My special place

I'd like everyone to know that I, Monstro, have a special place. It's the place where I put scenery bits that I plan to use within the next twenty four hours, like that second floor to the bombed out building that fit perfectly and that I lost in my special place for nearly 2 weeks, or the sidewalks that I plan to mold from some child's toy that are perfectly detailed and to scale, there in my special place now too, wherever that is...

You see, what I do is I look through my bits and I say, "Grip tape, this will be perfect for the fences that I'm about to make." And then I move the grip tape to my special place and lose it.

Of course, since I'm a scenery designer, that means that half the crap I own was bought at a dollar store, a clearance bin, a yard sale (tag sale for you New Englanders), or browsing through the Final Cut, Big Lots, Walmart, or Home Depot. In short, half of the things that make it into my special place are things that I can't just go out and buy again. The Bit Bin on my website is an attempt to not have a special place, but let's face it, it's incomplete: I have five other boxes filled with stuff that have yet to be catalogued. Not to mention two little bookshelves covered with bits, pieces, chemicals, clay, rocks, flock, and paints that I'll never get to.

I write this here as advice to fellow scenery designers. DON'T HAVE A SPECIAL PLACE. It's just somewhere where you can conveniently lose things for weeks on end. Leave that important bit in with the general mass of crap you've collected. Yes, it will take more digging to get to it, but damned, you'll be able to find it without having to tear your house apart. Or you'll go out and buy a suitable standing part, which is right when you find the original, and now there's no damn continuity between your pieces!

Man, those sidewalk things were sweet. I'll never find them again.