The Kids in the Hall

I did not have complete control of the TV remote until I was a senior in high school. My brother was finally away in college and my parents got a second television, moving the first one for their own personal viewing into the living room where the climate was a bit more stable. I had free reign of the basement with the BIG TV and was finally allowed to have it on while I worked on my senior art projects, which required a big table and solitude. In a way, that was when I developed my lifelong joy of watching TV while I work.

Unlike most teens, however, I did not just leave the channel on MTV or VH1. I was all about Comedy Central and Bravo, which had aired mainly indie movies and no reality shows. At the time, Kids in the Hall, a sketch comedy show comprised of five men, was knee deep in its popularity and had the coveted prime airtime of 9PM. I started watching it without paying much mind, occasionally remarking to myself, “boy that was a weird sketch” or “those men look bizarrely beautiful in drag.” I just chalked it up to some weird Canadian humor and left it at that. But the sketches were so outrageously charming and infectious that I decided to give it another chance, and then another, until I was a huge fan. As it wasn’t customary for my BFF (also named Irene) to hang out with me on weeknights, I taped the episodes and showed it to her on the weekend, and she, too, became a lifelong fan. Later, when we were both in college–she in Boston and I in Manhattan–the comedy troupe did a live performance at the Academy and I secured tickets for us and she made a special effort to come back into town for it, such were the devotions we had for this show.

I have been wanting to do a Kids in the Hall set for so long, but there were too many memorable characters to choose from. Just a few years ago, when I was visiting Irene and her family, her husband mentioned something about creating a set of dolls featuring all the characters we liked as children. That notion stayed with me and then, after seeing a VHS tape, everything clicked into place. My friend and I have watched so many shows and movies together on VHS tapes. Her parents had a grand video library–they were more organized, however, with a single movie for each individual tape, whereas mine were more chaotic. How many movies, shows, music videos I loved were crammed into a single tape? I knew the answer when my parents were moving and volunteered me to sort it all out.

I have made many “shake ’em out” sets in the past with a large doll as the storage for the myriad mini ones inside. Instead of a doll this time, I created a facsimile of a VHS tape, which was a nightmare…let’s just say it had something to do with me not being so good with math. I would also like to thank my friend Doug for hooking me up with the labels. The Kids in the Hall cast were one of the best group of men playing drag. They portrayed their female characters justly and all of them, and I mean all of them, could really pass for real women when in costume.

It was hard, but I narrowed it down to some of the more memorable recurring characters: (left to right) Buddy Cole (Scott Thompson), Mr. Tyzik the Headcrusher (Mark McKinney), Cabbage Head (Bruce McCulloch), Hecubus (Dave Foley) and Sir Simon Mulligan (Kevin McDonald)

The female counterparts are: Cathy (Scott Thompson), Kathie (Bruce McCulloch), The Chicken Lady (Mark McKinney), Jocelyn (Dave Foley), and Darcy Pennell (Kevin McDonald)

This set was created for my BFF’s birthday. I figured what with the both of us sprinting toward our senior citizen discount cards, we ought to have a little keepsake of what had been such a big part of our youth!

Side note: This wasn’t the first time I made Kids in the Hall dolls. Back in college, when I didn’t have cable television or VCR in my apartment and had to wait until I was visiting my parents in order to watch the reruns, I made do with sewing little dolls of THE ENTIRE COLLECTION OF CHARACTERS they portrayed across 5 seasons out of panty hose and scrap fabric. There were so many of them that I finally had to throw them all out due to a lack of storage. Not a single photo of them were taken either, so their existence were limited to my classmates who’d watch me sew them during break at SVA and my BFF, whose memories of them might have been compromised by other more important things in her life.

Squid Game

I hadn’t planned on watching Squid Game when it first appeared on Netflix. I kept hearing great things about it and then my brother, who knows my taste in movies and things very well, sent me a rare text demanding that I give it a go. I’m glad I did because it was one of those shows I had to keep myself from binging so the novel experience of watching it for the first time could last. I spent several days living in the violent and very upsetting Squid Game universe. As soon as I laid my eyes on the Killer Robot Girl I knew I had to paint the set.

The show is about 456 people who are deeply in debt to play a series of children’s games for a chance to earn a huge cash prize. Sounds innocent, right? WRONG! It’s far more sinister and horrific than what the players had originally thought. The show is rife with symbolism with an unwavering motif of how the wealthy control the masses.

