RE-THINKING TOMORROWLAND (EXPANDED)

Of all the possible futures envisioned by architects the one that appeals to me most is the one in which the world has been reforested. It would be a high tech world with all the modern innovations, but one in which nature would never be far from our front door.

Utopians disagree about the nature of this urban forest. Lots of people want to see concrete skyscrapers sticking out of tended gardens a little like the one above. That's not a bad way to go, and it would be a big improvement over what we have now, but I'd like to see some towns try a different look.

 My own taste is for a mixture of tended gardens and of primeval, wild, old-growth, urban forest. I don't mind pushing aside branches every once in a while. It's probably a wildly impractical idea, but I wouldn't mind being one of the people who try it.

These towns would be home to free-roaming wild animals.

Don't ask me how that could be made to work. Figuring out the "how" is somebody else's job.

What would the houses and sidewalks look like in such a town? Maybe something Arthur Rackhamish, like this (above).

This (above), by the way, is one of my all-time favorite landscape photos. It's a thought-provoking picture that really is worth a thousand words. You might want to enlarge it.

 Rackham's illustrations show a fondness for wild, scraggy forests.

Most artists favor the sentimental Romantic forest (above) where trees look cute, like something out of a Disney film. Not so for Arthur Rackam.

Rackham took forests as he found them. They're not easy to traverse, and they don't exist for our sake; in fact, it's not at all clear how man fits into them. They're a mystery, an enigma, a place where gnomes and mythological creatures might be plausible..

I think about things like that when I'm in the treehouse at Disneyland. Now that would be a great house to live in, but it would require a colossal old growth tree and there aren't many of those these days.

Here's a more modest ground-level house, surrounded by wild, stringy foliage. It still has the Rackham touch.

Of course this Utopian town requires creeks and rivers that would be well-stocked with fish.

Kids' walk to school would take them through beautiful caves.

Uh-oh. It's a traffic jam (above). Roads in the town are narrow and nature is always close by. I don't envision cars covered with moss like the one in the foreground, but I like the idea of narrow streets in the verdant jungle. I like the idea of leafy tunnels.

Most people would find it easier to use public transportation instead. Within the town that would be provided by miles-long roller coasters (above) that wind their way up and down through the forest.

Maybe the Disney people should build a green town like this in Tomorrowland. After all,  we're all headed for a green future.

My ideal town would contain several rope bridges.

Maybe a Chinese bridge, too. I don't know if the style would fit in, but what the heck.

Would the town have an airport? Yes, a small one. Something very high tech. The idea is to cobine very high tech with very low tech.

With stewardesses, too!

DECO CARS

Is it just me? Am I the only one who was unaware that Deco cars ever existed in large numbers? Look at this 1948 Buick Skyliner (above). Was this really ever built?

Wow! A car (above) that looks like it's moving even when it stands still.

This (above) looks like a toy. Was there ever a real, assembly line version of this? Not that I know of. 

I used to wonder how drastic tail fin cars of the 50s (above) ever got the green light from cautious Detroit. Now I have a possible explanation. They were okayed because, drastic as they were, they were less drastic than the Deco designs that preceded them.

How do you like this 1939 Cabriolet "World's Fair?" Nice, huh?

Many thanks to Pseudonym for turning me on to cars I didn't know about. Here's (above)  the 1938 Phantom Corsair, which I assume was a concept car.

Woooooww! Look at that rear!

Also thanks to Pseudo, the 1936 Stout Scarab. If I understand right this was designed for mass production but the designer died and the funding collapsed after only nine cars were made.

Above, the Scarab interior.

Here's the Efijy, another concept car that looks like it's moving even when it's standing still.

The Efijy from the rear. Very nice!

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BTW: "Anonymous" wrote to correct what I said about Cars #1 & 2 and the Efijy. What he said is so informative that it deserves a place up front, under the post. His comment:

Fascinating! I didn't know Delahaye even existed! Here's another of their cars with a 30s look (below).

ANOTHER HALLOWEEN BITES THE DUST

Wow! What a year! I might have had the most kids ever at the door. Princesses, Ninja Turtles, Minnie Mouses, witches and skull monsters...all were there.

I wonder how many overate when they got home.

Actually, I almost collapsed from a sugar high because I couldn't help eating what I was passing out. I ate the stuff all night.

It's a terrible feeling to get sick from candy. You realize there's nothing for it but to let it run itself out...painfully slow.

The next day I took down the porch decorations. Most of mine were paper and handmade and I got some positive comments on them, mostly from art students and parents. Little kids are too greedy to pay attention to anything but the level of chocolate in the bag.

Oh! I almost forgot.....before the last embers of Halloween die out I want to re-publish one of the alltime great Halloween photos, called "Pumpkin Queen." It's co-designed by our own Joel Binkerhoff and has been a kind of lucky charm for this site since he sent it to me a few years ago. I can't believe the picture hasn't made Joel and his partner rich by now.

HALLOWEEN / SCARY CIGARETTES (EXPANDED)

 I'm unexpectedly busy so this might be my last post before Halloween. If it is, have a great holiday! 

