puppetmaker | Entries tagged with lj idol

Welcome to my journal. I have been posting on Live Journal since 2004 and participated in Live Journal Idol for quite a while. I have enjoyed the prompts over the years and I think they have made be a better writer. I even had a couple of essays published in the LJ Idol book.

Who am I?

Well it depends which circle I am in and who you ask.

If you ask my daughter, I am mommy maker of things.

If you ask my husband, I am his wife and soul-mate.

If you ask my stepdaughters, I am their father’s second wife and pretty chill.

If you ask my husband’s grandchildren, they will look at you and drool a bit since they are both under a year old. But I am Baba to them, which is the Polish version of Grandma.

If you ask my husband’s fans, I am the wife of Peter David writer of stuff who has a cool set of skills on her own.

I am a puppeteer, costumer, published author, book editor, a teacher, and more jobs than I care list.

I know a lot of interesting people. Some of them are famous and others not so much but they have things that are interesting about them.

I have had a lot of adventures in my life and been to a lot of interesting places. I have been to Hobbiton, the set of Dr. Who twice, SDCC, George and Brad Takei’s wedding, and many other conventions all over the world.

I am a fan of a lot of stuff but I am also a professional in the publishing world, which is a balancing act.

I am looking forward to getting to know my readership and my readership getting to know me.

Some that I do in my regular entries which I hope you give a read to as well as my essays for LJ Idol is I end it with something that I am grateful for. I started it years ago just to take a pause and consider what I have in my life.

I am grateful that Gary decided to have another season that I can play in.

Be careful the first step is a doozy.

Hello gentle Reader,

Welcome to the 2014 edition of “Who the heck am I?”

My name is Kathleen David. I am more commonly known as either Puppetmaker or Puppetmaker40 or Kath. If you knew me before 1987, then you might call me Kathy which was the last time I was Kathy due to the Yale School of Drama where I became known as Kath because we had a Kathy, a Kathleen and a Catherine in the Stage Management program.

I grew up in Atlanta and was very involved in the science fiction community. I was a member of the Terminus TARDIS and the Might Rassilon Art Players along with the Androgum Society. I worked at Oxford Comics for a time too. I am well versed in many forms of Fandom. Current favorites are Dr. Who, Sherlock, Elementary, Once Upon a Time (and in Wonderland), Supernatural, Arrow, Agents of Shield, and too many other shows to count.

I am married to Peter David (click here for his Wikipedia entry and here for his website). I have three stepdaughters who are all adults (Shana, Gwen, and Ariel) and out of the house and we have our daughter Caroline who is eleven. We live out on Long Island but go into the city quite frequently.

My jobs over the years would take pages. I have had a rather eclectic work history. I am still an Equity Stage Manger, a Book Editor, a Writer, and a Master Puppeteer along with the title of Mom. I also make dolls and costumes among other crafty activities.

Puppetry is my main calling. I have been “wiggling dolls,” as the Great Gonzo says, for fun for as long as I can remember. I have taught courses in puppetry all over the United States. I do puppets I am interested in and I create commissioned pieces for various people and venues. My puppets are in private collections all over the world.

I can converse about a variety of topics and will do so during this season.

So feel free and ask me any questions you have. There are only a couple of topics I either don’t talk about or can’t talk about.

I am in no way a fashionista. My couture tends to the t-shirt, bowling shirts, hoodies, and pants end of the spectrum. I wear men’s shoes because women’s shoes don’t fit me well. I can’t wear heels at all due to having worn corrective shoes when I was a child to fix a problem of flat feet with slightly deformed ankles. I still have the flat feet but the ankles are in good shape.

However I am an observer of fashion and have done so since I was small. I always loved when the fashion magazine was in the New York Times on Sunday. I would spend the afternoon going over all the pictures and looking at the photos. Because of the way my mind works, I was picking out at a rather early age those fashions that were going to stick and those that were a flash in the pan.

As some of you know I have been going to scifi conventions (as we used to call them) for over 30 years now. And they have a fashion scene all there own that has evolved over the years. Even some fashion that started in fandom, made it mainstream over time. Some would call it costuming and they might be partially right however I see more people wearing what they wear at conventions and even renfaires outside the venue and they don’t look at all out of place.

Here are some current trends in fandom that I can see or already have seen outside the convention halls.

Let’s start with Steampunk. It is showing up more and more on the runways of Paris and Milan along with New York and Sidney. Steampunk the term was coined in the late 80s however I have seen people dress in steampunk garb as far back at the 70s. I have seen rocketmen and Jules Verne type explorers. It has only been recently that there has been an explosion of Steampunk garb which has gone into the main stream especially in the realm of shoes and boots. I have seen in both fall and spring collections more garments that have nods to the steampunk world. Eventually you will be able to get your punk on from your local Target if you would like.