As there are far too many characters to fit into a traditional nesting doll set, I decided to make a “shake ’em out” or a “Trojan Horse” set. These sets often allowed me to defy the laws of physics, so I went out of my way to look for accessories to make the entire Squid Game experience.

First up is the Killer Robot Girl, which was an easy one to paint, but I had trouble deciding on how to make her little pigtails. In the end I sculpted it, having an absolute horrible time but they’re done and dusted.

Next, I picked the essential characters: Main guy, Gi-hun (456), his childhood friend Sang-woo (218), Sae-byeok (063), Ali Abdul (199), Il-nam (001), Frontman, Jun-ho, and the guards. And then I decided to add the baddie Deok-su (101), the crazy Mi-Nyeo (212), and the adorable Ji-yeong (240).

Gi-hun, Sae-byeok, Sang-woo, Jun-ho, Frontman, Salesman

Il-nam, the guards, Ali Abdul, Deok-su, Mi-Nyeo, Ji-yeong

As with my side projects, this one took about six months to execute. Every night I looked forward to making a little bit more progress than the last.

As for the accessories, I spent some time tracking down these miniature tins to create the Dalgona Challenge, wherein if the contestants break the paper thin honeycomb treat, they are executed on the spot. The business cards were a lot easier to source, but I had trouble initially finding the right size marbles and bag that will fit into the doll. In the end, everything came together.

While I was emailing my brother, I decided to make two more totems to represent the remaining games: Tug of war and the hopscotch game involving tempered and non-tempered glass steps on a (gulp) bridge. For the uninitiated, you can guess where the loser ends up.

Apparently, if you are to ring the phone number on the card, you will reach a bakery somewhere in South Korea!

Top That!

I’ve always referred to the 1989 debacle “Teen Witch” as “Top That” because of the epic cheese rap off between the lead’s BFF Polly and the Vanilla Ice wannabe in the middle of a deserted suburban neighbourhood. The movie, when I first watched on TV, was met with sheer disbelief due to the out-of-nowhere musical numbers, the fact that it never made it known if it was a comedy or a drama or even a straight up musical! It was so bad, and vaguely uncomfortable to watch but that’s most adolescent-hood isn’t it? I can’t even look at pictures of me from that era without shuddering a little.

Teen Witch cast featuring (clockwise from the biggest doll) Louise, Madame Serena, Hunky Boy Brad, the Mr. Weaver VooDoo doll, Richie, Top That guy (I’m sure he has a name in the movie but…) and Polly.

I have been wanting to paint this set for a very long time, and finally got to it after having a session with a tarot card reader. She was someone who had helped me out with a few issues in the past but this time I’d just wanted to see how she was doing because she was undergoing a serious operation. As always, we always ended up chatting before and after the session and “Teen Witch” came up because she had just been on a podcast discussing this very movie. She encouraged me to go ahead and paint it, which naturally took a while to get to but I wanted to make it happen this time as it would be a gift for her for having to go through such an ordeal.

The problem with making dolls from the 80s era are the hairstyles. They are always so voluminous and don’t usually translate well painted on, so I decided, even though my wig-making skills are still sub-par, I should give it a shot. Creating Louise’s hair happened at 2 AM one night after one too many cups of coffee and pain tablets the day I got a cortisone shot on my shoulder so I was a bit cranked to the max, so to speak, fuelled also by the most exciting chapters in Ruth Ware’s One By One on audio. When the dust cleared, there were wisps of hair everywhere, coffee splotches here and there, and me nursing only a few injuries from felting needle related accidents. Still, I wonder if I could ever Top That night.

The Mr. Weaver VooDoo doll. He was a disgusting teacher so this action by Louise the Teen Witch was just.

The Wolf of Wharf Street

Happy Halloween! I am swamped as always this time of year and hadn’t originally planned on doing a Bob’s Burgers Halloween set but I had mistakenly ordered a tiny set of three dolls and decided it shouldn’t take too much time to knock them out after after after hours.

