I'm coming clean...enough is enoughThanks for sharing your story Jeffrey.
You are on the road to recovery.
;I
susan
----- Original Message -----
From: Walton, Jeffrey<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2007 5:18 PM
Subject: [MOPO] I'm coming clean...enough is enough
It was years ago, even before I got into collecting movie posters, even
before I began collecting locks of hair from the worldwide wrestling federation
employees, in looking back it was probably right around the time leg warmers
became popular, that I hashed my scheme. Well I have to admit, it didn't start
as a scheme, in fact it was a very innocent and a kind gesture on my part. It
was my nephew's 5th or 6th birthday, before I confess any further, let me tell
a bit of the back story, the summer before his birthday the entire family was
staying at the shore. It was a whirlwind of drunkenness and clam bakes - fun
times. Anyways, the family decided to take over a local burger joint for din
din and me being a strict fruitaterian opted to sit my nephew since he was a
bit of a sugarholic and did not work well in crowds. Being the good uncle that
I was, we decided to bake some Jiffy-Pop and pop in a betamax tape and enjoy
one of my favorites from the 70's...Jaws. As I remember he didn't say a word
and when his parents arrived back from Cows N Catsup, they were truly amazed at
his catatonic state and chalked it up to my masterful skills at sitting, that
and my strict rule of no sugar after 11pm. That's part of the back story,
turns out months later my nephew is in still not talking and in therapy (for
what I have no idea) so I decided to relive old times and spoil him for his big
day. I went to the local Kiddie City and was cruising the aisles and saying to
myself stay away from the pink aisle, stay away from the pink aisle, when all
of a sudden I found my self in the game aisle. All my favorites were there -
checkers, lawn darts, Dukes of Hazzard's though I think I liked the box more
than the game...I still see those shorts in my dreams, anyhoot, there it was,
the perfect game for my perfect nephew, it was a game to remember all the good
times we had had together...the game JAWS. There was his favorite big fish
with a rubber-band mouth snapping tires and other junk from the fishing poles
of the players. Yes that was it, I forked over my $14.95 plus tax and was out
the door in a flash.
Hey I'm finally getting to the good stuff.
So there it was, the game Jaws sitting on my footstool waiting for his big
day to come. The only thing it was missing was wrapping paper and a big bow.
Now I'm a bit anal at times I must say and I don't like to waste anything. I
got out my trusty ruler and measured the box and since I was a mathematics
major, I calculated the exact amount of paper I needed - 13 1/2 by 34 15/16,
then I accounted for errors or scissors mishaps and arrived at a perfect size
of 14 by 36. I searched high and low for the exact size to no avail. I
searched every Hallmark store in a four county area and nothing, zilch, nada.
I went to office stores, grocery stores and nothing, zilch, nada. I scoured
the Yellow Pages in search of advertising specialists and all said the same
thing...I have never ever seen that size of advertising material, ever,
anywhere. I was at a lost. As miracles do happen, so help me Buddha, I
stumbled upon a thrift store during my search for a new pair of boxer shorts
when what did my eyes behold, a poster of some sort, advertising Clint
Eastwood's Every Which Way But Loose, just my favorite movie of all time. What
did I do? I bought it for 50 cents knowing all to well it was a fake, I've been
to the movies, I've seen movie posters, and never, ever did I see a size like
this. My boxer shorts would have to wait for another day.
I brought home my newly prized possession and taped it on the wall right
above my footstool. Then a light bulb went on during a commercial on the Gong
Show when I looked at this, what I was calling a fake movie poster, and I
looked at the game on the the footstool and I decide to get out my trusty ruler
again because I had a hunch. Sure enough this fake movie poster was 14 by 36
exactly, and exactly what I needed. But there was one problem - no way in hell
was I going to take my prized possession and turn it into a cat's amusement
park moments after my nephew ripped open his present...no, no way in hell. So I
went back to the thrift store to see if the owner had any more of these fakes.
As luck would have it, he did, they was one with this big robot on it,
Forbidden something or other, I don't really recall but I purchased this for
the same amount - 50 cents.
I got it home, grabbed my tape and my scissors just incase,and started to
wrap it with the printed image on the inside....then that light bulb flashed
again...what if, yeah, how cool would that be, what if I could wrap this game
in a fake movie poster of Jaws, sort of like foreshadowing - ah those English
teachers of mine would be proud, yeah that would be cool, this time I got smart
and called the thrift shop to see if they had a Jaws fake movie poster...no
such luck. Then I thought, what if, yeah, how cool would that be, what if I
just created my own image on the back of this Forbidden something or other.
That's the ticket. I had all the tools including my APPLE IIe, even back then
Apple was way ahead of its time in the graphics department, and I had this
really cool tri-colored daisy wheel printer. So I stayed up all night and
created an image in this paint software. I recalled the day I waited 4 hours in
the rain to see Jaws for the first time, good thing too because for most of
those hours I was stuck in front of the actual movie poster and the imagine
burned in my brain like the first time I saw my parents having sex on the
kitchen table...you try eating Fruit-Loops on that table before school each
morning. Back to the story at hand - what I had to do was shrink this to fit
but I must say it didn't look all to bad.
My wrapping was a big success at the party, though the bow covered most of
the shark. It was the only package wrapping that the cat wasn't allowed to
sleep in. From there it started and I couldn't stop, it was like a drug, a
disease. My brother-in-law wanted one for his office, his boss wanted one for
his mistress, and so on and so forth. I started to get request for other great
movies like Every Which Way But Loose, some Star Wars and this bad sci-fi movie
called Blade Runner. Over time my technique got better, my computer got faster
and I was churning out a good fortune on these cheap fake movie posters. Then
all of a sudden people started to accuse me of forgeries. Forgeries on fake
movie posters, how bogus is that, that's like trying to stop another fake Rolex
maker from creating fake Rolexes, after all, look around have you ever in your
life seen a true movie poster that was 14 x 36...my thoughts exactly. But
after various angry phone calls and nasty grams, I decided to hang up my
printer's gloves but not before I mass produced about 4000 copies of each
poster just to have you know.
I apologize to any stupid person that I may have hurt not realizing the 14 x
36 inch movie poster is surely a fake. I have now placed my energy in creating
a really small movie poster, since movies are my life, roughly 11 x 14, surely
no one would every confuse these as being
real.
On a side note, my nephew is doing great, sort of a set back the following
year, for his 6th or 7th birthday I took him trick or treating then sat down
and we watched Halloween, it only took him a few weeks to get over that one but
now he's living life of comfort out in some cabin in the hills of West
Virginia. I truly envy him at times.
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