Man has a repertoire of 88 ballooning animals Dennis Forel 34 of Hermosa Beach has a tendency to blow things out of proportion What Da Vinci was to art Sally Rand was to feathers Frank Lloyd Wright was to architecture Tchaikovsky was to music and Fred Astaire was to dance Forel is to b alloons He is an artist Da Vinci might have created the Mona Lisa and Tchaikovsky might have composed Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty" but they would have been lost in Forels medium balloons Forels Mona Lisa is a Brontosaurus or better yet a Stegosaurus two prehistoric creatures that he lists in his repertoire of 88 animals His pallet is a long skinny balloon First he breathes life into it then with a series of dramatic twists and yanks transforms it before your very eyes into an animal You want a snake? You want an elephant? You want a teddy bear on a tricycle? You want a Brontosaurus? With a single balloon voila! it is yours for the asking There are four great balloon sculptors in the world Only one was born and raised in Redondo Beach graduated form Redondo Union High School and El Camino College and creates prehistoric creatures with a single balloon You may Find him table-hopping at the Strand nightclub in Redondo Beach on Friday and Saturday nights Or catch him at the Fun Fair in I Hoots 1 LeBaron Lawndale next Sunday Hell be the guy in the straw hat practicing his art Like most of us bis biggest fan is his mother Loretta Forel who with her husband Sheldon still live in the home where Dennis grew up She described her son as an artist who does magic with balloons While working as a bartender at a Shakeys Pizza in Gardena the boss gave him a bag of balloons and said Make a dog" From that point he kind of oozed into it said his mother The whole neighborhood watched him grow creatively We are proud of all of our sons Paul his older brother works for an executive search firm in Santa Monica while the middle brother David is a geophysicist living in Texas Since his father owned a biomedical laboratory in Carson and his older brothers pursued careers in business why did he choose a field that was so far removed? I feel like I'm contributing to people entertaining them causing them to forget some of their frustrations just for a moment to slow dowTi and watch he said I dont know if I'm making the world a better place but I'm adding a little happiness to it" No to fashionable logos Remember Paddy Chayevskys movie Network" when the late actor Peter Finch as a TV newscaster screamed to the world I'm mad as hell and Im not going to take this anymore'" Meet Wayne R Le Jeune a senior engineer with TRWs Space and Technology Group Hes fed up paying my money for clothes that carry huge logos and other advertisements of products Mankind has become nothing more than walking billboards Yet society calls this form of commercialism fashionable Although his wife Janice a TRW secretary realizes that fashion logos frustrate her husband she points out Its his little quirk not mine It doesnt bother me because I never buy those kind of clothes She does however rent movie cassettes and resents paying to see a Film and having to sit through a commercial What really upsets Wayne is car dealers who list their names on license plates frames I would never buy a new car if it came with a product name painted on its hood or the name of the manufacturer printed across its trunk" she said Sad news from England After six hours on Sept 1 John Hill 52 of Palos Verdes Estates gave up his attempt to swim across the English Channel No reason was given for Hill's coming out of the water which reportedly was 63 degrees Dot-tie York of Manhattan Beach received a call from her son John HJls coach who jumped into the water beside Hill but couldnt convince him to continue York told his mother that Hill reached up and touched the hull of the accompanying boat thus ending the challenge York had said that Hill had been working out six davs a week for almost a vear preparing for the swim In the past Hill a Los Angeles attorney swam from Catalina to Marmeland in 10: hours bicv-cled 3000 miles across the country competed in the grueling Hawaiian Iron Man competition and was a Finisher in the Western States 100-mile run If you haie sonet king you think is timely proiocatne or just plain nonsense Boots LeBaron uants to hear from you Write him at this neuspaper