This picture (above) is here because it scares the heck out of me. I saw this cigarette dancer on TV when I was a little kid. It's one of my earliest memories. So what, you ask, is it doing on a Halloween post?

It's here because it seems so very old...so out of date. As the memory fades I begin to doubt whether I ever actually saw it. I find myself wondering if I imagined it. Do you see why that scares me? It's an artifact from a civilization that used to exist and has now been erased, expunged, excluded...lost in the endlessly flowing river of time.  It was as real as anything that exists now, and now it's completely gone, scarcely remembered even by the people who witnessed it. Yikes! The picture makes me feel like the guy in the film "Memento."

Chibchib did this mask (above), but who is that? [This is answered on the comments page.]

And what the heck is this (above) from? Disneyland? [A commenter confirms that it is!]

John turned me onto this costume box. I love the two faces on the side and the cellophane window. Every box needs a window, even a box as commonplace as the one Cheerios comes in. It would allow us to satisfy our curiosity about what's happening inside, in the secret world of breakfast cereal.

 Woooooow!!!!! I'm guessing this (above) is a discontinued Don Post creation. Am I wrong?

Above, if there was a Theory Corner pumpkin award for 2014 this would be the winner. It's hilarious!

I think I'll reprise a few cartoon characters I've posted about before, because this time I'm pitching the heads...just the heads...as stand-alone cardboard masks.

McKimson's Peter Lorre would make a great back-of-the-cereal box mask.

Geez, this black and white Milt Gross head would make a great paper mask, even though the pose is a profile and the cut-out eye holes wouldn't line up with the cartoon's eyes. It might need a heavier outline, though.

And this Wolverton girl would make a great cardboard mask, much larger than life size and cut off at the bottom of the chin.

Hmmmm.....it's a shame to cut off Wolverton's neck.

HALLOWEEN / BLACK SHUCK

England must have been home to some pretty nasty dogs because the country is riddled with legends of Baskervilles-type killer hounds. There's The Galleytrot, The Shug Monkey, The Evil Thing, The Churchyard Beast, The Hell Beast, The Swooning Shadow, Snarly Yow, and The Black Dog of Torrington, just to name a few. The worst of all of them, though, is Black Shuck who claims victims even today. 

If you haven't heard of him it might be because the locals who live in the afflicted areas  believe it's bad luck just to mention his name. A coastguardsman spotted the hound in 1972 and made the mistake of officially reporting the event. He died under mysterious circumstances within 10 weeks and his father died under equally mysterious circumstances only a few months later. Just to see the dog is to incur a death sentense. 

Black Shuck officially enters history in 1597 at Holy Trinity Church in Blythburgh. A clap of thunder burst open the church doors and a hairy black "devil dog" came snarling in. It ran through the congregation, killing a man and a boy and causing the church steeple to fall through the roof. Scorch marks still visible on the church doors are purported to have come from Shuck's claws as it fled.

The rector of the church described it this way (below):

The door of the church still stands. There they are (above), the scratch marks right where Black Shuck left them. But the hound didn't stop there. The next stop was Bungay, where two worshippers were killed at St. Mary's church. One was left shrivelled "like a drawn purse" as he prayed. 

Then there's "The Black Dog of Newgate" (above). Legend has it that the dog is the ghost of a boy who'd been eaten by other starving prisoners. The act of cannibalism caused the prisoners to imagine that they had seen the black dog in the night, his jaws open in preparation for his revenge.

Lots of countries have stories about vicious dogs but the English seem to have more than their share. You can't help but wonder why.

Maybe giant wolves thought to be long extinct survive in the English countryside. Maybe Norse folklore got it right; Wotan brought to the UK his fearsome war hound and it somehow escaped into the forest.

HALLOWEEN / MAGIC POSTERS

Here's a terrific poster (above) that didn't make the cut when Taschen made a cheaper edition of its massive coffee table book, "Magic 1400s - 1900s." The cheaper edition is still worth having, though.

Compare the Herrmann poster to minimalist modern ones like the one above. The new ones convey no philosophy, no vision, no craftsmanship, no idealism, no challenge to one's beliefs, no forbidden fruit, no sense of urgency or crisis or adventure.

Magic shows were tremendously popular in the days before TV. They influenced and were influenced by 19th Century Romanticism and my guess is that they influenced the invention of the detective story, horror novels and horror films, sci-fi, politics, psychology, and the observance of Halloween.

Magic shows helped to inject Rousseau and occultism into mainstream consciousness. I don't mean that large numbers of people were won over to the occult, just that audiences learned to entertain the possibility of another parallel set of rules in the universe...well, at least for the duration of the show.

Whenever I see a magic show I try to be a skeptic and a believer at the same time.

I love this image (above) of the electrically powerful hands. 

Kellar (above) was said to have had a killer delivery.

Thinking about that reminds me of Ian Keith's unique performance in "Nightmare Alley." Anyone interested in magic should see this film because Keith's performance underlines an important truth, namely that magic is as much about performance as tricks.

Poor Keith. He had it in him to act at a high level (above), yet he was constantly given scripts that were beneath him.