ricky had been repainted with clown makeup. The client wanted the clown to look like the little boy looked when the figure was new.

You can read the article about that project by clicking here.

Ricky-Tiks are small figures. They stand about 36" tall with heads and hands about three-quarters the size of a traditional professional hard figure. The one I restored has fixed eyes. It is the ideal size for young ventriloquists who can be overwhelmed by a full-sized dummy, for professionals to use in walkarounds because of their light weight, and in those situations where very small children might be intimidated by a bigger dummy.

Here is a picture of the restored Ricky-Tik.

Through an agreement with the client, I made molds of the figure's head and hands with the objective of eventually making a limited number of reproductions.

(If you want one, contact me through my website at http://www.alstevens.com)

Observe that the restored figure is dressed in a suit based on the style that Marshall used in his advertisements.

The client had the suit custom made from the photos so his Ricky-Tik would be authentic. He shared the pattern with me so that I can have copies made.

Here are the molds I made.

The hand molds suffice for the project, but the head mold does not. It is a two-part mold that reflects things I had to do to the original head to permit making a mold. For example, you have to tape closed all openings, such as around the eyeballs, the jaw slots, and so on. Otherwise the mold material flows inside those openings and makes a mess. Consequently, the molds show signs of masking tape outlines and do not adequately reflect the eye openings.

Also, it is a two-part mold, which means the two halves of a cast must be fit together and the seams filled in and finished. To make it harder, a typical face mold is made with the jaw installed. Which means every cast made from that mold needs its jaw cut out, a jaw casket assembled, teeth and tongue added, axle fitted and aligned, and so on.

Using such a mold, a figure maker (me) does a lot of finish work on each cast head to make it useable. I wanted to minimize those repetitious parts of head-making. So I inserted another step into the dummy-making process.

I made a finished, working cast of the head with moving jaw and fixed eyes. This cast will never actually be an operational dummy. Its purpose is to be a master model for making molds from which I can cast heads that are easier to assemble and finish.

After ensuring that the jaw fits and moves precisely, I removed it and closed the jaw opening to accomodate making the mold. Otherwise the head would get filled with mold-making material.

Here's the cast master model head.

Observe the eyes. They are wooden spheres drilled to accept irises and sealed around the eye holes. The eyeballs themselves will be part of the cast head. I will simply glue the irises into place. This approach saves a lot of time on each head assembly. No eyeholes to cut and finish on the face, no eyeballs to drill and fit into the head.

Here's the cast master model in profile.

You'll see what seem to be two small holes, one on the cheek and behind and the other below the ear. These were holes when the master model was operational. They hold the jaw axle and jaw control pulley axle. But they aren't holes now. They're filled in from the inside. They are guide holes to show me where to drill holes in the working casts.

Here's a picture of the jaw master model. I'll make a mold of it and make multiple casts. It also has guide holes for the axle.

Now for what kids call "the beauty part." Assembling a replica is simplified from the usual dummy-making project. I got my inspiration from the Juro headstick Jerry Mahoneys that so many of us used to learn ventriloquism.

Everything that goes inside the head is installed through the jaw hole in the face. The headstick is installed through a hole in the bottom of the neck. The headstick has a spring that connects to the post on the back of the jaw to hold the mouth closed. The jaw string feeds up behind the jaw control axle and connects to the bottom rear of the jaw to open the mouth.

If everything goes according to plan—that is if it all works the way I hope it will—I'll be able to stamp these dummies out like automobile fenders. I wonder how many I'll really make and whether anyone cares to buy one.

New Kid on the Block

2008-02-12T12:03:00.001-05:00

The fellow shown here arrived at my workshop last week.

He was built by JC Turner, a figure-maker of some prominence in the 1930s and 1940s. This particular figure was repainted at some time in the past. Whoever painted him must have used yellow house paint. It's glossy and brittle. I'm thinking a chemical strip might be needed on this guy.

I disassembled the head. There are signs of repairs over the years. Whoever worked on him believed in using nails instead of glue. Apparently so did Turner. The three sections of his head were held together with nails and wood screws. Here he is in pieces.

I'm still working on getting the headstick off. It's held in place with a pin through the neck. But it isn't securely fastened and rattles around.

The eyes, which do not move, are ping pong balls with black marbles for irises and filled in with spackle. Both eyes were held in place with tiny nails. One also had a small wood screw holding it in. They were set in there in a cock-eyed fashion. I don't know whether that was on purpose or whoever worked on him couldn't get them straight. It doesn't matter. I kind of like the look and might retain it.

More to follow...

New Promo Video

2008-01-28T19:56:00.000-05:00

I've been doing more G-rated shows, and so I put together a new promo video for DVDs and on youtube. It features only G-rated comedy and includes a clip with Uncle Sweeter, which my earlier promo video did not have.

Agents want entertainers to have promo DVDs they can give to their clients. They prefer that the DVD not have contact information so the clients will come to them to hire the entertainers.

Be self-contained

2008-01-27T13:40:00.000-05:00

I had a corporate show last night for a local company that has a contract at the Space Center. The gig included music and comedy ventriloquism.

I went to the venue a couple of days in advance to see the layout. I was to provide music on the patio during cocktail hour, comedy in the dining room after dinner, and music for dancing after that.

