{"id":2415,"date":"2005-02-17T17:26:34","date_gmt":"2005-02-17T22:26:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=2415"},"modified":"2010-07-12T13:31:41","modified_gmt":"2010-07-12T17:31:41","slug":"by-the-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=2415","title":{"rendered":"The Barefoot Kitchen Witch"},"content":{"rendered":"

I forgot to mention: the Barefoot Kitchen Witch<\/a> is back blogging. It had been December 27 for 2 months on her blog. I kept checking in, thinking: wha’ happened?? And now she’s back.<\/p>\n

I suggest you check in with her often. Her stories about her kids are wonderful, funny – I love this one in particular <\/a>– hahaha.<\/p>\n

The Barefoot Kitchen Witch and I go way, way back. We went to high school together. Our first bond was our shared love of the Trixie Belden series.<\/p>\n

4 of us made a movie in high school – which, honestly, is to this day, one of the funniest things I have ever seen in my life. And I really don’t think I’m biased. It is a 2-hour sprawling epic, and it is called The Troubled Days and Nights of Husbands, Wives, Lovers, and Children in Hope and Despair<\/i>.<\/p>\n

We were all 15, 16 years old at the time of filming. Barefoot Kitchen Witch was the master-mind – she came up with the Byzantine plot, she assigned the characters. The 4 of us would have summit meetings, where Kitchen Witch assigned us our roles, etc., and told us: “Okay, so YOU are in love with him … but you are married to HIM … and YOU love him so much that you want to kill HER …” Then we would rent a camera, take a whole day, and film, film, film. I think we had 4 days of filming over a 2 year period. We had costumes. We had makeup. We were insane.<\/p>\n

The plot is exquisitely complicated. We filmed it at the house of the Witch and her sister (one of my best friends – Meredith). We kicked their parents out for the day, so we could film EVERYWHERE.<\/p>\n

The plot involves: multiple murders, swirling adultery, rampant alcoholism, people disguising themselves as Boy George, and an entire family being put into strait jackets at the same time. All of us are girls, obviously, and yet – in reverse Shakespearean style – we played both genders. We wear mustaches, we wear bowler hats, we talk in deep voices. It is ridiculous. The Barefoot Kitchen Witch with a mustache taped on her face, wearing one of her father’s blazers, being patriarchal, macho, and out of touch with his emotions.<\/p>\n

There are also random musical numbers, where we lip sync to songs we chose carefully to fit in with the plot (because it was the 80s too, the songs are HILARIOUS. Hall & Oates, Billy Joel, B 52s, Stray Cats), there are frightening scenes where we wield kitchen knives wildly and laugh like maniacs. Mere, playing the evil cold matriarch, got some bad news on the phone, and then crumpled into a faint on the floor. Wearing a GOWN and dangly earrings.<\/p>\n

We, of course, were filming this whole thing onto a VHS TAPE – so there’s no editing, nothing like that. All of our bloopers (and woah, there are many) are captured in all their glory. A desperately serious scene will be going on. There is Dolores, in a frilly pink GOWN, talking earnestly to Meredith, who (playing a guy) is dressed in a black blazer and silver sunglasses. They are serious<\/i>. They play the scene. And then – of course – something happens – or they suddenly realize how RIDICULOUS the whole thing is – and they both start cracking up, and they laugh their way through the entire take.<\/p>\n

Maybe someday I will delineate the entire plot of this masterpiece. I have it on tape somewhere still. It is a riot.<\/p>\n

Anyway. Barefoot Kitchen Witch is back<\/a>. Go check out her stuff. She’s a dear dear friend of mine, and a terrific writer, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I forgot to mention: the Barefoot Kitchen Witch is back blogging. It had been December 27 for 2 months on her blog. I kept checking in, thinking: wha’ happened?? And now she’s back. I suggest you check in with her … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[600],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2415"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2415"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18267,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2415\/revisions\/18267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}