SUPERGURL VS. THE EVIL UNCLE EDDIE

THE EVIL UNCLE EDDIE (VO): "Boy this house is a mess! Greasy pizza boxes, beer cans...but I have no time to clean. I gotta finish this book on hypnotism! Wait a minute...somebody's at the door."

GLADIOLA: "Hi, Evil Uncle Eddie! I just happened to be passing, but if you're busy..."

EVIL UNCLE EDDIE: "No, no! I'm not busy at all, but Gladiola....you look tired. VERY tired. As a matter of fact (HE GESTURES), your eyelids are growing heeeeavy. VEEEERY HEAVY."

GLADIOLA ( SLEEPY MONOTONE): "Yes, heavy. Very heavy.

UNCLE EDDIE: "Here, take this baseball bat, and make those eyelids close."

BONK! BONK! BONK!

GLDIOLA (MONOTONE ): "Make them close. Make them close."

CLUNK!!! SHE FALLS ON THE FLOOR.

EVIL UNCLE EDDIE: "Well whaddaya know? That hypnotism stuff really works! Hmmmm...I think I just figured out how to get the house cleaned up. Get up, Gladiola! We gotta find you a maid's costume!"

LATER: INT. EVIL UNCLE EDDIE'S HOUSE: SUPERGURL LETS HERSELF IN:

SUPERGURL: "Youhoooo! Anybody home? Supergurl here! We need to talk, Buster! I've heard some things about you!!!!!

SUPERGURL: "Huh? What's that? It looks like one of those stupid hypnosis machines."

SUPERGURL: "Haw! You can't hypnotise someone from Krypton. Everybody knows that!"

SUPERGIRL: "That's funny...I have an overwhelming urge...to....to CLEAN!!!!!"

WHOMP!!! SHE FALLS ON THE FLOOR!

EVIL UNCLE EDDIE: "Haw!!! Even Supergurl can't resist the power of hypnotism!!!!"

ON SUPERGURL IN A MAID COSTUME, HAPPILY CLEANING THE HOUSE.

SUPERGURL: (Hums "Tip Toe Through the Tulips").

EVIL UNCLE EDDIE (VO): "Everybody thinks the danger that's coming in the future is from robots. Haw! That's not even close!!!!"

EVIL UNCLE EDDIE (VO): "No, the real danger is from zombie maids hypnotised by ME!!! There's no defence against them! They'll take over every household that lets them in...and they all will let them in!"

EVIL UNCLE EDDIE (VO): "Soon they'll be an army capable of taking over the world!!!!"

And when they do, THEORY CORNER will be the only blog allowed on the internet.!!! No more of those stupid cat videos! No more Faceybook!!!! BWA Hahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!  BWA  HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!


TO BE CONTINUED.....

[Below, a teaser from the next episode...]

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EVIL UNCLE EDDIE: "So you see, Supergurl, that was all a fabrication made up by people who are jealous of me.  I'm just a gentle soul who would never dream of...excuse me, a minute...Gladiola, would you come here a moment? Would you take care of that fly on Supergurl's head?

GLADIOLA (SLEEPY MONOTONE): "Fly...Supergurl...head..."

CARICATURES 10/2015

Haw! 'More John caricatures of me. Big earlobes, a bell on top, egg salad on the mouth, plenty of warts...check! They're all here!

Here's a caricature I did of Jim Reardon and his family. I had to stop when I discovered that Jim had two girls and not a son. Geez, I hadn't seen the guy for so long that I was completely out of touch!

Haw! A Mike caricature of me.

This is a really old one! That's John K drawing me going on and on about Carl Barks. There's John Dorman in his Charlie Brown gear.

BERYL COOK

I don't know what I think about Beryl Cook. She had talent and an interesting point of view, but her subject was post middle-aged British housewives, the kind that Monty Python used to make fun of, and I don't know if I'm ready for that.

Cook's women are a bundle of contradictions. On the one hand they're kind of uneducated and unexciting, and on the other hand they're immensely good-hearted and somehow imbued with the character that's been the spine of British culture for centuries.

Her earlier period is my favorite. Cook painted traditional women who are colliding with modern times.

No matter how many new ways they adapt there always seem to be more that they're expected to catch up to.

Cook managed to capture the kind of cozy, sentimental life that lots of older Britains have evolved.

Her housewives always have lots of friends. Nobody in her pictures suffers from loneliness.

Haw! She's famous for her "Ladies Night Out" pictures.

Cook is sometimes compared to Donald McGill (that's his work, above), the prolific creator of British seaside postcards in the 40s. About McGill, George Orwell wrote (click to enlarge):

There are obvious differences between Cook and McGill but there are similarities, too. Both had an obvious affection for their subjects and both saw themselves as popular entertainers in the music hall tradition.

BTW: I like what Orwell said about Shakespeare injecting that kind of music hall comedy into tragedies. It's a combination that works.