The first problem was that I have only one sound system, which I would have to tear down and setup twice. Usually I have a program of segues between figures and accompaniments of tunes that my figures and I sing. With no band, that show requires the full PA system to support my playback device, a laptop. But my PA system would be set up out on the patio for vocals and piano work before and after the comedy.

Not to worry, said the venue manager, there is a wireless microphone system I can use inside. Given that, I decided to do my comedy ventriloquist show using only dialogue and no music. The typical wireless house system is usually adequate for voice-only entertainment.

I got to the venue early to set up. After everything was in place for both setups, I asked to see the wireless microphone. Drat! It was a good quality microphone, but its barrel supported two C batteries, and it was to wide to fit the microphone holder on my stand.

This was a handheld only microphone. It might work for a rock singer, but it won't work for me.

I need both hands for my comedy show. It looked like I'd have to schlep my rig between venues that night. But wait, he said, there is also a wireless clipon lapel mic. He said as he handed it to me, I hope this thing works. It did, but his comment made me wonder. Would the batteries last an hour. I kept the other one handy when I went on just in case.

And the show went on.

I usually work with a traditional microphone and stand. I know there are other ways to do it, but I'm and old-fashioned kind of guy, and this is how I learned when I started out many years ago.

With the traditional setup, as I turn my head to look from the audience to the figure, I rotate my head around the mic so that my lips are always directed towards it no matter what direction I look in. That's always worked for me.

With this ad hoc lapel mic setup comes a problem. When I faced the audience the mic picked up my voices just fine. But when I looked at the figure, which I often do while the figure is speaking, my lips got further away from the little button mic, and the voices got lower in volume. Some folks said that they couldn't quite make out some of what the figure said.

I've always taught others that you should be self-contained for these kinds of jobs. Never depend on what the venue provides. This experience reinforces that lesson. I really should have bitten the bullet and hauled my own setup into the dining room. As it turned out I would not have had to take it back out on the patio, because they were behind schedule, and the end of my show came about fifteen minutes before they were scheduled to be out of the room.

The show was a success. Folks laughed at the funny stuff, and the client was pleased. They have these parties every year, they've never had a ventriloquist as entertainment, and they look forward to doing it again.

Christmas Eve with Jeff

2007-12-24T22:54:00.000-05:00

We're at my daughter's house in Virginia with her and her family. I brought no musical instruments or ventriloquist dummies, although if I wanted to practice ventriloquism, I can borrow one from my grandson Landon. He has almost as many as I have.

I'll report now on my Saturday evening show a week ago. It was a resort beach jazz club. As usual, many of my friends were there including members of the Florida Ventriloquist's Association. Despite the rigors of "red tide," a seaborne organism that causes severe throat distress, I had a full house. The show was well promoted.

I played a set of jazz on alto and tenor sax and fluegelhorn with the house trio. The second set was all comedy. I kept a bottle of Entertainer's Secret handy to help keep the red tide effects at bay. The show went well, but there was a disruptive table of noisy patrons near the stage.

I'll never figure out why people will pay $15 a pop to see a show and then talk loudly during the show. Other patrons were annoyed, and the disruption was screwing up my timing. Finally Dexter took over. (Dexter is my smart-assed little boy dummy.) He engaged the unruly table in a bit of dialogue that eventually got them to settle down.

Last night I watched Jeff Dunham's new DVD, Spark of Insanity, with my grandsons. It is a delightful show, and I recommend it to anyone who likes comedy and to ventriloquists in particular who want to see how this art should be practiced.

Observe something about Jeff. He owns the audience before he even comes on stage. They all know him from his past work, and they know the characters of his figures. Consequently, Jeff has what Bergen had, what very few ventriloquists have. Walter or Peanut can say just about anything and get a laugh. Mortimer Snerd could do the same thing. As long as the line is in character, the audience loves it. It's funny because Walter says it. It's outrageous because Peanut says it.

Don't ever think you can do Jeff's material. It won't work for anyone other Walter and Peanut in Jeff's hands.

So, what can you learn from Jeff's performance? Timing. Can you explain timing? It's complicated. It's a combination of how you word each line, how fast you say each line, and how much space you leave between lines. The latter two values change depending on the lines themselves and the audiences' reactions. Guess what? You can't practice timing in your living room in order to learn it. You learn it only in front of audiences. Lots of audiences. Over a long period of time. And every time you perform, you learn and, hopefully, get better. Jeff gets better every time I see him perform. The lines are often the same, but the delivery steadily improves. And part of that is the complete acceptance he has from every audience now. The other part is how hard he works to make each performance a home run.

It looks easy, doesn't it?

2007-12-14T10:41:00.000-05:00

I had an interesting show last night. It was the final dinner meeting of a local association of retired military officers. The fellow who hired me is the youngest member of the group. He is 80. He said they were closing down because their membership was shrinking as members died off, and no one still alive was able to serve on the board. Most of the members are veterans of World War II.

He wanted music and ventriloquism in the show. I wrote some material specifically for the group mainly about my elderly man figure's Army experiences during WWII with plenty of irreverent references to officers. Also lots of old people jokes.

I played background piano during cocktail hour and began the show after dessert was served. The client had asked for about 45 minutes, and I was prepared to do an hour, but after a half hour he signaled me to cut it short. Everyone was getting tired and wanted to go home. Some of them were already nodding off. Just like a nursing home gig except in this case the inmates drive themselves home.

