"JOLLY ROUNDERS"

I like the way the best old cartoons (above) used to look. They didn't have the production value of a film like "Frozen," but they were fifty times as funny and they were cheap to make.

 Here's (above) a fragment from a vintage short called "Jolly Rounders." The disk it was on credits Paul Terry as the director, but IMDB attributes it to someone else. I believe the disk because the film is hilarious and Bob Clampett used to say that that the young Terry was one of the funniest guys in the business.

Anyway, the film starts with an irritated housewife sweeping a carpet. She no doubt wishes her husband were there to help. I love the awkward way she handles the broom with her oversized hippo paws.

 Outside her kids see Dad coming, and they're alarmed at what they see.

 They run inside and snitch to Mother: "Dad's coming and he has a Bimbo with him!" She tosses the broom and heads outside.

 Sure enough, Dad's out there and he's beckoning to his "Bimbo."

She comes in, naked below the waist...but that's okay because she's a hippo and because her modesty is preserved by the fact that she's wearing socks and shoes.

They embrace...

...and snog.

Good Lord! Well, that's all I have.

I believe this cartoon can be found on Thunderbean's forthcoming compilation, "Cartoon Roots." Steve Stanchfield says it should be out sometime in December or January. Personally I think Jolly Rounders is worth the price of the whole set and everything else on it is free.

And did I mention that "Hot Tomato Mollie"...Hot Tamale, get it?...is on the same set? Our cup runneth over! 

BRITISH ART NOUVEAU

I thought I'd post about a Christmas gift idea I had, namely architectural posters. I did some research and was amazed to find how few decent ones there were. It looks like those who want that sort of thing will have to make them at home.

I'd just seen a documentary about British Art Nouveau at a friend's house so the first pictures I tried to track down were of Nouveau buildings like the famous chapel at Compton, England (above). No luck, though.

In this case it's possible that the lack of demand for posters can be accounted for by the offputting clutter and darkness of Nouveau interiors. English artists liked to mix Nouveau with Gothic and the combination didn't always gel.

British Nouveau rooms were often platypuses where different influences were thrown together, helter skelter.

The combinations seldom worked, but that doesn't disqualify them as art. I like British Nouveau. The flaws don't diminish the invigorating passion and intelligence behind it.

Nouveau/craftsman artists like William Morris were socialists and were embarrassed by the fact that the new styles (above) were labor intensive and weren't really affordable by the working poor.

To correct that he put a lot of effort into fabric design (above) that could be cheaply mass-produced. It was a case of no good deed going unpunished: the poor guy was denounced by his socialist friends who thought anything factory made was a tool of the Devil. A bitter schism took shape.

Morris must have had OCD. His leaf patterns were incredibly busy, even more so than you'd find in real life forest cover. When I was a little kid old ladies were fond of dress patterns like this. All these years later it occurs to me that some of them must have associated those busy designs with Morris and the avant garde of his day.

Anyway, the man created some beautiful fabrics but he was undercut by a brand new movement in architecture that believed in filling rooms with light. Morris's fabrics were meant for shadowy rooms illuminated by oil lamps. Bright sunlight seemed to call for something more light-hearted and airy.

Gee, thinking about all this reminds me of how fast art movements came and went in the astonishingly creative Twentieth Century. Art Nouveau had ten years, which is better than some had.

THE VANISHING TOWN STORY

ON KIDS RESPONDING SCEPTICALLY TO A VOICE ON THE VIDEO PHONE:

 DAD (VO):

"KIDS! It's me, Dad!"

"I have to talk fast because I might get cut off any minute. Look, I can tell by your expressions that you don't recognize me anymore. That's okay...it's not your fault! Just bear with me!"

I tried to call your mother but she didn't recognize me either, and she hung up. It sounds fantastic, but...I honestly don't think she remembers having had a husband. Maybe you guys don't remember having a dad! By the time you wake up tomorrow you probably won't remember this conversation.

The whole crazy mess started a few weeks ago when I went out of town on business. Remember? You made me promise to bring back souvenirs and your mother drove me to the airport. Well, things in the city went okay for a while but I couldn't shake off the feeling that something was off kilter there, that things just weren't right. 

Maybe it was the people I saw on the street. They seemed different somehow. 

With every passing day they seemed to get more and more...aggressive. 

They'd get annoyed about little things. You had to be careful not to antagonize anyone.

I was at a restaurant and two men started a fight over who should have an empty table. I didn't get it. The place was full of empty tables. Why fight over them? They would have killed each other if someone hadn't pulled them apart.

