Barry Humphries (Thanks, Fe)

This is the first biography post I've written in weeks! I'm a bit nervous.

So....

I'm starting with that cross-dressing comedian.

I don't know much about him. I've watched a few clips from his alter ego-Dame Edna.

I guess I'll start.

Hello, Lord Wiki. We meet again.

Barry Humphries was born on 17, February 1934. That means we were in Australia for his birthday! We were in the South Coast specifically.

Humphries would fit well in my family. We have a cluster of February birthdays. My nephew's is the 14th, my dad's the 19th, and my sister's the 22nd.

Okay. Birthday website time!

He's a 9 in numerology. That's the same as my sister and her new son. They're all supposed to be humanitarians.

Humphries is an Aquarius. That matches my nephew too.

Humphries was born in a suburb in Melbourne called Kew. Now I'm going to be more interested in Victoria because that's going to be the focus of our next Aussie holiday.

Lord Wiki says it's an affluent suburb. So, does this mean Humphries was born with a silver spoon?

Oh...well, now Lord Wiki has changed his mind. Further down he says Humphries was born and raised in Camberwell.

The suburbs are only nine minutes apart. I guess it doesn't make that much of a difference. They're both east of the CBD. I know some of the most affluent suburbs in Sydney are in the east. Is it the same in Melbourne?

Geoffrey Rush is from Camberwell too. Missy Higgins lived nearby and went to the high school.

Lord Wiki says the family WAS well-off. Humphries dad was a successful construction manager. His parents bought him a lot of stuff, but spent little time with him. Humphries spent his lonely hours playing dress-up.

As a child, Humphries had a traumatic circus experience. A dwarf leaped into the audience and tried to grab little Barry onto the stage. This event led to Humphries having a fear of dwarfs. I wonder if he got over that. I hope so! I mean I understand why a fear would develop. Little boy Barry has my sympathy. But I don't think his experience is a good excuse for prolonged prejudice.

Lord Wiki says Humphries had a fairly happy and easy childhood. I guess he wasn't that neglected then.

When he was nine, his parents gave all his books to the Salvation Army. Young Barry wasn't happy with that. For revenge, he became a bookworm and started collecting rare books. Ah! Maybe that's what I need to do to get Jack reading more.

Humphries also became very artistic. His parents weren't fond of the arts.

Did Humphries get into the arts because his parents didn't like it? An act of rebellion? Or did his parents dislike art because their son took an interest in it?  Or was it none of the above?

For school, Humphries went to Camberwell Grammar School. It's a school for boys. Rubert Murdoch's daddy went there as well. I have to be honest here. I'm less interested in schools than I was before when I did these biography posts. So, I'm not going to do a lot of school research. I apologize if anyone was actually interested in any of that.

All the schools are beginning to sound alike to me.

I'll just quickly skim to see if there's anything brilliantly exciting.

For High School, he went to Melbourne Grammar School. Apparently, this school has quite an alumni list. This includes Malcolm Fraser, Alfred Deakin, Julian Burnside, and a bunch of other names I don't recognize.

At the school, Humphries ignored math and sports and embraced the artistic stuff.

After high school, he went to Melbourne University and studied law, philosophy, and fine arts. During these years, Humphries became involved with something called Dada. It seems to be some sort of anti-war and anti-capitalist thing. From what I'm reading, it seems to be protest via offensive art. Humphries was involved with various public pranks. You know who he reminds me of? Sacha Baron Cohen. They both like to dress up as different characters. And they both like to do crazy things to get people's attention and make us all think. I wonder if Humphries was a role model for Cohen?

Lord Wiki describes some of the pranks. In one, Humphries would verbally abuse a blind person on the train. But no worries. It was a fake blind person. I'm not sure what the lesson is there. Maybe as with Cohen, it's about the reactions. If you sing "Throw the Jew Down the Well", how does the audience react? Who happily sings along? Who looks uncomfortable? Who protests?

