This 1973 Public Information short two-minute film was sponsored by the Central Office of Information for the Home Office. This short was called “Lonely Water” (better known as “The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water). The short film warned children not to go near any dark water and water by themselves. The short film looks reminiscent of a horror movie, and Donald Plesance’s narration drives the horror vibes. Donald Pleasance had starred in such great horror movies as Halloween and Creepers.
This Public Information Film was probably one of the scarier ones. Various short films were also shown in British schools or on British TV. When demonstrated in schools, there was always a lecture and a question and answer portion from the police, who often went from school to school showing this and other similar shorts. I remember coming across this short when I went down a weird rabbit hole on YouTube and watched a bunch of weird commercials. This was one of the few commercials that stuck in my mind, and I could not forget it.
The short film was directed by Jeff Grant and written by Christine Hermon. The Central Office of Information wanted to show the public the high rate of child deaths in drownings and water-related accidents during that time. This short film showed everything they could to drive fear into children, not to go near that water, and to drive that point to the public. The film took about two days to shoot and was filmed near London near Heathrow Airport. The most prolonged duration was during the shoot, ensuring that the water was going in the correct direction to film.
Many other shorts were commissioned from the Royal Society of Prevention of Accidents that I might cover in future blog posts, but this is the more stand-out one. Which other ones do you want to cover in the future?
Comment below!!!
Source: YouTube, Internet Movie Database, and Wikipedia.
It’s no surprise that I read many books this past summer. Here are five of my favorite summer reads.
Good Morning, Monster by Catherine Gildiner. I listened to the audio version of the books while driving to and from work during the early summer months. Therapist Catherine Gildiner shares her thoughts and memories of some of her patients that stood out during her career. Some of the stuff she shared literally made my jaw drop! Try to find the audio version if possible. Her shared memories will definitely absorb your day!
Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier. 18 years old and pregnant and delivers pizza. She becomes fascinated with one of her customers, Jenny. And a weird relationship starts, and yes, a lot of pizza is discussed.
So I had this book FOREVER lying in my room and finally decided to read it a couple of months ago. I will never know why it took me so long to read it! However, Bette Davis wrote candidly about her career and life experiences during her later years. I had an ancient copy that made most of the pages loose when I finished it.
There was a Little Girl by Brooke Shields. I was really into memoirs during the summer, but this was my favorite one. Brooke Shields talks about her relationship with her mom, the ups and downs, and intermixes it with humor and sadness.
What the Dead Know by Barbara Butcher. Mrs. Butcher discusses very openly her struggles with alcoholism and how the twists and turns in her life led her to work as a death investigator in Manhattan. This was beyond exciting and totally worth a read!
If you haven’t seen it yet, that’s OK! It’s now available on Blu-ray through AGFA and Vinegar Syndrome!
Video Diary of a Lost Girl is a rock and horror fantasy where we meet the immortal Louise and her beloved Charlie. Unfortunately due to Louise’s supernatural origins, every man she sleeps with must die, so that she can survive. A heart-felt love letter to 80’s horror, punk, VHS, and German expressionism. PMS has never been this deadly!
My cinematic universe has been expanding into What’s Inside Pandora’s Talk Box? (dun dun). A TV series spin-off of Video Diary! In the attic of the family run video store Adult Sinema, Pandora’s newest bloody creation is a living TV made out of human flesh, with access to channels from other worlds! Channel surf every universe in this MST3K inspired monstrosity!
The kind people at Whammy! Analog in LA have been premiering the whole series inside their microcinema all summer! I will be in attendance for a Q&A on August 31st!
And NOW, my piece de resistance…
KILLER MAKEOVER (Coming 2025!)
Killer Makeover is about a beauty school dropout that gets cursed by a witch, so that anyone she puts makeup on…DIES! Our heroine starts working as a mortician to make ends meet, but finds out something sinister is going on at the funeral home… Set in the same cinematic neon universe as Video Diary of Lost Girl, Killer Makeover is a supernatural romantic comedy about following your dreams, even when they become nightmares!
(Karen (Sarah Fensom) witnessing the horror that her curse brings.)
