Culture: Exhibit E: Pumpkin Patch!

(This is me in the corn maze, surrounded by culture spewing from the Earth)

As the leaves began to turn their aging orange and fall from the trees like cherubs seeking naptime, I made my journey to the annual pumpkin patch. This is no ordinary pumpkin patch, however. This a pumpkin patch with blue grass bands, home made cider and artisan displays, and even a pirate ship. Venturing to this family friendly location takes me away from the hustle and bustle of city life in Shepherdstown. It is a place to meditate on folk music and heritage, a place to awkwardly run into people you haven’t spoken to in years, people you’ve secretly avoided while judging their silly meanderings on Facebook. It is a place to pause. (Below: my girlfriend, sneaking up on a lady pumpkin)

The importance of the pumpkin patch as a cultural relic stems from it’s ability to take us back to our “grass roots” as one could say. It reminds us that we indeed do live in the country and that life isn’t wholly about cranking out papers filled with half-understood ideas and just getting through to the next week. It’s a place that allows us to get lost in a maze other than our dumb, confusing minds; letting us soak in the breeze that blows us onward.

Culture: Exhibit D: Drag Queens!

(For evidence, see the footage Konrad has for his capstone, which I help majorly in shooting. Also, my face was on his poster board, which stated I helped him greatly. Also, I'm an honest young man just trying to graduate.)

Straight Up Drag is a documentary I’m co-producing with Konrad about the culture behind the art of drag queens. To help develop a trailer and sizzle reel for the documentary, Konrad, Matt Richards, and I went out to a drag show just down the road in Boonesboro (weird, right?) and filmed, with unprecedented access, the entirety of the show. This means from dolling up to stripping down, we filmed what the entrance of the stars to the finale of their performances.

Just by filming this event I learned quite a bit about the processes behind the transformation into queenhood. For one, breasts don’t just poof out of no where. There’s a shading process between the man-pecks that’s a vital part of making the breasts look realistic enough. Also, the shading must match well with your skin tone. You can’t just slap magenta on and think you’re boobzilla. Creating the drag visage is very much about knowing what color works best with your skin and where to shade in the most important areas of the body.

I hope that next year we’ll really start pursuing this idea more and have a working product to shop around to festivals.

Culture: Exhibit C: Muppets!

I never watched The Muppet Show when I was a kid. I even hated Sesame Street with a burning passion, which is something I’ve never been able to figure out why exactly. But boy do I love Muppet movies. My favorite Christmas movie is A Muppet Christmas Carol. I watch it every year. So when I saw that a new Muppet movie was poised for release and potential greatness, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

What I love about this film is that it is lays everything on the table. It doesn’t try to just rekindle that fire of old, trying to turn a cheek to the troubles the franchise has found over the last twenty years. It shows the audience that times have changed, yet people still want Muppets if Muppets can be done right. What I also loved was the fact that the writers of the film didn’t try to make the movie hip or create a “modern Muppets”. They distinctly played off of the aged franchise, projecting charm onto the theme of relics rather than garbage. This was the most respectable part of the film, but at the same time it just didn’t feel quite like a Muppet movie. Sections screamed the dry Muppet wit, but other segments screamed a little too loud and obnoxiously for me to care. In the end it gives me hope for another film, but they can’t go down the charming relic path again. This time they’ve got to be obviously fresh and not wholly rely on the hearts of fans of the past.