FEMALE CRIMINALS OF THE 1920S and 40S

I put up a lot of old-time mugshots lately, and I thought I exhausted the subject, then Jorge sent me a link to more that I'd never seen before. These were police photos of prostitutes taken in Montreal in the 1920s. What a find!

None of them were what I expected. American gangster movies of the period always portrayed prostitutes as high-living Flapper-types (above). After seeing Jorge's pictures I'm wondering if that image was exaggerated. I don't see any Flappers here.

Here's a few of the Montreal pictures. The woman above was a madam in a house of ill repute.

So was this woman (above).

And so was this woman (above). Yikes! Two of these women managers were pretty mean-looking. I wonder if that's because some of their employees were virtual slaves. I don't know if that's the case...I'm just guessing.

Some of the women (above) who were mere sex workers in those houses looked pretty mean themselves. 

Maybe they were madams in training. They look hard as nails.

Some of the workers looked tragic, as if nothing good ever happened to them in their entire lives.

Others looked simple-minded.

By the 1940s the women (above) in the mugshots looked more normal...well, sort of.

Maybe by then more women were in that business voluntarily. 'Just a guess.

What were women in that line of work like before the 1920s? I'm not sure, but this mugshot (above) from 1920s Australia might contain a clue.

BTW: Most of these pictures were derived from a site called "vintage everyday," 1/26/2014

MILEY CYRUS AND JOHN K./A MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN

http://youtu.be/8yxUlR65E9E

Miley Cyrus's "Bangerz" concert tour opened on Valentine's Day in Vancouver and, to judge from this phone video (below), it must have been something to see.
................

Yikes! Youtube removed the video clip I had above. I was hoping it would show why I liked her in spite of the overly raunchy things she does. She has a sense of humor and  believes in knocking herself out to put on a creative show. Just out of camera range was the animated film John K did as a backdrop.  I saw parts of it while it was being made.  Pret-tee impressive!

Haw! There's the film in the background. Do you see it? It's just behind the giant and dwarf Miley dances with. Kudos to animators Alex and Gabriel.

I wish I knew more about the people who put the show together. The art direction looks spectacular.

Holy Cow! She looks great in costumes.

She even looks good in buck teeth.

John's film is stunningly creative and has to be seen to be believed, but I don't know how fans can do that. It's not a stand-alone music video, it's a backdrop for a band.

 For now animation fans will just have to buy a ticket to the show. Here's the schedule for the rest of this month. It looks like it'll come to L.A. on the 20th and 22nd.

Here's the price guide for the concert at the Staples Center in LA. The prices run from $80 for the pink seats to $1900 (!!!!!!!!) for the yellow ones. If you want to meet and greet Miley that'll run you...are you ready for this?... $2660. Yikes! Major concerts like this are unbelievably pricey! I wonder what sitting behind the stage would be like.

A LOVE POEM FOR LIP READERS

It's almost Valentine's Day!!!!!!!  Is your loved one hard of hearing? Maybe she'd appreciate a copy of the love poem I'm writing for the hearing impaired.  I'm not finished yet, but here's how it starts. See if you can guess what the poet (me) is saying. I'll give phonetic hints along the way, then print out the whole thing in ordinary script at the end.  

Okay, let's do this thing!

(Cough! Cough!)

Oops! Sorry about that.

Okay, here goes......

M...m...

iiiiiiiiiii

luuuuvvv

fur

yuuuuuuu

izzz

like

āā

tikled

thhhh

issss

llllllll..... There, I let that last "L" syllable just roll off my tongue.

The whole thing is "My-love-for-you-is-like-a-tickled-thistle." Tickled thistle...get it?...it's a repetition of the "th" sound. Us poets know about stuff like that. 

Notice that I left out harsh, explosive syllables...you know, stuff like....

"PATTERSON'S"

"POOCH!"

Don't ask me how I know to do that. It's a gift I was born with. 

ASTRONOMY PICTURES YOU MAY NOT HAVE SEEN

That's Asteroid Itokawa (above) which passed near Earth in 2005. It's remarkable because there's no craters on it. Nobody knows why but the best guess is that it's a loose ball of rubble that easily breaks apart and reforms every time it's hit by something large. Japan landed a robot on the surface and actually got a sample of it.

Above, a star-forming region in Orion, 1500 light years away. The straight line is jet of high energy electrons and protons which is thought to be a normal occurrence when a star ignites. This probably happened when our Sun was born.

Here's (above) a picture of the jelly doughnut shaped rock that mysteriously appeared near Nasa's Rover on Mars. The rock has a high manganese content which contradicts geologists' predictions for the area.



Here's a parachute jump from outer space. The video tells the story.

BTW: Thanks to "Astronomy Picture of the Day" for the photos. You can link to it from the right sidebar.

