HALLOWEEN COSTUME IDEAS

I was trying to figure out what to wear on Halloween this year and it occurred to me that I should dress up as one of my own characters (above) from Theory Corner. The question is...which one?

The one I'm dying to do is The Mad Scientist (above). The problem is that I never completed his story because I couldn't find the right kind of lab coat. I'd need the long kind with a high collar and double rows of buttons going down the front. I don't see anything like that out there, so how can I dress up like him?

Here's (above) The Righteous Dude. I love this guy and dressing up like him would be easy. Ditto for the beatnik. The problem is that they're both too easy. A good costume takes risks, don't you think?

I could come as The Romance Reader, except...well, geez, that tight flannel nightgown would be hard to wear for a whole night. The one I have probably belonged to a skinny old lady who had a figure like Olive Oyl. 

  

Or maybe The Smoker's bone-crushing adversary,"Beulah (above)." I picture her wearing The Romance Reader's flannel nightgown, only a huge, padded triple X version of it. Hmmmm....I'll have to see what the local thrift store has. It took me forever to find the skinny one the romance lady wears. 

This (above) is a highly Photoshopped picture that I made for my sidebar. The nose is huge, the way John K used to draw it in caricatures. I could make a long nose and maybe attach it to glasses for stability. I might even be able to do a protruding skull in the back. I don't know if it would be comfortable to wear for a whole night, though.

 Maybe The Lone Stranger! 

Maybe I'll come as the Grand, Exalted, Imperial Muskrat of the Royal Order of the Muskrat. I'll tell you what...if anyone here lives in LA and makes a Muskrat costume of their own, send me a link to a picture of you in it and we'll have pizza together at Lido's (Dutch treat, of course). Wouldn't it be great to have group photos of all the local Muskrats doing justice to one of Lido's stringy pizzas?

I haven't posted about the muskrats in a while, so here's a reminder of what a meeting of that exalted order is like:

Of course members of the Royal Order of Raccoons Ladies' Auxiliary are invited too. To become a member you only have to show up wearing what refined middle-aged ladies of the 50s wore. Here's (below) a couple of links concerning the proper dress for both men and women. 

For men:  http://uncleeddiestheorycorner.blogspot.com/2009/10/meeting-of-royal-order-of-muskrat.html

For the ladies: http://uncleeddiestheorycorner.blogspot.com/2009/10/proper-attire-for-ladies-auxiliary.html 

BACKSTREETS OF OLD LONDON

Old London bore little resemblance to the bland London of the present. Old London was a vibrant, creative, moody city with endless visual delights. It was also dank and mildewed, prone to crime and fire. That's okay...it was still more interesting than any modern city.

With buildings so close together fire was an ever present danger.  The solution of the time was periodic wide boulevards which would act as a kind of fire break. Maybe that was a mistake. Boulevards are frequently awkward and unaesthetic wind traps. You have to have some but too many can deface the city they're trying to protect.

Maybe the city would have done better to regulate the kind of oil lamps that were used. Maybe banning candles and certain types of stoves and heaters might have been more helpful. Or maybe do the boulevard thing, but provide frequent walking bridges or tunnels.

Old London made good use of wrought iron. Iron and bricks (above) make a nice match, especially when the bricks and woodwork were painted black.

Old London was also full of balconies. That needs to be explained since London is a North European city and most Northern cities didn't feel the need for them. Maybe the balconies were a symbol for rooms to rent.

I love balconies, especially wooden ones (above) with wooden floors. Oh, to go back in a time machine and be a kid running around the corridors!

Some of the mid-size streets (above) were incredibly beautiful. If London had retained more of the best ones it could have attracted the kind of tourist dollars that Paris gets now.

And while I'm on the subject of Paris...what if Paris had followed the lead of the English and replaced their old town with a modern monstrosity (above) like the kind that Tati parodied in Playtime? Would anyone, even the Parisians, have had a desire to live there? Fortunately Paris kept the 19th Century part of the city and isolated the newer buildings in a modernist ghetto on the Right Bank.

You could wish they'd retained more of the Pre-Nineteenth Century architecture (above), but lets be grateful that they saved what they did.

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Thanks to Kellie Strom for the great link!

HALLOWEEN MASKS AND PORCH SCULPTURES

What a great Halloween decoration this would make! I picture it as a giant lawn sculpture made up of plastic bags of lawn clippings and leaves with a blanket tongue and paper eyes. Hmmmm....maybe it should it should be surrounded by kid furniture, as if it were situated in a living room like it is in the picture. Maybe a man's legs should stick out of its mouth. 

*Sigh!* The cheapest of all masks...the cereal box cutout type...and I see no current examples anywhere. Well, almost anywhere. John did those cardboard masks of Hanna and Barbera.

You don't think of Dada or Futurist architecture (above) when you think of Halloween, but Dada can be very theatrical and for me that earns it a place at the Halloween table. I could see a porch sculpture like this made of painted boxes, with Futurist ghosts coming out of the windows.

Good old Leg Avenue! This (above) is not only a good nurse costume, but it's a nice conversation starter on the subject of how hospital personnel should dress in the real world. We all know that men would recover faster if some of the nurses dressed like this.

I'll add that Leg Avenue still won't sell cardboard standups of their Halloween costume models. Anybody know why?

I might make something like this (above) for my front lawn. It depends how much the materials cost.

Above, a nice shot!

Boy, the mask (above) seems to expand out of the picture plane! 

This (above) is, believe it or not, an African mask. At first glance it looks like something that would have come out of America in the 1920s, but when you look close at the details you see lots of sculptural and painting conventions of African origin. Maybe the artist was influenced by old American cartoons he saw. Maybe he arrived at this caricature style independently. 

