RECOMMENDATION FOR A CHRISTMAS PRESENT

Hi, Uncle Eddie here! Well, the holiday season's upon us and it's time to start thinking of Christmas presents for family and friends. If you're strapped for ideas I thought I might be able to help. I have in mind the present I recommend every year at this time...

...the "EXTENDO FORK!"

Well actually, I use...Ahem!... the "Freeloader Fork ...'PRO' " model. Stainless steel, oiled shaft, nice balance...an advanced instrument for advanced users. Since you guys are just starting out I figure you'll want to begin with the cheaper, but serviceable "Extendo Fork. "

When the target isn't looking, quickly extend it to it's full length of 2 1/2 feet...

...and DINE! Dine off your friend's plate that is. The rule here is, be fast! It tales practice to harpoon your food, bring it back to your plate, and collapse the fork in one continuous motion. Practice on an unwitting friend...heh, heh...like I did with Mike.

Okay, what else have we got here....

...okay, next is the Soup Sucker. You'll need a drink to go with that food you just forked, and the Soup Sucker doubles as a terrific drink infiltrator.

The Sucker can be had at any hardware store. It's called shrinkable insulation, and it's used to cover wires. It sells for 20 cents a foot, and it comes wrapped around a big spool. You'll need about 3' of the 3/8" size.

Thread the tube into your shirt sleeve so you have one end coming out of the cuff, and one end coming out of your collar.

Simply allow the cuff end of the tube to fall (fall stealthily) into your neighbor's drink, then suck on the other end.

When you're finished, you'll find that he curl the tube got from being on the spool really comes in handy. You just move your arm a little and and the Sucker recedes into your cuff, all by itself! Nifty, huh?

Oh...er, be careful that you don't get a siphon going. I tapped into Mike's tomato juice once and the juice kept coming out after I stopped sucking. I didn't notice it, and a big red stain formed on my shirt. Mike saw it and had a fit. He thought I'd been shot. He wanted to take me to the hospital!

Anyway, good luck with finding this stuff! May all your meals be free!

HANDBAGS

I have a question for you. What is unusual about the woman in the photograph above?  What about this picture tells us that it's a fantasy, with no relationship to reality whatsoever? Is it the height of the woman? Nope.  Some mad scientist somewhere might be able to pull that off.  No, I'm talking about something nobody could pull off, something utterly inceivable. Give up?

It's the fact that she's walking outdoors without a handbag. That's an unthinkable situation which could never, ever occur in the real world. Even a giant woman would never be seen in public without a handbag. Why? 'Darned if I know.

 Remember when ladies' purses used to be small (above)?

Well, not any more. They're huge now....

...and getting bigger all the time.

What's in 'em (above)? Well, other handbags for one thing. There's also phones, ipods, candybars, photo albums, tissues, mints, gum, books, cameras, a second wallet, brush, bottled water, tea, teasing comb, checkbook, hair dryer, scrunchies, hair spray, sun glasses and case, glasses and case, reading glasses and case, letters, crumbs, pens, markers, cosmetics, clothes, soap, tissues, coupons, umbrella, thread, receipts, chap stick, keys, aspirin... well it would be a long list.

How do I know this? 'Cause there's a kazillion youtube videos where girls passionately talk to each other about their handbags.

A bag that packed (above) is a formidable tool for preventing people from passing you in narrow aisles.

Handbags are a big deal now. Movie stars advertise them. Here (above) Madonna's famous crotch endorses a Gucci bag.

Here (above) Scarlett-Johansson  shows off her handbag. Scarlett's a nice girl but she's a liitle chair-challenged.    

Hey, lots of people don't know how to use chairs. It's fairly common. But I digress.

If you're a guy you're focused on the girl in the picture (above), if you're a woman, you're scoping out the handbag. The brown florette pattern identifies it as...GASP!...a real LOUIS VUITTON, the towering MOUNT EVEREST of handbags! There isn't a girl on the planet who wouldn't kill to own one!

This (above) is the coveted Vuitton pattern, the one with little gothic wildflowers and Vuitton's initials.

For some the florettes are too subtle. Vuittons can cost well over a thousand bucks, and if you shell out that kind of money you want the world to know it...thus the labels (above).

Check out the fox tails. Handbags can be embellished with tails, feathers, beads and Hello Kitties.

At this point guys are probably breathing a sigh of relief. Handbags are something only girls have to worry about, right? Er...maybe. Check out the link below. It's a youtube video but embedding wasn't allowed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8tqaGHUu4Q&feature=fvst

LUNCHTIME BOOK CHAT #2

Greetings Theory Cornerites! Uncle Eddie here for the first of several Christmas editions of "Lunchtime Book Chat." Our guest reviewer today is Isobel Wren,  the famous internet model and book fancier.

Um...those aren't zits on Isobel's face. They're just artifacts of hasty Photoshopping.

I gotta warn ya....Isobel gets...gets kinda "unclothed" in this review. I guess she thinks it's too hot in here.

Oops! Dropped my book!

Darn book!

Whew! I hate to see a good book get dirty like that.

Oops! 'Dropped the book again!

'Doggone book!

Boy, that book is really slippery!

Anyway, here's (below) Isobel Wren reviewing "Forever: a Novel" by Pete Hamill.

