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The Media Made Me Do it
Stay Free! asked: Have you ever imitated something youve seen
on TV or in the movies? In reply, our readers and contributors shared
their witty comebacks, special outfits, and not-so-secret fantasies, which
appear below in no particular order.
When I was in high school, I saw an episode of Real People about a boy
with no arms. The story showed him using his feet to dress himself, play
soccer, and eat at the table. He laughed and held his cutlery between
his toes. After watching this, I trained myself to use my toes for all
manner of basic tasks normally performed with hands: dialing the phone,
lighting cigarettes. In college, I would show off all these feet tricks
for my friends. (And my parents thought that knowing how to play bridge
was essential for socializing at college!) Even today, I still do many
things with my feet that others use their hands for. When barefoot, I
never bend over to pick anything up: I simply use my toes.
Catherine Sears
Nothing filled pediatric wards with broken tibias faster than the sight
of Evel Knievel attempting to jump buses on TV with his motorcycle. While
I never imitated him myself, I was more than happy to help construct the
flimsy wooden ramps that would send my friends hurtling into the pavement
on their Huffys on many a suburban Saturday. I cant imagine how
well bicycles must have sold back then as they were continuously destroyed
and replaced in these feats of daring. Mercifully, I seemed immune from
this influence. However, I did once jump off the roof with an umbrella
like the Penguin on Batman.
Ashley Holt
First of all, yes, I know how supremely geeky this is. But when I was
in high school I sometimes wore a 12-foot Doctor Who scarf that my mother
knitted for me. By "sometimes" I mean "every day."
I also wore numerous Doctor Who T-shirts and accessories, including a
classy enamel pin depicting the fifth Doctor in his full regalia. One
day, this girl looks at it and says, "Oh, my God, is that you wearing
your scarf?" All this time I was slavishly imitating a TV character
and she thought I was a fashion trendsetter (albeit a disastrously failed
one).
Daniel Radosh
When I was in the eighth grade, I ordered a pizza to my math class after
watching Spicoli do it in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. The pizza actually
arrived late because the delivery guy went to the wrong junior high. When
he finally got to my class, my teacher immediately knew it was for me
and flipped out. The school put the pizza into the school vault until
they could figure out what to do with it--and with me. I think I got detention
for a week, but they gave me the pizza back at the end of the day, so
I had a nice picnic with some friends as we laughed about the whole thing.
Sarah Jacobson
I dressed like the Fonz one traumatic fifth-grade day. As soon as I stepped
on the school bus, I realized the grievous error in judgment Id
made. I was stared at, laughed at, and taunted ("Ayyy, Fonzie! You
think youre tough? Huh, Fonz? You gonna beat me up?") like
never before--and I was already something of a social outcast. I unslicked
my hair in the bathroom before second period, but even my friends never
forgot about it. Years later in high school, my friend Ed would frequently
ask "Hey Mike! Remember when you dressed like the Fonz?" before
collapsing into giggles.
Mike Appelstein
Mike, someone I knew from the Boston punk scene, was a big guy who was
impressed by the movie Fight Club. Inspired, he started a similar club
in Cambridge. But instead of a bonding experience, it apparently was just
guys getting beat up by Mike. It was completely consensual, just that
nobody could fight nearly as well as Mike could. Eventually the Cambridge
Police broke it up, and the non-Mike participants were reportedly just
as happy to have an excuse to stop as they had been to fight in the first
place. Meanwhile, Chuck Palahniuk (author of the book Fight Club) denied
knowing that any real fight clubs exist.
Rich Mackin
I cant remember where or when I saw Mary Poppins float down to
earth with her magical umbrella, but I do remember desperately searching
the house for my own umbrella so I could experience the same graceful
descent. I found an umbrella and climbed to the very top of the monkey
bars in our backyard. I was so confident that the same laws of physics
would apply that when I hit the ground with a BANG I reasoned that it
must be the wrong type of umbrella and went inside to look for another.
Armed with my new umbrella, I plummeted down to earth just as quickly
as before. My final attempt involved both umbrellas, which was a big mistake
because I had no free arm to help break my fall and became tangled up
in a mass of umbrellas, frustration, and pain at the base of the monkey
bars.
