Sabrina Parke: Who Should I Make This Out To?

I have paid a $20 admission fee and I already feel slightly ill. There are too many people. Too many things happening at once. I feel out of place and yet this is preferable to feeling that I belong here. Richard Roundtree walks past me on his way to lunch. I feel slightly better, but still on edge. I should be better at this - this is probably my 30th visit to the Hollywood Collectors’ Show.

For those of you unaware of this bi-annual Los Angeles tradition, the Hollywood Collectors’ Show is basically Comic Con for the baby boomer set. If you’ve ever wanted to meet Lassie’s Timmy, I Dream of Jeannie’s Major Healy or Dick Van Patten – you have a reasonably good chance of finding them here. In a large room, rows upon rows of tables are set up. Half of them are occupied by the stars of movies and TV shows that have come to rest at Turner Classic Movies and TV Land. The rest of the tables belong to dealers – middle-aged men and women schilling everything from Super IV: The Quest for Peace half-sheets to unopened packs of Harry and the Hendersons trading cards.

My connection with this show began before I ever attended it. In a shrewd move to give me the same childhood that they had, my parents raised me on a steady diet of retro VHS tapes. Instead of Captain Planet, they put on The Howdy Doody Show every Saturday morning. Instead of watching Saved by the Bell, I watched The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Topper, and Family Affair. As a result, I still have trouble relating to children of my generation. But, by God I knew who Jean Stapleton was when I met her.

My reward for allowing my parents to raise me in the nineteen-fifties was my collection of eight by tens, chosen by and made out to me. With a few rare exceptions, I was always the youngest one at the Collectors’ Show by at least a few decades. Because I was so young, polite, and still had several years before my ugly stage kicked in, the celebrities doted on me. I was so cute! Did I really know who they were? I’d seen all thirteen chapters of the 1941 Captain Marvel serial! Thank goodness someone’s parents are showing them the good stuff.

Although my parents paid for these autographs, often the stars gave them to me for free. They were thanking me – a representative of the future – for the promise that they would live on. While I did my best to live up to this promise, I often only half-knew who they were to begin with.

In hindsight, I believe that my awareness of the show directly corresponded with my cuteness level. As my looks and personality descended into the dregs of pubescence, I was no longer an adorable anomaly. As the focus shifted off of me, my focus shifted to my surroundings.

The people who looked through old piles of Mexican lobby cards next to me suddenly seemed strange. They were adults, yes, but somehow they were different. They breathed heavily through their mouths and when they spoke, it was always one pitch louder than necessary. They talked to dealers for long extents not about what was being sold, but about their own collections at home. Sometimes the dealers appeared interested, but often they seemed bored – eager, in fact, to end these conversations. Oddly, the collectors never seemed to notice.

My fascination with these people grew as I began to watch them interact with the celebrities. Some stayed too long – holding up lines. They yammered on incessantly about their favorite episodes of whatever TV show the actor or actress was associated with. By the age of ten, I could clearly sense Dawn Wells’ boredom and growing annoyance at an unprovoked, five-minute lecture on the superiority of watching Gilligan’s Island on LaserDisc. How could a man four times my age not pick up on this?

With age comes the realization of age. At sixteen, I decided to skip buying Buddy Hackett’s autograph in order to pay for the latest Good Charlotte CD. A month later Buddy Hackett died. I had missed the opportunity to meet a legendary comic, one who had appeared in everything from It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World to my childhood favorite The Little Mermaid, in order to buy the music of a lame rock band from Maryland. The lesson was clear – celebrities are mortal. I must collect the signatures of the elderly and of those with continuing substance abuse problems before they die.

From that realization onward, I began to feel less like a fan and more like a harbinger of death. Deciding which former Oompa Loompa seems more prone to pneumonia before plopping down $25 really takes the fun out of things.

