Posts Tagged ‘snow’

1. Gropey – This all-hands dwarf couldn’t stop touching his fellow actors and was #metoo-ed off the set
2. Swiftie – This dwarf was always trying to shake it off
3. Mucousy – A real drip. Usually found quarantining w/Sneezy.
4. Phony – George Santos dressed as a dwarf
5. Limey – An Englishman dwarf who developed scurvy
6. Needy – A clinging little guy who suffered from abandonment issues
7. Blitzen – One of Santa’s reindeer that briefly got mixed-up with the Dwarfs.
8. Rashful – Poor little shy guy suffered from eczema
9. Dock – This other “Doc” enjoyed boating and would never come to work
10. Chang and Eng – Siamese dwarfs. Disney only paid them as one dwarf unit, but they demanded to be paid as 2 people even though they were attached at the hip. So they split – kinda.
11. Alky – Always drunk on the set and was let go. Later got a job as a Munchkin.
12. Specificity – He was punctilious, fastidious and precise. A real pain-in-the-ass.
13. Homey the Dwarf – A little too hip for his own good. He had one of those overly elaborate hip-hop handshakes that went on for like 2 minutes.
14. Stupido – An Italian version of Dopey. Always asking women, “Won’t you dunce with me?”
15. Tom Cruise – C’mon, he’s not that little. Give him a break.
16. Spacey – Smoked doobies on the set. Always forgot his lines. Very cool little person however and was the only one who could keep up  with Homey the Dwarf’s complicated 2-minute handshake.
17. Hunky – A sexy dwarf fireman who had his own mini-calendar. Not so much beefcake as he was vealcake
18. Dinky – Was TS (too small). Was actually a very rare “Toy Dwarf.”
19. Boney – Appeared as a Mexican skeleton in one of those Día de Muertos scenes
20. Snarky – It was one snide comment after another with Snarky. Would often remark to politically incorrect tall people that, “Hey, I can call us midgets, but you can’t call us midgets.”
21. Filthy – Hygiene issues caused him to be escorted from the set. In later years, Filthy was the inspiration for Charles Schulz’s Peanuts character “Pig Pen.” He lived off those residuals for years. When asked what he thought of Filthy, Schulz remarked, “He stinks. Wonderfully.”

“Holy holiday on ice, Batman,” exclaimed 9-year old David Hardiman, upon hearing the jolliest words of the holiday season. It was 6:30 in the morning and I’d waited breathlessly in paralytic anticipation next to the radio for what seemed like an eternity, but was probably about the time it takes for a snowflake to fall lazily to earth. This unexpected Snow Day electrified my body with ripples of sheer joy, causing me to shimmy down the hallway in a funky celebratory gyration – like the way Steph Curry does after swishing a spectacular trey.

 

Ode to Joy for this Snow Day – Well at Least Owed to Somebody I Suppose

For my snow day good fortune I felt a great debt of gratitude to somebody or something. This bonus day, this meteorological windfall, this unexpected gift of the Magi was way better than frankincense, myrrh or gold. It was the pinnacle of pre-pubescent happiness. And when I think of the small world I inhabited in the early 1970’s, I’m surprised I even fit into it. But fit I did, and some experiences were tailor made for me. Case in point: a sweet and dearly unearned school “snow day” – or as we called them back in the days of the Ice Capades, a “Holiday on Ice.”

 

When those cheery words “All Syracuse public schools are closed” were broadcast over the airwaves from on high, all public school pupils were elated, and all the pupils’ pupils were dilated. This eye-opening experience allowed us to see our way clear to a sensuous morning of deep, cozy hibernation nestled in our beds, followed by a strenuous afternoon of deep, snowy celebration sledding with our friends.

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As it was, we were already knee-deep in juvenile joy because the brawny forces of nature had defeated the bureaucratic powers of mandatory school attendance. Truant officers would have to find someone else to hassle today, because when afternoon came we’d be chest deep in snow drifts – and that’s no drift. I mean, and that snow drift was huge.

 

In my little 9-year-old way I realized that when mounds of the white stuff triggered a school closing, it was a kind of “white privilege” that everyone could share in equally. Snow: the equal opportunity precipitate.

 

My early Christmas present was given me by WNDR’s “Dandy” Dan Leonard – 1260 AM on your radio dial. His unctuous radio inflections are imprinted on me like a tattoo I can’t remove. The larger point however, was that there’d be no school on this fiercely-snowing, traffic-snarling Tuesday in the arctic tundra masquerading as the city of Syracuse, NY, and I couldn’t have been any happier if Marcia Brady had asked me to a sleepover. Read the rest of this entry »