Horror and Romance

I watched the Evil Dead movies today. I've never tried to before because I am really afraid of zombies and all manner of undead. I watched the first one when I was just out of high school, and I was so scared that at one point I actually screamed and hid under the blanket (and I'm not afraid to admit that). Now I have forced myself to watch them because I wanted to know what they're all about - mostly because I love Bruce Campbell and these movies are what he is most famous for. Honestly, the main reason I avoid horror movies is the same reason I tend to avoid romantic comedies:  both genres are dependent people doing really stupid things. If the girl hadn't run out into the woods in the middle of the night...if the guy had just talked honestly to his girlfriend...there wouldn't be much of a movie, would there? It frustrates me. There are of course exceptions in both genres, and the less the plot is dependent on the characters' utter lack of common sense the happier I am. As for Evil Dead - I cannot love the movie for its own sake, but Bruce Campbell is eye-candy to me and as long as I focus on that I am ok. :)

Kids Movies That Are Actually Good For Your Kids #1: School of Rock

School of Rock is one of the best Jack Black movies I have ever seen. In it Black's character, Dewy, makes a rock band out of the private school class he is substitute teaching. He uses their natural musical talents to get them into the Battle of the Bands. It's a cute movie and, unlike most of today's comedies, the jokes are funny instead of just stupid-funny. All of that is great for a movie in general and a kid's movie in particular, but what really makes School of Rock stand out is the evolution of Jack Black's character, Dewy.

Dewy starts off as a desperate guy trying to make his rock dreams come true, and it only gets worse for him when his band kicks him out. He pretends to be his roommate in order to pick up a substitute teaching job to raise money while he tries to get a new band together. He can't get anyone to play with him, but he realizes that the kids in his class can play classical music so he teaches them about rock and convinces them to be his band. This clearly starts out as a revenge fantasy for Dewy:  he is trying to get back at the band who kicked him out. But as he spends more time helping the kids find their individual roles in the band and shows each one how his or her role is important, he begins to focus on what is best for them, and less on using them as a vehicle for his own self-aggrandizing scheme. By making the band more about them and less about himself, Dewy becomes a better person.

I'm not going to give away the ending, but this movie clearly shows what's best about working as a team and why you don't have to win the big prize to be successful. Watch this movie with your kids, and then talk to them about it to make sure they understand why it is a more uplifting movie than it seems at first blush.

The Gamer In Me

As I have mentioned before, I am not a hardcore gamer, even though most of my friends are. I just have so many other things to do, the business I am trying to build (including new product experiments), books I want to read, painting, and organizing my life and my stuff, that I don't have the time or the energy to spend cultivating gamer skills. This is most noticeable in shooters or platform games. People who have played video games since childhood find these pretty easy, but I never even touched a controller until I was well into college life so it would take months of practice to bring myself to the level of my peers. But even with these disadvantages, there are games that I enjoy.

My favorite kinds of games are fighting games and puzzle games. Puzzle games require mental skills that I already have, and I like fighting games because I can get away with button-mashing. I don't win much against more skilled people (practice, remember?), but as long as I can give a good fight and I don't go down too easy I don't care. I guess the point is that being a casual gamer can be fun as long as you have a good grasp of sportsmanship.

Belated Family Friday Post: Rolling Thunder

Yesterday we had thunderstorms all day long, along with several brown-outs and one black-out, so I didn't turn on any electronics just to be safe. Hence the belated post.

When we have kids, out of all the things you worry about, one of the last is what they might be afraid of. After all, we are likely many years away from our own childhood fears. Shawn is afraid of zombies, just like me (I still am), but he is not afraid of thunderstorms; he is just annoyed by them because it means he can't play video games. I was never afraid of thunderstorms either, except for one specific time that I can still remember.

A thunderstorm hit while I was at the Acme with my dad. I can't remember how old I was, maybe five or six. We had to run out to the car with the cart in the pouring rain. My dad got me and the groceries safely in the car, but then he shut me into the  car and went to take the empty cart back himself.  Now this was years before anyone thought to put cart returns in the middle of the parking lot, so he had to go all the way back to the store. It was dark and raining too hard for me to see outside of the car. I only knew that there was thunder and lightning and my dad was in the middle of a wide open parking lot with a metal shopping cart. I was terrified that he wouldn't come back, that lightning would hit him and he would die. He made it back of course; the chances of him getting hit were more astronomical than my child's mind could comprehend. I'm sure he was only gone for a few minutes at most, but it felt like an hour to me as I was caught up in the fear.

