Here’s a Bowl of Mixed Nuts for the Holidays

This is my last post for 2008, and I’m happy to report that I’ve met my goal of putting up a halfway decent article each week. OK… you be the judge of the quality here. It’s been a lot of fun writing this blog, and I’m pretty sure I’ll keep it going next year as I’ve gotten a lot of positive responses from fans and friends. I do like the process of writing, and I think that this blog is a good way for me to share my thoughts with the people who buy my work.

Here’s a few odds and ends for the end of the year:
“The Goddess of Turkey Media” – I’m kicking myself for not having made at least two dozen of these plates last week. I got an email request to “do a joke about that Sarah Palin video with the turkeys” from a customer in California. After watching the YouTube video, the joke pretty much wrote itself. My initial thought was that this story was a flash in the pan and Wally pots with this design would get old quickly. But the image and story is something that is fun to remember, so I’m going to put this design in my webstore as this could be a great decorative Thanksgiving object to treasure for years to come.

“The greatest gift of all” – I think the best gift that I will have given this year is going to be the one that I made for the sheer fun of it. I’m in a guys’ book club that meets at irregular intervals, usually at cheap restaurants where we usually don’t talk much about the book that we read. It’s a group of men who are a bit older than me and have interesting lives with very successful, eclectic careers (film making, oil exploration, etc.). Last week we met at Bert’s house because he has been laid up with a back injury. He and another member of the group traded stories about the misery of sitting at home all day in pain, whacked out on drugs with not much to do but feel like crap. The day before, as Bert’s wife was putting up the Christmas tree, the two of them reenacted that memorable scene in “It’s a Wonderful Life” where George Bailey goes totally bonkers in the family living room on Christmas eve. Suffice to say, Bert just doesn’t have the Christmas spirit this year. Driving home that evening, I realized that I could make a nice commemorative gift out of this story. A week later, the ornament was out of the kiln and I literally ran it down to their mailbox. I live exactly five miles from their house, along the route of my favorite fifteen mile run. Bert called just a few hours later and he and his wife were totally thrilled with their ornament. Bert’s wife is a former potter and their home is filled with some truly amazing pots. I’m glad that their collection now has one of my best pieces in it.

“Yippie-kai-yay, Merry Christmas!” – While my all-time favorite holiday movie is and will always be “It’s a Wonderful Life”, I now have a close second. We were decorating our tree last week and we wanted to put on a Christmas movie but we had a problem. All of our holiday films are on VHS and a lightning strike last summer took out our VCR. Monica had just bought the first “Die Hard” movie on DVD and Lori remembered that the story takes place on Christmas Eve so we put it on. Man! This is the perfect film to prepare you for the stress of the holidays. What are our mere trials and tribulations this time of year compared to John McClane’s epic duel with a pack of terrorist/thieves?!!! Christmas music and imagery abounds in this film, as in the scene shown below. I love that moment when McClane’s first casualty shows up in the elevator wearing a Santa hat! This film brings back fond memories of Los Angeles for Lori and me. Our first home was just a few miles away from “The Die Hard Building”, as we called it. Lori commuted to UCLA where she worked and got her degree, and the cheapest gas station en route was “The Die Hard Gas Station” featured prominently in the film. To top it off, we had seen Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepard filming a scene from the TV show, “Moonlighting” one time when we were getting off a plane at LAX. The show was just starting to take off and Bruce Willis was still a relatively unknown actor. I made eye contact with Bruce and he gave me one of those patented eyebrow raises as if to say, “You’ve seen my show, right?” File it all under, “I love LA”.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!