I Faint at the Sight of Real Blood...However

When I get jaundiced-eyed reading the humorous polemics of C. Wright Mills, the ruminations of Dwight MacDonald from Partisan Review or even the salacious events surrounding the lives of Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord and Madame de Staël, I kick back with a case of Smirnov, pack my brain stem in the freezer, and watch an example of one of my favorite film genres: the Japanese splatter film.

Examples like Ichi the Killer, Battle Royale, Guinea Pig, Shogun Sadism, Machine Girl and Tetsuo, the Iron Man are so over the top in their blood-spurting excess, hot gore juggling, severed limbs bouncing, and agonizing diamond-splitting screams that I need a drop cloth and ear plugs as part of my viewing pleasure. I'd invite others over, but I can't afford an in-house metal detector.

Grindhouse, Tarantino's homage to the American gut-wrenchers of the 1970s, is an afternoon field trip to Peck's Petting Zoo. Saw, Hostel, Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Halloween franchises are like subtle allegorical works of art penned by Herman Mankiewicz in comparison to these buckets of blood.

Japanese splatter-gore is simply raw, unadulterated tens on the gag-o-meter. Many are adaptations of successful manga comics, which means the readership is mostly male and in the millions. Knives, chainsaws, razors, swords, pipes, and shivs come in contact with eyes, ears, noses, heads, genitalia -- the end result a technicolor spray of red dye and Karo syrup with prosthetic limbs thrown around like fists at a drunken wedding party. This is gonzo with ginzu.

Basic story lines feature revenge gone beyond the pale, followed by mass mutilations, geysers of blood, abattoir hoedowns and nifty wire work (when affordable). And what's not to love about those weird foot-tapping ABBA-esque pop culture bubble-gum ditties that come out of nowhere and are sprinkled over the most graphic scenes like carobs on Sundaes? Makes me want to jump up and cut open cantaloupes (even in off-season) with battle axes and samurai swords. Watching them without subtitles is recommended; half the entertainment is creating your own dialogue.

Tokyo Gore Police comes from the visual effects master Yoshihiro Nishimura, make up wizard behind Suicide Club, Machine Girl and other films emphasizing hemoglobin hi-jinks. Eye-balling Eihi Shiina, one of Japan's top models, dancing around in her school girl outfits, flowing kimonos and various other manga inspired accoutrement is difficult at best.

Perhaps Lupo the Butcher was one of the progenitors of rivers of red corpuscles as comic relief. I first saw this diamond about 20 years ago at an animation festival. I laughed so hard I still cough up blood. Danny Antonucci, the Canadian animator behind this classic went on to create Ed, Edd, and Eddy for the Cartoon Network. Had Lupo lived to have sons, they would have been these three boys, minus, of course, selected limbs.

The French Make the Best Commercials

This clip is not from the movie Madagascar: Escape to Africa. This is an actual French commercial produced several years ago that I stumbled upon last night while reading a post about Dan Ackroyd signing crystal skulls (filled with vodka) in Madison, Wisconsin. I can't make stuff like this up. If I could, I'd be working at this very moment as a paid writer and not as the itinerant cleaner of cat boxes I list myself as on Craig's List.

I have no idea what's being sold here other than it is a beverage of sorts, but I'll take a year's supply of it.



For those who really care about how a commercial like this is made, here are the behind the scenes tricks. The technique is called performance capture, used spectacularly in both Robert Zemeckis' film adaptations of Polar Express and Beowulf.


Addendum: Could Henri Rousseau be the inspiration for the animal design of the commercial? I'm not sure but at least I can end this post on an intellectual note far less provocative than images of God's creatures pole dancing for refreshment.

Fatty Foods and Neighborly Love

Norman McLaren, Canada's greatest animator, won an Oscar for his 1952 study of neighborly love. Spend a leisurely afternoon in between looking for that now elusive job, eh? Kick back a last nourishing LeBatt's before repossession of hearth and home, eh? And enjoy his wonderfully quirky and totally original short pieces, found on any video download site where X does not mark the spot. You need not have the art house maven gene to appreciate McLaren.

