Barbie Blondieri Saga: Growing Up

Fans of our blog know that from time to time we bring you the occasional tidbits of goodness from beyond our usual focus of comics, film, TV and whatnot. Regular readers are already familiar with the developing saga of Barbie Blondieri, her unsightly neck growth, and the whole drama being some guy named Phil's fault (see May 2006 archives for more info). Barbie now goes by the name Chastity Pariah, is the 13th wife of one Gideon Jedediah, and raises their family strictly adhering to the Mormon fundamentalist lifestyle in Resurrection City, Utah.

At any rate, now we bring you information on Barbie's troubled childhood, by focusing on her young childhood. Born in 1971 in Torrance, CA, Barbie is the youngest of two daughters born to Paul Blondieri (born in Naples, Italy, 1940) and Janice Jones (born in Los Angeles, 1946).

Blondieri was an engineer with Northrup-Grummon, a defense contractor. Janice was an emergency room nurse at the local hospital. Barbie's parents were your typical 70s parents, except that they were very straight-laced and did not rebel one iota. Regular church-goers, the Blondieri's were so conservative that Charlie's Angels on TV was too risque for their home. Nixon was infallible in their eyes, much like the Pope, just because he was the President. Barbie's older sister Sandy (born in 1966), was her little sister's hero. Active in Girl Scouts

and 4-H (yes, Torrance had a 4-H club), Sandy won the 1976 Girl Scout Southern California Regional Bicentennial Jamboree Award for the most prized heifer. In this case, I am speaking of the cow. Sandy was also a spelling bee champion, winning her Middle School Spelling Championship by correctly spelling the word "dicktink" (look it up if you are unfamiliar with it).

Barbie looked up to her sister like a god, but never seemed to match her potential. Always compared to her sister, Barbie never really could step up to the plate. Then everything changed.
At the age of 15, Sandy ran away with a 23 year-old named Leo who was the night manager of the local Adult Movie Theater. A real winner that guy. Five years went by before the Blondieri's heard from Sandy. By this time she had moved to a commune in Vermont, where she was in charge of the dairy operation (see, 4-H Club can be useful!). During this time she entered into a common-law marriage with one Scott "Moonbeam" Purkowski, having one daughter named Baez Purkowski. At some point, however, Sandy left the commune, Moonbeam, and Baez behind and joined her sister in the world of Mormon fundamentalism (see photo below, taken by one of our "moles" in Resurrection City).

The reasons for this dramatic shift is still unclear. According to Moonbeam, who now has re-embraced his birth name Scott and is a software engineer in Rochester, NY, it all stemmed for a bad acid trip in 1987. The next morning Scott awoke to find that Sandy had abandoned him and their daughter. Scott has since remarried a corporate marketing executive for the Kodak Corporation. Neither he nor his daughter has had any contact with Sandy since she left Vermont.

Once her older sister left home, Barbie's parents essentially disowned Sandy for embracing the "godless hippy lifestyle." This turned out to be a major boost in Barbie's self-esteem (which, in retrospect considering how she turned out, is laughable in concept). Although she loved her sister, she felt liberated and that she had jettisoned her from her life. According to Tiffany Van Der Platen (nee Sanchez), who was Barbie's BFFL in 8th grade, Barbie's whole outlook changed. She became more confident at home. Unfortunately, that proved short-lived; within two years, everything changed. With no other sibling to deflect the pressure from her parents, Sandy became their sole focus.

In our next installment, we'll take a look at Barbie's troubled adolescence. If you have any information about the Blondieri family, Chastity Pariah, or Gideon Jedediah, please contact Mister Fanboy at once.