I Listen to John McCormack & I'm Not Even Irish

Most of my neighbors in the Greenbush area were old immigrants and spent their time either cooking Old World foods, starring tearfully out of windows, screaming at each other, or listening to long playing records loud enough to shatter windows half a block away. Walking around the neighborhood as a seven year old, I became quite an opera fan, familiar with the tenor voices of Robert Merrill, Jan Peerce, Richard Tucker, Enrico Caruso, Mario Lanza and Lauritz Melchior.

I would knock on doors and invite myself into these airless homes to listen to old scratchy RCA opera recordings; just as the soprano was about to sing a stock number about dying, I would feign hunger pangs and ask for any old dessert that their ungrateful grandchildren had mistakenly left behind during their last hurried visit. Okay the Yiddish word for the day is schnorrer which translates as 'beggar' but I was a kid in a candy store and the grandkids never once missed an extra biscotti, tiramisu, tortoni, cannoli, zeppole, or zabaglione. I paid for my behavior years later with enough cavities to purchase 300 acres of beach front property in Maui for a dental co-op. I was also keeping the old people company, so that has to count for something in heaven.

I heard recordings of Paul Robeson in the "Bush" as well, and I was told he was the world's greatest basso profondo. I thought that meant 'anarchist' since only the most sinister moustache twirlers listened to him. None of these women seemed to ever have men around them. I never came over much to listen to Robeson, since his followers offered me nothing more filling than copies of Emma Goldman speeches to chew on.

But today is St. Patrick's Day so we'll put the Jewish, Italian and Danish tenors back in their sleeve jackets. When I think of classic Irish tenors, the name of John McCormack stands above all others. His voice was heard in the "Bush" as well, but usually in taverns on West Washington Avenue. Beer joints were off limits to a seven-year old, but that was okay with me. Based on what I found in the dumpsters behind these places, most tavern desserts were served with half-smoked cigarette butts stuck in them.

I only began to appreciate John McCormack's voice in college, when an Emmigrant's Daughter with Endearing Young Charms named Colette took this Croppy Boy to The Hills of Connemara and All Through the Night made my Non Irish Eyes Smile. Alright, that line stretches Irish songs way over the edge, but several shots of single malt Glenlivet will do that to a non-drinker like myself. Thank goodness blogging this in a speeding car is still legal on St. Patty's Day.

This excerpt highlighting the stunning voice of John McCormack is from a forgettable 1937 movie (it's mislabeled 1934) entitled Wings of the Morning, starring a very very young Henry Fonda with a very very bad English accent. The beauty he's courting is Annabella, future wife of Tyrone Powers. For all you film buffs out there, Wings of the Morning was the first Technicolor move shot in England. It's still unwatchable.

Happy St. Patty's Day

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.

"My Home, My Citizenship, My Burden"

Bill Holm (1943-2009)

Minnesota lost its poet laureate on February 25th. Bill Holm was a literary institution in his home state, as well as in those circles that understand and appreciate a unique subset of American regional poetry: the hardscrabble social radical who takes nourishment from the soil without over-romanticizing those who plow its fields. An imposing figure from Icelandic stock, standing some 6'8", Holm more closely resembled a conquering Viking than a carver of words. While he strode the earth from China to Iceland, he spent most of his writing life sequestered in that part of southwestern Minnesota where Spring fears for its life and Summer waves goodbye from a fast-moving freight train.

Like most great regional writers (a winner of the McKnight Distinguished Artist Award), Holm's thoughts speak a truth far beyond a state's borders. His essay on failure, Uncle Sam-style, should be required reading in every high school classroom that continues to spread saccharin over American studies like a heavy tarp. He who dies with the most toys still dies, and is not any richer for the experience. Holm's poem on the death of Senator Paul Wellstone is a lament for that peace voice cut short while the more sanguinary songstresses continued to bleat out a war beat. For those who have never lived beyond the leaf blower sounds of the urban landscape, his words will feel both foreign and unpretentiously quiet. For those of us who grew up in the cold, flat lands of the Midwest and have drifted away from our roots, his poems and essays are a comforting reminder that those who do go back home again will not find the world so alien after all.

