WALLY WOOD REVEALS THE FUTURE!

Nobody understood the future like Wally Wood.  He knew that our successors will have emotional conflicts just like we do, and that many a future spat will be settled with a laser blast. Here (above) two young space patrolers squabble under the ceiling of a futuristic bachelor pad owned by a nice old granny. The spaceman's wrinkly suit appears to be caught in his buttocks, but no one seems to notice.



I love the way Wood handles his backgrounds. All his characters, even villains, creatures and old ladies, take an obvious delight in cavorting around the 50s furniture. Wood would have loved Ikea, which is as close to a real-life Wood theme park as we're likely to see. 

Wood rightly assumed that future men will lust over beautiful babes the same way we do now.  He knew that women will spend a lot of time lounging around their pads in see-through clothing, and will therefore get lots of calls from guys on their video phones.
  

He foresaw that young men would live in spotlessly clean, high tech apartments in the tropical jungle. No bugs or mud, just friendly, beautiful neighbors.

Wood also knew that beautiful girls will have no need to take rocket ships to other worlds.  Every strange, loathsome beast in the galaxy will sooner or later come to them.

Last of all, Wood knew that tail fin cars would make a comeback, and that the future would be full of them. How did he know!? It's uncanny!

"FEEL MY FANGS ON YOUR SPACE HELMET!"

A Short Story by Eddie Fitzgerald
(Copyright 2010 by Eddie Fitzgerald)


It is I, Magog the hunter, daughter of Nartha the matriarch, and along with my fellow nogs I watched the metal thing emerge from the stars and, with fire roaring from its bottom, land on the surface of my cratered asteroid. None of us had ever seen anything like it, so we waited in practiced stillness to see what would happen. Who knows? Maybe there was a meal to be had here. Sure enough, after a bit, a hole appeared in its side and a creature emerged.

It walked on only two limbs, something none of us had ever seen before. How does it do that? Nogs have barely enough at twenty, twenty-two if you include the large mandibles which are for ripping and tearing, but are also useful as extra legs when running down prey.  No need for that now, though. With no prompting from us the thing was slowly advancing right into the middle of us, cautiously shining a wide beam of light into the shadows that defined our still and rock-like bodies.

I was in favor of waiting another moment or two but one of the hungriest young nogs impetuously reared up and loomed over the creature, its mandibles opening and closing; hot, steaming acid dripping from its grinding mouth parts. The startled creature made a move to run back to the metal thing but was cut off by several adolescents who spat a corrosive fixing fluid that anchored the creature to the spot.

The thing was doomed, but was apparently determined to sell its life dearly. It reached into a pouch on its side and frantically withdrew a thing which shot out beams of light which vaporized whatever they touched. A big mistake. At the sight of a struggling victim nogs go into a feeding frenzy of inconceivable ferocity. The creature shot its beams this way and that, pouring the destructive force of its energy into us; maiming, killing, destroying, and for a moment appeared to be getting the upper hand. It was time for me, the chief, to enter the fray.

With a leap I jumped onto the transparent globe on top of its body and sank my fangs into the smooth surface. The top of the disk crumbled and there was a whoosh of gas and inside I could see a soft hairy thing which I immediately bit. The flavor was indescribably delicious but the thing was still alive and was able to bring its shooter up to my abdominal segment and fire.

In the silence of space I saw my body divide into two wildly flailing parts. My entrails unwound into the ether and large quantities of blood escaped in shimmering globules. My time was up. I only had a moment of consciousness left, but that's not important. For nogs it's the species that matters, not the individual. With my last instant of wakefulness I watched as my belly disgorged hundreds of small nogs which carried the feeding frenzy into the gaping hole in the shattered dome.

Life goes on.

I GET MY COMEUPPANCE

This is for all the Theory Corner people who were mad at me for making pictures collide with the right sidebar. I can't promise to fix that right away...I just think it's funny...but readers deserve some satisfaction for all the suffering they've endured. For those readers I offer this picture (above) of me getting my just comeuppance.

As long as I'm in a confessional mood, I'll admit that I went out of my way to find pictures of busy subjects with the intention of buggering up the sidebar even more than I normally do.  I looked for pictures of messed-up hair, tangled wire, and spaghetti.

Why? Why do I have this irresistible urge to mess up my beautiful sidebar?  I don't know. It's one for the psychologists, I guess. I'll just offer my chin for one more chastisement then go back to my hole under the gnarled oak tree and nurse my wounds with the water beetles.



 

CONFESSING MY VENALITY

I consider myself a kind man and a good neighbor. I look in the mirror and I see a sainted man full of the milk of human kindness, a real pillar of the community...or at least I did until the other day when a friend asked me to show him how Photoshop works.  I found myself saying, "Bugger off!  I had to learn it the hard way, and so should you!"  