Audience reaction was okay, but not great. An audience of mostly octogenarians includes a lot of people who can't hear very well and the room accoustics were typical country club banquet room--the walls and ceiling absorbed most of the sound. I had my system on the edge of feedback, and they still had trouble hearing.

Setup and teardown took longer than the show. Electric piano, bench, amplifier, elevated speakers, microphones, prop table, and three ventriloquist figures. After I got set up I realized I'd forgotten to bring the figures' performance stand, the platform they sit on when I manipulate them. So I had to perform in the old way with one foot on a chair and the figure on my knee. (Thigh, actually. Why do we always say, "on my knee?" You ever try sitting on someone's knee? Kind of bumpy.) I had forgotten how awkward and tiring that posture is.

Tomorrow night is more to my liking. A jazz club with an audience of hearing people who've been drinking a lot.

Tenor Madness

2007-12-08T15:36:00.000-05:00

I own a 50-year-old Selmer Mark VI tenor saxophone, considered the holy grail of tenor saxophones. It is highly desired by players because of its playing characteristics and by collectors for reasons that I don't understand.

But most players can't afford it nowadays. I couldn't afford it either because prices for these things have gone out of sight. Fortunately for players, there are contemporary alternatives. I also own a new gold-plated Taiwanese saxophone that plays almost as well as a vintage Selmer yet cost me a fraction of what the Selmer costs.

The same thing has happened to vintage ventriloquist dummies. I don't own one, although I have in the past. I don't own a McElroy or a Marshall. I can't afford it. But, like saxophones, modern ventriloquist dummies are as good, and in many ways better than those lovable old figures. And they are affordable, so working ventriloquists do not have to yearn and pine for an old vintage figure just to get out there and perform.

How did these saxophones and dummies become so expensive? It's a product of collector mania and the auction mentality.

Collector mania should be self-explanatory. Anyone who has ever known a stamp collector or coin collector understands it. But what is the auction mentality?

Ebay is the culprit. In an auction you pay $1 more for something than anyone else is willing to pay. And in so doing, you inadvertantly establish a new price point for that item. The next time a similar item comes up, those who lost out will bid just a little bit more. What's another fifty bucks? And the price point goes up again.

That process iterates until the price point starts to get silly. Collectors and investors watch this phenomenon and get into it. After a period of time, the item is no longer accessible to those who would use it, and its best examples are relegated to wealthy dilettantes, closets and display cases. Which affects the supply and demand ratio, which causes prices to go up even more.

There's no end in sight for vintage saxophones. But dummies? I watched as collector mania and auction mentality drove the prices of Juro Jerrys to obscene levels. Then, when all the collectors who had to have one had one, the bottom fell out. Which kind of indicates that it was a fad, a trend, a passing fancy that ran its course.

So my advice is, don't spend the big bucks for that figure you can't live without. Live without it for a while. When everyone comes to their senses, prices will drop.

The Many Faces of Chuck

2007-11-26T10:14:00.001-05:00

Chuck Norwood's restoration is complete, and he will be on his way home to Bill DeMar this week. Working on Chuck has been a fulfilling and learning experience.

Here's what I did to Chuck:

Made an insurance RTV mold of the head.
Repaired the all-directional eye movement
Replaced the leather blinkers
Installed raising and lowering eyebrows
Repaired the jaw slot cardboard shims and resurfaced the cheek
Built and installed a new headstick with all new control levers and rods
Replaced the blinker pulley mechanism
Restrung all controls
Installed trapdoor mounting screws
Repainted Chuck

As usual, I am not totally content with the results. I look at Chuck and see places where I would like to rip everything out and start over. That's the perfectionist in me talking.

I think I need some time off.

Chuck is in the paint shop

2007-11-19T16:31:00.000-05:00

All mechanical work on Chuck Norwood is complete. That is to say, if I don't screw something up in the next several days, I won't need to look under the trapdoor again.

I've begun painting him, which is treacherous. Whenever paint gets near moving parts it can get in where it doesn't belong and gum things up. I have to paint around the fittings for the eyebrows and blinkers with much care. If I were to disable an eyebrow at this stage, you'd hear my shrill obscenities in the next county.

Paint can get into jaw slots, too, and stiffen up what was a smoothly operating jaw. I developed a technique a while ago to avoid that. While I'm painting around a slot, I have a business card inserted in the slot. I can slop paint on the card without gunking up the mechanism. Later there will be exposed parts of the slot that need a touchup. This I do with diluted flesh tone paint, thick enough to show some color and thin enough that it doesn't add substantially to the thickness of the jaw and cheek walls.

Paint can also mess up a nice eyeball if I get careless. I keep a damp towel handy whenever I get a paintbrush near an eyeball. My own eyeballs don't work all that well, and I need to be prepared in case of a slipup.

You never know how much you depended on depth perception until yours is impaired. Looking closely at a brush tip loaded with paint as you lower it toward an eye ridge brings it home to you. How close am I? Am I about to put paint on the wrong place?

Blending eye shadow and blush tones must be done before painting the details of eye ridges, lips, and eyebrows. That's because the stipple brush has a way of straying into areas where there will be features that need clearly defined edges. But doing detail work after blending can be precarious too. If your brush slips, you just put a splotch of bright detail paint where before you had a nice blend. No way to touch up the blemish. You have to redo the blend.

