Category: STORY TIME


Sometime back in 1991, I had a slightly different point of view & really nice glasses.
1991 & a nice set of glasses

I must admit, along the way…

I have lived a rather colorful past, and this page back then was All about Me, (before DaMeggie Oe came along), so let me just say… Pleased to meet You and here’s to some mimbilized sides of my wicked blasts!

Some of my favorites were found in filming, music, photography, flying & during raising capital for sustainable worthwhile ventures!

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When it came to filming, I was involved in more film productions than I can remember.

Photography & photojournalism are still on going and I’m still big on Canon & Panasonic.

Flying, I was so lucky to have piloted more than 30 different aircraft during my global encounters.

Raising capital, I’ve always been good at raising capital, basically for everyone other than myself!

Music, I was most fortunate… it literally rolled itself right into my life & in there I met many a Producer and Impresario, that presented to us all so much of what we listen to now today. I was raised on Rock & Roll, Rhythm & Blues, slipped into Motown, then flew into disco, gravitated to House & now I’m tuned into some of the world’s greatest DJ’s and my oh my what wonderful remixes there are out there now today and I do enjoy the Classics as well!

I’ve lived in some pretty nice places & was born in Vancouver. Once I was old enough to drive, the 25 hour drives to Hollywood began, then one day I shipped out to New Zealand, then off to Australia. SE Asia followed, then onto Europe & my first visit to Ibiza in the late 70′s. Along the way, I slipped on through St Tropez, Paris, Stockholm, Oporto, Tangier, Bombay, Byron Bay, bays everywhere, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Sydney, Adelaide, the Gold & Sunshine Coasts, Bali, plied the Caribbean for a while & visited heaps of other places along the way too.

I’m back in NZ these days, still love the colors I see before my eyes, and it’s given me time to ponder & realize some of the things that made me the way I was. I know it came from the genes & from being with those of you I knew & the places we lived, so let’s just get this straight right now… you can share in that too and that’s the story I’m sticking to!

For now, I’m working on me and whom I have become.
The rest I’ll leave for you to ponder.

And… from here on in, it’s not just All about Me anymore,
it’s now Meg & I, so from here on in…
:) :) IT’S ALL ABOUT US :) :)

Me & DaMeggie OeThis is what I'm talking about

Best read just before bedtime.
It’s… it’s updated, it’s altered, it’s, it’s also highly fractured & stir fried for more!
Remember the Twilight Zone & the Kanamits, the episode titled
To Serve Man… it was a long time ago.

These days we have CERN & the Large Hadron Collider and now the Higgs Boson as well… a particle thought to give matter mass. This is so far beyond the Twilight Zone… I wonder, could the
Large Hadron Collider actually be one big tenderizer from the Kanamits back for more?
Welcome to Story Time.

Years ago, the Twilight Zone, ‘To Serve Man’, a great little show, here’s the story line…
Flying saucers began appearing on Earth, lots of them, everywhere! Inside were alien beings called Kanamits, 9 foot tall creatures, big heads & mechanical sounding voices to converse with man. One Alien Kanamit Ambassador addressed the UN & offered friendship, asserting their intentions were to help solve earth’s global problems, hunger and energy shortages. In return they asked for… well, watch the video, it’s short 1min/22seconds long, but I can say…

Before leaving, the alien ambassador accidentally left a book in the UN chambers. Military specialists snatched it & immediately went to work attempting to decode it.

Meanwhile, the Kanamits convinced the planet’s leaders to demilitarize & simultaneously began ferrying interested humans to their home planet in spaceships to see what a wonderful place they live in… yum, ya right! Unfortunately, no human could be found that ever returned to tell the real story of what was going on up in Kanamit-Ville.

Panning forward… as the miltary scientists were deciphering the book, one scientist decided to travel to the alien planet to see first-hand what it was like. As he was boarding the space ship for departure in New York, his assistant had found part of the book deciphered & realized all was not well! She rushed to the airport to stop him, but on her arrival she was stopped by one of the Kanamits at the gate & while struggling to free herself from the being’s grasp, she screamed to the scientist… “The book, it’s called To Serve Man… it’s, it’s a cookbook!”

It made for great television back in the 1960′s, and a nice little excerpt 29 years later in the movie The Naked Gun 2 1/2.

