WHY DID CRITICS UNDERRATE CLAMPETT?

INT. FAST FOOD RESTAURANT:

MILT: "Hey, Eddie...you want to hear my latest thoughts on Clampett?"

EDDIE (VO): "More Clampett theories!!! Go ahead. I'm all ears!"

 MILT: "Well, Clampett gets a lot of attention these days and it's easy to forget that at one time he was denied the press that other 40s Warner directors got. Have you ever wondered how that came about?

EDDIE (VO): "Yeah, all the time. At one time Chuck and Friz got a lot of the credit, even though Bob was obviously the better filmmaker. Chuck outlived Bob and was pretty articulate about why he did what he did. I guess it pays to be eloquent."

MILT: "Well maybe, but I think it went deeper than that."

MILT: "The main reason was that Chuck and Friz relied on rules and formulas that were already described in books and magazine articles by the mid 30s. They were ready made for historians and critics to reference. Bob was more visceral and innovative. There were no ready-made words to describe what he was getting at."

EDDIE (VO): "Wow! True enough! In a Jones cartoon the bad guy always deserved what he got and Bugs administered the punishment. That's fine, but it got repetitive. After a while you found yourself yearning for a Clampett cartoon where Bugs just bothered the heck out of a poor, innocent patsy like Elmer. It just felt right." 

MILT: "Exactly. Bugs was shaking people out of their complacency. That's just classic comedy."

EDDIE (VO): "Haw! Try to explain that to Chuck and Friz, or to a critic who's obsessed with formulas."

MILT: "I sum it up this way: rules are fine in their place, but let's face it......"

MILT: "Rules are for beginners!"

************

P.S. In summing up Milt's ideas I sometimes resorted to a fictional paraphrase. If I goofed up, I hope he'll correct me in the comments section.

P.P.S. When I told a friend that I'd be doing a photo story about Milt he asked if I was going to add a wig and mustache. I indignantly replied that Milt is a good friend and that I would never stoop to such a cheap trick. 

DON MARTIN FLOWER ARRANGEMENTS

INT. FAST FOOD RESTAURANT:

AURALYNN: "Okay Eddie, are you ready to look at those books?"

EDDIE (VO): "Yeah, sure. Bring 'em on! They're on flower arrangements, right?"

AURALYNN: "Yeah, they're called "Ikebana." That's a style of flower arrangement that's influenced by modern art. I thought you might want to do a blog about it."

EDDIE (VO): " 'Itchy Bana?' Why is it itchy? Oh, I see...it's what happens when all that dried moss gets on you. "

AURALYNN: "Well, er....not exactly."

EDDIE (V0): "Holy Mackerel!!! That' looks like Don Martin did it! His leaves always sag like that."

EDDiE: "Okay, this clinches it.......that's Don Martin for sure."

AURALYNN: "Er, maybe........"

EDDIE: "Yikes! Do you know what those two vases look like!? You're going to get me kicked off Blogger!"

AURALYNN: "I think they're all about the tension that's contained in the space between two objects. It's about the energy that's generated. For me, it's a kind of creative energy that's being released." 

EDDIE (VO): "Hmmmmm. Okay, if you say so......."

EDDIE (VO): "Haw! Here's an interesting one."

EDDIE (VO): "It reminds me of a pompadour that I saw on the internet!"

AURALYNN: "What about this one?"

EDDIE: "Holy Cow! That's a Shemp wig!!!"

EDDIE: "It's a Shemp wig, a couple of cheese puffs and a twig, all sitting on a vase. Or maybe it's a Tacky Toupee." I got one of those last Halloween. Hey, I think I'm beginning to understand this Itchy Bana stuff!"

AURALYNN (TRYING NOT TO LAUGH): "No, no. It's not a Tacky Toupee."

AURALYNN: "Ikebana isn't about comparison to specific things. It's about contrasts and  relationships. Ikebana is always practiced in silence. It's a chance to appreciate things in nature that people overlook because they're so busy. The practitioner becomes more patient and tolerant of differences." 

