EDITITITITIING

Editing sure is boring! Sort of! It's also kind of great. I'm doing a lot of nose-cropping-out, but at least I get to look at stuff like this:

Christmas!!!

Hey, guess what, I have Santa Fever!!!!

This is my face from when I saw Santa in the Oakland Holiday Parade.



I know that Christmas is terrible for a lot of reasons, but it's also great for a lot of reasons. I especially like it this year because I don't have to go to school, and I had an insanely busy semester. Channing gets a much-needed vacation from work, too. Plus, our friend Gregg is coming to visit on Christmas!

I always like Christmas, whether or not there are friend visits or school vacations, because it's really over the top and ridiculous. I like that there is a mythology involving snowmen who come to life, elves who live at the North Pole making presents all year, and other equally ridiculous stuff. In fact, when I was a kid, the very idea of snow seemed like a crazy mythological thing because I never saw any until I moved "up north" to Missouri.

I like cookies, and my mom taught us how to decorate amazing gingerbread masterpieces from an early age using a variety of colored icings applied with toothpicks. Here's my dad with his freshly decorated Navy veteran in a Speedo Gingerbread Man.



Last year Channing got to decorate cookies with us for the first time. I talked about it for weeks beforehand and it was one of the most exciting parts of Christmas. My sister recently reported to me that her husband gets upset that he can't make the eyes, and she has to remind him that she's had years of practice.



I applied for a job as an elf for a mall Santa a few years ago. I got hired, but I didn't take it after they explained that the uniform was a red shirt and black pants, instead of the pointy shoes and striped tights I was hoping for. This year I went ice skating dressed as a snowwoman.



Oh, was I skating too fast? I guess that's because I am really good at skating! (Not really, but I only fell down once.) Ok, here is a picture of me going slower:




Channing went as a reindeer, but there are no pictures of him skating. He sat out most of the time and took pictures of the rest of us due to an ill-fitting skates-induced foot pain. Instead, for your viewing pleasure, I present you with our holiday card!




I love sending mail, so this is a good excuse to send something to everyone I know. Or at least everyone whose address I know. These are really fun to make. Channing did this year's, with some backseat photoshopping provided by me. The recipients think they are funny or think we are weird, but mostly people like them, as they already know we are weird!

Anyway, lately I've been hearing some of my friends talk about how Christmas is the worst because they're forced to listen to Christmas music for months and all the stores are decorated starting in October to encourage people to buy, buy, buy! And not everyone celebrates Christmas anyway! And I agree, that stuff sucks.

But! I am happy to say that I live an exceptionally charmed life in which
1. I don't have to work in a place that plays Christmas music, so I almost never hear any except in passing or by choice.
2. I don't own a TV, so I don't get bombarded with ads about buying stuff for Christmas. I don't watch a lot of shows so I don't get annoyed that every episode is a Christmas episode.
3. I never go shopping at the mall or almost anywhere else besides the grocery store, so I don't have to deal with crowds and angry shoppers.
4. Absurdity is one of my favorite things in the world, which is great at a time of the year in which there are often costumed gingerbread men or pine trees walking down the street. These tap-dancing Christmas trees, for example, are a yearly fixture in the Oakland Holiday parade.



And here are "Shamu and Friend" riding in a convertible even though it is impossible for them to ride in a convertible because they have to be in the water to live! But here they are, because of Christmas. I tried to get a picture sooner so you could see both of them, but they were driving like 2 mph, so it was understandably impossible for me to keep up.



