An Easter Egg Hunt To Dye For (Get it? GET IT???)

Candy, eggs and bunnies, oh my!

Note: No! No!  Look at the KIDS!  Not the fat man, the KIDS!!!

Addendum: Picture was taken with a wide-angle lens.

Disclaimer: I had just eaten a bowling ball for lunch.

Sidebar: The KIDS, dangit, the KIDS!!!!

Room to move…and hunt

Most of my readers know that we recently moved.  "Recently" meaning eight months ago, yes, but compared to the fridge life of mustard, it counts as recent.  We dared to move during, of all things, a global pandemic.  We figured life was not crazy enough at the time, and decided to mix things up a bit.  I am not saying that this was a wise decision, because it did feel a bit like Indiana Jones mustering up the courage and sizing up the equation to remove that sacred statue from the podium in the cave.  But ultimately, after we were pursued by a giant boulder, shot at with arrows and nearly fell down a pit, we jumped out of there and landed softly at our new humble abode.  (I brushed the tarantulas off of my wife’s back.)

When I say humble abode, that is not actually what I mean.  What I mean is lavish.  I truly mean it when I say that God has lavished upon us a massive blessing with this new place. When I first laid my eyes on our potential new home in May 2020, there were five things that instantly crossed my mind:

• The property was beautiful and spacious!
• This front yard would be perfect to throw the ball around with my dad or my kids!
• I can not wait to see this place at Christmastime covered in snow!
• The pasture would be excellent for an Easter Egg Hunt!
• It has been a long drive! I have to pee!

After visiting the little boys’ room, I ventured on out to the pasture.  Yes, we have a pasture.  We do not have horses.  I am unaware that that is a requirement for owning a pasture.  If it is, then I will head to Amazon and add horses to my cart and have them shipped via Amazon Prime, along with someone who knows how to take care of horses in a pasture that have been shipped via Amazon Prime.

Any way you slice it (the situation; not the horses), we now had a beautiful pasture that is expansive, wonderful and thrilling: much like my Lord of the Rings BluRay collection.  And on April 4th, 2021, we were finally able to host the Easter Egg Hunt I have always dreamed of.

Now, I am a man, and I have had tests to prove this.  What I would really enjoy would be an Easter Egg Hunt across scorched earth.  This would include grenades and firebombs.  Kids dodging RPG’s, napalm, and plutonium, while Kenny Loggins’ Danger Zone blares enthusiastically.  Little ones scampering around with their Easter baskets, dressed in their Sunday best, as machine gun fire strafes the cold earth around them.  Also serpents would be slithering through the grass.  I find that serpents are underused.  Kids today have it far too easy, and they are far too soft.  I would rectify this.  I would start an enterprise which would set wayward kids aright.  And perhaps even the parents!  Parents of two great kids and that other kid would be able to send that other kid to the Alexander Easter Boot Camp, and they would leave changed.  By changed I mean they are missing an arm or a leg and are now ready to start obeying.

Since I cannot have my wish without getting arrested – and I will not go back to jail – it behooves me to run a sound Easter operation that is not in conflict with most (read: all) major laws and codes of decency.

Our new home provided all of that this Easter.

Eye of the Tiger

^^^ My beautiful 1-year-old, Asher! ^^^

You have not truly lived until you have hosted an Easter Egg Hunt on a pasture.  The reason for this is that all of your senses come alive in this glorious thing we call Violent Competition Between Frenzied Sugar-Crazed Juveniles.  As a parent and an overseer, you become instantly aware of everything around you, and are highly attuned to potential impending conflict stemming from basket envy.

When hosting an Easter Egg Hunt, you must follow The Ten Sacred Steps, or risk multiple fuming prepubescents tearing the flesh off of your face like angst-ridden wombats.

