A DINNER I WON'T FORGET

Before I start, let me apologize for taking the Pizza Boy story down. It's only temporary. I'll put up an improved version soon, and I think you'll like it a lot better. I had trouble with Beta Blogger, which isn't set up for the kind of photo stories I like to do, but it gets better every day and, well...you can't argue with the price. Thanks to Roberto, Jorge, Rooni, Fritz and Ben for the kind comments on that post.

Fortunately, I have another pizza story ready to go, this one taken from real life...

A few days ago I had dinner in a pizzeria and I noticed what appeared to be a dad and his four kids wolfing down pizza in the booth next to me.  They seemed like a nice family and I gave in to the temptation to eavesdrop.  I'm glad I did, because what they said was fascinating!

I only heard bits of it. If I got it right, the dad had a small contracting business, which fit the way he looked: like the actor, Ned Beatty.  He seemed like an average Joe, a nice guy who was probably skilled and did good work.  He wasn't very eloquent or talkative but you could tell that he was enjoying his kids immensely.  

  

Three of kids talked mostly to each other about video games, friends,  rock music; the usual things ten year- olds talk about. The fourth kid, the one closest to the dad, was animatedly telling him about his internet business, which was buying and selling sci-fi figurines on ebay.  The kid was bragging about the deals he made.  He relished the details and the dad obviously relished hearing about them. 

So what, you ask, made this dinner so special? 

It was special because the kid seemed to genuinely enjoy talking to his dad.  Let that sink in for a minute. He actually thought talking to the old man was fun.  When's the last time you saw that? I guess he thought of himself as a businessman, just like his dad, and it was fun for him to compare notes with a sympathetic peer.  

The dad, who had the kind of stiff, cigar store indian face that most men have, was nevertheless beaming.  He was in Seventh Heaven because his son was talking to him just for the sheer pleasure of it, and maybe because he knew he could be useful to a son like that, and would never have to worry that the kid would grow up rudderless or penniless.  I got the feeling that the dad would remember that night as one of the best in his entire life.

When the family got up to go,  I felt like shaking the kids hand and giving him my wallet. What a gift he gave to his father! What a son! What a night!  

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF JAMES ELLROY?

It occurred to me that in my post on writers James Ellroy and Elmore Leonard I forgot to include a sample of Ellroy's writing. Ill make up for that here with a couple of brief Ellroy interviews.  He writes the way he talks, so this should give you an idea of what the writing's like.




Ellroy talks in short sentenses with short words.  It's a very lean style.  In the interviews he comes off as obsessive, which doesn't surprise me.  I think all good literary stylists have compulsive disorders.  They write whether they get paid for it or not. You have to write an awful. awful lot to get the kind of feel for words that they have.

The trick is to avoid getting seduced by your own beautiful words, and to never neglect the content. Good writing is always about something that's worth knowing.




YouTube has several videos where Ellroy talks about Elizabeth Short, the famous "Black Dahlia" whose corpse was found surgically cut in half in Hollywood in the forties. His own mother was murdered when Ellroy was a kid, some (not Ellroy) believe by the same killer. The two murders are always on Ellroy's mind. I'm surprised that Ellroy is able to keep focused on a subject he's spoken and written about so frequently through the years. Maybe this is another example of how you have to be an an obsessive compulsive in order to write well.

 Maybe the tragic crimes gave him a nucleus around which he could grow a compulsion. Maybe the best writers need compulsions for fuel and deliberately set about to acquire and nurture them. Or maybe I'm trying to over explain something that's simple and doesn't need an explanation. I don't know. Anyway, I love the way Ellroy talks.

FILLER

I hate filler. I hate it in books, cartoons, films, food...you name it. Filler sucks.

I particularly hate it in books. The other day I was in a used book store and I was infinitely saddened to  see how many books were overwritten, or were stretched out versions of what should have been  long magazine articles.  You can blame publishing's woes on computers and TV,  but that's not the whole story.  The truth is that the reading public is also re-acting negatively to the glut of wordy, needlessly long and expensive books which have come out since the late forties.

Why all the filler, and why did it appear in that time period? I don't know. I only know that books (excepting biographies) were tighter before WWII.

You see the filler problem everywhere. It's in art books which are full of super wide margins and wasted white space. It's in histories which hardly ever address themselves to what readers want to know. I don't want a book with a sappy title like "Brother Against Brother: The Civil War." I want a book called "Why the South Lost the Civil War," or "Why Sherman was an Ineffective General." 

 Maybe publishers are too focused on coming up with the one expensive big seller that will appeal to everybody and make lots of money. Maybe they'd do better if they issued a larger number of books at a much cheaper price, with more specific titles.

BTW: The filler book store I visited wasn't "The Iliad" in North Hollywood, which is pictured above. The Iliad has as much disdain for filler as I do.  

PHILOSOPHY GIRLS AUDITIONS (PART 1)

EXT. THE THEORY BUILDING, HEADQUARTERS OF "THEORY CORNER. INC."

 HUNDREDS OF EXCITED SINGERS AND DANCERS WAIT TO BE INTERVIEWED FOR SLOTS IN "THE PHILOSOPHY GIRLS," THE WORLD'S FOREMOST GIRL PHILOSOPHY REVIEW.

INT. THEORY BUILDING: ON THE APPLICANTS:

BUTTERCUP: "Only two slots left, and there's dozens of girls ahead of us. It doesn't look good!"

AT THE HEAD OF THE LINE: 

INTERVIEWER: "Nice job, Lily! You sing and dance, you know your philosophy, and you're able to handle tough questions. Congratulations! As of this moment, you're a PHILOSOPHY GIRL! Report to Theory Mansion on Monday and we'll introduce you to the gang!"

LILY: "GASP! I can't believe it! it's been my dream since I was a kid! Thank you! Oh, THANK YOU!"