The long awaited Killer Makeover will be beginning it’s festival run in 2025! How did Killer Makeover come to be you ask? Well, it’s a long, long story… so check out this EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW with two of the creators: Sarah Fensom and Chris Shields.
(Sarah Fensom and Chris Shields, writers and leads in Killer Makeover)
Heads up, this BIG in-depth interview is definitely meant for the hardcore fans 😉 Thank you so much to Lady Cult for letting me show-off what’s inside my Talk Box! Give me a follow on my YouTube and Instagram for updates! “
So, I have a list of topics I will eventually write about in my blog. This topic has been on my list since I made it. I am not really sure why it took close to nine years to write about it, but we are finally here writing about it.
Grave Robbing for Morons was made possibly in 1990 or earlier. The footage was on a VHS tape, and this short was extremely popular and passed around the VHS community. It was finally made part of a DVD called “Ensuring Your Place in Hell Volume One” which contained a total of four short films that included ” Grave Robbing for Morons,” “Mortuary of the Dead,” “Cooking with Huck Botko” and “Exploding Varmints.” Below is a Cinemas Underbelly discussing “Ensuring Your Place in Hell” in Volumes One and Two.
“Grave Robbing for Morons” is the first short film (which is about 26 minutes in total length) in volume one. It centers around a young man who goes to great lengths and describes how to rob graves. While he goes into detail, he carries a skull as a visual aid, has a bit of a stutter, and goes by the name Anthony and talks about the other people who help him rob graves.
There could be a possibility that the skull he is holding could have been a recently grave robbery that he committed, although who knows for sure. The mystery of this video is that throughout the entire history of this short film, it has been out on the internet and talked about for decades. No one knows who the people in the video are and what happened to them. But then were confident in continuing in robbing graves after the video was made.
Also, we do not know why this video was made, but there is so much speculation about this short film. Has anyone else seen this video? If so, what are your thoughts? Is it real or fake? Or weird?
This week’s contributor’s spotlight is from Marty Sokol (IG: @clubcobra )
“If you’re old enough, say, to scour the world for a cream – or anything to stop the neck creping, you might tie on a summer scarf and head out for a walk, but it won’t be long before shadowy spirits really come up on you – ghosts really, and if you don’t look for them, they will walk right through you in line to make a call on a public pay phone long gone.
Lines and Lines of people, all over Midtown and throughout The City, waiting to use the pay phone, itself, living on well past the time affordable cell phones had eclipsed their usefulness to the strains of Celine Dion ‘I Will Go On’ warbling down every Avenue, store front & passing car & indeed they did, nearly to the end of the Millennium.
Pay Phones, the way they smelled like flesh rot. The way we’d rub it across our shirt and think – ’It’s Fine’. …Keeping the folding door open with your back to breathe through the pee…
But it’s not the pay phone itself that’s missing, it’s The Lines. These Lines were miserable, maddening, anxiety induced suffering & they were everywhere, but by the close of the 90’s The Lines themselves were all but gone — absolutely no one noticed.
The absence of The Gay Piano Bar is much like that. It’s just Gone. The struggle of The American Gay Bar & Nightclub has been well documented. (Read ‘The Bars Are Ours’ by Lucas Hilderbrand & ‘Who Needs Gay Bars’ by Gregor Mattson)
— Only The American Gay Piano Bar had died in it’s sleep decades earlier, not many noticed, really everyone was fine…
…Turn another corner and it’s 1985 Back Bay, Boston, it’s dark, you’re a 17 year old Freshman walking narrow cobblestone streets – cowpaths you were told at orientation. The friends joining you – you will know forever, whether you see them or even speak to them.
(Napoleon Club Present Day (2018) Boston Herald)
You walk up to a large Colonial brick townhouse possibly standing since the Revolutionary War – a torch light by the door & a brass plaque ‘Napoleon Club’.
(Original Sign)
Enter a hallway — deep red flocked wallpaper — an actual marble bust of Napoleon on a pedestal, at the end of the hallway a bouffanted woman in the coat check charged you, although, I can not remember how much, or even ever having any money. She would never ask for an ID & you were in…
Over the years I have looked everywhere for photos or any information on Napoleons – I am shocked at how little exists online. — So here a quick tour!….