For comparison, here's how two other painters handled themes a bit similar to the ones that Cook tackled.  The first (above) is by a contemporary Australian painter and is called, appropriately, "Ladies Night Out."  Sorry, I don't know the artist's name.

The painter's very skilled but he's not as cartoony as Cook, and cartoons are a more efficient way of handling themes like this.

The second is by Cecil Bell, one of my favorite New York City painters. If Cook had handled a similar theme, with women on board a ferry on a windy day, she would surely have had one of the women face the wind like this (below).

That's because Cook was a cartoonist at heart. She wouldn't have been able to help herself.

A TERRIFIC FILM OPENING

I've a huge interest in film gambits, "gambits" being a chess term for the opening moves of a game. The term can apply to storytelling as well. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" was a gambit, as was "Call me Ishmael." Here's the the gambit for the terrific TV miniseries, "Olive Kitteridge."

The story is about a woman suffering from chronic depression in a small New England town.

It opens with silhouettes of buildings set against unsettling dawn skies. You get the feeling that something's wrong in this town, and has been for a long time.

The pounding surf intensifies the mood.

Now here's (above) where the really original part begins. A fishing boat is seen in an ominously tempestuous sea. One still frame can't do this image justice. A ship in a daytime shot usually symbolizes hope and escape. Not so here.

Far from being a symbol for escape, the boat may be seen as a sentry preventing escape and confining the townspeople to their prison.

The film trucks out of a porcelain image of the ship. The painted image is a happy one but the audience knows better. Seeing the creepy ship in this nice old-fashioned context firms up our conviction that whatever's wrong in this town has deep roots, and that the towns people might even have had a hand in covering it up. 

  

Smash cut to a street in the town where a woman is discovered lying dead on the ground. The music and art direction lead us to believe that she was somehow killed by a supernatural thing. It capriciously felled an innocent woman and left her limp as a rag doll on the ice.

This isn't a horror film, so the supernatural element I'm talking about isn't part of the plot. Even so, it's important. Sherlock Holmes stories are like that.  There always a supernatural subtext in them, and it makes the stories more interesting.

Fascinating, eh?

JOHN KRICFALUSI, KELLY ARMSTRONG

Haw! I don't believe it! This is the most insulting caricature I've ever gotten and yet it's so funny that I wouldn't part with it for anything. How does John do it?




Here, thanks much to commenter "ibcf" and his source Bob Jacques, is an unedited deleted scene from "Tales of Worm Paranoia."  Animator: Kelly Armstrong. Boy, Kelly did a great job on this! It's a pity it had to be deleted for time.

ECLECTIC DECORATING

I'll be moving to a part of the country that gets gloomy in the Winter and I want be sure the new house is cheerful and colorful. My plan is to compensate for the overcast by using a lot of interior white to bounce the available light around. I'll also go for an eclectic look that'll justify the use of bright color accents.

I like the room above a lot. If I can get something like that going I'll feel like I've accomplished something.

This room (above) has some interesting ideas. It's far from perfect, but it's white and colorful, succeeds in being challenging, and has a nice artsy feel.

 Hmmmm...a bit too girly and minimalist. I like some of the color, though, and the black Franklin Stove is a nice touch. I'll have to think about this.

I'm not a weaver or a fabric designer but I need an excuse to surround myself with the kind of color that you find in those trades.

My work area will probably be influenced by Julius Schulman's set up (above)...only with lots of color.

Some colorful Ralph Bakshi frame grabs on the bulletin board wouldn't hurt. Boy, Ralph has a good feel for color!  His "Last Days of Coney Island" film will debut on Vimeo at the end of the month.

HALLOWEEN ART MASKS

Geez, it looks like I won't have time to get a really good costume together for Halloween. If I had I might have tried a painted face of some sort. Maybe something painterly, like the kind of thing Philip Burke does. What do you think of his Arnold Schwarzenegger (above)?

I do worry, though. What if I put all that paint on and couldn't get it off? I'd have to go through life like that. Does gouache wash off easy? Is it poisonous?

Painted masks look great on girls!

Picasso's style makes for great painted faces (above). Even when it doesn't completely work, the attempt is usually worth seeing.

Here's (above) an interesting effort. Geez, Picasso would have made a great fashion designer.

I wonder if Picasso-type face makeup will become the standard for women someday. Stranger things have happened.

This girl (above) is dressed in cardboard. She deviates from the original in some ways but she looks like she had fun and she proves a point: Picasso could design real clothes.

For comparison, here's (above) the original.

I never thought of Picasso as a fashion designer til now. He was so prolific that you'd expect to see all sorts of wearables based on his designs, but I searched the net and didn't find a single one. Isn't some of his work public domain now? 

Lots of designers did their own version of Picasso's general style (above), but that's not what I had in mind. Not tee shirts, either.

Wow! This kid looks great!

Here's a takeoff on Picasso's "Weeping Woman" from 1937. 

For comparison (above).

On the net I came across some Picasso-type cars. I kinda' like this one.