I'm not telling you all this just to educate anyone. Most of you already know it. But you could feel sorry for me. Can't I go out and play?

Junny Rios-Martinez

2007-11-15T19:51:00.000-05:00

Please take a moment and read this report. This just happened today.

Mark Schwab Execution Blocked

The article goes into no details about the murder. Nor will I. You can search and find reports about it online.

Junny has been gone sixteen years. He would have been twenty-seven. I knew him and know his family. They live about two miles up the road. I have worked with Junny's father, Junny Martinez, Sr., a local drummer. Junny's mother, Vicki, operates a nearby beauty salon. Vicki's stepfather is John Powers, a string bass player and a very close friend.

I have a seventeen year angst about this case, well beyond the normal pain one feels when a child is taken. John and I were working together before and during the time when Junny was taken and murdered. John told me proudly about how a national surfing magazine had sent a young reporter to do a series of articles on his grandson Junny, then eleven years old. This so-called reporter had established a relationship with the family and offered to take Junny to surfing conventions around the world. My instincts told me that they should be cautious about this fellow. It didn't sound right. I kept those instincts to myself.

A few days later the worst happened. I have beat myself up about it ever since.

I sat across the kitchen table with Junny, Sr. after the killer had confessed and taken the police to the shallow grave. We were all just learning the horrible details of Junny's final hours. I told Junny, Sr. then. "What I am feeling cannot be one one-thousandth of what you are feeling, and what I am feeling is unbearable."

On a gig with John, a singer who did not know called the tune. "God Bless the Child." John had to stop playing as he wept openly on the stand.

Now today I face yet another conflict. I am a longtime opponent of capital punishment although not an activist. And the pending execution of the murderer of a child I knew is the catalyst by which the Supreme Court will decide whether to abolish the death penalty, something I think they should have done a long time ago. Talk about being torn apart.

I am a jazz musician, and there is an indirect jazz association with this attitude. At age 18 I went to see Susan Hayward's powerful portrayal of a condemned woman in the movie, "I Want to Live." I went to see it not for any message but because the Gerry Mulligan Quartet did the sound track. I came out of the theater with a lifetime opposition to capital punishment.

Since Junny's death and the death sentence of his killer, I have had to revisit my feelings about this particular issue. I'd willingly kill the guy myself. But that would be wrong, just as wrong as, in my opinion, allowing the state to kill him. So I developed a personal rationalization for how to deal with this conflict. This is what I believe.

Capital punishment wants to serve five purposes as often related by its proponents:

Punishment of the offender
A deterrent to others
Preventing the offender from committing further crimes
Saving the cost of feeding and housing the offender for life
Revenge for the victims' families

We don't know whether dying is a punishment. Statistics show that jurisdictions with the death penalty have no fewer murders than those that do not impose it. Life without bail effectively removes the offender from society. It costs far more to prosecute all the appeals of a capital case than it does to house and feed someone for life.

That leaves revenge. We cannot deny that. So, let the state not kill anyone, but let them set it up. Get the guy on the stretcher, in the chair, in the chamber, on the trapdoor, tied to a post, whatever. Then offer the switch to the family. If they are willing to pull it, so be it.

I know what Junny, Sr. would do.

It's not a civilized alternative, but it's one I can live with. Writing about it here might just help me make it through the next several months.

How Not to Install a Wig

2007-11-14T10:13:00.001-05:00

I used to fixed television sets as a sideline. I could always tell when a set had been messed with by the owner. It was always screwed up. And it was always the wife who lugged it to my shop. Her husband, probably a rocket scientist, was too embarrassed by what he'd done. It's one thing to understand the underlying electronic design theory that specifies how a TV set works. Fixing one is quite another thing. The wife would say, "I don't know, it just quit working."

(Never let your friends and neighbors know you can fix TV sets. Or computers.)

I don't fix TV sets anymore. They don't work like they used to and they don't break like they used to. I look in there and don't know what I'm looking at. I know better than to mess with things I don't understand.

Not everyone can say that. Case in point:

Last week a client had shipped to me an old handcarved Selberg ventriloquist figure. The figure has lots of animations—jaw, eyes, winker/blinkers, eyebrows, and upper lip sneer. And it has a beautiful, expensive child's wig.

But the eyes are not self-centering, and the client wants that feature. Which is why it's here now. Usually, such a job would involve the simple installation of a spring. About a ten minute job if where the spring needs to connect is easy to reach.

I haven't opened the head to see, however. First there's no room on the workbench, which is currently dedicated to Chuck Norwood. Then there's the issue with the wig.

This Selberg boy has a very nice wig, which has always been a highlight of figures that Tim builds. They have great hair. The problem with this one, however, is how the wig is attached. It looks to me that to open the head I might have to destroy the wig, which I really hate to do. The wig is part of the original figure, which, besides being a fine ventriloquist figure, is approaching collectible status; it is from the era about twenty years ago when Tim made mostly one-of-a-kind woodcarved figures.

I know three acceptable ways to install a wig on a hard figure.

attach it with Velcro strips
staple it on
attach it with hot glue

There are probably other ways, but these are the ways I've seen.

Velcro strips provide the most maintenance-friendly method for attaching a wig. You can easily remove and reinstall the wig, which makes for easy emergency repairs to the mechanics.

