The Dummy Shoppe | Puppets by JET

Imagination: That place that we can escape to in order to hide from the nastiness of reality; a better place. A land that does not really exist, but should.

These are three possible definitions of the word Imagination. I did not even look the word up, because I know what it means to me. It really is the world that you must be attempting to create for your audience every time you go on stage. Everybody knows what reality is. For a lot of people it is a place that really stinks. It is a place to get away from. The usual. The humdrum. The everyday.

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Within the last week, I became aware of a good friend of ours from Australia who had made a purchase on the big “E” auction site. There was a puppet for sale from one of the most reputable makers for I believe $1,200.00. Our friend emailed the Seller and arranged a buy/trade situation. He was sending the Seller an Axtell puppet in lieu of $200.00 and then sending him $1,000.00 in cash for the balance.

Our friend did due diligence as far as you can on the big site. The seller had a long history of selling with apparent good ratings. Our friend shipped the trade-in puppet, emailed the tracking information and then as he had agreed, he sent the balance of $1,000.00 via PayPal. So far so good.

The Seller had promised to ship the puppet as soon as he received payment and the tracking information. However, when our friend had completely honored his word and sent both the trade-in puppet and payment, no tracking information was forthcoming from the Seller. It should be noted that the Seller was in the USA and our friend was in Australia. After a reasonable amount of time went by, our friend began sending inquiring emails to the Seller wanting some tracking information. As you can imagine, the more time that went by, the more concerned our friend became and the more emails he sent the Seller.

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Every now and then we will see something that reminds us of the importance of keeping your material current. Have you ever seen a stand up comedian that falls flat when he gets up and talks about things that are happening . . . and everything he brings up are news articles that are several years old?

The same thing holds true with Ventriloquists. We, as a group, are basically stand up comedians – with puppets, figures or dummies.

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