Grand finale

Good Sunday morning to you. We'll wrap up our story of the movie mogul today and return to audio matters tomorrow. Just thought it'd be fun to take a small break, certainly is for me being inundated with the DirectStream launch. After filming the small bit of the ice block going down the street in our epic of movie making, nearly getting arrested and facing the wrath of school administrators on Monday, we figured we needed to fill out the end of the movie with a bang. That turned out to be truer than we ever imagined. The idea was the Ice Man would end his careening journey at the doorstep of the house he was trying to deliver ice to. Convenient how these Hollywood stories work. That house, of course, was mine. The Ice Man would knock on the door and, getting no answer, go inside and make himself at home, perhaps landing in the kitchen to make a meal. Yes, indeed, that would be an excellent plot so that's what we did. Once inside we took over the family kitchen with film camera and shop lights for illumination. My poor mother couldn't watch what was happening to her kitchen so she retreated upstairs for a shower while we filmed. Since we wanted a bang as an end to the story our idea was to have the Ice Man cook something on the stove and have it explode. Yes, that would be funny. Only, how does one do that? Exploding soup isn't so simple. My starring man, David, remembered something from science class that involved hot paraffin(wax). Seems that if you have boiling wax and put something cold inside, it would erupt. That sounded perfect. A small volcano of boiling wax would look good on film and we could close the epic with a bang and a laugh. My mother had a block of paraffin in the cupboard she used to seal the tops of her canning projects. We took one of her best sauce pans, boiled the wax and started filming. David was convinced that if we poured a wee bit of water into the boiling wax it would erupt. Instead, it simply bubbled and was quite unimpressive. David decided if water didn't work, what about ice? Why not take ice water, plus a few cubes and dump that into the boiling wax. That surely would cause an eruption. Right? The filming started, the Ice Man had his ice water and ice at the ready and he dumped the entire cup into the boiling wax. It was a success. The wax exploded in a ball of fury covering the camera lens, burning off David's eyebrows (lucky for him he wore eyeglasses), layering his entire face with hot wax, burning his scalp and completely covering the wall behind the stove my father had just painted. It exploded with a bang which sent my mother running from upstairs to the kitchen with nothing but a towel on and she began yelling and hitting us both. David ran for cover and then snuck out the front door and hightailed it home. I stayed for the onslaught and, of course, the arrival of my father who had been playing golf that fine Sunday afternoon. Epilogue. For the remaining years I lived at home, I had to scrape and repaint the back wall twice a year as the wax would bubble up through the fresh paint every 6 months. The vice principal expelled me and David from school for a week. The film itself, the object of our project, was sent to a processing house through the local Sav-On drugstore and took about two weeks. But finally it was ready for pickup. I couldn't wait. My masterpiece would be worth all the pain and trouble. Inside the packet was my processed roll of 8mm film plus a new roll of film and a note. "Dear customer, we regret to inform you that due to an unforseen power outage during processing, your film was destroyed. Please accept this replacement roll of film."