COMPUTERIZED SOCKS

Sometimes I have trouble using my %$&#@ computer. Fortunately I have a techie daughter who answers my questions but I can see the thought balloon above her head which reads, "Why does my dad have so much trouble with this stuff? What's wrong with his generation? Why are they all so dense?" Consulting my crystal ball I can see where all this is leading...


PUTTING ON SOCKS IN THE YEAR 2150

Dad: Help! Daughter, you gotta help me! I can't put on my socks! They won't let my feet in!

Daughter: (rolls eyes up) Well, maybe you didn't enable them!

Dad: Enable? What's that?

Daughter: (rolls eyes way up) You know, enable them! You have to activate the program!

Dad: What program? I just want to put on my socks.

Daughter: (rolling up eyes again, can't believe how stupid her dad is) Here, let me do it (she punches a code into the sock)! Here!

Dad: I still can't put it on!

Daughter: Well, maybe you need a new driver!

Dad: How do I get that?

Daughter: Dad, if you'd taken that community college course in socks I told you about you wouldn't have to bother me with questions.

Dad: I shouldn't have to take a course to put on a pair of socks! When I was a kid eveything was so simple!

Daughter: When you were a kid socks didn't tell you the weather.

Dad: I don't want socks to tell me the weather!

Daughter: (exasperrated) Here, take this book: "Putting on Socks for Complete Dummies." It's only 300 pages and comes with a CD ROM. And here's the name of an online sock message board. You'll get the hang of it yet!

Dad: (Groan!)

MY DOODLE STYLE

I feel silly posting these doodles. I'm only doing it because Katz, Ryan and others wanted to see some drawings and all my current stuff is related to what I do at work. I turn out tons (OK, ounces) of this stuff every day. The style of the show doesn't look like this but this is the style I use when I'm exploring ideas and poses. It's sort of my stick figure style.

HERE'S MY FAVORITE YOUTUBE VIDEO!

Here's a terrific video that Katie showed me last week. Enjoy!

WHY I LIKE KRAZY KAT

Whatever you do be sure to click to enlarge before you attempt to read this. Herriman's work doesn't read very well when it's reproduced small and that's the only way most people have read it..that is, if they've read it at all.

I confess that I've only recently begun to like Herriman. Like almost everybody else I used to think of it as primitive, plotless and pointless. Moderns aren't the only ones to feel this way, even in it's own day editors only carried it because the big boss, Randolph Hearst, liked it. It had a fan following which included Hemingway, Picasso, T.S. Eliot, Menckon, Stein, and Edmond Wilson but the public was divided about it. Me, nowadays I love it, in fact it's one of the best strips ever in my opinion. Take a look at the Sunday page above, printed originally in 1926.

The drawing of the mesa in panel one is exquisite. Blogger doesn't reproduce fine, cross-hatched lines very well but if you could see the larger print version it would blow you away. It's moody in a way that only graphics can achieve. The mesa lettering reminds me of the title letters Eisner used in The Spirit. Come to think of it, the content of the words throughout the page are funny and full of the love of language. They're also beautiful, even the ones in word balloons: ignorant, horse-hairy kind of letters, the scratchy kind that fleas would make if they could write.

The stork tries to deliver a baby in the town but the closely-packed, glowing, night-time town is empty. Look at the size of the buildings relative to the characters! I love that! I also like the fact that the buildings are larger when they need to be. Why be consistent? How do you like the bird walking down the street with the buildings diminishing behind him in railroad perspective? That street almost animates! In the end the sun, which is bottom shaded like a ball, comes up below the mesa throwing sizzling, frenetic clouds before it. All this in a page displaying a wonderfull and innovative balance of shapes, of blacks and whites, and strangely appealing steel wool-type lines. Wow! What a treat!

Buy this book or you'll regret it later: "Krazy & Ignatz" by George Herriman (covers 1925-1926).

IS JOHN GOING TO DISCONTINUE HIS BLOG?

John recently wondered out lout loud if he should continue his blog, http://www.johnkstuff.blogspot.com/ John's a natural teacher and he puts up a lot of training tools on his blog. The problem is that most of the people he helps to train won't make themselves available to Spumco but will take what they've learned to schlocky Saturday Morning studios where they can make more money. According to John this puts him in the position of training artists for the benefit of the big studios. Those studios don't pay him anything for it so what's the point of keeping up the blog? That's his argument, anway. Boy, I hope he rethinks this.

So far as I can tell John is the best practicing line artist in the world. No current popular or fine artist can beat him. Even the densest critic would have to admit that he and Robert Crumb dominated all of art in the last 40 years. Losing someone of that stature on the net would be a serious loss.

It's hard to think of an argument that might make him change his mind. I can only report what my own feelings are when I think about it. Whatever small things I've done to help out other artists - nothing that compares to what John's done- came about because I felt the need to express my gratitude to the people who helped me when I needed it. I remember Ben Washam (one of Chick Jones' best animators) who held free animation classes in his basement once a week. When asked why he did it he said, "I've had so much fun in this industry...I just felt the need to give something back." I know what he meant. This industry not only gave me a way to make a living but it gave me an identity, a sense of mission and a shared community. It connected me to something grand and magesterial and mind-blowing, something full of history and tradition. I'm not just Eddie, I'm Eddie the cartoonist. I'm not a cork on the waves, I belong to something worthwhile. In a modest way this blog is an expression of my gratitude for that.

John certainly doesn't owe us anything. He's spent a lifetime doing favors for the rest of us, including people he's never met. If he decides to discontinue his blog we've no ground to complain. We should just be grateful for what we've gotten already. Besides, that'll leave John with more time to do cartoons the rest of us can slaver over. Even so....

PORTRAITS OF FAMOUS CARTOONISTS

I don't have time to write a decent post so here's a cheater...but it's a good cheater! Here's pictures of Don Martin (above), Basil wolverton (below), and Rod scribner (below, lowest).

Don Martin looks great...so 50's! Basil looks like a class clown grown up and Scribner looks like John Daily, Daily being the actor who starred in "It: the Terror from Beyond Space."

A 100% EFFECTIVE WAY OF FINDING LOST THINGS

Occassionally I or a friend discover what I consider a universal law and now that I have a blog I'm anxious to share these discoveries. To kick it off I'm going to share one of the very greatest of all universal laws, one that was told to me by Vincent waller. Here it is....

"YOU CAN NEVER FIND A REALLY IMPORTANT LOST ITEM UNTILL YOU PUBLICLY ACCUSE AN INNOCENT PERSON OF STEALING IT!"

I don't think it's necessary to support this with argument. Anyone who's tried it knows that this is true. It's especially effective if the accused person is a good friend who's done nothing but good for you.