SHODDY, SECOND-RATE, POST-SURGERY ARTICLE #2

By the time you read this I will have had my eye cut up and I'll be on my sofa sporting a towel-size bandage on my face. I probably won't be in a mood to post anything much so here's the solution, a dip into Uncle Eddie's extensive photo archive. I call these...


MY ''INDIANA JONES'' PICTURES

The man in the first picture (above) is an executioner at the court the court of an Indian maharaja, circa 1910. All of these pictures were taken in the i910s and 20s.

Above, 3 Sikh police officers from the Punjab. Below a Cambodian monarch.



Above a somewhat European-looking Algerian woman. Possibly her mother was a European captured and enslaved by Barbery pirates. Below: I don't know. I've never seen buildings like this before.



Above: a Bhuddist temple in India. Below: a chieftain in Gambia

Above: a sultan of the island of Celebes, surrounded by his bodyguard. Below: a narrow rattan bridge spans a chasm across a Formosan jungle.

Above: an island chief in the Solomons. Below:?

Above: war canoe, Solomon Islands

SHODDY, SECOND-RATE, POST-SURGERY ARTICLE #1

I'm recovering from cataract surgery and so have to foist woefully inadequate and esoteric posts on you for a few days. My hunch is that a few readers are going to like them. The first one has to do with...

THE ASTONISHING DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ANCIENT AND RENNAISANCE SCULPTURE

The top five scuptures were executed in Rome sometime in the 1st or 2nd century A.D. The bottom two are Rennaisance scuptures by Donatello and Michaelangelo. Look at the difference! The Romans seem stern, manly and efficient. The Rennaisance heads seem thoughtful, sensitive and subject to doubt. What a difference! Click on the pictures and see for yourself!







Here are the two Rennaisance sculptures. What are these heads trying to tell us? Would modern heads resemble either of them?

THEORY CORNER GUEST RANT #1

Guests Can Sit in the Theory Chair (But Don't Leave Crumbs)!

It's true!!!!! You can sit in the Theory Chair and rant just like Uncle Eddie! Here's how it works...


Draw a quick-and-dirty comic of yourself on the Theory Chair, explaining your (probably completely erroneous) theory to Uncle Eddie and the Theory Corner readers. Take as many panels as you need. Do any subject you like except politics, which Uncle Eddie hasn't got a clue about. Post it to your site and send me a link or a URL. I'll dupe it, add or subtract a little, and print it here when I'm able.

Don't worry about the quality of the drawing, just the quality of the theory. It's OK to have a theory like, "Men suck and this is why!"

THEORY CORNER MAILBAG #2

Was it Jesse who asked to see this caricature by Tex Avery? It's a drawing of a close friend of his but I don't know anything about her. She's holding a pipe, is in her bare feet and wearing a simple dress which makes me think this was done in the 6os.

A couple of theory Corner readers asked to see more sketchbook drawings of my daughter. I'll put some up when I can but I thought someone out there might be interested in seeing a picture of my son when he was a baby (he's in graduate school now). It's by John Krisfaluci.

I hope I'm not boring anybody with this sentimental father-and-son picture. I don't know why my tongue looks like something out of a horror movie. Maybe that's John's way of saying I had bad breath that night. My kid was fully clothed but John drew him as if with X-ray vision. The anatomy on the back is remakable!

THEORY CORNER MAILBAG #1

SHOULD YOU HAVE KIDS?

The anwer is, "Yes! Yes! A thousand times YES!!!" Here are the reasons:

1) KIDS ARE CUTE: I mean REALLY cute. OK, so kittens and cute too and they're admittedly a lot easier to take care of, but consider this: a kitten stays cute for a few months. A kid stays cute for 13 years! If you had two kids spaced four years apart thats 17 years of non-stop extreme cuteness!

The picture above is from a sketchbook of drawings I did of my daughter when she was 12 yrs. old (she's older now, away at college) The reason I include these sketches is because I want to show you what it was like to be with her while we waited for our food in a fast food restaurant. This wasn't a special event, we were just waiting for our burgers to come up. Look how eager, idealistic and playful she is, how happy she is to be alive...just like your kid would be. I probably saw her act this way a half dozen times on the same day. It's interesting to think that something really terrible may have happened to me that day but this is what my mind chose to remember, just the simple pleasure of waiting for food with my kid.

Face it, you're biologically hot-wired to like what kids have to offer. Why deny yourself the intense pleasure that nature planned for you, a pleasure that feels so right when you finally commit to it?

