Stand in Awe

As inspired by taking part in some really fantastic comment discussions recently on subjects ranging from pastry to politics, how these things relate to superheroes and the fact that everything old is new again.

When I was a very young girl I lived in a tiny town called Humarock. If you read me over the fall and winter last year no doubt you heard all about it. The beach and that town in particular, have been the inspiration for many of my endeavors. My business name, Chucka Stone Designs, is a direct derivative (Hum-a-Rock, Chuck-a-Stone). Since a couple family members owned houses there I spent nearly every waking moment on the beach as a kid and as many as I could spend each year after. See my profile picture of me at age three. I still like to be barefoot as much as possible. For a short time when we were kids we lived in my grandparent’s house and my favorite thing about it was the fireplace on cold nights. My sister and I would take our night time shower, wash the dishes from dinner and then toast marshmallows while our hair dried and we watched Wonder Woman. We would go to bed smelling like a campfire, without all the pesky bug bites, knowing that girls who owned invisible jets and deflector cuffs ruled.

As I moved into grammar school, the Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake and My Pretty Pony reminded me why I was much more partial to trucks and climbing trees so it was no surprise I was drawn to cartoons like Inspector Gadget instead of Muppet Babies. With so many movies being made from old television shows these days it is only a matter of time before someone turns that one into a blockbuster hit. Oh wait, I almost forgot, David Kellogg tried using Matthew Broderick as Gadget back in 1999. It is really hard to keep up.

The current new millennium blockbuster based on a truly one of a kind old time show starred the guy who actually voiced the character of Gadget. How sad that even in 80’s animation Don Adams was pigeon holed into the role of a bumbling idiot spy just like his character Max in Get Smart from twenty years prior.

Now Maxwell Smart was the coolest dork I had ever seen on late night syndication. I mean, seriously, he had a shoe phone for crêpe sake, how could he have not been superfly?

The real secret to both Gadget and Max of course is that they never really did anything right and the women in their lives, Penny and 99 respectively, were the real crime solvers and spy thwarters just like Diana Prince as Wonder Woman. These ladies were the quiet force to be reckoned with even though they were likely dubbed as total geeks; Diana could bench press a football team, Penny’s only friend was a dog and 99 was a multi-lingual violin player.

The moral lesson: Never underestimate the power of a woman. Even if she is a geek, one day she just might save your life or set you free with her lasso of truth.