This year features only the Belcher kids in their costumes from season 8’s episode Wolf of Wharf Street where Tina is dressed as “Mom-bie” (a zombie Linda), Gene as a bunch of grapes, and Louise as Anton Chigurh from “No Country for Old Man.” She is so cool. For years I’ve been trying to talk my niece into dressing as a shirime, which is an easy enough costume to make (a body suit and a big styrofoam ball cut in half) but so far no joy. Louise would’ve been all over it!

A shirime is, as far as I know, is a step above a flasher. As you see no naughty bits are really on display as the “winking brown eye” is an actual eye but those who were flashed by a shirime find it upsetting all the same.

Okay. I never said I was a good aunt.

Mini Addams Family

Due to the descending diminutiveness of nesting dolls, I don’t often offer the option of mini sets past six dolls. I did, however, for the Addams Family set because I had been able to procure a smaller sized set of 7 dolls in the past and knew I had one more of those left in my arsenal. Unfortunately, when I went into my supply bin to unearth what I am convinced now is a mythical product because I couldn’t locate it, I spiraled into a mad panic. Now, panicking is not allowed in my sweatshop for more than 2 minutes at a time so I got my act together and quickly pulled out all my bins and attempted to Frankenstein a mini set. “Frankensteining” is a term I use to put together a set of dolls using loose ones sitting at the bottom of these bins. In the past I have successfully put together many sets using this method and the belt sander so I was hoping to do the same here.

The only problem is that in order to put together a set of 7 dolls with this method, the last two dolls had to be extremely tiny, the girth approximate to the other ones, the descending height not incongruous, and that they all fit together. I was so relieved to have found two extremely tiny, specks, really, dolls for the last in the set. The best one is just a hair too big for the sixth doll so I got to work with my Dremel, which died as soon as I turned it on. I had no choice but to use Husband’s one, which is plugged into a coil of messy cords out in the garage. A minute later the speck of a doll skittered out of my hands and promptly disappeared. I conducted a half hearted search and knew exactly how people who were tasked to find a needle in a haystack felt before giving up and went to examine the second and last speck doll.

It was a little tinier than the one I lost, but I was confident I could successfully paint Wednesday Addams on it. Just in case, I made a tiny barrier in my work space and hardly breathed at all whilst painting her. Between painting she is kept in a sealed jar, just in case. I’ve learned my lesson.

So here it is, the set that I’ve painted many times before but made me think a lot about eye and mental health nonetheless.

The Vampires of Staten Island

I have to admit I was a bit trepidatious when I heard there was a TV version of “What We Do in the Shadows” in development. I watched the first episode filled with that very same trepidation. By the very end, I was hooked. I was glad there’s an entirely new cast of characters for the TV series instead of trying to get someone to fill the bloody fangs from the movie. Due to the recent global events, I had forgotten all about season two until someone emailed me and asked me if I could paint a doll modelled after the lone female vampire in the cast. Intrigued, I watched a couple of clips recommended and all my recent troubles were forgotten. Yes, it was this show that had pulled me out of some serious funk. After I painted the Nadja doll, I decided to give the cast a whirl. It took about an eon to finish it since I was only able to paint it at the end of very long work nights but it was worth it!

The guy playing Nandor, Kayvan Novak, is an uber hottie under all that hair and beard! He’s like the English’s version of Jason Momoa. Apart from Matt Berry I don’t know anyone in the cast (except for Mark Porksch, who had a brief cameo in “Corporate”) and I must admit I find all of them delightful.

United We Fall

I was asked to paint some characters from a new sitcom titled: “United We Fall” and here it is! I’d been a huge fan of Will Sasso’s ever since he was on MADtv so it was a thrill to paint him. Same goes for Christina Vidal, who had stolen countless hearts when she played a sassy child actress in “Life with Mikey.” And let’s not even go into how much I squealed upon discovering Jane Curtain was in the cast and that I also got to paint her! I loved Guillermo Diaz in “Half Baked.” Let’s face it, the cast, and the fact I got to paint them, was a dream come true!

I was painting this set around the time when my best friend’s Dad’s health took a sudden downturn and to get through it she and I had a great time talking about some of the fantastic sketches Will Sasso was on, notably the severely edited version of “The Sopranos.” It comforts me that in trying times like this, we always have some sort of joy in our lives to help us through.

The Munsters

This set had been on my wish list for years. It’s been so long that the ink I used to write down the Munsters set idea on was completely faded! Someone had proposed the idea and I quickly agreed. There were several challenges to meet for this set and I’ve met all but one, unfortunately.

