"THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE!"

One of the most horrifying stories in all of literature is Aesop's "The Tortoise and the Hare." I take this fable very, very seriously. Thinking about it fills me with painful recollections of past defeats and humiliations. I've been beaten many times by tortoises and I know from first hand experience what powerful competitors they are.



For one thing tortoises exist in daunting numbers and often share common values and goals. Hares are fewer and tend to be loners. At the outset of the race hares run roughshod over the sluggish competition only to find themselves in mid-race mired in the mud with few allies or sympathetic friends to help. It's very scary!

Obviously I sometimes picture myself as the hare in the story but I'm not bringing this up to indulge in self-pity. What I really want to do is acknowledge that tortoises are not always the boobs that hares think they are. Whenever I get to thinking about this I remember the stories about common heroism in WW2 when ordinary sailors would run through oil fires to save their buddies on the other side. I think about parents who make enormous sacrifices for their kids or a whole society that changed its mind about race prejudice in just acouple of generations just because it was the right thing to do. No doubt about it, tortoises are often good people... when they're not being an obstacle to progress.

MY FAVORITE BERNICE ABBOTT PICTURE

It's a picture of the Bowery "EL", Second and Third Street Lines. You'll have to click to enlarge it, it probably won't look like much if it's seen small. The picture below is a detail of the one above.


This together with a couple of the New York City ferry pictures by Cecil Bell (already posted, in the archive) are my favorite pictures of that city. Philadelphia used to have el trains complete with stations and tracks that look just like the ones on New York, and I used to look forward to riding them. The elevated stations were designed to resemble German railroad stations of the 19th century. Maybe Frank Furness, the famous Philadelphia architect and champion of railroad architecture designed some of these.

Furness believed in designing ordinary residences and business buildings to look like old railroad stations and modernists widely criticized him for it. I can't imagine why. German railroad stations are one of the most pleasing structures ever built by man and it makes no sense to confine their use to only one purpose.

I love the film noir slatted shadows cast on the street by the tracks and steel above. How often do you come across architecture that distinguishes itself by the fascinating shadows it casts? Walking up the steps and through the corridors of these elevated wood and steel cathedrals was a real treat and I for one miss it.

ITCHING

Lots of people have "dreaded-consequences-of-scratching" stories, so many that I'm beginning to think that scratching an itch is one the most perilous things you can do. It was in my case. Here's the story...

Years ago a famous German director made a low-budget, 8-hour movie called "Our Hitler." The critics raved about it and I was curious to see it. Evidently the public didn't share my curiosity because, even though I saw it on opening day, there were only about ten people in the audience. I found a seat in a completely empty section of the theater and prepared to be blown away by high art.

Well, to put it mildly, there was no art. The whole film was an amateurish, stream-of-consciousness home movie about whatever trivial thing the director felt like talking about. Sitting through it was torture; I wanted to strangle the critics who recommended it! I found my self endlessly re-adjusting my position in the seat, refolding my jacket, and scratching imaginary itches. Sometimes I'd get itches on my arm and, since I had nothing else to do, I'd roll up the sleeve of my shirt just to get a good scratch on just the right place. I particularly liked scratching my five-o'clock shadow which was bristley and made a noise. Once or twice I tried scratching like a dog just to see what they saw in it.

Hour after hour the film plodded on and I got more and more restless and itchy. I was scratching like a madman. Just when I was in the middle of the mother of all raking scratches a giant moose of a face appeared from the seat behind me and shouted at the top of its lungs: "Stop it! S T O P I T!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IF YOU SCRATCH ONE MORE ITCH SO HELP ME I'M GONNA KILL YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" 

I froze and slid way down into the seat, too scared to move. I didn't even breathe. I just tucked my head into my shoulders and looked rigidly forward. Where did this guy come from? In a nearly empty theater why did this giant have to sit right behind me? I stayed there completely still for the rest of the film. When the film finally ended and the light came on I discovered the seat behind me was empty. There were only about three people left in the whole theater. I guess my outraged citizen found the film intolerable, even without the scratching.