I think it's an oversimplification to say that people who are annoyed by the media's and merchants' focus on Christmas should just get rid of their TV and stop going to the mall. It works for me, but I guess a lot of people really like shopping and watching TV, so telling them not to do it during a certain season isn't very reasonable. I do think it's reductive to claim that anyone is forcing you to listen to Christmas music, unless you have a job where it's played and there's no option to change it to something else. I've had those jobs, and it was pretty awful. Commercialism sucks, but Christmas really doesn't have to be about presents. It can be about religion, presents, cookies, dancing, ridiculous costumes, eating, getting drunk, or whatever else you want. If you hate what Christmas is for you, start your own traditions. Complaining isn't going to prevent merchants from trying to sell you things or stop the radio station from playing Christmas music. And in case you didn't notice, merchants are trying desperately to sell you things all year long, not just at Christmas. I'm not saying complaints aren't valid, just that they aren't especially productive.

I really want to read the book described here about the origins of modern Christmas. (This blog, Four Pounds Flour, is really good. It's all about historical foods, which the author often attempts to re-create. This particular post includes a recipe for Christmas cookies from 1796.)

We also went to the Nutcracker at the San Francisco Ballet this weekend. It was really amazing. The snowstorm! The set changes! The horses! OMG! The horses come in at 5:30 below, in case you don't want to watch a bunch of dancing but want to see ponies.



So much better than the Oakland Ballet's budget Nutcracker that we saw last year where the funny kids in the audience were the best part. Channing stayed awake the whole time and reported that he liked it even though he doesn't care about ballet at all. Sorry Oakland Ballet, I know you tried.



I'm going to make some cookies as soon as I get some sugar. Mine are going to be a lot less fluffy than this one, and more whimsically decorated.

Oh yeah, the other thing I'm excited about: Christmas vacation means I will have some time to work on editing my movie! I bet you thought I'd forgotten about it, but no! I have been thinking about it day and night, getting the songs stuck in my ears and the images stuck in my eyes. I am so excited to have time to work on it again. I'm currently still recovering from my semester, but soon!

Pilloween

Pillow and Pillow dressed up like skeleton vampires for Halloween. Aren't they convincing?



They wanted to go trick or treating, but I convinced them that the candy would just fall through their skeleton bottoms. They were happy to hang out with the Great Pumpkin instead.



These scary pillows were made by Gregg Lewis. You can see some more of his pipe-cleaner masterpieces and non-pipe-cleaner masterpieces here. His latest video "A Booring/Boring Evening" is highly recommended, although not Halloween-themed despite the title. Here it is:

Pandaland

Channing and I made a quick video in honor of my niece's first birthday. Here it is:



We did it in one take because we didn't have time to let the camera battery charge enough to do more than that. Luckily it turned out fine.

This song is somewhat typical of my songwriting style in that I just wrote new lyrics for a pre-existing song. I like this better than the sandman version, but maybe that's because I like pandas. And because I always hated that sandman song.

I've always wanted to make children's television. For a long time I wanted to be a muppeteer. So having a niece is really great because it gives me an excuse to make kid-type stuff and have an audience for it. This is the first thing I've made her, since she doesn't really understand tv yet, but I hope to record many more stupid songs for her in the future.

crossin' the words

Hey, so I have no time to do anything! Like finish my movie which is almost finished. Boohoohoohoo. I am taking four classes. In grad school! This is a lot of work, but it's okay. I'm trying to graduate as quickly as possible so I don't have to go to school anymore. But, even as I type I should instead be reading some reading about reading for my class about books.

I did have time to make some sweet birthday presents for my sweet Channing. Among other things, he received two crossword puzzles. This is one of my favorite hobbies, the making of crosswords. I made these while I was at work, after I finished my schoolwork of course, and probably did some working actions I guess. Since I made these especially for Channing, they might have some inside joke type clues. If you see any clues like "_______ is hot" the answer is probably "Channing." I haven't actually looked at it since I made it, so I don't know how many times you will have to write that Channing is hot or know something that is impossible for you to know. You should also know that I refer to the TV show Mad Men as Mad Mans. I think that might come in handy. These are pretty hard, so use a pencil. I guess you have to print it out, I don't know. If you click it gets a lot bigger. If you need help I can give you hints. Put your queries in the comments. I will post the other one later, but this should keep you busy for now if you do indeed attempt to solve it.

