Old movies and silky blankets

My sister recently saw "Wicked", which I have seen twice and LOVE. I have a love / hate relationship with "The Wizard of Oz." When I, well - we - were younger we would watch The Wizard of Oz at least 3x's a week.* For whatever reason, I was drawn to the movie. ** In middle school or highschool, I saw a documentary on the making of the movie and learned about all the problems on set and issues they had filming -

- the original Tin Man (Buddy Ebsen) being allergic to his aluminum powdered makeup that coated his lungs and made him sick

- during one take of the Wicked Witch leaving Munchkin land in her ball of fire - her hat and cape caught fire and she suffered 2nd and 3rd degree burns.

- rumors of a munchkin hanging themselves on set /in a scene, etc.

After seeing this - I was a bit freaked out by the movie. I wondered why I wasn't more scared of the witch, and the movie in general when I was younger. The Tin Man is creepy looking , and those monkeys are SCARY. Anyway - in highschool I had a new found fascination with it, when I learned it had a historical allegory. But it still freaked me out.

The point of all this - is that Heather and I just talked about our obsession w/ the original movie. and also talked about how we would go to my Grandma's, and after 'Perry Mason' was over, we would run right over to the VCR (or BETA player, cause they definitely had one) and put in Wizard of Oz, Annie, Heidi (WHY??) or Sword in the Stone. We'd eat chips from the Charles Chips can, and wrap up in the silky fantastic blanket. Man, I wish I was about 6 yrs old right now, laying on the couch in that blanket and watching one of my fave movies.

*this is a pattern in our lives. We find movies we like and watch them OVER and OVER and OVER - Hocus Pocus, Annie (when we were little), The Santa Clause, Sweeney Todd (Heather), etc.

**It wasn't until I was much older that I realized we were watching a version from TV with the commercials cut out - one day I wondered where the 'by Mennen' part was - only it wasn't in the movie because it was part of the cut out commercials!