Friday, January 07, 2011

THE PRINCESS & THE GIANT (REVISED) (PART I)

EXT. PRINCESS CASTLE:

PRINCESS (V.O.):  "Why can't all men be like giants?"

PRINCESS: "Giants are gentle and nice...not stuck up like that stupid Count Frisbee. I wouldn't go out with him again if he were the last man on Earth!


PRINCESS: "He thinks he's God's Gift to Women...and you know that he's probably always thinking about doing the nasty!"


PRINCESS: "Hey, I'm a Princess! I could have his fingers pulled off! Ha, ha, just kidding!"


PRINCESS: "Giants are so docile and friendly. Why can't all men be like giants?"


PRINCESS: "Hey, I have an idea! Let's take a walk! We'll be gone when Frisbee gets here, and when he sees that nobody's home, maybe he'll get the hint that he's not wanted around here!!


PRINCESS: "I'll just change real fast!"


PRINCESS: "Take these shoes, will 'ya?"


PRINCESS: "I don't need Count Conceited, or whatever his name is."



PRINCESS: "What do I need men for, anyway?"


PRINCESS: "Here, take this scarf."


PRINCESS: "Everybody thinks you find happiness by finding one special person that you share your life with, but I don't think that's how it works. Look at all the people who believe in that. They're all still looking, you know?" 


PRINCESS: "Me, I greet life with a smile. I feel the sensation of the morning dew on my skin. I wait for the sun to come up and fill me with love energy! I don't need Mr. Right!" 


PRINCESS (V.O.): "All I need is a friend like you. Someone I can...you know.... share everything with. 


PRINCESS: "It's all about Karmic energy!"


PRINCESS: "Get rid of this will 'ya? Where's my other dress?"


PRINCESS: "I mean, the only time you can ever feel strong and secure is when you're giving it to others instead of wishing they would give it to you!"


PRINCESS: "Give it to others, I say! Give it to others!"


PRINCESS: "I just want to share!"


PRINCESS (V.O.): "That's all I want..."


PRINCESS: "I just desperately want to...SHARE! Um, do you know where my socks are?"


GIANT: (He wordlessly mouths, "Thank you, God! Thank you!")


 ON THE DOOR:

SFX: KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!


*******TO BE CONTINUED*******

Thursday, January 06, 2011

THE PRINCESS & THE GIANT (PART II)

KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!

GIANT: "Huh?"


PRINCESS: "Count Frisbee! Is that you? You're early!"


COUNT FRISBEE: "Yes, darling...I couldn't wait any longer!"


COUNT FRISBEE: "I just had to see you! I was going out of my mind!"


COUNT FRISBEE: "I couldn't even think without you! I didn't get any sleep last night!"


PRINCESS: "I know how you felt, Darling! I couldn't sleep either!"


COUNT FRISBEE: "That silly quarrel we had...it was all my fault! I'm so sorry!"


PRINCESS: "No, no! It was totally my fault! I feel so ashamed!"


COUNT FRISBEE: "It's so good to be together again! Maybe...maybe it's time we made this permanent."


PRINCESS: "It always was permanent, Darling. It always was. Let's find a grotto somewhere and hold hands!"


PRINCESS (V.O.): "Giant, clean this place up while we're gone, will you? It's a mess!"


Tuesday, January 04, 2011

SHOPPING FOR CHAIRS WITH MIKE

I recently went with Mike to shop for chairs for his living room. Mike likes modern stuff, and we we ended up at some pretty weird places. If you thought this kind of furniture was replaced by something else, think again. There's a lot of it out there and it still sells!

Mike rejected furniture like this (above), but only because it didn't come in leather. 


Is there really gender specific furniture? I did see a couple of chairs with separate cushions for each buttock. 


Hmmmmmmm.



50s modern is still out there. I wouldn't be surprised if you could get chairs like the ones above at Ikea. 


Maybe I was too hasty when I said that all modernism is still with us.  Box furniture like the example above is gone forever.  It used to be popular. You could even buy box beds. I guess people were so taken by their TVs that they wanted to live in them.  This style was ridiculed by later modernists who preferred to live in eggs.

Poor Mike couldn't get this (above) in leather either.

Thank God none of the stores had one of these (above). If they had, I'd have had to buy one, and my family would have moved out.


Ditto this chair (above). Some things must be acquired regardless of the consequences. 



I used to like chairs like this (above), but I didn't see them this time around. Can you still get them?

Monday, January 03, 2011

REST IN PEACE: DENIS DUTTON

Nothing special to post today. I'm bummed out because I just discovered that Denis Dutton, the founder of "Arts and Letters Daily," died. That was one of my favorite sites on the net. Free, too...The Chronicle of Higher Education picked up the tab.

Denis was one of the Los Angeles Duttons, a super achieving family that ran an indispensable chain of used book stores in L.A. I wish I knew more about them. 

The Arts and Letters Daily site: http://www.aldaily.com/


Friday, December 31, 2010

WHAT'S WRONG WITH MY %$#&@ EYES?

Well, I sure am looking older lately!


