LOOK THE PART

I just blew an interview with an executive who might have helped me to get a directing gig I was interested in. I could kick myself because I could so easily have aced the interview. I was just in a quirky mood and I rambled on and dressed funny. Ah, well...

It occurred to me as I was leaving the building, feeling dejected and sorry for myself, that I might have done a lot better if I had just looked the part. Directors wear baseball caps and jeans...or, in another era, riding pants and a crop. I was just too "against type."

You can't blame executives for having stereotypes in mind. We all do. If you were hiring an accountant, which man would you pick: the man with the glasses halfway down his nose like the guy pictured above...


...or the guy in the disco outfit above? The disco guy might be the better accountant, but who cares?

If you were hiring a cowboy, who would you hire? The guy above...

...or the emo (above) with a copy of "Brothers Karamazov" in his back pocket? Be honest. You'd go for the stereotype and so would I.

When you think about it, stereotypes convey a lot of useful information. When someone on the street says, "You work in animation? Wow! You must have a terrific imagination!", they're conveying something important. They're telling you that they value and even crave imagination and are willing to dish out money for media that delivers it.

I've often thought that we should be the industry the public wants us to be. They imagine that an animation studio is a wonderland full of wild, zany, talented visionaries...and that's exactly what it should be.

Most professions would do well to live up to the image the public has of them. Rock musicians should be wild, talented guys surrounded by groupies and young writers should peck out great novels under a 25 watt bulb in ratty Manhattan apartments. Engineers should be bright and earnest and poets should be temperamental and wear velvet suits. We all should strive to be what the public wants us to be, what gives people pleasure to think about.

COMPUTER CARICATURES VS. HAND-DRAWN

These computer caricatures are way too depressing and grotesque for my taste but they do prompt an interesting question: how long will it be before we start seeing computer caricatures in theme parks? I mean caricatures done by an artist sitting at a computer.

Aargh! I couldn't bear to end this without something hand-drawn. Here's a portrait (above) by caricature genius, Grigor Eftimov.


Here's Grigor at work.

YOU WOULDN'T WANT TO BE SUPERMAN!

Being Superman means you can't trust your own friends! Here's Jimmy wearing his "Helmet of Hate" again.

Everybody's envious! You can't even trust your own parents!


Superman once had an affair with a fish woman and they had kids together. Knowing that society would frown on such things he moved his fish family to an asteroid. That should have been the end of it but his pesky girlfriend, Lois Lane, found out about it.



There's always some other super hero trying to muscle in.



Boy, that Lois is a real player!


When you fly people are always trying to shoot you down with fruit juice weapons.



Fortunately Superman's friend Jimmy, who gets coffee for people during the day, performs brain surgery at night.


Superman doesn't always share the tastes of his friends...

...particularly Robin.

No, Superman's a normal guy. It's amazing that even Superman doesn't score every time.


All these pictures were stolen from a terrific site: http://www.superdickery.com/

MY FAVORITE JOHN K. T-SHIRT!

Here it is, fresh from the washing machine! Sorry I don't have time to put up a more elaborate post. I'm so busy that I shouldn't even be taking time to do this. I'll be back with something more thought-out on Wednesday.

You have to admit, though...it is a nifty shirt.

THE AMAZING MARLO MEEKINS

It's probably bad form to steal pictures from some one's blog while the pictures are still current. I just couldn't help myself! These are so good that they demand to be seen. Run, don't walk, to Marlo's site and take a look!

http://www.marlomeekins.blogspot.com/

The problem with buck teeth, well pesented. I have buck teeth and I'm always tasting food from meals I had two days before.

Here's the look that caricaturists get when they're intent on nailing you. This photo of Marlo is the only picture I've ever seen that captures that.

It's fun to see highly dramatic color caricatured and applied to cartoons.

Marlo's done lots of parties. You can only envy the lucky kids.

Boy, you can't accuse her of getting in a rut. How are these (above) for a change of pace?

The recipient of this (above) is crazy if he doesn't have it professionally mounted and hung over the mantlepiece.

I don't know this woman (above) but I'm willing to believe that Marlo captured her very soul!

A terrific picture of Kali! Man, I'd love to see the rest of the pictures in this sketchbook!

MORE INTERESTING INTERIORS

Another Arts & Crafts living room (above)...but what's all that detail on the left? Is that a bed I see near the middle?

It's probably just a bench of some sort but it looks wide enough to double as a guest bed. If it is some kind of built-in bench bed then that's amazing! I know people used to build like that hundreds of years ago but I never saw the idea incorporated into homes as modern (1900) as this. Modern living rooms don't need guest beds because we have sofas. Even so...

I like the way the fireplace, the cabinets and the bed are tucked away in a kind of built-in theatrical stage. Maybe people like to be reminded of theater when they're home. Cars used to be designed like jets and rockets for no other reason than it made the owners feel good. Maybe theatrical shapes make homeowners feel good.

Living rooms frequently looked barren and uncomfortable in 1900. Maybe that's because they had a different function then than they do today. In those days living rooms were meant to show off the owner's wealth. So were dining rooms. A lot of the real living took place in spacious kitchens. Nowadays kitchens have shrunk and people actually use their living and dining rooms.

Here's (above) a couple of Russian-style rooms. Very interesting spaces! Nowadays only restaurants have interiors like this, which brings up an interesting point. If you want to know how to make your home cozy and social just copy what your favorite restaurant does. After all, they're in the business of pleasing people.

