LOONEY TOONS FOUR IS OUT!

Looney Tunes four is out and I think I have a couple of commentaries on it. I commented on two interesting cartoons, Tashlin's "Stupid Cupid" and Jones' "Aristocat." I'm afraid I did a horrible job this time and I thought you might be interested to hear why.

Over the years I developed a superstition about public speaking which can be summarized as "Whatever you do, don't think about what you're going to say on the day you're going to speak." You can prepare all you want the previous day but on the day of the speech you have to completely put it out of your mind till the time comes to deliver it. Ignore this and on stage you'll end up babbling like a fool, unable to put two words together. Well, I ignored it and that's exactly what happened.

I've often wondered why the mind works this way. Jackie Gleason had the same superstition that I have. He didn't believe in rehearsal because he didn't want to waste his first and best performance in a situation where only the stage crew could see it. People say that that Red Skelton's TV show was brilliant in rehearsal but lackluster on the stage for the same reason. I should have paid more attention to these guys.

LEARNING HOW TO STAND IN LINE

Amazingly, you have to learn how to stand in line. It's not an innate behavior, you have pick it up by watching other people. I discovered this while in a line leading to a teller's window in my local bank. I was waiting there with about five people infront of me when a lady came in and stood beside me, not behind me. It made me feel uncomfortable but I tried to ignore her and read my magazine. After a couple of minutes a guy comes in and stands behind the lady instead of me. Another guy comes in and does the same thing. Now there's a whole line behind the lady. By the time I get to the teller's window the lady's line is the real line and I'm just a street urchin standing beside her. How do things like that happen?

Now take a look at the picture above. Notice that two people hang back leaving a large space between themselves and the people at the counter. That's OK, they're probably not ready to talk to the counter yet. Nothing wrong with that, that's fine, but I've been in fast food restaurants where the line starts this far back and the people in line get indignant if you walk up to the counter and try to order. What's with that?

My guess is that that men who don't know how to form a proper line are the same men who leave paper hand towels in urinals. You know who you are!

VINCENT WALLER HAS A BLOG!!!!

Vincent, of course, is THEEE Vincent Waller of Ren & Stimpy fame. Vincent directed, wrote, and drew on a lot of fan favorites in the Ren & Stimpy series. Vincent is also a legendary chick magnet and a wonderful story teller. Recently he directed Sponge Bob for Nicolodean. Friends have have been prodding Vincent to start a blog for what seems like ages and now he's finally done it... http://inchoherent-thought.blogspot.com/ The "rape eye" and "sex face" posts are already classics. I can't wait to see what else he puts up!

These are pictures Vincent sent me in an email. Boy, they lose a lot when they're reduced this small! Click to enlarge. I can't tell wether this mountain is in Japan or China. It seems to be a mountain-climbing trail for people who people who don't know how to climb mountains. You climb with the help of narrow wooden ledges and chain guide lines. No ropes keep you on the ledge. If you fall you're dead. I would LOVE to take this hike!


It looks like the people who survive the hike get to sip tea in civilized surroundings on the summit. Where do we sign up?

"THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE!"

One of the most horrifying stories in all of literature is Aesop's "The Tortoise and the Hare." I take this fable very, very seriously. Thinking about it fills me with painful recollections of past defeats and humiliations. I've been beaten many times by tortoises and I know from first hand experience what powerful competitors they are.



For one thing tortoises exist in daunting numbers and often share common values and goals. Hares are fewer and tend to be loners. At the outset of the race hares run roughshod over the sluggish competition only to find themselves in mid-race mired in the mud with few allies or sympathetic friends to help. It's very scary!

Obviously I sometimes picture myself as the hare in the story but I'm not bringing this up to indulge in self-pity. What I really want to do is acknowledge that tortoises are not always the boobs that hares think they are. Whenever I get to thinking about this I remember the stories about common heroism in WW2 when ordinary sailors would run through oil fires to save their buddies on the other side. I think about parents who make enormous sacrifices for their kids or a whole society that changed its mind about race prejudice in just acouple of generations just because it was the right thing to do. No doubt about it, tortoises are often good people... when they're not being an obstacle to progress.

