Collect 'em all!

Editor's note: I interrupt this rerun of All Things Clearly Canadian to bring you this irreverent and irrelevant message from today's work picnic.

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Who brought it up or how, I don't recall--I think it was hearing the Bee Gees' version of "Islands in the Stream" playing on the PA system, that got the mirror ball turning--but at my place of employment's annual summer picnic on Wednesday, the conversation turned to childhood heroes and heroines.

The Lady Carlisle quickly went into full nostalgia mode, remembering her favorite American pop idols from yesteryear--more specifically, the 1970s. "I loved David Cassidy! Just David Cassidy! Not Shaun, not Bobby Sherman, not . . . who was that other one? Oh, not Donny Osmond--"

"What about Leif Garrett?" said the Intern.

"Eww, no, not Leif Garrett! Have you seen him lately? He's gotten all fat, ugly, and disgusting."

"Rehab'll do that to do," I said. "At least, if you keep flunking out of it."

Giada De Los Altos interjected, "I loved Andy Gibb," and immediately "Shadow Dancing" started playing in my head. "When he was still alive, I mean," she giggled.

Whatever happened to Andy Kim, I wondered. Rock me gently, rock me slowly.

"Ooh, I had a Partridge Family lunchbox!" exclaimed the Lady.

"A Barbara Stanwyck lunchbox?" I said, perplexed, as I'd only been half-listening, instead lost in thought pondering Andy Kim's hair, circa 1974. "Did they really make such a thing?"

"THE PAR-TRIDGE FAM-I-LY," the Lady replied and laughed. "But you know, there probably was one from, I dunno, her days on Gunsmoke."

"Big Valley," I said. I loved that show. Audra, hitch up the buckboard. We're going into Stockton!

"I used to always watch the Donny and Marie Show," commented Giada. I'm a little bit country, I'm a little bit rock 'n' roll, I thought.

But, other than briefly trying to come up with alternate versions of their theme song ("I'm a little bit Coptic, I'm a little bit rock 'n' roll"), I wasn't thinking about D & M. I was off on another tangent--inspired by the grande dame herself, Barbara Stanwyck--visioneering my marketing plan for The Old Battle-Axes of Hollywood lunchbox series.

Let's see, if I could find some old metal or hard plastic lunchboxes, maybe at a garage sale, then learn how to decoupage . . . I could use old photos of Hollywood's most famous and crankiest broads and cover the lunchboxes with them. I could come up with some catchy name for the business, maybe, well, um, FoxyBoxy. Or something. With a silkscreen logo of Pam Grier from Foxy Brown as my brand, all bootylicious and Day-Glo with her bad self. Then I could sell the lunchboxes in trendy shops around . . . Toronto, I thought, already developing ways to fund my emigration to Canada. Each one hand-crafted. Each one unique.

Barbara Stanwyck would be the lead product in the line, of course. I could use the photo of her I have hanging in my bedroom, a gift from my friend the Log Cabin Libertarian, with Babs in her Blackglama, full fur, "What becomes a legend most?" drag.

And Joan Crawford, of course, or better still, Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest, all arched eyebrow and Lily Munster make-up.

Bette Davis circa Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte . . . and Susan Hayward with the entire cast of Valley of the Dolls. With prominence on the box given to Patty Duke as Neely. Anne? Jennifer? Neely!

"Wasn't there a Scarlett O'Hara lunchbox?" the Lady Carlisle asked our lunchtime coterie, disturbing my daydreams, which were about to morph into a casting call for a Broadway musical version of the Valley of the Dolls. Assuming one hadn't already been done or wasn't already in the works.

I suddenly thought, hmmm, a Gone with the Wind lunchbox collection. Scarlett and Rhett and Bonnie Blue and Mammy and maybe Ashley Wilkes and ol' mush-mouthed Melanie on the outside, with Tara or Twelve Oaks in the background. And a Thermos made to look like a hoop skirt on the inside.

That'll sell, I thought. At least in some parts of the country. This country. Not Canada.

But what about the copyright and licensing issues? Am I allowed to take pre-existing celebrity photos and lunchbox products and modify them for my own amusement and profit? Does this count as parody, homage, or a straight-to-school-cafeteria rip off?

More importantly, by way of understanding this stream of (sub)consciousness, was it safe to assume that the pasta salad for the picnic had sat out in the sun too long? And would I have to fill out workers' compensation forms on myself for experiencing extreme, goofy delusions on the job?

Or would this qualify as professional development?