I'm getting e-mails from bird lovers and experts responding to my message of earlier this morning about how the crows in my neighborhood are getting frighteningly large. Several folks want to know if maybe these are ravens, instead.
No, they are crows. Huge crows. Crows of awesome, worrisome height and girth. Crows that if they get much larger will be able to grab up a full-sized man in their beaks and snap him in two like a Rold-Gold pretzel stick. Crows that could crush the roof of your car if they were to merely alight on it. I don't even want to think about what might happen if you parked under a crow that big. One good dump and they'd have to send in St. Bernards to find you.
And every time I see the crows, they're bigger than they were the last time I saw them. Soon, they will be the size of Graf Zeppelins and then, by God, maybe you people will listen to me.
I am not a paranoid person. I don't spend much time worrying about natural disasters or the economy or terrorism or even the adminstration of George W. Bush, who's making all those things worse by the moment. I rarely imagine doom lies ahead. Just look at some of the jobs I've taken voluntarily when a more apprehensive man might have imagined what could happen.
But I tell you: I'm deeply, deeply worried about the crows. And also by the fact that people love Dancing With the Stars. Somehow, that threatens our well-being, too.
This will probably be all over the Internet by morning but here's where you can see it at the moment. Last December in a sky-diving session over New Zealand, 24-year-old Michael Holmes plunged two miles when his chute failed...but landed in a blueberry patch with only an injured ankle. There are two videos of this incredible occurrence — one shot from Holmes's helmet camera and one from the helmet cam of another diver who was jumping with Holmes and who wound up finding him on the ground.
Here's the link to see the two videos, one after the other. You may have to click the little button to turn the audio on. The videos are scary, they're amazing and — maybe this is an awful thing to say — my first reaction, until I realized how many news organizations have vetted the story — was to suspect fakery. Let's say I'm assuming it's all true but would not be shocked to find out otherwise.
Great minds think alike and so do Jerry Beck's and mine. Last Saturday, I wrote this item recalling a great cartoon special that Bill "Jose Jiminez" Dana wrote and appeared in. Right after I'd posted it but before he'd seen it, Jerry phoned to get some info for a posting he was readying for his fine blog, Cartoon Brew, about another Jose Jiminez cartoon. An odd synchronicity.
Jerry's post is now up on his blog (which has a spiffy new design, by the way) and it includes a link to a video of a 1966 Jose cartoon made but barely released by the Paramount cartoon studio in its dying throes. As I've mentioned in the past here several times, I'm a big fan of Mr. Dana's but it's easy to see why this short didn't prompt a demand for more.
Still, you might wind it worth a peek...and as I mentioned, Dana's big collaboration with Hanna-Barbera — Alice in Wonderland or What's a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This? — runs on Boomerang later this month. So I think Jerry's right to hail Jose Jiminez as a Forgotten Cartoon Legend. He's also a Forgotten Legend of the Space Program. You almost never hear him mentioned when they talk about the great astronauts.
I'm up at an ungodly hour, concluding a lonnnnng day of working on the Jack Kirby book I announced back here. Before I hit the linens, I wanted to put out a public appeal. We're looking for interesting and special Kirby art to include in the book. This may be the nicest reproduction of Jack's work we'll ever see and I'd like to feature some pieces that especially deserve that treatment. Several collectors are loaning me originals — and even unframing framed pieces so they can be scanned at a high resolution.
I'm most interested in pieces that are either historic or early. I have access to hundreds of...well, I wouldn't say "common" since nothing Jack drew was "common." But pages that were common for Jack from the mid-sixties onward. But I'd like to locate the original art to some early pieces and especially to things that weren't done for Marvel, or were done for DC in the forties or fifties. I'm also trying to find intricate pencil pieces and one or two really spectacular pages from the Fourth World material. Art does not have to leave your hands if you can get it to a place that does high-rez scans, and we'll pay for expenses incurred and give proper thanks and such.
Please drop me a line if you have something you think oughta be in this book and you're willing to share it with the Kirby fans of the world. (If this explanation seems a little vague, it's probably because I am at the moment. Good time to go to bed. Good night.)
A lady named Alicia wrote to ask if I still have little furry creatures coming to my back door in search of a meal. Yes, I do. In fact, about two hours ago, the above fella (gal?) came around to nibble on the Friskies buffet. I put a dish or two out every evening. When they're empty before dawn, it usually means at least one and maybe several raccoons have wandered by. You can also tell that there have been raccoons because they not only clean the plate, they fling it around the yard, overturn the water dish and leave wet raccoon prints behind. The cat and possums, on the other hand, just eat a few mouthfuls and leave.
I also throw peanuts out every morning for the squirrels and bluebirds. You can see a few they didn't claim in the above photo, also. I suspect the reason the peanuts don't get eaten is that some mornings, my back yard is patrolled by crows the size of SUVs and while they peck at everything on the ground, they don't seem to like peanuts. In fact, the way they avoid them, you'd think they're afraid of anaphylactic shock or something.
And hey, what is it with these huge crows, people? Is this a symptom of Global Warming that Al Gore didn't warn us about? I don't recall the crows of my childhood being this large. Two more years of growth and they'll be carrying off dogs and small children. I'll try to get some photos of them one of these days but take my word for it. These are big damn crows. Since I got skinnier, I'm starting to get worried. The birds in your yard should not weigh more than you do.
Not long ago — in this item — we linked to the opening minutes of the Olsen and Johnson comedy, Hellzapoppin', which is not widely available in the U.S. these days. Today, we have three or so minutes from another film they made, Crazy House, which is an even weirder movie. I don't know why someone hasn't released these in this country on DVD since, with a little drumbeat, they'd probably do quite well. Hellzapoppin' is out on DVD in other nations, including what I hear is a lovely new edition in England. So what's the deal? Is our money not good? Are they all pissed at us over Gitmo?
Crazy House actually came out in America on VHS some years ago...but even though I would have snatched it up if I'd known about it, I didn't. Never saw an ad, never saw it in stores, nothing. General rule of thumb: If there's a weird comedy movie out on home video and I don't know about it, the releasing company has done their best to keep it a secret. I'd hate to think someone is looking at the sales of that, ignoring the non-existent promotional campaign and saying, "Guess there's no interest in Olsen and Johnson movies in America." Of course there isn't...just as there'd be no interest in Three Stooges films if they'd been kept that well-hidden. (Wait'll you see the Stooges DVD sets that are in the works. The complete works of Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein will never get such loving treatment. Of course, he wasn't as funny as Curly.)
Matter of fact, one of the ways the big studios could make better use of the Internet and services like YouTube is to circulate teaser clips like the one we're offering you today. I bet that if there was a link at the end of this where you could click and order the whole DVD from Amazon for a reasonable price, a lot of you would click. The film only gets sillier after this excerpt.
So here it is...and yes, speaking of the Stooges, that is indeed Shemp Howard trying to sell Olsen and Johnson everything that isn't nailed down and being persistent about it. The folks at Universal's home video company could learn a thing from that man.
February 13, 2007