MY FAVORITE BERNICE ABBOTT PICTURE

It's a picture of the Bowery "EL", Second and Third Street Lines. You'll have to click to enlarge it, it probably won't look like much if it's seen small. The picture below is a detail of the one above.


This together with a couple of the New York City ferry pictures by Cecil Bell (already posted, in the archive) are my favorite pictures of that city. Philadelphia used to have el trains complete with stations and tracks that look just like the ones on New York, and I used to look forward to riding them. The elevated stations were designed to resemble German railroad stations of the 19th century. Maybe Frank Furness, the famous Philadelphia architect and champion of railroad architecture designed some of these.

Furness believed in designing ordinary residences and business buildings to look like old railroad stations and modernists widely criticized him for it. I can't imagine why. German railroad stations are one of the most pleasing structures ever built by man and it makes no sense to confine their use to only one purpose.

I love the film noir slatted shadows cast on the street by the tracks and steel above. How often do you come across architecture that distinguishes itself by the fascinating shadows it casts? Walking up the steps and through the corridors of these elevated wood and steel cathedrals was a real treat and I for one miss it.

ITCHING

Lots of people have "dreaded-consequences-of-scratching" stories, so many that I'm beginning to think that scratching an itch is one the most perilous things you can do. It was in my case. Here's the story...

Years ago a famous German director made a low-budget, 8-hour movie called "Our Hitler." The critics raved about it and I was curious to see it. Evidently the public didn't share my curiosity because, even though I saw it on opening day, there were only about ten people in the audience. I found a seat in a completely empty section of the theater and prepared to be blown away by high art.

Well, to put it mildly, there was no art. The whole film was an amateurish, stream-of-consciousness home movie about whatever trivial thing the director felt like talking about. Sitting through it was torture; I wanted to strangle the critics who recommended it! I found my self endlessly re-adjusting my position in the seat, refolding my jacket, and scratching imaginary itches. Sometimes I'd get itches on my arm and, since I had nothing else to do, I'd roll up the sleeve of my shirt just to get a good scratch on just the right place. I particularly liked scratching my five-o'clock shadow which was bristley and made a noise. Once or twice I tried scratching like a dog just to see what they saw in it.

Hour after hour the film plodded on and I got more and more restless and itchy. I was scratching like a madman. Just when I was in the middle of the mother of all raking scratches a giant moose of a face appeared from the seat behind me and shouted at the top of its lungs: "Stop it! S T O P I T!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IF YOU SCRATCH ONE MORE ITCH SO HELP ME I'M GONNA KILL YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" 

I froze and slid way down into the seat, too scared to move. I didn't even breathe. I just tucked my head into my shoulders and looked rigidly forward. Where did this guy come from? In a nearly empty theater why did this giant have to sit right behind me? I stayed there completely still for the rest of the film. When the film finally ended and the light came on I discovered the seat behind me was empty. There were only about three people left in the whole theater. I guess my outraged citizen found the film intolerable, even without the scratching.

So that's my itching story. What's yours?

HOW TO COMMIT THE PERFECT CRIME

I hope only people of good character are reading this because I'm going to spill the beans about how a perfect murder might be committed. I call it perfect because in this scheme the law itself is the guarantor of the murder's freedom. It goes like this...

A man who we'll call Fred wants to kill his friend Joe. In order to do this he enlists the help of another man who looks just like Fred. The two look-alike Freds, wearing identical clothes, arrange to to be in public places at opposite sides of town at, say, noon the following day. It would help if the public places happen to have a large clock which displays the time.


At the appointed time each of the Freds, in opposite sides of town, loudly declares that he is Fred (using Fred's entire real name) and the real Fred shoots his victim, which I forgot to say was skillfully maneuvered to also be at the right place at the right time. The other Fred deliberately breaks a store window. Both the Freds make their getaway. Passer-bys will tell police that that they saw a man named Fred, who dressed in such-and-such a way, and will site the time, which was on a big clock. Can you see where this is leading?

Neither of the Freds can be tried for murder because each can prove he was somewhere else at the time. The police know that one of them did it but can prosecute neither since both Freds have an air-tight alibi! The murderer must be turned loose!

OK, that's my perfect crime! What's yours?