Stapling the wig is okay, but you need a tool to pull the staples and a staple gun to reinstall the wig.

Hot glue works okay, but it's my third choice. It leaves a clumped up residue when you remove the wig. Removing an old hot glue clump is next to impossible, so you just leave it there and add more hot glue when you put the wig back on. Too many wig removals make for an unruly wig with all those clumps of dried hot glue.

Those are the ways I know to attach a wig. The Selberg figure does not use one of those ways. Whoever last had the wig off reinstalled it with—you'd better sit down to read this—epoxy glue.

That's right, folks, epoxy glue. Figure makers around the world are smiling to themselves now. They're wondering if the owner's wife brought the figure in to my shop to be modified. No, not this time.

Epoxy glue is kind of permanent. It becomes one with whatever you apply it to. It flows freely, seeks its own level and bonds with everything it touches. That's okay when what it touches is wood, brass, plastic, or anything inflexible. But hair and net webbing? Alas.

This is kind of like working on your antique car and then welding the hood shut.

To remove the wig, I'll have to virtually destroy the webbing and a lot of the hair, much of which is heavily glued to the wooden head. Then I'll toss the wig fragments into my wig remnants box. Maybe it can contribute to a mustache some day. Then I'll spend several hours scraping the glue residue off the head and trapdoor. Finally I'll acquire, fit and install a new wig.

Whoever used epoxy on that wig substantially added to the cost of what would otherwise be a simple repair. And they also reduced the value of the figure as a collectible. The new wig won't be original or even like original; you can't find wigs like that anymore.

So, kind readers, if you are about to do maintenance on your valuable figure, please keep in mind that someone might have to do additional maintenance sometime later. Don't do dumb things that will make the next guy's job that more difficult. Don't weld the hood shut.

Better still, don't do anything yourself. Send the figure to someone who is qualified to work on these valuable works of art.

Plastic Wood...or would it?

2007-11-07T11:38:00.000-05:00

Why can't they leave things alone? What the heck happened to Plastic Wood?

Mortimer Snerd was cast in Plastic Wood. So were most McElroy figures. Some vintage figure-making books suggest using Plastic Wood as a casting medium.

Chuck Norwood's trapdoor was held in place with a loose pin. It kind of rattled around. I decided to install two wood screws, one at either side of the head. One of the sides just above the ears is too thin to receive a screw hole, however, so I decided to build it up. I needed just a small bit of casting, not a major job.

So I bought a new can of Plastic Wood and gave it a try.

I built up a nice thickness on the inside of the head with Plastic Wood. I let it set up for a couple of days. I drilled a pilot hole for the wood screw and began to thread the screw into place. The Plastic Wood clump fell apart and broke away from the wood. I picked up the clump and dug my thumnail into it to see how well it had hardened. It crumbled apart. Plastic Wood not only won't stick to wood, it won't even stick to itself.

Someone must have thought the previous formula was wrong. They must have decided to fix it. It ain't the same. The can looks the same. I still have one of the old cans. Empty.

Don't try to cast a head or hands from Plastic Wood. If you drop the cast, it will break apart.

In the past I've used DAP Wood Dough successfully for such things. But I've run out of it. I went to Home Depot and Lowe's. They don't carry it any more. Maybe because DAP now owns the Plastic Wood trademark.

The DAP website has a link that helps you find dealers for their products. The nearest one is in Daytona. It might be worth the drive. Unless they fixed that formula, too.

I found several more goopy wood filler products under various names that look and work—more precisely, don't work—exactly like the new, improved Plastic Wood. I now have an assortment of cans of wood filler products decorating a shelf in the workshop. Too bad none of it will fill wood.

Maybe I can do an Andy Warhol-like painting of the cans.

It's been a while

2007-11-06T16:55:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I posted about the Chuck Norwood project, and usually that's because I wait for something interesting to tell, especially if I can include some pictures.

Just now there's not much to show. I've been in rewind mode the past couple of weeks, undoing and redoing some things.

Every time you get near a complex assembly of mechanical parts with something sticky, such as glue, you run the risk of getting two things stuck together that oughn't to be stuck together. (That previous sentence reminds me of a limerick about a couple named Kelly, but I'll save that for another time.)

That is what happened to Chuck recently. As I tried to glue his eyebrows to their frames, the glue ran down the frame and permanently adhered it to the tube it rotates in. No more rotation means no up and down eyebrows. I had to cut out the entire mechanism and start over. Since I built new frames outside the head, I decided to solder the brass eyebrows onto the frames, something I could not do with the frames installed.

He's back together now, and I am getting ready to paint. I'll show the new eyebrow control rod and the eyebrows themselves once everything is pretty. But wait, I can't paint yet. There's the thing about the cardboard.

Good old Frank Marshall had a nasty habit of shimming the jaw slots with what seems to sheets of cardboard from breakfast cereal boxes. At least thats the thickness he used. Thats how he closed the gaps cut by his bandsaw when he cut the jaw out of the face. Cardboard is, I guess, simpler and faster than doing a proper job of narrowing the slots with wood filler. I first saw this cardboard in another Marshall figure I restored a while ago. Since then I've seen it several times.

Several years ago I published an essay titled, Building a Precision Mouth Movement. I did not know at the time I could get the same effect by cutting up a cereal box. Live and learn.

