IT's HALLOWEEN TIME AGAIN!!!!!

Heeeere we go again! It's Halloween time and, to judge by the terrific material that I see on the net, artists and collectors are really reved up for it.

I only wish there were a couple of first-rate horror films out. I'm really in the mood for it.

It would have been nice for Halloween fans if Sam Rami's "Drag Me to Hell" had been timed to debut in October, rather than the summer...and even nicer if the poster had actually attempted to illustrate the title of the movie. There must be a story behind that, but I don't know what it is. I haven't seen the film yet, but I imagine it'll be in the rental places soon.

I've been to the local Halloween stores, but they were still unpacking so it's a little early to speculate about how this year is going to shape up for collectors.

I'll have to stop by the drug stores to see what cardboard decorations are out this year.



Don't you love houses that look like faces (above)? This one even appears to have feet!

Wow! A beautiful vintage card (above)! Someone should re-issue them!

Proof (above) that a race of giants once walked the Earth!

Uh-oh! The attack of the giant Flash animation creature....

...maybe Wiener Man will think of a way to thwart it!

Let me know if you see anything good in the stores!

P.S. Most of these images come from two wonderful sites whose names I can't remember. Sorry for the ommision! When I find out their names I'll print them here and add them to my links.

JAMES GILLRAY: FATHER OF THE EDITORIAL CARTOON

British artist James Gillray is considered by many to be the father of the editorial cartoon.

Gillray worked in the late 18th and early 19th century, the age of Napoleon. He attacked the French relentlessly, and went at his own countrymen with equal ferocity.

My favorite Gillrays are his fashion parodies (above). Even men went for the wasp waist look, and everybody wanted to appear taller than they were.

Geez, I wish these pictures were bigger. The picture above won't enlarge, but about half of the others will, so give them a try.

He was a terrific caricaturist (above). and you know he would have been a good animator because he loved to caricature walks as well as faces.

It would have been fun to go with Gillray on his sketching tours of the parks (above). His focus was always on the people who visited the park, and not on the trees.

There must have been a lot of fat rich women (above) in Gillray's time.

Fat men, too.

Gillray wasn't the only British cartoonist of his day. Cruikshank and Heath (that's a Heath above) were contemporaries. You can see the influence that Heath had on Edward Lear, who came later.

This (above) is a beautiful picture when you see it large. It's full of movement and nice line. Gillray was an expert at etching, so he didn't have to pass his drawings on to an engraver the way some other artists did.

Haw!

He could be downright hilarious (above) when he wanted to be.

The Prince of Wales is said to have disliked this picture (above) so much that he paid to have the plates destroyed. It's beautifully composed.



More fashion caricatures (above). Is this picture by Cruikshank or Gillray? The two did park pictures that are almost interchangeable.

Anyway, catch the padded jacket and knee-high boots on the guy on the right. Wouldn't you like to see him do an animated walk?

Boy, Gillray caught that gloomy look that some Englishmen have. The pants of that day framed the crotch like a puppet theater and he caught that, too. But what's with the dainty little shoes?

Here he depicts a wealthy mother (above) who takes two minutes out of her busy schedule to breast feed her child.

Unbelievable (above)! This guy is SO funny!

Poor Gillray. for years he lived happily and prosperously with the woman who published his pictures... then his eyesight began to fail. When he found he couldn't work any more he made a botched suicide attempt which left him with injuries which may have driven him insane.

BATTLE OF THE BURGER TITANS (REVISED)

"Hi! Uncle Eddie here! Labor Day's coming up and I thought I'd post again about the best way to make a burger. The best burger I know of is John K's "Manly Cartoonist Burger." I put up the recipe way back in August of 2007.

Rather than print that all over again, I thought I'd discuss it side by side with Kenny Shopsin's burger theories. Shopsin wrote a cookbook that I'm perusing called "Eat Me," which features recipes from his famous New york restaurant. I thought you might find the contrast interesting."

"Um...a word of warning: burger theorists are feisty people. If John hears what he considers burger heresy, there's half a chance that he'll trash the place while I'm shooting."

"Okay, let's start! Well, to begin with, both cooks agree that you want ground beef that's 20-25% fat. Don't worry about the high fat content, it cooks away. John puts islands of chopped sirloin around the paddy so you get different flavor sensations with every bite, but the restaurant guy uses one type of meat overall.

John says add an egg (1 egg for 4 people), but don't compress the meat much when you put it in and never squeeze it, because that makes the cooking more difficult. It's good to have some air inside. A little pepper, chopped green onions, garlic, and chilli pepper, but never salt. Salt dries out the meat. If you want salt, add it after the burger's cooked."

"It's important to let the burger cook for five minutes undisturbed, except to turn it over at the midway point. You don't want to poke it more than necessary because that lets the juices escape."

"Uh-oh! Aaargh! This brings us to our first major disagreement."

Gulp! Gulp!

"Well, John passionately insists that burgers have to be cooked on hot charcoal, with a lid on half the time . The restaurant guy says no...it has to be on a really hot, pre-heated iron frying pan with a lid. Charcoal and frying pan: that difference defines the two types of people that exist in the universe. I hope these guys never meet because they'd probably kill each other."

