After all the beautiful days, the Feast of the Resurrection turned out gray and cold and uninspiring. At about three-thirty I made some brownies, and a little after four we started out to see the couple I’ll call the Wee Folk.
They live in a house in a quiet neighborhood in Menlo Park. Both are computer people. He is red haired, red bearded, rather short man who reminds me of a hip leprechaun. She is slender, with long brown hair, slanted brown eyes, and a long face with high cheekbones. She looks like an elf from one of those Celtic fantasy books, is an ex-nerd and SF fan who got tired of working in the “pink collar ghetto” and acquired enough computer skills to make a respectable salary. She is also an excellent artist. Some friends of ours asked her to do a mural for them in the house they bought, and she did a beautiful job, creating a small jungle in one of their work rooms. They have three cats, two of them long-haired. Fur kept drifting in tufts around us.
The meal was delicious, lamb that he had prepared, peas and carrots from their own garden. Somehow, near the end of the evening, we got onto the subject of Pee Wee Herman, and we ended up piling big cushions on the floor and watching a video of Pee Wee Herman’s April 2 Saturday morning show. Weird. I liked it. After that came two Bakshi Mighty Mouse cartoons I liked even more.
I must remember to set the clock an hour ahead. I should have done it last night, but I forgot to.
Actually having movies and shows on videotape that you could watch any time you wanted was still very much a novelty, and it it was common to invite dinner guests to watch them with you after the meal. I remember hosts playing everything from the film IMPROMPTU to probably pirated episodes of Jonathan Frid’s DARK SHADOWS. Older TV shows weren’t easy to find before YouTube and the internet as-we-know-it, and that could be the only chance you had to see them again.
Bakshi’s new version of MIGHTY MOUSE, brand new in 1988, is now a collector’s item. I hope the Wee Folk kept their copies.