Category Archives: doll collecting

October 30, 2015 · 2:04 pm

Page-Filler Friday

I have had a monumentally horrible week. And one of the hardest things about it, is that I cannot tell you about most of it and make fun of it for the sake of healing by humor because, after all, real mental health issues are a very private thing. So, I am left with a mish-mash of free-associations and brainstorming to fill up a page with random and unthinkable thoughts. (When I brainstorm, sometimes it is more like a brain-hurricane.)

Under the general heading of; Things a relatively sane older man who is battling hoarding disorder should probably not do is the new collection I started of Sparkling Disney Princesses. As you can see above, I unfortunately acquired some of the more recent Disney Princesses in sparkle form within the rules for collecting (not costing more than $20 and not spending more than $50 in any one month). I even added a rule to slow down the collecting mania. (No buying sparkle princesses of characters I already have in my Disney Princess collection.) Tiana, Merida, and Elsa add up to only $30 over the last three months.

This is actually Cowboy Mickey in the middle of the bedroom he shares with about 500 dolls and action figures, 1000 books, and the fairy in the foreground who is real.

The thing about the relentless doll collecting is more the space it fills than the money it burns. A few years back I completed a five year stint of buying, selling, and trading action figures in which I learned how to make the obsessive-compulsive-disorder part of it turn out to be profitable. I ran a used-toy and collectible E-Bay store that helped me pay for my mental health issue. Of course, I did not get ahead, as all the profits are tied up in the dolls, action figures, and stuffed toys that I have kept. Still, I learned how to do the thing effectively enough to believe I can effectively do that again if I need to, in spite of the fact that E-Bay got wise and raised their fees to make a $5 and $10 business far less profitable.

I should note that I gave up toy-selling on E-Bay after an irate Barbie collector teed off on me in the comments section over a misidentified 80’s Barbie. (Heck, how was I to know that the date on her neck was a copyright date only and not an indicator that she was sold in the 1970’s?) Lady Godiva Barbie on the wingless Pegasus from the Goodwill store is a new project I put on the project table. There is at least a month’s worth of hair-combing necessary and clearly visible in the picture. Mane and tail alone will take weeks.

And I am not yet done with the notion of collecting beautiful sunrises. The recent rains and cloudiness of Texas wild weather have provided some interesting color and variety to the skyline of the park next to our house. It all helps to keep my mind off of troubling issues that developed from dental pain and attendance woes. This has been a very rough week, but the sunrises keep coming, and I look forward to a new day.

Rehab for Disney Princesses

I am in the habit of rescuing dolls from places like Goodwill. I particularly look for the abused or over-loved toys that may be a little bit marked up or a little bit broken. My work table (which was once-upon-a-time a drawing table before being over-loaded with unfinished projects) is loaded with doll parts and beat-up dolls. In the photo Paffooney you can see two naked dolls that I have been working on. One is a Disney Princess, Ariel the Little Mermaid. The other is a Barbie doll with jointed arms and legs, possibly a ballerina in her previous doll life with molded ballet slippers. The fairy in the foreground is possibly a real fairy that I have coerced into lending me some of her magic to help these poor once-loved toy dolls. We are in the process of rehabilitating them.

Now, you realize that Disney dolls are more cheaply made than Barbie dolls (that is important to understanding the evil corporate empire run by a cartoon mouse primarily for hideously huge profits… I love Disney, but it is evil). Ariel has a funky body that has a signature lopsided waist joint. She is proportioned in ways that make her hard to make clothes for, and definitely hard to dress in Barbie clothes. That was intentionally done because Disney is in competition with Mattel and, besides, the basic Barbie body is patented. Disney can’t just steal the entire design.

