Thursday, May 04, 2006

San Mateo Campout with Acacia, April 2006

Great campout, as it is every year. On Friday night, instead of the usual movie, I volunteered to do a "Kids' Concert". I was worried that I would be less entertaining than "Ice Age 2", but the everybody seemed to be OK with it. The surprise of the night was when I did "Love Potion Number 9", which has been in the Kids Section of the Book for a long time, but never gets requested, so I don't do it much. But I did it anyway, and it went over really big. When I played at the Saturday night campfire, and again at the Sunday morning "Chapel", some kids were calling out for me to do it again. Raucously. Who knew?

On Saturday, we implemented my idea for the "video" that we're supposed to submit to be shown at the end-of-the-year Family Campout in June. Each tribe is supposed to do whatever they want. Nobody in my tribe had any ideas, so, naturally, I had to come up with one, which was to do the "Penguins on a Bus" sketch, but with sock puppets which the kids would make, use in the play, and take home. A craft and a video, all in one. I spent two weeks designing the penguin puppets for cuteness and build-ability, and making the cop and bus driver, and the motorcycle, and getting ready to build the bus at the site, to accomodate however-many girls we ended up with. Planning nightmare, 'cuz whatever I remembered to bring was gonna be it -- no running out to the garage for some duct tape or whatever.

It came out quite well. Took forever, but we had a good long morning to do it in, and the kids could go play while the dads worked on the "set". I was really surprised at the level of participation -- all the dads helped out, a lot. Frequently, on this kind of thing, they all just sort of get a "This is Keith's thing" attitude, and walk away. This time they all pitched in, and it's a good thing, too, 'cuz it was pretty complicated to get it all working.

You can check it out here.

The link is to an 8 megabytes file, but you might find it's worth it.

The original idea was to do it in one take, in the camera, and to submit the tape, foregoing any editing on the computer and that whole can of worms. Didn't happen, but since I had to go to the computer anyway, I was able to throw in some titles and stuff at the beginning that make it a lot more fun anyway.

By the way, the name is a parody of the upcoming Samuel Jackson thriller "Snakes on a Plane", which won't be out until August, but is getting lots of buzz on the Internet, probably only 'cuz the name is so cool/funny. I know nobody will get it, but it's just my little joke.

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