Muse Madness!

I am usually crazy confident about titling my works, but coming up with a title for my winning work in the 2016 Lake Merritt Flash Mob Play Festival was harder than writing the play itself!

The original title was "Disgruntled Muse." I didn't want an adjective-Muse title, since I just re-named my newsletter (muse-letter?) "Generous Muse." And I have worked hard to have a positive relationship with my muses... want to keep it that way!

I came up with over 50 potential titles, based on the contents and theme of the play... with help from a rhyming dictionary and thesaurus, of course!

1. A Goose Waits in Oakland
2. A Kick From a Muse
3. A Muse and a Goose
4. A Muse Crosses the Street
5. A Muse Grows in Oakland
6. A Plague of Muses
7. A Push from the Muse
8. Abused by the Muse
9. Bossy Muse Blues
10. Can't Stop the Muses
11. Choose the Muse
12. Choosing the Muse
13. Confused by the Muse
14. Control your muses
15. Cuddle the Muse
16. Dances with Muses
17. Demands of the Muse
18. Distressing the Muse
19. Don't Mess With the Muse
20. Embracing the Muse
21. Goose from a Muse
22. Goosed by the Muse
23. Juice of the Muse
24. Kill my muses
25. Mad at the Muse
26. Make Way for Muses!
27. Muse Calling
28. Muse Madness
29. Muse Sings the Blues
30. Muse Trouble
31. Muse-a-palooza
32. Muse, Don’t Abuse
33. Museday Afternoon
34. Muses Made Me Do It
35. Not A-mused.
36. Perfectionist Muse
37. Persnickety Muse
38. Plagued by Muses
39. Provoking the Muses
40. Refusing the Muse
41. Seduced by the Muse
42. Seize the Muse
43. Shaking the Muse
44. Sing with the Muse
45. Slave to the Muse
46. The Madness of the Muse
47. The Muse Moves 
48. The Trouble With Muses
49. Tighten the Muse
50. Turn of the Muse
51. View from the Muse
52. Voice of the Muse
53. Wealth of the Muse

Sifting out the negative ones (wanting a more neutral tone for the title), I selected the top six that I thought were memorable, evocative (of a feeling or another cultural reference), and carried the right sort of exciting energy:

• Be Mused
• Bossy Muse Blues
• Choose the Muse
• Muse Madness
• Museday Afternoon
• The Trouble with Muses

And then I set about pestering friends and family. I asked a few dozen writers and other creatives to vote for their favorites. Of course, most of them were much more clever than me, suggesting even more truly wonderful ideas, such as:

• If you Give a Muse a Muffin 
• Win Some, Muse Some
• Muse En Scéne
• Blue Suede Muse
• The M-Spot
• Afternoon with the Muse
• BeMuse
• Beggars can't be Musers (however, in my play, they can...)
• Dark Side of the Muse (my personal fave)

Ultimately, the poll results were clear. Be Mused (which my aMUSEing husband shouted out a week before I thought of it), won definitively. An equal number of votes were split between The Trouble with Muses and Bossy Muse Blues, with a few clear votes for Muse Madness.

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." —Paul Simon, Graceland

How to make Pornocello™

This is a highly toxic and not-good-for you cocktail invented somewhere over Greenland by punch-drunk strangers on a plane.

(It is much worse than Limoncello, but less creepy than actual porn.)

1. Start with a package of Lemon Candy. 
2. Put it in a jar. 
3. Cover it with "Really Good Vodka." (Whatever's cheap.)
4. Shake it every few days.
5. When the candy has dissolved as much as it will, pour off the sticky yellow liquid into a bottle.
6. (The bottle should probably be clean.)
7. Keep it in the freezer.
8. After dinner, unzip your pants.
9. Drink straight from the bottle.

Actually, the resulting sticky sweet alcoholic syrup tastes pretty good over ice cream, or mixed in a cocktail. And you can make it with any kind of candy (Jolly Rancher Vodka is a Thing) ... but if it's lemon, call it by the proper Italo-American adult beverage name: Pornocello!

This Is Not Photoshopped.

As football season begins, I would like to salute my fantasy football league (The 69ers, The Nutcrackers, Team Nice Dynamite, XXL Cheerleaders, Slaughtermelons and more...) with the one of the best things I ever saw on TV...

Do not doubt my commitment (yet) to Sparkle Motion!

Coco Crisps + Reddick Whip = Victory Pie!

Happy #museday!

