When WWE Was WWF

As a child growing up in the 80s with an older brother, I would watch “Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling” on Saturday mornings as a warm up to the real thing almost immediately thereafter (rounded out by G.L.O.W) before changing out of my pajamas and starting my day. Saturday morning was the only time my mother would allow us to watch TV so my brother and I would abuse this decree to the max. It was quite fortunate also that my mother happened to be a Chinese language arts teacher and had decided to retain our linguistic prowess herself, or else we would’ve had to forfeit our Saturday morning toon time in a Chinese language classroom instead like so many of our Asian peers did. I can’t say my mother’s efforts allows me to speak Mandarin as fluently as I’d like, but I am grateful for being able to soak up as much 80s pop culture as I could back in the day because it’s quite useful in my line of work these days, largely because I know what people are talking about when they come to me with proposals.

Like always, I am always thrilled to receive emails from people requesting sets from my childhood, but this latest one took the cake. I was asked to paint the “old school” WWF stars so I was beside myself, thinking: Junkyard Dog! Andre the Giant! Roddy Piper! Mr. Fuji! Wendy Richter! The Iron Sheik! But I must’ve been A LOT older than the requester because aside from Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair, I only vaguely remember the rest of the wrestlers in the lineup since by the time these guy came around, I was already a teenager and was busy smuggling V.C. Andrews books into my room. Still, this was a fun set to paint and I am now moving things around on my schedule just so I can paint the wrestling stars from my childhood.

This set features Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, The Undertaker, The Ultimate Warrior, and the ever so sexy Bret Hart who probably goes through a gallon of Soul Glo a week.

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Edward Scissorhands

Although Edward Scissorhands isn’t technically a “Christmas Movie,” I always lump it in with my usual cache of holiday binge this time of year. And why not? I now live in a place where snow is non-existent, sort of like in the movie.

This set features Edward, Kim and Peg Boggs, Jim the hoodlum boyfriend, the Inventor, and a mini topiary dinosaur.

Well, Merry Christmas, wherever you are!

A Little Shop of Horrors Reprise

Many many many moons ago I made a Little Shop of Horrors set with a non-working Audrey II. By non-working I mean it’s basically just a Papier-mâché plant that won’t open. It’s been haunting me ever since the set was completed. Every now and then I catch myself looking up at the moon and thinking about what I can do to make it even more extra.

This is the older version:

I will admit that I had a lot of fun papier-mâché-ing Audrey II. It still has a place of honor in front of the TV set.

But you know how it is when you’re looking at something online and one thing leads to another (I now know how to fully furnish an underground bunker, thanks to one of my after midnight forays into the interwebs), I found an old Maxwell coffee can, the same one Seymour used in the movie when he first bought Audrey II and things sort of spiraled from there.

This is the new and improved Audrey II. The plant structure itself, I’m happy to say, now opens. Most of the leaves and vines are papier-mâchéd. As this is one of those sets I constructed after after hours, I more or less use what was sitting around to make the greens, including utilizing hardanger fabric meant for embroidery, wires I filched from the Hubs, and tissue papers saved from something someone sent me. I suppose years of working as a public school art teacher has taught me to successfully scavenge for supplies!

As the plant now opens, I can happily put in the core cast from the movie. Here’s Seymour Krelborn and Chiffon, Crystal and Ronette…

…along with Audrey, Dr. Orin Scrivello D.D.S., and of course, Mr. Mushnik.

The Ultimate Babs Johnson Set

I’m the first to admit I’m not the most fashionable person in the world. Once, when I was the dance teacher, a job that I believed was handed down to me out of pity and desperation, the only thing that got me up in the morning was the knowledge I could spend the day in sweat pants. Nevertheless, I do appreciate fashion and what people can do with bits of fabric and a fabulous sense of color. This is why every now and then I feel the need to paint something fashion-y and what’s better than going through “Pink Flamingos” and examining each outfit Babs Johnson wore piece by piece? This is the outcome.

Naturally, what with Babs being the “filthiest person alive” and all, the seventh “doll” is a pile of poo.

Divine Madness

It’s always fun knocking out a Divine set, mostly because she was such a colorful entertainer. This one features dolls shaped just like my favorite rotund entertainer!

The best part of doing this set is making those cotton candy wigs!

Happy Halloween!

I never have to think long and hard for my annual Halloween sets. The list is a mile long and growing. I am thrilled that I actually had the time this year to make this particular set, the main doll being the Cenobite from “Hellraiser.”

I sort of wanted this one to be more about the supernatural killers, but I can’t help lumping Captain Spaulding from “House of 1000 Corpses” in here. These ones are so much fun to paint. Maybe next year I’ll get around to painting an all-female killer cast…or even one featuring children! The possibilities are endless!

Happy Halloween!

The Divine Dynasty

Every now and then I like to shake things up so I’m always on the look out for new and unusual nesting doll-related objects. I had my eyes on this particular set for a really long time now but I never got a chance to really think about what I could do with it. But like all things, if you leave a nagging problem well enough alone long enough, you’ll eventually come up with a solution. After watching my neighbor, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Divine the first drag superstar, parade in and out of her house in myriad of outfits in just one day, it hits me. I should paint Divine in some of her more memorable costumes!

This white gown IRL is prominently featured in the Divine Museum, which I’d been salivating over ever since I saw photos of it. Whilst creating it, I realized, to my horror, that the skirt I made was a blinding shade of white and didn’t go with the dress at all. I dug through my fabric chest and unearthed the leftover tulle from my wedding garb, which was a preferable shade of off-white, did some ironing and mixed it in with the bleached teeth shade of white tulle and thus all is once again well with the world.

