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The Mood, It Be Weird
Jun. 23rd, 2005 07:37 pmThere's an ice cream parlor on Clement Street called Toy Boat - it's this blue-painted old Victorian structure with a lunch counter and a soda fountain, and the inside of the place is liberally decorated with toys, some vintage, some new that you can buy. This the place where you get your talking Mr. T keychain, your plastic desk Jesus, your action figures of Librarians and Wrestlers and Sigmund Freud. (Sadly, no rubber ducky, which is what I think we went in there to look for, aside from the ice cream cones.)
In a glass case, there was a display of Pee Wee's Playhouse action figures. Now, Toy Boat does indeed have the now-sadly-rare 12" doll (which I'd never coveted at the time, but sort of do now, if only for the irresistable thought that you know, that suit would probably fit my Angel and Spike dolls) and they also have a full-size Chairy for the 12" Pee Wee to sit in, something I hadn't even realized was made. That item I really covet. (More visions of dolls that really don't belong in Pee Wee's playhouse getting a well-deserved hug from Chairy.) But what really surprised me were the miniatures of the rest of the cast, and I realized with some shock how much Jambi, the fortune-telling head in the box, looks like Lorne, from AtS. Or vice versa, rather, since Pee Wee was long gone from the airwaves by the time Lorne ever showed up. And total coincidence, I'm sure, but that image really gave rise to this whole picture of Lorne in a turban, like Johnny Carson used to do. The Vegas act we didn't get to see. (And okay, now I've got Margaret Hamilton in her Wicked Witch makeup glaring at me, snarling. "what, all green people look alike to you?" Gah!)
Damn, I miss that show. Pee Wee's Playhouse, I mean. It had an energy that was so hard to describe. There was something so decadent in watching it as an adult, that feeling of willful reversion to childhood that made you want to wear flannel pajamas and eat sugar cereal; at the same time, there was a fun sense of transgression, of getting the joke that these are adults acting like kids. And encouraging kids to do things that would really annoy adults, such as the infamous word-of-the-day at which you "scream as loud as you can! Hah hah!" As a fair conissuer of children's entertainment, I still can't think of anything else quite like it to come along either before or since. That good-hearted sense of mischief and fun.
In other news, class is going well. So far, at least. I've had my first runaround with the semi-pro digital camera - I still haven't figured out all the controls, but what the hey, first day - and spent the bulk of the afternoon dashing around Golden Gate Park on shutterbugging experiments. I'm already feeling a step forward from how I felt doing this stuff in art school the first time around.... and that euphoria will probably last until those young kids start blowing me away with all their youthful talent. Scream as loud as you can!!!
In a glass case, there was a display of Pee Wee's Playhouse action figures. Now, Toy Boat does indeed have the now-sadly-rare 12" doll (which I'd never coveted at the time, but sort of do now, if only for the irresistable thought that you know, that suit would probably fit my Angel and Spike dolls) and they also have a full-size Chairy for the 12" Pee Wee to sit in, something I hadn't even realized was made. That item I really covet. (More visions of dolls that really don't belong in Pee Wee's playhouse getting a well-deserved hug from Chairy.) But what really surprised me were the miniatures of the rest of the cast, and I realized with some shock how much Jambi, the fortune-telling head in the box, looks like Lorne, from AtS. Or vice versa, rather, since Pee Wee was long gone from the airwaves by the time Lorne ever showed up. And total coincidence, I'm sure, but that image really gave rise to this whole picture of Lorne in a turban, like Johnny Carson used to do. The Vegas act we didn't get to see. (And okay, now I've got Margaret Hamilton in her Wicked Witch makeup glaring at me, snarling. "what, all green people look alike to you?" Gah!)
Damn, I miss that show. Pee Wee's Playhouse, I mean. It had an energy that was so hard to describe. There was something so decadent in watching it as an adult, that feeling of willful reversion to childhood that made you want to wear flannel pajamas and eat sugar cereal; at the same time, there was a fun sense of transgression, of getting the joke that these are adults acting like kids. And encouraging kids to do things that would really annoy adults, such as the infamous word-of-the-day at which you "scream as loud as you can! Hah hah!" As a fair conissuer of children's entertainment, I still can't think of anything else quite like it to come along either before or since. That good-hearted sense of mischief and fun.
In other news, class is going well. So far, at least. I've had my first runaround with the semi-pro digital camera - I still haven't figured out all the controls, but what the hey, first day - and spent the bulk of the afternoon dashing around Golden Gate Park on shutterbugging experiments. I'm already feeling a step forward from how I felt doing this stuff in art school the first time around.... and that euphoria will probably last until those young kids start blowing me away with all their youthful talent. Scream as loud as you can!!!