There are three main rooms downstairs with a piano & well dressed piano player seated at each one & bartenders formally suited in red vests. The rooms elegant & overstuffed… Cozy Ivy League Country Club vibe. A bar in the center room & the furthest, The Empire Room, an actual ballroom with a stage I can only remember being open once.
Men in sport coats with leather patches on the elbows – college professors, art collectors, Men of Industry, Men Of The Cloth even. These were cultured people. Drunk, singing, laughing, smoking, sometimes handsy, a little randy & always happy to buy a young man a drink.
If downstairs was Harvard House, upstairs was Fire Island — Josephine’s was a fully lit, low ceiling Disco, whose walls were inexplicably lined & lit with dozens of black light velvet clown portraits & a room filled with Gay Joy. Every night the DJ would close with ‘Old Cape Cod’, a 1950’s Patti Page regional radio hit & the men would slow dance together till the lights came up.
The nights spent at Napoleons were Grand in every way — it’s hard to separate fact from fiction. …The night we took mushrooms & went to The Ringing Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, ourselves spinning over the 3 Rings in the Nose Bleeds at The Garden & then running to Napoleons only to be greeted by a dozen Circus performers drinking & laughing at the bar — including famed Lion tamer Gunther Gebel-Williams in a fur coat!
I have confirmed this night actually happened – frankly even I sometimes have doubts & I was there(!) — so I corroborated the lore with my friend David who concurs it did actually maybe happen — but in all fairness, David, on another unrelated night at Napoleons, was, point in fact, accused by the bartender of stealing his rag — incredulous — outraged — I rushed to my friends defense — “Why would he do that?!” I demanded. Later, as we drunkenly walked home towards Beacon Street, David pulled the wet rag from his pocket, waved it in the air & literally rolled on the street laughing. I was gobsmacked.
Look, 1985 was a scary time to be Gay & frankly a scary time in general. Listen closely & you’ll hear the Ghosts of Men of a certain age singing & laughing at the piano. Most of them had left us by the time I left Boston in December ’88 & Napoleons, well it became condos.
Funny how those men – most likely years younger than me now, seemed so old & funny to us… out of touch — the irony, of course, after so many decades without older Gay Men on this planet, we finally filled that gap ourselves.
So step on a crack & spin in place — listen to the laughter swirling around us on empty street corners. Is the Circus in Town or is that David whirling a wet rag?… let me make a call.”
—————————————————————-
Marty Sokol is a writer/producer & entrepreneur who owns & operates nightclubs in Los Angeles for over two decades. SokolWorld01@gmail.com
Today is the last day of the B&N criterion collection sale. Here are my five recommendations if you still haven’t decided to get:
Risky Business, directed by Paul Brickman. Starring Tom Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay. Spine Number 1227.
Risky Business is one of my favorite Tom Cruise movies. In it, Cruise plays a high school student who seems bored with his everyday Suburban life. He meets Lana, who is involved in some interesting ordeals.
Sid and Nancy is directed by Alex Cox and starring Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb. This movie is based on the rocky relationship between Sid Vicious and his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen.
Claudine was directed by John Berry and starring James Earl Jones and Diahann Carroll. Claudine is a hard-working single mother with six kids in New York City and trying very hard to make life work. While trying to hold everything together, she meets a man in the least likely place.
The movie of the day is Tourist Trap, from 1979, directed by David Schmoeller and starring Chuck Jones, Jocelyn Jones, and Jon Van Ness.
Tourist Trap is about a bunch of kids driving in two separate cars in the middle of California when one of the cars starts experiencing car troubles. One of them decided to seek help and came across a gas station. However, he is met with bizarre supernatural forces when he enters the gas station.
This is one of my favorite summer movies. I tend to revisit it every now and again, thanks to the fantastic soundtrack by Pino Donaggio. The soundtrack does not take over the movie but mixes well with the eerie vibes that these groups are experiencing. Throughout the film, you explore why there are so many wax figures and literally no human beings in sight.
Some fun facts about the film:
The writers of the script wanted John Carpenter to direct the movie.
David Schmoeller changed some of the concepts of the script from the original script because he had some inspiration from watching the movies of Alejandro Jodorowsky and Luis Bunuel.
He also was inspired by watching the mannequins at JCPENNYs.
