The Portal

I just wanted to quickly share this picture of an amazing, old key hole! Just think of the wonderful worlds and mysteries and dangers that it could hold on the other side! The possibilities are endless! Isn't it great?

The New Mad Hatter is In The House!

So I've had two women friends become the last folks to join in this crazy home, who better to be the first man than the legendary Captain Jack! Before I talk to long about him, I just saw this little blurb on Yahoo and thought that you all would love to hear this awesome news. Check it out:

Looks like audiences will be seeing a lot more of Johnny Depp.

The Pirates of the Caribbean star, 45, has signed to star in two new high-profile Disney projects – and has also agreed to reprise his role as Capt. Jack Sparrow in a fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie now in development, Variety reports.

He'll play sidekick Tonto in a big-screen adaptation of The Lone Ranger and will team up again with frequent collaborator Tim Burton (Sweeney Todd) for Alice in Wonderland.

Depp, known for his own eccentric fashion sense, will star as the Mad Hatter.

The actor confirmed his involvement during a Disney showcase at Hollywood's Kodak Theatre.

As Depp appeared onstage in full Captain Jack Sparrow regalia, the USC marching band played the Lone Ranger's theme song – also known as "The William Tell Overture."

Now I don't know about the rest of you, but if I hear the two things, Alice in Wonderland and Tim Burton, in the same sentence, I start to get little warm and fuzzies all over! The news that Johnny Depp is going to be the Mad Hatter in this movie just puts the icing on the cake! Crazy it will be but it's crazy already, that's why Tim Burton like it. Yes! It's going to be awesome, as should Tonto and the Lone Ranger, and the next POTC (maybe:-), so all I can do now is enjoy the Sparrow in his first movie (which was the best of the series) and wait for the awesome switch to Mad Hatter!SWEET!

Tangible Friends for the Imaginary Friends

Hmmm..... Even better than the last one (in my opinion), I think this addition to The Home is quite significant in the fact that she just has so many things to offer! (to the blog that is).

First of all, like I talked about before, we can obviously see that she is another way that our generation has found to make something old, recognizable, and "boring" turn into something new, sleek, and sexy. If she were to walk into a party, people would right away recognize her as "Cinderella" and maybe even point it out to her that she makes a fabulous Cinderella, but I doubt that MOST people would go as far as to start asking her about her fairy godmother, or her stepmother, or how her sisters were doing cause that would just be nerdy, right??

Second, all these talks about displaced fairy tales (which have all been wonderful) makes me think of how many true life fairy tales there really are out there (especially Cinderella stories). Now, I'm not saying that any of those fairy tales are perfect (there will always be heart ache and pain no matter how good your life is), but look at most fairy tales, they're not perfect either. What I was thinking was of stories such as that of the "Cinderella Man" (true life here, by the way) and how people do constantly rise, fall, and rise again. It's something that some people can do. They get a taste of the good life, fall back to the low, and end up returning even better than before, whether it be from chance (not very often) or by learning from their mistakes.

Anyway, maybe the point I'm trying to get at is that this home could quite possibly become a home not only for "imaginary friends", but could become a home for you. Each one of us has a fairy tale that fits at least into some part of our lives, thus making you an honorary member of the imaginary friends home (even though your not imaginary, we live like them, you see?) and giving you powers beyond your wildest dreams when your fantasy is realized. So now the goal is to go and figure out that one little thing!

Figure out what Fairy Tale YOU are living!

A Story About Gary

Gary knows it is wrong, but he can't resist. It's his one passion in life. His thief instinct was right now running through his blood like hot acid, and it made him stir crazy for the thrill that comes from the anxiety and speed that only thievery can deliver. But this night was different from all the others. This night was bigger, better, and even more dangerous. Tonight he was hitting the Lord Ursus's manor, and it was going to be a huge pay off.

Gary did the usual pre-thieving work. He took out the guards at the gate with a beautiful distraction named Tiffany, cut the wires to the security box on the opposite side of the hedge ridden stone wall, and rerouted the security cam's video feed through his own recordings so as to be virtually invisible when going through the mansion. All that was left was for the Ursus family to take off on their scheduled 9:30 pm helicopter flight to the Florida Keys for the weekend.