Here are said steps:

1. Announce Easter Egg Hunt, and immediately wonder what you have gotten yourself into.
2. Purchase several packs of jellybean-stuffed eggs, knowing full well that this quantity will not suffice, and you will have the flesh torn from your face by angst-ridden wombats.
3. Hide them skillfully throughout your pasture, realizing that you need more pasture.
4. Invite over small children that belong to parents whom you trust and assume have raised their children well.
5. Desperately attempt to painstakingly corral and talk over a battalion of children and adults for The Instructions of The Hunt, during which no one listens to you, you question your self-worth, and lose the will to live as your flesh is torn from your face by angst-ridden wombats.
6. Announce that there is a grand prize “afikomen” egg out there that is the mother of all prizes, a silver egg affectionately dubbed The Mother Of All Eggs.
7. Ask Alexa to play Eye of the Tiger on a loop, so as to provide proper motivation during The Hunt. (Danger Zone would evoke images of the ideal Easter Egg Hunt).
8. Unleash said battalion of small children throughout your pasture to scoop up eggs into their baskets and collide with a confusion and frenzy not seen since the 2000 Presidential Recount as your flesh is torn from your face by angst-ridden wombats.
9. Watch your own son stomp furiously back to you when he does not find the afikomen.  Impart something reassuring such as “knock it off.”
10. Make sure you have a pasture. This is actually Step 1.

Seeing as how you have invited wombats to an Easter Egg Hunt, you obviously have a death wish.  A death wish is a crucial ingredient in hosting such an event.

Truly, all I remember seeing were zips of color flashing across my pasture, as ten kids raced for plastic and dyed eggs, hidden:

• in the pasture grass
• in the forest on the perimeter of the pasture
• under the trampoline (it is a requirement to purchase a trampoline if you own a pasture),
• up in trees
• deep in foliage, and
• any other place where you can't find anything, you are losing patience, and feel like you are in hell, such as when you are at the DMV.

Voiceover Easter Eggs

Yes, I have indeed blogged about this before.  But one of the glorious things about blogging about something again is you get to link to yourself, which is very cool.  Also because it is my blog and not yours.

For voiceover artists, every day truly is an Easter Egg Hunt.  We are turning over rocks, we are climbing up trees, we are digging in holes, we are searching, searching, searching for clients all the time to market our wondrous voiceover services to.  Sometimes, they do not think they need us.  We lovingly convince them that they do, however, by burying them with demo files, inundating them with links to our gallery page, and recruiting our other clients to barrage them with emails stating how neat we are.

I am joking.  Burying, inundating and barraging are not The Voiceover Way.  It is our job to race to and fro, looking for our next client…..and oh the joy when we find them there, laying in the grass, dyed red or blue or green, full of jellybeans, shivering and wondering what year it is!

What is marketing but a giant Easter Egg hunt, after all?

Here is my challenge to you.  If you do not like marketing, no one could blame you.  It is truly not everyone’s cup of tea.  I do understand that.  But here’s a tip:

1. Take one moment.
2. Breathe.
3. Detach from the present reality and project yourself back to when you were a child.
4. Relive the thrill of racing headlong across a field and slicing through the wind as you bear down on a beautiful ovum filled with colorful treats.  You found it!  It is yours.  Savor it.
5. These were actually five tips.

Marketing is the same thing.  All of those eggs are just waiting for us to find them.  Infuse a little joy into your marketing, and go find those voiceover clients that are out there waiting for you.

If it helps, you can always put on a little Danger Zone when you start reaching out. Just watch out for the RPG’s. I will be over here ready to shoot at you for stealing my eggs, er, clients.  Now get out of my pasture or I am calling the cops.

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Final Bullet Points:

• Like this blog?  My children are counting on you to put bread on our table through the purchase of one of my books.  By the way, low-guilt-trip sales pushes are my specialty
• NOTE: This blog is purely for commentary / educational / entertainment purposes.  I make no money from these blogs; though I do not refuse large cash gifts if it means I can pretend I'm a church
• Check out my whole UNIVERSE of blogs right HERE!
• This is a fourth bullet point.

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Joshua Alexander
Seattle Voice Actor & Voiceover Artist for hire
[email protected]
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