THE LATEST ASTRONOMY PICTURES

I never tire of looking at pictures of the Milky Way taken from the surface of the Earth. This one (above) was taken from Reunion Island in the Southern Indian Ocean. 

What we call the Milky Way is actually a spiral arm of our own galaxy which is closer to the galactic center than we are. 

One of the biggest fears of space scientists is that Earth might might one day find itself looking down the polar axis of a nearby star which is about to go supernova. Until now no star fit the description but one has recently been discovered and we appear to be looking right down the barrel of the gun. 

That star (possibly a double star) is Wolf-Rayett 104, about 8,000 light years distant. Sometime in the next million years this star (above) will explode and the remaining core will fire a massive gamma ray jet in our direction. We don't know enough yet to predict whether the jet will hit us directly or score a near miss.

It's unlikely but we can't rule out the possibility that the star has already exploded thousands of years ago and the gamma rays simply haven't arrived yet. They could be here tomorrow.

 Above. the rings of Neptune. 

Above, a heat map of the sky taken by the COBE satellite. It shows that one side of the sky is warm and another relatively cold. By measuring the difference scientists can calculate how fast the Earth is moving through the universe relative to the background radiation. Our speed it turns out, is an unexpected 600 kilometers per second. That's very fast. No one knows why we should be moving at that speed. 

What you see here (above) is a recent imrovement on the deep field picture we all saw on the news a couple of years ago.  These are some of the most distant stellar objects it's possible to see. The galaxies shown here are all very young, only a few hundred million years old. 

It's puzzling because you'd think that stars would form first then clump together into galaxies, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. Maybe stars were abundant but were too small for the Hubble to resolve, but it's also possible that galaxies of some sort precede stars.

THE SUPPORT GROUP

INT. MENTAL HEALTH FACILITY:

GERTRUDE: "Um...Hi! Er...is this the room where the support group meets?"

ALL: "Yay! The counselor's here! Now we can get on with this! C'mon in! We thought you forgot about us!"

 GERTRUDE: "Um, I'm not the counselor. I'm just here for...um...help with shyness."

DAISY: "You're not the counselor?  Now what'll we do? This whole session is a rudderless ship! What are we supposed to do...counsel each other?"

GLADIOLA: "Well, maybe that's not a bad idea. I mean, all disorders probably have  something in common. Maybe we can help each other."

ARNOLD: "I'm game. Why don't we go around the room and let everybody say why they're here?"

MATILDA: "I'll start. I'm Matilda. I have a surgical addiction."

FRED: "Fred. Gender confusion."

JOLSON: "Mother Fixation."

IRIS: "I hate men."

CLOVER: "Me, I like men...maybe too much."

MARVIN: "I'm Marvin and I'm suicidal. I'm lonely 'cause I can't find a woman who likes my kind of guy. By the way, it's hard to commit suicide in a cheap oven like this. Look at the valve heads...they're plastic.

ROSE: "My name's Rose. I have the same problem. Nobody wants to go out with me either, so I figure I'll end it all. My oven has copper valves, by the way. My ex says they last longer."

MARVIN (VO): "Rose? YOU know about oven valves? Geez, I thought women didn't care about things like that. Er...ya wanna get a cup of coffee later on?"

SEDGWICK: "Hey guys! I was just in the room next store, and they're holding a support group for female sex addicts."

BADOOMBADDOM!!!! CHAIRS FLY AS EVERY GUY IN THE PLACE RUSHES OUT OF HIS SEAT, LINES UP FOR THE FEMALE SEX ADDICT GROUP.

THE ABSENT COUNSELOR FINALLY COMES IN:

COUNSELOR: "Hi everybody! Sorry I'm late!"

THE AL HIRSCHFELD WINDOW

Wow! Mike just sent me some pictures of a terrific window display in the Al Hirschfeld Theatre in Manhattan. That's Hirschfeld above, seated in the barber chair he did most of his later caricatures in. Someone...I've gotta find out who...did a bang-up job of transforming Hirschfeld's self-caricature into sculpture. Can somebody out there find more work for this artist? I want to see more exhibits like this!

For comparison, here's (above) the original pen and ink caricature that the window image is based on.

Here's (above) how the window looks at night...

...and here's (above) the same window in the daytime. I see Audry Hepburn, Woody Allen, Bernadette Peters, Marilyn Monroe, Whoopi Goldberg and Carol Channing, among others. My guess is that some of these were done by a different artist than the one who did Hirschfeld but I could be wrong. 

Yikes! A rear 3/4 shot reveals a few of the perspective cheats.

Above, more perspective cheats revealed.

Above, a close-up. The head looks like it might be flattened a bit like a bas relief, but I'm not sure.  If it is that was good choice since that approach makes it easier to subordinate the details to the need to emphasize line. I wish I could find an interview with the sculptor. 

Some of the framed pictures (above) behind Hirschfeld have 3 Dimansional elements.

The theatre's housed in the same building as the old Beck Theatre. When it was built it was the biggest vaudeville theatre in New York. Now it's home to lavish Broadway plays. 

I love the way the sign looks at night (above), though I'm not sure this photo does it justice. 

That's all I have to say about this. Thanks, Mike! 

   

The Flickr link: http://www.flickriver.com/photos93779577@n00/sets/72157637743809794/

MY WEEKEND

I thought I'd put up a few pictures from my weekend as it's played out so far.  That's me (above) on Saturday, taking a selfie in my medicine cabinet mirror. 