Avatar Hot Boy

I spend hours a day on the computer looking things up, jumping from one link to another and wondering how the world survived without a search engine. The Google is the best little engine that could since my college girlfriend researched and wrote all of my papers during the four years of the Revolution when I was out doing god knows what. I paid her well for keeping me afloat during those turbulent times. At that point in my life, I was young and healthy and my get up and go had not yet gotten up and left. I also still had all of my teeth.

I received a rather strong GPA from all of her efforts; yet that one-sided relationship set in motions years of selfishness and ego-maniacal behavior, for I believed every woman in the world would treat me with such kingly Rush Limbaugh subordination.

Then I woke up and discovered it was a dream, and I have been hugging a very animated adult Chia pet ever since. I still have my college girlfriend's magical Underwood typewriter, just in case the UW ever asks me to prove I did my own papers; she has certain Polaroid’s that the FBI would find interesting to fill out certain archival questions. We haven't exchanged Valentine’s Day cards since Watergate.

I digress, for I have eaten only almonds today. For some odd reason, eating almonds makes me nostalgic. I have no idea why; neither do any of the clinicians I keep on the payroll. Now back to today's subject.

Avatar Hot Boy is the title of today's post. Sounds pornographic, perhaps it should be, but it isn't. Due to ways Google algorithmic spiders work (and don't ask me how because I can't even follow the explanation on Wikipedia myself), typing these three words into the search engine popped my blog up nearly to the top of the list. I know this because a reader from Hanoi did just that recently. The poor guy ended up temporarily looking at all of my swirling pictures of dancing cows, marching bands, Ellis Island immigrants and most importantly, the schematics of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile before clicking out. I hoped my reader from Hanoi stuck around long enough to play the University of Wisconsin Marching Song.

I had written a post about Avatar: The Last Airbender, several weeks ago, complaining that once more Hollywood was walking down the Charlie Chan route of casting white actors in Asian roles. A live action movie was in the process of pre-production planning and the Asian community was up in arms at some of the major casting choices. Granted the creators of the animated series were white as were most of the primary voice actors, but the cartoon design and story arcs were straight anime, giving off the impression that this was a non-western series. My point was why would Hollywood court a racially insensitive problem it could so easily avoid?

The complete title of the post was Hot Air Bender is still Old Hollywood Gas. Okay, it was a silly sounding title, punning "hot air" with "Hollywood Gas". So sue me for making it as clever as boiling water. The word "Hot" combined with a partial listing of the blog name,Greenbush "Boy", plus the word "Avatar, was enough information for Google to go to town.

But why did he (I presume it is a he) sequence these three words together in the first place? Initially I had no idea. Today he came back again Googling the same three words. This time I did some backtracking on Google links (the closest I will ever get to forensic diddling around), and discovered my visitor was not interested at all in the cartoon series. Even in Hanoi the making of James Cameron's Avatar is news enough to track. My visitor was searching for the latest images of Na'vi, an incandescent blue female (I wonder how you can tell?) that, except for the tail, looked similar to Mystique.

This Avatar design is hot...boy is it hot! Apparently this was one of dozens every teenage boy and man-child thought initially was the alien look for Cameron's decade long in the making sci-fi epic. Well it ain't, because dozens of web sites have their own "this is the true version" of Cameron's vision and none of them are correct. So many of these images are now floating out there in the cold waters of the Internet, they're forming their own icebergs in the North Atlantic and crashing into each other. So my curious friend in Hanoi, keep reading blogs like EW.com, io9.com, First Show.net, or Cinematical, because one of them will eventually hit design pay dirt for you.

This has given me an idea. As a blogger I face millions of others who shoot off their mouths daily for no other reason than they can and someone has been kind enough to make them breakfast. How do I market my blog? Make it visible? Keep people constantly coming back for more? I mean the Wienermobile can travel only so far!