Cardboard doesn't last forever. The cardboard on one side of Chuck's jaw had started to deteriorate but I don't know when. I noticed it when, for no apparent reason, his jaw began to stick open. An inspection revealed that the years of gunk that built up in his head had contaminated the cardboard. Perhaps it was hurried along by the overhaul I was doing. I don't know, but whatever caused it, I can't send him home with lockjaw.

I used an Xacto knife to clean the rotted cardboard out of the slot, leaving the original cut slot exposed. At the same time a lot of layers of old paint came off the cheek. I'll have some reconstructive surgery to do on the face to restore the precision slot and build the cheek up to where it aligns with the jaw.

Here are two views of a not-very-precise jaw before cosmetic surgery. Ugly chile, ain't it? Maybe when I'm finished this project will qualify me for one of those reality shows.

Furrowed Brows

2007-10-18T12:54:00.001-04:00

There is much to report today on the Chuck Norwood project. I prevented what would surely have a continuing problem with Chuck's blinker mechanism. And Chuck will now have the feature that Frank Marshall did not install in this particular figure and that Chuck's owner, Bill DeMar, always wished he had.

First the potential problem. Return to my previous article where I proudly displayed the two-pulley assembly I built for Chuck's blinkers. That design has a congenital flaw. The blinker strings are narrow, because that's what fits in Marshall's return spring loops. You'll recall that I had some difficulty threading strings through those loops until I figured out how.

A problem exists with the narrow string. Those strings go slack when the pulleys are pushed up. If that happens when Chuck's head is not upright—when he's traveling, for example—the resulting string loops at the pulleys can ride over the pulley ridges and bind up between the side of the pulley and those brass wire pulley guides. Those guides are intended to keep the strings in place on the pulleys. They become instead a part of the problem. The only way to fix it when it happens is to open the head. I didn't want to believe that it would ever happen because I have a lot of work in those pulleys, but I gave Chuck a stress test, and it happened.

(Picture me dancing around the workshop, shaking Chuck's head all around like a baby rattle, and chanting loudly, "Stay, strings, stay!" There are some things you don't want your grandchildren to see.)

There are only two solutions: Thicker string, which won't work because of the spring loops, or a better pulley assembly.

After I posted my clever but flaed design here, Mike Brose posted on the Yahoo Ventfigures discussion group a simpler design that he uses. With much reluctance but no hesitation, I ripped out the elegant pulley assembly and replaced it with what you see here, a nylon tube on a brass axle. Simplicity wins out over cleverness every time.

But, wait. What's that dodad with the two springs we see under the pulley mechanism? That wasn't there the last time we looked inside Chuck's head. Which brings us to the "rest of the story." (Catchy seque, wot? I ought to be on the radio.)

During one of my many conversations with Bill, he told me that he wished Chuck had eyebrows that raise in surprise and frown in anger. That feature—the raising part, at least&msah;is common on Marshall figures, but Chuck Norwood did not have it when Bill purchased him from Marshall. Bill wondered what it would take to add the feature. I replied that it would have been a lot easier if Bill had mentioned it several weeks back when I had Chuck's animation assemblies out of his head and spread out on the workbench. We agreed that if Bill could wait even longer to get Chuck back, I would remove the assemblies once again and install the feature. Bill wondered how long it would take. We checked the actuarial tables for ventriloquists his age and figured I'd be finished sometime during Bill's lifetime, and so I got the goahead to proceed.

Well, there's good news to report. Because Bill wants the control on the back of the headstick, I am able to install the feature without gutting Chuck's head (a bit of a misused metaphor, I agree). The inner mechanics can be at the back of the head behind the other stuff. Take a look first at Chuck's face with the eyebrow frames installed in raised and lowered positions.

As you can see, there are still some adjustments to make in the eyebrow size and placement, but the basic design works well.

I ran the linkage from the face through that maze of contraptions and rigged it behind everything, a space that is free of clutter and easy to reach.

Observe now the mechanism inside the head in the eyebrows' up and down positions.

The control rod runs down the back of the head, bends at an angle to get around the other mechanics and align the the back of the neck, and is fed through a brass tube through the neck down the back of the headstick to where the control lever is installed.

This modification required that I open the back of Chuck's head further so I could access the mechanics. This gave me the opportunity also to install some braces that prevent some the the linkages from wobbling when they move.

Here's a picture of the brain surgery before I close.

I'll reinstall the lower piece that constitutes a secondary trapdoor such that the seam is not visible but that so the new, lower trapdoor section can be removed for future maintenance. I hope it's never necessary.

But, who knows? Twenty years from now, Bill might want a spitter and wiggling ears added to Chuck.

Blinker Mechanism

2007-10-12T21:25:00.000-04:00

Chuck's insides are almost done. But the blinker mechanism needs some linkage to run the strings down to the levers on the headstick.

The first thing I need are two small pulleys. A trip to the hardware store produces this suitable device.

But I do not want to hang the pulleys from the ceiling of Chuck's head. I want two pulleys side-by-side on an axle similar to the one that Frank Marshall installed for the jaw pullstring. To do that, I have to get those little pulley wheels out of the pulley casing.

That's easy enough. Using the bench grinder, I ground down the axle head on the side of the casing. The axle slides out, and I have two pulley wheels.

