GOTTA' BE GONE TIL TUESDAY NIGHT!

THE GLORIOUS, AWE-INSPIRING 40'S CHEMISTRY SET

Before the era of nuisance lawsuits, before my own time even, there were glorious toys. One of the all-time best was the fully-loaded chemistry set, which came in a metal box like the one above. To judge from the look of it I'd say this example is from the 40s. I'll bet there were even better ones in the 30s.

Every boy in that era had seen a million mad scientist movies and they were all chomping at the bit to blow things up and transform themselves into monsters a la Jeckle and Hyde. Of course, once they got the set, they got channeled into doing the experiments in the set's book, which were still pretty dangerous and awe-inspiring.

They also wanted a high-voltage lab like the one in "Frankenstein" and there were electrical sets to fill that need, too. I have a 600,000 volt spark generator in my garage, I guess because I want to make dead bodies come to life just like the kids of that era did.

If you're interested in hands-on chemistry you should spend 25 bucks for the Granddad's book above. I think Amazon has it. I used to have my own copy and I loved it. Chemistry must have been a lot of fun way back when.

"Popular Science" and "Popular Mechanics" used to be crammed with chemistry-related articles. Here's a small article about evaporation (below) from the March 1948 issue of Popular Science (cover above). Notice that it's not mathematical. Kid chemistry should be taught this way for at least a year before making it mathematical. Get kids interested in the subject first!

The article's below. Click to enlarge.

THREE MILT GROSS HANDS

Milt Gross does terrific hands. Usually they're not as detailed as this ginger root with finger nails (above) but this is a close-up so it gets the royal treatment.

Here's (above) a knobby, pointy hand that manages to be more interesting than whatever it's pointing at. With funny hands like this to learn from why are we wasting our time drawing normal, boring hands? We're cartoonists! We're supposed to be inventive!

Here's a dandy's hand. Maybe it's a deaf dandy's hand because it looks like it's executing sign language. I wonder if sign language poses could be helpful for drawing funny hands?

I love this hand because it suggests a whole set of mannerisms and a character to go with it.

Sometimes interesting hands require interesting, quirky arms like the ones on this Ted Geisel drawing (above). It's great how a single hand can suggest the way a whole character should be drawn. That's because the hand was non-standard. Drawing standard body parts dulls the imagination.

CARTOON ANATOMY: EARS

Most print cartoonists draw ears the way Don Martin drew them above.


It's a "C" within a "C", or a lower case "a" within a "C."


For caricatures and more realistic characters the "C" isn't enough. For those the more high class "Y" within the ear shape is necessary.


Some poor souls are born without the "Y!"



"Y"-less ears aren't very common, thank heaven.



I've seen so many boxing movies that cauliflower ears actually look good to me.



Most ears slope a bit. I think mine are like that.




Some, like Lyndon Johnson's, are vertical. Sometimes the vertical ones come with exaggerated lobes (above) and tons of ear hair. Ear hair is too big a subject to tackle here subject so I'll have to leave that for later when I can give it a seperate post.

Gee, this guy has lost his "Y." What's left is a puffy disappointment that doesn't deserve the noble name, "ear." Is this what happens when you get older? Are we all destined to loose definition there?

Big ears (above) aren't linked to the face at the lobe so they stick way out. These are noble ears that indicate poetic intelligence in the owner.

Another ear (above) without a fully-formed "Y." I include it here because the major chambers of the ear are symmetrical. Look at it, the top and bottom alcoves are the same size. This may be without meaning...on the other hand the person might be the Antichrist.

A number of how-to-draw books put the ear near the middle of the head. I don't know about that.

An awful lot of people are like Kali, with the ear favoring the back of the head.

Well, that's enough science for now.

I NEED SOMETHING I CAN PUT UP FAST!

I'm too sleepy to post something new. How about if I reprint this article I wrote for Animation Magazine way back when, when I was doing "Tales of Worm Paranoia?"

