I love buying computer books. I’ll see one in a bookstore and think to myself, “I really should learn Photoshop.” Or maybe how to create mash-ups with Sony’s ACID. Or how to use Microsoft Expression Web, the program that replaced FrontPage.
And I’ll buy them. Now, I have them in a bookcase right near the computer, so the next time I say to myself, “I really should learn Photoshop,” I can add “…after all, I did buy the book.”
“Rule The Web,” by Boing Boing’s Mark Frauenfelder, never made it to the shelf. I keep it where I can grab it. It is hands-down the most useful computer book I’ve ever bought. It’s packed with information I need, it’s well organized, and the hints and tips are just fantastic. I can’t tell you how many questions it’s answered for me – many of which I hadn’t even thought to ask. “Rule The Web” literally paid for itself on the day I bought it, by directing me to RetailMeNot, where I was given coupon codes that reduced a couple of online orders by more than 20 bucks. That in turn led me to BugMeNot, a handy way to bypass the registration requirements many magazine and newspaper websites insist upon before they’ll let you view the article you’re looking for. Highly Recommended.
This cel from Raggedy Ann and Andy (1977) is huge – 16 1/2″ inches long by 8″ high. Not all of the cel is shown, because my scanner does not have a Panavision setting. Most of the cel is taken up by “The Greedy,” an amorphous glob of taffy liberally suffused with lollipops, ice cream, gum balls, cherries, fudge sauce, and “Butterscotch and nuts that never stop.” As if that wasn’t bizarre enough, The Greedy constantly scoops up delectable parts of himself and eats them.
I wrote about the desire many of us have to see this film released on DVD. Its episodic nature is usually cited as one of the film’s faults (the other being too many songs) but this did allow for the creation of “set pieces,” some of which were star turns by legendary animators. None are more incredible than the Greedy, as animated by Emery Hawkins.
The cel above, like all Greedy cels, is only partially painted. Rather than laboriously apply huge amounts of orange-yellow paint to each cel, a large piece of colored paper was cut to match the Greedy’s outline. This also eliminated the potential for unwanted, distracting swirls of motion within large areas of paint. The jet-black sky was created with another piece of colored paper (this cel has been mounted on a white background).
I’ll link to the YouTube clip for those of you who want to see this scene in all its incredible motion, but be warned: the beauty of this scene is in the details as candy emerges from the taffy pit, is swallowed, and re-emerges. YouTube doesn’t have that kind of resolution, and doesn’t have widescreen, so you’ll be missing a lot. Another reason we need that DVD.
Here’s the second of four installments of Monitor radio sketches by Mike Nichols and Elaine May, “The King and Queen of Sophisticated Comedy.”
This brief history of the team comes from The New York Times: “Nichols and May first did improvisational theater with the Chicago-based Compass Players troupe, which evolved into the Second City company. They began performing their own act in 1957, arrived on Broadway in 1960 and broke up in 1962 after feuding over a play that Ms. May wrote and Mr. Nichols starred in, “A Matter of Position,” which closed in Philadelphia.
The last track isn’t a sketch – it’s Mike and Elaine as part of a round table discussion with Irv Kupcinet (or is it Mitch Miller? It’s hard to tell those two guys apart from their voices). Favorite tracks from this second bunch: “The Air Conditioning Repairman” and “Edith and Osbert,” which was written about international long distance calls, but works well today as a cell phone sketch.
Kenneth Branagh (whose full-length version of Hamlet was released on DVD recently) characterized playing Hamlet on stage as “…three hours of dialogue and then a sword fight when you’re exhausted.” What, then, of playing Hamlet on film? How about in silent film?
Sarah Bernhardt portrayed the melancholy Dane in a French version from 1900, Le Duel d’Hamlet, and one is tempted to infer that the adaptation focused on the action of the duel simply because film was silent in 1900. That inference would be wrong, however, since Le Duel d’Hamlet was a sound film that shipped to theaters with an accompanying Edison cylinder recording. Take that, Al Jolson.
There were many silent Hamlets, however, like the one produced in Denmark in 1910, now lost, and others that still survive intact or in fragmentary form.
It is not impossible to create a silent Hamlet. As recently as last June, a 90-minute mime and movement version was presented wordlessly at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. Sarah Kaufman of The Washington Post wrote of the silent performance that “… the suspicions [and] shadows… blare like sirens though the actors, who convey them only through a glance, a gesture and a particular way of moving across the stage.”
The 1916 silent film Hamlet Up To Date, shot by the Lubin Studio in Florida, was perhaps the first film version to recast the story in a modern setting. The trend cotinues: the Ethan Hawke version from 2000 was set in modern-day New York. A 2000 TV adaptation starring Campbell Scott updated the setting to 19th Century New York (and was shot right here on Long Island).
Given the critical attention these productions garnered, it seems unfathomable that arguably the boldest adaptation, a silent film, shot in upstate New York at a time when most film production companies had long since departed for Hollywood to escape the restrictions of Edison’s Motion Picture Trust… remains largely unknown.