Another one of Humphries' pranks involved one of my biggest fears. Airplane vomit! He would use soup as pretend vomit. He'd throw up on the plane and then pretend to eat the vomit. Lovely.

After he finished with University, Humphries joined the Melbourne Theater Company (MCT). Lord Wiki says it's the oldest professional theater in Australia. Wow.

More importantly.....It's here that Dame Edna was born. Her first performance was on December 12, 1955. We were in Australia on her birthday too!

Dame Edna isn't the only personality to emerge from Humphries. We also have Sir Les Patterson. While Dame Edna is refined and snobby, Patterson is vulgar. Then there's a more endearing character. Sandy Stone. Lord Wiki describes him as a grandfatherly type. There's other characters as well. I'm not going to list them all, but I MIGHT come back to some of them later.

Humphries eventually moved to Sydney. He performed in Waiting For Godot. I remember that play. I should read it again someday. I'd probably understand it much more now than I did as a teenager.

In 1959, Humphries left my favorite country and moved to London. He spent the 60's there. Speaking of decades, we're almost done with this one. What the hell are we going to call it? How are we going to refer back to it? I'm very concerned about this issue.

Humphries became friends with British comedians. The only one I've heard of is Dudley Moore. I used to love that movie Micki and Maude. I never really got into Moore's other famous stuff. I just looked him up though. He died! I didn't know that. I knew he had been sick for awhile though. Oh well. Now I know.

While in London, Humphries did a comic strip called The Wonderful World of Barry McKenzie. It made fun of Australians abroad. I guess Australia didn't find it so funny at first. It was banned in Humphries' homeland for awhile.

Okay. Now I'm getting into some interesting stuff.

I thought the book sounded familiar so I looked it up. It seems although it was banned at one point, it later was embraced by Australians. Even the government stood behind it. In 1972, a film was made based on the book. The film, or just it's sequel (I'm confused) received government funding via the Australian Film Development Commission. Gough Whitlam made a cameo appearance in the sequel...granting damehood to McKenzie's aunt. And who is that? Dame Edna. Small world here!

Lord Wiki says McKenzie used euphemisms for bodily functions. This includes the technicolor yawn for vomiting. I've heard of that one. So, did the term actually come from the book/movies, or did they just popularize it?

Here's something.....

Lord Wiki says the lyrics for Men at Work's "Down Under" were inspired by the McKenzie character. Wow. I always wondered what all those lyrics meant. I still don't know, but at least I know what inspired them.

I'm very intrigued by all this. I think I need to see the movie, or at least read the book.

At the age of 28, Humphries had a bit of an accident.

He fell off a cliff. Ouch. He fell a 150 feet. Holy shit.

I have nightmares about Jack falling off high places. I see him fall. Then I wake up. Maybe now I can feel a little better. I can wake up and imagine Jack's dream self did a Humphries and survived.

Humphries performed a lot in Oliver. I have to admit. I've never had much love for that play. I mean I've never seen it, but I've heard some songs from it. It just doesn't appeal to me for some reason. I've never been much of a Dicken's fan. I do like A Christmas Carol, though.

Humphries first film role came five years after his little cliff accident. He was in the film Bedazzled with Dudley Moore. I think I saw the remake of that. I'm not sure I realized it was a remake. I liked it though. I think. Maybe?

Humphries returned to Australia in 1968. He toured with a one man show called Just a Show. Then he went back to the UK and did the show there.

Then we're back to Australia in 1970. That's the year my older sister was born.

A couple years later I was born and The Adventures of Barry McKenzie was born as well. Barry Humphries didn't play the title character. Barry Crocker did. I just added him to my list. Hopefully, I'll get to him before I return to Australia in 2011. The list is awfully long right now.

Lord Wiki says The Adventures of Barry McKenzie was one of those movies that are scorned by the critics and loved by the public. What other movies are like that? I know there's been a lot, but I can't remember them.

