The Dragonsail Puppets are a musical comedy ensemble featuring two dogs, a retired cat and a human mammal of mysterious gender but unambiguous style. After spending 40 years domiciled in a toybox, they escaped into a new world still steeped in a 70's frame of reference. Once they found the opportunity to explore stages and music studios, they began to share this retro sensibility in a range of styles - from prog rock to psychedelia to disco to synth-rock - in a theme-driven situation comedy YouTube series. All of this was made possible for them after they wormed their collective way into my brain and took over my life.
Now the Dragonsail Puppets sing their songs and hone their comedic craft while sailing the seas aboard the "Club Dragonsail", a huge old whaling vessel that is somewhere along the spectrum between luxury liner and rickety piece of antiquity that should never have been coaxed out of retirement. Upon this war-scarred ship, which Surrenda in her lovingly dismissive tone refers to as their "tugboat", they entertain their "willing captives"—aka patrons who have dared to buy a ticket and take the ride—and dock every so often to regale fans in various ports.
When not on the ship, they busy themselves in their rural hometown running errands at the Pinch-My-Penny or getting styled up at the Color-Me-Crazy Salon, all in preparation for the next leg of their collective journey(s).
Get ready to pooch and scoot, hon!
It is probably wise to start here. A former street kid and self-described southern classical beauty with impeccable comic timing and a sense of funk whose vocal stylings land her somewhere between Chaka Khan and Ethel Merman, her will is her strongest asset and her hunger for fame, for recognition of her gifts and her innate superiority, might accurately be called ravenous.
Lacking in extensive formal education of any kind, for years she honed her craft at the Hobnail Lounge, a place that could be described as a "booty bar" (according to Bruce). Surrenda, however, counters this assessment, defining it instead as a "respectable establishment...a cabaret club where serious performing artists perform for well-heeled clientele". Surrenda has survived a shoot-out in the parking lot and a smoke bomb hurled onstage during a live performance at this posh facility.
When the club is bought out and transformed into a "Taco Nirvana", Surrenda finds herself unemployed and in a wretched psychological state, until Catatonia comes to the rescue with healing herbs that help her descend into a coma so that she can be surreptitiously snuck aboard the Club Dragonsail. On this ship she continues to work and hone her craft and manages to control her seasickness with Catatonia's herbal concoctions.
Fame as Surrenda would define it, a blend of global adulation and charismatic tyranny, continues to elude her, and so she finds herself unexpectedly doing the unimaginable—establishing actual connections with her compatriots....though this certainly would not have been her first choice.
A retired tenured art professor (and a feline) with a history of performances in the theatrical avant-garde, as well as an extensive expertise on the book "Moby Dick", Catatonia does not shy away from bearing the mantle of a renaissance woman. This is no doubt the reason she enthusiastically stepped in as replacement keyboard player for the Dragonsail Puppets when the previous player, Snowman, was arrested under sensitive circumstances. Having found herself not as content as she thought she would be spending her days reading in her extensive library and writing treatises for "Art in America" and touring Parisian museums, Catatonia devised a scheme wherein she might live the sailor's life she'd always fancied since encountering Melville, while also enlisting her old friends in this venture, especially her protégé, Onree.
Catatonia often spars with Surrenda over Surrenda's claims that she was "drugged and kidnapped" as part of Catatonia's scheme. In Catatonia's mind, however, creating an opportunity for Surrenda to perform for audiences worldwide in various ports—not to mention having a captive ship's audience on demand—more than justifies Catatonia's machinations.
Catatonia provides poetic inspiration for Surrenda's compositions, though Surrenda's ego being what it is, she does so covertly—slipping her song lyrics on napkins while she's sleeping and allowing Surrenda to pretend to believe that she wrote these lyrics in her sleep. Theirs is a complicated relationship which must be seen to be fully appreciated, preferably via repeated viewings of their YouTube episodes.
A young adult dog with the spirit of a pup and a fairly limited range of intellectual pursuits, Bruce has two ambitions in life: to sing and get stoned. Perhaps it might be put more delicately. He has a sanguine disposition that, while it does lend itself to joyfulness and free-spirited boundlessness, can often descend into rather compulsive patterns.
Indeed, Bruce's life is one of being cyclically either torqued up on caffeine or smoothed out on catnip (and other substances), with the occasional alcohol thrown in when he has the opportunity to assist Catatonia in her study of French wines and Kentucky bourbons.
Much as Surrenda would be loathe to admit it, the musical part of her act would only begin to gel once she, with extreme ambivalence, allowed Bruce to sing with her at the Hobnail Lounge. A goofy baritone whose vocal stylings land him somewhere between Tom Jones and Tiny Tim, he, in his unrefined enthusiasm, ironically manages to anchor Surrenda's siren attack.
Luckily for Surrenda, he is devoid of any purpose beyond the momentary joy of singing and being complimented, and so she has found a suitable vessel, if not servant, for the realization of her hard-rocking and ever-so-funky music projects....even as she must occasionally kick him out of his inebriated stupor to make him productive.
At the heart of the enterprise sits little Onree, the young pup just starting out in life and trying to make sense of the world around him... especially the adults in his orbit who exhibit such baffling behaviors.
Catatonia, impressed by his simplicity and goodness and ability to be imprinted, takes him under her mentorship and enrolls him in Civil Disobedience School while educating him about French Naturalism and avidly encouraging his creative pursuits.
Although it is still not certain that her assessment of his intellectual potential is warranted, it is certain that her guidance is a positive force in his life, as he would otherwise have only two dubious major influencers in his development: a perpetually chemically-altered best friend and a conniving diva on a diet of slimming shakes.
Aboard a ship dominated by the interplay of such powerful and often contentiously willful entities, Onree's easy-going and egoless approach to life provides a much-needed grounding for one and all. And he plays a mean shaker. And his singing is getting a little better.
So here we have the basic dynamic and all the major players. Now all that's left to be done is to make sure you get your ticket for the voyage aboard the Club Dragonsail. As Onree says, "Merci buttercups!" And as Surrenda says, "Ya'll live in light....or suck it up, bitches!"
