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THE AMAZING GALAXY S4

Have you seen the latest Galaxy phone, the S4 model? It has something called
"Drama Shot" which allows for a burst of character exposures, all in the same picture. You get pictures like the one of the dog above, or...

...or like the Playtex Living Girdle ads (above) that were in every bus when I was a kid.

Geez, I wish I had an S4! If I had one maybe I could persuade my friends to smash into the ground for a photo like the kid above.

But the Samsung isn't the only technological marvel. Steve Worth introduced me to a new kind of camera called the Ricoh Theta. It's a $400 camera that takes 360 degree pictures without distortion...well, I should say with a minimum of distortion.

The picture taken by the double fish eye camera comes out distorted like the picture above and an easy-to-use computer program straightens it out and makes it presentable...normal looking, even. On your laptop screen you can scroll right and left or up and down and see everything in all directions that surrounded the camera when the picture was taken.

One use for it might be internet who-dunnits with clues in the pictures. The pictures are pixel hogs, though. One of the pictures Steve showed me was a jpeg and it still took up over 6 MB. Isn't Blogger's limit 10 MB? That would mean only one spherical picture per post.



Last but not least (above), a home virtual reality viewer called "Oculus Rift." It looks like Microsoft has already made a deal with the Oculus people to do an Xbox game in that format.

Here a 90 year-old woman experiences virtual reality for the first time. Imagine that...she  was born into the world of The Charleston and Flappers and now she's looking at a virtual world in our time.

DEATH MASKS

With the approach of Halloween I looked up "masks" on Google and inadvertently stumbled on these. They're death masks, probably of well-known people, but I don't recognize them. 

They all look like people I'd like to have known. How sad to see them like this, with their nobility intact but bereft of life.

In a comment Steve Worth says this (above) is Beethoven,

 The faces are so striking. A passage from the Bible comes to mind: "What is man that Thou art mindful of him?"

 This man (above) looks like death came on him in his sleep.

 This woman (above) appears to be smiling. Could that be? Would anybody ever smile at the moment of death? In a comment Kelly Toon has this to say about the mask:

The smiling woman has a very interesting history. She was a girl of about 15, whose body was taken from the Siene river. Her face had such a serenity and peace despite her tragic end, that she became a well-known and sought after mask. Many artists used her as reference and inspiration. 

The faces also remind me of the lines from Hamlet: "What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals. And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust?"

DISNEYLAND PRINCESSES

I just visited Disneyland again, and here we are (above) at Princess Island, or as I call it..."Princessneyland." This is the part of Disneyland devoted to little girls who wear princess costumes and come to hobknob with adult princesses. The place is just crawling with royalty!!!

Oh, yes...the "censored" symbols are there to cover up a friend who wandered into camera range and got into the shot. None of my friends will allow me to post their pictures so I'm forced to cover them up with these stupid signs.

Here's a theater where, between shows, kids get to chat with adult princesses. This is a terrible photo but I put it up so you could catch a glimpse of the three peasant girls who dance to entertain the people in line. They twirl around in flare skirts like they were at a ball dancing to a Strauss waltz. I wanted to stay to get a better picture but my friends were getting antsy. Princessney Land was just not their thing. 

 As you would expect, princess outfits were sold.

Now here's the interesting part...in the back of the princess shop I stumbled into a photographer's dream...the kind of thing the old LIFE magazine would have assigned their top photographers to. I refer to the fact that Disneyland has set up a beauty parlor there just for little princesses.

Imagine that...a kids' beauty parlor in the middle of Disneyland!

I could easily have spent an hour taking pictures but the place creeped out my friends who practically pulled me out of there.

 Outside, adult princesses were all over the place.

Boy, it looks like this little girl (above) has fallen head over heels for the Prince.

Here's (above) the princess with the hardest job: Snow White. She not only has to smile all day, but she has to speak in a high-pitched voice, like the character in the film.

After all these years Snow White is still a big attraction. Interesting, eh?

PICASSO THEATRE

The set design in "Rabbit of Seville" is great, but who did it? I'm guessing Maurice Noble designed it and Phil DeGaurd (spelled right?) painted it, but maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, whoever did it was obviously referencing Picasso.

[Thanks to Roberto who commented that Gribbroek was responsible.]

Even before Picasso some set designs looked like they were made of cardboard. They looked like blown-up versions of the little paper tabletop models designers liked to make. Picasso seems to have taken a like to that look and accentuated it rather than covered it up.

You see that in Picasso's theater sketches. The sets look like paper dollhouses.

I couldn't find any sketch that looked exactly like the one in the Jones cartoon, but I came up with some similar ones.

Geez, that chandelier looks obscene!

HYPNOSIS FILMS

I love to see the evolution of a filmmaker, even in the unlikely environs of the adult film industry. This ambitious dirty filmmaker wisely picked a genre that nobody else cared much about: the naked hypnosis genre. 

The plot is simple: a girl is hypnotized and takes her clothes off. 

The director made a dozen or so of these simple hypnosis films.

Maybe out of boredom, he started adding gags. The problem is the girls weren't actors and couldn't pull them off...the gags, I mean.

No matter...the filmmaker persisted. He added brief little stories to the films.

 Here the hypnotized girl wonders around the house tidying things up.

Apparently the hypnotist in the story, who you never see, figured out that he could get house cleaning as well as nudity for his trouble.

The girl even thanks him for it. It's kinda-sorta funny but there's only so far you can go with non-actors. 

What you're about to see is the Citizen Kane of cheesey naked hypnosis films. The previous films must have made some money because the filmmaker can now afford to hire real comedic talent. He can also afford an aquarium and a puffy couch.

As usual, the watch is taken out and the girls are hypnotized.

The hypnotist plants the idea that the room is way too warm. Perhaps they'd be more comfortable sans clothing.

This (above) is my favorite shot. The girl on the left has a great comedic expression and the girl on the right strikes a pose that's intended to support her friend's attitude rather than compete with it. Very professional!

 They move to the next room where they disrobe.

A cat shouts outside and the girls wake up. "Hawhaw! Sally, look at you! You're naked!" Whaddaya mean, 'look at me?' Look at you!" "What the heck," they're thinking, "how'd we get like this!?' "

Okay, maybe it's not Citizen Kane, but you have to admit, there is evidence of developing skill here.

HAVE A GOOD HALLOWEEN, EVERYBODY!

Behind you! Watch out!!!!

The man she's kissing (above) comes apart in her arms.

There was said to be a face in the clouds erupting from the World Trade Center. Here's a similar one.

Slow motion running has always struck me as creepy so I include it here.

Above, a real mummy's head!

Yikes!