Oddly enough, this experience didn't change how I feel about thunderstorms. I loved them before and I still love them now. I always found them exciting to watch, and I love how clean the world feels afterward, like the very air has cleared out.

The Hanged Man

In my second post after I started this blog, I talked about my "Hanged Man" Tarot painting. I chose to paint the Norse God, Odin, hanging upside down from the World Ash tree complete with wolves and ravens. I finally finished it last week, and now it is dry enough to show:

You can see my whole "Refashioned Tarot" project on my Facebook and Flickr.

Canvas Mixers

For my birthday, my mom took me to Canvas Mixers in Collingswood. With instruction, you can go from blank canvas to finished acrylic painting in three hours. Here is mine:

 A Bird of Paradise flower

You can find out more about Canvas Mixers on their website.

A Reason To Celebrate

While at work today, I found out that my cousin, Sharon, was invited to give a lecture to a photography class at Gloucester County College. Sharon is a talented pinhole photographer. Check out this cool example:

 "Sitting Through Hoops" by Sharon Harris

www.sharonharrisphotography.com

I'm pretty excited about this lecture opportunity for her, and I'll see if I can interview her about the experience later on. You can find Sharon's photography and information on both her and pinhole photography in general on her website.

The Value Of Good Advertising

Today I got a T-shirt made featuring the Tarot card paintings I have done and advertising my Facebook page. I'm really happy with it because it gives me something cool to wear at craft fairs that shows off my work. I'm also really happy because making the design for this shirt encouraged me to finally name my in-progress Tarot deck:  The Refashioned Tarot. I love the name because it refers to my business name, Phoenix Refashioning, and because I am refashioning the classic Tarot images to reflect a more universal understanding. Check out my facebook page to see my ever-growing collection of Tarot paintings as I work my way to my goal of 78 unique paintings. And while you are there, please press the "like" button!

Family Friday: The Absentee Post

Derrick and Shawn have gone down to North Carolina with Derrick's parents for a cousin's wedding. They aren't going to be gone for very long, and since I don't actually live with them normally, it's not like I'm spending much more time without them than I usually do. Nonetheless, under the circumstances, all I can bring myself to say is this:  I miss my guys. That is all.

Family Friday: The Things We Do...

This post is dedicated to the crazy things that parents do to look cool for their kids. I think that, even more than showing off for a romantic interest, parents are driven to jump through hoops in the hope of gaining their children's approval/pride. The words, "That's my mom/dad. He/she is the coolest," rank right up there with, "I love you." How do I know? Experience.

I was talking with one of Derrick's roommates about a video game he was playing, one that takes more time and skill than I possess. I'm mostly a casual game-player. I enjoy puzzle games, fighting games, as well as some other games that don't require skills above button-mashing. More on that in a different post. So I say to the roommate, "I haven't played that game. I'm not really much of a career gamer," and Shawn pipes right up with, "You're not much of a gamer at all."

 Shawn was born with a controller in his hand. Me... not so much.

I don't know what came over me. I had a sudden, intense, and overwhelming desire to take a game and play it until I was good enough to impress Shawn, despite the fact that I don't have the time for that kind of practice and I never had any previous inclinations toward marathon gaming.

The point of this example is to highlight one of the less common ways we show love for our children, because we definitely wouldn't behave so irrationally if we didn't love them so much.  

Update: Sheeple!

If you saw yesterday's blog post about the Woodbury Block party, you saw this print that I got from local artist, Angela Capel:

This print is called "Bruce and the Emo Sheep," and you can find it and all her other awesome art at harmlessfangirl.deviantart.com.

Woodbury Block Party

Having a table at the Woodbury Block Party was such a blast! The weather was beautiful, there were lots of people, and it was just a fun time overall. Going with my friend, Mel only added to the fun. I got this great print from a table near ours:

 

The artist didn't mention a title, but I'm going to check out her website tomorrow and post an update to this post then.

Family Friday: Food Fights

Is it me, or is it getting harder to get kids to eat? I don't just mean vegetables, I mean anything that doesn't come in a pre-printed package. At this point the only food I have made that Shawn will eat without complaint is meatballs. Even when Derrick made hamburgers Shawn refused to eat one. He only wants to eat hamburgers from McDonald's or Burger King. Does anyone else have this problem? True, Shawn doesn't see homemade food much when I'm not around, but does that mean that it's too late? Is there any hope that I can get this kid to eat a normal meal with us like a normal family? Anyone out there who understands what I'm going through, please feel free to share your story, solution, or perspective.