THE NEED FOR PROFUNDITY

I’m ashamed to admit that these thoughts were prompted by a hard-to-sit-through film called “Little Miss Sunshine.” It’s one of those frustration stories where everything goes wrong for a dysfunctional family but they all pull together at the end. Usually I hate films like that.

The reason I'm writing about this story is that it brings up a point worth discussing, and that is the need everybody has for profundity in their lives and a kid’s ability to deliver it.

If you have a kid then you know how amazingly comforting a kid can be. When you're feeling low a little hand on your shoulder or a kid’s head on your arm is amazingly restorative. Why that is I don’t know. It can’t help you to get a job or pay your taxes but it does recharge the batteries in a way that booze or caffeine can’t.



The film is about a family who are bored and irritated by each other and who all are harboring secret fantasies about taking off on their own without even a good-bye. One of the only things they all have in common is that they’re all quietly moved in some way by the earnestness and innocence of the youngest kid. The girl isn’t Shirley Temple. She’s plain and awkward and doesn’t have witty lines. She’s just good-hearted and sincere.

If you only saw a few of her scenes you wouldn’t think the kid had much influence on the family at all...that’s why you have to persevere to the end. If you see the entire film you realize that she exerted a subtle but stabilizing influence on the family all along.



Everybody in the family wanted to leave and start fresh somewhere else, but the audience knows what the family doesn’t, viz, that they’d probably do even worse on their own. These are luckless people who are doomed to experience tough times and disappointment. That happens to some people. What they don't realize is that life could get even worse. They don't know it but the only chance they have for even a small amount of happiness is to dig in and be loyal to each other.

I said before that I had a theory about the need for profundity, and here it is. The awe you feel standing on a hill or a mountain, or watching waves break on a beach is not a luxury; it’s a necessity for your mental health. You need it. Humans crave profundity, and that’s what your own kid has to offer in abundance.


Having a kid of your own fills you with awe several times a day. If you're adventurous, and especially if you're an artist, then you need that awe to recharge the batteries. For me that's the message in this otherwise irritating film.

HOW WOMEN DISGUISE FAT

The other day I was at the library and spotted a picture book called "Sexy." I immediately took it off the shelf because I thought it would be full of pictures of naked women. It wasn't. What it was, was a book about the way women should dress to compensate for physical defects. It was fascinating! Women on this site know about this stuff already but I thought I'd publish an example for the education of my fellow males who are probably as clueless as I am about this subject.

OK, here's (above) the problem body. The woman is short and has a rectangular body, rather than the classic hourglass. Her legs aren't bad so she has that going for her, but not much else.

According to the book this (above) is the kind of clothing she should most avoid. The long dress covers her greatest asset, her legs, and the thin, clinging fabric emphasizes the thick torso. The tiny straps make the shoulders appear narrow and fat.

Here's (above) what the book recommends: Cover the shoulders and arms to cover the fat. The broad, horizontal neck on the blouse makes the shoulders seem wider and the low waist line takes our attention away from the width of the real waistline. Finally, the long pants over heels makes the legs seem even taller and thinner and the heavy fabrics don't cling.

I don't know about you but I regard this as an amazingly effective bit of camoulflage.

The author was obviously a master illusionist so I was anxious to see what he'd do with a really challenging subject. I looked for a truly fat woman but the best I could come up with was a short, plump woman with thick legs (above). The solution was so similar to the previous one that I won't bother printing it here. What I will do is put up the picture of the clothes the author said the woman should avoid. I'm putting it up because I disagree.

I grant that the frilly, thin-strapped dress makes the woman look wide, but is that wrong? I like it because it says about the wearer that she's dressing in a deliberately flamboyant way to attract a man. She looks a little vulnerable to ridicule and the vulnerability makes her sexy.

I like people who need people and aren't afraid to be explicit about it. A guy who wears a loud disco shirt to a dance is doing the same thing. At work, during the day, by all means be tasteful. At night, on a date, dress like a peacock in heat.

MORE EARLY DON MARTIN

Here's another example of the early Don Martin style. The foreground guy looks soooo grungy! How do you like the Virgil Partch-type rake fingers? How about the class clown way of drawing shoulders high up around the ears?

I love a good set-up and this one is a classic: an intense, miserable guy is observed by an ecstatically happy guy with an ear-to-ear grin. It's the time-honored collision of an optimist with a pessimist (he's not really a pessimist but the word fits the point I'm trying to make). You can feel the electricity in the air!

When you think about it, a lot of comedy is about the collision between two different personality types. Cartooning does it better than live action because we can push the caricature farther. It's puzzling that so many TV cartoons don't seem to realize this. You see so many shows with similar characters who all hang around with each other. There's no conflict, no electricity.

