THEORY CORNER FOR WOMEN: FOUR WOMEN TELL THEIR STORIES

MS. PRISCILLA ANCHOVY: "Greetings Ladies! This is Priscilla Anchovy, Roving Editor for Theory Corner for Women. Today we're going to sit in on the lunch-time conversation of four independent, women...four strong women who exemplify the modern woman's striving for fulfillment and self-awareness.

The chat's already started. Let's go to our remote camera and see what they're up to..."

THE GROUP: (general chatter, then...)"What'll we talk about? Men again?"

MAGNOLIA: "Wait! I've got it. Let's talk about our first boyfriends!"

THE GROUP: "First boyfriends!? Haw! Oh boy, this should be rich!"

THE GROUP: "You first Gladiola! Sit in the middle!"

GLADIOLA: "Well...(tee hee)... I feel silly talking about it, but if you insist...."

GLADIOLA: "We met in a chat room on the internet. He used to call me his lucky charm because every time we talked, something nice happened to him in real life. We discovered that we lived near each other, so we decided to take a chance and see a movie together.

It went great. Halfway through the film he put his arm around me, and I snuggled into his shoulder, just like we'd known each other for for years."

GLADIOLA: "After the film we went shopping in the mall and he bought me a beautiful tee shirt with the name "Lucky Charm" embroidered on it. It looked great. I was so happy with it that I just had to buy him something, so I bought him a bottle of cologne."

GLADIOLA: "That's when everything went South. It was a sweet-smelling cologne and he put a lot of it on, right there in the mall. We went outside to see if we could buy some ice-cream, and he was stung by a bee."

GLADIOLA: "He said it really hurt and asked if I'd drive him home. Before we could find the car he was stung by two more bees. I doused him with more cologne, thinking it would ward off the bees, but it didn't work, because inside the car he was covered with them."



GLADIOLA: "I drove to the local hospital where they had to use a steam gun to get the bees off. When I saw his face it was unrecognizable, and the steam had peeled off his skin down to the bone in some places. The doctor said he was at the brink of death. Only a higher power could help him now."



GLADIOLA: "His parents arrived soon after and we all waited anxiously in the waiting room to see how things would turn out. They were the sweetest people you'd ever want to meet, and said they were privileged to meet the girl their son called his lucky charm."

GLADIOLA: "The boy's father noticed the cologne I'd left on a table and, since he'd always been curious about that brand, he dabbed some on himself and his wife, and they went out to the parking lot to get a smoke. They were only gone ten minutes, when there was a commotion outside and they were both wheeled in on gurneys, stone dead and covered with bees.

So that's my story. The boy survived, just barely, and is a disfigured recluse who occasionally sends me emails. He still refers to me as his lucky charm. Actually, I still have the rest of the cologne. I hate to see it go to waste, so if you're interested......"

"MAGNOLIA: "My story isn't tragic, thank goodness! My boyfriend was a lawyer. I remember the day he proposed to me. He kneeled on the floor of the restaurant and with a lump in his throat he showed me an open box containing the most beautiful diamond ring you ever saw."

MAGNOLIA: "Magnolia, my beloved," he said, "I hereby give and convey to you all and singular, my estate and interests, rights, claim, title, claim and advantages of and in, said ring, together with all its sparkle, inscriptions, fuzzy felt box, satin lining in said box, and all rights and advantages with full power to cut glass, compare size, impress, develop envy in others and otherwise wear, the same, or give the same away with and without the sparkle, inscriptions, fuzzy box and satin lining, anything or any kind whatsoever to the contrary in anywise notwithstanding."



THE GROUP: "Oh, that's terrible! Imagine talking like that to a girl! How could he have offended you that way?"

MAGNOLIA: "Offended? Oh, I wasn't offended. My Dad was a lawyer and I grew up with that kind of talk. I simply said,"I accept, provided that that acceptance of this ring and fuzzy box does not imply a legal obligation incurred now or in the future, in this galaxy or any inhabitable surface between the galaxies, including but not limited to asteroids and space platforms, and provided that amendments to this acceptance take the form of a written document duly executed by both parties.

