TV Hot Take - Watcher's Puppet History

Back in 2016 Buzzfeed started a new show called Unsolved. It started with true crime and starred Ryan Bergara and then Shane Madej joined in. They then added in Supernatural and both shows appealed to my murderino nature and deep love of abandoned spooky places. I was hooked pretty quickly.

Then Buzzfeed tried a show called Ruining History hosted by Shane but never continued it. But as a person who loves weird history as well, this tickled my fancy quite a bit.

In 2020 Ryan and Shane started a company along with Steven Lim, started a production company called Watcher (after an episode of Unsolved) and started to make their own shows.

One of those shows - Puppet History.

First, I should way I have Puppet History t-shirt because my son knows I love this show so much. So I am just putting out there this is a fan’s perspective. This is a delicious mix of weird history, rigged game show, cursing puppets and a varying genre musical conclusion to summarize the moral. It’s weird, fantastic and funny as hell.

It seems like it shouldn’t work. For dozens of reasons. In one episode there is a God puppet. And yet, this is a wonderful corky show filled with warmth that makes learning history really quite entertaining. One thing that I hated as a kid was how boring history was. It made no sense. It was dates and wars but rarely covered the why and impact of decisions made. And yet, we all know that we are living history and know that it isn’t boring, so how could the past be that boring?

As I got older I realized it wasn’t history that was boring, but how we teach it. My role models I now name were never mentioned in history books but shaped history more than they were ever given credit. Agrippa alone shaped so much of western history and yet most give his bestie all the credit for his accomplishment, Augustus.

This show focuses in on exactly this type of history. And it then makes it even better by having these ridiculous and adorably wonderful puppets. I would literally have any of these on a bookshelf without any hesitation. The quality of these are surprisingly good.

But honestly, the songs. I can’t even begin to describe appropriately how hysterical and good they are. It is a low key flex showing the talent involved that these take to make. Go check it out.

So, yep, highly recommend. :)

TV Hot Take - Dropout's Um, Actually

There are certain memories from my childhood that firmly are fixed as a generational memory almost as much as a personal one. And staying home sick and watching game shows and soap operas during the day are something nearly everyone my age can relate to. There is also the memory of Jeopardy being on after dinner. It was too late for cartoons but too early for Must See TV and it was Trivia Pursuit without needing to find the little triangles.

Oddly enough, College Humor/Dropout scratches the game show memories better than anyone else for me with their various shows. One of the shows - Game Changer is fantastic and wonderful and definitely worth the watch.

But the one that is a must watch in this household is the hysterical Um, Actually.

A show that reads statements about various nerdy topics in which the contestant has to find the error in the statement and call it out by first stating the phrase Um, actually in true pedantic fashion.

There is an element of pride to getting these right as you obviously play along. In many ways similar to Jeopardy, you feel your geek cred get validated. But on top of it, it is a wonderful way to learn about new properties to watch/read/play along with learn more trivia about things you love.

It is such a delightful show that we bought the at home game off their Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wiggles3d/um-actually and will probably buy more for certain family members for the holidays. It is such a fun show, one you can watch with younger geeks. There is cursing but honestly, who cares about that anymore.

Let me know if you try it, would love to find some folks to play the game with when it does get released.

My Sanctuary

There is something magical about Art in it’s classical form. Now there are many things I classify as art, but what I am referring to is more of the traditional form of art; paintings, sculptures, etc. So often people see these forms of art as walled off, elitist in many ways. To me that is farthest from the truth. Yes, many might try and wall it off, but when you actually read about the artists and look at their works, it becomes crystal clear, it is for all of us, not just who can drop a few million to then hide away.

What is a shame is that a lot of artists were total fan boys of whatever was the pop culture of their day (Degas, Miller), were absolutely moody adults who never grew out of the teenage angst phase (Michael Angelo, Pollock), dreamed of a better world they new didn’t actually exist but wanted to show in their paintings (Van Goth, Dali) or saw beauty in what most would call mundane (Picasso, Warhol). By looking at these works of art they can ground you in a way that the world tries so hard to untether you from.

I luck out, I live in Cleveland. We have the amazing Cleveland Museum of Art. The collection spans so much and so many different flavors, any mood you are in, it can raise you up. What I really enjoy is that they acknowledge that art can come in many forms. One of the favorite areas is where you can wander a great hall filled with armor and weaponry. On the walls, high above, the telling of a myth across about 8 massive tapestries plays out beautifully rendered from so long ago. Placing the two, weaponry and tapestries together helps to make you transport to the time when that would have existed. Tapestries were insulation back in the day of castles. In the large echoing hall it makes history come alive.

Aside from those I have above, there are a few pieces I always go see when I am there. They speak to me in an odd way. The first is a prayer book. Before printing presses, books were precious and the amount of effort that went into creating them was massive. When you look at the pages, seeing the painstaking detail, you can feel the pride of the creator in the work. Talented and deft at his work, it is awe inspiring to think of the amount of time that went into it’s creation. http://www.clevelandart.org/art/1963.256

Another is a painting by John Rogers Cox called Gray and Gold. http://www.clevelandart.org/art/1943.60 When I first saw the painting it reminded me of the beginning of Wizard of Oz. Though it is painted in response to WWII, it hits me at a more personal level. Beautiful and yet worrying, it has a dream like quality that makes you wonder which way the dream will go.

Lastly, but far from least, is a painting called Stag at Sharkey’s. Painted by George Bellows it is of a group of guys watching a boxing match. http://www.clevelandart.org/art/1133.1922 Boxing has always intrigued me. It has always felt like the violent version of dance. Where dance in all of its forms from ballet to krump tells a story, but in telling it is only making you aware, so there is a lack of finality to it. Boxing, and it’s cousins in martial arts and MMA, solve a problem. It comes in to play in the third act of the story and shows the resolution and holds out the consequences for all to see. Dance can seem so violent, especially when dancers bodies contort in ways that painful to see. Boxing looks so graceful and elegant as they weave together and apart during their fight.

What I think makes this painting though so amazing is that the beauty and elegance is shown as the bodies merge together in the painting. Like, dance, boxing is incredibly intimate and yet is on stage for all to see, often by those who don’t even sense the true beauty of it, only engaging for an adrenaline high, or as depicted, gambling. This painting captures this juxtaposition so well that the first time I saw it I just stood and stared at it for so long. It seemed to capture in what is a mundane premise and a sporting event the true beauty of everyday life that we all fail to miss so often. And that just hit me hard.

The Art Museum is my sanctuary. My hideaway from sorrow, pain and chaos. A place I can go and wander, with headphones on, feeling the weight of millennia of human culture helping to put into perspective how tiny I am in the grand scheme of things. And if I am that small then my problems are minuscule. It all melts into a abstract mess until the pictures of potential solutions start to appear as masters tell me their stories through their works, guiding me to what I know I should do.

I know it might seem odd. An Art Museum? Really? But really. Try it. But I mean really try it. Go and read the plaques next to the art. Look at the detail and image what it had to take to create it. Try and figure out how the hell that crazy idea was even thought up of by someone and what that person must of been like. Not everything will speak to you, but in some of those moments, you might hear something. And that can be wonderful.