This is another photograph from my aunt’s artsy black and white period, although obviously a little earlier than the Mickey Mouse Ears photo.

This is me with my rocking horse, which, incidentally, my artsy photographer aunt made. I love my artsy aunt. And I loved this little horsie. Loved him so much that one of my earliest memories is of me dragging him across the hall from my room into my parents’ room and locking the door when I left. I wanted him to be safe. Safe from what, I’m not sure. Probably safe from my dad’s irritation when he realized that I had locked their door to protect a wooden pony. Thank goodness for skeleton keys, eh?

My little rocking horse still exists. He made a circuitous path through our family after I outgrew him, spending some time with one of my cousins before finally making his way back to his maker. He now resides in my aunt’s attic. His rockers are a little worse for the wear, having been chewed by the various dogs that have completed our packs over the years. I sometimes have a thought that I’d like to have his head mounted and hung on my wall. Then I realize how creepy and Godfather-esque that sounds. So I’ll be content with this photograph and my silly memories.

However, every now and then, I did have moments of silliness. Like this one. Listed under the title, “whimsical vacation edition,” this was a random little poem I wrote after photographing the praying mantis that hung out around my apartment every spring. I thought having a praying mantis outside my door was awesome. Jodie, however, had different thoughts on the matter, which hopefully I have properly expressed at the end of this poem

praying mantis!
offering psalms with alien palms,
your silhouette evangelical.

preying mantis!
watchful eye as I stride by,
your posture puritanical.

playing mantis!
limbs so strange, colors that change,
your image so fantastical.

my dog would love to eat you.

I’m a sucker for a sucker. Well, I used to be. I used to be quite the sugar hound back in the day, actually. Again, there should be no surprise that there was quite a bit more of me back in the day as well.

Eating healthy and exercising, FTW.

Of course, I still do get cravings. This Sunday, for example, I’ll more than likely be indulging this secret love, which I hid from you all last year for utterly selfish reasons. Consider this my recompense. Just don’t forget. I’m not reminding you again.

So back to my sucker fetish. I like candy that’s going to stick around with you, give you the most bang for your buck. Push Pops definitely qualify in this regard. Unlike regular lollipops or Tootsie Pops, Push Pops aren’t just a tiny disc or orb of lickable candy. Oh no. These are solid sticks of candy pleasure, complete with plastic case and top for a lovely easy-to-retract storage option.

Of course, this isn’t completely true. Anyone who’s eaten a Push Pop knows that two things inevitably can happen with these funsticks that never happen with a regular lolly on a stick. One: You run the risk of having saliva drip down the Push Pop and pool briefly inside the plastic container before finally rushing down the finger inside the Push Pop and down your arm in a sugary deluge. I had this happen more often than I preferred when I was a wee wolf. I can assure you, it’s quite disgusting.

The second thing? Let’s say you decide you don’t want to finish your Push Pop, so you push it back inside its case and snap on the lid. You let it sit for a little while—let’s say a few hours—before returning to finish it. Go ahead. Try to get that sucker back out of the case. All that sticky, licked lollipop gunk has now become fused with the plastic and you run the risk of breaking the tip of your finger before you can push that Push Pop back out.

Sticky, licky goo sticks like glue. Tastes de-lovely though.

Of course, all this means one thing: You simply cannot stop until you’ve finished your Push Pop (and you might need a bib, at least for your arm).

I haven’t had a Push Pop since I ran the candy concessions when I was a Senior in high school (stop trying to figure out how long ago that was!). I highly doubt that’s going to change any time soon. Too much sugar makes my teeth ache now. Besides, at my age, blue teeth and lips are more likely to make people think I’ve gone cyanotic rather than indulged in a candy fetish…

[Loba Note: I don't know why, but I can't find a version of this commercial in English. That's okay, though. I'm sure you'll still get the message: "Don't push me! Push a Push Pop!"]