2) KIDS ARE NATURALLY WELL-BEHAVED: it's true! The kids you see throwing tantrums in the mall aren't doing what your kids would do. They yell like that because their parents won't answer them unless they yell. You wouldn't do that would you?

I used to hate kids. In a way I still do. But you won't hate your own kids, I guarantee it. Your kid may be normal and unexciting in the eyes of strangers but for you, with the wonderful blinders that nature provides, they're endlessly fascinating. Endlessly! It's all you can do to take your eyes off them!

3) KIDS ARE CHEAP TO RAISE WHEN THEY'RE YOUNG...as long as they're healthy, which they usually are.

4) KIDS ARE PROFOUND: or at least they're good at provoking your own deep thoughts. If you haven't had kids you can't begin to understand why society is the way it is, why events in history happened the way they did.

5) IT'S SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE: the depopulation movement had the unintended consequence of removing a large number of intelligent, socially responsible people from the gene pool. The world of the future is going to need every person of character or intelligence it can get. My hunch is that they'll be plenty glad to get them.

The downside? Brace yourself, it's big. The downside is that you'll suffer the worst moments of anguish you'll ever experience as you worry about how to get the money to raise your kids safely and well. Good jobs may be hard to get. You may have to raise your kids in a bad neighborhood. It's very scarey. But consider this...

Human beings weren't made to be yuppies. We're the same species that fended off sabertooth tigers in the shadows of glaciers, that took up pitchforks against Vikings. Somewhere within us we have the guts to tough it out. It's in our DNA. It's what we're built for! I like the old saying,"A harbor is a safe place for ships but ships weren't made to rest in harbors."

What do you think?

My Favorite One-Panel Cartoon

What Happened to Yearbook Photography?

This (above) is the way it used to be!

This is the way it is now. What happened? Where did the fun go?

Is color photography responsible? The lighting? Maybe the bottom pictures were flattened out with a long lens and the top ones shot with a normal 50mm one. Maybe the top ones were shot with variable lighting and the bottom with one technique for all. Does anyone here know about photography? What's responsible for the difference?

A GRIM NATWICK WALK

Here's some Grim Natwick animation from Ub Iwerk's "Soda Squirt." The guy is clearly gay and I hesitated to post it lest I offend some Theory Corner readers. In the end I couldn't help myself. It's just so funny!




















Thanks to Marc Deckter for the great frame grabs!

WHAT IS A GIRL?

Here's a drawing I did for an ad advertising a show I used to work on. I had to cut and paste with real Scotch Tape and scissors because I didn't know how to use Photoshop. Anyway, this is the way I and a lot of other artists (I think we all took our cue from ace girl artist Lynne Naylor in those days) used to draw girls. I went on like this for years then one day it occured to me that I wasn't drawing them right. They just weren't funny enough. After thinking about it I decided to simplify things by starting with a fundamental question:

WHAT IS A GIRL?

No sooner had I asked the question than the answer popped into my mind. Like all great truths it was really simple. What is a girl? A girl is a guy with long hair and breasts! Why hadn't I thought of it before?

In the light of this revelation I further realized that the greatest girl artist ever was Don Martin. His girls pass with highest honors because they look just like men. And funny? They're as funny as a girl could possibly be!

Then it occurred to me to ask, "Why are we always drawing beautiful girls?" Beautiful girls aren't funny (except for Katie Rice's girls)! Funny girls are always too skinny or too fat, too old or too young. They include old bitties and battle-axes, gossipy teens and mean girl scouts. Blogger won't let me type in the font I need and it's screwing up my sentense spacing so I think I'll end this. BTW, these last 2 drawings are by by Milt Gross

Some Fun Modern Art

These are two pictures by Gary Panter, a modern painter who showed lots of promise early on but who seems to have lost interest in color and, so far as I know, is now doing black & white, punk-style comic books. Ok, it's not fine art but it's fun art. I'd love to have a big canvas of "Elvis Zombie" hanging in my living room.
Here's two by Phillip Burke who used to paint rock stars for Rolling Stone. He insisted that the subjects pose live, in his studo. He'd set them up near a sunny window and paint from natural light using oils . The original portrait of Mailer (above) was six feet high. Agove, another one by Burke. He seems to have been influenced by Matisse portraits. Once again, it's not fine art but it's kinda fun to look at.
For comparison here's a couple of Rubens sketches which are indisputably fine art. I love these drawings but seeing them doesn't make me want to give up on Elvis Zombie.
What do you think?