The Valley Girl Comes to the Valley
Monday, May 6th, 2013
Who can forget such 1980’s classics as Valley Girl, My Chafufeur, or April Fool’s Day? C’mon…show of hands. OK, so almost no one. I do, because they were on frequent rotation on HBO. And I have a feeling there are a lot of others my age who were inundated by these or other similar low-quality-but-fun movies as youthful, impressionable boys. The common denominator among all of these films is that they all were lead by actress Deborah Foreman. She wasn’t just some bit player, she was the star! Read the rest of this entry »
Martin Scorsese’s 1980 film Raging Bull is a movie that just keeps getting better the more times you watch it. I think it was somewhere around the third when I realized just how much of a masterpiece it was, how the period flavors swirled around the intense action, and how every nuance of every character had been perfected. The movie of course is the story of boxer Jake LaMotta, one of the most determined, but self-destructive, men who ever entered the sport of pugilism. Cathy Moriarty played opposite Robert De Niro as his ever-suffering wife Vikki to absolute perfection. She conveyed the part of a sexy and loyal woman who gradually watches her husband turn into a jealous monster. 
The first rule of Mayfield is that you never utter the words: “been there, done that.” No sir. When you get a chance to bask in the presence of actors from Leave It to Beaver, you jump on it and you relish it. So even though I had met both Ken Osmond, who played the world’s greatest slimeball friend Eddie Haskell, and Tony Dow, who was the All-American perfect older brother Wally Cleaver, in the past, there was no way on earth that I was going to let an opportunity to meet them again slip by. So when these two television treasures made an appearance at the Hollywood Show on January 12, 2013, I made sure that I was there to greet them. 
It’s hard to process just how small actor Verne Troyer is, until you get the chance to stand beside him. Troyer, best known for his role as Mini-Me in The Spy Who Shagged Me and Goldmember in the Austin Powers series, stands exactly 2 feet 8″ – but conceptualizing that height in your head isn’t anything like being next to him. And let’s face it, that’s the real fascination with Verne Troyer. At least it’s mine. I was never a fan of any of the Austin Powers films, so the fact that he was in it doesn’t mean much to me. Of course with the phrase “Mini-Me” entering common usage, the character that he played has become somewhat iconic. 
I honestly have no idea how the character of Elvira – this mistress of the dark – seeped into the national consciousness. It’s a mystery to me. To date, I can’t recall seeing one thing that she actually did. Not that there aren’t things. Oh, there’s the guest commentary she did for WrestleMania 2 back in 1986, there are TV specials in which she acts as ‘hostess’: VH-1 documentaries, E! True Hollywood Stories, even a Playboy Halloween special. But I really don’t think I ever saw any of it. Well…maybe the wrestling thing. Of course, Elvira is just a character played by Cassandra Peterson, who even outside of the character has starred in some things too: Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Cheech & Chong’s Next Movie, and even a bit part in the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever. But’s it’s Elvira that has brought her all the fame.