Actually I didn't say anything like that, but I rattled off some sugar-coated bromide that meant the same thing.  A minute later I felt terrible. How could I be so mean, I who had my tin cup out, begging friends for Photoshop help only a short time before? I made a note to call my friend back and offer to help, and also to try to understand my own selfishness.

After thinking about it, I concluded that maybe I'm not really such a jerk after all, that maybe something about Photoshop actually encourages behavior like that.  I had just learned it (sort of) and like everyone else I'd convinced myself that I'd just breezed through it, with no trouble at all. It was a comforting myth, and it made me feel good about myself. Now, with someone asking me to teach them, I was suddenly forced back into reality, and the painful memories of a time when it seemed I could do no right with the program.  Nothing makes you madder than being confronted with reality.

What is it about programs that makes every user construct a personal mythology where every obstacle was painlessly pushed aside?  Something about computer culture makes every initiate a collaborator in the conspiracy to make computing seem faster to learn than it really is.
 

The computer era I live in reminds me of the way things were a hundred and fifty years ago when refined people wore starched shirts and whalebone corsets with rib-deforming waists and hoop skirts and elaborate hairstyles. Of course the trick to making all this bearable was to put all the fuss of morning dress-up out of your mind, and imagine that that you just put on whatever was handy.  Tom Wolfe nailed it when he said that human beings are status-seeking creatures and we'll do anything to convince ourselves and others that we acquired our god-like attributes with no effort at all.

Soon I'm going to try to pick up the relevant parts of Illustrator and Flash. Then there's...Groooooooan!... ToonBoom. That's going to take time. I'd much rather spend the time improving my drawing and animation, but if I want to stay employed...

Oh well, at least I'll have the satisfaction of knowing that after I go to all this stupid trouble I can create a memory for myself that I learned the programs effortlessly, in a few weeks.




  

CRAWFORD SLAPS

 How 'bout some Joan Crawford slaps (above)? There's some real dooseys here.  Slaps are a useful dramatic device. The writing in a scene builds up to its slap, as does the performance. The worse thing a writer can do to an actor is to leave them rudderless in a scene that meanders all over the place. Slaps give a scene a direction, something to build to.



My favorite screen slap of all time is the one in "Mildred Pierce" where Crawford's daughter slaps Joan on the stairs. Crawford is completely disoriented and nearly falls off screen. No wonder...the slap was real. Crawford insisted on it. I wonder how many takes it took to shoot it?




Was Crawford tough in real life? I'm not sure. The stories are contradictory. In the interview above Arlene Dahl implies that Crawford deliberately threw her drink at her while at a dinner party. In the same interview Gloria DeHaven says Crawford unselfishly taught her a really useful vocal technique, and  tells us what the technique was.



My guess is that the real-life Crawford was usually pretty nice, but we can hope that there were exceptions. I like to think of her as the hostess in this scene (above), where she fires her maid for dropping a cup. Crawford's real life daughter Christine, author of "Mommy Dearest," claims she was just like the roles she played in "Queen Bee" and "Harriet Craig."

BTW, I think the person who uploaded this video meant to title it: "Joan Crawford Is Pissed in the Movie Entitled 'Harriet Craig.'" The present title implies that Crawford did something unspeakable to someone named Harriet Craig.



What a whiner Crawford's real life daughter was! Here (above) Christine gets the punishment she deserves by being a guest on a nightmarish Italian TV show that never lets her speak. Watch it to the end because the actor who dubbed Cliff Robertson's voice does an even more over the top vocal than Robinson.

DAVID O'KEEFE TAKES A BOW

I've been laughing at this guy's paintings and sculptures for years (that's Seinfeld above), but I never knew his name til now. Maybe you didn't either. It's David O'Keefe, possibly the best caricature sculptor in the world right now.

Every caricaturist does Clint Eastwood, but how many do him this well (above)?

Above, an impressive Brando.

An awesome Nicole Kidman (above). Where'd she get a mouth like that?

Not a bad Sheryl Crow (Crowe?)!

O'Keefe paints too. You can buy prints on his site.  This one's (above) called "The Clinton Years."

Recognize Led Zeppelin?

Check out David's site:
http://www.davidokeefe.com/

WHO CAME BEFORE THE BEATS?

Ever since the late fifties a large number of the intellectuals in this country (above) have been bohemians. Even some traditional intellectuals like Bill Buckley had a bit of a bohemian side to them, and enjoyed playing to bohemian audiences.  That's understandable. The 50s intellectuals seemed to be searching for something elusive,  and you always have a grudging respect for seekers, no matter how addled they may be in other respects.  