The entire movie took about 24 days to film, and a huge part of it was filmed in an abandoned house that was scheduled to be demolished.
The production designer of the movie was Robert A. Burns, who also worked on films such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and The Hill Have Eyes (1977)
Director and writer David Schmoeller convinced composer Pino Donaggio to work on the movie’s soundtrack because he happened to be in town working on another soundtrack, Piranha, directed by Joe Dante.
Linnea Quigley had an uncredited role as a mannequin in the movie.
Jon Van Ness did all of his own stunts in the movie.
Gig Young and Jack Palance were offered the role of Mr. Slausen.
This movie is available to watch on Tubi, Shudder, and Youtube.
Sources: YouTube, Wikipedia, and Internet Movie Database.
Lights, camera…mummy??! In December 1976, when filming an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man:
The crew was on set on a laff in the dark ride in California. The director on set told a crew member to move one of the dummies in the funhouse scene.
However, when the crew member went to move the dummy out of the scene. One of their body parts broke off while it was being pushed, and you could see human bones from the broken part. The dummy was an actual dead human being named Elmer McCurdy, who died almost 80 years old.
Elmer McCurdy was born on January 1, 1880, and died on October 7, 1911. He was part of a gang of outlaws who robbed. They finally got unlucky when they were planning to rob a train with loads of money but instead robbed the wrong train and got only 45 dollars, a watch, and some alcohol. A couple of days later, another group attacked McCurdy’s gang, and he died in a shootout with them.
McCurdy’s body was taken to an Oklahoma funeral home called Johnson Funeral Home located in Pawhuska. The funeral home embalmed his body, and he was left there for six months, waiting for someone to claim the body, and unfortunately, no one did. The mortician turned this into a money-making opportunity. He decided since Elmer was perfectly embalmed, he nicknamed Elmer the “Embalmed Bandit” and dressed him up in cowboy gear, put a gun in his hand, and charged a nickel for anyone who wanted to see Elmer.
In 1916, a group of carnival promoters passing by Pawhuska pretended to be relatives of Elmer. It took him to the Great Patterson Carnival Show as part of their human curiosities sideshow.
In 1922, the head of an entertainment company from California named Louis Sonney got Elmer only because the Great Patterson Carnival Show put up Elmer as a security deposit and could not pay back a $500 loan they took out. Louis Sonney, in turn, put Elmer as part of his traveling show and also in the Museum of Crime. Elmer was on tour up and down the West Coast of the United States until 1940. He was even part of a movie from 1933 called “Narcotic.”
However, when Louis Sonney died in 1949, the hype about Mummy Elmer died down, and he was stored in a Los Angeles warehouse for about 20 years. In 1968, Elmer was sold to the Hollywood Wax Museum and renamed the “1000-Year-Old Man.” However, the museum closed after only a year, and somehow, Elmer got grouped with the other Wax Museum dummies, all sold to the Nu-Point Amusement Park in Long Beach, California. The people who owned the part naturally assumed that Elmer was a Wax Figure, so he was painted in fluorescent colors and hung in the dark ride Laff in the Dark.
That is how, in December 1976, a crew member from the show The Six Million Dollar Man came to find Elmer. Elmer was then taken to the Los Angeles Corner’s Office, where he was researched and was found to have the bullet that ultimately killed him still in his chest and an embalming fluid that was commonly used in the early 1900s. Elmer even had carnival ticket stubs stuffed into his mouth. With additional aid from Oklahoma historians, the LA Corner matched the remains with Elmer McCurdy.
In February 1977, the City Council in Gurthie, Oklahoma, had a burial plot in Boot Hill, part of Summit View, where other outlaws had been buried, and offered Elmer a chance to be buried alongside them. Finally, after sixty years of Elmer’s illustrious after-life career, he was laid to rest.
Source: Youtube, Library of Congress blogs: Elmer McCurdy: traveling corpse.
(Pic1. “My little sister, Jaclyn, our Mom and Me.”)
