WHAT I'M READING NOW

I love gambits in storytelling, the way the better writers hook you in right away with an interesting beginning. Lesser writers liked to start with something blunt and stylized like, "Bang! The roscoe barked kerchow and lead creased my thinktank," or a keep 'em guessing/Who's Wally-type ploy like, "The caper went off without a hitch except that Wally got plugged."

James M. Cain was more subtle. He starts "Cigarette Girl" with: "I'd never so much as laid eyes on her before going into the Here's How, a night-club on Route one..." I wouldn't say that beginning is good enough to memorize, but I do like it. It starts with the promise of a love story, which is the kind of adventure most people can relate to, then ups the ante with "...the Here's How, a night-club on route one." The club has a primal name and is located in an island of light on a dark highway. You get the feeling that destiny is waiting for you in a place like that. 

Actually the opening takes a whole two pages to unravel. Read them (below) and see what you think.

I love the idea that she declines to take the tip, not "refuses" mind you, just declines. This girl has class. So does the guy who's hot for her. The bartender gets in his way and our guy respects that. After all, the bartender's just trying to protect her. He doesn't order horny guy out, but asks questions about his background. Everybody in this intro seems to be a nice guy, doing his duty.

 The villain hasn't entered yet, but we feel his presence and we already fear him. The people we've met are people with backbone, who wouldn't cave in to an ordinary bully. Whoever this mean guy is, he must be something special, something unusual. 

Cain sets up his good vs. evil theme with hints. He provokes you to use your intuition. The atmosphere becomes magical in the sense that mysterious forces we've never encountered before seem to be converging on this place. 

Interesting, huh?

AMAZING SNAPSHOT CAMERAS

I'm amazed at how good the average snapshot camera is these days. Even the cheap ones take great pictures. I've been experimenting with the settings and filters on my Elph and I can't believe what I get just by using the built-in presets.

Like this sepia setting, for instance. The picture above is Steve's kitchen. It's a nice cozy room with a good vibe, but you wouldn't expect to see it in Architectural Digest. With the sepia filter you get a version of the room that looks positively sophisticated. Chic, even. You feel that somebody famous must live there.

It's not just the sepia tone that accomplishes that, it's the camera's exposure computer.

Above, once again the camera set the exposure (above). I didn't have to do a thing!

 

Do you remember how frequently high end magazines used to use this effect (above)? Now it's a one-click option built into snapshot cameras. Haw! Now that everybody can do it the magazines will probably lose interest in it.

BTW, that's Auralynn and Jo Jo above, opening Christmas presents.

Auralynn took this photo (above) using the same filter as I used in the couch photo.

I forget what this filter's (above) called. It's monochrome with tints of just one color. It looks like it could use some tweaking in Photoshop, but I wanted you to see how it looked right out of the camera.

You can experiment with the aperture to get effects like the one above, and preview the result. There's nothing special about that, probably all digital cameras do it, but I grew up in the Kodachrome era and this commonplace convenience blows my mind.

BTW, I caught Jo Jo in the act of standing up and the awkward inbetween pose isn't very flattering. Sorry, man!

Wow! You can effortlessly do things like this (above) with a snapshot camera now! The future is here!

One last photo (above), but it's not mine. Steve shot this of Jo Jo with his hair messed up and with a five o'clock shadow. He put it up on his Facebook page and Jo Jo was inundated with admiring comments by girls.

You see? That's the power of photography. No. I'm not abandoning cartooning, but I think we should all be nice to Steve since he has the power to make us stars.

NEW YEARS MUSIC

When it comes to New Years I'm torn between two musical traditions. One is British and  patriotic, the other has to do with American party music. It's an odd mixture, I admit, but there it is. I'll put up both types of songs and hope the incongruity won't cause pain.

That's "Rule Britannia" above. I love the line, "Britons never ever ever shall be slaves!"



Clara Butt (yes, that's her real name) recorded this version of "Land of Hope and Glory" in 1911. She had a matronly voice, a bit like Margaret Dumont's, but her version of this song is outstanding.



Lots of people prefer Vera Lynn's version of the same song (above). She's brilliant here.



Now for the dance music! Above, Toni Basil's version of the classic dance song, "Mickey."


Here's the ultra-danceable, ultra-bubble gum "Barbie Girl." YouTube is full of parodies of this.


Remember this (above)? Whatever happened to these girls?



Ah, "The Percolator." I sing this to myself sometimes when I'm raking the back yard.



