IT'S ELECTION DAY!

The election's here! Who are you gonna vote for? Me, I'm a Romney guy. He has a proven ability to work well with the other side, balanced the budget as governor in a Democratic state, turned around a problem-ridden Olympics, and made a fortune turning around ailing businesses. It's an almost perfect resume for the job he's after.

But you're an Obama person, right? If you're an artist you probably are, since artists are usually among the first to throw a brick through the establishment window. Yes, we're a volatile lot, but I think the Deity still likes us.

Anyway, I'll be away from the computer for most of today and tomorrow. I'll be back Thursday morning. See you then!

LEVITTOWN TODAY

Here's Levittown Pa., way back in the late 40s or early 50s. It was ground Zero for the postwar housing development mania. It's not my taste, but I can see where it was a big advance for the workers who bought affordable houses there. Folksingers on the other hand, were appalled by it, and one of the catchiest folksongs I know was written to ridicule it (actually it ridiculed Daly City, which was a smaller version of Levittown):

Geez, workers having their own houses, sending their kids to universities, having children who became doctors, lawyers and executives...sounds like a success story to me, but what do I know? 

Anyway, I have to admit that the initial uniformity of the houses was a bit off putting. I bring the subject up because I live in one of those post WWII developments myself. Yes, me...I live in one of the dreaded hell holes reviled by folksingers. I thought readers might like to see how one of these places evolved into whatever it is today.

Of course I live on the West Coast where houses tend to be lower and wider than ones in the East Coast example, but I imagine the square footage is roughly the same...and  our tract houses are made of stucco, which is as "ticky-tacky" as you can get.

My development was created in the early 50s. These houses are cheery and comfortable, and they're all made of cheap materials available at any Home Depot-type store. They're affordable and easy to repair. So why did they excite such fury in the folksingers? 

Er, the telephone pole is actually straight, the lean comes from a camera distortion. 

I imagine that these houses looked bleak and arid when they were new, but they didn't stay that way. People planted trees and shrubs, and tinkered together add-ons. I wouldn't be surprised if Levittowners did the same thing.

I'd need more photos to do justice to the subject, but this is all I've got so I'll end for now. No wait, I have a couple more pictures with a different emphasis. I'll put those up......

Okay, how do you like this porch (above) and front door? "What porch? What door?" you say? Good question! Well, you can't see them because they're covered with leaves and branches. I pity the poor mailman who no doubt gets scratched to ribbons every time he delivers a letter.

  

Actually, lots of doors around here are hidden behind thorns and bramble. The developers in this area were real pranksters, real rubber chicken and joy buzzer types.  

How do you like that phony roof trim that leads to nowhere? Variations of that are aaaaall over the place here. I'll take some pictures of it and you won't believe what you see! I only wish I could show you the built-in birdhouse that's out of frame. It dominates the front of the house. You could put an ostrich in it.

TRICK OR TREATERS

I've been taking a lot of pictures lately and usually I have to venture out into the world and do some digging in order to find fit subjects. It never occurred to me til it was too late that Halloween is the one day of the year when fit subjects come to your door in droves and practically beg to be photographed. So...Rats!...I didn't get any Halloween kid photos.

If I had, they'd probably have looked like the pictures assembled here....Halloween as kids experience it, mostly taken down at their level.

This (above) is my favorite of the bunch. It shows an earnest kid and her loyal dog taking care of business.

The best pictures are often simple and the one I'd have died to have gotten was one I saw of a kid and his mother simply getting out of a car in a parking lot. The kid was scruffy and ungainly, just a typical ragamuffin of a kid, but he was happy as could be, boxing imaginary bad guys in his Spiderman costume.

His mother tried to look haggard and adult for the sake of the other mothers who were standing around, but she couldn't conceal her happiness at being with her kid at that moment. She was radiant.

And why shouldn't she be? The kid who looked so scruffy and average to me was an object of infinite beauty and pride to her. You could have offered The Hope Diamond for the kid and she wouldn't have taken it...a clear case of value beyond price.

I felt good for the kid, too. With a mother like that the kid had a chance in life. He'd grow up humane and confident and able to pass that gift on to his own kids.

INTERIOR DECORATION FROM NORWAY

Norway (above) has to be one of the most beautiful places on Earth, and the people there are some of the most appealing. They have a lot of talented home furnishing designers there, in fact I just stumbled on one their sites on the net. It belongs to a woman who doesn't identify herself, but who has pretty good taste in design. See if you agree. 

  

She likes a lot of what Americans have come to identify with IKEA, but she favors the most pure version of it. That's understandable. Norway has an even more extreme climate than Sweden. With long, dark winters, Norwegians naturally favor white (above). What better way to deal with the gloom than to capture every available photon and bounce it around the room?

Even her color accents are tinted with white, as if they were weathered. She has a way of bringing the harsh climate outside into her home and taming it. The tiny, delicate areas of color remind me of wildflowers, which I imagine have a special significance to mountain people.

Her inside windowsill decorations include lots of glass, including glass bottles filled with plants. Maybe the clear crystal of the glass reminds her of ice. Maybe the green is a symbol of hope.

Reminders of ice crystals (above) are everywhere. This designer has not only made her peace with snow and ice...she celebrates it.

Lace is a kind of cloth version of ice crystals and she uses it on lamps. The rest of the room (above) is a bit too minimalist for my taste but the light fixture is a good idea. It kinda looks like the full Moon, too.