From now on all of my posts will have one or more "hot" words in the title: Porn, Hemorrhoids, Murder, or Implants, for instance. The subject matter will have little if anything to do with the title, a bait and switch technique I first discovered while running for Mister Congeniality in grade school. With provocative keywords like these, who knows who else might stumble onto my blog site? Perhaps even Bin Laden will drop by long enough to stop using Master Chief as his dance instructor and listen to "On Wisconsin".

The Grapes of Wrath are no longer affordable

Henry Fonda and Jane Darwell

"A fellow ain't got a soul of his own, just a little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody . . . Then it don't matter. I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too."

Tom Joad, "The Grapes of Wrath"

Do today's high school students still study John Steinbeck's, 1939 classic , The Grapes of Wrath, a novel infused with indomitable perseverance, personal sacrifice, and a Christian tenderness towards the truly less fortunate? If not, they should. Given our current financial mess, perhaps they’ll find it stimulating reading while marching from city to city looking for a job.

I remember my dad once telling me that no generation can know how resilient it is until it survives a depression. Wars, he said, come looking for the young every five minutes, but a drop on your knees financial Armageddon like the Great Depression tests the true mettle of the human spirit. While cathartic, pointing a gun at a bank building rather than at an enemy soldier wins you no ground except in a prison yard.

The Bizarro World of Republican political consultants fascinates me for they speak a language of callousness and brass-balled inflexibility towards the poor, the weak and the infirm that would have Jesus picking up the 16 oz gloves. Cloned from tombs rather than born from wombs, these characters spew forth enough foul bilge water on the 24/7 cable news services to inundate most of the fly over country which they swear they speak for. They utter the word "No" more often than the girls I asked out in high school (and college and post college). The "facts" they herald with such impenitent certainty emanate from orifices that only proctologists are licensed to explore.

The current Obama stimulus plan has them harmonizing in tongues. They speak "fat cat" lingo as a Woody Guthrie lament. Their latest appellation of dread is the term “class warfare” as if that's a ballad alien to these shores. According to them, this measure will suddenly pit rich against poor, businessmen against labor, gerunds against dangling participles. The world is coming to an end and non corporate Socialism is just around the corner. These chicks and chicken hawks either know so little about this nation's history or hope none of the viewers do. America is nothing if not a constant train of Credit Mobilier schemes and scandals. In fact we've had more booms and busts in our 200 plus years than an all night Vegas burlesque show.

Who are these lockstep lemmings? Which casting agency recruits them? How long does it take to fill their heads with the same identical talking points? Who pays for their straight teeth and the women's flouncy blouses? And how can they find so many young black Republicans to speak like so many young white Republicans? Questions left unanswered.

They hate everything they personally have themselves and they make a nice living at it. Can anyone believe that these jokers walk around with no medical coverage, for instance? Their invectives against that idea are loud enough to crack off the nose of Mt. Rushmore's Washington. Or that they don't get paid hefty fees by various political action groups or think tanks to run around like well coiffed but highly rabid Ole Yellers (I grant a poor play on words). Perhaps one day after a spirited discussion on said issue, one of the highly paid 24/7 teleprompter readers might ask one of these babbling bloviators which health coverage they have and whether it is a PPO plan or, like for the rest of us, the UFO option.

Wouldn't it be nice if one day all of us had the same benefits as Senator Lindsey Graham and Congressman John Boehner and even Congress’s very own Vampira, Michelle Bachman? They seem to have problems bestowing on the American people the same beneficence afforded them. I wonder if that can be construed as classless warfare.

I will continue to watch the distaff Republican spokespersons. They resemble the type of woman I've only been able to speak to after placing several cool crisp Franklins in their hands. If truth be told, I get turned on by vixens who use enough lip gloss to lubricate truck axles.

