Lise's Ramblings

For several weeks now, I’ve savoured one to two pages daily from Imagination Illustrated: The Jim Hensen Journal . In this book, curator-archivist Karen Falk and Jim Hensen’s eldest daughter Lisa Hensen combine excerpts from the Muppet creator’s journals with photos, sketches, script doodles and biographical notes, spanning 1954 to 1988. What a joy! While most of us know Jim Hensen’s work―ranging from Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock through to The Muppet Show and scores of other TV specials and movies―people recognized his talents well before any of those accomplishments. By the time he headed off to the University of Maryland, nobody could overlook Jim Hensen’s creativity. He had illustrated high school publications, designed sets for shows and performed from time to time. As a freshman, he secured his own TV show, Sam & Friends , and started a poster business of his own. He quickly moved on to creating funny commercials for Wilkins Coffee Co. In 1958, the ...

Regular readers of my ramblings know how much I adore handwritten letters and postcards . Now, I feel it's time for handmade cards to have a own shout-out of their own.  As much as I laugh when someone sends a greeting card with a witty or perfectly appropriate message, it's another level of joy to receive cards and notes prepared with crayons, markers, glitter glue, stickers, origami, pictures, pencil crayons and loads of love.  Sometimes, those handmade cards are elevated to the status of fridge art .       AWESOME! Thank you, Sarah Jane, Shannon, Makayla, Mackenzie, Rachelle, Allie, Melanie and Beverly.

LOL. BFF. ZUP. n00b. RT. OMG. ROFL ... ad nauseam Bemoaning English's demise in today's instant-messaging world? There's an app for that. Just kidding. JK. But, if you search amid the language shortcuts and the Interweb, I promise you will find people who take short attention spans and 140-character limits as a positive challenge. Sure, Lady Gaga, Charlie Sheen and Justin Bieber have far more followers that the owners of the Twitter bios below, but wouldn't you rather read these instantly identifiable, witty and snappy entries?   As   Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet,   "...brevity is the soul of wit."  True, clever bits are      AWESOME!!!

True zingers are perfectly timed and witty remarks.   Not all zingers are mean-spirited, though I confess that I tend to revel in the zingers aimed squarely at someone who was due for a healthy dose of karma. One of my favourites cropped up in the early 1990s in a song written and performed by a Canadian band called The Northern Pikes. “She Ain’t Pretty” features the following line: “Her ego wrote cheques incredibly fast, but her personality didn’t have the cash.” Shakespeare had an incredible knack for composing zingers. But unlike for writers, when the rest of us are in want of a witty comeback, there isn’t the luxury of time to dream one up. Even if zingers aren’t on the tip of your tongue when you need them most, you can still value a zinger delivered by someone else. Clever, funny and a bit edgy…       AWESOME! Any zingers stand out for you?