And now my life is complete

Yesterday at work, I was talking with one of my co-workers about summer vacations. I'm not a huge summer vacation person; the beach isn't really my thing (as I lobster in the sun) and I find traveling to places where it's as hot or hotter than where I live unsatisfying. When I was a kid, we usually moved over the summer, so our vacation was usually a trip to Detroit on the way to wherever we were moving. I usually go on trips in the spring and fall. They're my favorite seasons and traveling in the US is amazing in both seasons because everywhere I travel looks like a postcard. Anyway, I told my co-worker I was taking a few days off in August to participate in a baking contest. Her response was: You live such a creative life! I smiled and took it as a compliment.

The funny thing about this comment was that I don't always feel that creative. I know I do a lot of creative things: make glitter purses, embroider all the things, sew, bake elaborate confections, volunteer at a museum. Sometimes, though, I have zero creative energy to do these things. I have three unfinished embroidery projects in my house right now. I know I need to finish them, but I come home from work and just don't have the energy to work on them. Preparing for a tour, something I truly love doing, is like having a second job (although one where I get to make vagina jokes and make fun of the myth of the white male genius painter). 

What I've come to realize is that I'm often too ambitious in my creative endeavors. I put a lot of pressure on myself to make a certain thing or write a specific thing. Doing that saps the creativity right out of me. Comparing myself to other artists and crafters is equally draining. What I've realized recently is focusing on small projects may be the best way for me to get over my overachiever, perfectionist tendencies and enjoy the creative process. Yes, that's it exactly.

Enter the button maker. 

I don't know your life, but I can tell you one thing about mine: I have wanted a button maker since I was twelve years old. I would love to say it was the release on one of my favorite movies, Empire Records, that inspired me but that movie wasn't out yet. Maybe it was because I went to my first concert the year prior, and started buying concert merchandise like buttons. Maybe it was because I was going through my 1960s/hippie phase, and buttons were a big thing. I don't really know. All I know is that I've always wanted a button maker.

I asked for one a few times over the years, but no one ever bought me one. Yes, I'm now an adult and can buy my own things, but I always come back to the idea that this would be the easiest gift in the world to get me. A button maker or a label maker...I am easily pleased. Finally, for my birthday this year, my friend Anita bought me a button maker. My life is now complete.

Button making is easy and surprisingly soothing. I could make buttons for hours if that was all I needed to do in my life. The tricky part is to the get the placement of the image or words right on the button; the model I have is for 25mm buttons, the smallest size. Images are easier than words, but anything will work.

We hit the jackpot with some old magazine Anita brought over. One was a Rolling Stone issue on the greatest albums from the 90s. The album covers were the perfect size to cut out and make into buttons. Between the two of us, I think we made over a dozen buttons. They're amazing and I will wear them with pride.

I also made a fabric button (lower left, green flowers) and embroidered a design on some denim (under the Nirvana album). I used too thick of a thread for that one, but definitely think the embroidery buttons could be a fun, small project. And that's the thing about buttons: it's a little project that takes less than a minute to make. Can't draw or paint or embroider? No problem! You can still make a button. All you need is a cutout image and the button maker. It's also a low impact arm workout; who doesn't love any activity that combines fitness and art?

I'm convinced there is such as thing as a "button making zone." Had we not decided to start watching Stranger Things, I'm pretty certain I would have just kept making buttons all afternoon. I've started collecting little pictures and magazine pages to turn into buttons. I'm practicing tiny lettering so I can fit words on the buttons in the right position. Some people meditate, I make buttons.

So now, dear Island readers, what should I name the button maker? I feel like it needs a name. Any suggestions?

Coming this summer to the Island: a few new Lazy Movie Weekend posts, I enter the Arlington County Baking Contest, and Keely helps you ease your way out of summer (because he's a very smart cat).

Sharknado Time Machine

Not too long ago, I wrote about the anticipation I always feel when attending a concert. When I'm really into a band and have been looking forward to the show, my expectations around what is going to take place go into hyper-drive. I have a list of songs I want to hear. I want the band to fun and not too aloof, but aloof enough if that's their thing. I don't know if other people feel this way when they go to shows. Maybe it's just me.

I feel this way about specific types of movies as well. Movies that fall into this category include: MCU movies, anything based on a musical, movies based on books I love, Quentin Tarantino movies, any movie involving a combination of Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Edgar Wright, and Star Wars universe movies. Of course, I also love really terrible things so I have to add one major movie type to this list:

SyFy's Sharknado franchise.