Although I have always disliked being in large crowds, in recent years I have nearly panicked while trying to negotiate my way through the sea of mouth-breathers. The trek is made that much more arduous when combined with my attempts to look at celebrities without making eye-contact. While seeing one of your favorite childhood stars surrounded by adoring fans is a heart-warming sight, watching a former celebrity pass the time at a vacant table covered in stills from their glamour days is just the opposite. They look like shelter puppies who you know aren’t going to good homes.

In what must be a side-effect of my parents’ original plot, almost all of my clothes are vintage or look like they could be. I take special care to wear these pieces to the show, as if to tell the celebrities – I may look young, but I know who you are where you’re coming from. Perhaps I’m giving to much credit to my felt hat.

As I age, the antics of socially awkward collectors no longer amuse me – they make me uncomfortable. When my interest shifted from autograph hunting to poster collecting, I initially found it necessary to create a feeling of distance – otherness – from these people. After several excruciating minutes of listening to a middle-aged man in an ironic Krull t-shirt intricately describe his unrolled poster collection, it will become painfully clear that not only is he not going to buy anything, but that there is no end in sight to this conversation. I’ll often flag over the beset dealer and ask him the prices of certain lobby cards until the clueless collector leaves. Then, with a sly grin I’ll say, “You’re a saint for listening to him for as long as you did.” Often, the dealer will just shrug. It comes with the territory. I’ve since stopped my practice of ‘rescuing people.’

With the final shreds of childhood long behind me, the process of meeting the celebrities is now daunting. Waiting in a long line means that I’ll only have a moment with them, before their handler brushes me aside for the next paying customer. Getting the autograph of a celebrity who has no line means the possibility of being trapped in an awkward, endless conversation. But, regardless of who I’m meeting my prerogative is always the same – show that I’m an intelligent fan, not a collector. Since I tend to clam up, I often prepare a few things to say. And, just as often, I still end up tripping over my words, just barely getting out “I’m such a fan…”, or smiling like an idiot until their friend/manager waves on the next person.

Of course, the stars are polite. Many were groomed by the big studios of yesteryear, and their training still shows. Smile. Shake hands if it can’t be avoided. What’s your name? Why, that’s a lovely name. Oh, this is one of my favorite stills. Should I make it out to you? Oh yes, he was an absolute darling to work with.

Even if a celebrity meeting goes successfully, I have to ask - Did I meet them?

I want to say that I am different. That I did not pay $20 to enter a building, to wait in a line, to pay $30 to have someone I’ve admired for years sign a poster I bought two weeks ago in preparation for this moment. But, I have collections of autographs, posters, metal lunch boxes, and it is slowly dawning on me that my collection of vintage apparel is the female equivalent of an ironic t-shirt.

Sabrina Parke - Crisp

Seeing all of the people that I missed over summer was never my favorite part of going back to school. I had play dates with all of the girls that I liked from June through August. I could take or leave the September through May set. To me, the best part about going back was shopping for school supplies.

I was absolutely in love with the crisp feeling that only a trip to Staples can provide. Since I went to school with the same 55 kids from kindergarten through eighth grade, school supplies were the only fresh start that I got each year. Crayons or colored pencils? Regular pencils or mechanical? Trying to predict what would be ‘in’ that year was a challenge I relished. My biggest personal dilemma was always what folders to get. They had bright, colorful pictures and set the tone for the entire year. I needed six – one for each subject – and since I was obsessive compulsive, they had to match. Was this the year to show my affinity for the Coca Cola polar bears? Was Garfield too third grade? Usually, I kept my head down and played it safe – puppies in baskets.

As I continued through school, the crisp feeling became less intense. In high school, they stopped providing books and my parents realized the importance of buying used. The crisp feeling began to fade. In college, after the initial thrill of buying new furnishings for my dorm, each semester became a test on how far I could stretch my shoddy resources. That crisp feeling was all but a memory – until my last semester of college, when one of the 55 returned, and everything was new once again.

Wherever I went, I saw everything as if for the first time. Large shrubs. Dimly lit sections of the parking lot. Enclosed staircases. All these things that had been there for years, probably decades, had fallen below my radar. Now, there were new realizations, new discoveries to be made. Classes were missed. Meetings were skipped. The possibility of unearthing a surprise was too much.