MILT TALKS ABOUT 3D TV

INT. BURGER RESTAURANT: 

MILT: "Okay, I gotta clear the table so I can tell you about the big thing that's coming up...."

EDDIE (VO): "Big thing?

MILT: "Yeah! My family and I are soon to become owners of...are you ready for this?...a (Ahem!)...55' Samsung 3D TV!  There's a clearance sale on and I can get it for a thousand bucks. That's a set that normally sells for three grand or more." 

EDDIE (VO): "A 3D TV!!??? Woooow! That's great!!!!! Invite me over! But how come it's so cheap? Samsung's a big brand."

MILT: "Ahhh, good question! The answer is that Samsung is debuting a new set called the 'Smart TV' that doesn't use a remote. It responds to hand commands.  You change the settings from your chair just by wiggling your hands."

EDDIE (VO): "Yikes! That's great...but it's not worth an extra two thousand bucks."

MILT: "Exactly! When I first heard about the Smart TV I thought, 'Oh, no! Another excuse to charge an arm and a leg for a TV!' Then I thought, 'Wait a minute! What are they gonna do with the old sets?' A friend called and told me about the sale and that clinched it. "

MILT: "Eddie, have you ever seen 3D on TV?"

EDDIE (VO): "Yeah, a while back in Best Buy, but the glasses were kinda clunky."

MILT: "Not any more. These glasses are low profile. Wearing them is like wearing Ray Bans...well, er...sort of. Anyway, they're only a small distraction. You just have to hold them close up to the set to activate them. The glasses are free, and so is the Blue Ray player. The store throws them in for the price of the set!"

MILT: "3D is amazing!!!!! I saw it over a friend's house. We watched excerpts from the 3D disks of 'Tangled' and 'Polar Express.' You wouldn't believe it. They looked great! Well...as great as those kind of films can look."

EDDIE (VO): "You don't hear so much about 3D TV these days. Maybe the sets didn't sell as well as expected."

MILT: "Yeah, it's hard to know if the industry will continue to support it. I think it will, but who knows? Maybe the prices are too high. I bet they'd sell a lot more TVs if the price was lower. Anyway, I'm happy because the price is a steal even without the 3D.

Oh, and I forgot to say that the set I want to get is made in Korea. My friend says you have to avoid stores like Frye's because their sets are likely made in China where the standards are lower." 

EDDIE (VO): "Hey Milt, do you mind if I put this on Theory Corner? Maybe somebody else'll save a buck on a set, just like you will."

MILT: "Sure, go ahead! If enough people buy 3D TVs, then it'll become standard!"

   

ATLAS SHRUGGED II DEBUTS TODAY!

Yikes! "Atlas Shrugged II" debuts today and I almost forgot about it! This is the kind of film I have to see on the first day, so if you feel the same way, then maybe I'll see you in the theater!

What will it be like? Er....Maybe not technically great. Atlas Part 1 (shown in the clip above) had terrific actors in the main roles but had to chintz on everything else. Atlas is an epic book and the filmmakers just didn't have the money to shoot an epic film. Even so, the effort was much appreciated by fans.

I'm expecting this second film to have more problems than the first, but I'm also expecting to have the pleasure of seeing capitalism defended on the screen. When's the last time you saw that? The last film I can think of that did that (apart from other Rand films) was a black and white Walter Houston/Mary Astor film called "Dodsworth." Look for it on TCM. I think you'll like it.

Anyway, here's (below) where the film is playing in the Los Angeles area. 'Better confirm the times and days on the net or by phone because Atlas may not start the same day in every theater.

IDEAS FOR HALLOWEEN DECORATIONS

A hydra (above)!!!! What a great idea for a scary porch sculpture...something to scare the trick or treaters with. You could make the necks out of those flexible aluminum ducts they sell in hardware stores.

It's a shame to scare little kids...but the little rugrats seem to like it.

I'd love to do flaming pumpkin torches, but I'm scared that the house would burn down.

Paper masks used to be everywhere, especially on cereal boxes. What happened to them?

Above, nice...very nice!

Hmmmm, more hydra ideas from a Russian kids book. Geez, the Russians are good at this sort of thing.

'Love those Steinberg paper bag masks (above). I made a few one year and they were more complicated to make than they look. You have to alter the dimensions of the bag to make it look right.

Every year I seriously consider going to the local kindergartens and buying up their masks. Nowadays they're probably considered folk art and parents wouldn't let their kids sell them. I should have stocked up on them when my own kids were young.

 Above, some good pumpkin ideas. Joel Brinkerhoff, a Theory Corner man,  co-created my very favorite Halloween pumpkin picture. I've posted it before, but it bears repeating. I'll pull it from the archive.

Here's (above) part of my own mask collection. I keep 'em up all year.

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Incidentally....Happy Birthday Jim Smith!!!! Here's the card that John made!

DEVIL MASKS

Here's one of my favorite Devil masks. Lots of kids in my old neighborhood had it. It was made of thin rubber and sold for a price that even us kids could afford.

Like many of the best masks, it doesn't try to look natural. It has a painterly, sculptured look. I wonder if the original was carved out of wood. 

Above, three great Devil masks. The last one on the right is particularly interesting because it depicts Lucifer as a thug. Usually he's portrayed as super intelligent...a sort of Moriarity who wins by cunning. Here he's a mindless bully, a yob, a lover of violence for its own sake. It's a new take on an old subject.

Whoa! A Nicholas Cage devil mask (above)...but my source says it's African.

Here's (above) Adolphe Menjou as The Devil.

And here's (above) an Ernie Kovacs devil. All it needs is a cigar.

This devil in drag mask (above) is from Peru. The artist apparently sees The Devil as a nice guy, someone you could joke with.

...Or maybe not! Above, more Peruvian devils, this time looking very fierce.