We're going to be married in the Fall. You guys are all invited."

DAFFODIL: "Well, it was back in the old country, in Hungary! My first boyfriend and I were walking along and an old gypsy woman jumped out."

DAFFODIL: "She grabbed me by the shoulders and said, 'Before this day is done, your boyfriend will betray you! Just wait and see! For you this day is cursed!' 'Ha!' I said, 'Boy did you get it wrong, old woman! This is my birthday. All my friends'll be at the party tonight, and we're going to have a good time. Now stand aside. We'll have no more of your silly stories!"

DAFFODIL: "Well, as you can imagine the prophesy cast a pall over everything. The villagers heard about it and were afraid to come to the party."

DAFFODIL: "The gypsy, my best friend and my boyfriend were the only ones who showed up. I went into the kitchen to get them a drink and when I came out my boyfriend and my best friend were on a bench by the fire, locked in an embrace, and doing...doing...oh, it's too horrible to tell!"

DAFFODIL: "Out of my mind with fury, I reached for a poker from the fireplace. My boyfriend looked at me with horror on his face!"

DAFFODIL: "With tears streaming down my face, I struck and I struck."

DAFFODIL: "But that wasn't enough! I also strangled and strangled. When I was finished the lifeless corpse on the floor resembled a pile of bloody meat more than a human being!"

THE GROUP: "Whew! So you killed your boyfriend. Well, I guess that's understandable."

DAFFODIL: "Boyfriend? What boyfriend? No, I killed the old gypsy woman. She ruined my party."

GERTRUDE: "My boy friend was an angel, pure and simple. We were supposed to be married but while flying on a business trip over the jungle his plane crashed and he was nursed back to health by a white woman who lived in the trees and was known as 'The Queen of the Jungle.' "

Gertrude: "She nursed him back to health, and before you know it they fell in love. They lived an ideal existence near a waterfall surrounded by orchids and exotic birds. Food was naturally in abundance and animals did all their chores for them."

GERTRUDE: "One day he explained that he had to go back to civilization in order to explain himself to me, his former girlfriend. He just couldn't decide which one of us he loved more. She came back with him and got a job in the drive-thru window at Burger King."

GERTRUDE: "That's when things got really weird. She blamed me for the wretched life she was forced to lead. I'd hear footsteps on the roof at night, and wake up with tarantulas and poison snakes on my pillow."

GERTRUDE: "My boyfriend couldn't make up his mind and this infuriated the jungle queen. I feared to walk under trees lest she drop out of the branches and gorilla-bite me."

GERTRUDE: "I've been shot with blow-gun darts repeatedly. From week to week a different part of my body is always paralyzed. I don't think I can take much more."

Gertrude: "She had a big influence on the other Burger King emoloyees. They were all on my lawn last night dancing like they were demons. They whooped and shrieked, and carried around a big head made of mud and feathers that looked just like me."

THE GROUP: "Oops! Hold it there, Gertrude! It's time to get back to work!"

THE GROUP: "We'll pick this up tomorrow."

GERTRUDE: "But...but..."

GERTRUDE: "But...but I didn't finish telling you what they did with the head! They took it and....."

THE GROUP: "Tomorrow, Gertrude!"

GERTRUDE: "But I might be dead tomorrow!"

MS. PRISCILLA ANCHOVY: "Dead perhaps, but not without a fight, eh Gertrude? Modern woman marches on! Til next time: bye bye!"

THE PLAYERS: Lindsay Schulz (Ms. Priscilla Anchovy); Ericka Martinez (Gladiola); Carlyn Yeh (Magnolia); Christina Pazsitzky (Daffodil); and me, Eddie Fitzgerald (Gertrude).

ANNOUNCEMENT: I need a vacation so my next blog won't be up til this Thursday night, August 6, 2009.

ARE CLOWNS FUNNY?

No, of course they're not, though there are exceptions. In circuses they're a necessary change of pace. In fact, it's hard to imagine a circus without them. But the circus is their domain. Why do they seem so out of place in the real world?

