Planet Puppet
December 26, 2024 at 08:30PMVentriloquism isn’t the audience draw it used to be—anomalies like Jeff Dunham notwithstanding—but as a spectacle worthy of a gonzo approach, it remains almost unbelievably fertile. Mina Tavakoli visits the tradition’s biggest convention (in Kentucky, of all places) and returns with one of those stories you wish you’d written but are all too happy to read. Offbeat, uncanny, and unforgettable.
The man with the chef’s hat and meatball puppet was barely registering his acquaintance, who was gesturing toward heaven with a puppet in the shape of an ear of corn. That was Job, the unlucky cob. The man in the chef’s hat bore Meatball, a loud Italian American meatball who calmed hospital patients and veterans through a nest of spaghetti. Just past the gurgle of the lobby fountain was Barbie Q. Chicken, a 4-year-old bird who was both Broadway prima donna and antibullying activist. Beside the wall of potted plants was Danny, an underweight and barefoot hillbilly from the mountains of West Virginia, and further beyond him was Herman the Worm (pronounced “Hoiman Da Woim”), a cross-eyed caterpillar made out of a dryer vent hose. Beep, a monkey, was kitty-corner, behind me were Doodle the toad and the handsomely breasted showgirl Miss Trixie, and now approaching with tensed biceps was Rocco, the muscular pit bull from Staten Island. Each was, and I understand that this sounds stupid, tremendously human: some had that sort of vaporizing charisma; some, one could tell, had the limper, more sheepish personalities of those whose lives are defined by long stretches of extreme silence. As the lobby mushroomed with figures of felt, wood, and PVC tubing, they formed a great chorus of flopsy and glabrous creatures that would not shut up.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2024/12/26/planet-puppet/
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