AURALYNN: "You become closer to nature and that relaxes the mind and soul."

EDDIE (VO): "Oh....okay........I think I get it now. These two stalks of broccoli, or whatever they are......"

EDDIE (VO): "....they're completely unrelated to the way that Milt Gross draws womens' hair. They're all about....relationships."

AURALYNN: "Yeah, that's it. Don't worry...it'll sink in when you think about it."

EDDIE (VO): "Okay. What we need now is to establish a relationship with a couple of big old tasty hamburgers."

****************

BTW: Milt told me that Blogger recently prevented him from leaving a comment. Has anyone else had similar trouble? I have Comment Moderation, but there shouldn't be any squiggley letters to figure out. Please let me know (somehow) if you've had trouble with this.

MALE FACES TO DRAW (PART 6)

 Wow! I think of the bully undertaker's son in "Oliver Twist" when I see a face like this (above). Or am I thinking of "Nicholas Nickleby?" Dickens wrote about so many bullies that it's easy to confuse them. BTW, I love the schoolmaster in the Nickleby story. The way he taught Nicholas how to teach was priceless. 

What a face on the actor on the right! And what a chin! I'm so envious!

Here (above) Christopher Lee plays a dissipated young man, but what film is this from?

Imagine that you're a dad and your daughter brings this boy (above) home to meet you. I can imagine offering him some pretzels and getting a look that says, "Oh reeeeeeeally. Pretzels, how amusing. Do people really eat those things?"

Geez, this guy (above) has an interesting profile. The diagonal from the tip of the nose to the chin is so drastic! It's not all that uncommon, though. I see it on the street all the time. 

For my last male subject I present....me! I just got my hair cut and the cutter made me a skinhead. Geez, I'll have to wear a bag over my head for the next couple of months!  

WHAT DOES THE EARTH'S CORE LOOK LIKE?

Well, it may look something like this (above). This is a crystal cave in Mexico. The red specks are people. I think the Mexican crystals are made of gypsum, unlike the Core's crystals which would be made of an iron/potassium alloy. That combination that would be impossible up here on the crust, but it's recently been proven possible in the high pressure, radioactive Core.

Oh, I forgot to mention the size of the Core crystals. They'd be 10 kilometers long, all aligned North and South.

The Earth's Core is getting a lot more media attention than it used to because recent studies show that the Earth's magnetic field, which is driven by the rotating Core, is quickly weakening. It's already weakened to the point where the dip at the poles (above) is threatening to come down to the height of commercial aviation. Those places will receive less protection from solar radiation.

Not only is the magnetic field weakening, but it appears to be shifting. There's a concern that Earth's magnetic poles might reverse sometime in the next two hundred years. One estimate puts the date as early as 20 years. They've been moving around a lot lately. I've read that in the past ten years the magnetic pole has shifted nearly half the total distance of the last 50 years. The effect of this on the Earth's weather is unknown.

Last but not least are the traveling "hot spots." Although the main magnetic forces run North and South, smaller lines of magnetic forces erupt in travelling "islands" around the globe. One such hot spot started in Africa and is now moving over the Atlantic in the direction of Brazil.  That means planes flying in that region will have to fly lower than normal to be safe.

  What causes these deviations? I'm not sure...nobody is. The Outer Core is a rotating ocean of liquid metal, which is only a little more dense than water. I think...though I'm not sure... that this layer rotates faster than the Inner Core, and is influenced by big, fluctuating irregularities on the surface of the Inner Core. Don't quote me on that, I might have misheard it. I saw this on a Science Channel documentary, and was distracted by X#@%&X phone salesmen throughout.

THE MEANEST COMIC STRIP EVER

I just stumbled on what I consider the meanest newspaper comic strip ever. It's not the one above, it's something else. I'll come back to this subject in a minute, but first let me put it into context with a little history.