Road Kill Words from a Rhodes Scholar

Imagine for a moment that the world has run you over with a forklift. The job is gone; the money has run out. The wife disappeared with the homeless guy down the street. The kids did the right thing and broke into prison.The food on the shelves consists of stale air and untouched dust. The hounds of foreclosure are banging down the door. Time to make the Alamo stand. Your weapon of choice, last year's copy of Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide because, like yourself, it is already obsolete. The door smashes open. The blaggard Javier Bardem, cattle gun drawn, should be standing in front of you.

Instead you see this guy leading the charge:

Bobby Jindal is the Governor of Louisiana. He is also a Rhodes Scholar. He presented the Republican talking points last night after President Obama's speech.

It's amazing that now a personality can be outsourced. Call me old fashioned, but I want a national spokesman from the Planet WTF to have a deep menacing voice, twirl a moustache, walk around in a bulky pin stripe suit carrying a heater, and have a name like Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Sauron, Shere Khan, or Captain Hook. Bobby Jindal sounded like a whiny guy selling ShamWow at 3 AM on Lifetime. He exuded all the compassion of a broken levee. Apparently an angry ex-wife dressed him for the occasion.

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.

If I Could Vote For Oscar this Year

OSCAR THE GROUCH

I see scores of new movies a year, and I have an opinion on every one of them. This means nothing more than a bunch of burned out brain cells, because I am not a voting member of the Academy. Over the decades, my win/loss ratio in office pools ranks right up there with the '62 Mets. If I say a movie will win or a star will walk away with the Oscar, bet the opposite. I lost so much money choosing Saving Private Ryan to win Best Picture in 1998, for instance, that I'm still paying off a guy named Vinnie Shakespeare. That should have been the clue. The lack of Oscar acclaim for Citizen Kane, The Searchers, The Wild Bunch, Singing in the Rain, any Sergio Leone film, Barbara Stanwyck, Montgomery Clift, and so many others is well known and a reminder that Academy members have no more knowledge of what will make a classic than any of us mortals. Check out this flotilla of presumed Oscar snubs.

If I could vote here are my choices for the Oscars. The movies with the parentheses, I suspect, look by all odds to be the winners. By Monday afternoon, I along with the rest of the Universe will have completely forgotten who won what but will already be looking forward to next year's competition.

Supporting actress:
Marisa Tomei, "The Wrestler" (Amy Adams, "Doubt")

Director:
David Fincher, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (Danny Boyle, "Slumdog Millionaire")

Animated feature:
"WALL-E" (should have been nominated for Best Picture)

Adapted screenplay:
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," screenplay by Eric Roth, screen story by Eric Roth and Robin Swicord ("Slumdog Millionaire," screenplay by Simon Beaufoy)

Original screenplay:
"WALL-E," screenplay by Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon; original story by Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter (what else?)

Foreign language film:
"Waltz with Bashir," Israel (anti-war films always win Best Foreign)

Bathroom Backflips

I have a very blustery cockroach living in my bathroom, and the big brute blames me for his continued lackadaisical love life. I call him Langer because I first saw him high-diving Greg Louganis style into my morning mango-nectar drink shortly after breaking up with FANG, a bi-polar example of femininity if ever there was one. Diving in head first, he would paddle around as if he were a disgraced bank executive taking in his indoor Olympic size pool. Langer would then crawl back out, shake himself off like an Afghan and dive back in, with no regard for the backwash spilling onto the floor. If truth be told, Langer thrives on slippery surfaces. Every morning he greets me when I first walk into the bathroom. He waits for me to miss the rim then begins to freshen up for the day. It would have been easy for me to call him Archy, but given his foul language and surly disposition, I saw no intellectual resemblance to his more famous literary predecessor. Langer neither bangs out poetry on an Underwood nor does he hang around all night long with crusty stogy-smoking newspaper reporters covering the police beat while reading Krazy Kat.