“As a child in the 1980s, I loved growing up in Orange County. There was the sunshine and beaches, Disneyland, and my favorite Mall -The South Coast Plaza. Everything was new, the homes, schools, roller skating rinks, movie theaters, shopping centers, and the man-made lakes. It was where my Mom, a stylish, blond, valley girl, drove her daughters around in a burgundy Datsun 280zx blasting Madonna and Heart. When it was just the three of us, we were happy, and that’s how I liked it. Also, the 80’s just slayed. One cool 80’s thing my mom had was a glass brick. It had a hole at the top. She put transparent glass pebbles at the bottom and stuck pens inside. She displayed it on the kitchen counter next to our cordless landline phone.
At school, the cool things for kids to collect and display were pencils with toppers- a little toy or charm at the top of the pencil. Kids kept their pencil collections on top of their desks held inside a clear, plastic, rectangular container. Most of my classmates went to this stationary store called “LMNOP” to buy their pencils and containers. A talented woman with a steady hand customized your container by writing your name on it with paint pens and adding Sandylion or Mrs.Grossman stickers of your choice. I loved seeing my name written on my container adorned with a Palm Tree sticker. I loved my pencils. Each one was a personal, special treasure.
(Pic 2.“Some of my 80’s nostalgia collection surrounding an illustration of what our plastic pencil containers looked like. The font of the child’s name was written in a connecting dots font using two colors. The stickers were minimal to showcase the pencils inside. In writing this article, I discovered that these boxes still exist and are called “Amac plastic containers”. I will be ordering a few a.s.a.p.!”)
My favorite kinds of novelty pencils were by Russ. Russ pencils had a name or phrase engraved on them with a cute or interesting topper. My Mom would give me one on every occasion like. For Halloween, I got the pumpkin, ghost, and black cat. I had a purple “Good Luck Troll” and a Santa Claus Pencil. The “Ted D. Bear ” pencil had a brown, flocked bear wearing a red bowtie. He was exquisite. I also loved “Putt Putt Putt ”. It had a yellow, flocked car on top with plastic red wheels. My favorite pencil had an actual mini spinning pinwheel on top. My second favorite had a flexible pink hand on top. The fingers could bend to sign “Hang Loose ” and of course “Fuck You”. The Russ pencil designs were so clever, and I got so much joy staring at them because life had been hell. In 1988, my Mom, sister, and I had just moved to a hip apartment complex called Vista Del Lago. We had spent the year before living in a house with her long-term boyfriend, who I hated. In a word, he was “Putrid,” and that’s how I refer to him because if I actually said his name, it’s like what Stewie Griffin says “I would not stop throwing up!” For some reason, no matter what nasty, mean, or violent thing he did, my Mom would always take him back. Maybe she was attracted to him because he was the opposite of my Father, who was a Mensch and the perfect Dad. But even when I was 5, I knew Putird was no good and that we would never be safe or happy as long as he was in our lives.
Finally, when I was eleven, my Mom came to her senses and broke up with Putrid. He stayed in the house we had shared and the three of us ladies moved into Vista Del Lago. It was way better. One school night, my sister and I were excited because our favorite Aunt from L.A. was over to give us dinner and stay the night while our mom went on a date with her newest boyfriend. While my little sister watched TV and played, I had to convince myself to do my math homework. I always hated math, but I hated the feeling of showing up to school without my homework completed even more. I sat at the counter in one of the barstools and forced myself to get it done. When I finished, I placed the papers inside my Supershades folder with a graphic of a toucan wearing sunglasses in the corner. I zipped up the folder and my Math book inside of my acid-washed denim backpack, ready for the next day. Then I joined my sister and aunt to eat tortellini and watch TV until bedtime- feeling relieved and proud of myself.