The history of clowning is an odd one. Apparently part of the appeal of clowning was that they got away with social satire that would have landed ordinary people in jail. They paid dearly for that freedom by confining themselves to strident, way-over-the-top slapstick. Maybe by imitating crazy people they were asking to be regarded with the deference that society grants the mad.

Clown humor is so different than modern humor, so different even from modern slapstick like the kind The Three Stooges did, that I sometimes wonder if modern humor came from entirely different roots.

Here's a painting about two different types of clowns who meet on the street and fight by proxy through their dim-witted footman.

It seems that people have had the urge to do violence to clowns for a very long time.

Here (above) a woman appears ready to deliver an eye-gouge to an already wounded clown. That's a really terrible thing to do, but it shows you how clowns were regarded. Or maybe she's just gouged the poor man. If so, she doesn't appear very sorry about it.

Early clowns wore a specific costume, denoting the exact type of comic character they were portraying. Woe unto the clown who wore the cuckold's uniform when he was instead portraying a dullard.

Clown costumes were sometimes exaggerated versions of the fashion of the day, but it's hard to resist the notion that they also gave birth to some of those fashions.

Were the people who used clothing to make funny alterations in their body shape in the 17th to 19th centuries actually trying to dress like clowns? After all, people envied clowns for their ability to say things nobody else could. When a lot of people dress that way, maybe a desire for freedom of expression and a new social order is indicated.

P.S.: None of this applies to mimes, who I have new respect for, after having tried to walk like they do.

THE BEST KIND OF MAGIC POSTER

Here's a terrific one (above). It has it all: beautiful color and rendering, demons, advice from the Devil, and levitating women. Be sure to click to enlarge. You can hardly see what's going on in this tiny version.

I love this one (above). The color isn't as good, but the idea is wonderful: I'm guessing it's about an infidel magician who has penetrated into the secret enclave of a Moorish death cult. He's exposed when he tries to help a girl who's about to be sacrificed to a man-eating tiger. Only his knowledge of magic can save them now.

I don't like this poster (above). I'm a cartoonist but I take magic seriously, and I don't like to see it treated lightly as it is here.

Beautiful technique (above), but where's he rushing to? It's as if his magical powers were less important than a sale at Macy's.

Here's a good one (above). Thurston is presented as a scholar of the mystical arts. He's surrounded my mischievous demons and imps.

Another nice one (above), though the reproduction could be more colorful. Blackstone is portrayed as a man of such enormous power and mystical knowledge that his very presence rends the curtain that separates us from the demon world, and creatures from that place spill into our world all around him.

I don't know why, but the idea of lots of objects (above) floating in the air around a tied-up person intrigues me.


I like posters and magic tricks that are about cabinets (above). When we enclose a space we seem to steal that space from the nether world, and it becomes full of magical potential.

Nice poster...and big, the way all magic posters should be.

Another terrific Kellar poster (above)! The magician's presence has attracted demons who delight in helping him ensnare a space which is alive with mystical energy.

Awesome! The magician has revealed secrets to the audience (above) which were so fantastic and beyond our understanding, that he's driven his audience mad. Well, they can't say they didn't get their money's worth.

This magician's magnetism (above) sucks demons out of their own world and into ours.

A good poster (above), but it's a bit sparse. A magic poster should resemble the best of the old, crowded circus posters. It should promise more wonders than the mind can comprehend. I do like the lightning coming from his fingertips.

Here's (above) an improvement on the same theme. Demons always make a magic poster better.

Niiiice!

I like magic tricks that involve flash explosions. These remind us of Hell, and of the violence-inducing mysteries embedded in the real, everyday world.

THE GLORIOUS TANGO!

My favorite ballroom dance...The Tango!!! Well, sort of. The type above is a bit too slick for me. It's sexy and drastic in its way, but I prefer the older kind which was also street smart and funny.

I love the way tangos (above) have bursts of fast, funny, complicated action...