The thing about dolls is that they are created for little girls to love. And their plastic princess personalities are kinda air-headed. They become easily addicted to the love they get from little girls, and they continue to soak it in no matter what it does to their bodies or how it shortens their potentially immortal plastic lives. Ariel came to me with marks on her legs from black and red markers, and apparently melted rubber bands. I had to scrape and clean her bendable soft-plastic legs with cleaning alcohol (the same stuff I use to reduce anti-electric build-up on the wheels and rails of model trains). Her hair was a sunburned frizzy mess. It looked exactly like you’d expect an addict’s hair to look. I had to start to combing it with a metal dog comb, and then I was able to use one of the human combs I used on my own hair and beard. Finally, I found a cheap Barbie costume that has an open seam in front to wrap around the and seal with Velcro.

I dressed Ariel by stretching the fabric around her (especially the badly-proportioned bosom… dang that evil, sexist Disney design). I only had to twist her delicate arms slightly out of shape to make the dress that was never intended to fit her actually fit. You can see that I still need to find a way to restore color to her sunburned hairdo, but it is plastic, and if no little girl talks her back into her cycle of addiction, I can probably use acrylic paint. Ariel looks much better and healthier than when I found her. Of course, I learned to do this doll rehab bit from having a daughter who played with dolls in a brutal way that apparently required ritual sacrifice and dismemberment. Let me show you one of her Princess Jasmine dolls I saved successfully from addiction and death.

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Filed under doll collecting, humor, Paffooney

Tagged as doll collecting, doll repair, humor, Paffoonies

August 6, 2015 · 1:52 pm

Making Mickey Happy

I have to admit to being a little blue yesterday. Not “literally blue” because most days I look nothing like my Paffooney portrait here to the left. I said a little blue, as in slightly depressed. Not weeping and roaring with sorrow depressed… more like needing to softly sing to myself sort of depressed. I wasn’t depressed for valid reasons. I was mistaken about the writing contest results. The dental insurance also covers more of what we are going to owe for the privilege of having teeth than I was at first led to believe. So my deep blue hole yesterday was imaginary and all see-through-y if I had been sane enough to look properly. But, Mickeys are like that sometimes, getting all bothered about things they really shouldn’t get bothered about.

So, today, determined to still be sad for a reason, I began to list other things that I could conveniently be sad about. There was school news about an 8-year-old boy in Kentucky being handcuffed by an officer in school and crying because it was hurting him. That social media outrage led me to an article about school discipline. “Schools as Punishing Factories” Reading that made me bitterly depressed. I have witnessed the truth of that article in Texas where teachers can get in trouble so easily when they try to advocate for kids, especially black and Hispanic kids. I have seen talking back to the teacher, throwing spitwads, and disrupting lessons become reasons for students to be escorted away in handcuffs. I like to pretend it is because principals and policemen and community businessmen can be rather stupid sometimes, and not because there is a concerted effort to use the school experience as training for black and Hispanic, as well as poor kids to prepare for the second part of their life, the life they will lead inside prisons for profit. As a teacher who loved kids, even the bad ones, I am truly depressed about this trend in America. I have white friends in both Texas and Iowa that want to tell me that I am the one who is wrong, not the system. Their conservatives beliefs are stronger than any eye-witness evidence I can give them. So… even darker blues and more depression. My contest novel is about a teacher like me trying to fight the way things are and teach the way teaching should be done. I must comfort myself by telling myself that my book will change peoples’ minds and make the problem get solved. If I just lie to myself hard enough, like those friends who tell me “throwing money at the problem of failing schools will not fix the problem” lie to themselves… a lie I know is false but want desperately to believe anyway, then I can make it true.

So, how do I make Mickey happy? Well, luckily Mickey is goofy. I went to Walmart and finally found the doll on sale that I had been searching for. I bought Operetta. the daughter of the Phantom of the Opera to add to my Monster High collection for only $9.95. And Mickey is seriously addicted to doll collecting. It makes him happy and turns him away from despair when other things probably can’t. I am not forgetting about the education fight. Oh, no! Mickey’s dander is up on that. And he will bombard you with his writer wrath about that another day. But forgive me. I need to be happy a little right now. And Mickey needs to play with dolls.