Gary was prepared. His watch man, Dun, had control of all the cams and was well aware of everything going on in and outside the house from his little white van down the street. Both the men waited and watched as the Ursus family walked from their back door to the helicopter.

"Go Gary, we only have a small window of time until Tiffany hits the road. You now have approximately 10 minutes to get in and take the jewels from the Lord's chamber, just make sure you.."

And before Dun could even finish what he was saying, Gary was out the door and over the wall. Quickly he ran to the side entrance nearest the east end that they were at, quickly pulled out his lock picking mechanism and (so smoothly, so quietly) made the lock fall to pieces in his hand. He got into this business because of his skill with locks. He still found it amazing that they always did exactly as he wanted them too.

Gary quietly opened the door and made his way through the dark kitchen, all the time listening to the chopper outside, expecting it to lift off any minute now. "Why hasn't it lifted off yet!?" Gary thought to himself. He reached down to radio into Dun about his concern but nothing was on his waste. He had left the Motorola in the van! This was the biggest job of his life and he had left the walky-talky in the van! He panicked for a total of 0.3 seconds, but decided it was too late and he'd been planning for too long to turn back now. In and out was all it was, he'd be gone in no time.

With his heart beating in his ears, he quickly but quietly assailed the stairs to the Lord's Chamber. Once in, he began to rip apart everything. The closets emptied, cabinets tipped, bed stands smashed, chairs ripped, bed frames flipped.... but there were no jewels anywhere! "Think, Gary, Think!" he said aloud to himself. "Ah, must be in the Ladies room! Of course!" So he ran to the room across the hall and ripped Lady Ursus's room apart the same, but to no avail. "Where the hell could they be!? They couldn't possibly have taken the jewels with them," he said to himself. And at that moment, he heard a slam from downstairs! Somebody else was in the house with him!

"Great, now what!?" Gary stood silent for a moment to hear what was happening downstairs, and the rustling of papers came from where the Ursus's office may have been, somewhere beneath the room he was standing in.

Gary began to tip-toe back to the eastern end of the building. He figured even though he was on the second story, there would be a window over here somewhere that he could get to and make it back to Dun! It was dark but he had to go fast. He flew through a door at the end of the hall and ran straight into a giant stuffed animal. Gary and the animal toppled through the room and slammed against the far wall. As Gary and the creature hit the wall, a cupboard door next to them quickly swung open and out rolled a small, child size bowl. Gary didn't notice. He saw that his escape was just above his head, and as he was about to stand and jump out the window, he noticed a small glimmer out of the corner of his eye. It was the bowl. The jewels that were covering the bowl had caught the moon light, and Gary realized this was what he had been looking for all along. Not paying attention to the noise he had been making, and distracted by now trying quickly to stuff the bowl into his bag, he did not see the little girl walk up to the entrance of the room he now stood in.

As Gary pushed the bowl to safety within his bag, the girl let out an ear shriveling scream so loud that it probably blew Dun out of his seat in the van. She then yelled, "Daddy! Someone is in my room, taking the pretty bowl!" But Gary never heard this. Gary had already jumped out the window, ran through the yard, hopped the hedge, and fallen from the wall. Dun was nowhere to be seen.

"Had this all been a set up? How could this have all gone so wrong?" Gary thought to himself as he ran across the street and into the alley, slipping into the shadows as the police sirens wailed into the night.

The Ursus's never saw their golden bowl again.

So I think this makes a first good addition to the home here. As you can see, this Red Riding Hood has no "Little" in her name. As I was walking down the aisles of our local Walmart, I came by her and thought ,"Hmm... this makes me think of a few things for my blog." I also thought, oh what should I say, sexy adult version of our beloved fairy tale character. It made me think, "Ordinary adults of our day still love there characters of old, even if there ideas of them may be a little different than they used to." So I decided to bring her home! (That is, to Clark's Home for Imaginary Friends via mobile phone:)

First thing I have to say is that, if you ever thought fairy tales were out of the minds of our generation, you'd be horribly mistaken. It is, however, easy to say that they're maybe remembered in different ways than when we were 6 years old. We think of Little Red Riding Hood now a days and we think of these scantily clad outfits, or maybe we think of songs like Professor Sexson played, or perhaps we think of movies such as "Hoodwinked" where Red and the Wolf work together to stop the evil Bunny from stealing the secret recipe's of Grandma in order to begin a massive monopoly that would control all the sweets manufactured in the world. That's what our generation's Fairy Tales are now like.