...that ends in abruptly frozen poses (above) where the dancers whip their heads around with caricatured seriousness.

I love the weird, deco contortions.



Was the Tango invented by cartoonists?

I asked that because it's obvious that Don Martin must have choreographed this (above)!

Add elegance and skill (above) and the funny pose becomes a shockingly beautiful funny pose.


The Tango is so innovative! How many ways are there to bend a woman over? Only about a million and a half!

Attitude (above) counts for a lot. It reminds me of Flamenco in that respect.



Surely this (above) is ballroom's most heterosexual dance. It assumes that men and women are attracted to each other, that animal magnetism exists, that humans are determined to make a sophisticated art, even out of our most primal urges.

For a while gays were really into the Tango, especially in Paris.

The problem was that it just didn't feel right unless you did it with a girl.

A watered-down version of it, called The International Style, caught on and is still danced today in some places.

Finally the Argentines stepped in and with commanding authority...the result of single-minded devotion to the art...brought the dance back to its wild, heterosexual roots.

Of course the French gave us the Apache (above), which is a parody of the Tango. That's interesting because the Tango itself is a parody of previous dances, so it's a case of a parody being parodied.

It all started in the late 1800s when a lot of cowboy gauchos were put out of work, and forced to go to Buenos Aries to look for jobs in the big city. It was tough because a flood of Italian, Spanish and French immigrants soaked up a lot of the available work.

The proud cowboys (above), still wearing their kerchiefs, boots and knives (even though the picture doesn't show that), found themselves spending the day in what my Tango book calls "low life" bars, brothels and dance halls.

There they encountered Argentine blacks (above) who danced something vaguely Afro-Cuban and Flammencoish called the Milongo. It was athletic and flamboyant and struck the gauchos as being hilariously funny.

I like the way the artist shows cats on the floor.

The gauchos liked to do dance parodies of it, which Italian and Spanish musicians worked hard to find a rhythm for. When they did, the word Tango was sometimes used to describe it.

Here's the street in Buenos Aries where the Tango finally earned some respectability and entered the mainstream of Argentine life. All the composers wanted to write for this new thing, the Tango.

Here's (above) a modern revue which conveys a little of the street smarts and humor that I spoke about earlier. How do you like the row of Tango men in the background? The one with the military jacket (or is it a doorman's jacket) is especially funny.

A commenter from Buenos Aires said this looked like tourist art and implied that it was a misuse of the dance. Boy, Argentines still get mad about deviation!

Wow! Isn't it great, the way it starts with the guy in red (above) telling the servant girl to buzz off because he's working on some other girl? Wouldn't it be fun to animate Tex Avery-type humor like the kind above? Sorry to say the major studios are all invested in cookie-cutter features where this approach would be irrelevant. Too bad. I'm going to get laid-off in a week. Maybe I'll have time to try some drawings of this type just for the fun of it.

So the Apache is a parody of the Tango, and the Tango is a parody of the Milongo. I think it stops there, though. I can't imagine going much farther than this video does. The dance starts half a minute into the clip.

WALKING WITHOUT GETTING ANYWHERE

I was going to do a post about silly walks (above), ones that aren't in the famous Python sketch, but I got side-tracked into watching videos of mime walks, and now that's all I can think about. I'm going to learn the profile walk in these videos, and then do it in front of a dog. I have a feeling that it'll drive him nuts!



I posted three walk videos because each one contained some bit of information that the others lift out.



It does take strength in the legs to do this because, unlike real walks, you're putting your weight on a bent leg.






It's off-topic, but I couldn't resist putting a Moonwalk tutorial (above) in here. Actually this looks easier to learn than the profile mime walk. This guy does a good job of explaining it, don't you think?

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS CARTOON?

Unbelievable! Is this really a picture of Bugs Bunny displaying all his male assets? When a friend showed this to me I nearly dropped to the floor.

Actually, it's not what it seems. The offending object is simply the air space between Bugs' legs, and the color is the way it is because it's the color of the tub in the background showing through the empty space. Even so, it sure looks like......