BASIL WOLVERTON WOMEN

Sorry for the minimal post. Thanksgiving, Christmas shopping, and agonizing over whether to buy a copy of Painter 11 at a "Black Friday" price, took all my time. Boy, I love Christmas but we can all be thankful that it's only once a year.

Making a decision about Painter 11 was hard because the specs support Leopard, but not Snow Leopard, which is my operating system. People on the net were divided about whether Snow Leopard is compatible. Half said it worked just fine for them and half said it didn't. Ordinarily I'd skip something as risky as this but the asking price was ridiculously low....I just couldn't pass it up. Geez, I hope I did the right thing.

Anyway, how do you like these Wolvertons!?  They're made by someone who doesn't identify himself on his site, but whose watermark moniker is Stu Sutcliffe. Nice job, Stu!

http://stusutcliffe.blogspot.com/2009_07_01_archive.html

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

MORE LLOYD WRIGHT

Since we're on the subject of Frank Lloyd Wright's son Lloyd, I thought I'd put up a couple more of his projects. Here's (above) his Samuel Navarro house in Los Feliz, only a short drive from the Sowden House. It's beautiful when seen from this angle.

From the road (above) it looks like an Art Deco fortress.

Unfortunately the beautiful trim (above) doesn't hold up under close inspection.

The interior (above) isn't much either. I wish I knew the story behind this. Who's at fault? My guess is that a later remodeling destroyed the original. I feel sorry for architects. No one would think of buying a Rembrandt and repainting it, yet great architecture is routinely modified to fit each new owner.

I like the modest spiral staircase (above) and thin iron gate.

Here's (above) Lloyd's breathtaking Wayfarer Chapel in Palas Verdes. It's mostly glass. A critic described it as having trees for walls and the sky for a ceiling.

While researching Lloyd I came across some interesting pictures of houses made by his dad. Wouldn't you kill to own this one (above)? How do you like the razor sharp angles? And isn't it amazing that he was able to combine so many styles? I see the German 19th century railroad station style combined with Mayan and Tudor. The wide, blocky porch area reminds me of Bejing's Forbidden City.

Above, the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. Alas, it no longer exists.

I like that band-of-squares decoration above the first floor windows (above).  Other architects use patterns like that in moldings, but Wright uses them as sculptural elements.

Good for him! Here (above) he brings the roof down close to the ground where it belongs. Too long have we wasted beautiful roofs by putting them too high for people to see.

I assume every Theory Cornerite has a set of Froebbel blocks (above) on his coffee table. It's fun to build Frank Lloyd Wright forms with them.

LLOYD WRIGHT'S SOWDEN HOUSE

Lloyd Wright's Sowden House in Hollywood is said to be famous, but is it? For years I've lived within half an hour's drive of it, and I only heard about it for the first time last week.  Now I'm chomping at the bit to see it.

That's Lloyd Wright, not Frank Lloyd Wright. Lloyd was Wright's son. He also designed sets for Hollywood films. Maybe that's what accounts for the cheesy armoured guards at the entrance.

The house is also famous as the home of Dr. George Hodel, a wealthy doctor who is believed by some to have killed Elizabeth Short, the famous Black Dahlia. 

One of his accusers is his own son, former police detective Steve Hodel. Steve claims his dad was a sadist and a serial killer, and he lays out the case for that on his site (above). Short might even have been killed in the Sowden House.

  

Horrible though he might have been, you can't fault the doctor's taste in architecture.  With the blocks stacked in geometric patterns, and with the exotic landscaping, the house looks like a majestic jungle ruin. Here's (above) the view from Franklin Ave.

This (above) is the facade, pre-landscape. Gee, it's not the same without the trees and shrubs.  It reminds me of old Hollywood sets which were mostly blank punctuated by areas of great complexity.

  I'll digress to lament that for people with average incomes landscaping is prohibitively expensive.  Not only that but, beautiful trees take years to grow. For the first few years they don't seem to grow at all, because the tree is devoting all its energy into establishing a root system. It's as if you're planting for the benefit of the people who will own the house after you're gone.  

Even so, it's still worth doing. You could argue that landscaping adds so much to the value of a house, that whatever you put into it is free. 

The middle of the house (above) is a big, Mayan courtyard, covered with vines and flowers. I'll bet the original Mayans decorated their public buildings with foliage like this. 

Here's (above) a view looking at the back of the courtyard. No vines here. Do vines grow so fast that you can cut them back in the winter, and still have them cover everything in the summer? 

The swimming pool (a later modification) is raised, which is a nifty way to achieve scale. 

Here's a detail of the molded concrete supports. If Lloyd's dad had built this he probably would have used blocks, which in my opinion wouldn't have worked as well.  

As I said, Wright's son designed sets for the film industry. A number of films were shot here (above), one of the more recent being Scorcese's "Aviator."

Above, the master bedroom. The door it faces may be the big, barnsized, sliding door which opens out into the courtyard. If so, what a view to wake up to in the morning!

Here's (above) a detail of the living room.

This is the house (The two diamond shapes in the middle, above) seen from the air. The address is 5121 Franklin Ave, near Normandie and Franklin. There are no tours, but you can rent the place for a mere $3,900 a night. 

NOTE: Most of the info here was culled from a fascinating new book called "Weird Hollywood," which I'm reading now.

The author's web site: http://joeartistwriter.wordpress.com/2010/11/