Anyway, how do you like the way the happy guy taps on the other guy's back? Martin doesn't make a big deal about it but it's worth commenting on because tapping is funny. It means the nosey, intrusive tapper is invading your space and touching the precious membrane that holds your guts inside. Pecking is funny. Peck frequently, in real life and on the page.

The grinning guy pulls a bottle out of his jacket and the pickled guy downs it. He's a grunge ball troll and he knows it. He has nothing to lose. The swallow pose is great and I love the way the rake fingers enfold the glass.

Another virtuoso swallow followed by a moment of internal awareness.

Here's (above) the ending where all the characters grin at the reader. The soda water has made them blissfully happy! Of course this is a fake ad but it manages to communicate what it is that I like about real ads, namely that they promise happiness to anyone who afford the right toothpaste... which is just about everybody.

Buying happiness for a dollar is simultaneously funny, shallow and profound. Am I the only one who agreed with the hero's end speech in the film, "How to Get Ahead in Advertising?"

SOME INTERESTING ADS

Here's (above) a terrific magazine ad for mustard written by, of all people, Dorothy Sayers, the mystery writer. It's a masterpiece of understated pitchmanship. Click to enlarge.


Laxatives like Ex-Lax, Sal-Hepatica and Phillips frequently used comic strips (above) to sell their product. I wonder how the entire laxative industry came to be so focused on this one kind of advertising.

When I was a kid I used to love the Peter Pain demon. He'd lay in wait for some poor slob to pass then he'd jump out and clobber him with his pain bat. My friends and I drew countless parodies of this. Maybe the best ads always lend themselves to parody.

Much credit to the Cremo people who conceived of this new way to sell their cigars: imply that their competitor's cigars were made by people who didn't wash their hands after using the bathroom. Click to enlarge.

DO CARTOONISTS GET WORSE WITH AGE?

I imagine that they do, though there are exceptions (like Milt Gross). Anyway, here's (above) a beach cartoon by Don Martin, done when he was fairly young, and another beach cartoon (below) done when he was older. I thought it might be interesting to compare the two to see

if we can isolate the difference that age makes.

Let's see...hmmm...well, the emotions in the top cartoon are more extreme, and the poses are more caricatured. No doubt about it, young people are more judgemental about the people around them. They love to ferret out the phony and roast him over hot coals. Older people have a more live-and-let-live attitude, which is lethal for a cartoonist. Old people need to stop being so tolerant and learn to abhor everybody like young people do.

I notice too that the older Don Martin isn't as touchy-feely as the younger one. The girls in the topmost cartoon are all over the handsome guy. They can't keep their hands off him. And what's that quality in the faces in the older artist's cartoon? Is it intelligence!? What the heck is intelligence doing in the Don Martin universe? Martin characters are supposed to be stupid! We can all learn a lesson here. Cartoonists must constantly be on their guard against the debilitating influence of IQ points.

Here's (above) another example of Don Martin's early style. I'm dying to blow up the drawing of the zombie guy to life size, mount it, and stand it up in my hallway. Boy, nobody can draw stupidity like Don Martin!

GOTTA' BE GONE TIL TUESDAY NIGHT!

THE GLORIOUS, AWE-INSPIRING 40'S CHEMISTRY SET

Before the era of nuisance lawsuits, before my own time even, there were glorious toys. One of the all-time best was the fully-loaded chemistry set, which came in a metal box like the one above. To judge from the look of it I'd say this example is from the 40s. I'll bet there were even better ones in the 30s.

Every boy in that era had seen a million mad scientist movies and they were all chomping at the bit to blow things up and transform themselves into monsters a la Jeckle and Hyde. Of course, once they got the set, they got channeled into doing the experiments in the set's book, which were still pretty dangerous and awe-inspiring.

They also wanted a high-voltage lab like the one in "Frankenstein" and there were electrical sets to fill that need, too. I have a 600,000 volt spark generator in my garage, I guess because I want to make dead bodies come to life just like the kids of that era did.

If you're interested in hands-on chemistry you should spend 25 bucks for the Granddad's book above. I think Amazon has it. I used to have my own copy and I loved it. Chemistry must have been a lot of fun way back when.

"Popular Science" and "Popular Mechanics" used to be crammed with chemistry-related articles. Here's a small article about evaporation (below) from the March 1948 issue of Popular Science (cover above). Notice that it's not mathematical. Kid chemistry should be taught this way for at least a year before making it mathematical. Get kids interested in the subject first!

The article's below. Click to enlarge.