I am reminded of his classic pixilation short, "Neighbors," because at this very moment two men in adjoining apartments below me are once again going at it hammer and tong.



I wish my specialty were sitcom writing, but, alas, it is not: It is bad check writing. Throughout my entire life I have been told my sense of humor is no funnier than a burst anal fissure (remind me one day to tell you about my colonoscopy visit), so I am passing along the makings of this idea into the hands of smarter, funnier, and more devious purveyors of the human spirit than myself. Remember me on stage during the Emmy acceptance speech. I'll try not to sue.

My new neighbors are Calab and Cleon. Both moved out here from the Midwest, not to change their names, but with that same wild-eyed crazy kid dream of one day opening up Michelin-rated French restaurants back in their home states. Their first choice, Paris, was financially out of the question for them; however, for people not living out here, the City of Angels is no flash in the frying pan when it comes to eats. LA has some top-tier culinary schools: Otherwise why would we have so many fast food joints with exotic sounding names featuring chicken, lamb, and schnitzel? I told these guys about the cooking schools in Paris, Texas, but they looked at me glaringly and knew right away I was from Wisconsin.

I like both men, for they are completely neurotic about and borderline pathological towards the preparation of food. Even more intriguing, neither future Auguste Escoffier apparently likes the other, although both attend the same food classes. Irony and adjacent apartments brought these two strangers together. As all the cooking shows on cable networks detail, future master chefs are petty, whiney, immature monsters in the making -- more territorial than bull elephants during prom season. Caleb and Cleon dance around each other the way two rival chefs might do when battling for the same floor space at an upscale strip mall. They cook and cook and cook and begrudgingly share recipes with each other. I think it's because their wives demand it.

These early morning sounds are not connected with the construction of the building next door: cutlery crashing on the floor, dishes breaking, and the mournful screams of disgust spoken in French (though one guy is from Nebraska and the other from Kansas). When children fail to do their homework the night before, the rush to prepare for school has a universal language all its own.

This is Los Angeles, where apartments are mandated to have paper-thin walls and faulty window sealant. The distinctive love noises of men in broil, bake or sauté mode are now as recognizable to me as my own more common non-connubial sounds of grunting, groaning and grimacing. The smells wafting upwards from their respective apartments are far more exotic than those found on Hester Street at the turn of the last century. Those fragrances, whenever I smell them, whisk me immediately back to the good old days of Greenbush where all immigrant cooked and spouses fought pitched battles with each other.

Those two lovely wives of Caleb and Cleon – their respective partners, both majoring in online hospitality degrees – make it abundantly clear, in their own passive-aggressive fashion, that each finds the other man's cooking better. I guess this is a motivational technique learned from years of watching telenovelas, though neither women understands Spanish. Did I not say somewhere that this had all the ingredients for a sitcom? Throw in some car chases, fist fights, earthly annihilation and loud music and you have a Bruckheimer comedy. These women apparently love living on the edge. I wonder if there is a dish called "homicide au gratin?"

I'm a sadistic "ho" with no conscience, who eats both ends against the middle – and lately, since the battling chefs have moved into the apartment complex, my middle has expanded exponentially. Several times a week, I'll put on sackcloth and ashes and waddle on downstairs, first to one and then to the other, asking for handouts. Strumming my lute, I make clear to them in my best Oliver Twist, doe-eyed lamentation: "my own gruel be cruel, eight days a week." They never laugh at anything I say, but they do welcome me and my stomach in.



I never have any idea what I'm being served. I just know it's French because half-way through each meal I stand and sing Le Marseillaise, and then reflexively kiss someone on both cheeks. Baeckeoffe, Quiche Lorraine, Magrets de Canard aux cerises, Baked Apricots, Boeuf Bourguignon, Tarte Flambée. My palette is from Wisconsin, so its sophistication level is two floors below mulch. My mom would tell me as a kid when putting food down in front of me, "If it don't make you heave or rush to relieve, then remember bucko, it's free."