Next I need an axle, which is simply a brass rod of the correct diameter to fit the pulley axle holes. Then I need two guides to keep the strings from slipping off the pulleys whenever the strings go slack. I used the one Marshall installed for the jaw as a guide and made two more just like it by bending two thin lengths of brass rod.

Frank Marshall must have been a hard-working guy. It took quite some time to fashion those guides by bending the rods to the precise shape I needed with a pair of needle-nose pliars. And many of the Marshall figures I have seen have just such a pulley guide in them. He must have made thousands of them. I have this mental image of Frank sitting at his workbench until the wee small hours, making pulley guides while he sips a martini and listens to the radio. It must have been a lonely life.

To install the pulley assembly, I need to notch the head shell where either end of the axle mounts, a procedure that will send shivers up the spines of the collector purists. Gasp! Desecration! Then I must slide the pulleys onto the axle with a brass washer between them and solder two coils of rod on either side of the pair of pulleys. These act as stops to keep the pulleys from sliding from side to side.

Then it's just a matter of gluing the assembly to the head shell, threading the strings through the pulleys and down through the headstick, and tying the strings to the levers.

To wink Chuck's right eye, I pull down the longer of the two headstick levers.

To blink both eyes, I pull down both levers at once.

You'd thing I'd be ready to close Chuck's head and start the repaint job. That's what I thought, too. Until I had a long discussion with Bill DeMar today and he told me that he hopes to make a supplement to his manipulation workshop video. Chuck needs more animations. More about that later.

Chuck's Eyes

2007-10-11T16:16:00.000-04:00

It's taken me several weeks to get to this place in the Chuck Norwood restoration project. The biggest problem was with the eye mechanics. Chuck's eyes go side-to-side and up and down. Ray Guyll installed these mechanics twenty years ago. The delicate assembly was worn and fragile, and it finally failed at the 2007 ConVENTion. An emergency repair by figure maker Lee Dunn got Chuck working well enough for Bill DeMar to perform with Chuck in the Saturday evening show. But Chuck was long overdue for a complete overhaul. I got the job of doing that overhaul, and Chuck's head arrived at my workshop some time ago. I had to get everything realigned, reliable, working smoothly, and ready to perform. I've chronicled in this blog some of the pitfalls along the way. Now, for your entertainment and enjoyment, I put together a short video showing the eye animation and mechanics. This is before doing any repainting and before installing winker linkages. I hope you enjoy this one-minute reflection on what turned out to be several weeks of work.

If the video doesn't work, try viewing it on Youtube.

Click Here

Five Minutes of Work, Eight Hours of Waiting.

2007-10-01T10:00:00.000-04:00

It's been over a half month since I posted progress on the Chuck Norwood renovation project. I haven't been goofing off. I'm at that stage where I work for five minutes and then wait eight hours for something to set up. Figure makers everywhere know what I'm talking about.

This project has more of that unbalanced work/wait ratio than most because Chuck's eye mechanics are complicated and twenty years old.

First, there's the complexity. Each time I install the eye assembly, which is usually followed by an eight-hour wait for the plastic wood to set up, I find something that doesn't line up right or that needs an adjustment that I can do only with the mechanism on the workbench. So, I pull out the assembly and start over again.

Then there's the age of the parts. Every time I think everything is ready to go, something else falls apart. Yesterday I finally had all the little axles and spacers in place. Everything looked perfect. As I gently inserted the assembly into the head, an eyeball cracked and a chunk of it fell out. Fortunately, the damage wasn't near the iris.

Those eyeballs are ping pong ball halves. And they are old. And, between being used in countless shows and all the repair work, they've been subjected to a lot of stress. Ping pong balls are designed to take some stress. After all, you are supposed to hit them with ping pong paddles and bounce them off ping pong tables (and floors, walls, opponents, spectators, etc.). But they aren't designed to be cut, drilled, glued and manhandled for twenty years.

I repaired the crack with MagicSculp and waited overnight for it to set up. This morning I painted the repaired area. That took about five minutes. Now I'm waiting for that to dry. Eight hours, maybe. Sometime this afternoon I'll be where I expected to be this time yesterday. That's how this project has been going for the past couple of weeks. Five minutes of work and eight hours of waiting.

This work requires the patience that comes only with age. That's a good thing, because by the time you finish a job like this, you are an old person.

(I'll post pictures of all this when things are completed and more photogenic. Right now it's a mess.)

Chuck's User Interface

2007-09-12T12:26:00.000-04:00

A ventriloquist dummy's headstick is what the computer geeks would call its "user interface."

When rebuilding a figure, you have to keep in mind not only the ergonomic human factors of the user interface but also what the user is used to. In the case of Chuck Norwood, he has been going strong for 53 years. One can assume that the user, Bill DeMar, is kind of used to the way Chuck's controls work.

Bill rebuilt Chuck's user interface many years ago when the Marshall-installed headstick shattered during a performance. The headstick that Bill made is the one he's used to and is, consequently, the model for the replacement in the rebuild project. The replacement headstick must be at least as durable as the one it is replacing. It also must recreate the exact position and function of each of the previous headstick's controls. Here is a picture of Chuck's old and new headsticks side by side.