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Filed under doll collecting, humor, Paffooney, teaching

Tagged as discipline in schools, doll collecting, education, humor, paffooney, photo Paffooney, teaching

July 30, 2015 · 3:25 pm

Updating Futzbatter and Foohbah Recipes

Having already written well over a thousand words today on a different writing project, I don’t really have to worry about length on this one. But it is intended to be a scrapbook piece anyway. Thing #1 is the completion of a mini-collection. I now have all three of the main Minions from the new Minions movie. From left to right are Kevin, Stuart, and Bob posing for their picture with their fully pose-able arms in the middle of Cardboard Castle. There are still many many many Minions left to collect, but the first three are the most important bit… I think.

I have now reached the climax of the plot in my Sci-fi novel Stardusters and Space Lizards. I am at that moment in the story when characters, even the most important main characters, may die. I know, in fact, because of the ending that already exists that some of the main characters will die. I am not entirely certain that I know which ones yet. The three I have portrayed here are (left to right again because I am an English speaker/reader and horribly addicted to the same-old same-old) George Jetson, Davalon, and Sizzahl the Lizard Girl. At least one of them has to die for the plot to work out. But which one? I am deeply in love with all three.

My experimental flower wagon has been producing blossoms, but only one at a time. Each one blooms, I take a picture of it, and then the hot Texas sun burns the poor thing to blazes, and I have to wait for the next one to appear.

And finally, I think I need to define the two Mock-Iowegian words in my title today. Mock-Iowegian (as I am sure you are bright enough to already realize) is a made-up language spoken by Iowan farm folks in Mickian fiction where the object is to capture their eccentricities and mock them ferociously because I love them. Futzbatter… noun, meaning things that are fudged or made up on the spur of the moment and mixed together into the overall plan (or impending disaster… depending on the situation). Foohbah… noun, meaning something you tell a fool and expect him to believe, as in a honking-big-fish story, and nobody else will contradict for fear the fool the speaker is trying pull a foohbah on is the hearer, and they don’t want to let on that the foohbah-teller laying the big, fat, hairy foohbah on the group is talking about them, and they are only feebly trying to stop him.

So, there you have it… almost 500 words in spite of myself.

My Own Minions

You know by now, if you have been reading my posts and not just looking at the pictures, that I am a doll… er, action figure… er, toy collector with a raging case of hoarding disorder. So, after finishing the My Little Pony/ Equestria Girl collection, I went on to work on a Monster High collection. I still need at least Draculaura to complete that set. But I stumbled into Minions. I couldn’t resist. “Oh toot jour, Pappagaina!” Stuart said from the shelf. So I had to buy him.

You know how dangerous it is to have Minions. Just look in the background at what happened to the Red Baron when I bought Stuart. Minions can have a bad effect, as well as a funny effect, on the outcome of an evil genius’ evil plots for doing evil-ness. So I started thinking of the dangers. The Minions only cost $8.85 apiece… but of the three main movie Minions, Stuart, Kevin, and Bob… there were already at least three different versions of each. Besides the “bored silly” set, there was a pirate set and a beachwear set. And what if they start issuing all the other minions? You know, Dave and Charlie and all the boys? I could be financially doomed by my need to collect.

And what am I investing in? Here is a close-up of Stuart after taking him out of his mint-in-box to play with him, posing in the cardboard castle atop Mount Blue Blankie where I have built my secret evil genius’ lair. Please don’t tell any would-be heroes or rival despicable villains that my lair is located in my bedroom.

And it turns out that Stuart is fully pose-able. That is going to be even harder to resist. Let me prove he is pose-able.

And after I made the horrific mistake of buying fully pose-able Stuart, I discovered he was not my only Minion. I also found out today that my novel Snow Babies has been assigned to an editor finally. Jessie Cornwell of PDMI LLC was assigned to edit my novel back on June 28th. Of course, I didn’t know about it until today because the email informing me went straight to the spam folder in typical Minion fashion. So now I feel fully ready to face the evil world and try to steal the moon, while actually accomplishing something completely different that I don’t expect. That’s what having Minions means.

