I'm Cuckoo for Zombies!

YES! I'M cuckoo for zombies like a tiger digs frosted flakes. All zombie movies are excellent, but the ones with humor are the cream of the crop.

The best zombie movie ever is Shaun of the Dead. It's a British film and I love the snarky humor that the Brits do oh so well. In fact, I sell a lot of t-shirts and bumper stickers in that part of the world (insert shameless plug here >> www.cuckooforzombies.com. )

I'm not a fan of all horror movies. The slasher and senseless violence movies like My Bloody Valentine or Friday the 13th: number 2, 3, 4, 5, 6...42 are just stupid and I have to say pretty formulaic. I've been looking for a chance to use the word formulaic without it looking like it was on my word of the day calendar and LOOK-here it is!

I think that's why I enjoyed Scary Movie so much. I mean, we all know what's going to happen in a slasher movie, right?

• No! Don't go into the basement/woods/tool shed/serial-killer-rec-room-that's-clearly-marked all by yourself!
• ACK! Look behind you! [they never never DO even when I try to warn them by screaming at the television.]
• All minor characters get taken out one at a time to build the suspense of the final dual between the bad guy and the main character. However, the minor characters are always killed off one by one in order of importance, which generally means in order of minority/gender/ or funny but expandable sidekick. 
• Flashlights NEVER work, or only work long enough to make you feel safe about going into the basement/woods/tool shed/serial-killer-rec-room-that's-clearly-marked!

So, that's why I prefer zombie movies. First of all zombies are the slowest villains ever! Basically, you're watching a geriatric-like monster travel at negative 7 mph towards an able-bodied hero who somehow, always JUST gets away. Suspense in slow motion! It's fabulous. And no matter what, I end up screaming and jumping off the couch in fright. I do this even when I've seen the movie on 6 previous occasions.  I've never actually watched a zombie movie with another human, I'd like to keep all my friends. I would like to watch one on the big screen, but I'm pretty sure they would bodily remove me from the theater in the first 10 minutes... and they may need duct tape.

And I hate shutting my eyes at the gory parts. Instead I will pause the movie, jump around for a while and sing a happy song until I'm calm enough to continue with the show. This means it took me three days to watch Zombieland... and I loved every minute of it. The best part was that every time I would scream and jump from the couch, my dog would run to the window barking, scaring me even more. So, if you can imagine me jumping up and down singing, my dog barking at the window, intermittently looking to me for some sign of sanity and then... me laughing my ass off when I realized how ridiculous it all was. It's the BEST!

Zombieland is actually my second favorite zombie movie. Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg are brilliant and Bill Murray has a cameo near the end. Let's just say... Bill Murray, always funny! The best part of the story--and a good zombie movie ALWAYS has a story and good character development-- is Woody Harrelson's epic quest for the last Twinkies in a post-apocalyptic-zombie-infested-world. The survival list is fabulous, the humor is pee-your-pants funny and the characters actually pretty endearing.

So, I'm not sure what you're going to dress up as this Halloween, but I can guarantee you I will be on the lookout for roving zombies, probably screaming my head off and then laughing like a loon! It should be a sight.

Happy Halloween everyone!

The Unicorn in the Room

So, I've recently had to come to terms with the fact that I don't 'fit in'.  Although it's something I've dealt with all my life, my mid-life crisis is changing my attitude about it... and in a good way! No longer am I trying to fit in, but instead I am embracing who I am. It really hit me the other day during a business meeting. As I was sitting with people who were talking about driving to kid's baseball games, watching sports and sending kids to college, I realized that I was the odd man, I mean woman, out. I do my best to understand their perspective and share conversation, but for the most part, my life & my attitudes are very very different from theirs.

For instance, I believe in unicorns... and fairies and angels. Basically I believe in almost anything that sounds absolutely impossible. This sounds a little bit like my 'second childhood' has pushed me over the edge of sanity, right? But I'm as sane as the next person. I just choose to believe that magic is real. Why? Because it's a beautiful idea, isn't it? It's beautiful to think that something miraculous exists beyond us. It's also a great source of inspiration.

Let me tell you how I got here. As an artist, I've always been blessed with a wild imagination. I was an only child and from the time I was a little girl I daydreamed about fantastical characters and alternate universes. I particularly believed in wizards and unicorns, gnomes & fairies, elves & dragons. Sounds like the makings for the ultimate fantasy geek, right? Well, I don't actually attend Comicon, but I do think it would be fun.

Here's the thing. I didn't live in a house where my parents read me bedtime stories. In fact, it was just my mom & I unless I was staying with my grandparents, and none of them read to me. In fact, I can't remember one instance of anyone reading to me. I didn't have any early reader books. The first memory I have of someone reading to me was my second grade teacher, and he was really good at it. It's probably the reason why I love listening to audiobooks now. It's my indulgence. Some women like pedicures... I like a great audiobook read by someone who is really good at it.

So, I have to wonder where these imagined characters came from. If I didn't have any knowledge of fairy tales, how could I just know about fairies? I don't know the answer to that. But I do vividly remember moments where I knew it was true. For instance, I used to play at my grandparent's hobby farm. There was a shallow ditch running across the pasture and I loved to sit in the ditch and watch what passed by. There were dragonflies, snails & earthworms, crickets and birds, a plethora of tiny creatures that most people didn't notice at all. I would build boats for the snails out of milk weed pods complete with leafy sails and set them on their course. Looking back, I sure hope they made it safely to wherever I sent them. But I had a clear picture in my head of all of them communicating with each other, assisted by tiny fairies when they got in trouble and off to lands where they could see dragons and ride unicorns.

That imagination is alive and well today. Thank goodness. It's always been there, but it sort of woke back up when I started reading the Harry Potter stories a few years ago. What a magical and wondrous book! A friend recently said that J.K. Rowling was divinely inspired. She suggested that there was real magic happening in the writing of that story. She's a friend who believes as well, thank goodness for her. And I agree.

Artists and Art Historians have talked for centuries about divine inspiration. People accept the term without really thinking about it. But I'm here to tell you, it's absolutely true. I've felt it. There are moments in my studio, whether I am drawing or throwing pots, that I forget myself... even forget what I am doing and just work. It's not like I'm possessed or anything dark like that. It's a sort of stepping outside of myself. It's like I can understand the clay, or the pencil. Like the medium just works itself. I can tell when it's not happening and during those times it almost always pays to get out of the studio. In the inspired moments, the magical moments, the ideas create themselves. The forms create themselves. I am just tool in this. But I am always fascinated by it. And I always thank the fairies when the project is complete, because I truly believe they were in the room.

So there you go. I believe in fairies & other crazy things. So be it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to replace my DVD player so I can watch Lord of the Rings tonight. ;)
L