Humphries' career was blossoming. And so was his addiction to alcohol. Lord Wiki says this might have been why his first and second marriages didn't work out. I wonder if alcohol was involved in his cliff accident? It could explain why he survived. I remember hearing that drunk drivers often survive more than their innocent victims because the alcohol puts their body in a more relaxed state.

Anyway.....

Humphries did rehab and all that. He's been dry since the 1970's.

Oh! I forgot this! Humphries was in Finding Nemo. He played Bruce the shark. I love Bruce! Lord Wiki says the character's battle with eating-fish-addiction might symbolize Humphries' own battle with alcohol.

Lord Wiki says he has a self-deprecating sense of humor. I love people who have that type of humor. I prefer that so much more to people who can manage to only laugh at others. I mean it's fine to laugh at others. And I think it's fine to be critical of others...to a point. I think it can be done without being cruel. But if you have someone who constantly talks/jokes bad about others, and never says anything negative about themselves.....Ah, well I feel they're in some kind of deep denial. It's sad. They've really put up a strong guard to protect themselves.

Humphries has done a lot of one man shows. I won't list them all now, but I might get back to some of them later. (notice I'm saying this a lot lately? It's called Dina-is-being-damned-lazy)

Dame Edna seems to be his most popular character. She has her own talk show. I've seen a few bits on YouTube.

Humphries came to Broadway in the year 2000. His show was Dame Edna: The Royal Tour. It got good reviews and was a hit. He then had a recurring role on Ally McBeal. Well, she did. Edna was on Ally McBeal. I don't remember that, but I didn't regularly watch the show.

Controversy erupted when Dame Edna did an advice column for Vanity Fair in 2003. A reader asked if she should learn Spanish. Dame Edna replied, Forget Spanish. There's nothing in that language worth reading except Don Quixote and a quick listen to the CD of Man of La Mancha will take care of that. Who speaks it that you are so desperate to talk to? The help? Your leaf blower?

A lot of people didn't understand that this was all a joke...a way of making fun of wealthy white prejudice Americans. Not the Latinos. I think it's easier to get away with such jokes if you actually belong to that group of people. If people get mad at Sacha Baron Cohen for singing "Throw the Jew Down the Well", he can remind everyone that he's actually Jewish himself. Humphries doesn't have that luxury.

Some members of the Hispanic community where not pleased with Cohen. One of the angry ones was actress Salma Hayak. She denounced Dame Edna. Dame Edna fought back by saying that Hayak's protest was truly about professional jealousy. Edna claims the role of Frida Kahlo was originally offered to her and Hayak was jealous of that.

I wonder what ever happened to all that? Did Hayak ever realize it had all been a joke? Did she even realize that Dame Edna wasn't a real person?

Okay. It's time to leave Lord Wiki. Good-bye, my friend.

Now I'm going to look at Dame Edna's official website.

She's coming to Fort Worth in June! This June? Maybe I should go. I think we might be out of town then. I'll have to look into this. I don't really go to the theater much though. I'll probably just watch her on YouTube.

On her website, Dame Edna says what's unique about her show is she tailors it to each city she's in. That's cool.

The website itself seems a bit out of date in some places. Her letter to her fans is dated August 22, 2005. It has some pretty funny parts though. She says in one part, Talking of Laura Bush I hear that she has removed all paintings from the White House which are not by American artists. Is that meant to make her seem patriotic, artistic or both? Could foreign paintings be a threat to national security? I wonder who advised her as to which were American and which were not?

I wonder if that's true! I can't easily find anything via Google. Maybe it was just a joke?

Now I'm moving onto IMDb. Let's see if there's any fun trivia.

His current wife is some woman named Lizzie Spender. They've been married since 1990. Hopefully, they'll make it to their 20th anniversary. It's coming up.

His daughter Tessa is an actress. She was on the Australian soap opera Sons and Daughters. I don't think I've heard of that one.

According to IMDb, Humphries now lives in Cremorne New South Wales. That sounds familiar. Oh! It's in Sydney. I must have seen it on the map. It's not too far from Neutral Bay, and we were there.

It seems Dame Edna is no longer doing her TV show. I think it ended in 2007.

