Creative Geniuses
A long time ago, me and Jonny Smelter used to team up for group assignments in our grade 5 and 6 classes. We always had to do presentations on various topics, and our first one was at the end of grade 5, and the assignment was do a book report. So Jon and I decided we would do ours on The Sword of Shannara, but instead of doing a dry, pooey old report, we decided to do it in style- an interview with the wizard Allanon. So we made up a character named Flat Paycheck (sort of a joke on Pat Sajak- we were 11 ok!) who would interview our guest. The grande finale was when Allanon got fed up with Mr. Paycheck's annoying questions and decided to blast him with some of his Blue Fire that he does. Me and Jon spent hours designing the special effects for that- basically a piece of cardboard cut and colored to look like blue fire, attached to an elastic band. It was cool.
In grade 6 we had the same teacher, so we got to continue the Flat Paycheck show all year long. Our first show was a puppet show, and Flat got to interview the entire Pantheon of Greek Gods and monsters- we designed centaur puppets and such, even a Pegasus. Well, not to delve too deeply into the details, since Jon is STILL mad at me for going to see the Karate Kid the night I SHOULD have been making my share of the puppets, but he did a really excellent job on his puppets, and we got a great mark. Of course, the next project, everyone copied us and put on a puppet show, but we went back to live action. We had so much fun doing it, and Mrs. Baxter loved us.
Over the course of the year we interviewed a Sasquatch (ahh now you see my reason for this Long and Ancient Story) who bonked Flat Paycheck on the head (Travis helped us out, I sat on his shoulders and wore the sasquatch mask we made, and a fur coat); we interviewed Eugene the Uralian (from Uranus- talk about a source of readymade juvenile entertainment- plus Eugene shot Flat Paycheck with an improved version of the Allanon gun- a zap ray made out of toilet paper tubes); and my favorite, as well as our coup de grace, we interviewed Spatula the Statuela, an Easter Island statue. He was a work of art, he even had moving lips and the ability to stick his tongue out at poor ole Paycheck. Those were the days.