GLOOM!!!!

Nothing today, I'm afraid. I've been having computer problems so I figured I'd buy some time by reposting one of my very favorite photo stories, the one where a poet writes a romantic poem (2007). I loved that story, even though I looked fat in it.

Well, Blogger just erased it (no, the back button wouldn't recover it).

Things like that don't happen with Blogger the way it's currently set up, but way back in 2007 it happened all the time. Blogger had real stability issues back then, and users who fiddled with a previously posted blog risked losing it. I should have known better than to mess with the old stuff.

I've gotta take a day off to mourn.

TIKI HOUSES

I just stumbled on a TV reality show called "Monster House," where a homeowner allows a friend to completely redo his house. In this case (above) the friend was artist Kim Larson (and company), and she decided to give the house a Tiki look.

She fashioned this fireplace out of chicken wire and insulating foam. I think she did all the work in this room in a day, which isn't bad considering that she wasn't used to the materials. She also changed the shower so it would deliver lots of mist rather than a steady stream of water. That's an interesting idea. Could you get clean that way? Would breathing all that mist be good for you? I'm not sure. I'd like to try it, though.

She also rigged up a mister and a big, Hollywood wind machine on the roof, looking down onto the pool. The idea was to simulate tropical storms. Fascinating!

Larson was apologetic about the fireplace sculpture. She wanted to do something more detailed like the green fireplace above, but had to settle for something that could be done fast. She only had five days to do everything.

The show made me curious to see what renovations other people did on a Tiki theme, so I googled it. What came up were mostly computer images like this one (above). It looks like the Tarzan/Swiss Family Robinson house at Disneyland. I love stuff like this! I even like the way it's on an island or a sand bar. Very nice as long as the weather's okay. 

Here's (above) another beach-style house built over water. Nice. Imagine a house like this built in the suburbs over an artificial deep pond. Imagine tunas swimming in the water. Not very realistic, but fun to think about.

Here's (above) a novel idea for a beach house...I think the caption called it a "Tahiti Wind House." Fascinating! I wouldn't mind a wind house if the furniture was weather proof and nailed down, and the structure was sturdy. Imagine sitting in your walless living room while a thunderstorm raged all around you. Imagine the waves smashing against the nearby rocks. Sigh! But it's impractical, I know.

I can't help thinking, though, that one day it will be possible. One day you'll be able to walk around your walless, temperature controlled house in your pajamas, and nobody walking by will be able to see you. All they'll see in the window slots will be black.

You, on the other hand, will be able to observe passersby as if there was no barrier at all between you and them. Total security, too. No one enters unless you want them too. How will all this be done? That's for the people after us to figure out.

Let them figure this one (above) out, too. A tree house offshore in the ocean! How do you tease a forest tree like this one to grow in the ocean shallows? I don't know. I figure that just about anything we can think of will become possible sooner or later.

DICK VAN DYKE: SLAPSTICK COMEDIAN

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I'm too sleepy to post now, but I thought I'd put up an interesting video as a placeholder: it's the first episode of the old Dick Van Dyke Show from the early 60s. There's no need to watch the whole thing...it was the first show and they didn't quite get the rhythm right... but you have to see Dick's drunk routine which starts at 19:45. Watch it even if you don't like drunk sketches. It's great!

I'm reading Dick's autobiography. It's not very revealing, and he doesn't talk about how he acquired that famous personality and rubbery slapstick technique, but that's par for the course for biographies. I did come across one interesting tidbit, though...he said Stan Laurel told him that he got that cool walk by having the heels removed from his shoes. Where are my shoes? I'm getting them modified!

One final thought: I said they didn't get the rhythm of the whole show right, and that's true. Even so, watch how expertly most of the entire party sequence is shot and cut. Watch how that sequence is paced and how well the music was laid in. PRO-fesh-ee-yon-nal!!!!

P.S. For some reason the YouTube video above isn't embedding. Here's a link to the site:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIn8mPy5_jA

MORE EARLY NEWSPAPER STRIPS

Here's (above) a newspaper comic from 1896! I've blogged about this artist before, but I can't help doing it again...I guess I just can't decide whether I like him or not. Good technical draughtsmen were abundant in the 1890s, so the primitive drawing style must be deliberate. Maybe readers regarded this artist the same way we regard Edward Lear or Steinberg now, as primitive and sophisticated at the same time. 

Be sure to click to enlarge all the pictures in this post.

Ahhhh...refreshed at the fountain of Herriman (above)! Here he is caricaturing Opper's style.

Newspaper cartoonists back in the day must have been under a lot of pressure to come up with funny poses. This artist (above) doesn't seem to have a knack for that, but you gotta give him credit for trying. 

Slapstick was king in those days (above). I wish it was today. 