Here's a great video It's a Humphries narrated video about Gough Whitlam and the 1970's. It features both Dame Edna and Les Patterson.

So far.....I like this Barry Humphries. I like his humor. Besides Cohen, he reminds me a lot of Stephen Colbert. Colbert says offensive things while being someone else too. His situation is even more sticky though because he doesn't use a costume. And he uses his real name.

This website has a quote from Humphries. If I was in debate with Edna, I would disagree with Edna Everage on almost every point moral or ethical or metaphysical. I'm betting Colbert would feel pretty much the same way about his own alter ego.

I'm going to try to find out more about Dame Edna's fight with Salma Hayek.

The New York Times has an article. It has some of Hayek's response to Dame Edna. I'm sure you think you're funny, maybe sometimes you are, I wouldn't know. The great irony is that I am Mexican, I speak Spanish, and I am on the cover of Vanity Fair.

Yikes. She sounds uncomfortably defensive.

I'm not saying people shouldn't have been hurt by what was said. But sometimes you have to stop, realize the context, swallow your pride, and joke back.

Wouldn't that be funny if this is what Hayek was going for? What if her anger was all a joke? Now THAT would be hilarious. And I'd feel I was being the stupid one.

This website has the response from Vanity Fair. I think it's pretty well-written. They say, Our intent, in short, was to mock the very ethnic stereotypes that some have accused us of reinforcing. Further down they say, When we hired Barry Humphries two years ago to write a satirical advice column in Dame Edna's name, we did so on the comedic premise that Dame Edna is the last person on Earth that anyone would go to for sound advice.

In the same issue as the Dame Edna incident, the cover featured Hayek herself. It also featured other Hispanic people including Antonio Banderas, director Robert Rodriguez, and Pablo Picasso. The response says,Would a magazine that honestly endorsed opinions like those voiced by the character Dame Edna have published these articles?

Amen to that!

There's a fine line between funny and offensive. And it IS sometimes hard to know when someone is joking. It's hard to know when someone is laughing AT you rather than with you.

I sometimes get confused myself. A few days ago, I found myself hurt by what someone had said about my blog online. I TRIED to think that they were laughing with me and not at me. I tried joking back and they responded in a way that assured me they had been laughing AT me. They wanted nothing to do with me. They just wanted to make fun of me. But you know....at least I tried.

Another time, someone wrote something on their blog that I found to be offensive. I like jokes, but I found this to be mean-spirited. I stopped reading their blog for awhile. I don't know though. Maybe I overreacted. Maybe I took it all too seriously. But unlike Hayek, I didn't make a big stink out of it. I didn't start any kind of protest. I just quietly walked away. I give myself credit for that.

And....I find humor in things that other people find offensive.

Even though I had/have an eating disorder, I find this t-shirt to be quite funny. Yes, there's a horrific and sad side to eating disorders. I won't deny that. But there's also something absurdly ridiculous about them. I have to sometimes laugh at my past obsession with being thin--my belief that a low BMI would make me happier. And I also can't help laugh at my current failure to keep the scale numbers from getting higher and higher.

I guess the lesson here is that we all can't agree on what's offensive and what's funny. So, it's best to just not make a big stink. And if you do want to make a big stink, do your research first. Make sure you're not reading things out of context.

Oh well. That is that.

I'm going to now look at Google news--see if there's anything interesting there.

Humphries is the narrator of the recent animated movie Mary and Max. I want to see that! It looks like a beautiful movie. The trailer brought a little tear to my eye. Young Mary is played by Bethany Whitmore. Could she be related to Charles?

Dame Edna's current tour is called First Last Tour. That's a GREAT title. I wonder how many last tours she'll have. I hope it's many.

I'll end this post with a beautiful Dame Edna quote:

Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century




Read my novel: The Dead are Online 


36 comments:

  1. What a fun and informative post! I've liked Barry for the longest time but never actually read up on him so I didn't know about the cliff accident or anything.