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Filed under doll collecting, humor, photo paffoonies

Tagged as doll collecting, humor, Minions, novel writing, photo Paffooney

July 8, 2015 · 2:20 pm

Monster Collecting

Okay, it has been a while since I bought a new doll and was going through a bit of hoarding-disorder withdrawal. Plus a little windfall of cash finally came through. So, I added to the Monster High collection. Here is the new purchase still in the package; (Mint in package- can I resist the urge to take it out and play with it? Probably not.)

This is Lorna McNessie, daughter of the Loch Ness Monster. I am not sure how an aquatic plesiosaur who has managed to live from the Jurassic until the present by hiding in a lake and apparently only eating people no one would ever miss can father a daughter that looks like a scaly blue human girl with a big head, but apparently he did it. Here is a picture of Dad so you can compare and figure it out for yourself.

http://www.dinosaurjungle.com/prehistoric_animals_plesiosaurs.php

This purchase is within the rules of collecting. At $19.95 she comes in at a nickel under the maximum allowable price. She is also the first and only collectible purchased in July. So now I am closer to my goal of collecting all the daughters of famous movie monsters who fill the bizarro surrealist realm know as Monster High cartoons. Here is a look at where the collection now stands (or sits… displayed on the corner of my bedroom dresser next to the drawing table with all the Barbie parts and Goodwill reclamation dolls.);

As you have probably noticed, I have added Frankie Stein as well in the recent past, the daughter of Frankenstein’s Monster. She has surgical seams on arms and legs and neck, along with neck bolts, so one has to question why she is technically the daughter of the Frankenstein’s Monster if she is made of dead girl-parts, sewn together in a laboratory, and re-animated. Wouldn’t that indicate she’s Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster? Oh, well.

I still hope to acquire Dracula’s daughter, Draculaura, and possibly Venus McFlytrap, the daughter of the man-eating plant in Little Shop of Horrors. I am also pretty sure there is a daughter of some ghost-guy or other and the daughter of an evil genii. I don’t know what all is pertinent to this collection. They are somewhat oddball in nature, and I have not watched the animated cartoon (nor am I sure I can stomach it… there is no guarantee it will be a pleasant surprise like My Little Pony).

Here is what they look like naked. This is not intended to prove I am a pervert when I play with my dolls, but this does show the problems I face if I buy Goodwill rescue dolls that need repair or clothing (as most Goodwill dolls do) because their limbs and torsos are unique. You have to have character-specific replacement arms and legs, or be willing to paint the parts. The bean-shaped torsos are a bugbear for making your own clothing. Standard Barbie patterns don’t even come close to fitting, and you have to accommodate things like tails and fins and neck bolts. I may have to buy cheap ones so I can take their dresses apart for patterns. This is why I have never been tempted to collect Bratz dolls. Oh, well, the troubles unique to doll collectors, you know… And besides… I am well past 500 words for today.

Homely Art, Mom-Style

I am assuming, probably incorrectly, that you have seen enough of my art work to come to the conclusion that I am a bit of an artist. Amateur, of course. You have to make money at it to be professional. I used a great deal of my artistic abilities in the classroom as a teacher, and while you come eventually to an appreciation for that small sacrifice, you can’t really call that making money at it. And I am good enough at drawing to know where the mistakes are… the flubs and the flaws and the not-so-happy little accidents (I truly appreciate the genius of Bob Ross, and I know I am not Picasso or Da Vinci… but I can draw better than he ever could.) I know my artistic junk is kitschy junk in so many, many ways. But I believe that some of the best art is homely art… the art you keep in your house… not gallery quality, but irreplaceable to you yourself. And the point of this article (dreamed up while spending some alone time in my octagenarian mother’s house due to illness) is that I got my love of homely art from my mother’s house, the house I grew up in.