In the morning, my Mother was back. I went downstairs to give her a hug. She had a stack of developed pictures to show us of where she had just been. It turns out her date had been a 24 hour trip to visit a 100-acre ranch in Texas. She smiled while she showed us pictures of the animals, goats, swans, and a llama, the two lakes, the wooden bridge, and an enormous white house which sat at the top of the property. Then she asked in her soft, calm voice, “Do you girls like this place?” My sister and I were like “Yeah, it looks nice.” “Well”, she continued, “that’s going to be your new home. And we’re going now. So go pack some things because a limousine is on its way to take us to the airport!” My sister and I were shocked and disturbed. We didn’t want to go to a ranch in Texas, even if it was in a limousine. And now? Why now? Our Mother’s behavior, the smile, the pictures were just a ploy to introduce her next bad idea revolving around a man. I felt betrayed. Our Mother had found a rich boyfriend who wasn’t Putrid. But rich or not, why did she think it was a good idea to impulsively rip me and my little sister away from everything we had known to be with him? I was angry, but I was a compliant child. I had learned that my opinion or feelings never mattered when it came to adults. They were going to do what they were going to do. My Mother would consider me ungrateful and ridiculous if I told her how I really felt. That this was wrong. That I had heroically forced myself to finish my math homework the night before, for what? What about turning in my homework? What about my school? What about my friends? What about my Dad, my Step-mom, and my baby brothers? What about our clean, fresh start at Vista Del Lago? On that random weekday morning in 1988, I left California without a word to my friends, school or Dad- with only a few belongings in a bag. My heart ached. And my precious pencil collection sat abandoned on my desk at school. When we made it to the ranch in Texas, we saw the land and the animals and picked out our bedrooms in the humongous house. Then our Mom and her boyfriend had us come into the office with a Marlin Hanging on the wall to call our Dad. They told us not to tell him where we were. Not just because it was against California Child Custody laws to take a child out of the state without permission but because this was all so wrong on so many levels, and they knew it. I spoke on the phone cautiously to my father, and I felt like a liar and an obedient child at the same time. But when my little sister got on the phone, she couldn’t help herself. She was brave and took the only chance she could to tell our Dad we had been taken away to Texas. She got on the phone and said, “Hi Daddy! We’re in Texas!” The events that followed after that phone call were filled with so much confusion, heartache, and trauma that my sister and I only need to refer to this time in our lives as “Texas.” In Texas, our Mom and her boyfriend constantly fought, partied, and left us for days on end with strange people who were not fit to look after children. And while I was there, I felt the child in me die. I couldn’t play pretend anymore. I didn’t remember how. I started having panic attacks on
the way to school, but I didn’t know what they were. I just knew I had to handle it. I started daydreaming. Maybe that was my new form of play, but it wasn’t for fun. It was for survival.
(Pic 3. “Me, age 11, dissociating on my Mom’s Texas boyfriend’s yacht in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico”.)
After a few months in Texas, we were taken back to our apartment in California, just as abruptly as we had left. It was scary to leave the small amount of stability I had known in Texas whether it was stable or not, but I was relieved to go home back to California. I returned to school the next day, to everyone’s surprise. My teacher had me come inside before the rest of the class to speak with me. She said “Lauren, unfortunately we didn’t know if you were coming back, so the class auctioned off all your pencils.” I just stared at her face processing the information. What was she saying? An auction? We never had an auction in class before. How did that even work? Like rabid scavengers they bid on my special pencils? I couldn’t find the words to express my feelings because I had never really done it. Inside my mind I was thinking very clearly, “Ok, so then I should be given my pencils back, right? Because I’m back. Give the kids back their money or whatever they used to bid on my stuff and return my pencils to me!” My teacher just gave me a dumb look like “Gosh yeah, they’re gone. So… sorry.” But they weren’t gone. They were at different desks in different pencil containers around the classroom. My heart was honestly broken. Those pencils were mine. They were one of the few things left that made me smile. Objects I loved had become my home, a focus. After all I had been through they represented the last of any happiness I had left inside me to feel. My teacher did not have the students give back my pencils and none of the students even offered them to me. There was just an awkward silence at my return. Things only got worse before they got better. After school I was disgusted and extremely disappointed to find my Mother and Putrid together in the car. I had thought we had gotten rid of him. They took me