Something that I just realized was very important for everyone in our class to look into was the works of my favorite modern day writer, Neil Gaiman. His ideas of fairy tales for adults are what made me love every book he created so far. His first work he became famous for was his series called "The Sandman". This series of graphic novels was critically acclaimed not only for its amazing artwork, its intense adult themes based in a world of fantasy, and its beautiful prose, but because it was instrumental in breaking the world of comics from their classic goofy, stereotypical heroes and scantily clad vixens. I think anyone who wants to find a great example of the graphic novel genre should go straight to these works and spend a few hours engaged in their dark world.

Neil Gaiman's offerings to our class go even further than his graphic novel examples. Once he became famous for "The Sandman Series", he was able to break out his adult fairy tales. I've read interviews with him where he actually said, " Adults are getting screwed, and deserve their own fairy tales." And that's exactly what he creates in each of his works. The first book of his I read was , "Neverwhere" where a man falls through the "cracks" and becomes invisible, inexplicably consigned to a London of shadows and darkness, a city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels that exists entirely in a subterranean labyrinth of sewer canals and abandoned subway stations. He has fallen through the cracks of reality and has landed somewhere different, somewhere that is Neverwhere.

His second book was "Stardust", which pulls upon many important fairy tale structures such as that of the boy needing to go on a journey of self-discovery (leave the comforts of home) in order to find out where his treasure and self-confidence and maturity really is. He actually made it a point to make sure that Stardust was something that 30-year-olds and 45-year-olds and 25 year-olds and 60-year-olds could all enjoy and get that same feeling of true fairy tale as they had when reading similar stories as children. He also made sure that it was a metaphor for nothing, just plain and simple fun. It also turned out to be quite enjoyable when adapted to the big screen, just being released a year ago now with some big Hollywood names. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR ANY MEMBER OF ENGLISH 304! Check out some people's thoughts on it and maybe get yourself a copy of it at http://www.amazon.com/Stardust-Neil-Gaiman/dp/0060934719 .

My favorite book of his, however, is much darker and rooted much deeper in Norse mythology. It's called American Gods and plays off of the idea of what would happen if, because the gods of old were forgotten by modern society, they became humanoids and walked the face of the Earth in order to remain, many living in our melting pot societies of America. The plot is deep, the characters are giant, and the conflicts are intense. Great Read! His other big novel, Ananzi Boys, was good and based in Indian Mythology, but I didn't like it near as much as American Gods.

He's also published a couple short story volumes of fantasy and fiction, and a children's book called Coraline (which is also amazing, fairy tale turned horrific, just like the ones of old). After reading it I told my good friend Whelen, "This would make an intense movie!" and, lo-and-behold, it's coming out in 2009 as some type of animation that I'm sure will never live up to the graphic nature of the book. I'm excited for it none the less. I'll try and bring a copy of this book to class on Monday if I can remember.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to get at is that people today, like Neil Gaiman, are still creating fairy tales like that of old. Their also finding new and spectacular mediums to bring them into the culture (movies, graphic novels, etc.). What I think is most exciting about people like Gaiman are that they are trying to return us to that place of childhood satisfaction with our fairy tales. By throwing in some adult curves such as some sexual inuendos here or some intense violence there, he is only embracing what was already present in the old fairy tales that we no longer read to our children and bringing it out in new stories so that it can be enjoyed by our generation once again. That's exciting and something I would love to be able to do as an author. So go out and read him and find me in class and please let me know what you think. You won't be dissapointed.

For all those helpless, abandoned, lonely, and grown-out-of imaginary friends... Welcome Home

This will become place of rest for many of our imaginary friends (and not so imaginary friends) who have been deserted by the pages of history. Many familiar faces will show, as well as some horrible and not so familiar faces. It will become their tribute. To all those beaten, tortured, and magically abused fairy tale creatures....Welcome Home. :-)