These two goofy dinos are an example of what I am talking about. These two revered family art objects were bought as greenware porcelain from a mold at an Austin pottery-art store. Mother fired them in her kiln. I painted them in acrylic. They are now living happy lives in my Mother’s dining room. Oh, and they are made to be displayed together like this;

Most of mother’s art gallery-like house is filled with items just like this. No value to the history of art. Not museum quality. No more important than any other item of homemade functions-more-as-a-token-of-love-for-the-person-who-gave-it artwork.

Let me show you more of the many wonderful grandma-treasures that fill my mother’s house.

This was our Grandma Beyer’s glass doo-dad cabinet that for many years held sacred glass gewgaws and thingamajigs from the the thirties and forties. Mom inherited it and put all new grandma-treasures in it.

The cabinet holds all manner of precious vacation souvenirs, graduation photos of my sisters and brother and I, weird animal salt-and-pepper shakers, candle holders, souvenir plates, Precious Moments figurines, Hummels, pictures of long-gone relatives, and a variety of other things that each has a story behind it, a long and lovely story of years and tears and fears and more years. It is a cabinet full of memories and celebrations. Collectibles and corny joke items. There is no price that ever could be put on it, and one day it will all be given away.

Mom has collections of stuff everywhere. Christmas stuff, Thanksgiving stuff, and stuff on display just because Mom likes it sort of stuff. Much of it is antique simply because the people are old and have kept this stuff long enough to make it antique. It is displayed in every available nook and cranny and corner of the house.

And, of course, what every visitor to Mom’s house most wants to see are the dolls.

She was a very talented porcelain doll maker.

The art that is most important of all in my mother’s house, though, are her greatest and most valuable creations. That would be US.

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Filed under autobiography, doll collecting, humor, photo paffoonies

Tagged as autobiography, doll collecting, Grandma's House, homely art, humor, photo Paffooney

May 19, 2015 · 12:17 pm

Expelling Evil (Part Three)

When last we left the Captain Action Hero Team, they were busy trying to rescue Mickey’s beloved X-Box with the EA Sports Baseball ’04 game that Mickey loves. The Evil Doctor Evil had taken over the library and turned it into an evil lair for his evil minions of Evil. But Captain Carl Action had led his team into the fray and clobbered the Agent in Red with a kiss and the Grammar Nazis with bad grammar. Dr. Evil was feeling foiled.

The pretty Barbie doll (whose name was really City-Style Christie) was captured and at the mercy of Evil Doctor Evil.

Dr. Mindbender had an evil talent for bending minds. He possessed considerable talents of ESP (which here stands for Extremely Stupid Puddlebrains). The poor captive doll was bent to Dr. Evil’s evil will.

Suddenly Mickey’s blog stood on the verge of losing its PG rating (which was already on shaky ground anyway). Then, faithful Max Steele pulled an answer out of his… thin air… urm, yes, that was what I intended to say.

The day appeared to be saved by a good old bop on the bean. It was Captain Carl’s favorite problem-solving solution, as it is for practically all action heroes… definitely the ones with the hollow plastic heads in Mickey’s Action Figure Collection. But one important task still remained un-done.

Tune in next time for the only “Fight of the Century” in which Manny Pacquiao can’t possibly disappoint you!

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Filed under cartoons, doll collecting, humor

Tagged as action figures, Captain Action, cartoons, doll collecting, goofiness, humor, playing with dolls

May 17, 2015 · 1:52 pm

My Mother’s Dolls

Tom Sawyer without the straw hat, as created by Lois Beyer

You may already know about my doll-collecting mania. You may have already called the mental health people to come take care of the problem, and they just haven’t arrived at my door yet with the white coat that has the extra long sleeves. But you may not know that my mother is a doll-maker and has something to do with my doll-collecting hoarding disorder.

