"THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE!"

One of the most horrifying stories in all of literature is Aesop's "The Tortoise and the Hare." I take this fable very, very seriously. Thinking about it fills me with painful recollections of past defeats and humiliations. I've been beaten many times by tortoises and I know from first hand experience what powerful competitors they are.



For one thing tortoises exist in daunting numbers and often share common values and goals. Hares are fewer and tend to be loners. At the outset of the race hares run roughshod over the sluggish competition only to find themselves in mid-race mired in the mud with few allies or sympathetic friends to help. It's very scary!

Obviously I sometimes picture myself as the hare in the story but I'm not bringing this up to indulge in self-pity. What I really want to do is acknowledge that tortoises are not always the boobs that hares think they are. Whenever I get to thinking about this I remember the stories about common heroism in WW2 when ordinary sailors would run through oil fires to save their buddies on the other side. I think about parents who make enormous sacrifices for their kids or a whole society that changed its mind about race prejudice in just acouple of generations just because it was the right thing to do. No doubt about it, tortoises are often good people... when they're not being an obstacle to progress.

MY FAVORITE BERNICE ABBOTT PICTURE

It's a picture of the Bowery "EL", Second and Third Street Lines. You'll have to click to enlarge it, it probably won't look like much if it's seen small. The picture below is a detail of the one above.


This together with a couple of the New York City ferry pictures by Cecil Bell (already posted, in the archive) are my favorite pictures of that city. Philadelphia used to have el trains complete with stations and tracks that look just like the ones on New York, and I used to look forward to riding them. The elevated stations were designed to resemble German railroad stations of the 19th century. Maybe Frank Furness, the famous Philadelphia architect and champion of railroad architecture designed some of these.

Furness believed in designing ordinary residences and business buildings to look like old railroad stations and modernists widely criticized him for it. I can't imagine why. German railroad stations are one of the most pleasing structures ever built by man and it makes no sense to confine their use to only one purpose.

I love the film noir slatted shadows cast on the street by the tracks and steel above. How often do you come across architecture that distinguishes itself by the fascinating shadows it casts? Walking up the steps and through the corridors of these elevated wood and steel cathedrals was a real treat and I for one miss it.

ITCHING

Lots of people have "dreaded-consequences-of-scratching" stories, so many that I'm beginning to think that scratching an itch is one the most perilous things you can do. It was in my case. Here's the story...

Years ago a famous German director made a low-budget, 8-hour movie called "Our Hitler." The critics raved about it and I was curious to see it. Evidently the public didn't share my curiosity because, even though I saw it on opening day, there were only about ten people in the audience. I found a seat in a completely empty section of the theater and prepared to be blown away by high art.

Well, to put it mildly, there was no art. The whole film was an amateurish, stream-of-consciousness home movie about whatever trivial thing the director felt like talking about. Sitting through it was torture; I wanted to strangle the critics who recommended it! I found my self endlessly re-adjusting my position in the seat, refolding my jacket, and scratching imaginary itches. Sometimes I'd get itches on my arm and, since I had nothing else to do, I'd roll up the sleeve of my shirt just to get a good scratch on just the right place. I particularly liked scratching my five-o'clock shadow which was bristley and made a noise. Once or twice I tried scratching like a dog just to see what they saw in it.

Hour after hour the film plodded on and I got more and more restless and itchy. I was scratching like a madman. Just when I was in the middle of the mother of all raking scratches a giant moose of a face appeared from the seat behind me and shouted at the top of its lungs: "Stop it! S T O P I T!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IF YOU SCRATCH ONE MORE ITCH SO HELP ME I'M GONNA KILL YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" 

I froze and slid way down into the seat, too scared to move. I didn't even breathe. I just tucked my head into my shoulders and looked rigidly forward. Where did this guy come from? In a nearly empty theater why did this giant have to sit right behind me? I stayed there completely still for the rest of the film. When the film finally ended and the light came on I discovered the seat behind me was empty. There were only about three people left in the whole theater. I guess my outraged citizen found the film intolerable, even without the scratching.

So that's my itching story. What's yours?

HOW TO COMMIT THE PERFECT CRIME

I hope only people of good character are reading this because I'm going to spill the beans about how a perfect murder might be committed. I call it perfect because in this scheme the law itself is the guarantor of the murder's freedom. It goes like this...

A man who we'll call Fred wants to kill his friend Joe. In order to do this he enlists the help of another man who looks just like Fred. The two look-alike Freds, wearing identical clothes, arrange to to be in public places at opposite sides of town at, say, noon the following day. It would help if the public places happen to have a large clock which displays the time.


At the appointed time each of the Freds, in opposite sides of town, loudly declares that he is Fred (using Fred's entire real name) and the real Fred shoots his victim, which I forgot to say was skillfully maneuvered to also be at the right place at the right time. The other Fred deliberately breaks a store window. Both the Freds make their getaway. Passer-bys will tell police that that they saw a man named Fred, who dressed in such-and-such a way, and will site the time, which was on a big clock. Can you see where this is leading?