Here's (above) the whole cartoon. Skip ahead to 2:55.

Thanks to Milkandcookies.com for the post this is based on, to lyzard and psyjax who commented on that site and explained what was really going on, and to Christina who turned me on to all this.

THE OTHER POTTER

"It's a Wonderful Life": the film is falling out of favor lately, largely because it's been on the vintage favorites list for a long time and people are looking for something new. Too bad, it's a great film. Anyway, I brought it up because I want to talk about one of my favorite sequences in the film, the one where Potter tries tries to buy off George Bailey with the promise of a high-paying job.

It's an interesting sequence because Potter's been treated as a one-note villain up to this point so you'd expect him to play the sequence in a high-hatted, "Take this offer or else!" kind of way. Instead Potter uncharacteristically tries to sweet talk Bailey. Watch the clip. It begins 4 1/2 minutes into the video.

Did you watch it? What intrigues me about this is that it's a simple attempt at bribery that doesn't add anything to the story, yet it manages manages to be one of the best scenes in the whole film. Think about it. We already knew that Bailey and Potter were enemies. We already had abundant evidence that Bailey preferred integrity to money. The sequence tells us nothing new, and yet....

What I'm going to argue here is that the sequence exists for a theatrical reason. Up till now the Potter part of the story simply laid down information. It took great pains to let us know who the good and bad guys were. That's fine so far as it goes, but live theater people know that audiences crave scenes where they can boo the villain...where they're tempted to yell, "Don't go in there, Dick! he's got a gun!" Even in the middle of a story, they want sequences that end with the patriotic triumph of right exemplified with angelic choirs waving the flag and the villain being hissed off the stage.

Not only that, but actors need scenes where they can shine and not simply be pawns racing ahead to the next plot point. In this sequence Barrymore gets to be sunny for a while. This means he can anchor his performance in a deliberately insincere sing-song, which live audiences love to re-act to, and actors love to play.

That's all I have to say on the subject of live theater and film, but I have a copy of "Cyrano de Bergerac" on the desk in front of me and it wouldn't be much trouble for me to scan in a couple of terrific paragraphs that I read last night. Let's see...Okay...here goes!

Great, huh? Here's an excerpt from the same scene, a couple of pages later:





Wow! Good old Cyrano...a real force of nature!

THE NEXT NEW THING IN ARCHITECTURE

Here's (above) the previous movement: the "modern" look, with flat, ugly, sterile concrete walls punctuated by windows slats. This hideous building is by Frank Gehry.

Here's (above) the current look: sterile, flat concrete walls are still with us, only they're twisted instead of straight. I imagine this will last another ten years. at least.

Here's what's coming: buildings covered with bas-relief. How do I know? Because relief is beautiful and has become easy and cheap to make. That sounds like a formula for success to me.

Frank Lloyd Wright tried to introduce texture into modern building (above) but he was past his prime when he did it, and his interesting blocks were lost in bland, repetitious, modernist flatness.

What puts makes bas-relief a player again is the new building materials, especially the new hard styrofoams. Complex shapes are easily and cheaply molded and produced in quantity...sometimes from computer renderings. Sometimes the renderings are scans of old reliefs like the Aztec pattern above.

Right around the corner we'll also see a resurgence of interest in stone masonry for those who can afford it. I say this with confidence because when interest in texture returns to architecture, interest in stone, which is the ultimate texture, can't be far behind.

For those who have less money we'll see plenty of hard styrofoam stones which look identical to the quirky, pitted, silica-embedded real thing. Some of the fake stones will take designer shapes like the relief stone above.

I hope you like this Aztec relief calendar (above) because you'll see plenty of imitations of it on buildings in the near future.

The Mayans (above) were big on relief sculpture. Your kids may live in a house with Mayan-type walls like this, but punctuated with big, picture windows. Maybe they'll use undecorated real stone for the first floor, and realistic Mayan relief styrofoam for the upper floors.

Poor Rockwell Kent (above) will be plundered again and again for relief ideas.


