A BLOG ABOUT....ME!

A few days ago Nico kindly put up a post all about...(Blush!) me. It was a sort of retrospective of this blog, which has had nearly...are you ready for this?.... 640 posts to date! Can you imagine that!? 640!!!!

Nico: http://nicocartoons.blogspot.com

Originally this blog was meant to be exclusively about animation. Actually, I still think of it that way, but I guess I wonder off the point a lot. I never feel guilty about doing that because I always think of animation as a home for thoughtful and adventurous people.

If you wonder where I got such a darn-fool notion, it was from the old black & white Disneyland show, which I watched faithfully when I was an embryo. Disney made being an artist seem like the most exciting job in the world. All that about Davy Crockett, trips to Mars, Alice in Wonderland, and Donald Duck whipped me into a frenzy every week. I grew up thinking that you'd better be good at science, history and literature because if you're not, no animation studio will ever consider hiring you. I still believe that, regardless of abundant evidence to the contrary. Truly was it said that the boy is the father of the man.

My imagined audience for this blog has always been the intellectually aware cartoonist, or cartoon fan: the actor with a pencil, the adventurer who craves excitement, the entertainer who believes the show must never disappoint. Do people like that want to read about oddball theories? Of course they do; they're cartoonists aren't they?

Anyway, Nico inspired me to try a retrospective of my own. Don't worry, I think I can do it in two posts. This one's all about a single subject...photo essays! It gets so much weight because it's been on my mind lately, but hopefully that energy will morph into YouTube videos and podcasts that I can run here.

Well, it all started a year ago when Kali and I improvised a sketch in a restaurant (above). After that, Marlo, Kali and I did one, and after that Nico, Kali and I did another. They were always about girls who were crazy for cartoonists which, when you think about it, is the way the world should be.

Shooting these things (above) took three people and that was hard for us to arrange. Too bad, because Kali and Marlo were really good at this stuff.


One day it dawned on me that I could just put a camera on some books and put the timer on. That black hairball (above) is a rubber mask of Captain Hook.



This (above) was my favorite solo effort: "The Poet." I cribbed part of the poem from the internet but the way poetic inspiration happens was real. This is pretty much how I wrote all my real world poems, like "The Pastry Restaurant Poet:"

http://uncleeddiestheorycorner.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_archive.html


The smelly shoe story(above): a sure crowd pleaser.




Here's my friend Martin Olson (above). Some people are gifted with a face that fits a specific character type. Martin is indisputably a "leading man." Nowadays it's popular to go against type when casting but that's a big mistake. Going with type is one of the reasons old Hollywood was so successful.

By the way, ace-storyboarder Barry Caldwell took the two picture above.



I bought this checkered shirt at a thrift store just for this essay (above). It's delightfully bland.


I really like this dude character and I want to use him again. A girl commenter (Jennifer) called the character "adorable" and I instantly melted. In girl language "adorable" is a very, very high compliment.



Unfortunately the baser instincts can't long be denied and I followed up the adorable essay with one that made me look sleazy (above). Oh well, c'est le vie.


Another thrift store find (above). I love that blue jacket.


My new computer has a built-in camera that does great black and white, just right for horror. This (above) is from the story about the evil puppet that comes to life when its master is out of the room. Eerie, isn't it?


I wore fake buck teeth for this shot (above). There are times when my real buck teeth just aren't buck enough.


This is from another horror story (above), about a murderer who lives in the walls of this guy's house. When you lean in close to the camera the black and white gets really grainy, like it's reflecting bubbling, white magma.


Boy, this (above) is really unsettling. I've gotta try this again.

This shot (above) is from the last story, about a Raymond Chandler-type detective. I put a floor lamp just out of frame for contrast.

Well, that's the first half of the retrospective. One more to go. Somehow I have to figure out how to compress everything else that's been on this blog so far into a single post. Aaargh!

Thanks again, Nico, for getting this started!

AT THE ANNIE AWARDS

John received The Winsor McCay Lifetime Achievement Award. It was an unexpectedly moving event and the crowd cheered enthusiastically. Other recipients included Brad Byrd, Glen Keane and John Canemaker. Good speeches by all.


