Marissa Flaxbart

Today on the podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz: "Noise 'R' Us"

Growing up, my most important toys were my dolls. We talked constantly, but none of them made a sound. When I think of the recorded sounds of my early childhood, it's all on cassette: my beloved Teddy Ruxpin, my children's songbook with accompanying tape, the little shows, skits, and songs I recorded on my own. I loved the Fisher Price record player music box, where changing or flipping the colored plastic records determined what song played, but I didn't have one of my own. As I got older, memorable sounds came from games, like my Bop-It key chain. Or, above all, the game MALL MADNESS, which said things like "There is a clearance...at the...sunglasses boutique" from a little speaker box in the center where players swiped their play credit cards to score points (come to think of it, MALL MADNESS may be capitalism's greatest triumph in the indoctrination of a generation).

Remembering these and/or other toys (and the sounds they made) was a delightful part of researching and writing this, my first episode of Twenty Thousand Hertz. But the research didn't stop there. I walked down toy aisles and listened to the toys shout sweetly at me. We all know how far technology has come in the past few decades, but we (or at least, I) don't often think about how those advancements trickle down to change everything around us...even toys. Now I can't stop thinking about it!

I could go on at length about what an honor it is to contribute to 20k, a show that I have listened to and enjoyed for years, but if you get into the show's back catalog, you'll see that it speaks for itself. May I humbly suggest starting with today's episode, "Noise 'R' Us"? :D

Barbie was her maiden name. (#thedollevolves repost edition)

I originally wrote the following post way back in 2009, on the occasion of Barbie's 50th anniversary. I'm reposting it now in...you know, I'm gong go ahead and call it celebration of the new, more realistic, way more beautiful line up of dolls Barbie just announced. My first thought on seeing photos of these new dolls was "these aren't real, are they?" And, upon realizing, to my delight, that they WERE real, my next thought was that my mom would have been flabbergasted, in the best way, to see this day. And I'm not join to hide it: I really, really want to collect them all.

---

 

Barbie, that plastic minx, is 50, and I'm celebrating with my Official Barbie Story. It is a story of profound reverse-psychology, the only blotch on the otherwise stainless parenting record of Mr. and Mrs. Don R. Flaxbart.

My dear mother, God rest her feminist soul, hated, HATED Barbie and her stupid proposterous physique, her cheerleader-preppiness. So, as a child, I was given a rule: if I wanted a Barbie, I would have to buy it myself.  My parents both had brothers and sisters, so neither was quite prepared for their only-child daughter's doll obsession; I had one in the worst way. I was a six-year-old mother to seven cotton children, I created tiny universes with my playmobil people, and Barbie...Well, she was just so tantalizingly cheap! For a week or two of saved-up allowance, I could own a doll that was totally my own. And I would treasure it.

And so, over the course of about ten years, I built up a portfolio of Barbie dolls, complete with brushed hair and attached heads (ripping the heads off of dolls or giving them awful haircuts was apparently a common practice among my peers). As a young child, there was nothing else that I was required to buy for myself if I wanted it, making my Barbies (and some other over-the-top dolls I saved up for) the only possessions that were truly mine. So this was no mere collection; this was a soap-opera of interconnected families, the Jensens, the Ratners, the fledgling Williams family waiting for a father to join them from "out of town."

Yes, that's right. My Barbies had storyline.

It all started with a matriarch. Barbie was her name, uncreatively, and she was a rock 'n' roll Barbie by birth. I have no idea where she came from, but I couldn't have been over 4 when I got her, and to this day, she remains in my posession.  She had special hip-shaking action, which allowed/forced her to move her arms back and forth, karate-chop style, when you twisted her torso.

By the time I was 10, this twisting created a creaking noise that I jokingly referred to as "arthritis" when introducing her to others, human and doll alike. At that point, I'd already formed the basis of an extended family tree that I would have a hard time abandoning if I tried playing with my dolls today. There were the Jensens, Barbie and Ken's family, a popular but slightly trashy clan with two blonde daughters and a hunky jock son, Kevin. There were the Walshes, named for daughter Brenda, a 90210-Mattel crossover. This was my star family, with the beautiful Rosa at the helm; my favorite doll, Courtney, had shiny brown hair like her sisters, and was very serious with boyfriend Kevin Jensen. If you're surprised how well I remember it all, so am I; I suppose it's a testament to how much time I spent creating and living in this tiny world.

I do so wish that I had photos of Loren Ratner (a stylish aerobic instructor) or the look-alike eldest Walsh sisters (two identical 90210 dolls modeled after Shannen Dougherty, one of whom was missing a leg on account of my cocker spaniel puppy). I could present to you my formal list of names and connections, or my huge collection of matchless tiny plastic shoes. You would marvel at the ingenuity of my bedroom backdrops made from cardstock and pictures from bedding catalogs. Perhaps you would truly comprehend the breadth of my polyvinyl planet.