Computer-guided hard styrofoam molding will put realistic cathedral window arches (above) within reach of average homeowners.

Some will prefer more contemporary abstract designs like the Frank Lloyd Wright stones above. Anything you can draw can be molded into what appears to be real stone. You'll have bricks made bricks that look like your family and friends. Lots of people will do this. I for one am tired of looking at bare, flat, undecorated modernist walls. Who said that things modern always have to be flat and sterile?

A STREETCAR NAMED DEZYRE

STUNLEY: "STALLA! STALL-LAHHHHHH!!!!!"

STUNLEY: "Where's the scissors!? I'll bet your hoity-toity sister Blunche has them!"

STALLA: "Here, Dear. They're right here on the table where you left them.

STUNLEY: "Oh.....well anyway, your sister's always runnin' me down...sayin' I'm stupid and stuff. Well, I ain't stupid!"

AAAAGGGHHHH!!!!!


STUNLEY: "Slut! It's YOUR fault!"

STUNLEY (VO): "Oh, I'm sorry, Stalla. Come 'ere, Baby...Daddy'll kiss it and make it better!"

Blunche re-acts.


STELLA (VO): "Here I am, Daddy! Mommy needs those kisses! (Sloppy kisses and groans)."

STALLA (VO): "Careful, Stunley! Blunche is here, remember?"

STUNLEY: "Oh, right...stupid old Blunche is here! Hmmmm...."



STUNLEY: "Hey, a man gets hungry and there's nothin' around ta eat!"

STUNLEY: "STAAAAALLLAAAA!!!!!!"

STUNLEY: The refrigerator's all the way across the room! How am I gonna get my celerey!?"

STALLA: "Here, Dear. Celerey. Right here."

STUNLEY: "Huh? Celerey? Oh, thanks."

STUNLEY: "Yessir, when you're really hungry, there's nothing like a good...."

STUNLEY: "AAAAAGGGGHHHH!!!!!"

STUNLEY: "Ooooh, my eye!!!!!"

STUNLEY: "Slut! It's your fault again!"

STUNLEY (VO): "Oh, did I do that? Come over here, I want my baby over here!"

Blunche re-acts.

STALLA (VO): "Daddy was mean to his Poopsey-Woopsey!"

STUNLEY (VO): "Never again, Poopsey! Two lips'll fix it!"

STALLA (VO): "Careful, Stunley! Blunche is still here, remember?"

STANLEY (VO): "Oh, right...Blunche."



STUNLEY: (Sniff! Sniff!).

STUNLEY: (Blows nose).

STALLAH: "Sigh! That's my man!"

STUNLEY (VO): "Stalla, quick, get my shotgun! There's a fly on the ceiling!"

DELETED COMMENTS

Uncle Eddie: "I very seldom deliberately delete a comment. When I do, I feel really guilty about it. I mean the person who wrote it had to have gone to some trouble, even if it was just a death threat, and that should be acknowledged. In recognition of that, here's a few unpublished comments from the past three years.

"Uncle Eddie, you stud muffin...how's about you and me...steppin'?"

"Haw Haw (Snick! Harnk!)! Just kidding, Silly!! That was me! Hey, what did you think of 'Assassin's Creed?' Isn't that a way cool game? It takes a while to get a mission, though."


"Eddie, can I have the address of the girl on top?"

"Hi Eddie! Greetings from the 'Anonymous' community. Thanks for letting us comment here!"

"I'm sorry, but I find your practice of doing photo stories with a girl's wig on to be disgusting!"

"Uncle Eddie, I like your site but why do you persist in posting so many pictures of normal-looking women? What men want to see is babes...you know what I mean!"

"Um, Eddie...can I have the address of that handsome man above?"

"Here's a kiss for you Eddie...from a fan in Philadelphia!"

"Ditto from a fan in Wisconsin!"

"Another to you is kissing from fan we are being in Khazkstan!"

"Don't worry about putting stuff up that's bad for kids. We can take it!"

"Uncle Eddie, is it true that your male assets are...well, formidable?"

