A BRIEF HISTORY OF NEW YORK CITY

I'll begin this history with a picture of Coney Island (above) circa 1948. I've posted this before, but it was small and unworthy of its subject. Here's it's bigger and clearer. When this version is published I expect it'll sweep past the sidebar, right past the limit of Blogger's template, and right out into the digital ether where only griffins and centaurs live. This is a BIG picture.

Anyway, Coney didn't start out as congested as the top photo suggests. The beach (above) used to be narrow and less crowded. It was a place for "refined" people to bathe. Click to enlarge.

The problem was, too many refined people bathed there. You couldn't find a place to sit in all that refinement. Click to enlarge.

Under pressure from the public, the city fathers enlarged the beach (above), and oooh what a change that made! The public descended on the place like a tsunami. Amusement piers and cheap public transportation added to the chaos.

But the problem wasn't limited to Coney Island. Before long all of New York City became as crowded as Coney.

New York shops are famous the world over, but even shopping became a chore. There were just too many people.

You could try to relieve the stress with a quiet stroll (above), but at any time of the day or night millions of other New Yorkers were relieving stress with a stroll of their own. Yikes! Something had to give.

It was bound to happen. Nature, sensing that the city had exceeded all rational limits, moved to restore the natural balance.

Hideous monsters emerged from The Hudson River.

Excess New Yorkers (above) were eaten. A harsh corrective, to be sure, but Nature has its own ways and its own rules.

Today New York is a model of ecological harmony. The few thousand people who live there look forward to each new day with renewed enthusiasm.

Call New York...a success story.

IF I MADE A 3D ANIMATED FILM (PART 1)

I'm a comedy guy, and for that I'd want nice, sharp, funny backgrounds like the ones in the old Viewmaster reels.

 I wouldn't have much use for deliberately hazy backgrounds (above). Sure they make the foreground characters pop, but so what? They lose the context, the whole sense of the world the characters inhabit. 

I'll come back to this in a minute. 

Especially in comedy, the backgrounds and props are almost as important as the foreground figures.  Comedy is about stupid people, and the stupid world they inhabit. You have to make a world like the one in the Viewmaster above, one that's fit for ignorant characters to live in.

Of course I'm not being fair to the Kung-Fu Panda people. They were trying to do a humorous adventure film, not a pure comedy, and some of their backgrounds weren't all that blurry. The public liked what they did, so maybe they know something I don't. What I do know is that this type of background wouldn't work in comedy. It's too real.

In the world of ignorance (above) mountains don't know how to look like mountains. The Sun doesn't know how to light people in a natural way...but it still looks beautiful and our characters are still delighted to live there. 

Lighting is just as important as design. There's nothing natural about the light on these George Pal characters (above), but look how good they look. In 3D animated comedy you have to light for ignorance and what looks funny. You need a funny lighting man.

WHAT CLOTHES MEAN

WARNING: Contains Nudity

Thanks to a commenter I discovered an art and photography site that had a lot of draped and undraped figures to study.  I blogged about it at the time but failed to make a note of the website name and address, and now I can't remember it.  Anyway, I still have a few samples which I didn't have room for last time, and which you might be interested in seeing now. 

Why people wear the clothes they wear is a fascinating subject. It's pretty obvious that we all dress to hide our defects and display our assets. We also want to mark our identification with a desired group or class. What's less apparent is that we dress to project messages that we're only dimly aware of ourselves.

When I was growing up women (above) used to dress in a way that emphasized their role as mothers.



Modern women (above) don't want to be mothers, and the clothes show it. When naked, women still look like mothers, but when clothed -- they're transformed into something else. Women want you to know that babies are definitely not on the agenda. 

It's weird. You can walk down the street (above) and tell who would raise a family and who wouldn't. 

This (above) is a terrific picture, because it brings up the area where maternity and sex intersect. The girl above is sexy in both pictures, but most in the naked picture. When naked, the sex cues are even sexier. Women sort of look like babies.