Before the Beats most intellectuals were attached to universities. There's was a frustrating era because everybody knew the old world had ended with WWII, but nobody had a handle on the new one.  With the radicalism of the Depression years and all the wartime propaganda for our allies Stalin and the Soviets, Marxism now had a place at the university table and a lot of academics didn't know how it fit with traditional liberalism. The response of some of these intellectuals was to be  placeholders. They were determined to shepherd the old ideas and values into the mysterious new era, integrating them with whatever scary radical thing would come next.


It was an odd time, an inbetween time. University presses put out thousands of books with unclear, mushy opinions that nobody wanted to read. Today you won't even find these books in used book stores or thrift store bins. They just don't have an audience. Maybe they never did. Half of the titles had "Crossroads" in the title, as in "Education at the Crossroads." The output of liberal arts universities at this time was so boring and muddled that young people began to self-educate, which is one of the ways the Beat movement began.  

I'm a traditional liberal so I have no sympathy with the liberal/Marxist synthesis that was painfully emerging in the 50s. On a purely human level though, I sympathize with the attempt of academics in mid-century to keep the old wisdom alive. Doing that in a world that had recently been gutted by fanaticism was a perfectly understandable thing to do. The problem was that the old wisdom, at least when it was stated in the old way, was curiously out of sync with the new era. Immensely destructive changes were ahead, and these heroic placeholders were doomed to pass unthanked into obscurity.  I think they knew that would happen, they just didn't know what to do about it.


Anyway,  they were a likable bunch of people who were riddled with funny quirks and affectations as many good people are. Pipes (okay, cigarettes), woolen tweeds,  bow ties, Terry Thomas moustaches...they had it all, as you can see in the films below.






Here (above) an unidentified announcer of that era sits with critic Lionel Trilling, and "Lolita" author, Vladimir  Nabokov. The set is a room filled with statues, wainscoting, pillars, old European furniture and a working oil lamp which functions as a sort of candelabra.  After talking for a bit around the lamp, all move over to the sofa, as if to enjoy cigars and brandy. It's a wonderful world where intellect and culture still have a place. It just seems funny to see all those cultural artifacts crammed into such a tiny space. I like it, though. If this show were still on I'd watch every episode. 

Nabokov is fascinating, but he doesn't really say anything. Trilling attempts to say it for him and is good-naturedly rebuffed. Boy, you can never get creative people to tell you how they do what they do.

Trilling has real charisma. He has that great tortured look that intellectuals are supposed to have, as if every word was painful to enunciate.  The moderator, Pierre Berton,  does a great job of setting a musical tone that sets up pleasing counterpoints from his guests. It's a great little ensemble. Even if nothing memorable is said, it's wonderful theater.

Aaaargh! I'm too tired to write anymore.

MORE PHOTOSHOP PRACTICE

Here's my latest Photoshop exercise. I do collages because they require the use of different selection tools, which I'm still struggling with.  When I'm okay with those I'll pay more attention to edges, blends, noise, etc.

I really goofed up this one (above)! The original background had beautiful, expressive horizontals but you'd never know it because I covered them up with clutter and didn't leave enough blank space. I hate the lettering, too. Grrrrr!


Sorry to inflict these on you. I'll keep my mistakes to myself next time. 

PHOTOSHOP PRACTICE

Boy, Photoshop really is a fun program. There's a lot you can do with it, even at the primitive level that I'm working at.  I keep making mistakes though, like the one above, which seems to read "Theory Corned."

I wanted a logo I could use for a short science fiction story I was thinking of writing for the blog. I only have a title so far: "Feel My Fangs on Your Space Helmet."

I'm torn between using letters that are pure color, with no outline (above)...

...and outlined lettering (above), which is easier to read, but more conventional.

Without borders the words appear to be floating in the air, as if they were shrieks of horror uttered by some alien creature that just found itself bitten in half.  With borders the letters appear to be simple conventions of the publishing industry.



BTW: It's Memorial Day and I'll take this opportunity to say thanks to American soldiers past and present who made it possible for people like me to express ourselves freely in blogs like this one. Your sacrifices are much appreciated! 

REVIEW OF "BRIGHT STAR"

That's a musical number above, from the film "Bright Star" which was well reviewed when it came out in 2009, but which was afterward completely forgotten. I'll have more to say about the music in a minute.

The film's about my favorite poet of the Romantic Era, John Keats, and his never consummated love for Fanny Brawne. Reviewers liked the film, though some thought it was weak on story and was only saved by the performances. Some lamented that it never touched very seriously on Keats' poetry. They're right on both counts...well, half right...but if you liked films like "Shakespeare in Love," then you have to see it nevertheless.

I like a good love story, not only because I believe in the philosophy that underpins romantic love (discussed in previous posts), but because when these stories are done right they stimulate your thinking about everything else. To be in love is to live in a state of hyper awareness, when even the cracks in the sidewalk seem to have deep meaning. It's nice to be reminded of a time when we were fully alive, no matter how torturous it might have been in some respects.



