Ah, I remember like it was yesterday…

Well, no, not yesterday…. some things have happened since which makes it seem longer than 15 years…

I had [...]]]> No, not a wedding anniversary (won’t have another one of those for a long time yet). But today is the anniversary of me starting to use the name Calvero.

Ah, I remember like it was yesterday…

Well, no, not yesterday…. some things have happened since which makes it seem longer than 15 years…

I had signed up for a BBS (bulletin board system… very popular in the early days of the internet boom). I had been on the internet since January of ’95. And to signup for this BBS (ah, the days of Dynasty BBS of Orlando!) you had to create a username. Being a Chaplin fan, I tried using “Charlie”.

Drat, already taken.

So I tried a couple others. None took.

So I sat and thought. It should be a good name. One that sticks out somewhat but not to odd or too difficult for me to remember how to spell it.

What about Hynkel?  The name Chaplin used for The Great Dictator? No, don’t think so. While it was a great movie, Hynkel being a wonderful parody of Adolf Hitler, I wasn’t to keen on using a mass muderer related name. Verdoux from Monsieur Verdoux, but that’s about another mass murderer.

What about Calvero from Limelight?  Sounds cool, Chaplin related, and as I thought about it later, it also has a link to a couple other interests.  Buster Keaton (he makes a brilliant appearance in it) and also Nigel Bruce who plays Mr. Postant.  Bruce is most famous for playing Dr. Watson opposite Basil Rathbone in the popular 1940s Sherlock Holmes films (Chaplin hired Bruce for that reason, since Chaplin has a part in Holmes history.

I soon “met” many people in that BBS’s chatroom, though only one person I have stayed in contact with since those days. Others changed their name a couple times but I kept mine. I liked it, it sounded cool, and it sounded like I was a guy, so I wouldn’t be hounded by guys.

That year would bring other things, good and bad, but I just wanted to note the beginning of a beautiful, and sometimes rough, relationship (of sorts).

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The 4th Doctor, aka Tom Baker. One of my, and Kristi's, favorite Doctors

I remember when Kristi was 3 (she’s now 10), she saw one of my old Doctor Who VHS tapes in the cabinet, “Full Circle” [...]]]> It is strange and funny how what is laying around the house affects what your kid watches.

The 4th Doctor, aka Tom Baker. One of my, and Kristi's, favorite Doctors

I remember when Kristi was 3 (she’s now 10), she saw one of my old Doctor Who VHS tapes in the cabinet, “Full Circle” starring Tom Baker as the 4th Doctor.

She put it in the machine and started watching it. And then she watched it again. And again.  And again.  I had a few others but for some reason she liked this one a lot.  She would get scared of the monsters and laugh whenever the Doctor who give off his big toothy smile.

I should add that I did not watch Doctor Who much when Kristi was awake. Usually it was her shows like Blue’s Clues, Sesame Street, Dora the Explorer, etc. so it’s not like she just watched it when I watched it.

Since then she has become a fan of the renewed Doctor Who series and likes David Tennant as much as Tom.

And just yesterday I was watching Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights while folding the

Could it be that I have a future silent film fan in the making?

laundry.  Kristi was watching Pokemon videos on Youtube (She loves Pokemon!).  When I got up to put some clothes away, I left the movie playing.  I came back a couple minutes later and there was Kristi laying on the sofa watching City Lights. Not her Pokemon!

Since she caught it in the middle of the movie, I explained some of what was going on, like why the millionaire treated Charlie different drunk versus sober, and that the young lady who Charlie falls in love with is blind.

Now that Katie, my other daughter, is almost 3, she has discovered something even more off the

The controversial brothers from the 1960s got the attention of my almost 3 year old

wall. The Smothers Brothers.  She often sits on my lap watching YouTube videos, and the other day she saw the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour Season 3 DVD set sitting on my desk where my computer is. She pointed to it wanting to watch it.  She likes watching them sing. Even when they are talking she will sit there glued as they talk about the Vietnam War and student protests and so on.  I don’t go into explaining what happened back in the 1960s, what the protests were about or anything… I’ll wait to explain that when she’s older .

But it’s weird how my kids pick up on my interests like that.

Related Posts:

• Best Doctor Who fan videos – part 1
• My Favorite Sherlock Holmes videos – part 5

The video below is one that one [...]]]> This is my test to see how WordPress has improved embedding videos, especially YouTube videos. I was having one heck of a time (more like 2 or 3 heacks) with the older version and could not get it to work, even reading others fixes and trying different browsers.

The video below is one that one of the members posted to the Charlie Chaplin Forum. The montage is from a number of Chaplin’s films ranging from 1915 to 1940.  And the song is by Moby called Run On.  I think the video is awesome and well timed.

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