Anyway. So back in the late 90s, when I was both deeply entrenched in the nerdy wonder of The X-Files as well as falling further and further down that rabbit hole of the spurious, subversive downloading culture (yes, I was a very naughty wolf in those glorious underground geek days of late-night raiding of FTP sites with a 56K modem and a 6-pack of Mountain Dew), I came across a track on someone’s site, labeled “Gillian Anderson Quattro Extreme.”

Exsqueeze me? Baking powder? Gillian Anderson, as in Dana Scully on a music track? Yes, please!

And so I downloaded the track. And fell in love. I would later learn that the version of this song that I first downloaded was slightly mislabeled and was, in fact, the Qattara remix of “Extremis,” a song by HaL that originally featured Ms. Anderson way more than the remix does. I love the remix a lot more than the original because it has that driving electronica beat that I love…the beat that has gotten me pulled over on more than one occasion for encouraging my lead foot to drop more precipitously than usual.

However, the link below is to the video for the original song. I had never seen the video until a few months ago. I don’t think it ever played on any mainstream video channels here in the States. Once you watch it, you’ll understand why. Agent Scully apparently had dreams of being a naughty wolf, too.

I’ve read a lot of criticisms of Anderson for this song as well as for the collection on which it was originally featured, Future: A Journey Through the Electronic Underground. This 2-disc set was compiled by Anderson to feature music and musicians that she was very much into at that point in her life. Agent Scully was into electronica? Who knew, right?

I think some of the criticisms are unfounded. I do believe that the original version of “Extremis” is one of the weaker offerings from this compilation, but still has its merits. Plus, I really dig Anderson’s exquisite speaking voice. I also think that her selections are holistically strong and representative of what was a great cross-section of the electronica scene at that point in time: Fluke, Massive Attack, The Future Sound of London, The Chemical Brothers, Brian Eno, William Orbit (who would help reignite Madonna’s career on Ray of Light, which I still think is going to be her pinnacle). These are names that I would encounter many more times as I made my way through similar compilations and soundtracks, but I heard them all first thanks to Agent Scully and her crazy underground sound.

Of course, take what I say about music with a grain of salt. I once bought a Marilyn Manson CD and Debbie Gibson’s greatest hits at the same time.

So, hope you enjoy. If you don’t like the music, I at least hope you enjoy this wonderfully bizarre video. If anything, you can see how many times you can catch sight of Anderson’s beauty mark to the left and slightly below her nose. Chris Carter always insisted that it be covered by make-up when she was in character. Apparently, FBI agents aren’t supposed to have beauty marks. Again, who knew?

Okay, maybe not so much on that last one.

The host of these PSAs was Timer, some kind of jaundice-y looking globule who liked to sing and dance while wearing silly accessories (but no clothes).

I loved “Time for Timer” breaks. They were funny, short, and always had a catchy tune. But my favorite was the “Hanker for a Hunk o’ Cheese” song. I don’t really know why, but sometimes I’ll still catch myself humming this strange, silly tune. Thankfully, no one has caught me doing this. Yet.

So big and thick, no room for a stick.

Oh, those were far more innocent times when we could sing that tune and not feel like we were offering ourselves up to some horrible fate just for the crunchy-coated goodness of a Klondike Bar.

Actually, who am I kidding? I always giggled at the Klondike Bar theme, my filthy little mind titillated beyond comprehension by the subliminal meanings behind it all.

Heh. Titillated.

See? Filthy, filthy Loba.

Honestly, though, there was a time when I would have done quite a bit for one of these tasty treats (nothing too filthy, please; I was just a kid when these commercials first aired!). Not so much anymore. Ice cream just doesn’t excite me the way it did when I was a wee pup. Now if Klondike were to come out with a rum-based concoction guaranteed to knock me off-kilter, then we might have a different story to tell right now.

For now, though, here’s a Klondike Bar commercial perfectly suited to my literary tastes…and strangely and sadly relevant in light of Gary Coleman’s recent passing. It’s quite a bizarre commercial, actually.