For years Langer has demanded I remove the above circa 1930's Scott Tissue advertising poster from my bathroom. According to him, it frightens away all his lady friends. The man's scowl apparently gives his female companions a most delirious form of the vapors; most come from well-to-do Republican homes in the southland, so any inference that Bolshevism exists on my bathroom floor, hidden among old pizza crumbs and scraps of toilet paper freaks the honeys out. I tell him that he can always use the line, "Come upstairs and see my etchings." He reminds me that quaint remark has never worked for me; the poster in question is merely a dime store copy and tastes like it as well.

Langer pays no rent, and he rarely turns off the lights after he leaves a room, therefore the poster stays. Anyway, I have nothing more appropriate to cover the earthquake cracks that creep further and further upwards with every Southern California temblor. I tell him, "There's the crack, leave anytime you want and don't let the dry wall hit anyone of your eighteen kneecaps." He laughs like a Saturday morning villain and then threatens me with some Ninja moves if I don't pour him another mango smoothie. He has also taken a fancy to the weight-watchers "cure for cancer" fungus growing under my sink. He's not leaving anytime soon.

So this morning I wake up to the sound of Mondo Grosso coming from my bathroom. This is odd for I only listen to bottleneck blues and Cajun music before I start my day. Only one character I know hates my music and would dare change the pre-sets. Inside the bathroom Langer stands half drunkenly, listing from side to side, humming to himself, celebrating life, in a pile of old shaving cream suds. Intoxicated once again on that week old spilt virgin olive oil on the kitchen floor. How he finds his way back to the bathroom is anyone's guess. I should finally clean that mess up near the encrusted raisin bran pile, but Langer is funny when drunk. He can't play gin worth a hoot then.

This morning Langer is not alone. He has company, plenty of company, yet no one pays any attention to him. All stare up at the wall, more entranced by what they see there than Langer's slurred come hither gyrations. That damn free loading roommate of mine had changed the poster. I'm mortified and red faced as I read along with the others, our mouths slowly moving in unison over every shocking word. Who knew such stuff even existed? I excuse myself and go outside. I feel faint. I believe I do have the vapors, Miss Scarlett. But it is sunrise and certain needs must be performed because I am a still healthy male. Thank goodness for the knotty pine across the street, but damn if I didn't miss the rim again.

Come to Your Senses Day

I spent most of the day yesterday sleeping off the effects of a box of Godiva chocolates I gave to myself because my true love pulled a Crater recently with my former best friend, the one I loved like a brother even though he was dumber but more handsome than me, and now both live in some unincorporated area of Idaho protected by Rabid rottweilers and a bunch of survivalists who were hippies at one time, but now are all loons waiting for some asteroid to hit Earth and take them up to some planet just north of Capricorn. Damn! Glucose-induced run-a-muck sentences are sure fun to write. I wish I could speak this coherently during therapy.

Because I was twitching yesterday (not to be confused with Twittering), I missed posting this important post-Valentine Day holiday message: February 15th is duly recognized throughout the feminine world as Come to Your Senses Day and should not be confused with But He Was So Nice to Me Before I Slept with Him Day, Can I Get My Money Back from Him Day, or Restraining Order is now Finally in Effect Day.

I'm a fan of some of the holiday's progenitors such as Emily Dickinson, Dorothy Parker, and Melvin Dewey; this important date is circled on all my calendars throughout my apartment, so had I been all together yesterday, this post would not be coming out today. I have no calendar in my bedroom, but I do have a three-minute egg timer on my nightstand to remind me of those days when I did have someone important in my life.

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.

Lincoln and Darwin: Two great men together again for the First Time

On this date 200 years ago, Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born. Talk about less than six degrees of separation between me and these two great men: Darwin wrote about man's linkage with simians; Lincoln’s critics called our 16th President, the Great Ape. I worked for Hanna-Barbera. They're humans. Hanna-Barbera created the Grape Ape. I love that show!

I don't buy this nonsense that man personally evolved from monkeys. Monkeys are far too smart and understand the ecology of waste management much more so than us human people. Anyway, most of us are far closer to being a horse's ass than a monkey's uncle.