I was shocked the other day when I saw how ancient I looked in the steak post. In particular, I was amazed to see that I had dead eyes in a couple of pictures (above). You know what dead eyes are...they're blank, lifeless eyes that indicate the person behind them has no significant mental life at all. You see them on older people. Geez!

Actually it's not the age indication that has me worrying. I'm paniced because the the dead eyes make me look stupid and half asleep! Is that what lies ahead for me?


Even Rembrandt (above) developed dead eyes. The gods can be cruel.


What's the difference between young, vibrant eyes (above), and the dead eyes that older people get? Well. young people have smooth, colorful skin, and less pronounced brows. They have wide-open eyes, and brighter pigment in the corneas and irises.

They also have more highlights. I guess that means their eyes are more moist.


Add highlights to Rembrandt's eyes (above) and they come alive. They look kind of evil here, but we'll overlook that. Hmmmm. Now this is interesting!

If highlights are all it takes to get more youthful eyes then we can all rejoice, because those are easy to acquire. All you need is untreated contact lenses. Maybe even ordinary glasses will do the trick.



I'm not worried about bags under the eyes or wrinkles. John Huston had plenty of both and still succeeded in looking good. What matters is vibrancy. It's all about your eyes hinting that you have some kind of mental life.

Hmmmmm. I see that Huston had squinty eyes. That seems to work as well as highlights. Alright, that gives me my agenda! Expect to see me squinting and wearing glasses more often!



Tuesday, December 28, 2010

PABLO PICASSO: CARTOONIST

What do you think of Picasso? A lot of animation cartoonists don't like him because he was the inspiration for U.P.A., which indirectly wrecked traditional full animation.  He certainly planted the idea in the public's mind that anything representational, even cartooning, was obsolete and old-fashioned.


I like him because he was a cartoonist at heart, even though he tried to refashion cartooning into a purely graphic art.
He colored his pictures (above) the way newspaper comic artists colored theirs.....well, somewhat. It was more of a caricature of the way newspaper cartoons were colored.

I wonder if the picture above influenced the way Dedini used color?







Without Picasso we wouldn't have had Virgil Parch, Cliff Sterrett, and Steinberg. We wouldn't even have had Searle.

Thanks to Amid Amidi and The Modesto Kid for the Steinberg-type picture above.


This (above) is a better example of what I meant when I said Picasso was influenced by newspaper comic color. He even added the dot pattern that newspapers used.

Picasso had a great sense of humor.  The figure above is magnificently ignorant (I mean that as a compliment).  It's really goofy and funny.


Sometimes I can't believe that he managed to get critics to accept stuff as overtly cartoony as this (above).


Really, is it so hard to see the influence of cartooning on his work (above)?  The man was a cartoonist. He was one of us, though you could argue that he undermined cartoon art by abstracting it and removing it from acting and storytelling.


Picasso's mission seemed to be to liberate cartoon technique from cartoons. He seemed to think we cartoonists had a bag of tricks that was too valuable to be entrusted to us only. 

The man obviously read newspaper comics. It could be that he was influenced by Herriman and Sterrett, Opper and Fenninger, maybe even funny animal comics, and simply didn't admit it.  He may have had closets full of comic pages that were thrown out after his death by custodians who didn't think they were important. 

BTW, I'm aware that some readers are saying, "Wait a minute! Herriman was influenced by Picasso, not the other way around!" To that I say don't be so hasty.  My guess is that Herriman and Picasso influenced each other. 


So what do ya think?

Sunday, December 26, 2010

VINTAGE CHRISTMAS GREETINGS FROM THE "STRIPPER'S GUIDE" BLOG

I'm having difficulty using the computer because it's in my kid's old room and my kid is staying with us for the holiday.  He's pacing up and down in the living room right now, waiting for me to finish typing.  Aaaargh! I can't think when I have to write this fast!

Anyway, here's some vintage comic strip Christmas pages from a hundred years ago. Many thanks to Allan Holtz of Stripper's Guide (link in the sidebar) for the swipes. Click to enlarge.

About the strip above, I like the way this artist lays out the page. It's an ignorant style but there's something funny about it.  Sort of Hugh Lofting (Dr. Dolittle) meets Opper.


Above, The Katzenjammer Kids. I didn't used to like this strip but it's growing on me.


I like the simple, linear layout showing stupid characters sitting at a dinner table (detail above).


Very nice (above)! If I were an editor I'd run a strip like this regardless of whether the character had appeal. Reading this makes me want to draw.


Here's (above) the final panels in a two week long series where Santa develops a military plan to bomb a town with toys. Oops...I have to surrender the room to my kid. 'Hope you guys had a good Christmas!

Thursday, December 23, 2010

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY (2010)!


What with Christmas coming, things are really busy at my house and I don't have time to put up something elaborate. I just want to wish everybody here the best of Christmases. I hope you and yours prosper and prevail in the coming year!

Here's a few songs to get you in the mood, if you're not already:




How about "Ave Maria" by Pavarotti?  I couldn't embed the video, but here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojeLyPo_Wz4&feature=related
















MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYBODY!