DRAT!!!!!!!!

DRAT!   I COULDN'T FINISH ON TIME!

I'll put the next post up sometime during the day today (Wed.).

I WISH I COULD TAKE ELOCUTION LESSONS!

I did some reading this morning on the subject of elocution. Man, I wish I'd gotten some of that when I was in grade school. Imagine being able to talk like Darth Vader or Winston Churchill or...Ian McKellen.

Here's a clip from a comedy sketch where Ian McKellen attempts to teach Ricky Gervais how to act. I love the way McKellen varies his pace and emphasis: "Not....much....theaterworkoflate." Then he asks, "How...do I ACT......sowell? What I do is...I...PRETEND...to BE....the PERSONI'mportraying." Wow, very nice! He breaks the sentences down into individual words and word groups and then gives each a special treatment.

In a general way the actor's job is to artistically vary the pace and emphasis of a sentence without diluting it's dramatic force. That's hard to do. Most of us can do either variety or dramatic truth one at a time, but to do them simultaneously, and still give the illusion of spontaneity...well, that takes a lot of practice.

Then there's the matter of tone.

It's important to have a good tone when you speak. I like the smooth-as-satin tone of Vincent Price reading Tim Burton's "Vincent." I like the gravel in Johnny Cash's voice. Now how do I acquire a tone like that?

An awful lot of elocution teachers seem to be frustrated yoga instructors. They put a lot of emphasis on standing and bending correctly when you speak. That doesn't feel right to me. That's only for professionals. And I don't like my instruction books to have trendy titles like "Your Right to Speak." My right? You mean "the man" wants me to speak badly?

I like what the girl above is doing. It centers on things that are more intuitively right like forming the word in back of the mouth where it resonates more. The problem here is that the girl's own voice needs work, and I had trouble imagining  some of the vibration she's talking about. I guess that's why personal instruction is so useful. One book said it takes 7 hours a week of live instruction for a period of about a year to get the voice working right. Geez, I'll bet that's not cheap. 

  Vocal instructors are always obsessing over the diaphragm. After doing a little research, I finally understand why. The lungs rest on the diaphragm, which is just underneath them. If you breath the wrong way the lungs have nowhere to expand to because they're blocked on the bottom by the diaphragm. They only fill up to only half of their capacity. 

If you want to increase the lungs' capacity, you have to breathe the right way... which is to expand the stomach outward when you breathe. This causes the diaphragm to drop, and give the lungs a lot more room. Nifty, huh? Of course it makes you look fat. 

   

If I ever take voice lessons it'll have to be from people who know how to speak themselves, like Ted Williams, the famous homeless radio announcer (above).

Maybe CD courses are the way to go. In the car I could mimic the speaker and do lots of variations. I could lengthen the vowels and add my own pauses. I could inflect the end of a sentence up or down. I could savor so-called "glottal" words that begin with abrupt, soft vowels like "absolutely," "amenities" and "accent."

But how would I know what the good CDs are?

ACCIDENTAL RACISM?

No, not by a long shot. I'm doing a Lone Stranger episode and the Tonto-type character just doesn't seem funny without the long nose. I don't think most indians really had big noses, but Sitting Bull had a huge schnoz, and cartoonists seem to have taken their cue from him.  Now it's a convention. What's an artist to do?

Maybe I'll delete panels like the one above and go for a salami nose. Nobody on the planet has a nose like that, so who could I offend?  Besides, I'm part indian and I have a big nose, so I figure I'm entitled.

What do you guys think?

MY SOLUTION FOR NEW YORK'S "UGLY" PROBLEM

That's (above) the way New York City looked in 1950. Pretty impressive, eh?

But that was then, and this is now. Let's face it, present day New York has an ugly problem. A lot of the city was built in the tens and twenties and  that style hasn't always aged gracefully. There are exceptions, but the fact remains that even places like Dubai and Yemen have cities that look better than New York now, at least in some areas.

Well, there's not much money to rebuild now, so we'll have to live with the old warhorse as is for a while longer. Here's my probably cock-eyed suggestions for prettying up the city and bringing in more tourist dollars without spending a lot of money.

Suggestion #1: More trees would help, and so would more shops on the exterior ground floors of buildings.

Suggestion #2: Do something about the awkward spaces between some of the tired old buildings. I don't mean the giant skyscrapers, which I love, but the dirty, dismal structures that are maybe seven or eight stories high. Buildings like that are often surrounded by ugly streets that are way too wide, are hard to cross, and are wind traps in the winter.

