Bikeforums.net is a forum about nothing but bikes. Our community can help you find information about hard-to-find and localized information like bicycle tours, specialties like where in your area to have your recumbent bike serviced, or what are the best bicycle tires and seats for the activities you use your bike for.Stacey
12-01-06, 03:22 AM
I so want to have this mans' children!
A New Chapter of 'A Christmas Story' Unfolds
CLEVELAND -- Add a little snow and a Christmas tree in the front window and the house on W. 11th Street would make a perfect Norman Rockwell cover on a Saturday Evening Post.
By late November, the exterior was resplendent in a two-tone whose paint colors were christened "A Christmas Story" yellow and "A Christmas Story" green.
Inside the frame structure used for one of the most endearing holiday classics, a staircase like the one where the fictional Ralphie Parker modeled those hideous pink bunny pajamas is polished and ready for visitors.
Brian Jones, a 30-year-old San Diego entrepreneur who bought and restored the old house, has tracked down furnishings similar to those in the movie up to and including the kitchen sink.
Jones is betting that the cost of refurbishing the house as depicted in "A Christmas Story" will create enough allure that fans of the cinematic tale will eagerly flock to Cleveland's South Tremont neighborhood to visit. The house opened to public tours Nov. 25.
"It has a good 1940s feel to it," Jones said of the house he first glimpsed in 1983, the year "A Christmas Story" was released.
He was 7 years old at the time.
"It was a favorite at our house," he said, "because it had our family's style of humor."
To dismiss the movie in the Jones home as a mere yarn about a boy and a BB gun was tantamount to blowing off Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" as a tale about a tightwad and a disabled kid.
Jones was drawn to the movie in the manner that '70s nerds were magnetized by "The Rocky Horror Picture Show."
The son of a Navy pilot, Jones won an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy. Upon graduation, he hoped to train as a Navy pilot. At flight school, however, he flunked the vision test.
His parents, sensing his despondency over thwarted dreams, decided to brighten his Christmas by crafting a replica that would remind him of his favorite film. Purchasing a mannequin, they sawed off a leg, fitted the limb with a fishnet stocking and a lampshade, and presented it to him.
Something about the gift convinced Jones that his enchantment with the film's most memorable prop wasn't a passion that he alone experienced.
To test that notion, he began building the lamps in his San Diego condo as he wrestled with what to do with his future. By the time he had assembled and sold 500 lamps, he knew he didn't want to hang around the Navy unable to fly and perhaps assigned as chief helmsman for a minesweeper.
When he learned last year that the Cleveland house used in "A Christmas Story" had gone up for sale on eBay, he bought it for $150,000.
"It was probably worth about $80,000," Jones said as he recently led a nickel tour of the place. "But this is the window Ralphie leans out to shoot Black Bart."
To understand why a 111-year-old Cleveland home could possibly be successful as a tourist destination, one must understand the magic that makes the film a perennial favorite.
"A Christmas Story" was molded from the vignettes of Jean Shepherd, who parlayed amplified tales of his Hammond, Ind., childhood into a successful writing career. Shepherd handled the voiceover chores for the movie, a task that played no small part in its success. Remove Garrison Keillor's voice from "A Prairie Home Companion," and the long-running series might have folded its tent a long time ago.
The movie isn't strictly a tale about one child's Christmas. It is a story that trades upon the memory _ for many of us _ of a certain Christmas. It doesn't matter that our particular Christmas happened 20 years before or after the movie's 1940 setting, because the film is also about quirky, loving family relationships that transcend period. It is an affectionate recollection of daydreams and insecurities in which the minefield of sentimentality is deftly sidestepped by disarming humor. It is about being a kid and wanting something so much that you can almost taste it.
The house is about wistful memories. The gift shop across the street is about cold, hard retailing. The type of 53-inch lamp that Jones once crafted at home is now made in China and retails for $159.99. A string of leg-lamp Christmas-tree lights goes for $24.99. A bar of Lifebuoy soap fetches $3.99. The 1940 Speed-o-Matic decoder pin is $7.99.
To mark the grand opening of the house and gift shop the weekend following Thanksgiving, Jones hosted a reunion of some of the actors from the film. A few of those who played Ralphie's school chums agreed to attend, along with the actress who played the teacher, Miss Shields. Ralphie was conspicuously absent.
"He's mad," Jones said of actor Peter Billingsley. "He doesn't get any royalties off the film. How many times do you think he'll be going somewhere, crossing a parking lot and someone will holler, 'Hey, Ralphie, you'll shoot your eye out'? It has to be mind-numbing."
Billingsley, who most recently appeared in "The Breakup" as Vince Vaughn's bowling-team pal Andrew, has been trying to outgrow "A Christmas Story" for two decades. One day he might.
Brian Jones is hoping that the rest of us won't. Brian Jones, a 30-year-old San Diego entrepreneur who bought and restored the old house, has tracked down furnishings similar to those in the movie _ up to and including the kitchen sink.