Then there is gaming fashion. Yes, there is gaming fashion so don’t laugh too hard. One thing that came out of the gaming world that has made it into Hot Topic is the creature hoodie. It is a hooded sweat jacket that you can pull over your face like a mask and make yourself look like a pokemon or other characters from video games. I first saw a Pikachu hoodie about 10 years ago. The owner of the hoodie told me that his sister had made it for him. I thought it was a very clever idea and was not that surprised to see it in Hot Topic. Nor was I surprised to see hats with animal ears for teens and adults at Hot Topic which I first saw at conventions. The animal hoodie is not that far behind and will probably be available within the next two years.

Pirate couture is hot right now. There was piratical couture before Disney released “Pirates of the Caribbean” but quite an explosion since. It is now easy to find a pirate shirt in Sears or Target. Mainstream patterns are available in fabric stores and there is plenty of pirate themed fabric to be had at those same stores. Many of the former pirates have taken what they had and moved over to the Steampunk side of the fashion trends.

Out of Japan comes the Lolita fashion which had its start in the US back in the late 70s and early 80s. This is becoming more mainstream as well. The Lolita fashion has its own set of rules and regulations that I am not even going to start to go into. You started seeing this fashion mostly at Anime conventions but now it is more and more at mainstream conventions, tea rooms, and Disney parks. The fashion that I think is going to go mainstream is Gothic Lolita especially after I keep seeing people wear it in music videos. Also a lot of it is not far off from Steampunk. However I do expect to see more fabric for Sweet Lolita fashion in the fabric stores this spring.

Next I expect that clothing is going to have more of an oriental flair to it like what I see a lot of cosplayers wearing around conventions. Anime is going to be a big influence in the future along with more gaming clothing coming into the mix. Look at what people are wearing at the conventions and you may be seeing the future in fashion.

This was my entry for this week’s prompt for the LJ Idol. I hope you have enjoyed my thoughts on fandom and fashion and that you will vote for me in the next poll

Side note: this topic was a rather difficult one for me to do partially because I was reading other entries that were showing up on my friends list and a number of people said what I was going to say much better. It came down to two. Both involved a lot of back story which I am fine with. I went with this one with a flip of a coin and checking to see if I have written about either topic in my previous entries

There is a place at Disney World that I use to call home. I would walk in and be greeted by the denizens within. A lot happened in my life at that place and it still is our favorite place anywhere on any Disney property. Unfortunately no one has been able to go there in over two years. It was the Adventurers Club.

The empty building still stands on Disney property but not for long according to various permits that have been filed with both the local and state governments. The props are scattered through out Disney properties from Orlando to Hong Kong to France. A couple have been repurposed in shops on the Island. They have slowly been removing the insides so that they can knock the building down.

I went this past January to Disney World to see Ariel sing with her choir and to say goodbye to the Adventurers Club. I went by and took a lot of photos of everything that was still there. Since then they have removed a bunch of pieces including the banner. I sat on the steps and remembered all that came out of that club in my life.

It was there that Peter and I had our first formal date. It was there that we got engaged. It was there that we made some life long friends who have been there for us in thick and thin. It was there that we learned the secrets of the club including the tunnels that allowed the cast members to get from one room to another without having to deal with the crowd. It was there we spent our entire evenings going from show to show. We knew where to be when for everything. And we would stay in the library post show to talk to the actors behind the characters that we had friended.

I think that is one of the things I miss the most. Sitting around discussing all kinds of topics while someone was on their break. Seeing them snap into character if someone opened the door that they shouldn’t and then relax back into themselves. The library has been stripped and the stage we sat on has been dismantled. The scrim that “Fingers” use to hid behind so he could be the ghost playing the organ has been rolled up carefully and is in storage or maybe in Hong Kong where most of that room went.

It was our touchstone. Now we really don’t know what to do with ourselves in the evening after the parks are closed. Well that’s not so true. We tend to get together with our Adventurer’s Club friends and reminisce about the club and talk liked we use to in the library with the topic floating from one subject to another.

Soon not even the building will be standing and with that we will say a fond final Kungaloosh to a club where you would come in as a stranger and leave a little stranger.

Behind the cut are a few photos I took the last time I visited my beloved club this past January.

( Kungaloosh )

This past week I have been introducing myself or finding myself being introduced to people by other people. I find it interesting how I am introduced to others especially at my daughter’s school. First it is the fact that my daughter goes to the school which explains why I would be interested in the school I guess. Then it is my puppetry skills which, if the other person is a long time participant in the school, the other person can then place me as that parent that did the puppets at Field Day. Then it is the fact that I help out in the library every week.