As a child, I remember time spent gazing at myself in the full-length mirror at the end of the hallway. Before going back to school, I always hoped to see changes from the previous year. A fully formed mouth of grown-up teeth. Breasts large enough to justify a training bra. Now, my body was covered in temporary/permanent changes. So, the pair of sweatpants that I was forced to buy for a high school P.E. class were fished out from the bottom of a drawer. A college sweatshirt hid the rest of my frame. Bangs weren’t cut and soon I was barely visible. At least, I hoped I was.

I was never hungry. My jaw still hurt like hell when I ate. But, I forced myself to eat. Since I was never hungry, I was never full. I had no gauge of when to stop. If I gained weight, maybe people would assume that was the reason for the sweat pants. If I gained weight, maybe men would leave me alone.

For the first time, I looked on the men in my life with suspicion. Hours were spent deliberating who could be trusted. I could not afford to be wrong. Although few ties were permanently severed, I forced myself to create distance with any possible threats. I clung closer to the men I believed could protect me – although I would never ask them to.

I have never been a feminist. I belong to no ethnicity and am merely a bland blend of Europe. Generic jokes hardly ever apply to me, and even more seldom do they offend me. But, there was that crispness again. Now I, or at least the category of person that I now fell into, was constantly the target of jokes and thoughtless comments. They were said on TV and by friends. But, it wasn’t fair to withhold what had happened from my friends then condemn them for acting as they normally would around me. So, I laughed – laughed and hoped that no one looked too close.

Despite the fact that I’ve grown up in a city with one of the worst police forces in the country, I had always been a fan of cops. Even during my teenage years when it’s basically a requirement to have a deep-seated problem with authority – I didn’t. I really thought that if I was good, they’d be there if I ever needed them. Now, I finally get it. Rodney King. The Rampart Scandal. Hell – the Bloody Christmas of 1951. The LAPD are the worst of the worst, and their detectives are the bottom of the barrel.

My life was and continues to be run on a need-to-know basis. If a friend catches me sobbing, I’ll give them the Reader’s Digest version. If an acquaintance catches me, I’ll say my cat died. Technically, I’m not lying, but I leave out the fact that Roy died in 1997. This essay marks the end of my need-to-know policy. If you’re a friend of mine who’s hearing about this for the first time, I’ve probably tried to tell you several times – I’m sorry I didn’t.

After a year of horrible crispness, it was over. While I have not become fearless, I am just no longer struck by the newness of small dangers I confront everyday. My sweatpants have found a new purpose – I’ve joined a gym. I’m doing my best to build up my upper body strength. Thoughtless comments have stopped hurting. Sometimes I make them.

The drawback to all of this is the realization that I will never feel crisp again. There will never be a newness to any aspect of my life. I was already too old for my age – now I feel ancient. I’m too weighed down by my past to experience a fresh present. When my boyfriend and I started dating, the excitement that comes with new love quickly vanished. I knew that soon I would have to tell him about my past, so that my erratic behavior would have context. While we love each other, I wish that we had been allowed to experience the joy that comes with a fresh relationship. But, considering the realities faced by many women who fall into the same category as I – I consider myself lucky.

Oh.

If you are reading this – no, not you the reader – you, don’t worry. I won’t say your name. I won’t say your address. I won’t say where you went to school, what type of car you drive, or what profession you plan to go into. As of this moment, you are a nonentity to me. You are not worth the time or energy it would take to destroy you - to do to your life what you attempted to do to mine. You have no reason to be nervous. You said it yourself – it was consensual. Maybe it was even great. I just wish I had been conscious for it.

Sabrina Parke: Cheer Up, Charlie

Whether you’re a fan of musicals or merely homosexual, you know when it’s coming. Your palms start to sweat. If you’re listening to a soundtrack, you leap across the room, forgetting your own safety. As a familiar strain begins to invade your eardrums you hit the ‘skip’ button. Silence. You’re safe. But, you are one of the lucky few. Anyone watching that musical has no such reprieve. They are about to take in the Whiny Female Song.

