Lee Majors

Yesterday William, in one of his endless yet charming "what if" questions, asked me about people with robot legs so I told him about the Six Million Dollar Man tv show. Coincidentally, this morning I was watching tv with him and I put on one of the season 2 "Wapos Bay" episodes that I'd recorded months ago but forgotten to watch. It ended up being an episode that guest starred Lee Majors as Steve from Austin (Texas) and his box Felix. They did all the slow motion running and sound effects, a good satire even though it's 30 years out of date. Dennis Jackson had told me about getting Majors to agree to it a couple of years ago and that he was going to Los Angelos to do the voice recording (Wapos Bay is a puppet-style animated series). Cool episode. I paused it to explain all the references to William, he really liked it too.

120

Quiet day today, breakfasted on the bed then zipped to my parents to see my nephew Chris off as he headed back to Calgary with his new car (new for him). I laid a few Tim Horton coupons on him, seemed to like that. I was going to do some writing or something this afternoon but I went to the Science Centre with William and looked at teeth instead.
The Gemini awards were here in Regina this evening. I didn't go, or even watch them, but I guess that's exciting. Corner Gas won one. Wapos Bay, by my friend Dennis Jackson in Saskatoon also won best children's program but that award was given out two weeks ago, not tonight.

2 days

We just go back from Saskatoon, went for a couple of days to shoot film and visit a bit. The high point was visiting the studio where Dennis Jackson is shooting his Wapos Bay series. They are in hiatus right now, but will start shooting season three in a October. Season two will be starting to air on APTN this fall. It is a puppet animated series based around a fictitious first nations community in northern Saskatchewan. I was honored to be involved on the pilot episode (the one hour "Christmas at Wapos Bay") in 2001 at the same time William was born. He was given the nickname "Wapos Papoose" (FYI, that rhymes). They now have a much larger studio so there can be 10 scenes shooting simultaneously. The armatures are now much more sophisticated, I've taken extensive photos so as to be able to steal lots of their ideas. It's shot digitally now, rather than on 16mm as "Christmas" was, so there is much less tension about missing shots or errors. It was a great tour and they gave me a hand, yes, a hand, one of the new wire filled latex hands, soon we'll all be using them.

On the less happy side, I dropped a light meter with dire results...