Friday, December 29, 2006
My Life in Film
Over this holiday break my parents decided to bring out some of our old home movies. I hadn't seen them in quite some time, and I have to admit they were pretty fascinating. There I was, at the age of seven, wearing a hat and cape made out of Styrofoam packing material and conducting an "interview" with my sister. Then as a ten-year-old, speechifying on the merits of various members of the Transformers family and ripping open a wrapped copy of the game Splish Splash with ferocious glee. Then we proceeded into the archives of our various holiday "concerts," including one in which my grandmother somehow goaded me into singing "Can't Help Loving that Man of Mine" from Showboat, which has me wondering if in fact she was at one point in on the joke.
In addition to these beloved works of amateur cinema, we also had a bunch of taped portions of local television, since there is sufficiently little news to report in Quincy that the exploits of preteens performing peppy pop tunes or married English professors expounding on local folklore actually merited media coverage. There was a segment on when my sixth grade class was challenged to create a contraption that could safely protect an egg as it dropped ten feet, and one on my fifth grade class's stunning and wholly imaginary exploration of the stock market. Perhaps my favorite, though, was the anti-drug PSA I did when I was in middle school. I played the challenging role of a preteen both amazed and delighted by the fine array of fun alternatives to drug use presented to him by his friend. I even had a catch phrase: "Drug Free is the Place to Be." God, they just don't write roles like that any more.
Over this holiday break my parents decided to bring out some of our old home movies. I hadn't seen them in quite some time, and I have to admit they were pretty fascinating. There I was, at the age of seven, wearing a hat and cape made out of Styrofoam packing material and conducting an "interview" with my sister. Then as a ten-year-old, speechifying on the merits of various members of the Transformers family and ripping open a wrapped copy of the game Splish Splash with ferocious glee. Then we proceeded into the archives of our various holiday "concerts," including one in which my grandmother somehow goaded me into singing "Can't Help Loving that Man of Mine" from Showboat, which has me wondering if in fact she was at one point in on the joke.
In addition to these beloved works of amateur cinema, we also had a bunch of taped portions of local television, since there is sufficiently little news to report in Quincy that the exploits of preteens performing peppy pop tunes or married English professors expounding on local folklore actually merited media coverage. There was a segment on when my sixth grade class was challenged to create a contraption that could safely protect an egg as it dropped ten feet, and one on my fifth grade class's stunning and wholly imaginary exploration of the stock market. Perhaps my favorite, though, was the anti-drug PSA I did when I was in middle school. I played the challenging role of a preteen both amazed and delighted by the fine array of fun alternatives to drug use presented to him by his friend. I even had a catch phrase: "Drug Free is the Place to Be." God, they just don't write roles like that any more.
