There were lots of things that kind of surprised me about the television studio when I finally got there.
For one, I wasn’t expecting all the food. And I mean good food too. Muffins. Danishes. Chocolate chip cookies about as big as Frisbees, and I’m not kidding. Pop. Candy. Party mix. You name it. It was like a kid had done the grocery shopping or something.
The best part was that you could eat as much as you wanted whenever you wanted. It was all on a big table in the hall outside the studio and it was like, go for it. And, boy, did I. That apricot face cream of Kathleen’s had made me feel kind of sick. (She got ripped off. I couldn’t believe she spent $89 for it. There wasn’t an apricot in it.)
Another surprising thing was how big the studio was. Kathleen produces this puppet show for little kids called Bitsie ’n’ Bytesie.6 It’s about these two little alien guys who live inside a computer and surf the net. Like literally “surf” the net, on surfboards. Ha-ha. How clever.
It’s pretty lame actually. (You’ve probably heard the theme song. “We’re caring and sharing in Cyberspace! So put a big smile on your Cyberface!” That’s about as far as most people over three can get. ) There are, like, five puppets in the whole show. Bitsie. Bytesie. Rom. Ram. And their little human friend Amanda, who keeps on getting sucked inside the computer. (Like we haven’t seen that before.)
Five puppets. How big a room do you need for that?
About the size of the school auditorium.
Honest. Maybe a little smaller—but you still could put the entire Beach Meadows Flea Market in the place. (Sure, the puppets are bigger than you’d expect—but they’re not that much bigger.)
In fact, everything about the place was big. Big ceilings. Big doors. (You could drive a truck through them. Really. I saw them do it.) Big thick walls so no sound could get in or out. Big curtains that go right from the floor to the ceiling even though there’s not a single window in the place. And big locks on everything.
Last surprising thing: the number of people who work there. Okay, like I say, five puppets. You figure five puppeteers, a camera guy and, if your aunt’s a producer and you’ve ever heard of such a thing, a producer.7
Wrong. For starters, there aren’t five puppeteers. There are only three. Christine, the lady, plays the little girl puppet. Jimmy and Norm do two puppets each. (They’re kind of amazing, the way they can switch back and forth between different voices all the time.)
So there are fewer puppeteers than you’d think—but about forty more people than you’d expect. Three or four cameramen. Someone who decorates the set. Someone who makes the props. Guys climbing around on the ceiling making sure the lighting’s right and guys crawling around on the floor making sure the sound’s right. A bunch of people who look after the puppets, a bunch of people who look after the director and, of course, a bunch of people who look after Kathleen. And they’re all running around with headphones on as if they work at the Gap or something.
And I’m not even counting all the people up in the control room who mess around with the computers and TV screens and stuff like that. Or the people who write the shows. Or the people who made the puppets. Or all the people I never figured out what they did. (It must have been something because they were always busy.)
The place was a zoo.
What didn’t surprise me about the studio was that Kathleen would just drop me there and leave. She only introduced me to one person: Nick, her assistant, who is twenty-five or something, but is still so gorgeous that I was actually glad when Kathleen made him go with her. I’m used to not being able to open my mouth around people. It was kind of embarrassing not being able to close my mouth around Nick. He was so handsome with that brown skin and those white, white teeth that I just gawked at him like
I’d been hit really hard on the head or something. I might even have drooled a bit.
So anyway, Kathleen and Nick left and I was stuck in this big studio all by myself with a whole bunch of people. I was scared to move—and not just because I’m me, either. Someone else moved when the camera was going and this cranky guy named Mel went berserk.
And I mean it.
He started screaming, “Cut! Cut! Cut!” and telling off this props person for scratching her ear too loud or something. I never heard a grown-up talk to another grown-up like that in my life.
So there was no way I was going to move when the camera was rolling. My problem was that I couldn’t figure out when it was rolling and when it wasn’t. Sometimes, I guess the puppets were just rehearsing, but I never realized that until the camera started going again. So I just stood there and hoped that all the pop I woofed back wouldn’t kick in and I’d have to pee.
I don’t know how long I was standing there—except that it was long enough for Bitsie and Bytesie to do this scene a million times about being happy to have friends—when my stomach rumbled really loud.
I mean, really loud. Like a toilet flushing or something. Everyone must have heard it.
I was terrified. Especially when somebody grabbed me by the arm and whispered, “Come with me. Now!”
6 Ms. Pointy Producer doing a kids’ show? I know. I was surprised too. I figured she’d do a news program or one of those lawyer shows where the judge doesn’t like the hero, but he still always wins. What does Kathleen know about little kids? Other than they tend to smell and make poor fashion choices I mean.
7 I don’t know exactly what she does, but everyone sure does what she says.