Freak Show Friday: Marilyn Manson

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O.K., this guy WANTS us to think he's a freak. That's his whole shtick. And, clearly, it IS working for him. But I, for one, am not buying it! It all just seems soooo forced to me. I guess that on some level I do appreciate his theatrics. I mean, there is no denying that he's a pretty dynamic performer, albeit a little disturbing at times... But I find him coming across as way too desperate, like he's always saying "Look at ME, I'm f*ckin' CRAY-ZEE and sh*t!" He just proves that you gotta have a gimmick.




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Umm, Marilyn? Do you know where those

fingers have been?




'The Golden Age 1' photo by Gottfried Helnwein

Mommy, I don't like Mickey Mouse

anymore... He scares me!

As far as Mr. Manson's talent as a singer, I'm NOT that impressed. The only real exposure to it that I get is when my husband Tommy plays one of his CDs. I certainly don't CHOOSE to listen to it! And most every time, I bark at him like an old biddy to "turn down that racket!"

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Well, what do we have here?! It looks like yet
another ringmaster wants to conduct my circus...

Have a nice weekend, everyone! I hope you can "get your FREAK on"! Or, at least have fun trying!

A Boy's Toy Joy: The Fisher-Price Movie Viewer

There is probably only a handful of toys that I can fondly remember playing with as a child growing up in the 1970s. I plan to feature them one at a time, so as to give them the attention I feel they deserve.

The first toy that I would like to "focus" on is the Fisher-Price Movie Viewer. Its design was suggestive of an old movie camera and it even hand-cranked like one. The main difference, of course, was that you used it to watch movies, not film them. The movies that I can remember viewing with it were all animated cartoon shorts. And there were only two of those that I used to watch again and again.

Walt Disney's 'Lonesome Ghosts' was my all-time favorite. It starred Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy as ghostbuster/private eye types investigating an old haunted house. They even had on hats like Sherlock Holmes wore, and a magnifying glass, I think...

My favorite sequence was when they were already inside the old house and Mickey opens a door, only to be nearly drowned by a HUGE wave of water that comes rushing in! And four "spooky" ghosts come-a-floating on that very tidal wave. One of the neatest things about the viewer was that, because you powered it by hand-cranking the red dial, you could make it go as fast or slow as you wanted. Even frame by frame or BACKWARDS! So, the whole water sequence alone had a myriad of possibilities and could keep me fascinated for hours. The tale concludes when the three bumbling "detectives" are being chased by the ghosts and crash into a stack of flour barrels. They are then covered head-to-toe in white powder and end up scaring the ghosts away!

The End.

This was my 'Blade Runner'

at the tender age of 4!

My second favorite was Walt Disney's 'Three Little Pigs'. Now, I don't have to tell the story of that one, do I? Again, the thing that I loved to do was watch it in slo-mo or throw it in reverse when the Big Bad Wolf blew down the pigs' houses. I also enjoyed all the happy pig dancing and laughing in this one!

Their houses would get blown
down, then rebuilt again and again...

Thanks to a retro toy seller, I can now crank-up these gems whenever I feel like remembering some of the simpler joys of my youth. There ARE others, but I'll save those for another time!