Having recognized the establishment of a new yearly blog post record I have to decide what I'm going to write about in this milestone entry.
I have decided to share with y'all a couple of moments of "enlightenment" that I've had lately.
The first one is rather whimsical and something that it only took me 34 years to realize. It has to do with a song that's part of one of my all time favorite movie soundtracks.
The 1980 film, The Blues Brothers, is not only one of those movies I have to watch every time I see it on TV but I love the soundtrack.
The movie's opening song and the first one on the soundtrack is called "She Caught The Katy." Some of the lyrics are:
She caught the Katy
And left me a mule to ride
Now my baby caught the Katy
Left me a mule to ride
The train pulled out
I swung on behind
Now I've been singing along with these lyrics for over 3 decades and always thought "the katy" was a slang term for a Cadillac. I can only assume that I thought that because that was the type of car a blues song would be about.
But while watching one of my favorite TV shows the other night, Mysteries At The Museum, I saw a story about the old Missouri-Kansas-Texas railroad whose nickname was "The Katy" because of it's stock exchange symbol "K-T."
Knowing that the song laments about a woman leaving town on a train helps to illustrate the sadness the writer feels about the broken status of his relationship with her.
The only relevance this realization has is that in the future when I hear this song I will mentally picture a train leaving a station instead of someone driving away in a Cadillac.
As a "thank you" for allowing me to expound on this really trivial bit of personal discovery I now present for your enjoyment a link to the You Tube video featuring the song. Be careful it can get in your head and you'll be humming it all day.
The second enlightening moment I want to mention is the result of the book I'm currently reading.
My habit of reading has really tailed off this year. I haven't finished one book all year long. I have listened to a couple of audio books but have not actually completed reading one.
Having said that, the book I have been reading is the biography of Jim Henson. This is the book I bought after I attended a release party at the Bowling Green Barnes & Noble store in June of last year. At the time of this post I am about halfway through the book.
Jim Henson is one of the top 10 on my most influential "famous" people in my life. Let me share with you the story that illustrates the effect he has had on me.
The artist who first sparked my aspirations to perform with puppets was ventriloquist Paul Winchell. He fascinated me on the afternoon kids TV show "Winchell Mahoney Time" when I was about 6 or 7.
Around that time, the Muppets were just something my dad really liked. He used to call us to the TV to watch the segments of the Jimmy Dean show that featured the Muppet Rowlf the dog on Saturday nights and occasionally on Sunday nights when the Muppets performed on The Ed Sullivan Show.
But in 1969 it was Henson's work with the Muppets on Sesame Street that got me obsessed with puppetry.
Once I met Kermit, Burt and Ernie, Oscar the Grouch, Big Bird, and Cookie Monster through the black & white TV in my living room I was hooked. I made it my goal to create a troupe of puppet characters just like on Sesame Street. I wanted a puppet troupe of my own.
Over the next 5 or 6 years I collected the Fisher Price version of the Sesame Street hand puppets, finger puppets, and even some small Disney Character marionettes.
However once I started going to middle school the idea that I played with puppets was not something my friends would let me get by with. They razzed me about it and I really wanted to fit in. Eventually I traded in all my puppets for a peer group and a shot at having a girlfriend.
At age 15, I tried to learn but didn't stick with ventriloquism. Again the reason I gave it up was because, for some reason girls weren't attracted to a guy making a stuffed animal sitting on his lap talk...go figure.
Even though I'd put it aside in my youth, my interest in puppets and ventriloquism never ever left me. Fast forward 40 years.
In 2006 I took up ventriloquism again. Returning to my artistic interest reignited my passion for puppets. I began collecting them again. I now have about 3 dozen puppets.
Now here's where the moment of clarity as a result of reading Jim Henson's biography comes in.
While reading the section of the book that deals with the 5 years The Muppet Show was in production and The Muppet Movie was made I realized that those years were probably the apex of the Muppets during Henson's lifetime.
At that time the Muppets had grown into what they were mostly through Henson's vision and efforts. Breakout characters like Miss Piggy, Gonzo, and Fozzie Bear had become popular and well known all over the world.
As a kid I had the dream to emulate the cache of characters that Henson had created on Sesame Street. As an adult, who was back into the world of puppets, I once again tapped into that childhood desire to be like my idol. My cases full of puppets sitting in my back storage room is evidence of that.
But I have realized that there are two things wrong with my aspiring to the model of the Muppets. First of all, the Muppets are made up of a troupe of puppeteers. There are dozens and dozens of men and women who give life and voice the Muppets. But each puppeteer only performs a handful of characters. I perform as a solo act and have a limited range of voices I can do.
Also I am a ventriloquist. If you look at even the best of the best ventriloquists, (Jeff Dunham, Terry Fator, Jay Johnson, Taylor Mason, to name a few) they have multiple characters but only a few.
So I think the next step in my personal development of my ventriloquism should be "thinning the herd" in regard to the characters I perform.
I already know that my most popular character, Cecil the turtle, is at the top of the list. But as of now the rest of the lineup has to be determined.
Some of my puppets are front runners because they are personal favorites. But I am going to have some decisions to make.
I'll be writing more about this process and may even create a way for my blog readers and Facebook friends to help me choose.
So there you have my latest "epiphanies." One about some song lyrics that's basically unimportant and the other about making a major decision in my future approach to ventriloquism.
Thus begins the first step into a new frontier of more than 170 blog posts in a year. Hmm...wonder what I'll write about? Aria? Lego? My travels? Happenings at church? Self Indulgent childhood memories? Smiths Grove stuff? Yeah I think there's some material there.
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