Here's John (above), looking very suave. Kali appears to be reacting to a loathesome thing crawling on the armrest.


Jerry Beck won a much-deserved special award for contributions to the industry and gave one of the better speeches of the night.


Let us take a moment to appreciate the suavity of Jim smith and Mike (above).


After the ceremony John signs autographs. Jim appears to be hooting at Kali, though he may have sucked in a passing bee.


Mike also discovers the loathesome thing, this time crawling on JoJo's jacket.


JoJo won an award for volunteer work at The ASIFA Archive.


After the ceremony Mike and I searched for our parking structure with Marjane Satrapi, director of "Persepolis." Wow! She has a magnetic personality!

At the after-awards party Mike (above) toasts an off-screen friend while Steve is lost in visionary reverie.

Here's (above) Kali, fishing what appears to be an old shoe out of John's Annie Award.

Tom Minton and Wendy (above) were there! They make a great couple! Tom's a producer but in this picture he has the brooding look of a novelist. I'll bet Kurt Vonnegut would like to have looked like this.

Why is the image (above) so blurry? Did I put my thumb on the lens?

Here (below) a passing giant asks for Tom's autograph and Tom graciously complies.

HOW TO TIE A BOW TIE

Hello! Uncle Eddie here! Tonight I'm going with John, Kali and Mike to the Annie Awards ceremony at U.C.L.A.! John's getting a life achievement award! It is of course, a black tie affair. Only the most suave animation people will be there. It's all very refined, very upper crust.

Most men will wear bow ties and ten'll get you twenty that most of the ties won't be tied right. Most artists are butterfingered when it comes to things not of the drawing board. Well, I wouldn't want any Theory Corner Readers to have that problem. If you're going to the Awards tonight, and you're having trouble with your tie, here's a tutorial just for you! 

First, adjust the tie to maximum length. You can tighten it later.  Put it around your neck and let one end be about an inch and a half longer than the other.

Now tie a standard simple knot, letting the long end do most of the wrapping. 

Here's (above) what I mean. Just a plain old, common as water, knot.

Now take the short end and crimp it between your fingers.

After the crimping it should look like this (above): The classic bow tie shape. I forgot to say that the other end of the bow tie doesn't come into play here so you get it out of the way, maybe by flinging it over your shoulder. 

Now, take the long end that was over your shoulder (above) and let it fall in front of the crimped bow tie shape.

Now this (above) is the hard part, the thing that seperates the men from the boys.  The problem is that there's no way to photograph it.  I tried, and my hands always got in the way.  Maybe I should have drawn this, instead of taking pictures.....Aaargh! Too late now! I'll have to talk you through it.

Ok, take the bottom of that long, vertical piece in the foreground,  bring it around the back of the tie, up and over, til what's left dangles over the front of the tie again. 

Now, as you see here (above)....You take the dangling part and stuff it through the loop in the middle of the tie.  Hard to see, I know. You have my sympathy.

Come to think of it, before you do any stuffing, take a look at the shape of the tie. One side has a bow and the other side has a straight end.  Each side needs to be completed by getting the part that it's missing. The bow side needs a straight end, and the straight part needs a bow. Stuff the part that was dangling through the middle loop so each part of the tie gets what it needs.


And Voila! There it is! 

Well, it doesn't look like much at this stage. 

Wiggle and pull things around till it begins to take shape (above).  When you get it right, reach around the back and tighten the tie buckle till it fits nice and snug. That's it!

I was going to say, "Simple wasn't it?", but it's not really.  Actually, it's kind of complicated. Just remember that each end of the tie, both the right and the left, require two parts: a bow and a straight end. Do whatever you need to do to make that happen.

Now...onto the Annie Awards!

COMPLETELY RANDOM THOUGHTS

Warning: nudity below!

Forgive me for writing a post that's all over the place.  I just haven't had the time to write. Just rambling now, I thought I'd mention that I've been fooling around with imovie 08 and 06, the two amateur mac editing programs.  Holy Mackeral! The critics of 08 were right! 06 is a whole lot easier to use! Now at long last I've experienced the simplicity that mac is famous for and it's wonderful to behold! I was able to do almost everything quickly without resorting to a help menu. o6 is amazingly intuitive!  Of course 08 has the ability to send everything to YouTube with a couple of clicks.

