Star Lites

STAR LITES*

*Those irritating little profiles of some recently famous actress you see in Airline magazines

When she is in town Carla Stoneweather can often be found in “The Blank Look”, her favorite LA eatery. The current Most-Watched New Starlet claims the Look may not have the best gnocchi in town but that at least “they have good intentions”. 

Ms. Stoneweather, formerly of Clay Pot, Arkansas, migrated to LA in search of her true calling, to open a feed & seed emporium specializing in exotic varieties of corn and chicken scratch. Unfortunately for Carla, in the late 60’s a very similar idea was brought to fruition in southern California by Karl Blankenhammer, when he opened up a string of unforgettable specialty shops under the name of “Hog Slop AGoGo”.  Once our starlet was made aware of this fact and that local memories of these establishments occasionally foment mini riots, she was forced to alter her focus.

Undaunted by her disappointment but aware that one meal a week results in a tendency to pal around with pigeons, the former southern belle set off on a series of shoplifting excursions.  This line of work too proved to be unrewarding.  Unlike most filchers who are satisfied to sell their booty on the street for food money, Carla was driven by a creative zeal that interfered with the actual point of her enterprise.  The future actress was unable to accumulate her booty due to the fact that she would replace each purloined prize with what she had filched in the previous shop. Carla’s sensitivities were such that this reordering of merchandise from one establishment to the next was her way of “bringing order to a chaotic world”.  However strong her artistic urges were they proved unsatisfactory in her quest for succor because at the end of a week’s incessant stealing she had kept only a Precious Moments figurine of a boy cloyingly e-trading small caps on Nasdaq.

To make matters worse for her, or so it seemed at the time, a security camera in a Starbucks caught her replacing a pound of coffee with a salami.  Since Carla visited this Starbucks several times a day, it took the police only twelve weeks to crack the case and pin the heist on Carla.  As fate would have it though, Carla’s fortunes were to take a dramatic turn for the better.  The manager of the violated coffee house, Jack Dorkin while reviewing the video with police, noticed the hauntingly balletic movements Carla employed in making her switch and decided not to press charges (plus he felt a good salami for a pound of coffee was more than a fair trade). 

Jack, like so many others in this magic town, was an aspiring actor and he knew talent when he saw it and he definitely saw it in Carla.  Even though Jack had little success in the acting trade he was the kind of selfless man that would go the extra mile for his fellow man, and helping Carla provided potential dividends since she was a saucy dish and if he was lucky would display her gratitude by washing his car in her underwear.  Jack decided to introduce Carla to his agent Tuppe.

Tuppe Biowak was a former boxer whose head had absorbed more than its share of jabs and left hooks but he had a way with many movie producers in town (his way generally involved encouraging reluctant producers to enter their cars through their tail pipes).  Not easily impressed, Tuppe was enchanted by Carla’s natural approach to acting which Carla’s family stupidly mistook for spasms. 

Carla finally had her first big break when Tuppe placed her as the lead cashier at the “Pants for Less” next to Freddy’s Tabac Shop.  While this may seem like a far cry from snagging a part in a Broadway play or even an extra in a low budget independent film, Tuppe’s genius was soon to be apparent, for only six year later Carla caught the eye of Rufus A. Stegemon, mogul of Gigantic Studios.  This fortuitous event occurred when Mr. Stegemon was returning a pair of gabardine slacks that inexplicably had all the pockets sewn to the right leg while the left leg was festooned with wicker baskets. 

Some have suggested that this “error in construction” was the work of Carla, but her friends (Freddy and Clegg the janitors) knew better as gabardine caused Carla to become extremely dizzy.

Regardless, Rufus was smitten at the first sight of this beautiful counter girl and proposed to her on the spot.  Carla, still reeling from the sight of the gabardine, said yes, or yeech, or something but whatever she said, wedding bells were soon to be sounding for her.  Most people may think it strange that a wistful girl like Carla would agree to marry an 87 year old prune such as was Rufus, but it really is not so hard to understand. For you see, Rufus was charming, but better yet, he was clever, so clever that he had worn gabardine all through their brief courtship. Not only that, he had his car and all the furniture in his palatial estate done up in gabardine.  Keeping the delectable beauty in a semi conscious state allowed Rufus to fare better than her two other suitors, a deaf and blind ex-hockey goalie and a full sized cutout of Ronald McDonald.

As head of Gigantic Studios, Rufus slowly introduced Carla to the public by providing her small roles in his most coveted projects.  This way the public would become conditioned to Carla’s strangely hypnotic charm and grace (she displayed a slight limp, walking like Walter Brennan, and had an artificial eye fashioned from a yellow driving range golf ball). 

The early films “Loaves of Bread” and “Gravel!” provided suitable material for show-placing Carla’s talent, but it was in her starring debut in “Ben the Grizzly Argues with a Salmon” that her true artistry was apparent to all.  In that film she played a good natured woodchuck that is tragically devoured by Ben who was to eventually see the error of his ways.  Carla’s triumphant splash on the screen, when Ben guiltily regurgitates her, has been compared to some of filmdom’s greatest and most heart rending moments. 

Since the success of Ben (soon to be released in 3-D DVD), Carla has been involved in her first romantic role about a confused taxi driver in mid-evil England. For this film Carla is paired with heartthrob Jeremy Bones fresh from the successful “Yikes it’s You Again” in which he played a hapless air traffic controller who is somehow responsible for numerous train derailments.

Screen watchers are anxiously awaiting the grand opening of this film which will take place in the back room of Harold’s Pool Hall in Clay Pot.

Although there are rumors that Carla’s first romantic role has Rufus nervous, those in the know say he is quite comfortable with the pairing especially since Jeremy’s entire wardrobe is constructed of gabardine.