av geeks: the modern housewife

September 29 movie: AV Geeks: The Modern Housewife. This AV Geeks performance was in Hillsborough, which apparently does a "Last Fridays" thing once a month. Last Friday seems to be exactly like the First Fridays in other towns: stores stay open late, there's a band, outdoor food vendors, people playing chess and kids drawing in chalk on the closed part of the street. And they had an AV Geeks show in the Masonic Temple. Which was a little weird in theory, but in reality it was a pretty decent venue. The chairs weren't comfy, but the display was good. I would rank the Masonic Temple better than Kings in Raleigh (which has smokers and an incredibly crappy screen, and a long drive for me) but not as good as the Documentary Center in Durham (which has nice chairs, a good display screen and no smoking, plus it's about 10 minutes from my house).

The show was great. It rivals the safety series (what was that one called? Safety Last?) for the best AV Geeks performance I've seen. There wasn't a dud in the bunch; every film was hysterical. I had two favorites: first, a short film from the early 60s that encouraged women to wear perfume. Produced by Avon, it featured a woman drenching herself and her home with more perfume than I would have thought possible. All over her body, sprayed on her hair, in her lotion, bath oil, delicate laundry, drawer sachets, even sprayed into the air before a party. She made me think of the scary BPAL slatherers. Not to single out BPAL wearers, I'm sure every perfume line has people who overuse it. I only know about the BPAL slatherers because that's what I wear. One person on the BPAL forum claimed that she goes through a 5 ml bottle in 3 to 5 days. Just to provide some context, my favorite scent is Dorian. I wear it more often than any other single scent. I bought a 5 ml over a year ago and have used about half a bottle. She must be applying at least 50 times more perfume per day than I am. I'm so glad I don't work in the same building as her! (There is someone in the HKB building who slathers perfume to such a degree that we can't ride the elevator if she's been on it recently. When we get a "stinky perfume" elevator we send it on and wait for the next one.)

Anyway, my other favorite short at AV Geeks last night was "Freeze-in." It was a motivational film by Sears, for Kenmore freezer salesmen, based on Laugh-in. It had a couple of the actors from Laugh-in, Artie Johnson and Judy Carne, and was shockingly unfunny. So unfunny that it ended up being really, really funny. Skip only showed us a couple of minutes but I wish he had showed the whole thing. I might have to buy the DVD.