My own birthday is coming up soon, and I'm going on a plane journey shortly afterward, so if any of you also like making crosswords you can send them my way. I will be ever so pleased to solve them.

The Gang's All Here.

Almost all of them, anyway. Some of them were lollygagging in the other room for the photograph.



This is the audience for the Pillow and Pillow Show, drawn by HARVEYJAMES (with a little TM after it, but I don't know how to type that).

Above is before they were cut out, below is after. As soon as they get their arms and heads and whatnot attached to their bodies they'll be all ready to see a show.


I'll get around to animating them any day now. It should only take about 100 more hours, after which we will have everything for the entire movie on tape! Hooray!

But now I have to do some schoolwork.

The Title!

I finally decided on a title for my movie:



This is the rough draft of the calligraphy, by my mom.

See also 1933 and 1935. There are a few more for which clips are not readily available.

Thanks everyone! Now I need more help...

I'm writing the credits for my movie, and it's making me realize how great everyone is to cooperate with my weird requests. So thank you to everyone who agreed to voice a puppet or help with writing or lend us a car or recording equipment. The credits are going to be really good, because I'm having my mom do them in calligraphy.

I made Channing accompany me to the San Francisco Main Library last night to find the perfect font (or "alphabet" in calligrapher-ese) and we also visited the skylight gallery on the 6th floor, where there happened to be a calligraphy exhibition on display. It was quite impressive, and I would recommend visiting if you're in San Francisco. It's free! And, as an added bonus, you can imagine you're me as a kid, because I was surrounded by calligraphy all the time. Some of the calligraphers in the show have even stayed with my family when they were in Memphis for calligraphy-related purposes.

Anyhow, I am hard at work organizing the details of the movie. I filmed all of the curtains and backdrops for the puppet theater.

But there's one serious problem! I don't have a title! Does anyone have any brilliant suggestions? I want something that's short and that doesn't give away the plot.

The main characters are names Paxinosa Easton and Ebenezer Van Buskirk, so naming it after them is probably out. In the meantime I'm trying to read up on gold rush slang.

A Big Weekend in the Movie Studio

AKA A Big Weekend at Home

So, I pretty much forgot to take any photos of the weekend's activities. I will add in some photos for those of you who hate words.

On Friday I actually wrote a script for the entire vaudeville show. Channing and Sunny (who was visiting for the weekend) helped me turn my brilliant ideas into a script, and added in some brilliant ideas of their own. I ended up eliminating the hilarious but dirty jokes that Keith helped me come up with, because I decided it wasn't worth it to limit the audience by including a few dirty jokes. Without them the movie is appropriate for all ages, so I decided to stick with the non-dirty jokes. Those jokes are really good though, so they will soon be available to members of the fan club!

That night we recorded the voices of Pillow and Pillow (Burke and Ty) until the wee hours of the morning. Okay, it was only like 12:30am. I had never met Ty before, but I wanted Burke to cast his co-Pillow so they would be comfortable singing and telling jokes together, and so they could show up at the same time. I think his casting worked out really well. We also ate this pie:



His name was Pyman, and he was delicious.

Then on Saturday I worked at my job, but afterwards I worked on fine-tuning some of the songs. Then I rolled up my hair in some rags in preparation for the next day's shoot. Here is the result of my test-curl, before I combed it out, which almost turned out (after I combed it, which of course I didn't photograph) better than the actual curling:



I was really excited because I used to have to get my hair curled a lot when I was a kid, and it never worked very well because I have really straight hair which was really long for most of my childhood, both of which prevented it from curling very well. I kind of want to start curling my hair all the time, but I'm not going to because I am lazy and because it is a stupid idea.

So on Sunday we set up the greenscreen and pushed all of our furniture to the edges of the living room.



We recorded my song first, because I wanted to do it as soon as I woke up. I was very excited. It's a version of the Mongoosnuffle Shuffle Rag, adapted so it fits with music. Mr. Tusks played the part of Mr. Mongoosnuffles, and he got the attitude right even though he doesn't exactly look the part.