Anyways… this Large Hadron Collider, what is this thing?
Maybe the collider is about to become our galaxy’s largest ever known tenderizer & the
Higgs Bosun particles are about to give human matter added mass, up there in Kanamit-Ville, after being shrink wrapped here, then shipped out to the Kanamits out there, for their dining pleasure… a zap of the collider, a bit of flambe, hey… just another one them fancy alien restaurants?
Guess who’s coming for dinner! Food for thought. Have you hugged an Alien yet today?

Have a good night & that’s it for Story Time.

The year is 2014, it’s not here yet,
changes are being made, but wouldn’t
you rather know
where’s Montezuma’s Gold?

Welcome to my Story Time!

The scene opens hi atop a Mexican jungle, a large flat open deck, nicely tiled, potted palm trees, terraced gardens, tables, couches & an open styled verandah, curtains gently flowing in the wind, a large pool, birds chirping & in the distance the jungle below. It’s actually high atop an Aztec pyramid & the focus is on 2 kids playing marbles.

Their mother calls out… `dinner time’ and the camera zooms in on the 2 fetching up their marble bags & even further to one of the marbles, right in, like Google Maps zooms in & we realize that marble is planet Earth.

The camera zooms back out, a few marbles are flipped into a string tied marble pouch, the kids dad is there too, Que… Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec Sun God & business man who happens to own our sun, actually, he owns several, which is an array of nuclear reactors, that to us, appears like our Sun, designed to warm, lighten & nourish the planets in the galaxies he owns… Earth being one!

The camera pans left, it’s now the early 1500′s, in Mesoamerica, a place we now know as Mexico. Montezuma II enters the scene… we’ll call him Monty, a rather clever architect, handpicked by the Aztec Sun God himself, Que chose Monty for his special talents & appointed him as leader of the Aztec Triple Alliance, Emperor of the Aztec Empire, with conditions… Monty agreed & began accepting the largest ever known stash of gold stolen from galaxies from far, far away! Transports came weekly, from the skies above and with them came teachings of mathematics & great learning’s. The Aztecs called it Gifts from the God of the Sun and Que’s gold was stashed well, well, most of it. Monty amassed a huge fortune for himself, designed & built himself an Empire, saved an occasional pyramid or two for personal entertaining and sacrifices & all seemed to be running rather well.

Meanwhile, a ways back, a thousand years before, when Que was a child, Que’s grandmother, once Empress of all known empires amongst the galaxies & notable clairvoyant, prophesied Que’s return to Earth in 2012! She also prophesied the Aztec Sun God may return himself to Mesoamerica in 1519, but he never did.

Camera right… come the Spring of 1519, Monty thought the Sun God himself was making his return. Since he never actually met Que before, he sent out greeting parties to openly greet the white skinned, white haired people, arriving on the Gulf Coast in their ships, in fact, he arranged gifts of gold for them as well. That was not good! Instead of it being the Aztec Sun God Quetzalcoatl, it was actually Hernándo Cortés, along with six hundred of his henchmen Conquistadors, supposedly in the name of Christianity, on behalf of the Holy Roman Church, the other half… with deadly greed! They were looking for gold and they found it, well, some of it! Monty did a good job of hiding the mother load but come June, 1520, his job came to an end as hostilities broke out, culminating in the massacre in the Main Temple and his own death, Montezuma II was dead & that was that!

Que’s grandmother a thousand years before prophesied Que would return to earth in 2012, so the Aztec’s decided it best to end their Calendar there. Some say come Dec 2012, there’s going to be a bit of a scrap! Que’s mother load of gold was reportedly never found, instead it may have been moved by its caretakers, so that the Conquistadors could not get their hands on it. There’s no doubt the Conquistadors made themselves wealthy & many a story has been written, yet to this day, the mother load has yet to be found.

Camera farther right… time line now, 2011. Que has been caught up warring with other galaxies & has a little problem with a warlord from a neighboring galaxy who wants the Sun reactor that warms our earth, plus he heard Que may have the largest ever known stash of gold found in the galaxies & may be returning for it. Loving a good scrap, the warlord decides he’s coming for it & on the screen, in the background, are thousands of armed battleships waiting in orbit for battle as 2012 fast approaches. It looks to be a bit more than your usual intergalactic sausage sizzle so Que & Daddy Warlord decide to get together & have a little chat.

