Hibernating Beauty

As I look down at the world from my parapet here atop Morehead Heights, waiting for the delivery van from The Liquor Barn to arrive, these are some of my current observations:


This week Disney DVD released a new edition DVD of its 1959 animated classic Sleeping Beauty. This has created a bit of a crisis for Little Dougie. You see, he has the 2003 release 2-disc "Special Edition." The 2003 release says, right on the packaging, "The Ultimate Fairy-Tale In The Ultimate Format!" It has "An innovative digital restoration," and "All-New state-of-the-art digital picture and sound."



So now comes today's release in, apparently, The Post-Ultimate Format, featuring a restoration of the restoration, that makes the 2003 restoration "Look like raw sewage spewed from under a zoo for digestively-diseased animals!" Roy Disney appears on a trailer for this release saying, "Once you have seen Sleeping Beauty in this new, enhanced, engorged, and restored digital restoration and anti-diluvian resurrection edition, with bonus extras, extra extras, extra bonus extras, and bonus extra bonuses, you would only use your 2003 DVD release to wipe the shit from your ass, except shit deserves better."


So Dougie can't decide if he should pony up another $14 for a 75-minute movie he already has a spectacularly good DVD of. Admittedly, one of the extras on the new release is a spell that, when you hit "Play" on the extra menu, it conjures up the ghost of Eleanor Audley in your living room, or where ever you happen to be when watching it, for you to ask Disney-approved questions of as you enjoy the movie. Just don't bring up working with Lucy.


You see, for his 9th birthday, Little Dougie got taken to see Sleeping Beauty in its original release, at The Fine Arts Theater in Beverly Hills, in 70mm Technorama and stereophrantic sound. He loved the movie, and came out of it knowing exactly what he wanted to be when he grew up. He wanted to grow up to be Maleficent!


Well, who could blame him? There are drag queens aplenty in his life, but Maleficent is a Dragon Queen. She's a Queen (of Evil, natch!), and she's a dragon! She wears cool looking robes, she parties day and night with some little devils and demons, she ropes in handsome princes and keeps them chained up as sex slaves in her dungeons (Until some buttinski little fairies let them out. Meddlers!), and she makes great entrances! This is Dougie's Dream Lifestyle!

Which may help explain why, the first time Little Dougie glimpsed Morehead Heights, my luxurious movie star mansion lodged ever-less-firmly astride massive Tumescent Tor, he shrieked - I mean exclaimed,"Oh my God, it's Maleficent's Castle!" You see, it is. My house was used for both the exteriors and the interiors of Maleficent's Castle in Sleeping Beauty. Walt said that my house had a "Uniquely 2-dimensional quality." In fact, he said my house was "Such a cartoon," he had to use his multi-plane camera to fake a three dimensional look to the live shots.

I was originally cast as Maleficent. Long-time fans, mine and Disney's, know that I played the Wicked Queen in his Snow White sequel, 7 Brides for 7 Dwarfs, so it should be no surprise that, when Walt needed his most evil queen of all, once it was clear that Darryl Zanuck would not release Clifton Webb to play the role, that they should come to me next.

Here I am being tested for the role in full make-up and costume. Sonja Henie played the dragon, only they hadn't worked up the make up or costume for the dragon yet, which is why Sonja is in her street clothes and normal face in this test shot.

It didn't work out for me to play the role. For some reason, whenever I put on the costume, it made me extremely horny! It was so pronounced, you could see it in the picture! Now, I was born horny and will die horny (assuming I ever die at all, and the jury is still out on that. I am, after all, a Screen Immortal!), but being so horny that it distorts the silhouette of my turban into that of a rampant bull created certain problems when working at Disney Studios. They were not the most sex-friendly studio in town. Nor was there a wet bar on the set. (I had to go to Walt's Office for a drink!) I was told to keep away from The Mousketeers. It was always "Leave Bobby alone! Hands off of Cubby! Whose lipstick stains are these all over Annette's training sweater?" Finally I was fired, after an incident involving tail feathers (not mine!), some bird-brained behavior, and some very lousy extemporizing by Huey, Dewey, and Louie. And they sure as hell weren't Mousketeers, so what's the beef? (Oh Dewey, Dewey, Dewey. I've never forgotten that magic thing you used to do with your bill!)

Mallufulah was never to be. Eleanor Audley got the role, but I never sought revenge. The poor woman did a lot of episodes of I Love Lucy. That's punishment enough for anyone. OJ better hope for more leniency.

But now, from out of The North, comes a new Maleficent, bane of moose, wolves, and unmarried horny teenagers, Russian expert, and one of the few who recognize the truth that dinosaurs and humans co-existed, as I have demonstrated in my dinosaur trilogy: 1,000,000 Years Ago, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Block, and Jurassic Tart, though, according to Ms. Palin, that first movie couldn't have taken place earlier than 10,000 Years Ago.

Sarah "Welcome to the 13th Century" Palin is truly Presidential timber. She's from Big Timber Land, where The Big Bad Wolf gets shot by Soccor Moms from helicopters piloted by Joe Six-Pack, and sometimes his half-Injun brother, Joe Two-Six-Packs. Good Lord; she was unknown a month ago, and now she has dropped more catch-phrases and catch-words into The American Lexicon than a whole season of Saturday Night Live in the mid-1980s:

"We're Mavericks!"

"You Betcha!"

"Soccor Moms and Joe Six-Packs."

"Victim Pays for Her Own Rape Kit."

"I'm an outsider."

"Media Filters."

"Gotcha Questions."

"Abstinence Only."

"Stupidity is Non-Elitist."

"Can I call ya Joe?"

"I know a gay person - well not 'know' in the Biblical sense, and all Real Sense comes from The Bible, so I know many gay people, I've just never met any."

"Main Street Values."

"Knowin' Stuff is over-rated."

"Barack Obama is BFFs with a Terrorist/Former Chicago Citizen of the Year."

I do look forward to the day, it must be soon, when Sarah Palin pricks her finger, perhaps on The Needle of Truth, and goes back into hibernation through the next Ice Age (Global Anti-Warming), until reawakened by Prince Nutjob Successionist as he lays on her True Love's First Abstinence.

For True Love Conquers Brains!

Cheers darlings.