PAUL COLINS: GENIUS LITHO ARTIST

Parisian artist Paul Colins was arguably the best jazz poster artist ever, and this (above) is his most famous poster.

Like everybody else in Paris in 1925 he was bowled over by the Revue Negre, which featured Josephine Baker dancing in a banana outfit. The revue also introduced 'The Charleston" to France. Audiences went nuts!

The famous bananas (above).

Baker dancing to "Hot Hot Hottentot!"



Colin couldn't fit all his impressions into posters so he did a series of lithographs for a book called "Le Tumulte Noir," which is where most of these pictures are from. Baker sat for him several times.

The odd angles of the poses struck by the dancers wowed everybody...

...as did the frank sexuality.

In Colin's words, Baker was "part boxer kangaroo, part rubber woman, part female Tarzan." Baker was one of the all-time great free-form dancers.

Here's (above) the kind of thing Colins did when he wasn't drawing jazz artists.

Are some of these pictures racist? I honestly don't know. When they're done as well as these are, the whole question gets hard to focus on. You could argue that the red minstrel lips are a racial stereotype, on the other hand the artist clearly admires many of the people he depicts, even when he makes fun of them.

MEAN GIRLS

Like a lot of men I find the idea of mean women to be completely contradictory. I mean women, almost by definition, are kind and nurturing, aren't they? Apparently not, in some cases.

Every girl I've talked to about it has horror stories of other girls who gave them grief in school. Sometimes the bullying is physical, sometimes it takes the form of a whispering campaign aimed at separating the victim from her friends.

A really evil girl will go even farther. She'll try to change her victim's perception of herself. If the aggressor succeeds, even when the target is grown up she'll be a wallflower with limited career possibilities and no self-esteem. It amazes me that even evil girls will devote so much energy to damaging girls they hardly know.

I'm dying to know what happens to mean girls when they get to be say, 25 or 30. What percent of them mellow out?

If you have a daughter, and send her to school, then I offer you this picture (above) of the girl who'll greet her in the schoolyard every day. This photo gives me the creeps. It displays a combination of natural meanness stoked by teen aggression hormones. No wonder your daughter hates school.

Oddly enough, surly Goth girls usually aren't the biggest aggressors. Maybe my artist's bias is at work here, but I reason that if Goth girls have a sense of style, which is a form of art appreciation, that this implies a yearning for higher culture. Am I wrong?



Meanness in young girls is shocking and appalling, but in older women women it's sometimes tolerable, provided you don't have to come in frequent contact with it. Maybe that's because nature has already applied its penalty. Maybe because it's sort of funny. Women like this tend to establish little kingdoms where they rule over small, alcoholic husbands and rebellious teenagers.

But there's a serious side. Imagine what it must have been like a hundred years ago in third world countries like China. Older women were sometimes merciless slave drivers who had no pity for the poor girls who worked for them.

You see it in some men, but it's more unexpected and therefore more disconcerting in women...that restless energy, that hungry need to go for the jugular of people they scarcely know.

I love this picture (above). I've used it in two blog posts. When this kid grows up...man, just walk on the other side of the street and never, ever give her the wrong change!

FRAZETTA VS. WOOD

It isn't often that you get to compare the work of your favorite artists in some way that can lay claim to being objective. Maybe the closest you could get to a fair contest would be one in which both artists attempted to illustrate the same story, without being able to reference each other's work. Well, that's what we have here: Frazetta and Wood illustrating the same story. There's no stylistic similarity, so I'm guessing that neither saw how the other handled the story.

Hold your hats, it's going to be a battle royal!

I can't put up every page of the story, so I'll just put up highlights of what each artist did with the beginning, middle and end. The finished, inked page way at the very top is by Wood. The pencil page immediately above is by Frazetta. Frazetta's pages only exist in pencil because the magazine folded before he could start on the inking.