I am so happy that Ross Altman wrote this song. It means I don't have to come up with anything witty to say about either Lincoln or Darwin today. As you can see from my first two paragraphs, I don't know anything about either man except that both had two names, bushy beards, and the ability to enrage millions of people with their words and deeds.



I do know a little more about Lincoln than I do about Darwin. I've driven in his car. I've passed through his town. I've read the play he was watching the night of his assassination at Ford's Theatre. (Until Eugene O'Neill came along, this sort of melodramatic claptrap was the apex of dramatic theatre in America.) I even memorized The Gettysburg Address as a high schooler, something kids were required to do back then to prove that public school education was about more than smoking cigarettes in the bathroom and attending Friday night football games at Breese Stevens Field.



Isn't that video the weirdest thing? Not the animated Lincoln, but how the synchronization makes it look like a poorly dubbed Chinese martial arts movie? It's that kind of thought process that made me into a C student.

Monday night, February 16th, I will be watching The History Channel's "Stealing Lincoln's Body." It's one of those odd chapters in American History that few kids know about because no one has been able to download it yet on ITunes.

Virtual animation apparently can now bring Lincoln to life to the point where he now looks more and more like Royal Dano, the voice behind Disneyland's Main Street Opera House's animatronic, "Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln." Incidentally, Disney never one to miss a great PR opportunity, has had that exhibit closed since 2005 while it continues to show some self congratulatory 50th anniversary film about the Park. I wonder what Walt would think?

Since I do not want to slight Charles Darwin on his birthday, perhaps a primer on how evolution works for the layman is in order. I've watched it already and I still don't quite understand natural selection. But then again, I also pick up food off the floor that's been there for more than five seconds and I'm still around. I guess that makes me evidence of survival of the most foolish.

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.

THE WRECKTIFIERS

I first came up with the basic idea for THE WRECKTIFIERS around the time the Roslin Institute introduced the world to Dolly the Sheep... and I have been doodling around with it ever since. I know far less about basics genetics then Gregor Mendel did, but with this brave new world of cloning and genetic experimentation fast approaching, I wondered how geniuses would pervert it. I imagined a world where scientists could rid any family tree of all its genetic diseases and make every baby born free from any chromosomal damage. From there, mad scientists then take over and turn all of Earth and everything on it into one very large Petri dish.

If I had had the opportunity to take steroids in high school, I would have gobbled them down like M&Ms. No matter how much time I spent in the weight room, I still graduated looking like
Arnold Stang (shown here, on the left, with Fess Parker and Peter Lorre), which proved quite embarrassing during those mixed doubles arm and leg wrestling contests put on by our sadistic gym teachers. My win/loss record was no doubt due to the high concentration of testosterone in all the girls I faced.

From my fertile imagination sprang a world far beyond steroids: A world where expectant mothers injected a potion into their fetus; a potion which would, over time, give their newborn child the ability to survive on any substance, drink any fluid, fear no ozone depletion, and live as long as there were replaceable parts.

Granted, these powers were not of the comic book variety, but that wouldn't be the story. The real tale involved how Earth disintegrated when this magic formula kicked back results no one expected, turning all of humanity into a messy mass of devolving protoplasm.

Of course the only people who can rectify this situation are two teens with the secret to Earth's salvation. Hey! This is a cartoon show for kids ages 9-14. To make this story work, the two teens have disappeared from Earth for five centuries. During that time, a science fiction convention of mad scientists have taken cloning, cyborg enhancement, dinosaur making and hybrid creation to a point where we can imagine a massive boys' action toy line and an innumerable number of cartoon episodes.

As you read THE WRECKTIFIERS, remember it is a first draft. A number of structural and character questions are purposely left hanging to give the pitch fewer cul de sacs to stumble towards. The development game is a harsh and unremitting exercise in the multiplicity of ideas. Premises either catch fire with executives or sit there like a lump on a stump; move on to the next concept if no one other than yourself has that captivating twinkle in the eye. In that regard, the less written up front, the better.