I don't have those things with me at the moment. 4 years ago, my father sold the house I grew up in, and I had to search through all of my belongings, deciding what to keep and what to throw away. It was pretty ugly.

Don't panic. My carefully manicured collection definitely made the cut, much to the confusion of the rest of my family. For now, they live in a giant RubberMaid container in a cousin's garage.  There they sit - Barbie, Ken, Skipper, Kevin, Courtney, Stacey, Janet, Shannen, Brenda, Brandon, Luke -the list goes on- waiting for the day I can bestow their storyline on children of my own.

On second thought, maybe I'll keep them too myself. I wouldn't want their heads to get ripped off.

Toys for Weird Kids

If you have spoken to me at all during the past three months, you may already be aware that I have become passionately obsessed with Adventure Time on Cartoon Network. Since the show is ostensibly for kids, it airs during the network's hours of kids programming (which are most of them), which means I sometimes get to see some pretty nutty commercials. Today I saw these gems:

For Future Denists: Play Doh Dr Drill & Fill Playset

 

For Glamor Girls with a Passion for Crustaceology: Xia-Xia.

I can't find a video of the commercial, but the product is apparently made be the same people who made the weirdly popular Zhu-Zhu pets, which are little robotic hamsters on wheels. My guess is that the company, Cepia, thought to themselves, "how can we make the same product, only more bizarre and for girls?" And the answer was clear: Sparkly Hermit Crabs. 

Mad Men Barbies. It makes so much sense.

Like most sentient television watchers, I adore Mad Men on AMC. Unlike most of them, I think I might actually like the show even if the scripts and plots weren't so great, because I am obsessed with mid-20th century advertising. It's really an extension of my love of popular culture in general; I think it's fascinating to see what people in other decades saw everytime they opened a magazine or newspaper, and even more fascinating how bizarre the ads seem in retrospect.

You know what else looks weird in retrospect? 1960s Barbie faces. People have been up in arms about how Barbie dolls look forever, but they never looked as alien as they did back in the early days. Realism was never the point – the dolls were meant to be dramatic and beautiful and plastic. It reminds me of something…could it be… the characters on Mad Men?! That's why I think it's so perfect that Mattel and AMC have teamed up to create a collectors' line of Mad Men Barbies. (Read more about my strange love of Barbies here.)

 The Barbies are gorgeous, with perfectly tailored clothing and (stroke of genius) 60s-era Barbie styling. There are four characters represented in the collection: Don Draper; Betty Draper; Roger Sterling; and "bombshell office manager Joan Holloway." Personally, I think it's a little odd that Mattel describes Joan as a bombshell, but leaves the ridiculous Barbie proportions as is rather than, you know, amping her up a bit. I'm not shocked, but just as January Jones and Christina Hendricks aren't going to swap clothes anytime soon, I don't really think the dolls should be able to, either. But that might be the bitterness talking.

The first commenter on AMC.com's post about the dolls mentioned that he wished Peggy was a part of the set. At first I was in total agreement, but after mulling it over, I think that Peggy's too sweet and honest for this plastic crowd. I know, I know, she's got her secrets too, but she's not Draper-league. Let's leave this collection as it is, with only the snakiest characters represented. Fake pretty dolls representing the fake pretty characters that sell pretty for a living? I love it.

Post Script: That Peggy-missing commenter has his own set of self-made Mad Men Barbies he photographed for Haute Doll magazine. You can check it out for yourself here. Greatness.

Transformers ★★★

From Cineplexus…

Yeah, I know. You already decided. Either Transformers 2 sucks hard-core (the general critical consensus) or it kicks ass no matter what those cocky jerk critics say. So why am I even bothering to write a review of a movie that everyone already seems to have an opinion about, regardless of whether or not they've seen it?

Well, the news is good, if surprising: Transformers 2 is not that bad. While there are a handful of scenes that Michael Bay seems to have exploded all over, particularly during the film's marathon parade of endings, and some seriously annoying, Jar-Jar Binks-y Transformers who won't shut up, it also has genuinely exciting action sequences, really gorgeous visual and audio effects, and some pretty funny moments (as in, moments that are funny on purpose). 

The lesson here seems to be all about expectations. Perhaps the first critics to see the film were able to approach it from a neutral perspective; it's possible that some were excited about the much-hyped film. More likely, they expected it to be awful, and were on their guard for anything reprehensible about the film, thus making all the jokes that fall flat, the ultra-short climactic fight, the annoying (but not, in my  opinion, racist) robot twins, that much more heinous. Whether because of high hopes dashed or low hopes self-fulfilled, the storm of harsh reviews led me and my cohort in cinematic guilty-pleasure seeking, Mikey, to expect a truly awful movie. 