The Whiny Female Song is the extraneous part of a musical where a woman – usually a secondary character – sits and bitches. While the topics that these sirens bemoan in song-form differ from film to film, universally these problems are insignificant. Has her man left her? Is she about to give in to the advances of the antagonist? These are not the topics sung about in a WFS. Unfavorable weather, home shoe repair, and running out of starch before you finish the laundry – these topics are pay dirt for such lyricists and broads. Despite the fact that these laments are shoehorned into otherwise witty and insightful soundtracks, they share none of the humor or joy of their siblings. To make matters worse, nearly all of these sequences happen while something much more exciting and important is taking place. Perhaps it’s because these whiny females don’t get much screen time that they malevolently choose the worst possible times to air their grievances. You’ll hardly ever spot a gal singing about a ring around the bathtub after an act break. She’ll wait until her beloved is evading Nazi fire to unleash this ditty. Although the Whiny Female Song is a staple of bad musicals, a few have managed to worm there way into some of cinema’s most beloved classics.

While Mary Poppins’ ballad on the importance of feeding pigeons makes me antsy and the ragdoll’s lament during the frenzied third act of The Nightmare Before Christmas seems like borderline child-abuse, the worst WFS offender is Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory – the Gene Wilder classic, not the Burton abomination. While some people find other faults with Willy Wonka, namely the boat ride/acid trip, I think these scenes add to the film while at the same time saying, “Hey! This was made in the ‘70s!” The WFS, on the other hand, adds nothing.

By the time you see Charlie Bucket heading down a dark alley towards his mother’s boiling water emporium, you know you’re in trouble. You’ve already seen the hovel he lives in, his awful school, the search for the golden tickets, Violet, Veruca, and Slugworth. You aren’t ready to get to the chocolate factory – you’re frantic. If you’ve never seen the movie before, I imagine your ADD-ed addled mind is on the verge of an existential crisis. Repeat watchers know there’s still more than twenty minutes before they get to the factory. This is not the time for Charlie to pay a visit to his haggard-looking mother. Now, I’m sure that actress Diana Sowle is a lovely human being, but I’m just as sure that there’s a reason that she didn’t work again for 23 years – and that reason is “Cheer Up, Charlie.”

As her malnourished child begins to walk down a poorly-lit alleyway in the middle of the night, Mrs. Bucket does what any mother would do. She breaks into song. “You get blue like everyone, but me and Grandpa Joe can make your troubles go away, flow away. There they go… Cheer up Charlie...” Never has a song about juvenile depression been so tedious. What’s more, it’s pointless. She’s not singing it to Charlie – he’s already hightailing it back to their shack. She’s giving a musical pep talk to thin air. Perhaps, if she actually told her son all the reasons he should cheer up, he might. However, the vague lyrics would probably lead Charlie to realize that there really isn’t any reason for him to look on the bright side of life. “When the days get heavy never pit-a-pat 'em, up and at 'em boy.” What the hell does that mean? I’ve been trying to figure it out for twenty years and am still baffled. But, I am positive that it’s nothing to cheer up over – especially when you’re a gaunt 10 year-old whose four grandparents can only afford one bed between them.

While the rest of the film is filled with colorful candy and Oompa Loompas, this sequence consists of two long tracking shots capturing Charlie walking down alleys interspersed with medium shots of the scrub woman in a stained, ill-fitting dress. Without a doubt, this is actor Peter Ostrum at his most awkward. You can tell the director simply said, “Look sad and walk really slowly” before each take. Charlie looks like a zombie, methodically trudging down alleyways as he tries to hit the middle ground between sad, but not crying and not looking constipated. In all, the sequence only lasts two and a half minutes. But, it seems like an eternity – or perhaps limbo is more fitting – a horrifyingly bland middle ground somewhere between Charlie’s hellish hovel and the heaven that is the Wonka factory.