Unlike the traditional nesting dolls, this one opens up to reveal three individual dolls, all of them are a fun sized 2.5″. It’s still large enough for me to make a little wig for the Babs doll but I fear that the ones after these ones might be a bit problematic. I decided to feature Divine from movies such as “Pink Flamingos,” “Female Trouble,” and “Polyester.”

Well, I said to myself, I have to tools, I have the technology…well, mainly just the tools really, and got to work on these guys. I had to trim off a bit more hair off my .0000 brush in order to get the eyeliner down. As for the Babs dolls, a bit of clay and a toothpick did the trick just fine.

It’s a miracle I didn’t lose these dolls I like normally do!

And there you have it. I may have to try this one again!

The Room

When Tommy Wiseau decided to turn a script he wrote into a movie, “The Room” propelled itself to the Worst-Movie-Ever-Made Stratosphere and received the kind of cult status that can only make the viewers believe that you should never let normality stand in the way of your dreams. I loved “The Room” in all its horrific glory, the book “The Disaster Artist” about the making of the movie by one of its co-stars, and I’m sure I would really enjoy the new James Franco movie based on the book when it hits the theaters!

There are far too many random characters in this movie to make it into this set, but here are the five definitive characters to start with: Johnny, Oh Hi Mark, Johnny’s Future Wife Lisa, Denny, and of course, Lisa’s Mom Claudette, whose cancer was only mentioned once in the film but quickly forgotten as the drama and melee ensues.

Who knows? One day I’ll get around to adding Chris R and Michelle and Michelle’s boyfriend and Peter and that other guy who replaced Peter halfway into the film…

Super Mega Big Lebowski Dolls

Growing up, I was obsessed with Broadway shows and would draw every character, down to members of the chorus, from the performances I loved. How I never managed to do the same with nesting dolls is beyond me, since I do have a drawer filled with loose dolls that can easily be cobbled together to reflect an entire cast from “Hair” or “Assassins” or “Sweeney Todd” or “Jesus Christ Superstar.” I did have in mind to paint every little critter from “The Fantastic Mr. Fox,” but it would be one of those projects that will take forever and a day to knock out.

And then I got a request to paint the entire cast of “The Big Lebowski.” We’re talking the core cast, the secondary cast, the extras, and even a couple of inanimate objects featured prominently in the film. How can I pass this up? I am beyond thrilled to bring this to life!

Set Number One:

This one features The Dude, Jackie Treehorn, Woo the Thug, Francis Donnelly the funeral home director, Younger Cop, Lebowski’s Chauffeur, and Bunny Lebowski’s severed toe with the green nail polish.

Set Number Two:

Here we’ve got Walter, Bunny, Liam (Jesus’ lackey), Dafino, Nihilist’s girlfriend, and porn actress Asia Carrera who appeared in the film as herself playing “Sherry” in “Logjammin’.”

Set Number Three:

Donny with his In-N-Out Burger, Nihilist #1 with the marmot, Marty the Landlord, Malibu Sheriff, Tony the Chauffeur, and the cashier girl in the opening scene.

Set Number Four:

Maude in her “painting harness,” Nihilist #2, Knox Harrington, Maude’s thugs, Saddam Hussein, and the doctor tending to The Dude.

Set Number Five

This is one of my favorite sets because of the wheelchair on Jeffery Lebowski. It also featured Brandt, Little Larry Sellers, Impound Lot Cop, the cabbie who hauled The Dude out of his taxi, and the Older Cop we came out to interview him.

Set Number Six:

The Stranger, Nihilist #3, Smokey, one of the showgirls in the dream sequence, coffee shop waitress, and Gary the Bartender.

Set Number Seven:

This one features Jesus Quintana, The Autobahn Group, Blonde Treehorn Thug upon discovering that The Dude wasn’t, in fact, the Jeffery Lebowski they were after, the Corvette owner who came out to beat up The Dude and Walt after they destroyed his Corvette, Pilar, Larry Sellers’ housekeeper, and the Stacks Pancake House waitress.

Set Number Eight:

This one was a lot of fun to make because it features Arthur Sellers in an iron lung, Dream Sequence Dude, the bowling pro who played an extra in the movie, the REAL Jeffery “The Dude” Lebowski, and the coffee can filled with Donny’s ashes.

Last but not least…

  

It’s a bit daunting seeing all these dolls out on display like this, but I’ve had about four months to work on it. Thank you, Mitch! This was a blast!

Batman: Heroes Vs. Villains

Talk about a blast from the past! When I was given a choice between painting all the different actors who’d played Batman or just the characters from the old Batman TV show, I immediately went for the latter. Are you kidding me? I was obsessed with the old Batman reruns when I was a kid. I remember rushing home each day from school just so I could watch a show which I hadn’t, during my formative years, regarded as campy at all. It was all kinds of illicit too because, as a latchkey kid, I was entrusted with the responsibility of doing my homework and practicing the piano in my parents’ absence. Instead, my afternoons were filled with a mixture of cartoons such as “He-Man” and “G.I. Joe” and “Transformers” (yes, I realize they’re all very male-centric. I had an older brother and one TV set. Choices were limited in such circumstances), followed by some great live action shows such as “Batman” and later “Wonder Woman.” This might explain why my grades were poor and that my piano playing didn’t amount to much, but if I had to do it all over again, I’d choose TV over good grades any day!

The “Heroes” set features: Batman, Robin, Batgirl, and of course, Alfred.

Let’s not forget the Villains, which is: Penguin, Joker, The Riddler, and of course, Catwoman. Meowr!