Horror Haiku
I did some PA stuff for the incredible people at Seraph Films and I’m in this behind the scenes short, being snarky. Horror Haiku are short films made based on viewer suggestions, by Seraph films! Watch the Horror Haiku we made here!
I did some PA stuff for the incredible people at Seraph Films and I’m in this behind the scenes short, being snarky. Horror Haiku are short films made based on viewer suggestions, by Seraph films! Watch the Horror Haiku we made here!
Mom, pretty please don’t read this one either. I’m sorry.
This was my entry for the second round of Bryan Cook’s amazing show, Competitive Erotic Fan Fiction at the Nerdmelt Theatre on 7/16.
If you’re not familiar, it’s a show where the first half is talented writers and comics who have pre-written amazing prose, and the second half is crazy people who have had an audience suggestion assigned to them. It is released in podcast form here, please go listen and attend this show! Bryan is taking it to SF, and it’s been to Seattle, Portland, Bridgetown Comedy Festival, and just all over. It is hilarious and deeply disturbing. My first show was just posted, which was a filthy story about Touched by an Angel. This time, I wrote on a random pull of topic “Laura Palmer”, in 18 minutes.
I am close to taking my Summer Sabbatical, which is not really what it is, but it makes my Mom feel better when I say “I’m Taking A Sabbatical” instead of “I’m quitting my job and hanging out all Summer”. I thought it was time to get my list of “OTHER” skills together and post them on the Internet.
If you feel like you read a slightly different but kind of the same list as this one, it’s because my site was hacked and my service restored from last week’s restore point and I lost it. It’s because SOMEONE was very jealous of my 70 hits a day. Eat it, haters!
1. Pit Toilets: I’m very good at using pit toilets in Asia. You just have to pretend you’re camping, which you kind of are.
2. Sleeping on Airplanes: Also work related. I can sleep bolt upright on a red eye to Turkey and emerge as fresh and ready as if I had slept in a garbage- filled car.
3. Tap Dancing. I’m not the world’s best tap dancer (SAVION GLOVER, because we can really only have one famous tap dancer at a time), but it’s the skill that took the most time and expense to learn, and which has the lowest street value. I’m considering trying to make people pay me NOT to do it.
4. Bemani. It’s no longer fashionable but I can totally do it- I get more points for style than accuracy on Dance, Dance, Revolution, but Karaoke Revolution is my bitch.
5. For that matter, I can lead in six count swing, and I can lead about five things in Lindy hop- I’m a good Lindy follow- I like a lot of dances.
6. I can make dance parties happen. I can make people do it. At karaoke, at coffeeshops- most of the time.
7. Karaoke. I’m good at it. I don’t have the most amazing American Idol style voice, but I know my range and I will perform the SHIT out of a song. I like to work a crowd. When I do it in Hong Kong they are upset with the dancing and eye contact.
8. Comedy. I do it for money and for free. Mostly for free. Don’t ask me to tell you a joke, I’ll make you laugh, m-f. Just you wait.
9. I can draw- I haven’t for around five-seven years, but I probably still can, right? I’m sure I can. I have an art degree. I can blind contour the shit out of something.
10. According to the Munsell test of Color Acuity, I am a Superior Color Discriminator. I will discriminate the shit out of your color. I need a lab coat and a light box with a true North setting. But I will do it.
11. I can make patterns and sew. Again, I usually don’t. But I can make seriously obscure and fucked up Halloween costumes!
12. Goth Makeup and Fantasy Make up! I have an airbrush and I’m not scared to use it, including airbrushing a fake tattoo on you!
13. I’m really good at telling long, involved, interconnected stories to people on acid. I can be on acid or not, it doesn’t matter.
14. I can tell a fake art history lecture at the drop of a hat, especially if the hat is from a particularly evocative period
15. I’m really good at making one kind of vegan chocolate chip cookies. Just one kind.
16. I’m really good at maintaining a blog for 8 years that only my mother consistently reads!
17. If I had just bought my first guitar, I would be a crazy natural guitar playing genius- however, I have had my own guitar for a decade, and play it occasionally. I’m mediocre, but proud!
18. I’m really good at steering an oversized Costco shopping cart with my elbows while eating free BBQ nuts.
19. I’m a good trivia team member- I don’t know that much about television or sports, but I’m very good at arbitration to try to determine the likeliest answer. Also, I like to win but I don’t care if I do.
20. I’m really good at running a White Elephant party. I will whip the crowd into a frenzy over Scratch tickets and a rubber garden gnome. Blood will flow!
21. Despite all the above, I’m really good at not going to Burning Man! I haven’t gone every year it’s happened! Consecutively!
With this kind of skill set, I’m gonna destroy this job market!
Bloodmeadow and Helfire compare notes from the holidays, answer viewer questions, and look forward to a spooky new year!
Well, in every Halloween career there are setbacks.
I love the Who, and I love their rock opera Tommy, and I love the over-the-top 1975 film by Ken Russell, who passed away a year ago in November. After last year’s somewhat involved costume, I thought, I’ll take a year off and do something simple: Showgirl in a Gasmask from the opening overture in Tommy.
The showgirls picking their way through the rubble of the Blitz were based on a memory of Russell’s from his childhood. Getting a period-appropriate civil issue UK gasmask was easy, and when I found a rhinestone bikini while in San Diego for Comic-Con, that seemed like a “gimme.” I bought a nude bodysuit to wear underneath and considered myself ready to go.
I put my gear on and headed to a party on Friday, and didn’t realize until I had left the house that, bodysuit or no bodysuit, I was pretty much naked. Much more naked than I had thought I would be, in my mind. Don’t get me wrong. Naked at a party is popular. Everyone wanted a picture with the naked lady in a gasmask.
Everyone has a different threshhold for public nudity, but I was raised Mormon and I still have some personal boundaries- So, I went home, took some photos to document, and am retiring this beast.
In the end, I had to have a costume for work (and one of my employees dressed as me, which was in turns adorable and insulting), and so I went for Sweet Jayne Mansfield. Her head’s off, so she stuck it back on with medical tape, and she put a necklace on over it so you can’t tell, but people can still kind of tell.