Archives for category: Hand Puppets
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Happy to see you!

February 21, 2014 //
2

happy to see you

Today was a special day for Harvey. He went out for lunch to meet up with his sponsor Mr XL. In the old days they saw each other every day, as Mr XL had his office right next to ours. But then we moved out of the building and so did Mr XL. I wasn’t aware until recently that Harvey and Mr XL are in frequent phone contact to exchange the latest tips on the horses. Mr XL let it slip when I arranged the meeting, and it finally explains my exorbitant phone bill.  Mr XL is apparently very lucky with the horses. Harvey isn’t. Now I am not quite sure whether Mr XL isn’t forthcoming with the right tips or if Harvey isn’t listening properly, though big enough ears he has!

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Categories Absurd, Art, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life, Social Network

Fantastic News

February 17, 2014 //
6

push push and harvey

It is about time for some real feel-good news. And we finally got some. It was quite funny and very unassuming, but now all the Dedes are celebrating. Here is the story.

Late last night, Push Push the elephant walked up to Harvey and said, “Harvey, you are a sponsored puppet, aren’t you? What do you actually have to do?” Harvey looked at her from top to bottom and back again, and said, “You have to find yourself a sponsor, you silly thing!”

“No, that’s not what I mean” she said. “What do you do when you are a sponsored puppet?” Harvey still didn’t get it, but Mouse jumped in. “Does this mean you’ve got a sponsorship?” she cried. “Yes,” said Push Push and suddenly got emotional with little tears glistening in the corner of her eyes. “Someone is sponsoring me. But I have no idea how I can thank this person!”  Mouse jumped up and down with joy and hugged Push Push over and over again. “Oh, you lucky, lucky Dede! You might get out of here before it all falls to pieces.”

But now Harvey stepped in and pushed Mouse to the side. “Oh no, a sponsorship is not a ticket out! It is quite the contrary. You get a sponsorship so that you stay.” All of a sudden he was the cool dude, the old experienced hand in sponsorships, which is in fact true, as he found his sponsor last year at the exhibition in July. He explained to Push Push that she will have to send Christmas cards and birthday cards to her sponsor and hold her hand up as often as possible to appear in films and on the blog, so that people see her and her value increases. She also might have to go out to lunch with her sponsor from time to time. “I am having a lunch date with my sponsor this Friday. It is not as easy as it sounds. It’s bordering on work” he finished off and folded his arms across his chest, just a tad miffed that he wasn’t so special anymore.

“Oh no, I won’t go out for lunches, my sponsor lives overseas! And I am happy to write Christmas cards and birthday cards. I will write one every month, I am starting right now!”

“Oh dear,” Harvey rolled his eyes. “How on earth did she find a sponsor?”

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Categories Absurd, Art, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life, Promotion, Relationships, Social Network

Look who is back

February 14, 2014 //
6

lost puppets

Out of the blue, Devil showed up. And can you believe it? He had Lizzie and Lil’Sculpture in tow. Phew, what a relief. But at the same time, everybody was very, very angry with Devil as he obviously knew all along where the two missing puppets had been hiding out.

Surprisingly, Sunny played totally cool now and said he knew all along they would not have met with an untimely end as the sturdy polystyrene man will outlast any Dede. But having observed him all week, I believe his change of mind only came after ArtistatExit0 pointed out that Lil’Sculpture’s distant cousin, the plain polystyrene coffee cup, will last for two hundred years. Right!

Everybody else stormed towards Devil and wanted to know what happend. Devil, back in a confident spokesperson mode announced he found himself a new job. From now on he will be the spokesperson of the trash puppets in the neighbourhood. Over the last two weeks the three of them had nutted out what they will to do in future. Life under the regime of Magician was too dangerous for trash puppets, so they had to set up their own union and run their own workshops. They have invited a very special guest to their next workshop and it will be on Saturday the 22 Feb in the studio…

“Hang on,” Magician interrupet at this point. “The Dedes have a workshop on the 22nd, the studio space is taken!”

“No it is not” Devil replied calmly and produced a booking sheet from under his robe “Here, see for yourself, we have made a booking for the space, where is your’s?”

At this point Mouse turned fire-engine red and said under her breath “I wondered where the booking sheet had got to.”

