OK, who's playing the head pirate? He looks damned familiar.

Truthful TV Title Cards

(Nintendogs?)

Two new dances learned on Yo Gabba Gabba:

1) The Baby Isaac - by DJ Lance

2) The Puppet Master - Elijah Wood (I'm sure you can imagine how that would go)

Thanks dcp!

Theatre to me is a stripped-down version of reality. It only has to suggest. Movies and television are depicting a whole world. I'm okay with movies that create some kind invented place that never was, but in this case, they appear to be trying to roughly place it in the original Crusoe era, the 18th century, minus the actual clothing and mores of the era, plus guns that shoot more than once and certain liberties with the laws of physics.

I like to play unusual music for my students. One of my favorites to spring on them is violinist Vanessa Mae. At first they look like, "What is this!" and then some of them are truly intrigued by an electric violin.

GG, have you heard any Lucia Micarelli? Classically trained, but plays Led Zep and Queen. Playing Kashmir

Gaming peoplr--do you have any recs for Nintendo DS games that would be good for 9 year old girls?

Perkins, Lewis works at Gamestop and he's asking if the girl in question is really girly girl? If she is, in addition to Nintendogs, there is a whole line of Petz games. The Imagine Series is also really popular (stuff like Fashion Designer, Rock Star, Teacher). There's also an upcoming series called "EnerG" that focuses on sports-related stuff aimed at girls, so there's going to be gymnastics, equestrian, cheerleading.

From personal experience, Abby, who's about to turn eleven, has been happily playing Pokemon, My Sims, and anything Mario. If you have any other questions, let me know and I can ask Lewis.

Are historically accurate costumes more important in movies than in theatre?

There is certainly more budget for them.

Perkins, Lewis works at Gamestop and he's asking if the girl in question is really girly girl?

Thanks! She (my niece) isn't really. I think the Imagine stuff would get usurped by her sister. I've heard Animal Crossing is good, so I'm going with that and then either Ninendogs or Mariokart, I think.

Cool-- Lewis is nodding his head and saying that Animal Crossing is definitely a good choice and started to mention it before. Plus, it has the Abby seal of approval.

I played the violin! Badly! 'Cause I was lazy and didn't practice as much as I should have.

I used to think learning violin would be extremely hard because they're fretless.

When I started the teacher put little strips of masking tape under the strings to mark where my fingers should go. It certainly takes a while, but eventually you develop muscle memory and just know where to hold the neck and how far to stretch your fingers, so that part isn't actually too bad. Well, if you have someone experienced, and some masking tape, I guess.

Actually, I think tuning the damned thing was the hardest part for me, but my sense of pitch is suboptimal.