10 Life Lessons on Art and Creativity from Don Hahn (and Don's "How To Create" List)

I hate this picture of me. But I didn't feel like asking
Mr. Hahn if he was willing to wait for me to refresh
my hair and makeup. Or hire a stand-in...

On Sunday, I decided to watch, "The Haunted Mansion". Then I watched it with commentary, something I'd never done before. It was a lovely way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

The next day, I had tickets to a Heartland Film Festival seminar. Who was the first speaker of the day? It just so happened to be Don Hahn, Oscar-nominated Disney producer who worked on "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Haunted Mansion". These in addition to his other works "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and many more. The man is prolific, to say the least. A man whose name I learned, whose voice I had only heard for the first time on the Haunted Mansion commentary the day before.

Twilight Zone theme music, aside...

How I didn't know who he was and didn't know he would be there and somehow managed to prepare for the event will always mystify me. The presentation he gave on creativity that day touched on themes of obsession.

Sherlock Holmes, Meet Mr. Spock

Well, I've finally gone and done it. No turning back now. I have written the first little seed to my first Star Trek story. Next Gen, of course. I fully intend to flesh this out, a chapter a day until it's done, just the way that Louisa May Alcott finished "Little Women". It's a shame she never wrote about space...

Anyway, here's the link to my little seedling, it's just a tiny little thing now, a spark of an idea. So be gentle.

They say, "write what you know", and boy howdy...do I know my Trek. So theoretically, this should be far easier than any writing I've ever done before. I'm no stranger to writing about Trek, just new to the fiction genre. Here are some links to a few other Trek (and even a Holmes) article. Also, if you click on the Star Trek tag underneath this blog entry, you can read several blog entries I've written on Trek.

How to Live like a Star Fleet Officer
Any good Trekkie worth his/her salt will know what a Star Fleet officer is. For the rest of you, a Star Fleet officer is known as the best and brightest that the fictional future has to offer.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1390132/how_to_live_like_a_star_fleet_officer.html

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Why You Should Be Watching This Show on DVD
Bad writing is KILLING the art-form of storytelling via television! What lessons can this show from the late 80's/early 90's teach us about what good writing can do?
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1062651/star_trek_the_next_generation_why_you.html

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
And you thought, "Spaceballs" was the only space comedy from the eighties.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1559577/star_trek_iv_the_voyage_home_1986.html

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes" Stories: 5 Reasons to Read Them
There are still plenty of good reasons to be reading these stories.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1514859/sir_arthur_conan_doyles_sherlock_holmes.html

7 Classic Halloween Cartoons

Here's an Animaniacs, "Good Idea, Bad Idea" designed just for Halloween.



Here's the darling Witch Hazel, at her Halloween best! My but her tiny little legs are limber...



If you ever run into a monster, just do this. It will give you plenty of time to escape. (Giant orange wardrobe shaped monster is "Gossamer" who never stood a chance against poor Bugs anytime he was featured.)



Here are all the musical segments from Garfield's Halloween Adventure, which I highly recommend watching in it's entirety.




Disney frequently did Halloween specials in the 80's, here's a remastered introduction from one of them. But searching for them on YouTube can bring SCADS of fun memories up and out of ye olde brain. (Who remembers the talking pumpkin puppet?)



It wouldn't be a cartoon Halloween without this classic Wizard's duel! Mad Madame Mim! But embedding has been disabled, but I say it's still worth a watch. CLICK HERE to watch!

The Battle Cry of a Grown Up Geek

I wrote this for a now defunct Forces of Geek column in January 2009. But I took a look at it again tonight as I'm starting to consider my thesis in graduate school. I dusted it off, made some changes, and low and behold I kind of had a mission statement not only for this blog, but for my entire life.

 Hi, my name is Audrey, and I’m a huge geek.

I didn’t name my blog, “Born for Geekdom” for the way it rolls off the tongue. It’s not the most convenient turn of phrase.

But my whole philosophy on life has developed around the idea that although geeks may sometimes be socially awkward or full of useless knowledge, we have absolutely all the fun in life.

We're extremely passionate about what we like and why and we want to share that with anyone who will listen.

Years of teasing have worn down our inhibitions, which leads us to go on all kinds of madcap adventures to theme parks, conventions, movie premieres and the like without a second thought.

Sure, survival in grade school and middle school were tough. Like so many others that have come out as full-fledged geeks since, I was forged in the burning fires of a painful geekhood.

Yes, bringing, “Aliens” to a slumber party had tragic results when all the other girls showed up with romantic comedies.

Sure, bragging about all my knowledge of the Klingon home world didn’t score me bonus points in the gym class locker room.

Today, the physical signs of my geekdom are mostly gone. My giant “Scooter and Skeeter” glasses are no more. (Giant pink and purple frames with a stick-on unicorn on the lower left lens.)

My teeth may not be perfect, but thanks to braces they’re a far cry from the set of chompers I was working with as a child. (They would’ve made Gollum recoil in horror and politely suggest braces.)

I don’t know why, but I didn’t match my clothes. Ever. I had weird hair. Everything from a bowl cut to some seriously Vulcan bangs. To top it off, I was a late bloomer. So while all the other girls in my class were becoming experts with curling irons and hairspray, I still looked like a 9 year old boy with feet too big for my body.

I was loud, which sometimes saved me. Random outbursts of accidental class-clownery sometimes put me in the smart-aleck category, and the time I got sent to the office for not being willing to stop impersonating Roseanne Barr kind of lent me a brief rebel sheen. Soon after such incidents, my over-eager, what I would now call “Mary Catherine Gallagher-ness” usually put me right back at the bottom of the social food chain.

But, in my life, the end results of such early humiliations have been desirable. My penchant for all things once considered “uncool”, such as black and white movies and all things science-fiction, have found me a decent place in my modern community. (Nobody knew the INTERNET was coming and soon the geeks would close ranks. Ha!)

What I thought was a curse as a kid turned out to be an amazing gift as I grew older. It didn’t take me as long to “find myself” because I grew up learning not to apologize for what I liked. The teasing gave me a thick skin and I ended up with some seriously amazing friends, because no superficial people would come near me.

I tried new things frequently because I had nothing to lose; I was already being teased anyway. As time wore on and high school came and went, nobody cared anymore. The negative geek stigma left me, but all the benefits of my early geekhood stuck.

I’ve based the beginnings of my extremely humble career on the idea that I am a full-fledged geek. I am Trekkie, hear me roar! I am obsessed with things I am way to old to care about (cartoons) and I find myself suffering long bouts of intense inspiration with things that might seem strange to others, such as my cyclical relationship with the Haunted Mansion. I don't write for the New Yorker or Literary journals, but I do regularly appear in Geek Monthly magazine and guest in publications like Animation World, Orlando Attractions, Haunted Attraction, and so on.

I peddle myself as a geek, and usually list it in my byline. Lots of people use that shtick today, so I often wonder if identifying myself as such is all but white noise. Nowadays, “geek” is a brand that can sometimes be achieved by a pair of drugstore glasses and the espousing of some superficial pop culture knowledge. And don’t even get me started on the woes of modern lady geekhood…

So why do I do it? Because, I’m proud. Because it’s true. Because I couldn’t always be proud of it as a kid, but you better believe I can be now. And you should be too.