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Categories Absurd, Art, Comedy, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life, Relationships, Social Network, workshop

Pushing on

February 9, 2014 //
2

magician dede live

While most of the Dedes are still looking for Lil’ Sculpture and Lizzie, Magician doesn’t have much time to be sentimental and is pushing on with the jobs at hand.  Devil started all these projects over the last year, but never really finished – like the website for the dede workshops. I found Magician sitting at the computer burning the midnight oil last night. When I asked him what he was doing, to my suprise he answered, “I’ll let you in on a secret, there is actually no such thing as magic. Things only happen by sheer hard work.”

I looked at him in disbelieve and he obviously had seen this kind of look before. “Well, yes, my parents should have called me Determination, but they thought that would make my life more difficult!”

“And what about the funny hat?” I asked.

“That is another secret… You always have to look the part!”

Then he turned back to the computer and proudly announced: “Here, that is what we need, a website to promote the workshops.”

I have to admit, I was impressed, particularly since he has only been in the job for how long? Three weeks? Though on closer scrutiny, I had the feeling that Devil had done most of the work and it only needed a bit of tweaking to finish it off. At least Devil is still the poster boy. Magician had made no effort to start from scratch and come up with a new strategy. If you are interested, here is the link to dedelive.com

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Categories Absurd, Art, Comedy, Digital art, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life, Social Network, workshop

Search effort

February 7, 2014 //
2

poster copy

Sunny took the advice of our reader Arlo and created posters with the images of the two missing puppets to hang up on the lamp posts in the neighbourhood. This one is right opposite our house and all the Dedes can easily see it from the studio window. So far we have not seen anyone taking notice, apart from a few dogs sniffing around before they did what dogs do. And certainly nobody has come forward to shed any light on the disappearance. Mabybe Sunny should have used a ladder?

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Categories Absurd, Art, Comedy, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life, Social Network

Gone missing!

February 4, 2014 //
6

sunny looking for lil

It so happens that the first anniversary of the day when Sunny created Lil’ Sculpture is approaching. You might remember it was last year on Waitangi Day when Sunny, the wannabe artist, all of a sudden got frantically busy and came up with a cute little figure. I was very miffed with him, as he actually didn’t come up with the concept but just copied the work of Artistatexit0. If you can’t remember, here is the story. Anyway, Sunny isn’t the most reliable Dede. He is so involved in his own little world, trying to create his 15 minutes of fame, that he usually forgets about anybody else and doesn’t keep in touch. Funnily enough, when he realised that it is Waitangi Day this week, he all of a sudden remembered that Lil’ Sculpture almost made him famous and he wanted to go and look his little mate up and reminice about the good old times (They weren’t actually that good… but I won’t enlighten him about this).

He got a big surprise when he arrived at the bookshelf, where Lil’ Sculpture has been residing like forever, to find the little man was nowhere to be seen. Worse, there was no-one else around, no neighbours, that Sunny could ask about the whereabouts of his creation. He tried to keep a brave face, but I could see that he was very distressed about the disappearance of his artwork.

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Categories Absurd, Art, Comedy, film, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life, Relationships, Social Network

First action

January 29, 2014 //
4

lizzie and lil sculpture

Magician finally got to work! His first action was to serve all non-Dedes with an eviction notice. They have to leave their places in the studio by Thursday. Magician wants all human visitors to the studio to see Dedes only. Lil’Sculpture didn’t take the notice too seriously as he is a well liked observer of the Dedes. You could call him an honorary Dede, as he was created by Sunny Boy, the wannabe Dede artist. He even appeared in one of the Dede Flash Dramas. He always thought he was well liked by everybody.

Lizzie, the sponge puppet, on the other hand keeps mostly to herself. She is a very hard worker and has been working flat out the last four days on a film to raise awareness about Lipoedema. She was too tired in the evenings to look at the notice. Both were very surprised when Magician appeared at dawn this morning and reminded them not to ignore the deadline, and they have only one more day to leave. “But where shall we go?” asked a tired Lizzie.  Magician looked around and said, “Ah well, you can have the empty bookshelf till Friday. But this is my last word. If you are not out by then, I will move you to the rubbish bin.”

Magician was very cunning with his timing. None of the other Dedes were about. They were all still asleep in their cupboard. Only Devil, who has made his bed by the stage door for the time being, overheard what was said. But if he mentions anything to the others they will assume it is just sour grapes. What a predicament. What to do?

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Categories Absurd, Art, Creative Writing, film, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life, Social Network

Devil’s viewpoint…

January 26, 2014 //
5

devil explain

Devil and I had breakfast together. I know he is extremely scathing about the committee when he is with Mouse, or so Mouse says. They have been good mates for years, and I assume he feels he can let rip.When I last spoke to Mouse she said he didn’t think he made any mistakes at all. But when I listened to Devil, his point of view didn’t seem particularly skewed, it all made perfect sense to me.

