June was the most important month of my year 2000. This was the month my mom and I went to Atlanta for a week, staying with my Aunt Jenny. And boy, did we keep busy!
This was the trip where I made my first appearance on television!
Mind, it was the closed-circuit Emory University station, as part of the sketch show created and produced by my cousin. It was a good show. Past episodes included a Blair Witch Project spoof (the movie was the sensation of 2000) and a prescient sketch called Homoerotic, Or...? wherein two men were presented with a video or photo - of three guys clad only in swim trunks being hosed down, for instance - and debated whether it was clearly homoerotic or just "good clean fun," which just demonstrates how old those debates are. Anyway, I was there when they filmed a "behind-the-scenes" sketch on the making of the show, and was of course cast as the Godfather of Comedy (see above), the ultimate decider of what was or wasn't funny enough to make it to air. The two jokes I remember: a Gladiator reference (see how popular it was?) wherein I gave my approval through the old emperor's thumb technique...
...and me flipping through a script until a tired Tom Green reference (see how popular he was?) made me hurl it across the room. That didn't make it the final cut. The entire episode is here, my bit is at 18:26, that's my cousin Clay hosting the segment.
This was also the trip where my fascination with Ancient Egypt (borne of my love for The Ten Commandments) came to its zenith with a look at the Fernbank Museum's Mysteries of Egypt exhibition. What I remember most is the IMAX film of the same name, where Omar Sharif tells his grandson ofthe native boy who really discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen, and who, despite the legend of a curse, lived to a ripe old age; and the journals of Napoleon's Egyptian exhibition, with richly detailed drawings of the French taking obelisks "home".
This was the trip where I saw the original Psycho at the Fox Theater. Sponsored by TCM, the entire program was a throwback to cinema days of yore. There was live organ accompaniment as we sang old tunes for the pre-show: "Yes, sir, that's my baby / No, sir, I don't mean maybe..." There was a short before the main feature - coincidentally, the Looney Tunes "What's Up, Doc?", a snippet of which I had watched just the previous night when my aunt introduced me to Peter Bogdanovich's What's Up, Doc?. And let us not forget: Janet Leigh herself was there, live, on stage, for an introduction and Q&A (oddly, what I remember most is not just her talking about how sweet and easy Alfred Hitchcock was to work with, but how her co-star and Hitch's daughter, Pat Hitchcock, would tell her how frightened classmates and teachers looked when he picked her up from school). Then, the film itself, a masterpiece. I had seen it a couple times before at home, but you truly have not lived until you've seen it on the big screen. Everything is more horrifying. Did I skip a shower that night? Of course I did. Did I hesitate before going up the stairs, sure that Martin Balsam's fate also awaited me? Baby, I had to turn on all the lights before mounting the first step. And this was before digital projection was a thing, so the silver screen was truly silver.
Naturally, there were other movies and television shows. No Time for Sergeants and the aforementioned What's Up, Doc?; Auntie Mame, which became a perennial for me, one I introduced many friends to, I've even seen some revival screenings in cinemas, it is one of my all-time favorite movies; a glimpse at a VHS cover at the video rental store turned me on to Freaks, which I found and rented and fell in love with when I got back to Florida.
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| Honestly, my auntie did |
And then there was Daria, which had its season premiere the same night as the Psycho screening. Aunt Jenny, helpfully, recorded the whole thing, including the two-hour marathon that played beforehand and half of the follow-up program: Making the Video for Janet Jackson's "Doesn't Matter" from The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps. I still have the VHS. Very gracious when one remembers this was Aunt Jenny's birthday weekend. To celebrate, we had tea at a traditional tea room - was it Mary Mac's, or am I misremembering? - friends of hers visited, and the day ended with a (homemade by one of the said friends?) coconut cake. I know she had fun doing the rest of it, too, but one can't overstate how much thought she put into making this trip meaningful and enjoyable for me and my mother.
Our last night, the moms went to bed while my cousin Carl and I stayed up late in the basement and read out loud Paddy Chayefsky's The Hospital. We stopped when 11-year-old me came upon the phrase, "It is nipple-clear that she is braless." Did we move on to Marty, or did we just chat about the Beatles, or both? I think both. We then listened to a Jesus Christ Superstar highlights CD featuring Claire Moore. Then dawn broke and it was time to leave...
Elsewhere at the movies...