That's one of Wood's middle pages above. The story goes something like this: a lonely bachelor is staying at his hunting lodge in the woods. A beautiful girl knocks on the door requesting help. Her car broke down, and she was pursued through the woods by someone or something intent on capturing her. The bachelor takes her in and offers her his protection. They start chatting and discover that each is the other's ideal mate. They fall deeply in love.



That's one of Frazetta's middle pages above.

Here's (above) the next Frazetta page. As their love deepens an announcement is heard on the radio.

Above, the next Frazetta page.

The radio announcer says a beautiful blonde mad woman has escaped from the local asylum. The announcer warns that she's very beguiling, but is not to be trusted. She's a homicidal maniac who slowly cuts up and horribly mutilates her victims. Under no circumstances should anyone let her into their home.

The bachelor is horrified. He kicks the girl out, locks the door, and spends the night upright in a chair, holding a rifle. Outside the girl begs to be let in.

She says they both found the true love of their lives in the cabin. She says he needs to trust that, and not the radio. She says the maniac is approaching. How, she asks, could he leave the girl he loves defenseless, in the hands of a fiend? With great difficulty the bachelor listens to blood-curdling screams all night. Finally the screams stop and the sun comes up. With gun in hand he opens the door to the porch.

That's Wood's page above.

The bachelor opens the door and discovers....the hacked, mutilated body of the girl he loved, and who he kicked out of the cabin. The girl, the love of his life who had pleaded for help, had been telling the truth all along.

That's Frazetta's final page, above. So who do you think won the competition? Who did the superior version of the story?

BTW, the format of the second version is different because it was undertaken later when the Congressional hearing on comics forced EC to recast their comics stories in magazine form. The reasoning was that magazines are assumed to be for adults and are therefore less vulnerable to censorship. The public didn't go for it. Sales of the magazine format declined (Mad excepted) and the horror titles fizzled out. Poor Frazetta was ordered to seize work on the magazine story before he could finish it.

I assume that he never saw the earlier Wood version because there's no similarity in the approach.

Also BTW: Thanks to Milt for bringing this to my attention and providing the artwork.

FILM LESSONS FROM BUSTER KEATON

Here's an interesting book, especially if you live in L.A. and are a Keaton fan like I am. The book takes frame grabs from the films and puts them side by side with shots of the same backgrounds, made today. If you're like me, and thinking about shooting some outdoor footage yourself, you might be able to take away some interesting lessons from this book.

Here the composition in the frame grab (above, left) favors the people and not the building, and it's clearly funnier that way. Next time I'm shooting real people against a beautiful building, I'll remember this. The modern picture also seems too contrasty, and the cars are a distraction.

I can't stand walking down sun-drenched streets with no protection. I'm always glad for trees and awnings (above). Even so, the mansions have much more comedic impact in the treeless pictures at the top. There the starkness of the mansions is a potent symbol for power and wealth.

More mansion shots. The one on the top is so stark and sunny! I guess when you're filming in the real world you have to seek out the backgrounds that will look good on film, no matter hot and oppressive it is to film there.

I like the way the mansion reads like a simple shape in the top photo...the perfect backdrop for comedy.


Comparing the building photos in the upper left with the one on the lower right: boy, the lower one certainly seems tacky and overly contrasty. The awnings on the old buildings are also sorely missed. If your home or business doesn't have awnings, what are you waiting for? All buildings look better with awnings!

I love trees (above), but on filmed comedies they make the scene too busy.

What wretch tore down the buildings above?

By the way, this shot reminds me that a slightly high camera takes in more of the sidewalk and makes characters read better. A good idea is to shoot on an overcast day, which greys everything down, and wear a dark suit yourself.

I think The Stooges also used this corner (above) in one of their films. It's funniest when shot frontally and symmetrically like it is here.


Darkening the bottom (above) makes the building less funny.


Another case (above) where darkening the building takes the humor out. No doubt the crime in modern cities makes knee-high windows impractical. That's too bad. I love windows like that.

Above, one of the nice old buildings that used to abound in Los Angeles, and which Keaton used in one of his films. I want to know who tore these down, and if they're still alive, so I can boot them in the pants. Note the beautiful awnings.