Right away he made it clear he wasn’t unhappy he lost this particularly ungrateful job. Nobody appreciated his efforts and the committee were the worst. To be honest, they had no clue what they wanted, nor did they know what is involved in a spokesperson’s job, but they expected miracles from him. Their motto basically is, we say jump and you jump, to hell with the implications. And while one member of the committee said jump to the right, the other said jump to the left, so he ended up standing in the middle of the road. Just look back at the last year. One day they wanted a zazzle shop, the next day they wanted to sell books, then they wanted a facebook page, a week later they thought workshops would be all the rave… and each time they expected him to put his full heart into the campaign while he knew very well that next week at least one of them would change their mind. He tried to tell them they should focus, it’s no good trying everything, but they didn’t want to listen to his expertise and it got really, really tiresome in the end. He got so sick of the uphill battle. Good luck to  Magician. But of course, he will be the hero for a while as new brooms always sweep clean.

“So why are you so down then? You should be skipping and dancing. It sounds like it was a job from hell anyway.” I asked.

“I am simply grieving for the engery I spent” he said. “You know I am not the youngest anymore. In fact I am the oldest of the Dedes. It gets more and more difficult to re-invent yourself, but that is what I have to do!”

Good on you, Devil!

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Categories Absurd, Art, Comedy, film, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life, Relationships, Social Network

What about the vote?

January 23, 2014 //
4

mouse clipboard

I bumped into Mouse and took the chance to ask her how it was decided that Devil should be sacked. Our reader Cathosster queried yesterday whether there should have been a vote and asks, where is the democratic process in all this? Mouse reminded me that there was in fact a vote by the Dede committee members. She even pulled out the minutes which she still had on her clip board to show me. “Here you are,” she said, “the woodheads had requested to speak to the committee at their meeting. They spoke at length about the future of the Dedes, and so on and so on… you can read it for yourself”. She handed me the minutes. It was all above board. In the end it was motioned to vote on the dismissal of the spokesperson and the result was 3 for and 2 against letting Devil go. Sorry, I am not a big expert on the Dede Society Constitution, but I believe Mouse when she says there was no foul play.

“So, what do you think about all this?” I asked.

Mouse seemed a bit uncomfortable and humed and hawed. “But you and Devil were such a formidable team,” I continued, “will it be the same with Magician?”

“Look” she said, “I am the administrator. I will work with whoever. It will be different, but I am sure it will work.”

“She is scared she will be next” said Pirate who just happened to pass by at that moment.

“No, I am not!” replied Mouse defiantly and then pulled me into a quiet corner. There she told me in confidence that she finds herself in an impossible position. Devil is one of her best friends, but each time when they see each other now, he is terribly negative and scathing about the Dede committee, and he wants her to agree with him. But she, Mouse, is still working there and loves her work. While she can understand Devil’s hurt, she also sees how he could have done things differently to avoid the situation. But of course Devil doesn’t want to have a bar of this yet (or maybe he’ll never want to hear it). The whole thing strains their friendship to the max.  He treats her like a traitor and while she knows he really needs her badly right now, she doesn’t want to see him. She feels like a real bad mouse at the moment and wishes it will be over soon and everybody is back to normal.

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Categories Absurd, Art, Creative Writing, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life, Social Network

Maiden speech

January 22, 2014 //
6

magician speech

After the Woodheads had started their long track back to the bottom of the stairs, where they usually reside, Magician was ready for his maiden speech. He stood quietly on stage and smiled benevolently at the crowd. You have to admit, he does have a very benign expression. It made me all fuzzy inside watching him slowly unfolding his arms and stretching them out as if he wanted to embrace the entire Dede world. The crowd looked at him expectantly. Finally he said very slowly: “I will save you, trust me!” in a rather high-pitched voice. And that was it. He bowed a few times in all directions and the Dedes thanked him with rapturous applause.

“Oh’ dear”, said Devil from his favourite spot behind the curtain. “Ssssh,” I said “Give him a chance, he just does things differently than you.”

“So far he hasn’t done anything!” Devil answered back and gave me a very dirty look as if I’d betrayed him. Then he wandered back to his bedstead to have another rest.

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Categories Absurd, Art, Comedy, Creative Writing, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life, Relationships, Social Network
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