Neither of the Freds can be tried for murder because each can prove he was somewhere else at the time. The police know that one of them did it but can prosecute neither since both Freds have an air-tight alibi! The murderer must be turned loose!

OK, that's my perfect crime! What's yours?

FREE MEALS FOR LIFE!

No wonder so many thinking people read Uncle Eddie's Theory Corner... where else could you find a sure-fire method to get free meals for life? OK, here it is...

From the hardware store buy a yard or so of transparent rubberized tubing (not pictured), the kind you wrap around naked wires for insulation. It only costs a couple of bucks. Run the tube down the inside of a long-sleeve shirt till one end peaks out from the cuff and the other end discretely peeks out of your open shirt collar. Now you have all you need to suck up the drink of the person beside you without being noticed. "OK," you say, "that gets me a drink but how do I get a meal?" Read on!

The meal comes to you courtesy of Extend A Fork (shown extended above), which is available from any fun shop. You probably saw them the last time you made a rubber chicken run and just never noticed them. It's a normal-size fork that telescopes out like a car aerial. You simply divert the attention of the meal sharer and feast!

The obvious question to ask is why, if the technique is so fool-proof, do I not take advantage of this meal-sharing technique today? The answer has to do with a tragic story regarding Mike Fontanelli. We were at a restaurant near Warners and I had my hidden straw in his tomato juice. Every time he took a sip of his juice he would return the glass to the same spot next to my "wired" arm. All was going well till he randomly put the glass down on the other side of his tray where I couldn't reach it.

I asked him why he put his juice down on that side and he gave me a strange look and said, "What do you care where I put my juice down?" I answered, "Me? Me!? Hey, I don't care! You can put your drink down anywhere you want! I'm just inquiring about the reason." Well, we bickered like this for a while and I didn't notice that a siphon effect was still operating and the tomato juice still in the tube was gushing out all over my white shirt. Eventually Mike saw the red stain on my chest and freaked out. He thought I'd been stabbed! He behaved nobly in my defense till he saw the fleks of tomato around the stain and did a double-take. You can guess the rest. Mike now always sets his drink down on the far side and has a wary eye out for the extending fork. Not only that but he warned everybody else. Alas! The well has run dry!

DAVID GEMMILL'S HOLLWOOD CLUB DRAWINGS

You gotta give it to David. He had trouble breaking into the industry at first so he hunkered down and studied cartooning and animation and now he's turning out cool drawings like these. I got these from David's blog, cartoondavid.blogspot.com.






Sorry I had to reproduce these so small. A bandwidth problem again. Click to enlarge. I only wish I could have included the hilarious commentary that went with these.

PICTURES BY CHLOE CUMMING

Boy, some interesting people comment here! I was curious to see what British commenter Chloe Cumming's blog was like so I went there and was amazed to find these! Not too shabby, I would say!

Here (above) is a page from her sketchbook. I love to look at artists' sketchbooks, especially when they're as interesting as this. The swatches of color on the top just burn out of the page! How did she do that?
Here's (above) a glimpse at Chloe's workspace. Isn't that a beautiful table?

MORE KATIE RICE!

Left to right (above): Kali, Katie and Marlo.

Country singers Kali and Katie (above).

Swiped from Kali's blog, Katie's amazingly accurate caricature of Kali.

A NEW BOOK ABOUT WALLY WOOD!

Hot off the presses, here it is! It appears to be a whole book of anecdotes about Wood by the people who loved him and worked with him over the years. This may be the ultimate book on Wood! I'll let you know when I've had a chance to read it! Thanks Milt! It's a great present!

I think I'll pay a visit to 15150 Parthenia in Van Nuys. I wonder if the apartment house is still standing?

NEW KATIE DRAWINGS!

Voila! Caricatures (above) of Marlo, Kali and Katie, who also drew these! Click to enlarge! They still won't be as big as they should be but this is the best I could do with the bandwidth I have. I'll put up more soon!Marlo and Katie here (above) (dress designers note...this is the proper height for all dresses in the front)! How does Katie manage to distill so much happiness in a drawing? You could say these are philosophical drawings because they depict a world devoid of stress and conflict. That's the artist's job, to show the rest of us a vision of what the world could could be, to give us something to shoot for. Here's Kali looking infinitely sunny and eager. Notice the great leg and topknot theories! Katie made an interesting choice here. Everytime I've seen Kali she's been upbeat and enthusiastic but, being human she must have the whole range of positive and negative emotions that the rest of us do and Katiie must have seen that negative side at some time or other. Katie wisely chose a single emotion to represent Kali. She chose happiness. She didn't choose it because it's a convention of caricaturists , but because it represented a side of Kali that appealed to Katie's own idealism, to her own vision of a better world...at least that's what I think happened.

OPERA AT JOHN'S HOUSE

Here they are, the pictures of the famous opera "Die Flabberpuss" staged at John's Halloween party. Photos courtesy of renowned stage photographer Marlo Meekins.

