Puppet Up Spring 2014 Tour – March 10, 2014 – Day off in Utah!
Today was a, glorious, day off. For me that meant one thing, sleeping in. And, boy did I. After being so exhausted last night, I needed it.
Around noon, I headed up to Main Street of downtown Park City, Utah. My company was Dan Ring, our musical director. Park City has a great free shuttle system that can take you anywhere you need taken and there are stops everywhere. So Dan and I hopped on a bus and soon were downtown.
Park City reminds me a lot of my visit to Deadwood, South Dakota a few years ago. It’s got a Main Street with a lot of shops and restaurants and there are some buildings that were built in the 1880s. And the ones that are newer are built in the same style so the whole downtown seems very ‘classic.’ It’s awesome.
Dan and I lunched at Bandit’s Grill & Bar because they haven….wait for it…barbecue. I will say that I was a little underwhelmed with the barbecue there. It was decent, and I surely ate a lot of it, but it just wasn’t great. I was a little dissapointed. But, the company was great, Dan is a great guy, and it was a fun time.
After lunch, Dan stayed up in the Main Street area and I took off back down to the condos where we are staying as we were shooting some Vine videos to promote our next show in Pittsburgh, PA.
I connected with Patrick, Julianna, Cameron, Sean and Tim and helped direct a few vine videos that, if you are on vine, or subscribed to our twitter feed, you will see. Warning, they are a little naughty. Hopefully this will continue to be a regular thing. People must have liked our first one because as it quickly racked up over 100 likes (thanks, in a large part, to Rob Johnston who re-vined us). It was fund to spend an hour or so creating with puppets and with such a great and fun group of individuals.
Here’s a link to the first vine we put out. Could be not safe for some work or kids.
When I told my pal John B. deHaas that I’d be coming to Park City, he told me I had to ride the Alpine Coaster. John is a roller coaster nut who rides as many as he can. During filming, Cameron mentioned that he had ridden it earlier in the day and I said I wanted to go. As soon as Vine filming wrapped we hopped the free bus to get to the ski resort where the coaster was.
It’s a pretty great ride. Twenty dollars (ouch) takes you to the top of the mountain and back. It takes about 8 minutes to get to the top of the mountain, enjoying the beautiful scenery along the way. Then, when you get to the top, it’s a wild ride all the way down, through dips and turns and twists. You can control the speed of the car by pushing the levers on either side all the way forward to go fast or pulling back to slow down. Of course I rode as fast as possible. It’s a fun coaster but I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a turn or two where I questioned if the car was really attached to the track. In the end, it was definitely worth the twenty dollars.
After the wild ride through the Alpine, Cameron, Sean and I went back to the Main Street area to walk around a bit. After a few hours of walking around and checking out the different shops and restaurants, we found a place to have dinner called the High West Distillery. The wait was rather long so we put our name in and waited. As we did, Vanessa and Peggy joined us and we sat as our 40 minute wait grew to an hour and 40 minutes. None of us cared much as we were enjoying chatting on their outside patio.
Soon, a cold wind whipped down the street and you could feel the temperature drop. Then little bits of water started falling. We quickly realized it wasn’t rain, it was snow. Luckily, our table was ready. We were glad for the long wait as Julianna was able to join us as well.
The food at the High West is fantastic. I was going to make my dad proud and order elk, but at $56 for a steak, I went for the Bison Burger. It was amazing. But the desert…a cinnamon fried Krispy Kreme donut with a scoop of ice cream on top, was…the…best. My phone dies earlier in the evening, or you’d have a picture of it below. Just imagine it. Yeah, it was even better.
Then it was back to the condos. Need to pack up as we have an early call tomorrow morning to fly to Pennsylvania!
This was a great first stop on the tour and we are ready for more shows!
Creative Mondays #010 – Today…create.
So for today’s post it’s something a little different. I’m not going to prattle on with my spineless drivel here, waxing poetic about my thoughts on creativity. Wait, I think I just did. Anyway, no, today is different. Today, I’m going to challenge you, dear reader. Today, whatever day it is your eyeballs are rolling past these words, I’m going to challenge you to create something.
Yes, today you are going to create something and you are going to finish it. That is your challenge. Start creating something today with the goal of simply getting it done before you go to bed.
Now, this doesn’t have to be The Mona Lisa or the next Great American Novel. It can be small. It can be tiny. But your goal is to see it through, from start to finish, today.
Here’s some examples of what you could create today:
- a haiku
- a short story
- a one hundred word story
- a sketch
- a quick painting
- a simple sculpture out of clay (or even Play-Doh)
- a short song
- a short play
- a computer graphic
- take some pictures with your digital camera (or phone),
- a found object sculpture
- a short video (again, shot with your phone is fine)
- draw a four panel comic strip
- write some jokes
- a pipe cleaner sculpture
- a small wood carving
- a limerick
- a 6 second Vine
- Arrange some flowers
- etc.
