Okay, so the title of this post makes me sound like something of a stalker, but I promise, I’m not. To really understand this story, we need to go back – way back to winter 2010. I was living in New York City at the time, completing an internship, and the Tim Burton Exhibit was enjoying a temporary stint at the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art). The Tim Burton exhibit is a traveling exhibition of Tim Burton’s work, from childhood to present. It features his original character sketches and artwork dating back to the 1970s, as well as school papers and mostly-lost projects he worked on during the 80s before making a name for himself. It’s pretty cool. When I was living in New York, two of my friends (Lana, who you know as the Lowly Intern from my job in Chicago, and Megan, who recommended I listen to Phoenix in March) and I decided to go see the exhibit as part of a grand Alice in Wonderland-themed day (it made sense because Burton’s version of the movie had just come out).

It was a really good plan except that the exhibit was really popular and sold out pretty much immediately every day.

We kept saying we’d go back, but that involved getting up really early on a Saturday, so we never did.

So I ended up leaving New York with the Tim Burton exhibit still on my adventure to-do list. When I moved to Los Angeles this summer and learned, upon my arrival, that the Tim Burton exhibit had made its way to the LACMA, I was determined not to miss it again. When my family went to the exhibit one day while I was at work during their visit and reported on how amazing it was, I told myself it was a priority. At a month to go before the end of the exhibit’s time in LA, I finally remembered that I needed to check it out.

Luckily, I have a constant companion in adventure-having in Los Angeles, Todd, who you might remember from when he recommended I listen to The Fugees in March. So Todd and I decided to take a break from our usual weekend adventures (which consist mostly of revival cinema and trips to Disneyland) and go to geek out over Tim Burton together.

Except that, apparently, the exhibit is just about as popular in Los Angeles as it was in New York.

This time around, I was a proper adventurer. I didn’t let something like getting up early stop me. Also, Todd and I bought our tickets in advance, so we didn’t have a choice but to get up early.

We were still about a half hour late, but thankfully, the good people at the LACMA let us in.

No photos were allowed inside the exhibit, but here’s my interpretation of the entry way, for those of you who can’t make it out to the exhibit yourselves. May it inspire you to pursue your own adventures…or go rent Beetlejuice.

Oh and in NaNoWriMo-relevant news, the exhibit visit came right as I’m working on character mapping and Burton is a genius with characters. It was great inspiration and might have prompted me to start sketching (you know, on paper instead of a trackpad) again.