"Anyway, after 5 minutes the restaurant guy relies sticks a meat thermometer right in the middle of the burger. 120 - 125 degrees for rare, 140 - 145 degrees for medium."



"Okay, that leaves one more subject...the bun!"

"John says you need a fresh pastry shop bun, something with sesame or poppy seeds. The book recommends Martin's Potato Buns, which you can probably get at the supermarket.

Mmmm, I gotta give it to John on this one. You can't beat a nice, fresh Kaiser roll. Besides, the restaurant guy owns a business and he's gotta be tempted to cut corners."

"You put a little butter on the roll to help it toast better, and something on top of it to press it down on the pan. You only toast it lightly so it's soft on the inside and crispy on the outside."

"Now the burger is assembled and spatulaed onto a plate. You take it over to stove where mushrooms have been cooking in bacon grease. Ladle some mushrooms and bacon on, then move to the condiment table, which contains Romaine lettuce, pickles, raw radishes, celery and fresh onions."

"Here we go with the controversy again. John prefers his onions raw and juicy. He says that's because you need to feel a little pain with your pleasure. He slices the onion only when it's ready for use.

The restaurant guy likes his thin sliced and fried in peanut oil til they're a gnarly brown/black that don't even look like onions anymore.

"And that's it. As I said, John's Manly Cartoonist burger is the best I've ever had. It even looks good! Even so, I'll try Shopsin's burger next time I'm in New york. All this reminds me that a good burger is a thing of beauty. It's not given to man to lay his eyes on a better Labor Day meal!'

"Bellisimo!"

P.S. At the supermarket where I usually score my Kaiser rolls, they tell me that Poppy seeds have been discontinued on rolls. Kali's Dad speculates that even though the seeds can't get you high, they can put something in your system that responds positively to drug tests.

P.P.S. Vincent Waller ate at Shopsin's and describes it in a comment.

P.P.P. S. I'M OFF FOR THE WEEKEND! 'BE BACK MONDAY NIGHT!

THE OUTRAGEOUSLY NEAT ZIM BOOK

Thanks to Steve Worth and ASIFA-Hollywood we now have a first-rate book on Zim, one of the greatest cartoonists of all time. As a matter of fact, the book is BY Zim: "ZIM'S Correspondence School of Cartooning, Comic Art & Cartooning." It's a compendium of the shorter books Zim made for his mail-order art course. It comes in two thick volumes, which I've seen, and which left me much impressed.

The book is loaded with drawings. You could get a whole art education just by looking at the pictures! Steve told me I'd see a lot of my own drawing theories in there, and sure enough, I did. The dentist in the drawing above is a perfect example of techniques that I've been using for years.

Zim was a true cartoonist. In his time, in the later 19th century, caricatures were reserved for the famous. Zim was the guy who figured out that the common man was worth caricaturing.


I have no idea where Zim's broad, old, newspaper strip kind of body exaggeration (above) came from. My guess is that German cartoonist Wilhelm Busch invented it, but you see it in some old Punch drawings from the the mid-1800s, so I'm not sure. Anyway, artists like Zim took it and ran with it, making it a staple of American newspaper and magazine art.


Steve wrote some terrific biographical material for the collection. Reading about Zim's ups and downs in the magazine industry of his day reminded me of the animation industry today. There's no security in the art business because tastes change and even talented people will be shown the door when their protectors in management are dismissed or bought out. No use complaining, it's just the way of things. All you can do is make a big splash when the opportunity arises, and hope that with hard work you can write your name in history.

I like Zim's practice of occasionally drawing alternative poses.

Zim was an illustrator rather than a comic strip artist, so the dawn of newspaper comics carried no benefit for him. I can see why. He liked to make his point with caricature rather than story. Steve says he used to sketch in bars and in crowds of all kinds.

Ethnic humor was one of Zim's specialties. He lived at the height of immigration from Europe when the streets were full of new arrivals who couldn't speak English, and who thought that everybody else looked stupid.

Hmmmm, I'll have to remember that open-mouthed pose on the guy above. It's deliciously ignorant!

Here's (above) how he handled my ethnicity, the Irish. Other artists like Thomas Nast made us look like apes, but Zim had a kind nature and was content to make us seem merely barbarous. Did we ever really look like that? I guess we did, but if we didn't it's still okay. It's funny.

Here's a Jewish caricature (above). The caption below it said something about Jews loving to gesture almost as much as they love to pinch pennies. Geez! Zim said stuff like that about everybody! It's amazing that he was able to walk down the street without getting whacked in the nose.

Actually the taste for immigrant humor diminished even in Zim's lifetime. It's astonishing how quickly most people adapted to the way of life here. The era of free-wheeling ethnic gags didn't last long, but it had a long-lasting energizing effect on American entertainment and literature.


The price for the two volumes is something like 250 bucks for both. It's a limited print run so there was no way to print it cheap. Plans exist for a paperback edition which will go for less, but suppose Steve gets hit by a meteor before then? I won't rest easy til my own copy of the present edition is securely sequestered under my bed, with an armed guard to protect it.

To order the book go to ASIFA-Hollywood's archive site. The link is on my sidebar.