Thanks to Mike Fontanelli for the caricature of me, above. John K did the one that accompanied the article below.

Click to enlarge!

THE ORIGINAL, BLACK & WHITE "DISNEYLAND" SHOW

So far as I'm able to tell, the very best kids show ever on TV was the prime-time "Disneyland" show which aired for four years starting in ...Er, I'm not going to tell you when it aired because you'll think I'm Methuselah for having been old enough to have seen it.

This show is not to be confused with the inferior "Wonderful World of Color" which succeeded it. That show was full of sappy live action mini-movies about things like the indian boy and his eagle or the handicapped girl who won the Olympics. Yuck! The show I'm talking about is the earlier, full-strength, glorious, politically incorrect, gutsy, heroic, imaginative, black and white show..."Disneyland!"

The show was so popular that the streets were almost empty when it came on. The time slots opposite the Disney show were known as the "graveyard" slots because virtually every TV was tuned into Disney. I still remember the thrill when the show came on and the mysterious, Camelot-in-the-mist title card (topmost, above) came on. Walt was a great presenter. It was fun to look over his shoulder at the glimpses of artists working at desks full of funny drawings and under giant models of things like Mars rockets.

I loved the Fantasyland shows which featured Donald Duck cartoons and features like "Alice in Wonderland." I think Disney must have chosen the cartoons himself, taking particular care to pick the ones little boys would want to see.

You'd think that a movie like Alice, which was shown in two parts, would suffer from being shown in black and white. Actually, it didn't. I refer the reader to Marshall McLuhan's theories about B&W TV requiring more effort from the viewer and therefore being more involving. I don't know if that's true, but if it's not then something similar must have been in play. After seeing full animation on the Disney show we kids learned to disdain the anemic, limited animation cartoons that played on Saturday Morning.


I believe that "Davy Crockett" played on TV before it played in the movies. Imagine that, a show of that quality premiering on TV! The marketing people must have thought Disney was nuts! Why would people pay to see a film on the screen that they'd already seen for free on TV? Ah, but they'd seen it in B&W on TV and the film was in technicolor! Disney knew how to use TV as a teaser for his movies.

Davy Crockett is a remarkable film. My kids didn't think much of it so maybe the film's time has passed, but it had every element in it that kids of the B&W TV era wanted to see: a driving, catchy theme, an appealing kid role model, heroism, adventure, an amazing you-are-there style of story telling, and a pervasive sincerity.

This (above) could have been me. I had to have the whole Davy Crockett suit, gun and powder horn. Believe it or not, toy stores and book stores were actually full of toys kids wanted to buy in those days and I and every other kid were more than willing to throw tantrums to get what we wanted.


Disney's "Zorro" was it's own show but I have a dim memory that makes me feel it may have had a starter episode on the Disney show. Of course I and all my friends had to have the sword, hat, gloves and mask. No kid ever missed an episode of Zorro.


Did "Treasure Island" also debut on the Disney show? That's where I saw it first. Of course I had to have the Jim Hawkins flintlock pistol and a plastic cutlass or two. Like every kid I had a whole arsenal of plastic weapons. Death to New-Agers who denied things like this to kids in subsequent years!


I loved the three part "Man in Space" series. Kids of that period LOVED outer space and I was no exception. I loved Von Braun's style of speaking and I hung on every word of the story. I remember thinking how much fun it must be to work at a studio that had space projects and funny cartoons going on at the same time. It seemed that everything that kids of that era really liked was going on under the roof of that studio.



"Mars and Beyond" left me speechless. I and the other kids gathered in the school yard the next day almost too awed to speak. When we finally were able to talk we tried to shout each other down with remembrances.


Disney didn't condescend to kids about space. He made it seem very dangerous and mysterious. He took it for granted that man was by nature a heroic creature, who couldn't be happy unless he was exploring the unknown.