I was raised to raise my nose at spectator sports. Our family would DO things while others were sitting on couches, drinking beer, drooling, screaming in unison like an idiot choir. We'd garden, draw, hike, read, or go visit grandma. But I married a sports fan, and in loving him, I have learned to love the ball seasons in my own way.

This weekend, I made a video based on my Walk-off Pie recipe from last year's streaky baseball season. My son, the aspiring filmmaker, was a very useful Techie. He helped me figure out how to turn the kitchen into a studio, held the camera on the tricky shots, and did a great a walk-on at the end.

The most annoying thing was not the way batteries ran out on the second-to-last shot, but the clicking noise the expensive fancy HD video camera I borrowed made a clicking noise when it zoomed. It was a tough call but in the end I took my own advice not to be a perfectionist but to get it out there. Life is short.

There were a few best things... the magic of editing (thank you, Adobe Premiere), being creative with my kid (his favorite scene was the table-clearing...), and the best surprise of all: THE PIE WAS DELICIOUS! We left it in the freezer and ate it the next night as the Broncos whipped up and up on the Raiders.

My crazy cook friends and I have always dreamed of doing a variety show. Maybe this is my opening salvo. (Mmm, salvo.)

Oh, and here's one more factoid. The shirt I'm wearing is homemade, too. It's a relic from our early days of parenthood, when I couldn't afford the licensed variety for a father's day gift. To avoid complete licensing failures, the child-sized one said "A-Ok-land" on the back. This one, which my husband has kept, says "Auckland A's" on the back, since Oakland doesn't start with an A....

St. John's ForNever...

Awww... I didn't win the contest to update the lyrics for my alma mater.  So, here's what the world missed...

(Click here to start soundtrack...)

here's the old version:

St. John’s forever; her fame shall never die.
Fight for her colors! We’ll raise them to the sky!
Each loyal son pledges you his heart and hand;
For her united, we as brothers stand.

here's my new version:
St. John’s forever! Your wisdom through us flows.
Bless your sons and daughters with knowledge that grows.
Johnnies eternally discussing love and law
For her united, we fight for ta kala! *

At convocation our odyssey begins
And with each page’s turning the mind of Man opens
The logos of freedom to seek reality.
Dialogues and elements our only rivalry.

As we continue our journey of the mind
Through discourses and amalgests, a greater truth we find.
Our nature strives toward beauty through sonnets, songs, and art:
The eidos of creation within the human heart.

Through fables, treatises, pensées, we feel the years fly by
Critiques, essays, principia our knowledge amplify
Contracts, novels, theories fill our precious days
Declarations, constitutions, operas, preludes, plays.

Speeches, fragments, poems, phenomenology;
Thoughts of great minds forming our own philosophy.
Past war and peace and quantum leaps, our epic journey ends,
And we become liberis, your books our cherished friends.

Now we have walked with giants, yet for all we’ve learned,
Endings are beginnings; for knowledge we still yearn.
Not content with laurels, the examined life’s our goal.
St. John’s eternal! The mater of my soul.

St. John’s forever! Your wisdom through us flows.
Bless your sons and daughters with knowledge that grows.
Johnnies eternally discussing love and law
For her united, we fight for ta kala! *

© 2012 Kristen Baumgardner Caven

*Alt: We read and waltz and play croquet and fight for ta kala!

Letter to Gary Craig

Dear Gary,

EFT is amazing. Who would think that tapping on certain pressure points with a mental focus could actually relieve pain, release stress, and cure everything from PMS to PTSD? But I have a problem. Whenever I try to explain EFT to other people, their eyes either glaze over or roll. I don't feel like "Emotional Freedom Technique" gives the right impression. It's so serious, but EFT is so fun! When the energy shifts, for me, there's a giddy feeling that follows. It can feel like a magic trick.

When I was a kid I was part of the 'Episcopal Youth Congregation.' We thought EYC should stand, instead, for 'Eat Your Cauliflower.' In that spirit...

The T should stand for tapping.
The E should stand for energy

Energy tapping....
Energy something tapping....

Energy Fomething Tapping....

Energy Freedom Tapping?
Energy Feeling Tapping?

Energy Field Tapping...

Energy Flow Tapping!

Feel free to use any of these new names if you like. (I bet the domain names are available!) I'd like to think of new acronyms as my contribution to the Endless Finger Tapping revolution!

Think about it: people could now approach kids with hurt feelings with this invitation: "Want to try an Energy Fluffing Trick?"

Ever Full of Trouble,

Kristen Caven