Oh, and don’t worry…I don’t expect any of you to tell me what you’d do for a Klondike Bar. I already suspect I know what some of you would do…naughty little denizens…

To be honest, I’ve been off my game for so long regarding the lair that I wasn’t even sure if I was going to do a Flashback Friday this week. Then the unfortunate news from yesterday regarding Rue McClanahan’s passing provided me with the prompting I needed.

I adored The Golden Girls. No, correction. I adore The Golden Girls. I’ve said it many times before, but it bears repeating: This is one of a select few sitcoms from my childhood that I can still watch without wanting to wretch from the cheese overload. True, it’s got ample slices of cheddar and Swiss spread throughout its seven seasons, but there’s something more that makes it palatable. This show, with all its overtly 80s style and fashion, is timeless in wit, in topic, in humor.

And how the stars aligned so perfectly the day they were casting these roles that we were gifted such an amazing ensemble! Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty, Rue McClanahan, and Betty White made Dorothy, Sophia, Blanche, and Rose not just hilarious but real. You believed that this quartet could actually exist, that they were going through the same things that the rest of us were going through or were destined to go through at some point. They were just doing it with way more humor than the rest of us (and way larger shoulder pads, too).

This show was also a standing weekly ritual in our house. No matter what else was going on, every Saturday night my parents and I came together to watch the latest episode. And we always laughed (sometimes I would even get caught laughing at jokes that my parents thought would be too “grown-up” for me to understand; awkward way for my parents to keep track of how quickly their little girl was growing up, fo’ sho’).

Dorothy was my favorite. But that’s almost like saying air is my favorite of the things I need to survive. I loved them all almost equally. It’s just, I think I’m a little more like Dorothy than any of the others (Prophets know I’m nothing like Blanche). Although I have my fair share of Rose moments.

It’s strange and most definitely depressing to think that a show like this would probably never be able to exist in today’s television market. We’ve become a society that not only doesn’t respect age, but shuns it and any who dare to show its signs. How else can we explain why people willingly get a paralyzing toxin injected into their faces? Where would the Golden Girls, with their love of cheesecake and their discussions about menopause, fit in among the anorexic plasticized perfection of those Desperate Housewives or the McDreamies and McSteamies and McBoobies of modern prime-time television?

There is a shimmer of hope. Betty White, now the Last Girl Standing, has been enjoying a resurgence in popularity recently, with several appearances in movies, that wonderful Snickers commercial, and even the honor of becoming the oldest SNL host in the show’s 35-year history. She continues to prove that humor and grace are supremely more beautiful than cheek implants, tummy tucks, fake tits, butt lifts, or whatever else the Hollywood elite are doing to keep people from noticing that their talent, just like their beauty, is skin-deep and thoroughly unconvincing when examined closely.

So, there you go. Flashback to a favorite sitcom from my youth and another glimpse at the vitriol that roils just beneath the placid surface of Lake Loba. Bonus! Want another bonus? How about a few show clips and bloopers? Not only are they funny but they show a quartet of women who were able to laugh at themselves and each other and who genuinely seemed to like each other’s company. That’s not just golden…that’s priceless.

Nothing too profound for this week’s Flashback, but I thought it might be bad form to miss another Friday without dropping something on you (sorry about last week…stupid work, keeping me from blogging!).

Whilst poking around on YouTube a while ago, I discovered that someone has been posting episodes from one of my earliest sci-fi obsessions. Yes, Loba is dipping all the way back into the year I was 9 for this one (although I thought I was younger than this…oh well), to bring you Misfits of Science.

Basic premise is that these two groovy California scientists, Billy Hayes and Elvin Lincoln (played respectively by Dean Paul Martin and Kevin Peter Hall), bring together these…well, misfits of science, to fight for truth, justice, and the right to dress in the most stereotypically gnarly 80s ways imaginable.

