Saturday, October 23, 2010

Go Read It!

Eight False Things The Public "Knows" Prior To Election Day.

• Posted at 9:48 PM · LINK

Alex Anderson, R.I.P.

Alex Anderson, an animation storyman who created Rocky & Bullwinkle and Dudley Do-Right, has died at the age of 90. I must admit that I don't know a lot more about him or his work with his friend Jay Ward than is contained in this obit but I felt his passing should be noted here. Thanks to Steven Silver for letting me know about it.

• Posted at 2:54 PM · LINK

Go Read It!

What's gone wrong with Woody Allen's movies over the years? Obviously, it's the punctuation in their titles. (Thank you, Vince Waldron!)

• Posted at 1:33 PM · LINK

Down the Amazon

A reader who signs his message Nikola sent me this link to a genuine piece of comic book history — a sketch that artist Harry G. Peter sent Dr. William Moulton Marston to try and settle on a costume for their new character, Wonder Woman. The handwritten notes are interesting as is the way Wonder Woman looks a little sexier here than, I think, she ever looked in the comic. But then the way Peter drew her in the comic all those years, she was about as sexy as Edgar Buchanan. I was always curious why, given all the artists then around who could have produced "good girl art," they went with Peter. Marston had effective creative control of the feature so it must have been a "look" he wanted...but why? Some of those early stories are pretty kinky so he probably had some sort of subtext in mind...and if I could have forced myself to read more than a dozen or so of those comics, I might be able to figure it out.

• Posted at 2:35 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

The Beau Hunks is a Dutch musical group that likes to perform American movie music, mainly from the thirties and especially from Laurel and Hardy films. They strive to be "note perfect," meaning that their music is arranged exactly the way it was arranged for its most famous film presentation. This is not always simple because the original sheet music and scores are often unavailable so someone has to listen over and over to the movie and transcribe every note. The results are always worth it. I have all of their CDs and often listen to them as I motor about town.

Here, they recreate Raymond Scott's famous 1937 tune, "Powerhouse," which most folks recall as the tune that always seemed to pop up in a Warner Brothers cartoon when anything mechanical or robotic was occurring. I enjoyed this and I hope you will, as well...

• Posted at 2:07 AM · LINK

Lying to Pussycats

It's come to this: I have begun lying to pussycats. In particular, I have been lying to several of the feral cats I feed on my back porch. I do not feel good about this but I have found it necessary to lie to them, particularly to the one I've named Max. In the photo above, the cat on the left is called The Stranger Cat and the one on the right is Max.

Max is perpetually hungry. In the morning when I get up and go downstairs, Max is waiting. If I don't immediately open the sliding glass door, he pounds on it with a paw and he howls until I open a can of Friskies cat food (preferably, Mixed Grill) and the opened can and I are outside on the porch. Now, the way he would like his meal served is as follows: I would put one spoonful into the bowl. He would eat it in full, then give me a look and I would put another spoonful of food into the bowl and he would eat it. And then another spoonful and another and another until the can was empty, whereupon I would open another can. In this way, Max would not have to do a thing he hates, which is to eat food that has been in the bowl for more than two minutes and twenty seconds.

Well, I don't have time for that. I can't stand there all morning ladling fresh food into Max's bowl. I have things to do — calls to make, obits to write, Fred Kaplan articles to link to. So I dump the entire can into the dish and go back into the house to make a protein drink or something.

Max eats about a tenth of the can, then stops and yells for fresh food.

I am not about to open another can when he still has nine-tenths of one before him...and here's where the lying comes in. I walk out onto the porch with the empty can and the spoon and I mime like I'm putting more Mixed Grill into the dish...and most of the time, Max is fooled. He thinks he has newly-spooned chow in there and he resumes gobbling it down. Sometimes, I take the dish inside, do nothing to it, then bring it back out and place it before him. He thinks it's fresh food so breakfast continues. Of course, I accompany both fibs by telling him, "Here's more food for you, Max!" But there is no more food. I'm lying. I do this with the other cats, too. They've all learned from Max that if you take two bites and yowl, you get fresh grub.

I always feel guilty about this. I'm confessing to you here to get it off my conscience and also because I don't think Max has an Internet connection. If he does, I'm really screwed.

• Posted at 1:47 AM · LINK