    "Speaking of decades, we're almost done with this one. What the hell are we going to call it? How are we going to refer back to it? I'm very concerned about this issue."

    So true! I wonder that myself. I live in Maryland and I imagine it'll be known as the years of the 0's (as in Oh's, not Zero's) and all the Baltimore Orioles (O's) fans will like that. I'll find it annoying, lol!

    There are times when I forget Dame Edna is actually Barry. He does it SO well. I always tell my family I'd love to have him over for dinner. I have some religious family members and very conservative ones and they'd probably be shocked to have a man dressed as a woman (even though he's not gay and is married) in the house. It's just not something they're used to. What fun that would be!

    PS - I found my way to your post via Google Alerts for Dudley Moore. :-)

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  2. Oops, forgot to check the little "eMail" box in case you reply. Don't wanna miss it.

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  3. Lisa,

    Hi!

    I went to check out your website! You are quite the Dudley Moore fan. I love people who are huge fans of things. I guess because I'm one too.

    I am with you on the Dame Edna confusion. I tried to tell my husband about writing this blog post. I think I completely confused him because I talked about them as if they were two separate people. I'd say "he" and later "she".

    If you had her over for dinner, maybe your family wouldn't even know it was a he.

    Yeah. And I often forget to check the email box too. I hate when I do that!

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  4. Camberwell is a little more suburban than Kew, but quite similar. Originally it was only Mrs Everage, a housewife. I seem to recall he was expelled from Melbourne Grammar. No doubt Humpries is very talented.

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  5. Would you believe I forgot to check the eMail square, again? lol!

    Thanks for checking out my site! And for the kind words. I'm in the process of moving it and it's such a hassle.

    Haha! I could not tell them that she was a he until AFTER dinner, when everyone was about to leave. Have him go into the other room and come back out as Barry. That would be amusing!

    It's funny how some people don't have a clue who Barry is, but they know Dame Edna. Maybe that was Salma Hayek's problem, lol!

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  6. Andrew: Thanks for the Melbourne info. I'll probably be asking you for more of that in the next few years.

    Lisa: lol. That sounds SO much like something I'd do (forget to check the email box again)!

    I think your dinner plan is quite a good one! So, how did you become a fan of Dudley Moore. Have you been a fan for a long time?

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  7. Hi Dina, we call this decade the 'noughties'. I think it will be defined for the 'war on terror' and depending on the severity of this recession, maybe the end of a belief in the market economy.
    I love Barry Humphries as well, think he is a very talented and intelligent man and I especially love Sir Les.
    I do like Vanity Fairs response to the criticism, but I can see how some people are offended by the comments, especially if you don’t know who Dame Edna is and understand her comedy.

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  8. Feel free Dina. All care and no responsibility. Just don't ask me for ideas of places to stay in Melbourne. I can tell you more about other Australian cities so far as accommodation than I can about Melbourne. Only two real choices of areas, City or St Kilda. Everyone loves staying in St Kilda. For tourists, tram, train and bus are wonderful. Use all three up to about 10 kilometres, 6 miles our from the city for about AU$6.50 a day. I don't want to oversell though. I shan't say compare Sydney and Melbourne like LA and New York. But we are perhaps more like Boston. Not from my knowledge, but I have heard it.

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  9. Matt: I've never heard the term "Noughties" before. I'm glad to know there's a name for it : )

    I think you're right about it being defined as the war on terror. I think that will overshadow everything. Maybe also (coinciding with that) it will be the decade of fear and paranoia. Oh! And the explosion of the Internet.

    I agree somewhat about Dame Edna and people being offended. I think though that since it was in a well-known respected magazine and so strongly worded...that it's somewhat obvious it's a joke.

    If the bigoted remarks had been more subtle, I think I would have fallen for it. I can't imagine a magazine printing what Dame Edna said and actually meaning it.

    Andrew: Okay. I'll look into St. Kilda then. Thanks!