This amazing show went on for four years then it morphed into a new thing, "The Wonderful World of Color." I don't understand why Walt agreed to this. Very few people had color sets in those early days and the idea of debuting films in B&W on TV, then showing them in theaters for money, was a terrific income-generator. Animation historian Milt Gray says that ABC took the opportunity to lean on Disney to make shows they could easily do me-too versions of. The imaginative stuff was too hard to imitate. Anyway, the decline in quality was drastic.



If Disney had never existed we'd still have cartoons but I don't think the word "imagination" would have been linked to animation the way it used to be. Even today when non-artists find out that I work in animation, some will say "Animation!? Really? You must have a lot of imagination!" That's the lingering influence of Walt and the Disneyland show.

By way of an exit here's a reprint (above and below) of a terrific recent article by Milt Gray about his impressions of Disney. Click to enlarge!

THE AMAZING PARALLEL UNIVERSE SALAD

I told some of this sad story before, but I never talked about what happened after and I may never (I can't remember) have divulged the amazing recipe that lies at the heart of the story. Let me remedy that now.



For those who haven't heard the story before, about this time last year my family and I were invited to dinner by a young Cal Tech Physicist who was researching the parallel universe theory. It turns out that it may be possible to do faster computer calculations in that universe than in our own. You don't have to travel anywhere in a spaceship to do it, the other universe is right beside us. Every atom in our bodies shares matter and energy with that universe. I don't understand it, so don't rely on me for an explanation.



Anyway, the guy was a terrific cook! The main course was terrific but the real highlight was the salad. It was to die for! It was absolutely the very best salad I ever had in my life! Imagine that! A physics guy who could cook!



Unfortunately I was so intimidated at being with someone who knows so much about physics that I could hardly put two words together and I ended up talking nervously about, of all things...Asperger Disorder. I couldn't help it! I was feeling awkward and it was on my mind from something I'd read the previous day. A big mistake!

It turns out that almost all physics students were considered nerds when they were young and had to put up with a lot of grief because of that. My host was anything but a nerd, but he rankled at every mention of it. I should have changed the subject but I was so nervous that I couldn't. I went on and on about Asbergers til my host was screaming inside his skin. Except for the wonderful salad it was a social disaster!

OK, I think I mentioned all that in my previous post. Now here's what happened months later...

My wife explained the problem to her old school friend who was the physicist's mother. They had a good laugh over it and the mother called her son and arranged for another dinner to soothe things over. I was so relieved that I'd finally be able to put it all right again...but...but I was still nervous. I can't help it. For me a physicist is like a rock star. It was like eating dinner with Mick Jagger. This man knows what makes the universe work. If that's not superstardom, then what is? Anyway, I was nervous all over again, and all day long I kept repeating to myself, "Don't mention Aspergers! Don't mention Aspergers!" I think you can imagine what happened.

It was so much on my mind that the first thing I blurted out at the restaurant was "Aspergers." You could see the guy wince. He must have thought I was crazy! It was a terrible night. Now I know how John Cleese felt in "Fawlty Towers" when he couldn't stop talking to his German guests about the war.

Anyway, at the cost of unbearable social awkwardness and ill manners directed at my betters, I managed to extract the recipe for this amazing salad. Here it is:

Preperation: Remove extra virgin olive oil from the refridgerator (it should also be refridgerated) 25 minutes before making the salad and let it sit on the counter.

Have all the ingrediants on hand so you can eat as soon as possible after the dressing is made.

1) Rub garlic into inside of salad bowl then toss the bits away.

2) Add salad leaves (baby greens sold in a bag) and toss with a little olive oil till the leaves are greasy.

3) Into blender:

Extra virgin olive oil

Walnuts

1/2 Blood orange

Red wine vinegar

Veggie salt

Pepper

Oregeno

Sugar

4) Pour blended dressing over leaves.

5) drizzle a little balsamic vinegar on while tossing.

6) Add cut beets from a can and fetta cheese.

Eat immediately before the dressing seperates.