Just a soundbite- and a mutant goose...

This has been my first real lapse in blogs so far this year, for which I apologise and pomise a renewed effort on the posting front. The workload is beginning to ramp up, and I'm currently juggling the writing of my first ever full-length theatre script, a plethora of journalism assignments and of course the dreaded essays. There should be a blog about the Chinese Lunar New Year parade in San Francisco, and the evening I met a giant (no, really) coming up; but in the interim I wanted to make a quick note to say that two saturdays ago my Journalism class took me on a trip to the Lawrence Hall of Science to cover an event called an Open Make, which was essentially a showcase of some really nutty inventions. I saw some fairly wacky things there; a cardboard pinball machine; a completely functional computer game that was controlled by the player hitting a can of tinned tomatoes; and two really extraordinary girls called Annabel Dudash and Elsa Swanson.

My very own Mutant- provisionally titled Goosezilla.

The girls were exhibiting their Mutant Monsters business, which has become a huge hit in the Berkeley and Oakland area over the last three years. It’s the sort of artsy-kitsch project that could easily become a huge fad back in the hipster student zones of Norwich, and when I asked to meet the Makers I'd  expected a couple of edgy twenty-something’s with asymmetrical haircuts and ‘vision’: so couldn’t have been more surprised by the arrival of the two eleven-year olds; one in a white lab coat, the other in a huge fur hat with fox ears. They explained how they started Mutant Monsters by taking apart old toys and gluing them back together, handing their original Mutants out as party favors at Annabel’s ninth birthday. The toys were an instant success, and the two are now registered Young Makers, and a regular feature at the monthly Oakland Art Murmurs, downtown from Berkeley. Annabel wants to be an engineer when she grows up, Elsa an artist; and they have every intention of collaborating further in the future. Did they have a favorite mutant, I asked. 

“Well, we once took this Jesus,” Annabel explains, “and then we gave him some huge red thumbs,”

“And tentacles,” Elsa chips in,

“Yeah, and tentacles.” 

Watch this space, I think they're going to be huge.