So that's my itching story. What's yours?

HOW TO COMMIT THE PERFECT CRIME

I hope only people of good character are reading this because I'm going to spill the beans about how a perfect murder might be committed. I call it perfect because in this scheme the law itself is the guarantor of the murder's freedom. It goes like this...

A man who we'll call Fred wants to kill his friend Joe. In order to do this he enlists the help of another man who looks just like Fred. The two look-alike Freds, wearing identical clothes, arrange to to be in public places at opposite sides of town at, say, noon the following day. It would help if the public places happen to have a large clock which displays the time.


At the appointed time each of the Freds, in opposite sides of town, loudly declares that he is Fred (using Fred's entire real name) and the real Fred shoots his victim, which I forgot to say was skillfully maneuvered to also be at the right place at the right time. The other Fred deliberately breaks a store window. Both the Freds make their getaway. Passer-bys will tell police that that they saw a man named Fred, who dressed in such-and-such a way, and will site the time, which was on a big clock. Can you see where this is leading?

Neither of the Freds can be tried for murder because each can prove he was somewhere else at the time. The police know that one of them did it but can prosecute neither since both Freds have an air-tight alibi! The murderer must be turned loose!

OK, that's my perfect crime! What's yours?

FREE MEALS FOR LIFE!

No wonder so many thinking people read Uncle Eddie's Theory Corner... where else could you find a sure-fire method to get free meals for life? OK, here it is...

From the hardware store buy a yard or so of transparent rubberized tubing (not pictured), the kind you wrap around naked wires for insulation. It only costs a couple of bucks. Run the tube down the inside of a long-sleeve shirt till one end peaks out from the cuff and the other end discretely peeks out of your open shirt collar. Now you have all you need to suck up the drink of the person beside you without being noticed. "OK," you say, "that gets me a drink but how do I get a meal?" Read on!

The meal comes to you courtesy of Extend A Fork (shown extended above), which is available from any fun shop. You probably saw them the last time you made a rubber chicken run and just never noticed them. It's a normal-size fork that telescopes out like a car aerial. You simply divert the attention of the meal sharer and feast!

The obvious question to ask is why, if the technique is so fool-proof, do I not take advantage of this meal-sharing technique today? The answer has to do with a tragic story regarding Mike Fontanelli. We were at a restaurant near Warners and I had my hidden straw in his tomato juice. Every time he took a sip of his juice he would return the glass to the same spot next to my "wired" arm. All was going well till he randomly put the glass down on the other side of his tray where I couldn't reach it.

I asked him why he put his juice down on that side and he gave me a strange look and said, "What do you care where I put my juice down?" I answered, "Me? Me!? Hey, I don't care! You can put your drink down anywhere you want! I'm just inquiring about the reason." Well, we bickered like this for a while and I didn't notice that a siphon effect was still operating and the tomato juice still in the tube was gushing out all over my white shirt. Eventually Mike saw the red stain on my chest and freaked out. He thought I'd been stabbed! He behaved nobly in my defense till he saw the fleks of tomato around the stain and did a double-take. You can guess the rest. Mike now always sets his drink down on the far side and has a wary eye out for the extending fork. Not only that but he warned everybody else. Alas! The well has run dry!

DAVID GEMMILL'S HOLLWOOD CLUB DRAWINGS

You gotta give it to David. He had trouble breaking into the industry at first so he hunkered down and studied cartooning and animation and now he's turning out cool drawings like these. I got these from David's blog, cartoondavid.blogspot.com.






Sorry I had to reproduce these so small. A bandwidth problem again. Click to enlarge. I only wish I could have included the hilarious commentary that went with these.

PICTURES BY CHLOE CUMMING

Boy, some interesting people comment here! I was curious to see what British commenter Chloe Cumming's blog was like so I went there and was amazed to find these! Not too shabby, I would say!

Here (above) is a page from her sketchbook. I love to look at artists' sketchbooks, especially when they're as interesting as this. The swatches of color on the top just burn out of the page! How did she do that?
Here's (above) a glimpse at Chloe's workspace. Isn't that a beautiful table?