Violence was becoming common. I'd stumble over corpses in the street. Like everybody else I learned to walk past without seeming to notice.

The media was no help. TV and newspapers were full of stories that ridiculed people who failed to take revenge. There were shows that showed how to load and fire a gun, and tips like the one about running over a person twice to be sure they were really dead.

Even kids TV was like that. I could hardly believe what I was seeing. 

It got so that nobody trusted their neighbors. Misunderstandings resulted in shootings.

I had the feeling that the town was being rapidly depopulated. Not only that, but buildings were falling into disrepair at an alarming rate. It only took a few days to put what looked like years of decay on them.   

Whatever or whoever was causing all this must have come to the conclusion that the homicides weren't happening fast enough. I began to hear rumors that people had been inexplicably whisked away into the sky. At first I didn't believe them.

According to the stories people thought they could cheat death by staying home with the doors locked, but it didn't work. If their time was up they'd still get sucked up, only if the windows were closed they couldn't get out. 

Eventually they'd starve to death and their lifeless corpses would continue banging against the ceiling. I didn't believe any of this til I took my first walk down a suburban street. I can't begin to describe the sickening feeling I got walking along and hearing thumps inside the homes.

I'm no fool. I tried to leave but it was too late. Every avenue was closed. Small roads were overgrown with brush and trees...

....big roads simply vanished. 

There was no way out.

In only a few weeks whole parts of town had become overgrown with vegetation. It was as if the whole place was being obliterated, section by section. I looked at a map and the town wasn't even listed anymore. I mentioned the name of the town to your mother on the phone and she never heard of it, even though it used to be the state capitol.

What was going on? I talked to a guy on the street who had a theory...he said maybe this has happened throughout history. Buildings go, people go, and nobody remembers. Maybe cleaners have to eliminate the past to make way for what's happening now. Maybe that's just the way things work. I don't know. I don't understand any of it.

Under that soil had been schools and streets and people leading their lives. Now there's just...what?...wild growth and a strangely unfriendly forest. That'll probably be my fate too, if one of the angry shooters doesn't find me first.

Wait a minute, someone's at the door. Maybe it's the police. I called them a little while ago. I'll be right back.

BAM!

****THE END****

c story by Eddie Fitzgerald 12/2014, photo copyrights owned by their respective owners. 

HOW TO DRESS A CARTOON CHARACTER

Traditional animal characters were often naked below the waist. Maybe that's one reason they were so appealing and funny. You wanted to laugh before they even did anything.

Modern designs are sometimes pantsless but they're designed in such a way as to de-emphasize the nudity.

For human characters the obvious way to go is clothes that are either too small or too big. I like the way Curly's jacket fits in this photo.

All my thrift store jackets are deliberately either too small or too big. I wish I could show you a picture of the miniature Uncle Eddie jacket John gave me a long time ago, but I don't have it anymore and I think I'll take a minute to tell you why. It spotlights an age-old wives trick that men need to know about.

It works like this: the wife waits til her husband is busy with something then asks him a few questions that have an obvious "no" answer, questions like: "Are you saving this ball of lint?" "Do want this pencil stub?" "How 'bout his used Kleenex?" She gets a nice litany of automatic "no's" going then casually throws in the important item, in this case: "Do you want to save this ugly old Uncle Eddie jacket?" The first ten times my wife tried this I reacted with horror that she could even think of such a thing, but she persisted and one day when I was seriously distracted I found myself saying, "Huh... oh, yeah...sure...whatever..." and that was the last time I ever saw my jacket. Now I live in fear that my more-precious-than-rubies Wrinkle Jacket will suffer the same fate.

But I digress.

 I like one-of-a-kind outfits myself.

Cartoonists should be fashion leaders, not fashion followers.

I like suit jackets (above) that flare out and stay flared.

What kind of dress shirt? One way to go is bulky one-size-fits-all shirts that always look ironed and new, like they just came out of the wrapper.

A certain kind of character should tuck in his shirt even though that's not the style now. In real life tucking it in requires constant adjustment and that's a great bit of business for a character with OCD.

Besides, tucked in shirts look great when they're pulled out (above) and allowed to hang loose. They retain their beautiful wrinkles at the shirt's bottom.

BTW, how do you like the crumpled forearm fabric and long cuffs?

Dress shirts come with all sorts of biases. This one is tight at the shoulders and loose everywhere else.

I wish I could have found a picture of a ballooning "parachute" backed tuck-in but, Alas!, it was not meant to be. Maybe next time.