 

No one is ever going to say that any of the Sharknado movies are great pieces of cinematic art. They weren't created to be such things. If I wanted high art and sharks, well, I don't know that there is a movie that's both. SyFy movies are supposed to be fun and ridiculous, low on the budget, high on the suspension of disbelief. They're the equivalent of Hallmark Christmas movies for sci-fi/horror set. When the first Sharknado movie premiered way back in 2013,I thought it was hilarious. It reminded me of all those terrible movies I'd stay up late watching when I was a teenager. Like Troll 2 before it, the first Sharknado was campy, totally unbelievable, and the perfect summer movie. Who knew it would become a huge pop culture phenomenon and every celebrity would want to make an appearance in future movies? Who could have predicted that the creators and cast would stick around for six whole movies? But it did and they did.

The summer release of a Sharknado movie became an event. People live Tweeted the movies and created drinking games and themed parties. There's even a book called How to Survive a Sharknado. I know this because my brother bought it for me. On a few occasions, I had a long distance viewing party with my friend, Jessica. I got into the spectacle of the spectacle. A new Sharknado movie was something I looked forward to, even going as far as to put it on my calendar. SyFy had me hooked.

The first three movies were good in the way these types of movies are good. I spent the first movie counting how many ways sharks were killed during the movie and lamenting, but predicting the death of John Heard. The second movie featured both of the Julie Browns (from MTV) as well as everyone who ever worked at NBC/Universal (I assume it's a job requirement to make an appearance). The third one took place partially in DC and Nova returned. My favorite thing about the fourth movie was that I got to make a joke about kickstarting Vince Neil's heart and the Sharknado Twitter-verse thought it was funny (because the Sharknado Twitter-verse is a thing). The fifth movie gave us something none of knew we needed: the Sharknado Sisterhood. I would watch an entire movie about the sisterhood if that was a thing.

Anyway, I didn't even realize the sixth movie was happening. Yes, the fifth one left us with a cliffhanger involving time travel and the youngest son and other stuff I don't really remember. That means very little in the life span of a SyFy movie or really anything that people love. Just because there should be a sequel or another season of something, doesn't mean we get it (I'm looking at you, Joss Whedon). A few weeks ago, it dawned on me that I hadn't heard anything about a sixth movie. I checked Google and found out it was a thing and marked down the date on my calendar.

I have no idea what I watched last night.

I DVR-ed the movie when it originally aired and finally got around to watching it last night. Twenty-two minutes into the movie, I still wasn't really sure what was going on. It was originally about defeating the first sharknado and there were dinosaurs and people who died in the last movie were alive again. April, my least favorite character, learned how to fly a pterodactyl. There was a capacitor, like in Back to the Future. But then they were time traveling, sort of following youngest son Gil, who had come from the future to save the family in the fifth one. He was searching for them, but apparently you can only go back in time once. Eventually, there was an army of evil April robots and we made it back to the original shady deal boat from the very first movie. And then the sharknados stopped and the Shepard family was whole again and Nova was going back to college and John Heard never died...because the sharknados never happened.

Or something.

The Last Sharknado jumped the shark. I would argue that the Sharknado jumped the shark three movies ago, but hey, I'm not a studio executive who makes decisions about what does and doesn't get made. Am I sad I watched the sixth one? Absolutely not. There are three reasons for this:

1. Neil deGrasse Tyson
2. Alaska Thunderfuck
3. Christopher Knight

I expected none of these people to appear in a Sharknado movie, but here they are in the same one. Neil deGrasse Tyson and Alaska even appear in the same section of the movie, which is probably something neither one of them ever thought would happen. Who would cast an astrophysicist and a drag queen as Merlin and Morgana respectively? The Sharknado people, that's who. This specific sequence was the reason I enjoyed the first movie so much. It was over the top, including Merlin declaring, "Who needs science when you have a dragon?" and Fin pulling Excalibur from the stone, except that the sword's blade was in the shape of a chainsaw. Alaska/Morgana disappears with a trademark Alaska "Byeee" that was everything it needed to be and more.

Christopher Knight, better known as Peter Brady (the best Brady brother), was oddly endearing as Nova's grandpa. It's his death, at the jaws of sharks, when Nova is a little girl that leads her to her destiny as a sharknado fighter. This section also gets into a story line that comes up frequently in these movies: Fin being the worst. He and Nova argue about whether she should save her grandpa's life, with Fin being the worst and telling her she can't. Of course, things don't go as planned, and we end up with an army of evil robot Aprils. Christopher Knight as grandpa was the most genuine example of family goodness in the movie. It was another unexpected moment.

The sixth Sharknado was a lot like going to see a band I really like and all they played were crappy songs from their terrible new album; not quite what I wanted but not completely unenjoyable. I've done my job and watched all six movies so you didn't have to.

More importantly, if I don't want to enter a room with the confidence of a mediocre white man, I can enter a room with this thought instead:

Sharknado motivational poster
Frye meme
Merlin