You might wonder why the headstick needs replacing. The previous one is not as reliable as it was. The levers are worn, especially at the axle holes. The axles themselves are simply bent lengths of wires. The levers wobble. I noticed in a video of Bill performing with Chuck that when he closed both eyes often the right eye closed completely and the left eye did not. When I got the head in my workshop I determined that years of use had worn the axle mechanisms such that there was a lot of play in the mechanics.

The following picture shows the new hardwood levers.

You can't tell from the picture, but each lever has a brass tube sleeve in its axle hole through which the brass axle goes. The sleeves eliminate wobble and the wear of wood on metal. Brass spacers keep the levers centered and prevent them from rubbing the headstick.

Winkers, Blinkers

2007-09-05T14:12:00.000-04:00

Leather winkers and blinkers are a common feature on vintage figures. Frank Marshall installed them on the figure that was to become Chuck Norwood. Years later Bill DeMar, Chuck's ventriloquist, replaced the leather. Now, even more years later, I am doing it again.

After many starts and restarts, I have the blinkers installed. I've discussed the use of leather for moving skin parts with other figure makers, among them Clinton Detweiler and Ray Guyll. They have a lot of experience with fiuremaking, and they have been very helpful with answers to my questions. I've installed leather blinkers in other figures.

In this case I had two sources to draw from in deciding how to configure the blinkers. I have many pictures of Marshall figures with one or two eyes closed. I've examined Marshall figures up close, too. Then I had Chuck Norwood, with the replacement blinkers that Bill installed, which now themselves need replacement.

Should I attempt to recreate the original look of the Marshall as it came out of Frank's shop, or should I attempt to capture the look of Chuck as he came to me from Bill?

It depends on which master you serve. A purist collector would say, "Give it the Marshall look to preserve its value as a collectible." But the owner/operator of this particular figure is not interested in its collectibility. He uses Chuck in his work and wants the look and feel to which he is accustomed.

So, another question is, how similar are Bill's retrofitted blinkers to the original? I can't really say, because I have no closeup pictures of Chuck Norwood blinking with his original blinkers.

I compared how he looked when I got him to pictures and memories of other Marshall figures. What differences are there?

Two, mostly.

Virtually all the examples of Marshalls with closed eyes reveal two significant eyelid differences. First, the eyelids are heavily shaded with eye shadow that does not blend with the face above the eyeholes. Second, there is a defined seam where the upper rims of the eyelids attach to the upper half of the eyeholes, which indicates that the leather is attached inside the head rather than on the outside and blended in.

Chuck, on the other hand, has eyelids that blend into his face. The colors are carefully blended and there are no seams. This feature is one of Chuck's defining characteristics. When he closes his eyes, the effect is stunning.

Of course, when you look at pictures you cannot be sure whether you are seeing the original figure or a rennovation. Danny O'Day, for example, has been redone many times. Jimmy Nelson tells us that the original Marshall paint job was designed for harsh stage and B&W TV lights. Lots of orange. His paint job today is more natural and meant to be pleasing for personal appearances.

So, I called Bill and asked if Chuck's blinker setup had been changed somewhere along the way. He said no, that Frank made Chuck the way we are used to seeing him. He added that other figuremakers and ventriloquists who are familiar with Marshall's work—John Arvites, Ray Guyll, and Johnny Main, for example—observe that Chuck is unlike most Marshalls they have seen and owned.

This is good news. I can serve both the purists and the pragmatists. Chuck will look very much like he did when new. At least around the eyes, he will. Bill did quite a facelift on Chuck so he wouldn't look like the garden variety Nosey. Bill wanted a unique figure that definitely does not call to mind other well-known Marshall figures such as Jerry Mahoney and Danny O'Day. He extended Chuck's nose and filled in the cleft in his chin and the dimples.

Here's Chuck with open and closed eyes as the blinker part of his reconstruction is underway.

Headstick Surgery

2007-09-04T13:41:00.001-04:00

It is time to remove Chuck's former headstick. Bill DeMar, Chuck's ventriloquist, replaced a long time ago the headstick that Frank Marshall installed when he built Chuck. The original wooden headstick was deeply slotted to accept the several levers that control the mechanics. The dowel itself is naturally weakened by this modification, and, after many years of constant use in the steady and firm grip of master ventriloquist Bill Demar, the old headstick gave way and collapsed. Stuff breaks when you use it a lot. Where before he had a headstick he now had a handful of splinters.

Bill replaced the splintered headstick with a length of metal tube that he purchased from a hardware store. It looks like a leg from a patio chair. The tube is smaller in diameter than the original dowel, so Bill filled in around the neck hole with some kind of black, tar-like substance and padded the grip with various kinds of tape. The jaw control lever had no axle. Instead, it rotates on a length of wire wrapped around the stick. The two blinker levers travel on wire axles, with holes and a slot that Bill drilled into the metal headstick tube. The levers themselves seem to be the same kind of levers Marshall made from chopsticks.

To remove the old headstick, I cut it off flush at the base of the neck with a bandsaw. Then I chiseled out the part of the headstick that was still inside the head. Here is what is left of it now that it's out of the head. The brass tubing in the picture was for the eye control rod.

The inside of the neckhole was a mess with that filler substance still in there. It didn't bond with the basswood, though, and a few taps with the chisel cleaned it out. Bill had rounded out the ball-and-socket neck with more of that black stuff, which came off readily, too. Here's Chuck's neck with his newly cleaned out tracheotomy