That may change, however, since the lone surviving print has now been painstakingly transferred to video and become available for critical reevaluation. Kerry Decker’s decision to set the story in fifteenth century Greece at first seems counterintuitive, but perfectly suits his Hamlet, John Hopkins. Hopkins’s startling performance as the tragic prince is matched in subtlety and nuance by Alan Chapman’s Claudius. The silent Decker version takes extreme liberties with the story and eschews the violence endemic to nearly all productions, on stage or screen, silent or with sound, taking its cue from Claudius’s reaction to the madness of Ophelia, spoken to Queen Gertrude in Act Four, Scene Five: O, this is the poison of deep grief/ it springs all from her father’s death/ O Gertrude, Gertrude/ When sorrows come, they come not single pies/ but in battalions.
Michael Iceberg played his “Iceberg Machine” (synthesizers of all varieties, tweaked, customized, and modded) at Disneyland and at Walt Disney World. Michael was way ahead of the curve, producing sounds no one else was getting in the early 1980’s. Couple these sounds with Michael’s immense musical talent and wacky stage persona, and you’ve got the makings of an E-ticket park attraction. The Tomorrowland Terrace was huge, yet there was nary an empty seat when Michael was playing.
The Disney Channel created a special showcasing Michael Iceberg at the park, and you can find that on YouTube. This great performance comes from “The Tonight Show” just after the opening of Epcot, which should be celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary at the moment, but hasn’t really done much to mark the milestone. A 3/4″ U-Matic video of Iceberg’s Carson appearance survived in my collection – and here it is.
Johnny Carson occasionally had bad nights on his show – when the audience didn’t laugh, guests didn’t talk – everything seemed to go wrong. This happened to be one of those terrible nights, as you’ll hear in Johnny’s introduction. I’m guessing that Michael overdid the fog just a little bit, because it’s a l-o-n-g time before we see anything other than the wide shot – one can practically sense the panic in the control room as they waited for the fog to clear so that they could get a medium shot or close-up.
But then, things start going right. It’s remarkable how different Johnny sounds at the conclusion of Michael’s performance – listen at the very end of the clip for his succinct review. Michael has that effect on nearly everybody.
It is printed on cheap newsprint and dates from September 12, 1942. It is apparently a continuing magazine issued in the UK by the Army Bureau of Current Affairs, sensibly titled Current Affairs.
Yet – on the cover appears this curious warning: “Not to be published.” This actually meant “not to be re-published.” The cover states that “the information given in this publication is not to be communicated, either directly or indirectly, to the Press or to any person not holding an official position in His Majesty’s Service.”
In other words, for God’s sake, don’t show this to a Yank.
This issue is titled Here are the Americans, and here is its lead sentence:
The more we know about the Americans and the more they know about us, the less likely is Goebbels going to succeed in one of his most important jobs – the promoting of ill will between the United States and this country.
Essentially what we have here is a wartime field guide to the Americans – why they are who they are, and why they act in the ways Americans tend to do.
This initial assumption of this curious pamphlet seems to be that Americans coming to England actually represented the return of the rabble.
They say that for three hundred years any Englishman who wished to might have emigrated [to the United States]. Would not the stock left behind tend to be domesticated, conservative, calm in crisis, and polite?
Who knows? This simplistic social Darwinism may contain a grain of truth. Might it not possibly be true that England did get rid of all of its wild-eyed, over-the-top, out-of-bounds crazy people, who all quite naturally emigrated to America, leaving behind a homogenous population of people “domesticated, conservative, calm in crisis and polite?” It’s a stunning generalization, and I’m not so sure that I disagree. The theory does explain America’s Wall Street types, as well as the car salesmen who purchase TV time in order to yell and wave their arms to attain local celebrity.
Stunning generalizations abound in Here are the Americans. Try this on for size:
The Northern United States have a dry and sparkling climate. The air is full of electricity. This climate dries the flesh, giving the tall, lean, typical American figure. It probably accounts for the American voice. It certainly gives immense and restless energy to all who breathe it.
One suspects that the research which led to such a conclusion was conducted in its entirety during the viewing of a Gary Cooper movie on a Sunday afternoon. And if the authors hadn’t stated “Northern United States,” one would suspect that the Cooper movie in question was a Western, for after noting that…
[The] red Indians, were tall, lean, handsome people…
The authors go on to suggest that…
Strangely enough, these new American stocks [created in the ‘melting pot’] soon began to share the native American characteristics; they grew tall and lean, and became great fighters and great scalp-hunters – in the world of business and sport, that is…
Seen any tall, lean Americans lately? Statistically, six times out of ten, the American you meet today is overweight. Nine in ten Americans will tell you they recognize that the country has grown too fat, yet only four out of the six overweight Americans will admit to personal weight issues. America has become fat and delusional. One thing, and one thing only, has not changed in over sixty years:
[While the Americans are living among us] …it will help us in our job if we remember that in American films, it is always the villain who is courteous, smooth and sleek. The hero is tough and gives as good as he gets, without ever losing his temper at what other people say.
