The Silver Screen Oasis

JackFavell wrote:Ken dolls were always good for ripping apart or suspending from hooks... not much else was done with them as far as I remember.

Well, my sister was none too pleased and wondered why I didn't use one of my GI Joe's. (Show's what she knows. I mean at that time, Joe's not only had the way-cool 70's beard and mustache, but also the kung-fu grip! Plus Ken was a stupid doll. GI Joe is an action figure!)

Even us girls used to beat up on Ken.... I remember running over him with the Barbie convertible a lot. Good times, good times....

We would never have done that with G.I. Joe.

Oh, heck, maybe we would have... any port in a storm.

You must have been too young to have anyone special in mind as you crushed poor Ken, weren't you?

Ken was awfully neglected in my house, I was most unimpressed at having a male doll.

Laurel and Hardy is even funnier if watched with someone. My daughter loved Brats too, she nearly wore out the DVD. I like them even when they play their own wives. Another of my favorites are Laughing Gravy and there is one on top of a skyscraper, very funny.

Chris -
It was probably just men in general.

I was too young to have a specific fella to work out my frustrations about, though I was terribly popular with the boys in kindergarten. I inspired one poor little boy, Philip (his last name and face are gone from my memory) to steal his sister's bracelet to give to me. I didn't ask him to, he just quietly did it on his own. My mother made me give it back.....sigh....I remember it had little tiny pennies all over it and I loved it. I couldn't understand why I had to give it back. That must have been the beginning of my frustrations with men....

If it's any consolation, I burned a black rubbery hole in my Barbie's head later on. I washed her hair and stuck her under a super hot desk lamp to dry. When I came back she had melted.

The mention of doll's hair. I kept mine pristine but my daughter has a knack of getting the hair to look like a bird's nest as soon as it's unpacked for her. Dolls being obscenely cheap these days and great aunties and uncles who love to treat her, we have so many of these dolls with such bad hair and every so often I take them down and give them a good brush.

I showed "One Week" to a Six Sigma team abut halfway through a long term project. It was meant to be both instructional and fun, and it worked great even with corporate workers who had never seen a real silent film.

Last week at an antique mall Courtney found a Henry Higgins Ken doll. It was apparently released in the mid 1990s along with 4 different Barbies featuring four of Liza's outfits.

I finished editing and scoring "The Telepathic Animal Communicator", the film for my nephew, and, if I do say so myself, it's not too bad. By making the film "silent", I was able to toss in all kinds of things, including a chase scene featuring gondolas in Venice (footage I'd shot on my wife and my 20th anniversary). It helped that nearly all of the gondoliers were on their cell phones, so I could simply slip in a title and have them conversing with my nephew (or whoever). Lots of fun to do and it all came together with the score. I "borrowed" most of Howard Shore's marvelous score from Ed Wood and the gondola chase sequence has a cello and piano version of Chaplin's Napoli March from The Great Dictator.

I did include the Slapstick Masters DVD as well as a DVD of the greatest film ever, King Kong, which he's never seen!

I put them in the mail yesterday. Here's hoping he watches and likes them. I'll keep you posted.

He's gonna LOVE King Kong....