I highly recommend the film "Beasts of the Southern Wild"

Wow, just home from seeing the film "Beasts of the Southern Wild" at the Avalon Theatre in downtown Grand Junction. I really loved this film. There was absolutely nothing predictable or formulaic about it -- nothing at all.

A Sundance Film Festival winner, I hope to see it on the Oscars list. Truly brilliant, timely, and touching. I highly recommend this film.

The piano, basic walls and floor of my little music video cafe

My clay stop-motion music video project is underway. As you can see, I have the floor and walls of the little set done!

I started out with the idea of a living room in a house where the pianist (Mike), sax-man (Warren), and I (vocalist) are rehearsing, but when I saw the little black and white tile squares for only $2.40 per square foot at Home Depot, I knew it had to be a small cafe instead of a living room. That tile just screamed cafe to me. And knowing I only needed six of those tile squares because the whole thing is only 3' wide by 2' deep, how could I resist?

I cut the three walls from old Grand Valley Magazine cover posters (felt strange cutting them up like that); my husband sprayed them with wall texture stuff and painted them yellow. I have no idea what color cafe walls are supposed to be, but yellow paint is what we had, so this cafe's walls are yellow.

The table cloths were cut from...

Those frivolous nonessential arts

Ever wonder why the arts are the first to see their funding cut during unstable times? Ever wonder where the idea that arts are “nonessential services” comes from? I used to wonder that too.

The movie The Sound of Music had a profound effect on me as a child. I was too young certainly to understand its climate of politics and war and all that (I was only five or six), but what did take hold of me was the undeniable power of music as a survival tool. For all their...

Aspen ShortsFest film festival really does delight and inspire! Had a great time!

Just home from the annual Aspen ShortsFest film festival; a first for us! I loved it! Unlike most film festivals that show feature-length films, most of the ShortsFest films run between 1 and 20 minutes. They’re shown in 90-minute blocks called programs. Because it is an international competition, everyone in the audience gets to rank the films on a scale of 1-4, with 4 being “loved it.”

Needless to say, we watched a lot of short films! My favorites were Lunch Date, Eyes on the Stars, Felix, Out of Erasers, and The Voorman Problem.  I haven’t heard yet whether any of them won awards.

As much as I enjoyed the films, the most valuable part of the festival was the comedy writers panel. Called "The Sometimes Hilarious Pain of Writing Funny," the panel was moderated by Elias Davis (Carol Burnett Show) and featured Shauna Cross (What to Expect When You’re Expecting), Alexander Payne (The Descendents), Mike Reiss (The Simpsons), and Robert Weide (Curb Your Enthusiasm). They answered...