For certain streets like that, I suggest an elevated boardwalk over the traffic. Build it to look either deliberately old fashioned or ultra-high tech; either is okay provided that it looks very inviting to users. Make it for walking and for bicycles. The boardwalk would follow an irregular path around the area, covering the streets that need a little magicians' misdirection to divert attention away from their ugliness.

Suggestion #3: Take some profession with lots of visibility like bus driving, and limit the practitioners to beautiful women in miniskirts. Sure it's unfair to everybody else who wants a job, but the idea is to bring in tourist dollars.

Suggestion #4: Make the world's first roller coaster mass transportation. I don't mean something with loop-the-loops or really high hills...just something fast and fun and hilly that careens around the streets above the traffic. Maybe there's almost a mile between stops. This would be for physically fit riders only, and would not be a substitute for normal bus routes. Build just one to see if it catches on.

Suggestion #5: Seed the city with exotic birds. Stock the river with shore-hugging fish with a high tolerance for dirty water.

Suggestion #6.....no, that's enough for now.

Post Script: Okay, New York is a heck of a lot more visually interesting than Dubai...I overstated that...but you can see what I'm getting at, can't you?

THE BEST OPENING OF A MEXICAN FILM

Steve Worth does it again! Steve says this (above) is the all time best opening of any Mexican film, and who am I to argue? It's great! It looks like something Jerry Lewis would have come up with. The movie is "Tin Tan y Las Modelos;" in English: "Tin Tan and the Models."

THE BEST MEXICAN FILM I KNOW OF

Steve Worth turned everybody he knows onto this gem of a film, "Al Son Del Mambo." It's about Mexican show people who travel to Havana in 1950 to check out Perez Prado, the great Cuban mambo king. At least I think that's what it's about...It's in Spanish and I can't understand a  thing!

Perez Prado and his band (above) are stupendous here, and the dancing is to die for. That woman is great! Man, you can't keep your feet still when music like this is playing! But poor Perez Prado...look what his tailor did to him!



The film blends Mexican and Cuban styles and amazingly, the combination works! That's Mexican star Pedro Galindo above singing a killer version of "La Malaguena Salerosa." Man, Mexicans in this era could really belt out ballads! What a sentimental and romantic people they must be!

I love the way the director, Chano Urueta, shot this song. Unfortunately this clip doesn't include Galindo's entrance which is deliberately delayed to build tension. When he finally arrives the director gives him a head to toe shot (also not here) which establishes him as the ultimate vaquero, resplendid in the uniform of the Mexican cowboy.

 And Urueta knows how to shoot romance. He plays it straight and sincere, with no hint of mockery. He makes you believe that these people really are in love, and that love is the most important thing in the world.



Above, more Cuban music from the film's 20 minute grand finale: Perez Prado and dancer Amalia Agular wow everybody...the vocalist isn't bad, either.

I love the Cuban style which appears to be influenced partly by Las Vegas of all things. I'm no expert on Cuban history, but it looks to me that Cuba was poised to become a real cultural and economic powerhouse before Castro buggered it up.



If you recognized Galindo's song "Malaguena Salerosa" maybe that's because you heard it on the soundtrack to Kill Bill 2. Here (above) Robert Rodriquez and Chingon do a fast contemporary version of it for a premier party. It gets a terrific arrangement here.

So that's it. Now go out and buy the Prado film. Good luck finding it, though. I don't even know if it's in print any more.

BTW: Aaaargh! I forgot the Dolly Sisters clip. Have enough stamina for one more video?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7qrVPMVa2w

GRADUATION: GAUDEAMUS IGITOR

I almost forgot...Friday was graduation day for students all over the country! I don't know why I always get sentimental about that. Maybe it's because graduation is a powerful symbol of civilization and hope. Anyway, for the graduates out there...congratulations! You did it!!!

By way of a gift, here's my favorite youtube version of the traditional academic anthem, "Glaudeamus Igitor." I wish I knew the origin of this beautiful song. One internet source says it's from medieval Germany and was brought to its present form by Brahms.



The lyrics (above) are beautiful and heartrending. It's a song about death and the tragic shortness of life. It's also about youth and the great academics of the past.  It's both a drinking song and a serious meditation on life and the purpose of education. When students wanted to honor an esteemed professor they'd gather around him and sing this song.