Next Keith (a different Keith!) and Jessica came over to help out. We filmed the complicated giraffe song and dance, which required three puppeteers. And of course none of us know how to be puppeteers, so it was a bit difficult. I think it turned out fine, though. I'm a big fan of doing things I have no idea how to do. I made Keith and Jessica sing songs (the giraffe and beaver) as well, but I'm not sure how they turned out. I'm going to attempt to edit them today. Channing is kind of a confusing conductor, but I figured he would do a better job than me since he has some experience recording music. We recorded some backup versions just to be safe.

Later we filmed the Pillows and Barnaby lipsynching and dancing to their parts. This was hard just because these guys are hand puppets, which meant we had to lay flat on our backs with our arms straight up in the air in order to get them in the proper position.

After that there were only three minutes left on the tape and we were tired so we decided to call it a day.



There is still one more song to film, and a few incidental things for transitions and backgrounds, but the vaudeville show is almost complete! After that's done we still have to film the entire ending of the movie, but it feels really good to have such a big chunk of footage out of the way.

Now to start editing...

PS - Rachel, I'll be sending out your fan club materials tomorrow.

The Poo Paw Team

Here's the team behind the soon-to-be classic song Poo Paw, which was recorded last night:



Mike is the golden voice behind the sort-of-golden cat, Michelle wrote the lyrics, and I forced them to do this.

The song is turned out so well! It's the first one I've recorded for the movie, and I'm really excited to do more in the next few days. Sorry, but you will have to wait to hear its brilliance, but hopefully not much longer!

Here's Barnaby, almost ready to film his dance on Sunday. He's eagerly awaiting the completion of the track so he can get his lip-synching down perfectly.



Big thanks to everyone. I would especially like to thank Mr. Tusks for only occasionally having the terrible hygiene problem that inspired the song.

Now I'm off to get some last minute supplies!

It's Curtains

Curtains for a vaudeville theater! This is one of many backdrops for the very fancy theater in the golden retriever movie.

I think I might make a shirt out of this after I finish filming the puppets.

To make it, first I sewed the two fabrics together with lots of seams to make the pattern below. Then I cut out the appropriate amounts of the top layer to make the pattern. Easy!


Mr. Tusks was helpful as usual. Is it getting really boring to post a photo of Mr. Tusks sitting on my sewing every time I sew something? If so, perhaps you can send him a letter to convince him to stop doing it. Until then, here is a photo of Mr. Tusks sitting on the curtain while I was sewing it.


I just got some fringe to finish up another curtain, which is one of the last things I have to make before filming. I also have almost all of the actors lined up to play the various puppets. We're planning to film on June 7th, which is less than two weeks away. I have lots of little things to finish up before then, but I think I should have plenty of time to get it all done.

Pillowcases

Those who have already joined will recognize these as parts of the Pillow Pals Membership Packet. Or Membership Pillowcase.

I'm in the midst of finals (and procrastinating) right now. I'm really looking forward to being finished with the semester so I can get to work on the moviemaking again. Most of the puppet scenes are almost ready to be filmed, I just need to focus on getting them done.

I have three more essays to write today, so I guess I'll get back to that.

Airnuts Professbud, Child Star

I'm working on a vaudeville child star costume for myself. It now has puffy sleeves. I just need to attach all of the pieces together and maybe make an enormous bow for the back. This will undoubtedly take me 18 more weeks. I'm going to be wearing this in the golden retriever movie. Not as the golden retriever. I'm actually playing two parts, making this movie a perfect combination of Air Bud and The Nutty Professor, two movies I have never seen.



I made a wig to go with this dress, but it looked like a combination of a macaroni and cheese head and a fake dreadlock hat wearing guy. It was really bad. So I'm going to make a fall out of doll hair. Does that make sense to anyone who is alive in 2009? It is a partial wig thing.