Copyright Scripps Howard News Service 2006
Printed from: http://www.wzzo.com (http://www.wzzo.com/cc-common/mainheadlines3.html?feed=104673&article=1539764)
A New Chapter of 'A Christmas Story' Unfolds
CLEVELAND -- Add a little snow and a Christmas tree in the front window and the house on W. 11th Street would make a perfect Norman Rockwell cover on a Saturday Evening Post.
By late November, the exterior was resplendent in a two-tone whose paint colors were christened "A Christmas Story" yellow and "A Christmas Story" green.
Inside the frame structure used for one of the most endearing holiday classics, a staircase like the one where the fictional Ralphie Parker modeled those hideous pink bunny pajamas is polished and ready for visitors.
Brian Jones, a 30-year-old San Diego entrepreneur who bought and restored the old house, has tracked down furnishings similar to those in the movie up to and including the kitchen sink.
Jones is betting that the cost of refurbishing the house as depicted in "A Christmas Story" will create enough allure that fans of the cinematic tale will eagerly flock to Cleveland's South Tremont neighborhood to visit. The house opened to public tours Nov. 25.
"It has a good 1940s feel to it," Jones said of the house he first glimpsed in 1983, the year "A Christmas Story" was released.
He was 7 years old at the time.
"It was a favorite at our house," he said, "because it had our family's style of humor."
To dismiss the movie in the Jones home as a mere yarn about a boy and a BB gun was tantamount to blowing off Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" as a tale about a tightwad and a disabled kid.
Jones was drawn to the movie in the manner that '70s nerds were magnetized by "The Rocky Horror Picture Show."
The son of a Navy pilot, Jones won an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy. Upon graduation, he hoped to train as a Navy pilot. At flight school, however, he flunked the vision test.
His parents, sensing his despondency over thwarted dreams, decided to brighten his Christmas by crafting a replica that would remind him of his favorite film. Purchasing a mannequin, they sawed off a leg, fitted the limb with a fishnet stocking and a lampshade, and presented it to him.
Something about the gift convinced Jones that his enchantment with the film's most memorable prop wasn't a passion that he alone experienced.
To test that notion, he began building the lamps in his San Diego condo as he wrestled with what to do with his future. By the time he had assembled and sold 500 lamps, he knew he didn't want to hang around the Navy unable to fly and perhaps assigned as chief helmsman for a minesweeper.
When he learned last year that the Cleveland house used in "A Christmas Story" had gone up for sale on eBay, he bought it for $150,000.
"It was probably worth about $80,000," Jones said as he recently led a nickel tour of the place. "But this is the window Ralphie leans out to shoot Black Bart."
To understand why a 111-year-old Cleveland home could possibly be successful as a tourist destination, one must understand the magic that makes the film a perennial favorite.
"A Christmas Story" was molded from the vignettes of Jean Shepherd, who parlayed amplified tales of his Hammond, Ind., childhood into a successful writing career. Shepherd handled the voiceover chores for the movie, a task that played no small part in its success. Remove Garrison Keillor's voice from "A Prairie Home Companion," and the long-running series might have folded its tent a long time ago.
The movie isn't strictly a tale about one child's Christmas. It is a story that trades upon the memory _ for many of us _ of a certain Christmas. It doesn't matter that our particular Christmas happened 20 years before or after the movie's 1940 setting, because the film is also about quirky, loving family relationships that transcend period. It is an affectionate recollection of daydreams and insecurities in which the minefield of sentimentality is deftly sidestepped by disarming humor. It is about being a kid and wanting something so much that you can almost taste it.
The house is about wistful memories. The gift shop across the street is about cold, hard retailing. The type of 53-inch lamp that Jones once crafted at home is now made in China and retails for $159.99. A string of leg-lamp Christmas-tree lights goes for $24.99. A bar of Lifebuoy soap fetches $3.99. The 1940 Speed-o-Matic decoder pin is $7.99.
To mark the grand opening of the house and gift shop the weekend following Thanksgiving, Jones hosted a reunion of some of the actors from the film. A few of those who played Ralphie's school chums agreed to attend, along with the actress who played the teacher, Miss Shields. Ralphie was conspicuously absent.
"He's mad," Jones said of actor Peter Billingsley. "He doesn't get any royalties off the film. How many times do you think he'll be going somewhere, crossing a parking lot and someone will holler, 'Hey, Ralphie, you'll shoot your eye out'? It has to be mind-numbing."
Billingsley, who most recently appeared in "The Breakup" as Vince Vaughn's bowling-team pal Andrew, has been trying to outgrow "A Christmas Story" for two decades. One day he might.
Brian Jones is hoping that the rest of us won't. Brian Jones, a 30-year-old San Diego entrepreneur who bought and restored the old house, has tracked down furnishings similar to those in the movie _ up to and including the kitchen sink.
Copyright Scripps Howard News Service 2006
Printed from: http://www.wzzo.com (http://www.wzzo.com/cc-common/mainheadlines3.html?feed=104673&article=1539764)