My friend S.Y. invited me to attend a special holiday event at his church. While I'm not formally religious, I am Christianity-friendly (#1, #2, #3, maybe #4, and certainly #5) as well as Buddhism- and Judaism-friendly, so I went. The program turned out to consist mostly of amateur singing by church members, and I have to say I was kind of bored and wishing it would be over soon -- but then this marionette lady came on, and I became thoroughly engrossed. The main part of her act consisted of manipulating a doll to paint a picture, set to poignant music, then another doll blowing up a balloon, sitting astride it and riding it around the room. I don't know anything about puppetry, and most likely such things have been done by others, but no matter - I certainly had never seen such puppetry before, and it was entrancing.