and my sister to Frozen Yogurt. As we sat there, I told my Mom about my pencils. “Oh well, honey. I’m sorry.” was all she said. And Putrid, who had no business being there anyway just stared at me, observing me with his smarmy self-satisfied smile. He never smiled out of joy or kindness, always when someone was feeling badly. I felt so alone. The injustice of everything was beyond my scope of rationalizing. I imagined an invisible grown up there in the yogurt shop with me. She knew this was totally fucked. She knew I was right about everything and everyone. That all of these adults who never had my best interests at heart were completely messed up. I wasn’t the ridiculous one. My feelings about wanting my pencils back were valid. Feeling livid and defeated at Putrid being back in our lives was valid. Feeling traumatized about having to leave my Daddy to go to Texas was valid. Feeling ostracized at school because I was now “the girl who disappeared and returned mysteriously” was valid. I was amazing and I didn’t deserve any of this. Over the next year, our Mother bounced back and forth between Putrid and her Texas boyfriend, dragging me and my little sister along. Every departure was abrupt, fueled by my Mother’s passionate love or anger towards her partner. She took us back and forth to Texas twice before she finally got rid of her Texas boyfriend. After that we moved to Los Angeles for my Middle School years. Then one night in L.A. he came back- Putrid. Our Mom told us she was taking us back to live with him in the same house we had escaped years before. I felt like I was slipping down a slide into a sea of lava. But this time, I couldn’t hold my emotions or words back. I was 13, but I screamed and sobbed like a 3-year-old. I begged, and pleaded. As I sat in my chair, my legs shook and bounced up and down, tears and mucus dripped down my face, and I did not care. I didn’t care that Putrid was observing me and smiling sickly. I didn’t care if I was going to be called ridiculous or if I was disobedient. I could not live with him again! And like all the times before and what I had already known was that crying, screaming, and begging did not change things. Grown-ups were going to do what they were going to do.
Finally, one day, I became a grown-up too. A grown-up who is so effing rad! My Mother and I have since made peace, and she’s grown a lot. She left Putrid years ago. I’m so grateful for the relationship we have. I’m also grateful for the grown-up I turned out to be. I got a Film degree from Calarts and I love to make movies with my Best Friend. But my day job, my career is being a Nanny. I get to be the person I always wished was there for me, like the invisible person I imagined supporting me in the yogurt shop when I was eleven.
(Pic 4. “Me as a rad, grown-up who understands kids. I am an Auntie or have been a Nanny to all of these children!”)
Last year, I was looking at vintage pencils on eBay. Surprisingly, I found my old favorites. Ted D. Bear, The Pinwheel, My Good Luck Troll, Putt Putt Putt and the rest. I hesitated about spending money on pencils, but then I spoke to my sister. She said, “Lauren, if it’s going to heal a part of you that you lost, Treat Yo’self!”
My sister gave me permission to buy my pencils back. So I did. When I finally had them all collected, I put them in a glass brick with transparent glass beads. My heart swelled. Unlike other nostalgia I’ve collected that simply made me happy to look at, these 1980’s Vintage Russ Pencils represented justice. Justice I never got. That I now have given to myself.”
This week’s post is by my friend @bigfunbeth, who is the co-owner of one of my favorite stores: @GreenwichLetterpress
“My So-Called Life, 30 Years”
“My So-Called Life debuted on April 25, 1994. It was the summer before I started high school and I was fourteen years old.
On that Thursday night in 1994, a small group of my friends convened at Jessica’s house. We all crammed onto her couch to watch the pilot debut. “An honest look at growing up in the 90’s said the ad that ran in TV Guide. Wait, we were growing up in the 90’s and who were all of these people that kind of look like people who could know? Plus, the show already had its own scandal- the main girl wants to stab her mother in the first episode, we heard? “Wait, is she really going to say that?”
After the pilot ended I remember immediately thinking, “I don’t know if I’m the same person I was an hour ago.” I looked around me. None of my other friends had liked the show very much.This felt like something that had separated me from them irreparably. We never got together to watch it again, and my hair was dyed orange by the end of 8th grade. I was Angela Chase, and at the time, it felt like I was the only one.
For the next handful of months, I was obsessed, and then, as suddenly as it had exploded into my life. It was over. There were rumors. Poor ratings. The lead actress wanted to pursue movies instead. I remember asking my mother about it like she wrote for Premiere magazine or something and had the inside scoop. There was no social media to turn to, there was no 24 hour news cycle. What had just happened to the thing that felt like my actual life just spread across nineteen episodes of TV? There was an online petition to bring it back, which at the time was groundbreaking. Then, just nothing…until MTV.