Here's a girl (above) who may want children, whether she knows it or not. For one thing she wears a conservative dress, for another the dress has a symbolic, white, mother's busom at the top. 

It's off-topic but I can't help commnting on the backshot. This girl looks great from the back and her haircut sets it off perfectly.

MORE SID CAESAR

I'm afraid I'm way too sleepy to put up a decent post, but I have a few more Sid Caesar grabs. They don't make the same acting points as last time, but they're interesting for what they reveal about Caesar's preferences in story. I'll put them up and see what happens.

In the situation above Sid and his girlfriend, who used to be poor and half starving, are a now a wildly popular dance act in Vaudeville. For the first time Sid has money to eat whatever he wants and it goes to his head. He can't stop eating...he eats even while dancing... and he's getting too fat to perform. Here his wife begs him to stop, but he pays no attention.

She clutches him passionately. He just stands there, rigid and impassive.

Finally he pushes her away in disgust.

She's crushed an egg salad sandwich that he'd hidden in his jacket pocket.

Fortunately he still has a banana in his other pocket.

I like this for a couple of reasons. I always like scenes where one character has a passion to communicate, and the other couldn't care less. I also like the jump cut that occurs in the final two pictures (above). They tell you to avoid jump cuts in film school but the truth is they work just fine when used correctly. Using them is a signal that something interesting is about to happen. In comedy they prime the audience to laugh.

Poor Sid doesn't realize how fat he's gotten til one day during a performance....

...the audience breaks out in cat calls like "Fat, fat, the water rat! 50 bullets in your hat"

He stops in mid dance, and addresses the audience...tells them they should be ashamed of themselves...but the truth is undeniable now. His career on the stage is over, or at least it seems that way.

Well, the story goes on. It's a parody of vintage movies like "A Star is Born." Caesar was best at doing "shtick," which is what the cocktail party sketch in the previous post was, but he also liked to do parodies. The two together fit what Caesar was good at. A lot of fans don't know that before he hit it big on TV he was a dramatic actor as well as a comedian.

********************************

Yikes! I thought I'd seen this actress (above) before. She's the very same woman who starred in my favorite horror film, "Burn Witch, Burn!"

SID CAESAR: GENIUS

I

I can't stand the comedic acting in most 3D animated features. It's just not funny. I'm an animation guy, but when I'm in the mood for a laugh I reach for 2D cartoons or for live action.

One of my favorite old-time TV performers was Sid Caesar. The guy was a living cartoon. Here he's (above) pantomiming a husband at a cocktail party. The plot has him always always sneaking away from his wife to talk to a beautiful girl. Look at him go!

His wife grabs him and brings him back to the discussion she's involved in....

...with someone her husband finds incredibly boring. That's a brilliant expression on Sid.

In an effort to make the situation bearable he he takes a bite of an hors d'euvres (above). It tastes terrible.

He discreetly puts it in his pocket.

 After a bit he scopes out the beautiful girl again.

Genius, pure genius! You won't find anything like that in new animated features. Come to think of it, you won't find it in the older ones either. Animated comedic acting really only exists in shorts. Too bad. I'm convinced that feature audiences would love to see it, but no one will give it to them.

Caesar was a master of comedic acting. Here he is (above) trying out a brand new
rug.

Ooooh, it feels good!

He's always aware of how he looks in silhouette.

In another sketch he shows off his wife's new maid to his friend.

The shocked friend reaches for a canape and sticks his hand in his coffee instead.

Caesar delivers a masterful slow burn.

Nice, huh?

JOHN DRAWS EDDIE

I showed John my new glasses and he thought the look was incomplete without a mustache, which he proceeded to illustrate. Geez, the guy can draw!

He even discovered a cleft on the bottom of my nose that I didn't know I had.

THE BITTER TASTE OF DEFEAT

Okay, my guy lost! I'll get over it....I'll just....chew on the rug for a while. 

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.