Camera left… zooming in on a calender, it’s now 2014… WE’RE SAVED, well, it’s 2014,
so much for that 2012 Aztec calender story, we’re still here, or so it seems. The kids have Earth securely back in their marble bag, it’s time for dinner & Que has a friend joining them for dinner who just asked…
`So whatever happened to Montezuma’s Gold?’
`Oh, the Gold… that story about Montezuma’s Gold worked well, didn’t it! I’ve been here since 2011, Monty stashed it well, I pulled it out, cut a deal with a neighboring warlord… he likes being called Mr. War Lord these days & I allowed him to take out all those on earth who like to scrap and create disasters, he took  them out back, roughed them up a bit, then sent them off to a distant outpost to mine commodities for his distant galaxies. I’m sticking with the story how they call me the Aztec Sun God, it’s sort of a fancy name and since I can… I’ve weaned out this planets misfits, cloned Earth, gave the real one to the kids to play with, it’s actually one of their favorite marbles and now as you can see… I’m kicking back atop one of Monty’s pyramids. I have a new wife, a couple of kids, working on my tan, this place is once again in pretty good shape, at least for a while and hey… the weather’s calmed down, palm trees back swaying, snow storms stopped, pollution disappearing, ozone holes closed, oil prices dropped drastically, food prices slashed, organics abound, air travel costs halved, earthquakes stopped, the oceans cleaned up, political rest on all fronts, taxes reduced significantly & free medical for all! Oh, I decided to remove all of the nuclear reactors here… just too costly, disaster after disaster & far too many just Unclear about Nuclear, so I provided them with a new energy source for the globe and did I tell you how I sucked up all that space junk up out there & cut a deal with Branson?’
`Ya, I saw that coming in, it was clear sailing all the way in this time! Well done… and the Gold?’
`Aw, that’s best left to the imagination! I’ve re-stashed it, so let’s leave it as the story of Montezuma Revenge and move on. Oh, by the way, I’m having a few thousand tons of it loaded onto your craft for your wife’s birthday present… are you all good with that? I don’t want you thinking I’m still hitting on her or anything… I’m a married man again these days & hey, we’re going on a little holiday next week and looking at a new galaxy at the same time, why don’t you tag along? On the way out, we’re having lunch with Branson in one of his new space stations, thought we’d hang out & smile a while at some of his scheduled Virgins flying by! Care to join us?’

Here’s to 2014, Que & the Gang, Monty’s Gold & positive change ahead on the way before us all!
You didn’t really believe 2012 was the end for us all, did you?

Pam Finkel // Pamela Lavaf, RIP


Pamela Ann Finkel
R.I.P. 1952-2006
married name Pamela Lavaf,
associate director, stage manager, 1st & 2nd AD,
my first true love in my earlier teens and
Bob Finkel‘s daughter.

Back in 1965 or so… I met Pam Finkel while I was staying at the Royal Hawaiian Guest cabanas on the beachfront in Honolulu with my family. Pam was 14, I was 15… she was visiting Honolulu with her family, she was tall, had freckles, gorgeous & intelligent… we became childhood sweethearts & friends! One night, while walking hand in hand along the shoreline of Waikeke, several young men approached us, we instinctively sensed trouble & were right, they grabbed us both, some began hitting me & others were pawing towards Pam! I struck out wildly hitting anyone of them I could, they had Pam, I had to stop this & I did eventually get between them & Pam. They came for me & Pam came beside me & said we’ll do this together. We began kicking & punching, every blow hit its mark & they were rolling in pain on the ground. Woooo, I took Pam by the hand & said Let’s Run and we did with our attackers following chase until we found a group of people & the attackers turned the other way & were gone! We both smiled… we knew we were very lucky, fortunately nothing too serious happened!

We hung out day after day after that & one day she asked me to accompany her to the airport in Honolulu for me to meet her dad before he returned home ahead of her to California. Off to the airport we went & on our arrival we were met by an official of United Airlines & taken downstairs to a special lounge which led directly out to the tarmac where a Boeing 707 of United Airlines was waiting for her dad in front of the private lounge with it’s front door open and a set of stairs up to it. By the lounge door was a man talking with 2 uniformed United personnel, there appeared to be some sort of problem between them, to the far right sitting on a couch was Peter Lawford the actor, one of the Rat Pack & he looked at me and said Douglas? Yes I said & you are Peter Lawford? Yes I am he said & he looked at Pam and said to her… Is this him? She smiled, yes Peter, it is he! Perfect, Peter stood up, shook my hand & said let me introduce you to everyone… he called out ‘Bob, this is Douglas!’ Bob was the man by the door talking to the United personnel, Bob Finkel. He turned and called out ’Hi Doug, I’m arranging lunch, care to join us?’ I smiled & said Ok! Bob said I’ll be just a moment. I smiled. Peter laughed & asked what I knew of Bob, I said nothing, Pam never spoke of him until today. Peter said, ‘Well then, Bob’s one of the key players at the studios of NBC & Jerry Lewis’s producer and Bob has a contract with United that when he flies, he gets the whole of First Class to himself & for those he invites but today there was a problem because United somehow allowed a woman into First Class & Bob had not invited her & Bob refused to accept that, so United was arranging another aircraft just for Bob to take him & 2 of his passengers to Los Angeles… a Boeing 707, all to themselves.’ Ha! I could hear Bob saying ’I can easily cancel our contract with United’ & United saying oh please we don’t want that… yada yada yada and then all of a sudden Bob turned around and said, Ok everybody, lunch will be ready in 20 minutes and United has arranged for another plane just for ourselves.