    I haven't been to Boston since I was a child so the comparison would be lost to me. I have a feeling I'll be in Melbourne before I'm ever in Boston. But....you never know ; )

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  10. "Noughties" lol! I like that!

    I rented Arthur 2 and Crazy people somewhere back in middle school (I'm 31 now) and was hooked. I kinda went in and out of major fangirling, made a site in 2000 and only last year moved it to a better host and got a domain. Now I'm moving it to another host and getting another domain at the moment.

    Oh, I guess if you put a Name/Link, you don't get eMail notifications. No wonder I didn't get any, haha!

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  11. Lisa,

    I think it's so cool that you've been a fan of him for so long!

    What was Crazy People about? I don't know if I've heard of that one before.

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  12. One thing you didn't mention about Dame Edna is that she comes from the suburb of Moonee Ponds. I only mention this because I used to live in Moonee Ponds, and currently live just up the road in Essendon North.

    I never realised that Barry Humphries was in Bedazzled. Though I may have missed him as I've not seen the whole movie. The remake (with Brendan Faser and Elizabeth Hueley) is pretty good, but the original, from what I've seen of it has a more explicit message to it, a moral to the tale.

    The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, if I recall correctly, is the film that started the Australian film industry renaissance.

    The Vanity Fair kerfuffle was greeted with raised eyebrows and a few guffaws here in Ozlandia. Played into the sterotype that Americans don't understand irony.

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  13. Oooh! All this credit for coming up with biography ideas! Thanks Dina!!

    GREAT post! And.... again.... I have a connection with this famous Australian. I was the nanny to his two sons Rupert and Oscar for about 2 months in 1984-1985.

    His wife, Lizzie Spender, didn't like the amount of time that Barry was spending with me and the boys and gave me the flick two days before I was supposed to fly to London with them.

    And they never EVER paid me.

    Still, I adored those little boys (now big men with complex issues of their own) and have wonderful memories of playing guitar and singing with Barry Humphries and the boys in the Royal Botanical Gardens. I lived with them in the Astor Building in Macquarie St here in Sydney. Barry and Lizzie lived on one floor and the boys and I on the floor above, connected by a spiral staircase.

    There you go!!

    xoxoxo

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  14. Stephen: Cool. Now I know where you live. This will make it much easier for me to stalk you. It's been a pain in the ass until now.

    Moonee Ponds is a cute name...almost as good as Woolloomooloo.

    So, Dame Edna was born there? Is that where she grew up? Did you ever go over to her house for milk and cookies. Uh, I mean milk and biskies?

    Yeah. Americans don't understand irony. That explains the whole Alanis Morrisette song. No, wait. She's Canadian.

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  15. Fe,

    That's awesome that you got to spend time with them. That being said...I would probably have done the same thing Lizzie Spender did.

    I kicked a woman out of our house when I felt she was spending too much time with my husband. She wasn't a nanny though...just a woman living with us.

    If it was a nanny, I would have probably kicked her out sooner. You know that movie "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle" has probably ruined things for nannies
    everywhere.

    I blame the husbands though too. Why was Humphries in the garden with you singing? He should have left you with the kids and used that time to have sex with his wife or something.

    Sorry you didn't get paid. It's like The Nanny Diaries! Was the wife like the mother in that story? I hope not!

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  16. Fe,

    Wait. I'm confused. Are you sure Spender was his wife at the time? Well, I guess you would know...stupid question.

    Wikipedia is saying he didn't marry her until 1990. It says the kids belong to another wife.

    ??????

    I'm confused.

    I'm guessing you typed the dates wrong or you had the wrong wife.

    Maybe the real wife kicked you out because you kept calling her by the name of Humphries future wife.

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  17. Crazy People was about Dudley's character being in advertising and he starts being more honest about the ads ("Volvo. They're boxy, but good.") and gets put in a psychiatric hospital for a rest. While he's in there, he makes friends with the inmates and gets involved with one of the girls there. Cute little movie.

    Replying to someone else's post - Barry played "Envy" in Bedazzled. When Dudley ("Stanley") goes into the Devil's room to sleep, Envy is laying on the bed and they have a small chat.