Then other things that people think are interesting about me tend to come out. I have worked in Theater. I know some pretty interesting people in both the publishing and film industry. I am a published writer. I am a book editor. I worked on both Star Wars non-fiction and fiction. I have been to Australia and New Zealand. I have been to Europe more than once. My husband is a New York Times best-selling author. I make really wonderful puppets and dolls (One of my local fabric store buddies had me show pictures to other women who were in the store at the same time who did other crafts recently.) My costuming skills are wicked or wonderful depending on who you ask.

I have five cats as pets included a 10 week old kitten who dropped out of a tree during a terrible storm. I like animals and they like me a lot. My husband calls me the animal magnet. As I write this the kitten is curled tightly at my hip sleeping that boneless sleep that only kittens can do.

I prefer Apple products. I have an iPhone, an iPad, and a MacBook. I converted my husband to the Apple side of the force because it was easier for him to open up art files to look at rather than having to keep swiping my laptop. So now all the computers talk to each other. I have a lot of apple computers that still work even though they are over 20 years old.

I am an unabashed Doctor Who fan and all the spin offs. I am a Brit SF TV fan. I am big into animation. We are big Disney Fans. Currently I am watching Chuck, Supernatural, Sherlock, Good Wife, Warehouse 13, Sanctuary, Caprica, Nikita, No Ordinary Family, Tower Prep, Simpsons, Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Desperate Housewives, Project Runway, and Dancing with the Stars (until Jennifer Grey is out and then I’m done with it). There are probably other shows I am watching as well but those are the ones that come to mind.

I see a lot of films especially the children’s fare. Having an eight year-old means that I have seen some pretty awful children’s films and some pretty awesome ones as well. But my husband and I find time to see films that we want to see.

I watch sports. Baseball and football are my favorites to watch but I have watched a lot of other things as well.

So any questions?

OK Fan Geek, come over here.

Right here. That's a good fan.

Sit down at this desk. You comfortable?

Sound F/X WHAM WHAM THUMP

Aww your head hit the desk at I hit you with this clue by four that I have in my hand.

Why? Why am I inflicting this on you?

Because it seems the only way to get you to shut up and listen and get a fricking clue.

I am so tired of hearing the whining about how you feel that your favorite author has "ruined" their world that THEY created. How they didn't do what you wanted in the final book/comic/manga and now the whole series is ruined. Clue phone is ringing. Most of us like how things ended and thought that the author did a good job tying up the loose ends that had been created in the other books. B*tching to the rest of us is not endearing you to us at all nor is that dreadful fanfic you have been begging us to read.

Here is something else that you need to hear. THE MOVIE DOES NOT RUIN THE BOOK! If you hate what they did with the movie or who they cast in the films or how it was directed, go back and read the book. The book has not changed. The movie did not move the words around in the book so it now reads like the movie. The original text will always be there. Stopping bending our ears about all the things wrong with the film. You have beaten that dead horse into the ground and almost all the way to China.

Your favorite TV series has been cancelled. Yeah that really sucks but this happens all the time. Wishing for it to come back is not happening. The actors have contracts with other shows or they are doing a film. The sets are destroyed with a number of the props sold off at auction. Trying to convince everyone that we can convince the PTB to bring the show back is getting beyond annoying and is now boarding on the pathological. And the next time you bring up "Cupid" I will reach through my screen and strangle you. I don't see Jeremy Piven in it and oh look they even changed the name of the series. Bringing up "Serenity" just damages my calm. The series is gone, deal with it.

Your favorite actor/author/famous person said something mean about fans? Have you seen how some fans treat them on the Internet? If they comment or try to defend themselves, you come back that the VIP is picking on you and how dare they. How dare they? How darn you think it is OK to rip another human being. Does it make you feel better that you have slammed someone you have never met? This goes double if you don't have the guts to sign your REAL NAME to the insult. I am willing to bet BstFan4vr is not your real name.

You need to stop and think for a moment, that which you fan geek has a soul and feelings. And maybe you should count to 10 and really think about how what you are going to say is going to affect others on the Internet and in Real Life. I know you would not behave this way in Real Life in Public. Because right now you are clueless about how your behavior is affecting others.

And remember I have a large Clue by Four with your name on it. Don't make me use it again.

This has been my entry for this week for the LJ Idol and stems from some current frustration I am having with certain section of fandom

Monday Peter and I got one of our very rare lunches out by ourselves because school was out. He and I kicked around some topics for LJ Idol. A couple of good ones I had already written out so those when into the discard pile. A couple I felt I had covered enough on my blog over time that I had done them to death.

Then he brought something up that I have been avoiding thinking about for a while because even after a year the wound is still raw. Just the thought brings tears to my eyes and pain in my heart. It is probably why I have been in such a funk recently because just at the corner of my mind it sits waiting for me to look at it again.
( Cut_So_Not_Everyone_had_to_read_it )