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WEDNESDAY
Something just wasn’t right with the late Howdy Doodyjust as something just wasn’t right with his creepy brother from Magic. When you looked into Doody’s cold, lifeless eyesI mean really took a long, nerve-fraying ganderyou saw the soul of a performer who’d just as soon steal your wallet as make you chuckle. He was pure evil, all the way down to his rotted wooden core. You know it; Buffalo Bob knew it. “It’s Howdy Doody Time”? Yeahin hell. Though no one can fully assess Doody’s lingering damage on our collective psyche, those gigantic beasties in the Puppet Co. Playhouse’s Dinosaur Desperados go a long way toward making marionettes less terrifying. The show, in which dino wranglers mingle with prehistoric lizards in the Wild West, is full of inventive critters, lotsa laughs, and good-natured fun for the kidsjust don’t turn your back on anything made out of yarn. If Doody taught us anything, it’s that nightmares come from the most unlikely of places. The tiny curtain goes up at 10 and 11:30 a.m. at the Puppet Company Playhouse, Glen Echo Park, 7300 MacArthur Blvd., Glen Echo. $5. (301) 320-6668. (Sean Daly)