Architects should study successful restaurants. Even designers of business offices could learn something from watching the way people chose a place to eat. In the picture above everybody looks tickled to death to be sitting at outdoor tables under a canvas parasol. Maybe office buildings should be designed so that half the employees could work outside on weather and crime-protected terraces for part of the year.

Maybe indoor offices should be lit like reastaurants, just a bit dimly. Each desk or cubicle could be an oasis of light, just like restaurant tables are.

I like the small tapestries that you used to see in some Arts & Crafts houses. I think the Norwegians were the trend setters in this area.

ARTS & CRAFTS INTERIORS CIRCA 1900

I call a house like this (above) "Victorian" but it was in a book on the Arts and Crafts Movement so I'll include it here. Maybe the white trim qualifies it as an A & C house. I love houses like this but the interiors didn't always match the brilliance of the exteriors.

People of that era favored awkward high ceilings and furniture (above) that seemed oddly uncomfortable and out of place.

Low ceilings (above) worked a lot better. The low ceiling above offers shelter and helps to emphasize the luxurious width of the room. I love beamed ceilings, especially the ones that have occasional extra-thick beams for carving. I'll bet the orangey varnished wood looked great by candle light, and the reader at the raised desk in the foreground must have felt like a king when he surveyed the room.

I hate to say it, but even a terrific room like this has some defects. Arts & Crafts people didn't believe in comfortable chairs. They favored the medieval straight-backed chair and the bench. They also didn't believe in large social spaces. They'd design a big space like the one above then break it into tiny alcoves.

Even the alcoves weren't really social. Look at the big alcove on the right, above. Two uncomfortable and unmovable bench-sofas face each other across an awkward space dominated by the fireplace. It looks great but there must be times when the owners yearned for something more comfortable and friendly.

Here's (above) an odd and uncomfortable barn of a room which still succeeds in being imaginative and stimulating. The plain, maybe too plain, white cabinet dominates. The recessed bench area looks like a theater proscenium. I like the Nordic chevron pattern on the cabinet.

It's funky, and probably impractical, but I like it. The room above looks like The Globe Theater.

The color in watercolor above is so appealing that it distracts us from the defects of the room. The long, narrow shape of the dining room is uncongenial to pleasant eating and the china cabinet sits there like a big T-Rex, threatening to eat the guests.

I don't understand the appeal of monstrous cabinets, especially when the precious dishes they're supposed to contain are locked away, out of sight.

This picture (above) is off-topic but I couldn't resist including it. It's the Hungarian Pavilion at an international exhibition held in 1901. I love the stark, expressionist roof tops. I also like the way they're set off nicely by the girders in the ceiling above.

WHAT KIND OF FUTURE?

I've written about this subject before but I can't resist another try. Are there any professionals more clueless than architects? Why are they always foisting sterility (above) on us? Can't they get it through their heads that no one wants to live that way?

My guess is that most people would prefer a nice place on a quiet street (above) to an apartment in a megastructure.

Even so you have to admit that city living has some advantages. All those bright people living in close quarters! Anything is possible in a place that! My prediction is that in my own lifetime we'll see holographic robots and dinosaurs roving the city streets, visible to fans of holographic art who wear the right glasses.

I think people would much rather live in an aquarium than visit one. Big cities should have an abundance of everything that's interesting in the world. Let's have sea turtles and giant squids swimming in places that we visit frequently.

Both cities and suburbs should be full of bridges: iron bridges, wooden bridges, covered bridges, Chinese and Japanese bridges, high and low foot bridges, safe bridges, unsafe bridges...and there should be something interesting below the bridges. Waterways? Rapids? Urban kayak canals? Trees? Animals? Trolley cars? Waterfalls? Houses?

Let's plant giant trees and have tree houses (above)! I want to live in the Tarzan treehouse in Disneyland!

And let's figure out a way to bring exotic animals into urban environments. I'm tired of seeing dogs, cats and pigeons. I want free-roving monkeys and lions and ostriches. If we put our minds to it, we can figure out a way to make that happen, can't we? I mean some way that doesn't require capturing animals in the wild.

Let's have fun transportation! Can we take a submarine or a sailboat or a ferry to work instead of a bus?

Horseback riding is just about the most fun transportation there is. Can we make that possible for millions of suburbanites?

Can we have real, urban transportation like the kind we find in water parks? Can rapidly flowing water be made to channel through cities?

Why did we do away with trestles and steam trains? People like stuff like that! Can we bring these to the suburbs and cities?

Ever since I heard that Bangcock (spelled right?) uses urban kayak canals as a means of serious transportation I've been chomping at the bit to see them. Is that really possible? We have to wait for floods (above) to get our urban kayaking in.

Horse-drawn coaches of all kinds make great transportation. Not for the freeways of course, but they'd be great in the suburbs. And while we're at it, let's have affordable convertable sports cars.


Vincent said weird hippie vehicles slowly cruised all over the Burning Man festival area. They went slow enough that anyone could get on or off without the vehicle stopping. Maybe the hippies are on to something.

Somehow we've got to make cheap, safe, silent private airplanes available for urban use. I want to explore the caverns in cotton-candy clouds then land in my backyard in time for dinner. I guess if everybody did that the planes would blot out the sun. I haven't the slightest idea how to make this practical. Airplane buses, maybe?

A while back I read that one way to keep jobs from being outsourced is to make American cities so exciting and attractive that employers and skilled workers won't want to leave them, even if they can make more money some place else. Let's put that idea to the test!