Lately after these gluttonous visits, I spend long hours at the computer looking up the recipes to see whether I've broken not only any ancient dietary laws but those federal laws about eating endangered species. If I could only find a woman who could cook like this and humiliate me in front of others, I would be in Crème Patisserie heaven. Then all I would need is a job.

Animation, Sergio Leone Style

The Cold Rush by Mikael Lynen, Simon Corbaux, Tristan Urbin and Rémi Certhoux

Once more my win/loss record for choosing Oscar winners ranks me right up there with Napoleon betting against the Russian Winter and Custer's certainty that his Crow scouts were too drunk to have possibly seen so many Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indians playing canasta along the Little Bighorn. I was so depressed at my lack of prowess to understand the Academy that I fell into a deep funk, which should not be confused with Deep Purple or Grand Funk. Not even an abbreviated audio reading of The Reader helped my mood.

In search of a quick pick-me-up, I did a Google search for Chaplin's The Gold Rush. What a slap your knee, barrel of fun that movie is! I especially love the scene where The Little Tramp cooks his last pair of shoes to avoid starvation. Looking longingly into my closet, I knew that I would be able to weather the hardships of this recession, although I'm not certain penny loafers are as nutritious and rich in Niacin and Vitamin B12 as my steel-tipped hiking boots.

But I missed The Gold Rush by one Ramos Gin Fizz-slapped key, stumbling instead upon The Cold Rush, a visually stunning piece of perverse storytelling that had me laughing and dancing and calling up ex-girlfriends to ask if they remembered me. The ending is straight spaghetti western, those words keying my lust to hunt up a frozen cannoli and an excuse to cue the finest opening movie score outside of a Bond movie.

Better than a Valentine's Day Box of Candy

An irate female once told me that men don’t need women to dance around poles as much as they need to be hit upside the head by them. I think that blind date cost me four stitches. I was only asking...

For all those female readers out there in the New England area who secretly dream of dancing exotically around chairs, poles, and other upright items found around the home, let me introduce you to Wendy Reardon’s Gypsy Rose Dance Studio in Boston -- the only establishment of its ilk in that part of the country. Today, Wendy is offering a Valentine’s Day special for all women who find themselves currently single and bitter, and who would rather one day shake their booty at future men-folk in their lives, rather than simply shaking their fists.

I met Wendy when she first came out to Los Angeles years ago to try her luck at writing scripts for Hanna-Barbera and other animation studios. Wendy always had a unique way of presenting her ideas. She would never sit in a chair so much as walk around and climb all over it. Not realizing that she was already looking towards her next career move, I thought she had St. Vitus Dance. One time she walked into my office and straddled my couch. To this day, I don't remember whether she was pitching a show about cute lemurs or bent femurs.

In between all the wiggling and giggling and her dancing, prancing and eyeball-enhancing moves, Wendy went on to get a Master's Degree in Medieval History. She knows more about the lives and deaths of the Popes than all of those guys running around The Da Vinci Code. Wendy has one scholarly work out in the marketplace already: It is far too erudite for me. Instead, I purchased her book on exotic dancing. I can't do any of the moves, but the pictures look far better tacked onto my refrigerator door than a stack of unpaid bills.

The next time I'm in Boston, I plan to visit Wendy's studio. Who knows what sort of animation ideas she has come up over the years since tackling this rigorous form of exercise? I guarantee that 50% of the population over the age of thirteen would watch it even if it involved dancing femurs and bent lemurs.

Amy Winfrey Makes It Look So Fiendishly Easy

Amy Winfrey's Making Fiends

My art skills are on par with those of a groundhog. I can neither draw a circle with a compass nor a straight line with a ruler. Even my stick figures look fat and out of shape. Most of my adult life, I've worked around animators and designers who've make it clear that their talents are God-given and not man-made. This makes me feel very bad about myself until these very same artists allow me to bask in their brilliance by taking them out to lunches and dinners.