I keep thinking "Why did I get rid of that half-used packet of doll hair that I had three years ago?" even though I have since moved four times and never until now needed half a packet of doll hair. This seemed ridiculous for an entire week, until I went to the art supply store to get a new packet. Unfortunately I went to the art supply store that is always out of everything, so they were out of blonde doll hair. They had black, white, and auburn. There wasn't even a space where the blonde hair was supposed to be. I guess I will order some from the internet, even though that seems incredibly stupid.

I recently read this book, which is about vaudeville child dance star and pack rat Doris Eaton Travis, who went on to appear in the Ziegfield Follies. She then outlived every other Ziegfield girl there ever was. She's now 104, I believe. It's a really interesting biography because it takes advantage of its subject's huge collection of newspaper clippings and photos and whatnot to tell her life story in collage form. The story is also pretty interesting with or without the wacky format. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in graphic novels, collage, or famous people from the 1920s.

St. Louis Art Show Fun Time

Snowfakes will be playing on Thursday, May 7th in St. Louis as part of this:

Chataqua Art Lab
MAPPING THE MULTIVERSE
May 2-8, 2009
Temporary art and technology project
founded by Eric Repice and Sarah Paulsen
Fort Gondo Compound for the Arts space
3151 Cherokee Street, St. Louis, MO, USA

More info later. And here at Sarah Paulsen's blog.

Moon, Cat, and Bunny, LLC

The first membership packets for the Pals of Pillow and Pillow were sent out today. It's not too late to join if you haven't already.

Today I made this enormous moon guy. He's not finished yet. I have to add craters and facial features once the paint dries.


Then I worked on outfitting Barnaby. Doesn't he look dapper? I kind of hate this plaid, but it's the vestiest fabric I have, so I'm going with it. At least it matches the shiny material for the back of the vest. Plus I have such a huge amount of fabric that I can't really justify buying more.


I'm having trouble finishing anything today. Except the granola bars. I didn't eat them all, but I did finish making them. In fact, I should probably eat some more before Channing gets home.

I found out that audio recordings of the Oz books are available for free online. I've never read them before, so I thought I'd listen to them while I work on other things to prevent myself from checking my email 1000 times to see if my group project-mates have emailed me. The reader of this one is okay. Some of his character voices are slightly irritating, but at least he's known how to pronounce all of the words so far. I'm up to chapter 6. I think there are probably other versions available, but I'm satisfied enough to keep listening to this guy. Usually when I listen to audiobooks I fall instantly asleep, or try to fall instantly asleep but instead stay awake for excruciating chapters being annoyed that the person driving the car wants to listen to a stupid old audiobook. I guess it's better if it's a story I want to hear.

When I was learning to read my parents made me cassette recordings of my favorite books, like the one about the guy who rode his bike into a tree. They even used the toy xylophone to alert me that it was time to turn the page. Maybe it's just hard for other audiobooks to live up to that.

Speaking of nerdy things that are online for free, the Library of Congress has a youtube channel and a flickr page where you can look at lots of great stuff from 1904, or whichever olden year you prefer. I'm actually doing one of my final projects for library school about the LOC flickr project, so I spent a long time looking at the photos while attempting to do my research today. Life Magazine also has a huge archive of photos online in a somewhat less browseable format. Full episodes of the PBS series Art:21 are now available on Hulu. It's one of my favorite shows, although sometimes it's incredibly boring. It depends on whether the artists featured seem like genuine passionate people or like people who've spent a lifetime looking up words in a thesaurus trying to justify their artwork. Thanks to the internet, you can just skip the boring pompous people. I kind of like watching them, though, because sometimes it's fun to get mad at the tv. Actually, I think I usually just fall asleep until an interesting part comes on.

I'm really excited that Easter is coming. This year might be the year the Easter Bunny comes to ask for my hand! If you don't know what I'm talking about, this informative video will help you understand.