Billy is a “normie,” but Elvin creates and takes a super-secret potion that allows him to shrink from 7 feet down to, I think like 8 inches (thus becoming the first instance in history of a dude choosing shrinkage). The rest of the team is formed by “Johnny B” Bukowski (played by Mark Thomas Miller), a rad rocker dude with glowing eyes who can run super fast and blast lightning bolts from his fists thanks to being struck by lightning during one of his band’s concerts; Gloria Dinallo (played by Courteney Cox), a typically confused teen with typical teen issues…oh, and a pesky telekinesis problem; and Jane Miller (played by Jennifer Holmes), Gloria’s parole officer and Billy’s love interest. Throw in the dad from ALF and you’ve got your cast! Yeah. Oh, that I was clever enough to make that up.

This was a hot mess of pure 80s cheese all the way through. But I didn’t care. I loved this show. I tuned in to watch every episode that aired on NBC, and I remember being devastated when the show just disappeared. It was tough being a child of the pre-Internet information saturation, I tell ya! There was just something about the Misfits that I couldn’t get enough of. I’m not sure what it was though.

Oh, wait. It was Courteney Cox.

Even though I have a strong suspicion that she’s no longer completely biodegradable, I still adore her, and that all started with Misfits of Science. I was so happy when she re-appeared on NBC on Family Ties, totally related to her character on Friends (I, too, find it difficult to sleep if I know that there are still shoes lying out in the living room!), can’t get enough of Gale Weathers (okay, that’s somewhat of a lie…stop making Scream movies!!), and even own Masters of the Universe on DVD (Tom Paris and Gina Dinallo, w00ts!!1!). I even watched a few episodes of Dirt, but I can’t bring myself to watch Cougar Town. The thought of Courteney Cox being old enough to qualify as a “cougar” makes me feel old. Say it ain’t so!

[Loba Tangent: Seriously, Courteney, please stop with the plastic surgery. You're beautiful as you are...but foreheads are supposed to actually move and your mouth isn't supposed to stretch from one side of your face all the way to the other. Unless, you know, you're going for that oh-so-sexy "New and Improved Joker Smile" look.]

Okay, back to the Misfits. It was a silly show, indeed, but it was fun silly. Well, I thought so at least. Of course, I was 9 at the time. What the hell do 9-year-olds know? At that age, I was running through mud puddles and wishing that Scooby Doo was real (I still regularly do one of these things, but I’m not telling which). But check it out for yourself if you don’t believe me. Just remember: If Johnny’s eyes are glowing, all your batteries are going to be dead and you’d probably better move out of the way of his fists…and if Gloria goes all negative colors, you’re about to either be hit by something or she’s about to fling you across the room. Don’t say I didn’t warn you either way…

I hope it doesn’t feel like I’m letting the Emerald City take over all my silly special features here at the lair, especially considering the fact that my last Poster Pick was for the musical Wicked. But that was inspired by the fact that I was reading The Annotated Wizard of Oz: Centennial Edition at the time.

Honestly, it feels like I was reading this particular version of this story for a really long time. I do believe that this is the most thorough and definitive version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz that’s available. It was almost like reading three books instead of just one. The first part of the book provides a brief history of the novel and its follow-up stories as well as how it went from book to musical to movie, and information on L. Frank Baum. There are more detailed biographies out there on Baum (in fact, I own one, which I have sadly yet to read), but this is a good solid introductory piece for those who’d like to know a little more about the man and his wonderful world before diving in to the actual story.

Of course, then we get to the heart…brains…and courage of it all. Not only does this version of the book present the story as it was originally printed, complete with W.W. Denslow’s absolutely gorgeous illustrations (see below), it also provides a plethora of annotations. I kid you not, there are like three pages on just the name “Dorothy.” Plus, the annotations are printed in what looks like a 6-point Times New Roman, which is a huge contrast to the story’s ginormous 14-point font. Oh, my eyes!

(FONT SNOBBERY, FTW!!)

To be honest, there were so many annotations that I found them a bit distracting after a while. So I ignored them for a first read-through and then went back and picked them up on the second sweep. Like I said, it felt like I was reading this book for a really long time.