Herriman again (above). I love the guy in the white suit, who's standing in profile. I also like the guys on the lower left and right.  

I like the way this artist (above) lays out his page. He finishes the gag but still has space to fill at the bottom, so he ends the page with a bunch of random afterthoughts. Artists were free to pioneer new formats in those days. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn't. 

I'm amazed at how common plagiarism was in those days. How do you like the Dick Tracy rip-off above?

Here's (above) an interesting one. Helen Kane had just lost her lawsuit against the Fleischers (the judge claimed he couldn't see the similarity between her voice and that of Betty Boop), so she decided to stake her claim on her personna with a comic strip character of her own that looked just like Betty. It didn't do very well, and Helen Kane slowly slipped out of the public eye.

BTW: I heard a contradictory story, that Kane lost her lawsuit because it was determined that she had stolen her character from yet another singer. I have no idea what the truth is. 

Thanks to Allan Holz from "Stripper's Guide" for the comics. A link to his terrific blog can be found in the right sidebar.

DORE'S WONDERFUL FORESTS

This should be a treat for the artists who come here: rare Dore illustrations from  Chateaubriand's 19th Century novel "Atala." According to Wikipedia, the book was written to debunk the European idea that American indians were noble savages. Maybe it does...I haven't read it...but most of the illustrations I saw seem to say the opposite. Dore portrays America as a majestic Garden of Eden, and the indians as its ideal inhabitants.

Actually I'm glad that Dore added his own take to the story. Whatever the truth about native Americans, the portrayal of this country as an Earthly paradise is a useful one.  This is nature the way we'd all like it to be. It's a partly Utopian vision that should spur us on to make it a reality.

American swamps (above) really are like this in places, except Dore neglected to mention bugs. In real life the two women sitting on the water's edge would be buried under a mound of army ants and mosquitoes.   

Gee, this picture (above) fills me with memories of happy times around campfires at night. Fortunately places like this aren't that rare. You can find lots of places like this in America, some of them not far from cities and towns. Sometimes I wish it were against the law to build in or even near primeval forests. Maybe we shouldn't even build nature trails and roads there. We should just let it alone. 

Or not. I'm always amazed that Yosemite and Seqouia National Park look so unspoiled, and that in spite of the kazillion plus tourists who go there every year. How does the park service manage to pull that off?

I wish I knew the story of Atala. This looks like two "Noble Savages" wearing togas, taking a swim in America's life-giving water. Geez, Dore was so sentimental.

Seeing these pictures reminds me of the way Africa used to be portrayed in the media. When I was a kid sub-Saharan Africa was portrayed as being mostly jungle, like the kind you see in Tarzan movies.  But was it? The Africa I see on TV these days seems to be mostly grassland and scrub. What happened to the African trees?

THE AMAZING JOHN MARTIN (1812-1875)

Arguably the greatest British landscape painter of the Romantic era was John Martin. He liked religious themes inspired by The Old Testament and Milton's "Paradise Lost."

Romantics interpreted his pictures as depictions of the landscapes of the inner mind, along the lines of what would later be associated with Freud and Dali.

Here (above) Martin depicts Macbeth but for some of his contemporaries he seemed also to convey the majesty and tumult of the inner mind. How, reasoned the Romantics, could man ever be happy as a slave or as the victim of a life of quiet desperation when his true mission is to heroically wander the vast inner landscape of the mind?

That sounds like an Eastern concept...did Indian philosophy affect the West in the 19th Century? I guess it did...look at Schopenhauer.

To judge from the pictures, Martin unconsciously sees man as a tragic, Wagnerian figure. We're warriors who will spit in the eyes of the gods if need be, and that's why they're interested in us.

It's odd to think that a hundred years after Martin's lifetime the pendulum would swing the other way and man would in some places be perceived as a hapless statistic, possessing only an outer life.

Here's (above) a picture that influenced Ray Harryhausen. Ray was a huge fan of Martin and Gustav Dore.

Americans will no doubt react to Martin with the feeling that they've seen that kind of statement before. Well, that's because they have. Our high style of Western painting derives from American painters like Thomas Cole, and Cole was a pupil of John Martin's, Over here Martin's grandiose style was put to the service of awe-inspiring landscape and the extreme Romantic philosophy was deleted. This adaption is a style that perfectly fits the American wilderness.

By the way, the picture above is by Bierstadt, who I assume was a pupil of Cole. As with most of the pictures in this post, it would benefit from a substantial enlargement. I wish I could have found a larger, high res version.

ME AS OLIVER HARDY

Thanks for all the comments concerning my computer problems. It's nice to know that I'm not the only one who has them. I just finished a fix and it seems to work better now. I'm too tired to post but just so I don't appear to be dead.....here's a doodle of me as Oliver Hardy. Whaddaya think?