BUTTERCUP: "Aaaaargh! Oh, great...now there's only ONE spot left!"

BUTTERCUP: "Lily, you gotta help us out here. We're DESPERATE! Please, please; what questions did they ask!?  They wanted to know about the Positivists, right?"

LILY: "The Positivists? No, not the Positivists.  They were mainly interested in the manly Greek and Roman thinkers...some Enlightenment people...a little on Ayn Rand. "

BUTTERCUP: "Oh yeah, Ayn Rand.... (GULP!) AYN RAND!!!???? I haven't read ANY of her books!!!"

SUNFLOWER: "Neither have I! She was a follower of Nietzsche, wasn't she?"

DAISY: "Nietzsche!? Rand REPUDIATED Nietzsche! She liked him for a while in her youth, and that was it."

GLADYS: "EEEEWW!!!! Who let a KID in here!? Beat it, Pee Wee. You're too young to be a Philosophy Girl!"

CONTINUED  IN THE NEXT POST......

PHILOSOPHY GIRLS AUDITIONS (PART 2)

VIOLET: "Well, maybe she's right, Gladys.  Rand says we're born with fundamental rights, which no  Nietzchean Superman or Leviathan state can morally withdraw."

IRIS: " 'Sounds good Violet, but the Utilitarians had another way of looking at it.  They said the  purpose of the state is to bring about the most happiness for the most people.  It would be hard for the state to do that unless it had a lot of power. "

PETUNIA: "But who decides what makes you happy?  Hitler?  Stalin? Rand says it's not the job of the state to make you happy. It's the job of the state to protect your right to make yourself happy, whatever way you choose, provided you respect the rights of others to do the same. It's right here in the Declaration of Independence...our 'inalienable right to life, liberty and the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS!' "

OUTSIDE, ON THE LINE OF APPLICANTS:

GLADYS (VO): "GOOD GRIEF! ANOTHER KID!!!! What's this, the PHILOSOPHY BABIES!!??

MAGNOLIA (VO): "I don't know, I think she's kinda cute."

GLADYS (VO): "See if you think so when you end up having to clean her turtle bowl!"

THEORYBOY INTERVIEWS MILT GRAY

Well, slightly exaggerating.  Above, the heroine of Milt Gray's new web comic, "Ms. Viagri Ampleten."

Sepia sketches by John Kricfalusi

Greetings Theory Cornerites! Uncle Eddie here.  That's me above, second from the left. You know, we've interviewed many celebrities on this site: Sammy, Dean, Frank, and even Bob Clampett, but none has been as tall as our present subject, Simpsons timing director, animator, Clampett fan and web cartoonist, the 6' 6" "Tower of Power," MILT GRAY. "Hi MILT!"

MILT : "Hi, Uncle Eddie! Wanna see my latest drawing of Viagri Ampleten?"

UNCLE EDDIE: "Sure! Wow! She certainly is...(gulp!)...ample. So this is your new web comic character! She's a spy, right?"

MILT: "Well, not exactly. She's a free agent. Sometimes she works for the government, and sometimes for private people. She takes on the really dangerous assignments that no one else wants to touch." 

UNCLE EDDIE: "How does she decide what jobs to take?"

MILT: "Good question. Well, she's more likely to take a job that gives her scope to follow her hobby, which is sex. She's on a crusade to liberate people from their sex hangups."

UNCLE EDDIE: "Uh oh! There goes your 'G' rating."

MILT: "'Not worried. I'm after whatever rating makes sense for the stories I'm telling.  I figure the readers will tell me how graphic I should go."

UNCLE EDDIE: "How did you figure out the format?  There can't be many web comics that scan the way yours does."

MILT: "Yeah, it works great, doesn't it? It came about because the project started as an animated cartoon, and the panels were meant to be layouts. That's why they're all the same size. When I decided to do a web comic instead, it seemed like a natural outgrowth of that to put them in a column and let the reader scroll down. I guess I was lucky, because everybody seems to like it that way."

UNCLE EDDIE: "How did you color it?"

MILT: "Well, I xeroxed the original drawings down to a size my scanner could take, then I just fed them in.  The color was done on Photoshop by my color stylist, Cynthia Macintosh. 

UNCLE EDDIE: "I'll put a few of the panels up (that's them above, cropped badly by me, and in a different format than the one Milt uses. I was just too sleepy to do it right).  Boy, you can tell that an animator drew them."

MILT: "Thanks. There's a lot that's different about this comic. I hope it influences things. The web is a great vehicle for comics, and it'll get even better if we continue to experiment."


Milts web comic:  http://www.viagriampleten.com

WHAT MADE JOHNATHAN WINTERS SO GREAT?

Jonathan Winters (above) is an interesting guy. You can spend a lifetime in the entertainment business and never come up with an appealing character, and here's   Jonathan Winters who comes up with new ones by the cartload every time he speaks. What was his secret?

I'm not sure. Maybe it had something to do with Winters being mischievous.  People like that quality. Maybe that's why mischievous people make good joke tellers. They make you aware of the absurdity of the fact that you just dropped something important to listen to something that's going to be incredibly stupid.

I don't remember many jokes, and I'm not really good at telling them. What I do remember is the way they were told. I love the way joke tellers look both ways then grab your arm and lean in furtively. I love the whole ritual that's associated with joke telling. Mischievous people are experts at creating the atmosphere that precedes a joke.

In animation you know you've got a good character if you start laughing before he even talks. Good characters have ignorant charisma. Funny things happen just because they're in the room.  The air fills with electricity and potential just because a force of nature has arrived, and is checking out the room. For me the joke is of far less importance than the set up.

John achieved this with Ren and Stimpy. In his best period Winters achieved it every time he opened his mouth.