(SFX: KNOCK! KNOCK!) The pizza delivery boy knocks on the front door.
PIZZA BOY: "Hello in there!!! Your pizza's here!"
PIZZA BOY: "Oh, man! Smell that pie: mighty mozzarella, massive mushrooms, sizzling sausage, primo pepperoni....a bit of heaven here on Earth..."
PIZZA BOY: "...and all for the ridiculously low price of eleven dollars...er, plus (ahem!) an optional gratuity, of course!"
IGOR: "Go away! We don't want any!"
PIZZA BOY: "Huh!?"
Beta Blogger just erased the rest of this post, maybe because my desktop is cluttered with pictures. I'll reconstruct it and post it seperately in a PART II, BELOW:
PIZZA BOY: "Heh, heh. You obviously haven't heard me correctly, Sir!
PIZZA BOY: "This isn't any ordinary food...this is PIZZA: The Food of the Gods, The Taste Sublime!"
PIZZA BOY: "But I warn you: some customers love this pizza so much that they begin to believe the pizza loves them back. They have a relationship with the pizza, almost an affair. They burst into tears when the time comes to eat it."
PIZZA BOY: "If that's your intention Sir, then I must withhold the pizza. I cannot submit this poor innocent pie to such unnatural affection."
PIZZA BOY: "But if your intentions are good, your purpose honorable, then you'll know that the purpose of a pizza is to give soft and gooey pleasure. I beg you to feel no guilt when you take the first delicious bite!"
PIZZA BOY: "But enough of this...the time for talk is over! That's the gate opening up ahead! Sir, I have to ask you: are you ready to enter... The Land of Deliciousness!!??"
PIZZA BOY: "Eleven bucks! Whaddaya say!?"
LADY VAMPIRE: (Gasp!) What's that on your finger!?"
PIZZA BOY: "On my finger? Er, it's just a ring."
ON IGOR'S EYE: He reacts to the ring
PIZZA BOY (V.O.): "My girlfriend gave it to me!"
IGOR (V.O.) : "Gasp! You're one of us! Why didn't you say so!?"
He grabs Pizza Boy, pulls him inside.
WHAT'S GOING ON HERE? WHAT HAS PIZZA BOY GOTTEN HIMSELF INTO? WHAT TERRIBLE SECRET LIES WITHIN THE HOUSE? WATCH FOR THE NEXT THRILLING EPISODE OF....
Aaaaah, it's Halloween time again! Okay, it's almost 7 weeks away, but L.A. is Halloween chilly and overcast right now, and besides, starting early'll give us plenty of time to get in the spirit. One of the best ways to do that is to pay a daily visit to weird blogs like "Frankensteinia", "Monster Crazy", and "Shadowplay." I'll put up links in my sidebar.
Boy, there's no lack of scary pictures on the net. How do you like these evil parade pigs from Disneyland?
In the photo above we seem to have caught the sailor pig at the exact moment when his hungry eyes locked in on the plump little kid in the foreground. No doubt in the next instant he whisked the kid away to a cooking pot....or to a dreary subterranean cave where the ragged child will endlessly plod along in a circle, chained to a mill wheel. As I said, these are evil pigs.
Who did this painting (above)? Tim Burton?
Above, a detail from one of the all-time greatest animation backgrounds. It's a long pan BG from The Fleischer's "Snow White." I'm considering a framed copy for my wall. Of course, it would have to be a pretty long frame.
I love stuff like this (above), which I swiped from "Monster Crazy." Unfortunately, I can't identify it.
Above, a beautiful depiction of murder at sea by animation artist Dan Krall.
I'm flirting with the idea of making plaster or paper mache pumpkins this year. They're probably more trouble to make than conventional ones, but they should last for years. I'll try to find instructions on the net.
Look at that (above)! The painting part looks easy, and how hard could it be to sculpt cheeks and eye sockets like this?
Holy Mackerel! What a smile (above)! The cheeks are amazing. When someone smiles like this, do the cheek muscles inflate or simply bunch up? If they bunch up, then why doesn't that steal mass from some other part of the face? Almost the whole muzzle gets larger.
Also interesting is the triangle in which her nose and mouth are embedded. They do lose a little mass, but not enough to explain where the cheek bulge comes from. When the triangle stretches out to the sides like this, you can see the features wrap around the vertical mouth cylinder.
I love clothes that wear the human. Here (above) John Carradine is enveloped by a predatory Gaham Wilson jacket . The jacket is the sentient creature, Carradine is merely the conveyance.
What a silhouette! Look at the way the man's features (above) wrap around the front of his head. And that furrowed brow...!
Nanga! Nanga! Nanga! ! I love "S" curves in figure photography (above).
A typical nerd face (above)...or is it? If you imagine a normal hair cut, no glasses and a closed mouth, the guy doesn't look like a nerd anymore. It makes you wonder how many nerds you know that are really normal looking people who dress funny.
Above, a "Z" curve! Also, a fascinating head shape and chest on this girl. The straight hair emphasizes them.
Some girls (above) are self-conscious about having braces, and they try to cover them up by smiling in a strange way. I sympathize. After a lifetime of smiling in a way that covers up my buck teeth, I've learned to let my teeth show naturally. I'd hide them if I thought it would do any good, but there's no use trying to conceal what can't be concealed. Actually, I kinda like them now.