First off was Herman Munster’s head. Keeping a round dome wouldn’t do. I decided to go ahead and paint all of him and come up with an idea at a later time. When that time was up, quite on a whim, I popped this little round platform I use to stand the shorter dolls on to paint on his head and problem solved! The Hubs designed and 3D printed the flat top head for Herman and I finished the rest. Done and done!

Woof Woof was not in the original brief, but I remembered wanting that doll as a kid so in he goes.

There was also a request to paint Spot the Munsters’ pet. I vaguely recall just seeing his eyes and mouth emerging from the stairs but don’t know what sort of beast he is. After some intensive research I managed to find some photos. At the time I was also working on some Beastie Boys sets and had neon green paint handy for his eyes! The nose was sculpted on because, like Herman’s head, it wasn’t working out initially.

Lastly, the request was “somehow work 1313 Mockingbird Lane into the set.” I had initially thought about turning the biggest doll into the house but architecturally it would not work. Then I thought about turning it sideways and make it into a box of sorts with roofs and domes sticking up. It’s going to run into a lot of money and time and effort in terms of supplies so I think I’ll have to nix the idea altogether. It’ll be made at another time, I suppose. But it might not be a bad idea to just paint the house on the back of Herman for now.

I did a mock up of the house. This had taken 2 hours to make and it’s not even finished…so I can’t imagine how much more time I’ll need to make the actual house. Perhaps if there are an extra 8 hours in a day…or if I don’t require sleep…!

 

Nadja’s Creepy Doll

These past few months had been the grimmest I have ever experienced in my life…and I had just lost my Dad in December! Like everyone else, my emotions were a roller coaster ride and I had trouble being my best self on a daily basis. I am fortunate enough to live in a self imposed bubble which I had established a decade or so ago so I was doing okay…until the recent events arose.

As usual, there are always unseen helpers out there getting me through great many trials and tribulations in my life and I cannot thank these people enough for what they’ve said or done for me. One such angel had pointed me toward season 2 of “What We Do in the Shadows” TV series and asked if I could paint Nadja’s creepy doll. I got out from my doldrums long enough to have a look and what I saw made me believe that there is something I can focus on other than doom and gloom. Even though I had other things going on I set the time out to paint Nadja’s creepy doll, who, on the show, was inhabited by a ghost and she was just as droll and funny as the actual Nadja. I love her, I love the show, and I had great fun creating a babushka version!

I mean, how can you not want one of your own?

Hedwig Revisited

Boy, I have never experienced so many emotions all in one day and for so many days running and the sad thing is, I am not the only one feeling this way. Nothing unites us globally like a disaster of epic proportions. We are fortunate enough to have the option to stay home and wait this out instead of being out in the wild fending for ourselves and I am glad to see a lot of my friends and their friends doing constructive things with their time while keeping themselves and their families safe.

Right before everything went awry, I was asked to paint another Hedwig and the Angry Inch set, which I did between staring dumbly at the wall and crying and processing all sorts of unfamiliar emotions surging through me. I myself have nothing to worry about since I’m practically a shut in and I have had hoarded supplies in the past as a habit so I didn’t have to go out and grab things I didn’t need and deprive others who truly needs them, but I worry about my family and friends and my husband, who all of a sudden is deemed an essential worker after years of having his job maligned and laughed at by the more elite members of society. I am so proud of my husband for being out there every day making sure everyone gets what they need while making sure those who work under him are protected and looked after and ensuring they all hold on to their jobs in these uncertain times. It doesn’t stop me from giving him a stern talking to when he trails bits of grass and bark all over the house but I am very well aware of his incredible ability to see things in a broad scope and implement it the best he could.

I made this Hedwig set with much sadness, but the music buoyed my spirits once I got going. If nothing else, we’ve always got art, don’t we? Please stay safe because the outcome of this devastation is going to be more spectacular than the life we’ve known before.

This new version of Hedwig has two new additions: The Menses Fair look which I adore because it’s so feminine and the look John Cameron Mitchell rocked when he did the “Return to the Origin of Love” tour a few years back.

And let’s do that. Let’s all return to the origin of love. Use this time in isolation to really think about what important in our lives and what we can do to help ourselves be even better human beings and from there we can help others as well as this planet that had been so good to us for so very long.