Leslie Mello
After seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark I left the theater feeling
like Harrison Ford. It was as if I could swing from trees and outrun blowdarts
and giant rolling boulders. My sister tied a rope to the back of her bike
and I lay down in the middle of the street and held onto it. I dont
remember if Indy did this in the movie, but I wrapped the rope around
my left arm so I couldnt let it go. My sister tried to drag me down
the street, but after a few feet, I was crying so bad she stopped. My
knees and face and arms were all scraped up.
Steve Reynolds
In my junior year of high school, I started dressing like Alex from A
Clockwork Orange. Nearly every other day at school, I wore combat
boots, cook pants, a white shirt, suspenders, and a bowler. I couldnt
get a shillelagh, so I used a cane with knots in it instead. I went to
see the movie 19 times, and the last eight times I wore my Clockwork
Orange outfit. I even used to hitchhike in it. Everyone thought I
had wigged out; you dont do that in New Hampshire. I dressed this
way for about six years.
Jim Rocheleau
My life amounts to little more than a futile search for Laura Petrie of
The Dick Van Dyke Show. This is my curse.
Paul Moshay
When Madonna first came out with that "Express Yourself" video
à la Fritz Lang, my two best friends and I used to dance along
every night when it was on the MTV top video countdown, "working
on our moves" as it were. It actually got to the point where we practiced
crawling under the kitchen table (fetchingly) and lapping at a bowl of
milk. Also, I cut off all my hair and started wearing boxer shorts so
I could look like Mary Stuart Masterson in Some Kind of Wonderful.
When people see pictures of my family from that awkward period they
mistake me for a boy, saying, "Your brother is gorgeous," which
I only recently started taking as a compliment.
Brett Kelly
I was one of the few kids in elementary school who didnt have a
TV, which made keeping up on lunchtime conversation extremely challenging.
I did, however, have a downstairs neighbor with an old black-and-white
contraption, who let me watch Happy Days with him. I thought most of the
characters were dorky, but secretly I knew I was just like the Fonz. One
day, on a class field trip, I dropped my notebook. I picked it up with
my thumbs out, the way I did everything, the way I imagined the Fonz would
pick up his notebook. "Hey," another kid said to me, "are
you trying to pick up your notebook like the Fonz?" I was mortified
and hotly denied it. "Of course not," I said. "Dont
be stupid, thats just the way I pick up my stuff." He nodded
but with a smirk, and walked away. My career as a Fonzie-wannabe was over.
Rachel Neumann
When we were about eight, my best friend, Carrie (who happens to edit
this zine), and I would turn one of our living rooms into a mini-wrestling
arena. With WWF on television in full view, and with no regard for the
taunting of our brothers, we would each choose a wrestler and then act
out the match as best we could. This was fairly easy since each of us
was cooperating in the drama we were portraying; we never tried to hurt
each other and didnt play in an angry way. We simply thought it
was fun. Funny also is the fact that we didnt realize WWF was fake--so
we were "faking" an already fake event.
Wendy Marich
In fifth grade, I had a snazzy red electric guitar with a whammy bar that
I never really learned how to play. Instead, I would wear ripped jeans,
mousse up my hair and "air guitar" to Poison, White-snake and
Mötley Crüe videos. I would pretend to ape the moves of Bret
Michaels, Vince Neil, et al. The culmination of this was my lip-synched
performance of Poisons "Talk Dirty To Me" with three friends
at the school talent show. Unfortunately, my friends were more in awe
of my electric guitar than my slick moves.
Nick Nadel
In junior high, I was outside one day with friends and there was a guy
giving me a hard time. He wasnt bigger than me, in fact, he was
thinner, so I wasnt too afraid when things got more physical and
we started shoving each other. He backed up and reached in his pocket,
as if he were scrambling to pull out a pocketknife. Just then I remembered
a scene from an old gangster movie where a guy was fumbling in his coat
to pull out a weapon. The phrase it invoked in the other, unarmed man,
had struck me as a really cool line, so I repeated it to this kid: "Youd
better be reaching for a sandwich, because Im gonna make you eat
it!" Unbelievably, this stopped the kid and he just walked off, sneering.
Bob Kathman
When I was very small, I was fascinated by Zorro, the masked and sword-wielding
star of the Disney TV series. I prevailed upon my mother to make me a
mask, cape, and hat, which I regularly donned before charging madly about
the house with a little toy sword, hacking and slashing away with great
heroism at the bad guys who threatened our home. One day, my mother showed
me a picture of myself in this condition. I couldnt believe how
stupid I looked, standing there with my droopy little cape and plastic
sword in summer shorts and bare feet. I never wore the costume again,
and I suspect this is why Ive never owned a TV.