There’s all these ideas and more. Whatever strikes you from this list or from your mind, you are going to create it. Try to pick something that you have all the supplies to create. I don’t want to hear any, “I didn’t have any paint” excuses. If you don’t have paint, draw. Don’t let your brain put up roadblocks. Just create.
But remember, it must be finished today. Again, don’t make it too complicated. Don’t get too fussy about the details. Take your time, but realize that you are going to wrap it all up today, so there’s no sense in fussing over it. This should be something that’s done in under twenty minutes or so.
And then, once your piece of art is complete, I want you to release it into the world by sharing it. You can post it online on you blog or Facebook or you can just share it with someone in your life.
The purpose of today is to create something from start to finish and then share it. The goal is to show you how easy it is to create something from start to finish and then how much fun it is to share it with someone else. I promise you, if you post what you create on Facebook you’ll get a likes (unless you are like me and only have a dummy Facebook account simply to manage fan pages). Even if you only get one like, your art has still made an impact on that person. And if you create something to give to someone in person, you’ll get to see the effect that art has on them first hand.
Once you see how easy it is to create something and then share it, my hope is you’ll want to do it again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next day.
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So….what did you create? Care to share it in the comments below? We’d love to see it!
Puppet Up Spring 2014 Tour – March 9, 2014 – Park City, Utah
It is rough losing two hours. Yes, while most of the U.S. only lost one hour, the Puppet Up crew lost two because we travelled to a new time zone AND had daylight savings. Needless to say, I was exhausted all day.
Our tireless crew, Cameron, Matt, Julianna and Sean (who is pulling double duty) went to the theatre early to do all the really important work of making us look and sound good, as well as making sure the 80 Miskreant puppets are ready to perform.
We headed over the the theatre around 2:30 PM and soon we had our microphones on and were running through the opening and closing numbers. People often say, “You’re an improv show, why do you have to rehearse?” But our show has a lot of technical elements to it and we need to make sure those elements work exactly how we need to. We never rehearse the actual improvs but we rehearse the opening and closing or anything that has a heavy technical element.
Not too long after, we were in our blacks and ready for the show. The Park City, Utah crowd was just amazing. They gave their laughs freely and their suggestions were amazing! Suggestions ranged from a kitten giving birth to New Jersey to Ski Patrols. They laughed right along with us and were not afraid to get naughty. Just a super fun show.
All the puppeteers were on fire tonight. Vanessa made a sassy Miley Cyrus. Peggy sang the hell out of the James Bond song. Sean was hilarious as a cow milking farmer who spoke in tongues and Victor kicked ass with his rap. Very lucky to be working with the group and a little intimidated that, after this, I move into the host slot and, attempt, to fill Patrick’s shoes.
After the show, we went to the lobby to take photos for Facebook and that is always a blast. The Park City crowd was just fantastic. This show also marked the first time a four legged friend saw the show. Missouri, a guide dog in training was there for both acts (though we were told he slept through most of it.) After the show he was very interested in meeting our Pug Puppet. Hopefully those pictures will pop up on Facebook. They are cute.
After leaving the theatre, we went to a restaurant called Blind Dog and had a reception with donors and VIPS. It was a lot of fun discussing the show with the folks who had just seen it!
Tomorrow is a day off in Park City. We’re going to be making some fun vines for our upcoming Pittsburgh show, so if you’re on Vine, look for PuppetUp on there and follow us. The first one is live and it’s a doozy! After that, I hear there’s a barbecue place that’s pretty decent, so you’ll know where to find me come lunchtime. Excited to see a bit of Park City.
For now, I’m hitting the hay because I’m exhausted.
Puppet Up Spring 2014 Tour – March 8, 2014 – Here we go again!
And we are off on another fun filled Puppet Up Tour! This one started, as they usually do, at The Jim Henson Company lot to get a shuttle to Los Angeles International airport. Soon all who were going on the shuttle were on board and we were off.
There was some worry about getting to the airport on time due to some construction, but we needn’t have worried as while we were driving we got word that our 4:12 PM flight was delayed until 5:15 PM. Once we arrived at the airport and were through security, we were informed our flight would now be leaving at 5:50 PM. So we had a nice long wait at the gate.
Eventually, we were on our way to Salt Lake City. The flight was fine, nothing to write here about. We landed in Salt Lake City and then had a thirty minute shuttle ride off to Park City. Once there we got to our fun condos and put our stuff down. Then we were out foraging for food.
We found out that not much is open on Main Street Park City in the way of places that sever food. We finally did track one down after a bit of walking and finally it felt like we could relax.
I’d like to commend Park CIty on their HEATED BENCHES! Just the thing when sitting out in the cold waiting for the free bus that does a loop of downtown! Very nice.
There’s a lot of laughs off stage with this particular group of puppet people and I think that bodes really well for the shows!
Tomorrow is our first one, and because of that I’m going to cut things short and hit the hay. We are an hour earlier AND we have the time change tonight. That’s losing 2 hours! Need my sleep!
Here we go!
PUPPET UP!
