Pamela Sue Martin. It’s a name most people 40 and under won’t recognize, but many followers of my telefilm reviews were children of the ’70s. If you’re reading this right now, odds are you can vividly recall Martin, who was in The Poseidon Adventure and followed a stint on The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries by originating the role of Fallon Carrington on Dynasty. I’ve been thinking of her for a couple days now, since Crankenstein cracked a joke about my former partner’s possessiveness extending even to dreams. One of the dumbest fights I’ve had as an adult (indirectly) involved Pamela Sue Martin.
It all started with YouTube. Before there were 101 streaming services for every conceivable interest, YouTube was the go-to destination for sourcing old TV shows. My ex and I watched Match Game there, and Golden Girls and Sordid Lives and The Golden Palace. We tried watching Manimal, in which Simon MacCorkindale morphed into a black panther, but it was funnier in theory than execution. At some point we turned to Dynasty bootlegs — I’d grown up with Dynasty, Ex with Dallas — and it wasn’t long before she convinced herself I had a crush on Martin.
Martin was attractive, sure, but wasn’t my type; nor was Fallon.* Attempting to refute my ex’s spurious charges only convinced her she was right. “I know you better than you know yourself,” she maintained. Sometimes, depending on what Martin wore, or my attentiveness, or the position of the moon, she simmered and stewed as we watched. Quickly I learned not to comment on Martin’s scenes, even if they involved Al Corley or John James, my early season favorites.**
Ex’s suspicions continued into whatever season it was we’d finally reached (Martin left at the end of the fourth) when it happened — something that felt like a Seinfeld B-plot: I had a sex dream about Fallon. It was definitely Fallon, not Martin herself, though either scenario was strange given the circumstances. Making it weirder still was that I was otherwise as faithful in my dreams as I was while awake. Though I knew sex and Fallon Carrington Colby were only tossed together in the blender of my subconscious due to Ex’s relentless badgering, I woke up dismayed.
The dream itself wasn’t the problem; it was more a matter of fearing I’d roll over to find an enraged partner who somehow saw into my dreams. She was asleep and I never mentioned it afterward, even though she occasionally interrogated me about whether other women turned up in my dreams. Had I confessed and thrown myself on the court’s mercy, she wouldn’t have laughed — she would’ve barred me from watching Dynasty.^ Even though I knew it was the right thing to do, keeping a secret made me feel awkward and needlessly guilty during those first few episodes afterward.
… With that sordid tale out of the way, here’s the latest on my craftsy diversion: I’m not good at painting. Below you’ll find a lazy attempt to create the illusion of slate roof tiles because shingle strips were too pricey for a throwaway project. (You can purchase loose shingles cheaply in bulk, but painting and gluing them one-handed would take the rest of my natural life.) I regret making the middle roof black; it should’ve been gray or brown. The black and purple looked too Halloweenish, so I went back later and lightened the trim a tad.
Work continued this morning and I may darken the red tomorrow after adding second coats of the lighter blues and purples. Crankenstein, who is amused by my painting a birdhouse like a common kindergartener, will help me find the correct brushes for model-painting before I open the lighthouse keepers’ kit. I’ve made do with what’s handy for now but it’ll go faster with the proper tools.
Crankenstein paints for fun, in watercolor and gouache. Since she’s the annoying sort who excels at everything she tries, she sells her work and even has a few collectors. In her most recent series you see her usual style in the background, with something nerdier moving to the fore: viruses. “This one was based on an image of watermelon mosaic virus,” she explains, and if you’re familiar with whatever the heck that is, you’re a smarter woman (or man, or whatever) than I.
In other Crankenstein news, she’s been trying to learn Mandarin via DuoLingo these past couple weeks. If she’d done this 22 years ago, she would’ve known what was being said around her high school girlfriend’s house. “Everything her parents said sounded angry, like they were fighting, but they weren’t,” she recalls. “It’s because the language is so tonal.” It amused me because that’s how I feel about harsh, guttural German when I’m around Crankenstein.
* Maybe I’ll gain a greater appreciation of it one day, but what passed for glamour in the ’80s is almost singularly unappealing to me. Electric-shock hair thick with product, heavy eyeshadow, ludicrous shoulder pads, gowns that looked like gauche drapery; there was a lack of elegance in film and TV costumes compared to prior decades. Though I’m hardly a fashion scholar or social psychologist, I assume that’s due partly to AIDS robbing us of so much artistic talent.
** Watching Dynasty as an adult left me with an unusual problem as a viewer: I’m distracted throughout most Armie Hammer performances by his resemblance to James.
^ In response to these probings I once mused that Ex herself must occasionally dream of other women. She couldn’t mask her indignation and earnestly, with great vehemence, insisted “All my erotic dreams are about you.” Which caused me to burst into laughter, not just because it sounded funny but because me in an erotic dream is like Jerry Lewis as Marlon Brando or Maria Schneider — take your pick — in Last Tango in Paris. If you don’t believe me ask Crankenstein, who will probably dream about Eva Marie Saint (age 99), Vera Miles (94), Tippi Hedren (also 94) or Kim Novak (91) tonight. In their current forms, natch, not their Hitchcockian heydays.