When I was about 5 or 6 years old, Joel and I had run out of things to do with our firefighter mouse puppet, which we had (very originally) named “Firemouse.” So we changed Firemouse’s occupation (without changing his name) and declared him the president of Mousietown. On that new year’s eve many years ago, we decided to give a “state of the union” address about Mousietown via our little puppet. So began a tradition - we did it again the next year, then the year after that, then we had the idea of videotaping it (so we could feel like it was “televised”). Before too many years had gone by, we figured that we were getting a little bit old for doing something like this. But yet we still had a lot of fun with this tradition. So before long, we turned this into our annual political satire, scripting out a speech that would provide a humorous perspective on the actual political events of the past year, and videotaping it to show to a growing group of relatives and friends.
The tradition lives on this year, even though I put off writing the script until that very afternoon, and it had its first showing on January first at a family and friends get-together. Silly? Juvenile? Well, I’ll just have to ask you to withhold judgment until you see one of these speeches on national television…someday.