So, what did I think of the original story, now that I’ve finally read it? I’m going to say something so shocking for a book geek, but I have to tell you, denizens, I think that, as lovely as the original story is, this is one of the few instances in which I prefer the movie to the book.

!!!

I know! Shocking! And, honestly? It’s for purely sentimental reasons. The 1939 movie version of this story was a perennial part of my childhood, one of the things that stands in my memory as something specially reserved as a ritual for my mom and me. My dad worked night shifts at that point, so he was never home for the annual showing of The Wizard of Oz on television. So my mom would pop a bowl of popcorn just for us (and our little dog, too!) and we’d settle in for another trip to the Land of Oz. I loved this ritual for all its gloriously simple perfection.

Plus, the movie still remains magical, even more than 70 years later. Think about the creativity of the people who brought this world to the big screen pre-CGI! And the bravery! Don’t forget that Buddy Ebsen, the original Tin Woodsman, nearly died because of all the aluminum powder he inhaled before they switched over to a paste for Jack Haley. And Margaret Hamilton was badly burned twice during her portrayal of the Wicked Witch: once by a pyrotechnic in her broom and once when the flame effect during her exit from Munchkinland triggered before the trap door elevator could pull her down. Her green copper-based makeup instantly caught fire, along with her costume, causing second- and third-degree burns to Hamilton’s face and arms.

(Okay, bizarre and completely superfluous tangential geek trivia: In one of her last performances as Elphaba in the Broadway production of Wicked, Idina Menzel broke a rib when she went to step onto a trap door elevator for a similar effect, only the trap had dropped away already. Not quite as dramatic as Hamilton’s injuries; however, this does provide further evidence that it’s not easy being green. Ba-dum-bum.)

Sorry, back on track. There’s something about this movie that is so special and so (der!) wonderful. The music, the dancing, the costumes, the set pieces, the flying monkeys! Each actor was so well-suited to their role that it seems almost sacrilegious to try to imagine anyone else ever playing these characters. Also, for me, this is Judy Garland’s defining role (but also the role that landed her on the path to an untimely and unfortunate end, thanks in part to MGM introducing her to the Wonderful Wizard of Amphetamines). Her rendition of “Over the Rainbow” is one of the most heartbreaking moments ever committed to film. Just thinking about it now gets me a little verklempt.

And Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch! True talent is when you’re only 5 feet tall and your character is on-screen for barely more than 10 minutes, but you’re still voted the fourth most frightening villain in movie history by the American Film Institute. She might have gotten even higher had it not been for that unfortunate run-in later on with that damnable pink bunny…

Of course, all this movie praise doesn’t mean that I don’t think the book is worth reading. There are, in fact, multiple and significant differences between the book and the movie, which gives us two similar-yet-different ways to experience this delightful fairytale. At the moment, I can only think of one other book/movie combo, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Blade Runner, that provides an equally successful same-but-different experience.

Another bonus from finally reading the original story? I love inside information, and now that I have read Baum’s story and seen Denslow’s original illustrations, I feel like I’m now privy to some great jokes that I didn’t get until now. I’m referring to all the references that Gregory Maguire made to the original text in his book Wicked, as well as props and costumes in the musical that were directly inspired by Denslow’s art. There were a couple of moments in particular in which I had to explain the extra-large smile of recognition I had on my face whilst reading the story or looking at the artwork.

Final Verdict: I definitely would like to add this book to my collection, snuggled right there on the shelf with my aforementioned Baum biography, my Wicked Grimmerie, and my copies of Wicked and Son of a Witch. As for the movie? The three-disc release from 2005 is already in my collection, and I have to admit that the recent 70th anniversary release was almost enough to finally get me to buy that Bluray player. Almost. Maybe when I hit that big lottery payoff and I can get the HDTV, too. Until then, I just might put on my pointy black witch’s hat and settle down this evening with a bowl of popcorn…follow the yellow brick road and see where it leads me.