I'm reading a book on the famous Chinese 36 strategems. My book implies that these traditional strategems were taught to every Chinese child for a long, long time, but Wikipedia says the book has only been available since 1961. 

 
Every strategy has a romantic title and a story that goes with it.  "Loot the house when it's burning" is another way of saying, "Take advantage of your enemy's misfortunes". Somehow expressing the idea with the metaphor of the burning house makes it more memorable. "Borrow a corpse to resurrect the soul" is a romantic way of saying "Re-interpret the past in order to influence events in the present." It's amazing that this is taught to young children.  It's a very practical way of looking at the world, very far removed from the Christian ethic that prevailed here until recently. 

Since I'm rambling I'll mention that I just visited the Domai site and found the peculiar pictures shown here (above and below).  At first I couldn't figure out what made these girls seem so unusual, but after thinking about it I realized that they're all look a little bit crazy.  The girl on the top looks like she's way, way over the edge, the third one, one on the bottom (way below) is almost normal...almost, but not quite.  Her eyes seem like powerful instruments of understated manipulation.  Of course these are guesses. Maybe all these girls are much more normal than I am. 

In real life mildly crazy girls are kind of sexy.  Probably girls find crazy guys to be sexy too, if the craziness is mixed with charm. Isn't it odd that we're all attracted a bit by craziness? No wonder every generation has so many half-cocked people! 

I also find it interesting that the allure of craziness doesn't translate into photography.  These pictures are fascinating to look at but they're not exactly erotic. My guess is that in real life these girls would be very sexy, but in photography not so much so. Why is that? Maybe a lot of eroticism is in the eyes, and that's hard to capture in pictures. 

BTW, None, absolutely NONE of what I said about crazy people applies to anyone I know, thank heaven! I have to say that because every time I write about human oddities, half the people I know look at me strange the next day, as if they'd been insulted. 

Also, if one of the paragraphs is blue that's because I hit a wrong button and am too tired to do anything about it.  

WHY DON"T PAPERBACKS SELL AS WELL AS THEY USED TO?

Well, the price for one thing.  A new paperback novel averages $7.99 and a really popular author like Stephen King gets $9.99. That's outrageous!  But I don't think price is the only reason. Paperbacks just aren't as attractive as they used to be. 

Check out the 50s cover above where the "cheap and evil" girl is smoked on by the giant green head. Maybe the cigarette is a burning penis. It's beautifully executed but it's also weird, and vaguely supernatural. Weird and supernatural are spices you can add to any genre, the more the better.

 
I'm digressing here to include a magazine cover (above) from the paperback era. In evidence are girls, guns, an exotic locale, a picture of a real, live lurid girl, and exciting letter styling. What a feast for the eyes and for the imagination! No wonder these magazines sold!

Psychotherapy (above) was a popular subject in lurid paperbacks, maybe because men envied psychiatrists. Readers must have thought, "What a job! You get to put women on a couch and listen to their sex fantasies all day long!"  

Everybody likes to read about crazy people (above) for some reason, and if sex can be added, so much the better. It's sleazy but you have to admit that if this book was lying on a table, and no one was around, you'd pick it up and spot read it. 

There's a genre of paperbacks (above and below) which I call "Swamp Trash" for lack of a better name. Paperbacks readers were obsessed with the idea that hillbillies didn't work and spent their whole day drinking and having sex. Could that be true? If it's not, it's still an appealing fantasy for some. 

It seems to me that paperbacks of the past sold big because they gave the reader what he really wanted, even when it didn't make sense.  They sold stylized hyper-reality, rather than reality. There's a certain amount of pandering in that, but the quality of the writing and artwork was exceptionally good, which means that creative people found the medium congenial, even if they didn't like to admit it.  The weird subject matter lent itself to high style in the execution. 

One additional reason: I imagine that more books were aimed at men in those days and men's weird and sometimes deviant tastes made for more creative opportunities in print. My guess is that most editors today are women, Vasser graduates or the equivalent, and the subjects women choose to publish just aren't interesting to a lot of men.  We need more male editors.