STYLUSES AND DRAWING APPS FOR THE IPAD

Here's (above) a demo of the Jot Touch (the latest version = Jot Touch 4), which I'm told is the stylus of choice for most serious artists. The video's a year and a half old so the issues with line width and lag might have been fixed by now, I'm not sure. Of course the lag might be due to the ProCreate program, not the stylus.

On Amazon people complained that the Touch scratched their screens. You can use a screen protector but that puts a distance between the tip and the glass, and results in broken lines for some.



I have a feeling that Jot'll fix these problem in later versions (if they haven't already), so I'll hold off on that for now. I'm new to drawing apps so I'll start with something less troublesome: the "FiftyThree Pencil." It's not pressure sensitive, and it's not as good at detail as the Jot Touch, but it works well with the "Paper" program I want to use.

 Paper is limited in what it can do but it's elegant, easy to use, has really intelligent color choices, and has a killer pen tool that looks like it would be great for cartoony, Walt Kelly-type lines.




Jot, on the other hand, makes boring rapidograph-type lines...at least I think it does. I've never actually used it. It was created for handwriting in an app called PenUltimate. If I'm wrong about Jot, or if it evolves into something that can do elegant thick and thin, then I'll try it, along with the ProCreate.

Actually, you need more than one drawing program. I love Paper but I'm glad I also have Adobe Ideas and Sketches because they can do things that Paper can't. Adobe Ideas can import photos and may be able to translate hand-drawn blocky letters into formal fonts.


What I'm most interested in is ipad animation apps. I haven't used any of them yet, but I'm about to. I'm guessing Flipbook HD (above) is the one to get.

Or maybe Animation Desk (above). I don't know...it's hard to tell which is best because the videos that promote them are all about bouncing balls and happy face symbols. They don't tell you what kind of lines they can make, or whether you can animate on ones and twos, or what the maximum scene length is. Some of the lesser-known programs are geared for moving pre-existing template characters. I guess you have to buy the app to find out what it can do.

[Note: I just downloaded the animation apps discussed above. In a month or so I'll let you know how they turned out.]

BTW: did you know that Wacom makes an ipad-type drawing tablet? I'm probably the last person on Earth to hear about it. Now THAT would be nice to have.

50s WEATHER GIRLS

 Long time readers of Theory Corner know all about this Ernie Kovacs video...I've blogged about it before. What you might not know is that Jolene Brand (above) parodied a real life sexy weather girl, Teri Thurman.



Ernie's parody was pretty drastic, but it had to be. Thurman's real-life show was already pretty far out there. And the show was popular. It lasted more than a decade and was broadcast nationwide on the Monitor Network.




I wish I could go back in a time machine and watch some of the other weird 50s shows. High on the list would be "The Continental," a show where a woman we never see is daily invited into the bachelor apartment of her suave, sophisticated neighbor, The Continental. This (above) is a Saturday Night Live parody of that show. Let that sink in...there was a real show like that.

Unfortunately no kinescopes were made. The original show exists only in the memories of the people who watched it.

"GOW, THE HEADHUNTER"

I've seen some great DVD movies in the last two weeks.  The best was "Gow, the Headhunter," a  documentary from the early thirties about Melanesian headhunters and cannibals. The film has to be seen to be believed. It's not one of those tasteful National Geographic specials where everybody's smiling and wearing Nike T-shirts.

At the time the filmmakers arrived the cannibals and headhunters were at war, if that's the word for it. I got the feeling that the so-called "war" was the normal state of affairs in those islands. You'd think headhunters and cannibals would have been natural friends and allies, united against the rest of the world but, no, they hated each other. These were highly fortified islands where strangers, including the film crew, were definitely not welcome.

Another interesting film was "Wolverine." It was fun and exciting but the subtext is what put it over for me. It posited that Tokyo is a city where everybody strives for excellence, even the gangsters, and anything less is just unacceptable.  I don't know if that's true or not, but it makes for good storytelling.

Then there was "Quartet," a nicely directed film by Dustin Hoffman. The story's about the intrigues in an old folks' home for classical musicians. Don't let that scare you away, because the film is really about music, and the kind of people who are wedded to it.

A lot of the film's music is played on upright pianos by presumably arthritic fingers, and it sounds just fine. Maybe we're all too obsessed with the concept of recorded "best versions." What's wrong with a simply good version played live by people in the room who are passionately in love with the pieces they're playing?

My favorite scene was one where the old musician tries to explain opera to a hip-hop guy.  He said it's music where a strong emotion in the singer has to come out, and it does...explosively. I like that formulation but it seems only half right. I'd modify it to say that the best operas are ones where the nobility, skill, and greatness of soul of the composer are made available to us through the medium of gifted, idealistic performers. When you hear it live, sung by singers who "get it" and are physically present, you're witnessing the proof that human beings are very great creatures indeed.

Last but not least...I saw the Third season of "Sherlock" on Orange County's PBS station. Wow, and double Wow! It was great! Geez, now I have to suffer the torments of the damned while I wait for another year or more for the fourth season.