THEORYBOY FOR SENIORS

WARNING: "Nothing obscene here, but it's probably not office or school safe.

UNCLE EDDIE: "Hi Folks! I've done special blog posts for both men and women in the past and they were pretty well received. I even did a couple just for kids. It occurred to me that I never did one for seniors. I'll remedy that right now.

Welcome to the ST. ANDREW HOME FOR SENIOR MEN."

GEORGE: "Hi, Uncle Eddie! Gee, a whole blog just for us! I'm overwhelmed."

UNCLE EDDIE: " 'Glad to be of service. What do you want to see? How about some pictures of trout fishing in the local lake? I have pictures of all the lures that people use there!"

GEORGE: "Why don't we do trout a little later? I'm thinking we might start off with a little...you know...a little pulchritude."

UNCLE EDDIE: "Pulchritude? Oh, yeah...right. Okay, Here's Wendy (above). She loves posing for stuff like this."

GEORGE: "Wow! She's great! Er, wait a minute....it looks like she's having a problem with one of her socks." 

UNCLE EDDIE: "Oh, yeah...I remember that. She had a back problem and she couldn't bend over to straighten it. We didn't think anyone would notice."

GEORGE: : "I always notice stuff like that. You should have brought me along. Haw! I'd have straightened it. Get it? Heh, heh, heh!"

UNCLE EDDIE: "Haw! Geez, George...what a horndog! And at your age, too!"

GEORGE: "Wait a minute, Uncle Eddie...Ted here wants to ask you a question...."

TED: "Hi, Uncle Eddie! Well, what I'm wandering is...well...do you have any pictures of a girl with...you know...a rack?"

UNCLE EDDIE: "A rack!!?? Er...well, um...I guess so.  Here's Magnolia. Is she rackable enough for you?"

SID: "Yeah, yeah, she's fine, Uncle Eddie. Okaaaay....now it's time to go for broke! I'm picturing...I'm picturing a young chippie, a full blown Dominatrix replete with spiked dog collar, a big old snake, and leather everything. Whaddaya say, whaddaya say?"

UNCLE EDDIE: "Huh? Leather? A SNAKE!!!!???? I don't know, Sid. I mean, this is a family blog and all that. I don't want to..."

SID: "Aw, I knew you'd wimp out."

UNCLE EDDIE: "I didn't say I was going to wimp out! I just....(Sigh!) Oh, okay..."

LATER:

AS UNCLE EDDIE PACKS UP TO LEAVE:

NURSE: "Did everything go alright? It was so nice of you to talk to the men. They're so starved for intellectual stimulation."

HOME IMPROVEMENTS

I'm rereading Sarah Susanka's book, "The Not So Big House" and it's inspired me to try a couple of home improvements. For specific ideas I need look no farther than the architectural posts on this very Theory Corner site. Maybe it's time to try some of them out instead of just writing about them all the time.

Hmmmm....well, the obvious thing to do would be to would be to replace my living room windows with big natural wood ones like kind on the book cover above. Yikes! That looks pricey! And beams...they're out for the same reason. Too bad. They look great.

Susanka's right about the appeal of small houses (above) where every inch of space gets used. 

You can do all kinds of things with the big kind of wooden kids blocks (above), and I already have a bunch of those. I once saw a fireplace bracketed with blocks in a shape like this.

I have a level change in my back yard and I'm considering changing the retaining wall so it resembles something the Mayans would have done. I could keep the existing wall and brace the new structure against it.

I picture dumping a pile of maybe four different kinds of old weathered bricks on the ground and making a pattern out of them. Maybe I could I could make a few unique bricks with plaster of Paris. Does anybody sell triangular bricks?

I stumbled on this (above) while I was searching for structural foam on the net. Hmmm...white, textured interior wall panels. That sounds promising. All the walls don't have to look like this, just one small one.

I also came across a site that sells colored glass bricks. They were popular in the 60s and 70s with people who had waterbeds and bongs, which is not exactly my thing. Even so, maybe I can think of a use for them.

When my kids were little I painted the nursery walls with pictures of animals (above). It looked so good that I was always thinking of excuses to spend time in there because I liked staring at the walls. Later on the walls were painted over but maybe I should try something like that again.

Oldtime readers of Playboy like myself imbibed Hugh Hefner's aesthetic which required a large abstract painting in the living room, so maybe I need one of those.

Maybe something along the lines of Gary Panter's "Elvis Zombie (above)."

Or a Fearless Fosdick painting.

Or a Cliff Sterett-type picture. My left sidebar is full of interesting possibilities.

I like this curtain pattern by Lucy Cousin. It's a bit girly but it's cartoony and has a good vibe. It wouldn't fit with a zombie painting, though.

