Ben Caron

Sierra Vista, Arizona, United States

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Proving yet again, "It's not where you start, it's where you finish"!

Hi.  My name's Ben, nice to meet you.  I grew up in a weird (but not TOO weird), small (but not TOO small) town in southeast                      (fill in the blank with your state), just like you!  My parents are still married after 40 years, my brother is my best friend (next to Michael Wasmund and a very select few individuals... YOU know who you are!) and life is pretty normal.  Or... IS it?   My parents inspired in me a lifelong love of the arts; everything from rock n' roll to classical music to reggae to rock art (I mean, like pictograms and petroglyphs) to Ansel Adams to comic books to musicals to mad-cap comedy classics, and the list goes on.   Out of this love grew an intense need to create... but WHAT?  My ideas surpassed my skills, until my skills surpassed my ideas.  I started taking tap dance lessons at age seven; really got my start in piano around age 16, and on the advice of my father, quit math to take theater.  (Weird, right???)  Around that time, my parents sent me once a week to learn how to make public-access tv shows from a bunch of esoteric burnt-out hippies and beatniks. Then, my senior year of high school, the drama department did GREASE, and I discovered I wanted to sing while acting and dancing, simultaneously.   LONG story short, I wound up attending and graduating from the American Musical & Dramatic Academy (AMDA) in New York City, a small town boy in a concrete jungle. Things didn't go all that great after graduating, and after seven years in NYC, I wound up back in Smalltown, USA.  (It's Sierra Vista, AZ, in case you really wanted to know.) It wasn't long after (following a REALLY bad breakup) that I discovered virtual worlds; I was fascinated! Here existed a reality where you could be anyone and do anything, go anywhere at any time, instantaneously.    What did I do?  I made a replica of myself.  I wandered around (often on my magic carpet), looking at art installations and examining every object, every texture, every avatar, every prim.     And then I discovered the live music.   It turns out, there were people from all over the world, people just like me, hooking their microphones up to their computer, logging in, and playing music.  In virtual reality.  For real people.  Like, gathered at virtual cafés, virtual bars, nightclubs, gardens, Elizabethan castles, underwater grottos, the Birdcage Theatre in 1890s Tombstone, elven pubs... you name it!  I started attending every performance of every musician that I possibly could, and I knew I needed in.   I am (somewhat) proud to say that I have been performing in Second Life™ for almost exactly one year, this month (January).  It was there that I found (and became friends with!) countless talented and creative individuals from all walks of life, and have gone on to perform and collaborate with some of them!   And that brings me here, to today;  I have conceived a show that will combine the formidable artistic skills of my virtual friends with those of my immensely talented real-world contemporaries. It promises to be an inter-reality musical and comedic all-star varietal extravaganza, THE BENSKI SHOW.   Picture, if you will, a pair of brothers, who have a musical comedy-duo act, and host a wildly successful television variety show on a major network.  They brainstorm, they write, they plot, they plan, they hold auditions and rehearsals, have weekly tapings, interact with friends, relatives and whacky neighbors (and sometimes the three are one and the same!)...   NOW imagine that said brothers live in that virtual world.  The family next door is a trio of knee-high koala bears who sporadically teleport in and out of the kitchen to steal a ham as big as a fridge; the audience is full of dragons, vampires, robots, slaves, vampire dragon slave robots, sexxxy anthropomorphized animals (YOU know... the ones you don't WANT to be attracted to, but...), and a scattered number of regular folks like you and me, except most of them are models, strippers, or DJs.   Some of the women are men.  Some of the men are children!   One of the cameramen is a zombie, the other is translucent, and the studio head has horns.  (Big surprise, right?)  Occasionally, the characters will have dinner on Mars, or go on a date, not from Hell, but IN Hell.   However, after the curtain falls and everyone goes home, one of the brothers lives in a virtual world of his own; he sits down at his laptop and logs into a program called "First Life", where you can't fly, can't teleport anywhere, and you actually die if you don't eat or if you jump off a hundred story building!  Guess what: he's in a band, has a considerable number of talented friends there, and spends his time performing and going to concerts, plays and museums.   See where this is going?   It's fun.  It's entertaining.  It's artistic.  It's cutting edge.  It's a variety show.  It's a reality show.  It's a virtual reality show.  It's....  THE BENSKI SHOW

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