At night the white walls take on a pleasing warmth. Very nice. it makes the room look like a comfy alcove in a country barn.

The textiles designed by this artist (above) tend to be rustic. Most of the colors are tints.
This banner looks like an explosion in a bikini factory.

Summer doesn't last long in this part of the world and when it comes, people cling to it. She doesn't just situate her dining table under a tree, she surrounds the tree (above), milking every ounce of green it has to offer.

For a color accent she puts out delicately colored tulips. Boy, Norwegians really know how to savor the Summer.

I noticed these boots in one of her photos. I'm sure she didn't invent this look but I like the fact that she appreciates it. When I was a kid little girls wore boots of fire engine red. These newer boots are a delicate, weathered, Scandinavian red. Very nice.

IT'S HALLOWEEN!

Where did I get this photo? I curse myself for not tagging the source for some of the Photos I use. My deepest apology to the original poster.  I hope he'll identify himself so I can make the proper attribution. Anyway that's Milt Gross showing off a theatrical curtain design he made for Spike Jones. How does that relate to Halloween? 

Well. lots of people have front doors that are recessed into an alcove that forms a small front porch. Imagine two curtains like this covering the alcove, so a trick-or-treater has to go through the parted curtains to get to the front door.  Imagine the frightened kid having to trek through a dark (or bottom lit) alcove, through a gauntlet of recorded hideous laughter, to the front door. Aaaaaaah! That's a thought to savor!

Yikes! I can hardly make out anything in this frame blow-up (above), but you get the idea. Of course you can simplify things by using a black marker on a white sheet, though sheets are pretty absorbent, and the black may turn out to be gray when it dries. If a color sheet is used I think you'd have to paint an undercoat of white where the characters are going to be. 

Aaaaargh! I don't know why I'm posting about porch curtains now, on the morning before Halloween night. There's no time to make that sort of thing now. Well, there's always next year. Wait a minute...I have an idea that might take only a couple of hours to execute...a porch dog!

Yeah, a big, dumb dog dummy that looks like the Clampett dog above! The body could be a stuffed laundry bag with a beach ball on the bottom. You give it shape with bulldog clips that are out of site on the side where nobody can see them. The arms and legs could be rolled-up newspaper. The head? Hmmmm...that's a tough one. You might have to paint it onto flat cardboard and cut it out. 

How about a cardboard dog (above) going down the front steps?

"Porky in Wackyland" has a bunch of characters that would work as cardboard sculptures.

How about large framed pictures of cartoon characters to hang outside near the door? Here's a caricature of Veronica Lake. Boy, Clampett delivers!

I stole this picture (above) from John K's blog:

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/

How about a large, framed picture of Marie Dressler? That's pretty scary.

I suggest a nearby portrait of her husband, Mr. Meek.

You've gotta have Peter Lorre!

And  Marlena Dietrich...what about her?

Maybe a lawn sculpture made of a card table with ragged tablecloth and dummies sitting all around. Their heads would be distorted print-outs like the ones above.

I love paper bag masks. You can make a bunch of them in all sizes and put them out on the porch on broomsticks. Here's some more elaborate paper sculptures (above) for inspiration. Thanks to commenter Joe Crawford for identifying the artist: Andres at Nice Paper Toys.com:

http://www.nicepapertoys.com/profile/Andres

BEATNIK COSTUMES

Three girls who are going to the same Halloween party might try something like this...The Three Bored Beatnik Girls. It's important to look bored and aloof if you're going to be a beatnik. 

Geez, I wish I hadn't shaken the camera when I took this. Thanks to Mike for revealing his p....to Theory Corner readers. Oh, "P" is for porcelain. I had to look up the spelling.

Here are the same girls, only in color this time. How do you like "Darn-Old Duck" in the background at the top?

That's all I have on beatniks, but I do have more pictures. What do you think of this painting by Carl Barks?  I stole this from Michael Sporn's site. Michael says its his favorite Barks Painting. It's one of my favorites too, along with the "Scrooge in the Klondike" pictures.

Michael's site: http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/

Above, old crones from a dark ride that I can't identify. I have a great idea for a dark ride. Maybe I can work it into a story.

Where would Halloween be without spiders?

This (above) looks like an amusement park ride that takes its passengers straight to Hell then returns for more victims.

Nice!

Can't think of a costume?  Maybe a hat is all you need.

Sometimes (above) it's only necessary to cover the back of the skull. 

For outdoor work on hot, sunny days I could actually see having a hat like this. 

Thanks to TCM we have lots of Halloween movies to choose from. Here's a still from "The Innocents." 

This (above) is from my favorite horror film, "Burn Witch, Burn." It's based on a terrific book by Fritz Leiber, "Conjure Wife," and a wonderful screenplay by Richard Matheson.

Then there's the wordless underground classic (above), "Dementia."

Can you find the face in this Baroque wall detail?

Here's a couple of my favorite sequences from James Whale's "Old Dark House." Start at 49:00 and end with 106:00. I'm a big fan of the The eccentric/elocution-acting style that preceded modern acting styles and that method is vividly on display here. 

Watch for it in the character of Sir Robert (The old man in bed, played by a woman) and the in character called Saul. Melvyn Douglas was one of the finest practitioners of the smooth elocution style that replaced the old style so we have a clash of acting styles that produces lots of fireworks.