I wonder if there's some way I could use those thin, quarry-cut sheets of rock bricks (above) that you see everywhere nowadays. I'd have to use them sparingly because they appear phony when you look close.

How about a pre-fab Japanese fence for the yard (above)...you can't beat that.

Above, Picasso-type panels on the upper floor railing. Great idea!

Maybe built-in bookshelves... if I could afford it. They sure look good. Interior French doors, too.

I like the idea of out-of-the-way shelves that are designed for irregular piles of paper that haven't been sorted yet. This would be a hard sell for my family who wouldn't understand why I saved all that paper in the first place.

EDDIE FITZGERALD CARICATURES

Caricatures OF me by other artists, that is. Here's one by John K. He's convinced that I survive entirely on a diet of mayonnaise sandwiches and fast food. 

Uh-oh...John again. Oh, Man! Is that (above) cruel!!!!! But it can't be accurate. I know I look like Sean Connery in the James Bond movies, regardless of what my lying mirror says.

  

More John. He never said this (above) was me, but really.... 

Mike did this one of me reading a funny script by Henry Gilroy. Man, he totally NAILED Henry.

Ted Blackman did this one (above). It makes me look like Harold Lloyd. Ted's an amazing guy. Hes an animation producer but he could easily have been a newspaper cartoonist or a stand up comedian.

Never, ever get a cartoonist mad at you. The retaliation would be too horrible to think about. Here I am (above) with Mike Bell as drawn by the other Mike. In a comment Mike says he didn't do this...but then who did?

Haw! Bruce Timm drew this. It's embarrassing because I really did say what's attributed to me here, but I should have given more attention to how it would sound to others. Art is obviously about beauty, not ugliness. I only meant to say that comedy is about ugly people doing stupid things....beautiful ugly people doing intelligently stupid things.

SALOON PAINTINGS

A while back I did a blog about the nude pictures that used to hang in cowboy bars in the old West.  Well, I just got a request for info about currently available posters of that kind. The comment rekindled my interest and I did a little research. Here's what I found:

So far as I know(above) the most famous picture of that type, one made just for the saloon that hung it, is the one above, which is the very picture that used to hang in The Long Branch Saloon in Dodge City Kansas. The reproduction costs $50 and unfortunately isn't very big.

You wouldn't think that a dirty, Godforsaken place like a Western cowtown could support a fancy bar with paintings on the wall, but they did. I imagine that the nudes paid for themselves because satiated cowboys would have felt the need for one final drink to "toast the lady."

I don't think any Western bar ever owned a Titian but I wouldn't be surprised if some had big, tinted etchings of some of his pictures. Today you can probably get a decent sized poster of the classic reclining nude by Titian: the one called "The Venus of Urbino."

I like this picture; in fact, it's been a long-time feature in my left sidebar. It succeeds in being erotic and earthy on the one hand, and completely intelligent and thought-provoking on the other.

Giorgione did a similar picture (above). So did Goya. So did Matisse, but the Matisse pictures aren't funny. Bar nudes should be able to provoke jokes.

If the commenter has his own bar and the drinkers are male, then he'll probably want to consider a copy of Bouchet's "Reclining Girl," painted for Louis XV in 1752. I'm a fan of Bouchet but I'd never hang a poster of this picture at home. It would be too distracting and what if kids were visiting?

Then there's Beaumont's "Muse" (above) which isn't very edgy but (above) has the virtue of being family safe.

Joel Brinkerhoff reminded me of this bar painting (above) by Disney's Marc Davis. Wow! Very nice!

How about one of Picasso's reclining nudes (above)? Haw! Picasso was a cartoonist at heart.

CARNIVAL BARKERS

I don't know about you but I love to listen to carnival barkers, Shamwow salesman, racetrack announcers, auctioneers, streetcorner preachers, medicine show pitchmen....anyone who can entertain with the quality of their voice alone. I just came across a forgotten file of a carnival barker's script...read it and see what you think. The setting is a sideshow on Coney Island.

Yikes! That was kinda' hard to read, wasn't it? Like it was underwater. Sorry about that...It was an old file and I must have done a bad job of scanning it. Anyway, keep reading...it's worth the effort. 

The barker sets the stage by shooing away the kids in the audience...only there were no kids...then he resumes:

Haw! None of these pictures gel with the text but I thought you'd like to see them anyway. I love the jaded look on this barker's face (above) and the determined look on the woman's. It's hard to imagine nowadays, but a tattooed woman was once a shocking novelty. Anyway, back to the text....

Great, eh? Boy, it makes me wish I'd run away to the circus and been a barker!