VAMPIRE LADY: "Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like you to meet a new member of the team: Pizza Boy."
PIZZA BOY (AWKWARD): "Er...Hiya."
VAMPIRE LADY CLONE #1: "Mmmmm, a handsome, strapping youth. I like your disguise, Pizza Boy!"
ALIEN PRINCESS: "I like it too. Tell me, what special ingredients do you use in your pizza? Belladonna? Arsenic? They tell me you get more kills with Botulism."
PIZZA BOY: "Um...just pepperoni, m'am."
ALIEN GIRL: "Relax, have a seat! Take off your head. The Earth people can't see you here."
She screws off her head.
ALIEN GIRL (HEAD): "Ah, That's better! Dragging along a body makes my neck hurt."
VAMPIRE LADY: "I just take the neck off. It's easier."
Sorry for the delay in getting the next episode of Pizza Boy up. I had a lot of trouble with Beta Blogger last time I posted, maybe because my desktop was cluttered with hundreds of unsorted pictures. It's taken me almost two days to straighten it out, so all my blog work got pushed back. Don't worry, Pizza Boy is alive and well.
While I'm here, I thought I'd put up an hour-long lecture (above) by Temple Grandin, the best known writer on the subject of autism and Aspergers. She has both conditions herself and is amazingly articulate on the subject.
I don't think I have either myself, but Grandin interests me. I like her speaking style with its clarity and digressions to detail. She has the autistic propensity to concentrate on things rather than people, an approach that makes some autustic people seem cold and mechanistic, but which in her case is unexpectedly appealing. She's a good role model for people with that problem.
She's also thought provoking. She makes me wonder about the problems of people with low level Aspergers who aren't diagnosed early and are therefore are never given special consideration in school. They may never realize what they have until they're old enough to self-diagnose, but by then they're stuck with bad habits and an unnecessarily botched education.
She also makes me interested to hear how Aspergers people compensate. They're puzzled by the fact that ordinary people often don't mean what they say, and have hidden motives for things, and they're appalled by our insistence that they act that way too. That must lead to some interesting encounters. And autistic people...they have to put up with being touched, with strobing fluorescent lights, loud eating sounds, et al...imagine what their lives must be like. 'Lots of cartoon opportunities here.
BTW: To avoid the long-winded formal introductions, I recommend starting the video several minutes in, when Grandin takes the stage.
This one minute video (above) is a simple list of famous high achievers who are reputed to have been autistic. I don't know if it's accurate, but it sure is interesting.
(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?