The common wisdom is that newspaper comics experienced a Golden Age starting somewhere around 1925. That's the era when physical comedy artists like Ridgewell (above) were nudged aside in favor of sedate, story-oriented strips like (several years later) "Little Orphan Annie."

Above, more Ridgewell. In my opinion the real Golden Age of the newspaper strip was 1903-1924, or thereabouts. Most of the characters of that era weren't especially memorable but the drawings were really creative. 

Live action comedy films evolved along similar lines. Physical silent comedians like Chaplin and Keaton were phased out in favor of personality actors like (a decade later) Cray Grant.

Surely something valuable was lost when purely comedic artists like Frank Leet (above) were deleted from the papers. Why couldn't physical comedy co-exist side by side with the newer, more story-oriented stuff? 

Alan Holtz, creator of the blog "Stripper's Guide" (link on the sidebar) and my source for these strips, speculates that original physical gags may have been just too hard to come up with over the long haul. Take the Leet strip above. The idea of unleashing an attack dog on two ne'er-do-wells must have been used hundreds of times before Leet got hold of it. I can imagine Alan asking, "How many more times can you do a gag like that?"

I'm only half in agreement with that explanation. It seems to me that physical comedy could have evolved like everything else. Look at Fearless Fosdick, Milt Gross, Don Martin, Jerry Lewis, Jim Carey. 

Gee, comics (above) were so experimental in that era.

The point I want to make is that early comic strips were an anything-goes hodge-podge of everything that was considered funny in that era. Maybe that's why they were so creative. Political correctness hadn't discovered them yet. You could even do death gags in those strips. And talking about death gags........

What do you think of these death gags (above) in the strip I call "the meanest strip ever,"  Frank King's "Jonah" from 1910. I kinda like it. Here Jonah assists a woman in her attempt to commit suicide. Click to enlarge. 

The strip (above) was unbelievably drastic. You just never knew what would show up there. 

How do you like this one (above)? Jonah deliberately pushes a baby into a pond. Try to do a story like that today.

SOME USEFUL LIFE LESSONS

I wouldn't make a very good guru. I haven't really learned much about life, and much of what I do know is so commonplace that it wouldn't be worth repeating.  Even so, there are a few little odds and ends that you might be interested in hearing. See what you think of these minor pearls of wisdom:

The first has to do with the proper way to apologize. If you're sincere about an apology, never dilute it with qualifiers. Never say, "I'm sorry I left the gate open and the dog got out, but it never would have happened if you hadn't......."  That's not a real apology. You're still blaming the other person. It's better to say, "I'm sorry I left the gate open. I just wasn't paying attention." You take all the blame on yourself...because it's an apology, remember?

The second pearl of wisdom has to do with the proper way to comfort a friend who's just had a setback. Never say, "I'm sorry you missed the party. It was great!" Say instead, "How come you missed the party? Everybody was asking for you!" A friend just let me down that way, and it made me feel better.

For the same reason never say, "After you were laid off the rest of us adjusted and the work is going smoothly now." Say instead, "After you were laid off there was chaos. We're still struggling with it."  Why pass up a chance to make somebody feel good about themselves?

Let's see....is that all? No wait, there's one more item: when insulting a person in the heat of a shouting argument, always use profanity. Never say, "You incompetent idiot! My kid could do better than that!" Say instead: "You bastard! Get your head out of your ass!" People remember personal insults about their competence. They forget profanity.

This advice arises from a profanity laden fight I witnessed between an employer and an employee. The employee finally stormed out, slamming the door behind him, and I was certain that he'd never work there again. Amazingly he was back at the desk a couple of days later. Why? In spite of all the shouting, neither had said anything very personal about the other. In some circles profanity is an acceptable way of letting off steam.  Nobody gets permanently offended by it.

Interesting, huh?

PRETTY FACES

I have a file of pretty faces that I add to once in a while. Looking at them just makes me feel good. See if you feel the same way.

Geez, this (above) is one of the sharpest photos I've ever seen on the net. I'd like to see the camera it was taken with.