People's whole lower muzzle (above) withdraws into their face and neck when they smile, or at least it seems to. The effect is heightened by the whole head being pulled back and the cheeks being thrust out. Fascinating, eh?
Stage mothers really have a bad rep, but is it deserved? I'm not so sure. The fact is that an awful lot of talented people in the past started doing what they were famous for when they were five, if not sooner. Think of Buster Keaton who lived his whole life on the stage and in front of the camera. Look at what he achieved. Could he have done that if he'd started at age 23 like college grads do today?
Of course, starting early requires focus and that requires a pushy adults. Ditto for getting good work habits. That's why we need stage mothers. You don't want a mother who nags, and bullies, but you do want one that pushes you. I'm not talking about school work, I'm limiting this discussion to professions like music and dancing, auto mechanics, art, etc which can be learned by watching skilled people and practicing, which is the natural way that kids learn.
A few stage mothers in the entertainment industry are famous, and so far as I know were loved by their children: Minnie Marx, mother-manager of The Marx Brothers; Jaid Barrymore, mother of Drew; Gertrude Temple, who managed Shirley and spent hours every day curling her kid's hair; and Judy Garland's mom Ethel Gumm, just to name a few. Where did this myth come from that all stage mothers are evil (Gary Goldman's dad, notwithstanding)?
Stage mothers of the world, this toast is for you. You gave your kids the gift of a trade, of a chance to practice their profession while they were still young enough to innovate and develop a passion for it. Good for you!
Er...is that woman above really female? She looks a little odd.
I couldn't resist throwing this in (above): Judy Garland singing "Texas Tornado" in a completely professional manner when she was only 14. She could do that because her mother arranged for her to learn how to sing while she was still in the egg shell.
Haw! Stephen Rodgers' ably answered my argument with this song (above) by Noel Coward. I have to admit that it makes a powerful argument, but I'm not ready to admit defeat. I was hoping to score on a larger point, namely that people nowadays begin careers too late in life.
To make a big impact you have to start early, so you can turn professional when you're young enough to pour lots of energy and idealism into what you do. Stage mothers add a bit of balance to a school system that wastes youth.
I wish we still had Vaudeville, or an updated version of it. Talentless performers would get weeded out pretty fast if they had to play before live audiences that paid for their tickets.
Indisputably in my opinion, the golden age of newspaper comics occurred in the two decades before WWI. It was an era before formulas became locked in, when the field attracted first-rate artists like the one above (click to enlarge). Hmmm...well maybe some formulas were locked in. Editors couldn't get enough of Katzenjammer Kids-type stories where kids torment adults.
Arists that weren't first rate made up for it by being downright weird (above). Here the fruits and vegetables have a picnic, which is disrupted by a cow who eats them.
Editorial cartoons were terrific in this period. How do you like this one (above) by Herriman? No wonder he was a favorite of Hearst.
Some of these pre-war cartoons were incredibly violent. Here (above) a woman is threatened by a mugger and she sticks him with a pin.... in the stomach! Ouch! Good drawings, though.
I love visual stories like this (above). The storyteller was a continuing character, but the strips structure was loose enough to permit almost anything. There was room for imagination. In later years regular characters in predictable situations dominated, and artists were expected to use the same setting, day after day after dreary day.
This is a sore point with me. I wish current editors wouldn't put so much emphasis on regular characters in rigidly defined situations. Aren't you glad that Mad allowed the young Don Martin to draw whatever took his fancy, regular characters or not? Aren't you glad that he wasn't shoe-horned into a sitcom format?
I have a lot of tolerance for racial and ethnic humor when it's funny and not mean-spirited, but even I cringe at strips like the one above. I include it here because it's so well drawn.
Anna Magnani is arguably the best actress of the film era. What a treat to see her in a film (clip, above) with Marlin Brando in his best period. The film: Tennessee Williams' "The Fugitive Kind."
Magnani's great here. Brando has to get out of town to escape the law, but Magnani thinks he's leaving to be with another woman. When he tries to push past her she grabs his precious guitar and won't let go. That's such a Magnani thing to do! She fights for her man. She won't take no for an answer. He slaps her and she just takes the slaps and holds on.
But Brando knows he's got a real woman. In another sequence (on YouTube, not shown here) a beautiful girl throws herself at him and he says disdainfully: "Look at your wrists, they're so thin. I could snap them like a twig with two fingers. That's not the way a real woman is." The real woman is Anna Magnani, who has wrists like Popeye.
My only criticism is that the script doesn't give Magnani enough to say. She needed more lines. Maybe the studio was afraid Magnani would outshine Brando. Or maybe Williams slipped up. Maybe Magnani couldn't learn enough English. I wish I knew.
From another film, here's (above) Magnani playing a wife whose husband is taken away by the fascists, maybe to be shot. Magnani's a real woman. When her man is threatened she battles her way through a gauntlet of armed soldiers to get him back. When you see this you say to yourself, "Now that's what love is. If you're not willing to do that for your significant other, then you're not really in love."
Here's (above) Magnani and a beau taking a walk in the woods. What's so special about a walk you ask, but when Magnani does a scene everything is special. Her feigned helplessness is beautiful to behold. Watch the first minute and a half, and don't be put off by the documentary footage that begins it.
Thinking about "The Fugitive Kind" reminded me of Brando's performance in that film. Here's (above) the standout first sequence of that film, beloved by caricaturists and impressionists everywhere. It's one of Brandos funniest.