When MTV got the right to syndicate the show, I got to see my old friends again. They would cut the promos in fun and clever ways. There were all-day marathons, and one was hosted by Claire Danes and Jared Leto. I can remember the very 90’s dELIA’s looking shirt Claire wore. Her hair, OMG, it’s kind of strawberry blond now and shorter, and OMG, Jared’s hair is short now, too. I was so thirsty for content. I was starved for it, or whatever.
When the “Self-Esteem” episode come on it was like, everyone please stop talking and leave the room. He’s about to grab her hand in the hallway. For me, this was the epitome of love on screen, and I yearned for that love to happen to me in real life. As did every single person I have discussed that scene within the past thirty years. In fact, we all screwed up countless relationships holding out for that exact moment.
MTV gave the show a new audience and anyone who had missed out the first time had a chance to watch it. I remember meeting new kids in high school who now loved it and watching repeats with my sophomore-year boyfriend. There was a community growing around this show and it was like, cool. It was actually just cool. People were connecting with something that felt honest, inspired, and real. Only if it now only existed in reruns.
I recently showed the series to my husband for the first time, who was in his 20s, when it premiered. He was so taken with how dark the show was. Not the mood, he said, but the literal lack of actual light, which he thinks impacted how it was received for the first time around. I’m like, yeah, babe, that is the light that you bask in as a teenage girl filled with angst, lust, emotion, and uncertainty.
Since I own a shop, I have to comment on the merch. MSCL had virtually nothing to offer its obsessed fans. There was an early VHS set and soundtracks on cassette and CD. My sister and I of course had the soundtrack on both mediums and were horrified to discover that “Late At Night” by Buffalo Tom was missing. Nooooo. In 2002, there was a DVD set (no bonus content) and then a deluxe version that came in a lunchbox. By 2007 there was yet another DVD set, but this time there were extras. Finally, something else we could grab onto. Creator Winnie Holzman and Claire Danes sat down together and discussed what might have happened in season two. When I first watched this conversation, I felt like crying and then passing out. It was 1995 all over again. A love triangle between Angela, Jordon, and Brian!? Sharon pregnant?!? Graham leaves Patty?!? The agony was unbearable. It honestly still is.
All of these years later, despite just that single season of TV and lack of physical ephemera, this show doesn’t just quietly linger on (cue the Cranberries) – it has a foot firmly planted in the hearts of everyone who fell in love with it thirty years ago. In fact, it’s a barometer. I use for when I meet new people. The second someone can have the MSCL conversation, I think, “This is my person, and I am their person.” Countless times I’ve acknowledged with friends and fans about how this show made us realize we were transitioning into adulthood. How, with every rewatch, you start to connect more with Patty and Grahan and drift a little farther away from lockers and boiler rooms. When I was a teenager, I thought it was gross how much sex her parents had on the show, and now I think it’s hysterical. What 40 years with kids and careers has the energy for that much sex? Plus, now, I am four years older than Patty Chase was on the show, Hold on, I’m calling my therapist…
“Patty, we’re forty!”- Camille Cherski
As for someone who lives and breathes nostalgia and often wonders if it’s a mistake, I never feel like rewatching MSCL is a waste of my time. The things that made me laugh or cry all those years ago still do, and I feel like I learn something new about human nature every time I revisit. There is so much that has already been said about this show and, what its place was in the 90’s and how it might resonate to young people today. This is not that. This is just my little ode to a time and place that was for me, My absolute So Called Life.
Stray Thoughts
Was the Chase’s cat name Lady Di?
Tino is the JAWS of the 90’s, much more powerful to never see him
Shit ok, Brian IS cute!
It’s insane that Graham tells Neal about his affair in the kitchen while Patty is within earshot.
Andy Cherski is probably a babe.
I love that Graham is shocked Patty can make curtains and she’s shocked he can hang wallpaper.
“Brain Krahow?” “I like Buffalo Tom, I do!” “Stephan Dieter guy. Still funny.
I want to be friends with Vic Racine and Mr. Katimski and share coffee with them in the teacher’s break room. I also desperately want to be invited into a teacher’s break room, anywhere.
Weekend, Life of Brian, The Substitute and Self Esteem are my favorite episodes.
If you can find a friend to tell off Jordan like Rayanne does, you’ve arrived.
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