    I've had Bedazzled playing in the background on my pc all night, lol! The part at the end with the nuns and all the raspberries cracks me up so much.

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  18. Lisa,

    Crazy People sounds good...the beginning more than the rest. I like the idea of an honest advertiser!

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  19. It's a cute little movie that should be watched a time or to, I think. :-)

    "Maybe the real wife kicked you out because you kept calling her by the name of Humphries future wife."

    Hahaha! Sounds like the type of dreams I have.

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  20. Lisa,

    Do you have crazy dreams too?

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  21. I'm known for my crazy, vivid dreams, lol!

    I had one last night that I was in high school and didn't ever go to a math class so I was gonna fail the year. Then I had to chase Dudley around the school, up and down the stairs, because he kept running off to cheat on me with other students. I yelled at a girl and then found out she wasn't even with him and she said he was upstairs with a blonde. Somehow I ended up chasing her down and putting a plunger on the back of her head so I could stick her to the door while I went and dealt with Dudley (who said he was sorry....again). :-D

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  22. Lisa,

    I have vivid crazy dreams too!!

    And I also have recurring dreams about failing a class because I didn't go to class all semester.

    The funny thing is the past few years the dream has changed. I realize in the dream that I already have a degree or I don't really need a degree. I end up saying screw it.

    You are a dangerous plunger girl though. I'm glad your man apologized for fooling around!!

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  23. Those dreams are the weirdest. In mine, I'll decide not to go to school any more. Or I'll make a fuss and tell everyone about how we already graduated and don't have to be there now. But other times I forget and still go. Including the bus ride and everything.

    Last night I went to a grocery store and had a party with Michael Caine and Richard Burton. If I didn't have these dreams, I'd be so bored. :-D

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  24. Lisa,

    Funny!

    I have weird dreams on these past posts...

    http://notreallyaustralian.
    blogspot.com/2008/11/
    girl-who-wished-she-was-irish.html


    http://notreallyaustralian.blogspot
    .com/2009/04/day-27in-which-i-
    rush-to-see-
    my-cousin.html

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  25. Oh you're completely right! It was Diane Millstead! His third wife! She was such a bitch.

    Barry was spending time with HIS CHILDREN.... not with me. I was just there because they were the kind of people who didn't spend a minute with their children without the nanny, and because I was able to play guitar and sing, that's what we did! He did not flirt with me, nor I with him.

    Although their marriage was in it's dying days, as I recall. They were both drinking very heavily as well.

    I'm sure I was a scapegoat for all that other stuff.

    I met Lizzie Spender at the opening of a Play here in Sydney years ago. That's why her name was in my head when I think of Barry and his wives!

    xoxo

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  26. I just read your dreams. Fun to read ones that are just as weird as mine, hehe!
    -Lisa

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  27. Lisa,

    I love weird dreams!!

    Do you have lucid dreams often? I usually have a couple a month. I treasure them.

    I read your other comments, but figured I'd just respond here.

    The teeth falling out dreams--yuck.

    How about overflowing toilet dreams? Or I sometimes dream I'm using the toilet right in front of people...and it's as if that's totally normal.

    Do you write your dreams down?

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  28. Fe,

    It's disappointing to know he started drinking again : (

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  29. Overflowing toilets are common in my dreams, yes, lol! Usually I'll have to pee in real life and it'll end up in my dream so I'll be trying to find toilets that aren't gross and if I manage to finally go, I STILL have to go. Some times the stall is too small to fit into, or there's a puddle on the floor and I can't get there, or someone is watching, or it's out in the open and I don't wanna go there. Crazy.