Oh man, I wish I could do this!

AFTER CHRISTMAS

I'm writing this while half asleep so forgive me if it doesn't all make sense.

With my entire family away for the holiday the tasks I set for myself this Christmas were 1) to get story ideas by experiencing loneliness, and 2) to hang out with bachelors and report on the sucky way that I imagined they spend Christmas.

None of that panned out. Friends saw to it that I was never lonely and I discovered that there's a lively bachelor network that takes good care of its own, even on a family-biased holiday like Christmas. Well, live and learn.

Thanks to a friend I did manage to find out about a tradition I didn't know was so widely practiced..."regifting." Some people find themselves with no money at all on Christmas and they get around that by regifting, meaning that they mostly give each other presents that they'd received from each other in former years and promptly put away in the closet and forgot.  Apparently this works fine. The gift you give that's not appreciated is sometimes one you'd liked to have gotten yourself. Re-gifting means you finally get that cool present...it's yours now. Regifters are delighted with their presents and didn't feel much cheated.

Ah, but I do miss my family. None of them will let me talk about them here, which is a shame. I feel priviledged to know each one of them. You'd like them if you could meet them.

I also miss the philosophical discussions we always had during the Christmas season.  Christmas is all about trying to see the best in other people. Democracy preceded Christianity, but it's difficult to see how it could have evolved the way it did, with its emphasis on liberty and a free press, without the benign view of human nature found in Christian philosophy.

Geez, that kid in the picture above cleaned up! What a stash!

And Christmas music...it was nice to be reminded all over again how powerful and moving it is. Geez, people in previous times must have been very attached to that holiday.

And Santa Clause and gift giving....those are genius ideas! The argument that Christmas is too commercial seems unconvincing to me. It certainly can become too commercial, but taken in the right proportion it fits right in to the traditional mood. It makes a sentimental and thought provoking holiday fun and magical as well as satisfying. I love the excruciating suspense that builds up to December 25th.

MY DECEMBER 26TH

I was at Mike's house today and he let me take some photos of his toys. Here's some bar displays from the 50s and 60s.

This (above) is a swizzle stick holder. It was a nice, understated way to to reinforce the the beer's TV ads.

The Blatz people were especially good  especially good at this sort of thing. I think the guy with the bottle with body appeared in TV ads.

Very nice! Are these salt and pepper shakers?

Funny porcelain was everywhere in the late 50s. Why don't we have things like this today?

These Beaky Buzzard plush toys were selling several years ago at the Warners mall stores. If only I'd known!

Mike actually designed this doll (above)!

After watching a film at Mike's it was off to John's to see Auralynn's Christmas presents (above). Here they are: stand ups of...well, I don't want to spoil the surprise. John and Auralynn will no doubt have more to say about this on their sites.

ON CHRISTMAS EVE

I've always wondered what bachelors did on Christmas. If you don't have a family of your own, and your parents live far away, what do you do on...that night...Christmas Eve?

I guess you hang out with other bachelors, but what if there are no other bachelors? There's bound to be Christmas Eves where your bachelor friends are all inaccessible.

I'm about to find out because at the last minute my kids were prevented from visiting, and my wife is out of town. I've never, not even once, had to deal with something like this. In a whole lifetime it'll be my first Christmas alone. I'll have to be here by myself....just me...tossing playing cards into a hat.

But don't feel sorry for me. To tell you the truth, I'm thrilled to be going through this. The writer in me tells me that experiences like this are golden. The sting of loneliness is more than made up for by the treasure trove of lonely bachelor ideas I'll probably get.

The problem is that good friends heard about my problem and called to invite me to share their family Christmases. That's wonderful...I'm lucky to have friends like that...but they don't realize that this is my time to be exiled in the desert, my time to suffer. They say you'll never be a first-rate artist until you've suffered. How do I explain to my friends that I can't agonize over the sting of rejection while they're being nice to me?

I'll have to figure out what to do about this, but in the meantime I'm going to the mall to see if I can get some pictures of angry shoppers.

UPDATE: I just returned home from a night of partying. There goes my resolve to suffer. Thanks to friends I'm doomed to be a shallow man, someone who's never been purified by the chastening fires of rejection.

MIKE'S FAVORITE CHRISTMAS SONGS

Mike came up with a pretty impressive Christmas list of his own, which is too good to keep to myself. Here's what the man will be listening to over the next few days.



















Nice, huh?