I'm also tone deaf, color-blind, knock-kneed and pigeon-toed, physical attributes that have not helped my animation abilities or my profile on eHarmony. However, I do know what I like when it comes to twisted cartoon humor. Amy Winfrey's Making Fiends is a series of web toons brilliantly perverse in its simplicity of design and structure. The writing and music are subversive in their guilelessness. The series is now a deserved hit on NICKTOONS.

Why do I bring all of this up? Recently some addlepated, mutton-headed, snot-nosed son of a friend of mine wanted to know what I thought of his animation web toon. I told him it was rough, crude, and unfunny. He told me that anyone who fluffs up his chest hairs, wears polyester, and still listens to Loverboy on an eight-track can't be trusted to know anything. I referred him to Amy's website if he wanted to actually learn something. Last I heard, his father was forking over major bucks to get this kid into a school where they teach students how to draw stuff other than a beer.

Run, Rabbit: Dick and Jane for a Homeschooling World

Image source: Fun with Dick and Jane: A Commemorative Collection of Stories. San Francisco: Collins Publishers, 1996

Generations of American children learned their ABCs using the Dick and Jane readers. Perhaps that's why most of us still write in complete sentences of no more than three words before all grammatical hell breaks loose. The books' pictures were simple; the animals dishearteningly cute; and the kids were all whiter than the Dover Cliffs. I just wish my mother had not thrown out my primers. Untouched editions sell quite well on eBay.

Leave it to the British to come up with an updated version of Dick and Jane. Their humour, unlike ours, is so disturbing and violent, it is shocking no empire ever developed from their skewered view of humanity.



For more information about Run Wrake and "Rabbit," read the PingMag interview or visit Wrake's website.

Noir and Sin on Super Bowl Sunday

It's been a tough day already preparing for the Super Bowl. Practicing those expandable stomach exercises while rehearsing the rules of gaseous etiquette for public gatherings takes so much of the fun out of the game. With that in mind, until I can get back into my game, I leave you with two interesting animated pieces.

"Ruby Rocket, Private Detective" (from NiemannWorks Animation)

By late Sunday night, I hope not to have committed any more than four of the seven deadly sins. I might not be a saint, but I'm not that much of a sinner either.

"Los Pecadores" (from Maniac Planet, Dirección: Pablo Polledri)

Atul Rao's Channel Runs on Animation Voltage

Atul Rao, a Canadian animator and friend, recently posted his latest piece of wacky animation online and, as usual, it's pretty funny. This guy is so prolific that he has his own channel. Not even David Sarnoff programmed every time period on NBC, and he ran that joint for 50 years.

I've liked cutout and collage animation since I first noticed it while watching Monty Python's Flying Circus. I've worked in cutout collage for years. Just today, I placed all of my store coupons in a neat little pile at the checkout counter in a very provocative fashion.

Patience is a Virtue and Other Myths

I was thinking about this piece of animation while stuck in a "ripping my eyeballs out with a socket wrench" traffic snarl earlier today. I have no idea what caused the mess that turned the 405 into a personal steel cage match, but that's just one of the upsides of living the good life in Los Angeles.

The freeway problem did not involve road construction, fender benders, drive by shootings, earthquakes, mudslides, volcanic eruptions, or flash floods. It's like magic when this happens, but years of Boy Scout training prepared me for those times when the world moves slower than a statue. I always carry Tolstoy's War and Peace with me. I never know when a freeway slow down will force me to finish reading some of my high school assignments.

The woman in front of me was wailing away at her kids (well I hope they were hers). I found this quite disturbing, as she had one hand on a cup of coffee while the other was full of make-up paraphernalia. Women like this confound me, as I have no idea where they hide their third hand in normal situations. The guy to my left was making out with his passenger, reminding me that I had yet to see Milk. The driver of the semi, clinging so closely to my right side that I could smell his Old Spice, was kicking back and looking over a foldout map of Utah. The kid driving up my tail pipe was lost in a world of haze. Damn this younger generation for not having the 60's manners to share.