Here's (above) a color xerox I unearthed this morning, showing my kid on the occasion of his second month's birthday.  It was drawn by John.

The genitals are there because babies of both sexes have absolutely huge genitals. If you don't have a kid of your own you probably didn't know that. The equipment quickly shrinks but it is puzzling why nature would endow newborns like that.

On Friday night I went with John to an RFA fight (Ressurection Fighting Alliance/a UFC-type organization) at the Veteran's Memorial Auditorium in Culver City. The event was wonderful and John's friend Tom arranged for us to have ringside seats.

That's (above) a real UFC Octagon, by the way. I always wondered what it was like to be on the audience side of that and now I know. That's the judge's area on the right. Left of center we see a hidden sound man with a directional mic on a monopod (a single-legged tripod).

BTW: the auditorium looks empty in this photo but that's because I didn't compose the shot right. Actually the place was packed to the gills.

I'd never been to a professional Mixed Martial Arts fight before so I ended up missing a gazillion fight shot opportunities in favor of what the technical crew was doing all around me, which I found fascinating. Here's (above) the camera crane which is an indispensable tool at events like this.

Ooooh! And the card girls....yes, yes I did get their picture!

WHAT IF TIME TRAVEL WORKS?

I don't believe in time travel, but you have to admit that it has great story potential.

A lot of time travel stories have the practice heavily regulated for fear that someone might change the past and thereby alter the future. I prefer to imagine that safeguards will be in place and that time travel will become a safe and popular entertainment like amusement park rides are now.

People who elect to ride into America in 2014 will take blasters with them to protect them from Al Capone's gangsters. Capone died way before 2014 but only the A students will know that and besides, as long as they stay in their seats, nothing they do...even with lasers...will effect anything in our era.

The tracks will take their cars down suburban streets and into houses where they can see how people in 2014 lived. Even the most mundane things we do in our time will appear exotic and awe-inspiring to the time travelers. Of course they'll be invisible, so no one in our time will know they're being watched.

Everything will turn out fine as long as the cars keep moving and so long as no traveler attempts to get out or leave something behind.

The problem is that someone (above) always breaks the rules. Someone will find a way to get out of the car and mess with the people in our time.

Will they still be invisible after leaving the car? I don't think so. Of course, coming from the future they'll no doubt find ways to avoid being seen.

You could be walking down the street in 2014 never be aware that a mischievous future person was near-by.

If we're lucky the worst that will happen is a prank where some future person deliberately loses a 2014's set of keys.

But it could get worse. A girl might deliberately cause an accident just to see what happens when two gasoline cars collide.

"After all," she'll reason, "it's not as if I hurt two real people. These people in 2014 are just shades. They lived their lives and passed away a long time ago. Why can't I have some fun with them?"

Hmmmm. The future had better figure out a way to prevent passengers from leaving the car. Of course a really determined person could still make trouble. They might be able to sneak an android into 2014, someone who could pass as a local but who still takes her orders from the future. It could get nasty.

Yikes!

KIRK DOUGLAS AND "THE BIG STORY"

This is a post about 'The Big Story," a brilliant puppet film about Kirk Douglas. There's lots to say about it but none of it will make much sense unless I first discuss the 80s/90s TV show that paved the way for it, a British leftwing comedy called "Spitting Image." It was a topical show about what was then current in British newpapers. I don't think it ever played in America.

Above, some of the Spitting Image puppets. They were life size which allowed for the use of real life backgrounds. It was a great idea!

One day two of the show's ace character designers, Tim Watts and David Stoten, pitched an idea for a Spitting Image-type parody of Kirk Douglas. It would be a stop-motion short made with armature puppets. Tim Watts may (I'm not sure) have already pencil animated the film in 2D while he was at Cal Arts. Anyway, the producer, Rodger Law, agreed to bankroll it.

The Gods must have been on the artists' side because they were able to get one of the best impressionists ever, Frank Gorshin, to do Douglas' voice. He may even have influenced the writing which was based on real dialogue from Kirk Douglas films. I'm a Gorshin fan and so far as I know it was the best thing he ever committed to film. 

 Here's the finished short (above). Do yourself a favor and take a minute and a half to watch it.

 Okay, what did you think? Not too shabby, eh? The film got the 1994 Oscar nomination but lost to a Wallace and Grommet-type 2D short called "Bob's Birthday." The Bob film was great but I still would have given the laurel to The Big Story. It contained ideas and techniques that seem fresh even today, and which might have strongly influenced  computer animation when it came along.



The short payed off for Rodger Law because it allowed him to do several amazing Lipton commercials in the Spitting Image/Big Story style. That's one above.

Actually, I'm just assuming that Law was responsible for those commercials. Maybe it was Uli Meyer. I'm not sure.

Now here's where the story gets weird. The Spitting Image style rode a wave of popularity for several years then inexplicably ran out of gas and died. Oh, the caricature style lingered on in magazine covers but the film applications withered on the vine. "Why?" you're asking...but I don't know why. It just did.

That's tragic! It was a style that would have worked great in the Pixar era. Unfortunately the two styles never coincided.

Imagine what might have come about if Douglas' greatest animation fan, John K, had been green-lighted to do a Douglas-type 3D feature!