George Donovan
Almost every time I shop for groceries, I throw something into the cart
in a desultory fashion in homage to Mary Tyler Moore, who does this in
the opening credits.
Chip Wass
When I was about five or six, I was totally infatuated with Underdog--a
cartoon canine with a secret identity. Especially intriguing to me was
the "super energy pill" hidden in Underdogs ring. When
he found himself in trouble or when the apple of his eye, Sweet Polly
Purebred, called for help, U-dog would open his ring and pop a pill. Accompanied
by a triumphant chorus, he would transform from a wimpy pup into a muscle-bound,
albeit clumsy, hero complete with a cape and the ability to fly. As an
aspiring hero myself--already hopped up on many a Saturday morning episode
of Batman, The Lone Ranger and Zorro--I thought the pill
option was the quickest route to public adulation. And I knew of many
pills hidden in the house. One afternoon, I climbed the counter and took
a bottle of the orange-flavored St. Josephs Aspirin for Children
(most likely because I had been given some during a previous illness).
Over the next several hours, I flew through the living room, jumping on
and off the sofa, battling bad guys up and down the stairs, and strategically
downing the orange tabs as crime-fighting circumstances dictated. By dinnertime,
unsurprisingly, I was barely able to rise from the sofa. After repeated
questioning from my mom, I showed her the empty bottle. She gave me a
glass of milk, and, upon finishing it, I upchucked my fantasy onto the
basement floor.
Dan Cook
My best friend Wendy and I watched Saturday Night Live religiously
when we were in fourth grade--the same year we convinced our math teacher
to let us perform skits for the class. Every Monday, the class would take
time out to watch Wendy, me, and a couple other friends and our zany antics.
Although I probably never would have credited SNL for the idea, I tried
to write fake newscasts in the SNL style, and even stole a few of their
jokes (figuring no one would notice with all those good snot gags thrown
in).
On an unrelated note, I read A Clockwork Orange in high school
and--though I didnt understand the book at all, and wasnt
particularly fond of it--thought it would be cool to appropriate the characters
slang in my everyday speech. "Droogies" for "friends",
"moloko" for milk. Needless to say, this never caught on.
Carrie McLaren
After seeing Spider-Man, I left the theater in my frequent postmovie
liminal mental state--in this case, the fuzzy twilight of overidentification
with Tobey Maguire. I found myself roaming the streets of New York City,
pressing my fingers (middle and ring) to the base of my palms. It was
strangely comforting--maybe its an acupressure point?--though I
stopped short of aiming my wrists at buildings from which to swing. I
am 33 years old.
Alexandra Ringe
My twin brother and I once watched The Warriors at home on cable.
The movie, at 1970s cult classic, is about an innocent gang trying to
get home to their turf while another rival gang tries to incite other
gangs into killing them. My brother and I got very caught up in the action
and started trying some of the fight moves. I am embarrassed to say we
both had roller skates and one of the gangs uses roller skates. (Very
corny movie, lots of feathered hair; more like the Village People than
a real gang.) The friendly wrestling escalated into an all-out fight after
a few successful kicks. No serious injuries, but lots of cuts and scrapes.
Jason Hudson
When I was around seven or eight in Michigan, all the kids in the neighborhood
formed a Trailer Park Wrestling Federation. It was designed to be similar
to the World Wrestling Federation, except it occurred in the arena of
a trailer park alley- way. (This was nearly 20 years ago, when "professional"
wrestling first became popular on television.) What scares me now is that
the "pile drivers" were real, as were the "clotheslines"
and "neck breakers." We bought sturdy cardboard that we made
into championship belts, adorned with the titles "heavyweight"
and "middleweight" in crayon. Each champion would have to defend
their titles every weekend against the other eight-year-old terrors of
the neighborhood.
Jeremy Stanifer
As a youth sixty some years ago, my double-first cousin and I would listen
to the radio serials every afternoon (no TV yet) and then act them out
the next day in our backyards and the woods behind them: the Lone Ranger
and Tonto, Captain Midnight and his young friend of the hour, and our
favorites, the comic book heroes Batman and Robin. She was always the
alpha male, the Lone Ranger or Batman/ Bruce Wayne, while I, ten days
her junior, played the subservient guy role. We still reminisce about
this whenever we get together.
Buzz Ringe
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