Here (above) the young shepherd boy discovers a beautiful forest nymph (Marlo) asleep on the branch of a tree. The lad feels something peculiar stirring within him but he's on a quest and must not dilly-dally.

Here (above) the idealistic young shepherd boy encounters Katilda (Katie), the beautiful siren of the forest. She entices him to sup with her in her cave beneath a gnarly, mist-enshrouded tree. Once again the lad feels peculiar longings but he remembers his quest and bolts into the woods. Running through the dense forest the boy hears screams behind him. Curious, he climbs a tree and sees Fabberpuss (above), the towering, mushroom-covered, evil, girl-eating troll menacing three quivering fairies (Kali, Katie, and Marlo). Well, there's no time to tell the whole story. Maybe I'll continue this later. Thanks Marlo for letting me swipe these photos from your blog!

MORE BUKRAM HALLOWEEN MASKS

These masks all look like photos of corpses from the real-life, forensic experiment called the "Body Farm" in Kentucky. They're genuinely creepy. The photography is excellent. I wish I could talk to the guy who took the pictures.

A NEW (FOR ME) DISNEY COFFEE TABLE BOOK

These pictures are all from the coffee table book called "Chicken Little" by Monique Peterson. I feel sorry for Peterson because she had the thankless job of trying to put a positive spin on what appears to be a story of endless woe in the making of that recent film. I never worked on a 3-D film so I can only guess what it's like. If the book is right it couldn't be much fun. The programs are clunky and unresponsive and seldom do what the animators want them to do.
Maybe the strong suit of the 3-D programs is backgrounds and props but even there the results are mixed. The car (below) looks great but the theater (above) looks somewhat cold like something made out of a Leggo set. I can't imagine the cottage of the Seven Dwarves having any emotional impact in this style.

Everybody knows that computers are the future of animation but that future isn't here yet. Right now 3-D animation programs confine us to a style of literal, unimaginative drawing that dates back to 1910. Even the stories animation tells have to be crippled to fit the limits of the medium. How can that be considered an advance?

BTW, I just got Amid Amidi's book, "Cartoon Modern" and it looks great! I'll do a blog about it when I have a chance to read it!

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE LATEST MEN'S FASHIONS?

These days men's fashion really sucks. How did that come about? Everything is shapeless and looks like it came from a one-size-fits-all store. I don' t mind skateboarders' fashions because they're funny. You have to admit that wearing parachute-size pants almost below the buttocks is hilarious. No, what I object to is the urban gangsta look. Gangsters should look debonair and swashbuckling. I can't imagine Bogart taking any of these guys into his gang.



What's with the dress-length t-shirts and the tuke (spelled right?) caps that cover the ears, even in the summertime? Well, at least they're flamboyant and that's something. What I really don't understand is the middle class suburban variant exemplified by Chicken Little's clothes. What's with the tight green Arnold-Palmer T and the shapeless, oversized shorts? Click to enlarge it; the shorts look like the bird has a load in his pants. What man who wants to attract women would dress like he was wearing a diaper?

 Ditto the buccaneer shorts that the kid is wearing in the tiny picture. Oops! Blogger deleted the picture but you know what I'm talking about: long, wide pirate shorts and thick, rippled sneakers that look like astronaut boots!

Girls won't wear this stuff. They ransacked the past and came up with tight 70s bellbottoms and bare midriffs.

HALLOWEEN DECALS FROM THE 1950S

Unfortunately these won't look like much unless you enlarge them and even then they're not reproduced big enough for the full impact to get across. I can't figure out why some graphics make such a bold statement when blown up and others don't.

ANOTHER YEAR WITHOUT A DECENT MUSCLE SHIRT!

I've always wanted a set of muscles like the ones on the Doc Savage covers. That and a whole closet of torn t-shirts. The problem is that working out is boring, or at least it seems that way to someone who doesn't do it. There must be another way... And this is it! It's a little elaborate, maybe a tad expensive, but this guy is on the right track I think. A suggestion: loose the padded pants. They detract from the realism. That top combined with natural, skinny legs would be a killer combination!

Every year I hope the Halloween costume industry will put out a good set of fake muscles but they never do. Look at the tacky shirt this kid (above) is wearing. The muscles look like curdled milk. Oh well, maybe next year.

STILL MORE HALLOWEEN MASKS

I love these two masks of womens' faces. They're both funny, vivd and full of energy. I especially like the bukram mask of the girl with black eyebrows. Bukram is a great medium. It allows for mass production but it retains the feel of a customized piece of folk art. There's a web site that has detailed instructions on how to make bukram masks. I may take a stab at it sometime. The monochrome mask with the big teeth is kind of ugly but I offer it here because a frontal view on an upshot face is an interesting juxtaposition. The cardboard witch and the Opper-style cartoon characters are nifty examples of good design that's made to sell for pennies. The witch looks like it was influenced by Nabi theories.