Did you know that Channing has a video blog where he (sometimes, unless he is taking a break) posts a story every day? The video above is from that (on a day when he was taking a break). So if you want to see Channing talking, usually about things that are funny, you should go watch him.

You Can Be a Pillow Pal

I've been working on some fan club materials, and I woke up this morning with the idea to do a promotional video/infomercial so I would have more than one person to send them to. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. It reminds me, in the best possible way, of the class projects I used to do in middle school.

Don't you think Channing is the most photogenic and best boyfriend ever? I guess there's a slight chance you don't know who Channing is, so I'll go ahead and say that he's the Pillow fan in the video.

You should join the fan club. Email palsofpillows@gmail.com

-Fan Club President

boat and beaver

I finished that beaver puppet I was working on, and finally got around to taking a picture. 

Now I'm building a boat. It's almost finished, I just have to attach the mast and the sail at this point. Mr. Tusks was less helpful than usual on this project, which was great. 

Below is an experiment which involves me saving a bunch of trash, as do most of my experiments. Can you guess what it's for?

mail

I love mail. I get really excited to check the mailbox every day even though I almost never have any reason to be expecting anything. When something does come, besides a coupon for a store I never shop at, it's really wonderful. But I also love the other half of mail, which is making it for all of my lovely friends.

About six months ago, I started documenting the things I sent out, because I tend to spend a long time on them and then sometimes (hardly ever) they get lost, which is terrible. I also thought it would be fun (and useful) to keep track of what I sent to people, so I would know if sending more Garfield cartoons would be an annoyance or a delight. A lot of times I get too excited while making the mail and I seal up the envelope (usually I make the envelopes out of magazine pages for added fanciness) before I take a picture of the contents. Sometimes I even mail it without taking a picture of the envelope, so I sometimes get a message from someone saying "thanks for sending that thing" or "I'm such a bad friend, I totally owe you mail" and I've forgotten that I sent them anything at all. Not a perfect system, but at least now I remember SOME things I send out.

So I thought I would share a few pictures from my mail documentation project, to encourage you to send me something. (Just kidding. Sort of.) You can click on the photos to enlarge.






The tiny envelopes got put inside of a pinata with a bunch of other letters for a birthday present. In case any of you are wondering, my birthday is September 22nd. 

Guess how big the leek was!

This morning when I was brushing my teeth, the faucet broke. The water stayed on all day until the plumber came when I got off of work at 3:00. I read a newspaper article that said really obvious things about how bottled water is stupid, and I felt bad.

I really did get an enormous leek (plus a normal-sized leek) in the CSA box. It's as big as my arm, which is massive! We got rutabagas, too! I have never eaten one, so I'm pretty excited about that. Carrots=carrot cupcakes. We have been waiting two weeks for them because we were so busy that our last carrot bunch went soft before we could use them.

I went to the store and spent 40 cents on a lemon. Mr. Tusks followed me for two blocks when I went, until I scared him into the street. I was trying to scare him back toward the house, but I guess my scaring was too vague. Every time I go outside I feel like I have a thousand tiny cuts inside of my throat, because there are floral items in the air. I got some hate mail and some love mail. The love mail was way better.

I made a vaudeville beaver puppet last night while I was waiting to hear from my partner so I could work on my school project. I haven't added the teeth or eyes yet, but I think I will finish those parts tonight. I haven't settled on his costume yet.

While I was waiting (this was like 6 hours of waiting) I also mended those four garments he's leaning on, so now I will be able to wear them in polite society.

I do have ever so many appointments with polite people nowadays. For example, sometimes the bus driver is polite. Depends on which one you get.

Next week is spring break, which doesn't really mean much. Slightly less schoolwork, maybe.

Now I have to take a shower because I sprayed myself with hollandaise sauce when I was making it in the blender.

Here is a picture of a dogtor from the internet. He has hands just like the pig-faced lady:

This proves that 2009 is exactly like 1837.