In the early 1990’s my mother and I put our money together and bought a kiln while we were visiting my sister’s family out in California. It wasn’t the most expensive model, but it wasn’t the cheapest, either. We both had enough experience with ceramics that we didn’t want to buy a burning box that was merely going to blow our porcelain projects to kingdom come. Mother had doll-making friends in Texas who taught her about firing greenware and glazing and porcelain paint and all the other arcane stuff you have to know to make expensive hand-made dolls. Now, honestly, at the start we could’ve made some money at it selling to seriously ill doll collectors and other kooks, but we were not willing to part with our early art, and by the time we were ready to do more than just have an expensive hobby, everyone who would’ve paid money for the product was making their own. So dreams of commercial success were supplanted by the hobbyist’s mania that made more and more charming little things to occasionally display at the county fair.

The two dolls I have left to share on my blog from that era were both crafted by my mother. She lovingly fired the porcelain body parts, painted the faces by hand, and created the wardrobe on her Singer sewing machine. I made some dolls too, but never with the wondrous craft and care that made my mother’s dolls beyond compare.

Tom Sawyer was originally a boy doll who was supposed to be able to hold a model train in his hands. My mother had the pattern for the little engineer’s uniform and hat that she would use on another doll instead. He is named after the Tom Sawyer clothing pattern that my mother bought and sewed together to dress him in. He has a cloth and stuffing body underneath his clothes together with porcelain head, hands, and bare feet.

The other doll I have left to brag unctuously about is a doll named Nicole after the niece my wife and I have whom this doll bares a striking resemblance to. She displays a beautiful little girl’s sun dress with quilted accent colors that my mother sewed from scratch with the help of a pattern she was truly fond of and used more than once.

These dolls were gifts to my wife and I, presented shortly after my mother bought out my share of the kiln when she retired and moved back to the frosty land of the Iowegians. I haven’t kept them as thoroughly dusted and cobweb-free as they deserve because I have been a somewhat lazy and slovenly son… but I do love them almost as much as (and sometimes more depending on recent behavior) my own children. (After all, porcelain kids rarely make a mess, overspend allowances, or hog the television too much.)

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Filed under doll collecting, humor, photo paffoonies

Tagged as artwork, autobiography, doll collecting, doll-making, dolls, humor, photo Paffooney

April 10, 2015 · 12:24 pm

Completing a Collection

I was foolish enough to share with you all in my post “The Quest for Pinkie Pie” that my insane Hoarder’s Disorder has led me into a world full of Bronies

This is a really terrible first fan art of My Little Pony. I gave Pinkie Pie insane cereal killer eyes, and Rainbow Dash is too fat to fly.

(seriously maladjusted men who watch My Little Pony; Friendship is Magic and love it, making fan art and buying dolls). I have been on a quest to put together a complete set of MLP’s and an accompanying set of Equestria Girls (ponies put through a magic portal that turns them into teenage mutant horse-girls).

I have been making steady progress since my mother sent me $50 in a gift card for Christmas and I blew it all on ponies. I would like to report that I have finally brought this terrible mental illness thing to a proper conclusion. (And, no, I did not explain the problem to a psychiatrist or anything.) I completed the collection. Now I no longer have to buy any more of the terrible things.

I was able to find Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy both together on the bargain shelf at Walmart. Both were less than fifteen dollars. Together they didn’t bust my monthly maximum. So I put together the entire set of twelve and the compulsion has begun to dissipate.

Now the only thing left to do is play with them.

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Filed under doll collecting, humor, Paffooney

Tagged as colored pencil, doll collecting, humor, My Little Pony, Paffoonies, photo Paffooney

Category Archives: doll collecting

Page-Filler Friday

Rehab for Disney Princesses

Making Mickey Happy

Updating Futzbatter and Foohbah Recipes

My Own Minions

Monster Collecting

Homely Art, Mom-Style

Expelling Evil (Part Three)

My Mother’s Dolls

Completing a Collection

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