    I've been keeping a dream journal for as long as I can remember, but I usually just write down the celebrity dreams I have. I've got my own mall I hang out at and I love jumping off the top floor railing and freaking people out, hehe! I also have my own bar which has an apt. complex above it (which would never work out or fit there with proper floor plans) and one of the apts is mine and I have celebs stay there when they want. The bar has gone through so many changes over the years and I've even had a few cases where I had to convince people I owned it (had to call Paul McCartney and verify it, haha) and one time a guy tried saying I owed money on it when I didn't. Had to sort that out. Another time it burned down and had to be rebuilt. Once it had a cannibal family living in it and I had to get them out, but then they were ghosts and haunted the place for a while. I still can't go in there if it's dark. :-)

    I post some of them in my LJ (http://arthur2dudley.livejournal.com/) but they're usually just a few celebrity ones I feel like sharing.

    (I realized if I log in here with my Blogger name, I can finally get the eMail notices, yay!)
    -Lisa

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  30. Lisa,

    I think your dreams may be more awesome than mine. And that's saying a lot because my dreams are pretty amazing.

    I don't own my own property in my dream. That would be so cool.

    I do have a place I go to a lot. I call it "the dream city". And there's this place which is like a university there. But a lot of time, it's a huge struggle for me to get there.

    Do you ever have the neglect-the-pet dreams? You know where you have a pet but you forget to give it water, feed it, etc?

    The weird thing is I've had dreams twice like that lately...but with happy endings. One of them was last night.

    It's like I realize that for months I forgot to give the animals water. But when I check expecting dead pets, they're totally fine.

    In last nights dream, we returned from a long trip to Australia. I suddenly remembered we forgot to do anything with our hamsters. I went to cage expecting to have to deal with dead bodies. Instead, the two hamsters and one guinea pig were alive. And then it turned out the guinea pig was having babies. There were babies everywhere. AND then it also turned out the guinea pig wasn't a guinea pig. It was a monkey. We were blessed with hundreds of tiny little monkeys.

    I'll go check out your celebrity dreams.

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  31. You have those dreams, too?? I hate how guilty I feel about them! My reoccurring pet dream is where I go back to the place we lived before this house and I had a fish tank there. I go into my room and see the tank there and think how I forgot to feed them all this time. Some times the water is all green and some of the fish are dead (ug) but other times they're okay and have babies in there and everything. I really should look up what that means some time.

    *looks it up*

    I guess it means thoughts or a part of our personality that we've forgotten about and it's shining through in the dream. Figuring out which part of me I forgot will be the tricky part since....I've forgotten it, lol!

    Do you ever do reversed psychology in your dreams? I first learned how to do it when someone went to give me a shot and I said, "Oh, I hope I get that shot!" and they wouldn't give it to me then. So now I can say, "I hope so-and-so doesn't show up!" and they usually do.

    I think my worst ones are when I find myself in this industrial area. I'll end up on a little pier surrounded by water for as far as I can see, and then all these old metal structures (cranes and towers) built from the water up. I'll know I'm on the way there when I start seeing train tracks and trains and when I try to go back the way I came, I'm stuck out there. I have a water fear so that's never fun, even though I can breathe under water in my dreams just fine.

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  32. Lisa,

    I had a Patricia Garfield book. Have you heard of her? She's some kind of dream expert. She talked about the neglected animal dreams in the book--said basically the same thing you've found. But she didn't mention what it means if the ending is happy. ???

    I'm thinking maybe it means we've neglected something, but it's taken care of so we don't need to worry??

    I've never tried the reverse psych. thing, but it sounds like a great idea. Life always seems to go the opposite of what I ask for!!!

    Scary water dreams....

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  33. I've never heard of her but she sounds interesting.

    I was telling my mom about the pet dreams and she said she's had some where we have birds in the basement and she forgot about them but they're fine. I guess it's more common than I thought!

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  34. From 'some' woman as you call her, Lizzie Spender

    Well, I was not the wife at the time of the throwing out of nannies, so maybe you should check your facts. I am a tolerant sort of person as it happens.

    we don't live in cremorne by the way./

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  35. Lizzie Spender,

    If you read all of the comments, you will see that I DID check my facts.

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  36. Oh...but thanks for the Cremorne info
    : )

    I guess I hadn't cleared that one up!

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