(S)Kid nation

You guys, this is what reality programming is all about. Intricate Machiavellian social experiments, broadcast for the enlightenment of Americans.

Starring 40 children.

Get ready to cheer, cry and be appalled at the parents who would let their child be on this show. Seriously, why couldn't you just send your kids to summer camp like the rest of your book club?

10 years of improv communism

As you may infer from the logo, The Playground is celebrating its 10th Anniversary this week. The Senate was asked to open last night's show, which was an honor we jumped upon with vigorous abandon, if indeed that is something one can do. It is possible I am combining several phrases for effect.

At any rate, The Playground is a great theater that has been a wonderful place to perform in my relatively short time in the city. And it's the nation's first non-profit improv co-op. So that's something. Take that, other theaters who have actual owners.

Check this place out if you're ever in town, but especially this week. It's a great place and I hope it's around for another 10 years and more.


In other news, my brother just called. He's hanging around LAX on a layover before he and his wife go to Hawaii. Within three minutes, he met Supernanny and saw Calista Flockhart and Rob Lowe.

I said he should have asked Rob Lowe about Atomic Train. He said that, in his mind, he punched Rob Lowe in the face.

What a magical fairyland!

This was a children's show?

Seriously, you guys. I don't know why we weren't more terrified of this show at the time. Because looking at it now, we should have run for our lives.

Maybe it's the mostly black backgrounds, signifying that this show is taking place in some kind of vortex where no light dare show its face.

Maybe it's the super-creepy puppets with tall teeth and horrible hair and faces ripped from the very fabric of evil itself.

Maybe it's the overall sense of foreboding that comes from that echoing "Hall of Fame." *shiver*

Regardless, it was, and remains to be, a very strange show. But I guess it taught me about letters?

Thanks for the nightmares, Letter People!



P.S. And it was produced by KETC in St. Louis? I trusted you, KETC!

P.P.S. Check out this one for a Mr. X who talks like Jimmy Stewart and then the trippiest Letter People song EVER. No wonder it never made it to air.