Sabrina Parke: CoBi and Friends

CoBi and Friends



Like most people, I assume that you’ve always wondered what would happen if Kang, Kodos, and the T-2000 made babies together. Oh, you haven’t? Well, the question must have been plaguing the British collective conscious for some time, because it’s the only explanation for London’s 2012 Olympic mascots.

Wenlock and Mandeville are two liquid-metal, cyclopses – I believe this is the plural of cyclops; information on this subject is sparse since they are usually loners. The hermaphrodite monsters, each with his/her own mysterious markings, will adorn everything from baseball caps to QVC decorative plates, as the ring in the 2012 games.

According to the official Wenlock and Mandeville website, the three points on top of Mandeville’s head represent the winners’ podium. The lights above their (respective) eyes represent London taxis. Mandeville’s wristwatch embodies personal excellence. The list goes on, but I, along with most people, do not care. If you need to explain what should be a generic symbol, the creator has missed the point. While Wenlock and Mandeville are clearly the most horrifying mascots in Olympic history, we should have seen this coming.

The tradition of Olympic mascots dates back to the 1968 Grenoble games. (Yes, unfortunately there’s no cute cartoon to symbolize the 1936 Oympiad. However, I assume it would have been a sterner version of 1984’s eagle). France’s ‘Schuss,’ who was basically the red 7-UP ball on skis, was just the beginning of what would become a (sometimes) proud Olympic tradition.

For the 20 years that followed Schuss’ reign, Olympic mascots continued to be slightly altered versions of cereal spokesmen. Tony the Tiger became South Korea’s Hodori. Sugar Bear became the adorable symbol of Soviet rule in 1980. The characters’ designs neatly lent themselves to stuffed animals and commemorative cups. Olympic mascots were in a golden age, but it wouldn’t last.

From January until May, 1992 had all the markings of a banner year. Rick Moranis was blowing up children, to the delight of audiences across the country. Paul Heinreid had done us all a favor by finally dying. Life was good. Then came Spain. Until this point, nearly all Olympic mascots had been chosen through nationwide art contests, where young citizens competed to color within the lines. The youth vote was most apparent the year of Canada’s beaver mascot. But, despite these past successes with child labor, Spain bucked tradition and limited the competition to a handful of the country’s best known artists. Eventually, they settled on Javier Mariscal. Spanish authorities did have a point. Why rely on children’s drawings when you can turn to a cubist most known for crafting urinals that look like lips?

Mariscal gave the world CoBi the Catalan sheepdog. First of all, if you’ve ever seen The Shaggy Dog, Annie, or watched a mopey Sarah McLachlan commercial, you know that CoBi does not look like a sheepdog – if anything, he looks like a flattened Chihuahua drawn by Klasky Csupo. Half the time, CoBi was naked, leaving his Olympic chest tattoo for all the world to admire. The rest of the time, the one-dimensional quadruped wore a business suit with white sneakers. White sneakers. The fact that the ‘B’ in CoBi was capitalized for no other reason than to be quirky is more than enough reason to not only hate Spain’s Olympic committee, but to despise the entire country. While I’ll admit that my reaction to CoBi is a tad on the strong side, he and he alone paved the way for the Island of Misfit Mascots that would follow.

From 1992 onward, Olympic mascots were increasingly designed by ‘experts’ and grew increasingly bizarre. There was the Whatizit/Izzy/Sperm Wearing High Tops debacle of 1996, Owls drawn by mental patients in 1998, and the Greek monsters of 2004. Although Sydney’s kookaburra, platypus, and echidna were a brief return to sanity, it didn’t last. Which brings us to today. Which brings us to Wenlock and Mandeville. Given the elaborate backstories that were given to these amorphous metal alloys, it’s clear that these hideously deformed monsters took far longer to design than any cute, likeable mascot would have. All we wanted was a fox in a riding jacket. Was that too much to ask for, London?