Kevin Johnson

I enjoyed Kevin Johnson's Monday night performance on Late Night with David Letterman. His bird puppets are great, but that dubbed movie effect he does is absolutely mystifying. I've tried to duplicate it, but the wiring in my brain immediately begins to misfire in all directions. I can only imagine the hours in front of a mirror it took for Kevin to master that effect.

I tried to do another of his effects, a "delay" effect where he mouths a sentence silently, and then the sound emerges (of course without his lips moving). Again, I tried to do it in the mirror. After about 10 minutes of my grey matter short circuiting, I actually did it... once. And it totally freaked me out. I even did a double-take!

One other thing... I think the Letterman show initially thought up "Ventriloquists Week" as another one of those weird humor stunts. In fact, one of Letterman's recent jokes was "Anything worth doing is worth doing right... except ventriloquism". But I sense Dave is actually quite impressed by this line-up of gifted performers.