What we got, however, was an okay movie, with some very thrilling highs in action, technology, and humor, and some chuckle-inducing lows in robot dialogue, slow-running to dramatic music, and…humor. And what more, honestly, should be expected of a film that states clearly at its outset that it's presented by Paramount and Hasbro?

For all the critical abuse the film's been taking, moviegoers don't seem to be too concerned about how potentially bad the film might be after all – in its first week, it's broken several records, including highest-grossing Wednesday opening, highest-grossing non-opening Thursday and Friday, and the second highest all-time 7-day gross.

So there you go. "Not that bad." And a box office smash at that. All movies should be so maligned.

Side note: I can't end this review without mentioning how truly floored I am, once again, by the sound design of this Transformers film. The score may be schmaltzy, but the sounds these robots make, especially while transforming, are mesmerizing and beautiful here, as they were in the first film. If you don't care about these things, I willingly accept your scorn. But you're missing out.

Barbie was her given name.

Barbie, that plastic minx, is 50, and I'm celebrating with my Official Barbie Story. It is a story of profound reverse-psychology, the only blotch on the otherwise stainless parenting record of Mr. and Mrs. Don R. Flaxbart.

My dear mother, God rest her feminist soul, hated, HATED Barbie and her stupid proposterous physique, her cheerleader-preppiness. So, as a child, I was given a rule: if I wanted a Barbie, I would have to buy it myself.  My parents both had brothers and sisters, so neither was quite prepared for their only-child daughter's doll obsession; I had one in the worst way. I was a six-year-old mother to seven cotton children, I created tiny universes with my playmobil people, and Barbie...Well, she was just so tantalizingly cheap! For a week or two of saved-up allowance, I could own a doll that was totally my own. And I would treasure it.

And so, over the course of about ten years, I built up a portfolio of Barbie dolls, complete with brushed hair and attached heads (ripping the heads off of dolls or giving them awful haircuts was apparently a common practice among my peers). As a young child, there was nothing else that I was required to buy for myself if I wanted it, making my Barbies (and some other over-the-top dolls I saved up for) the only possessions that were truly mine. So this was no mere collection; this was a soap-opera of interconnected families, the Jensens, the Ratners, the fledgling Williams family waiting for a father to join them from "out of town."

Yes, that's right. My Barbies had storyline.

It all started with a matriarch. Barbie was her name, uncreatively, and she was a rock 'n' roll Barbie by birth. I have no idea where she came from, but I couldn't have been over 4 when I got her, and to this day, she remains in my posession.  She had special hip-shaking action, which allowed/forced her to move her arms back and forth, karate-chop style, when you twisted her torso.

By the time I was 10, this twisting created a creaking noise that I jokingly referred to as "arthritis" when introducing her to others, human and doll alike. At that point, I'd already formed the basis of an extended family tree that I would have a hard time abandoning if I tried playing with my dolls today. There were the Jensens, Barbie and Ken's family, a popular but slightly trashy clan with two blonde daughters and a hunky jock son, Kevin. There were the Walshes, named for daughter Brenda, a 90210-Mattel crossover. This was my star family, with the beautiful Rosa at the helm; my favorite doll, Courtney, had shiny brown hair like her sisters, and was very serious with boyfriend Kevin Jensen. If you're surprised how well I remember it all, so am I; I suppose it's a testament to how much time I spent creating and living in this tiny world.

I do so wish that I had photos of Loren Ratner (a stylish aerobic instructor) or the look-alike eldest Walsh sisters (two identical 90210 dolls modeled after Shannen Dougherty, one of whom was missing a leg on account of my cocker spaniel puppy). I could present to you my formal list of names and connections, or my huge collection of matchless tiny plastic shoes. You would marvel at the ingenuity of my bedroom backdrops made from cardstock and pictures from bedding catalogs. Perhaps you would truly comprehend the breadth of my polyvinyl planet.

I don't have those things with me at the moment. 4 years ago, my father sold the house I grew up in, and I had to search through all of my belongings, deciding what to keep and what to throw away. It was pretty ugly.

Don't panic. My carefully manicured collection definitely made the cut, much to the confusion of the rest of my family. For now, they live in a giant RubberMaid container in a cousin's garage.  There they sit - Barbie, Ken, Skipper, Kevin, Courtney, Stacey, Janet, Shannen, Brenda, Brandon, Luke -the list goes on- waiting for the day I can bestow their storyline on children of my own.

On second thought, maybe I'll keep them to myself. I wouldn't want their heads to get ripped off.