To get back to the film's music: The top video is from the film and is a vocal adaption of Mozart's Serenade in B Flat, K361.  For comparison, here's (immediately above) an original, instrumental version of the same music. The vocal version stands up pretty well, I think.

In the film Fanny tells Keats that she doesn't like poetry because she can never understand what poems mean. Keats gives a great answer, one which applies to visual art (examples by Van Gogh above) as well as poetry: 

"The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore, but to be in the lake...to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not 'work the lake out.' It is an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept mystery."


Woooow! Well said! I think of what Keats said when I look at drawings by Van Gogh. No doubt they're about the beauty of the natural world, but they're also about the power of lines and the awesome human mind that can manipulate them so expressively. To borrow from Keats: you luxuriate in the lines...in the sensation of the flow of them, and of the dynamic spaces between them. 

OLD & NEW MOVIE THEATERS: A COMPARISON

Boy, I love to see movies on a big screen in a packed theater!

It must have been great to see them in Technicolor, and in ornate vaudeville-style theaters that were like palaces inside. That's a Lego theater above. Every once in a while Lego knocks themselves out to make a toy that nobody can afford, but is very near a work of art.

How different the Lego building is from minimalist modern theaters (above), which often look like banks or Walmart stores.  Some are amazingly featureless and stealthy. You could be standing next to them and  and never know it. In the case of the theater above, the designer thoughtfully wrote "Box Office" on the ticket vender's window just to let us know what it was.

I wish I could figure out why modern movie houses disposed of the marquee. It was sheltering and fun to look at, and it announced the theater's presence to the world. You could see it from the road and no doubt it seduced lots of drivers and walkers-by into seeing the films. Notice too, the film posters are out on the street where people can see them, and not concealed inside or in a side alley, like the ones in my neighborhood.

When I told this to my kid he rolled his eyes up and said that marquees were unnecessary since people get all the info they need online.  He said nobody goes to a theater on an impulse anymore. Maybe, I thought, but it couldn't hurt to scoop up the few that do.

Actually, some modern theaters do have marquees...sort of. Here's (above) an ugly one on a theater that looks like it was built in the 80s. It's mind-numbing and bland, and looks like a bank, but at least it puts its posters out front where people can see them. 

Here's one current marquee style.  This example looks like it's outside, but a lot of marquees of this type are inside, over interior ticket windows. You have to go inside to see it. 

Like I said, a lot of modern theater owners have dispensed with marquees entirely.  In this theater (above) the titles of the films that are playing are written on bumper stickers  high on the wall behind the ticket sellers.  If you crouch down low enough,  and use your hand to screen out the reflections on the tinted glass, you might discover what's playing and when.

Don't expect to see mirrors in the restroom. If you're lucky the management might provide slightly reflective sheets of steel.  If not, then the walls will be bare.

No more movie palaces. Just bare bones walls and seats.

I wish theaters would bring back usherettes.  They look good and besides, you can use usherettes to sell the outrageously priced candy to people in their seats.

CONTEMPORARY COSTUME DESIGN

Boy, I love old-time theatrical costume sketches (above), the best of them I mean.  I had the impression that nothing good was being done in that medium any more, but I'm glad I took the trouble to check, because there's some interesting stuff out there that deserves to be seen.

Lots of sketch styles are acceptable now.  Amazingly, one of them (above) is caricature.

Another is collage. This artist (above) is pretty good at it.  I like how the dog is walking backwards.

Very nice (above), and it's practical, too. I have no trouble envisioning the real-life costume.

This guy (above) looks like a character out of an Otto Dix painting. 

This picture (above) is pretty abstract but it conveys the important information.  I assume the play is a comedy where the superhero has to look broad and lumpy in his suit. The sagging diaphragm is a nice touch.

This picture (above) is skimpy on the details but the overall concept is solid. Sometimes the designer is limited to suggestion, and the costume maker figures out the details.

Wow! What a prolific artist (above)! Better click to enlarge!

Interesting (above)! A Steinberg-type style combined with 3D collage! It's a very girly treatment but, as with everything here, you can use your imagination to see something more masculine.

Sometimes swatches of fabric are added to the sketch. Designers keep enormous scrapbooks full of samples of the stuff that are pinned or stapled onto the page.

According to an article on the net, the designer usually starts with cut-outs of pre-existing pictures from magazines (above) just to see if her and the director are in sync.

Here's (above) Ann Roth showing off her designs for old Hollywood movies, and here's a link to an interesting interview that she gave. Part 2, the best part, is only a couple of minutes long, and it contains advice that all artists in all trades can use.



http://makingof.com/insiders/media/ann/roth/ann-roth-on-costume-design-pt-2/61/172