Bob then walked over to me and said Douglas… Hello and shook my hand ~ Pam has told me a lot about you! I smiled, I liked Bob immediately, he was a delightful character! From that meeting I learnt that Douglas Fairbanks Jnr was a relative of mine, so hey, it was in the blood so to say! Fascinating and there I was with some of the world’s greatest. I always had extraordinary people around me but this was one of NBC’s BEST!!! Later that day Bob & Peter flew out, Pam & I returned to Honolulu, she stayed on for a few more days until my family & I returned to Vancouver & she to Los Angeles.

We stayed in touch, lots of calls & finally, we had to see each other. I did not have a car yet, drivers license would come the year after, so out went my thumb, 3 rides later, that’s another story, I was at Pam’s door in Encino, California & she leapt into my arms! It was so nice to see her… reunited! The next day I saw Bob & he asked where my car was, I said I didn’t have one yet & said I hitched all the way there! A few days later Pam took me to the studios of NBC to see Bob at work, Bob introduced me to Jerry Lewis and I got to see around the studios. Pam left early to head out for her fencing lessons and Bob drove me home in his convertible Rolls Royce. As we were driving along with the roof down, Bob said feel the wheel… we were doing 120 miles per hour on the freeway in a big bend to the right & it was smooth as can be, I held the wheel with 2 fingers from my left hand, I could barely feel a thing! He asked me if I knew how to drive & I said I did. He said tomorrow use this car & take Pam for a ride to the beach. The next day Pam & I headed to Malibu, with the roof down, no where near as fast as the day before & still I had no license! Pam was gorgeous!

Memory is a funny thing, taunting me when I need it most, yet forgetful in its nature. I need to know more about Pam… it’s possible Pam still has something to say & there’s this feeling I have mustering inside. Please… if you feel you have something you can add to this, please drop me a line and let’s see where it flows! Thanks!!

Come October 2006…
I found myself thinking about Pam late one night and we began talking, this was not on the phone… I had no idea where she was. The next morning, when I awoke, from New Zealand I tried finding Pam… that wasn’t so easy, it had been a long time! I sensed something was wrong, beyond my reach & knew I must accept that. Months passed and still I felt Pam reaching out, so we just talked, usually as I walked along a ridge on Waiheke Island, near Auckland, bit of a spiritual walk & stretch for me…
I suspected Pam had passed on.

Come April 2007 I was talking to Sue Davies on the island of Majorca/Mallorca in the Mediterranean, on the phone. I told her about Pam & she did some web crawling and found nothing but a few days later, she called me back, thank you Sue and sadly she said she read Pam had passed away 6 months earlier. That puts it back to October. Same moment… I heard the wind outside in the trees & I felt Pam smile now that I knew.

Come January 2010, I received a most moving email from Nellie Martinez, thank you Nellie! You also informed me of Pam’s passing and told me about Pam’s dog Lucinda & how Lucy passed away shortly after Pam. I think the 2 run together now! I’ve passed on your good wishes! Any photos you can share with me please?

Come February 2011, I received an email from Nancy Stephens, thank you Nancy!
You wrote: you met Pam along with her dad Bob Finkel and Jerry Lewis, his wife, and entourage (18 pieces of Louis Vuitton luggage and a dog named Angel in her own Louis Vuitton dog carrier); Steve and Barbara Bochco, Barbara Feldon; Andy Williams, and David Lander-among others during a two week project called “Carnegie Salutes Carnegie”. Makes me smile at the times we’ve lived! You also wrote: `Who wouldn’t love Pam? I never forgot her. She is an unforgettable person and I loved your story about her. So with this I thank you for sharing your story that finally allowed me to find about her passing’. You are most welcome Nancy and thank you!

Pamela Lavaf, born Pamela Ann Finkel 12 Nov 1952, died age 53 on 12 October 2006.