Downingtown Farmers Market. Missing Dummy Video.
Did you ever part ways with something then spent the rest of your life thinking of it?
Let me explain. When I worked in high school at the audio store at the Downingtown Farmer's Market, some weird man came in to see if we would buy his video camera.
I think the year may have been 1980 and it was one of those big ass cameras that they probably still use in Russia today.
So he leave the camera with us and we can take a look at it. And the video tape that was inside the camera was pure gold. Solid 24 karat gold. We hit play and we see him walking in front of a black curtain. He's carrying something. What is it? What is it?
It's a ventriloquist dummy. Oh no this is gonna be good. He places the dummy in the chair and walks out of camera view. The song "In My Life" by Paul McCartney begins to play. You can see the man crawling below camera view so he can get behind the dummy to "work it". Just that craptacular move alone made it great.
He plays the entire song. The dummy lip syncing the song to the crappy audio. The room's all echo and shit. Probably was his basement*. (Or "the staging area" as he probably calls it). At the instrumental portion in the middle of the song he shakes the dummy as if it's supposed to be dancing. But he shakes it so much that it looks like it's having convulsions. So much for subtlety.
The song ends and a piece of loose leaf paper is lifted up toward the dummy that reads, "Happy Anniversary". Crappy handwriting and all.
WHAT????
The description might not sound that funny but trust me. It was one of the funniest/creepiest things I've ever seen in my life.
I wonder if the woman viewed the video and cried tears of joy? Or just slowly backed up..looking for an escape. Was this done in one take? So many questions.
But the biggest question is, "Why didn't we keep that tape???"
And the best part is that when the guy came back he was really proud and asked, "Did you see the tape that was in there? I spent a lot of time on that. It was an anniversary gift to my wife."
*torture chamber
(AUTHOR'S NOTE: If I were that guy I would have made ONE change to the video. At the beginning I would have slowly raised my head into camera view. I would have faked a cough. Then, reached for a glass of water (to sooth the cough. You know what I mean?). I would then have sipped the water as the dummy was playing to show that, "Look, it's the dummy really singing". Which really makes no sense at all because it's obvious that it's Paul McCartney singing. But I wouldn't care. I would then give a shrug as if, "How do you explain this one? Nobody can really, but enjoy the rest of the song". Then I would slowly disappear from view. Slowly, like I was going down an elevator. Maybe I'd push an imaginary elevator button first. I'm not sure.)