I don’t know if Here are the Americans is correct about the influence of Native Americans on the development of our national character. But I would suggest the pamphlet does capture a defining cultural trait that accounts for the most popular TV show ever.
[The beautiful Dinah Sheridan starred in Genevieve, a 1953 comedy that the British Film Institute has designated "one of the hundred favorite British films of the twentieth century." Research on publicity for Genevieve unearthed the publication seen above, the "Magazine of the Hawkins-Universal Pressure Cooker Users' Club." When forwarding this to my friend Dinah for her comments, I couldn't resist writing the following letter to accompany it, ostensibly from a modern-day Hawkins-Universal representative.]
Dear Miss Sheridan:
I come to you with a heavy heart, a knot in my stomach, a stiff upper lip, on bended knee with a worried mind, my hand outstretched in friendship. This is, as you might imagine, a most uncomfortable position for me.
First, I would ask that you refresh your memory by looking at the pictures attached to this e-mail, the cover of Silver Lining Number 12, from March of 1952, and a second photo from the interior of that same magazine. Should you have any trouble viewing the attachments, please let me know. (The promotional pictures show you with the Hawkins Pressure Cooker).
Recently the British Testing Institute for Cookery and Kitchenware completed its exhaustive testing of Hawkins pressure cookers. It has come as a bit of a surprise to us that they have asked us to recall all Hawkins pressure cookers sold during 1950, 1951, and 1952.
Initially, when they asked us to recall these units, we simply wrote back, “Yes, we recall these products very well, and with considerable fondness.”
The BTICK mistook our response for sarcasm, feeling we were having a bit of fun at their expense. Once the confusion was cleared up, we recognized for the first time the monumental task before us: to contact all known users of these products.
Sadly, or actually, happily, our records are woefully incomplete, due to a series of pressure cooker explosions you may have read about which took place in late 1961. We attempted to retrieve our records following these explosions, however, we found to our chagrin that the soggy carrots, lettuce, celery, and potatoes permanently affected the documents, which quickly deteriorated to the point of unreadability. Therefore, we have no list of pressure cooker owners… well, I’ve told a lie, we do in fact have a list. In point of fact, we have only been able to identify one of our owners from that era — yourself.
Because you posed for the cover of our magazine, Silver Lining, now long discontinued, we were able to identify the pressure cooker you held in your hands as one of the affected models. When I discovered this picture, I took it directly to the office of Mr. Whetherstone, our Vice President in Charge of Customer Relations and Kitchenware Recall. I handed your portrait with pressure cooker to Mr. Whetherstone and identified the photo as containing an affected model.
Mr. Whetherstone did not get my import, commenting, “She doesn’t look like a terribly affected model to me, but if you say so…”
I immediately assured Mr. Whetherstone that when I referred to the “affected model,” I referred not to the young lady in the picture, but rather to the recalled pressure cooker. Once he understood that you were the only customer for this particular model of pressure cooker that we had been able to trace, he suggested that I e-mail you as soon as possible.
On behalf of the firm, my sincere apologies, but I must advise you to cease all use of your Hawkins-Universal pressure cooker immediately. Please pack the pressure cooker securely and ship it back to us via airmail. While we are aware that such a heavy item will be expensive to send, we regret that we cannot reimburse you for these costs.
BTICK requires us to provide you with a replacement pressure cooker. However, we exited the pressure cooker business some time in the mid-1960s. Therefore we have no stock available, and will not be able to return a new pressure cooker to you.
When the market for pressure cookers blew up in our face, both literally and figuratively, we found ourselves with huge excess capacity in our manufacturing facility. Recognizing that our expertise related to hollow metal containers capable of withstanding great pressure, we undertook a retooling of our product line, expanding, enlarging, and enhancing our manufacture capabilities with a view toward directing them at an entirely new market, to wit, undersea exploration.
I don’t know how familiar you are with diving bells, submersibles, and pressurized robotic underwater probes, but Hawkins-Universal have become a leader in the field.
I write to you in the slim hope that you may have need for some underwater exploration equipment which we could provide to compensate you for the loss of your pressure cooker. The primary challenge we face relates to the value of your pressure cooker versus the cost of our underwater exploration robots. We find only one item in our current catalog which qualifies as an ‘even trade’ for your pressure cooker, taking into account normal wear and tear over the past 55 years. This is our part number 16DRE99UW-6, an exploding bolt assembly. Of course, I have no way of knowing whether an exploding bolt assembly would be of use to you, although if you are planning a surprise party or have a vacation property from which you would wish to deter would-be thieves, perhaps you could use one of these items, which are fully guaranteed.
You may continue to rely on the high quality of our products. I assure you that our explosive bolts are produced to the same rigid standards of our pressure cooker line.
On a personal note, this piece of correspondence represents my last bit of work on my last day here at Hawkins. How odd that I should spend it working on the very product upon which I first began, many years ago… our pressure cookers, which served the British housewife quite nobly and honourably for many years. As a part of our company history yourself, I would like to personally thank you for endorsing our pressure cookers, and to let you know that we in no way hold you responsible for the discontinuance of the line some 13 or 14 years following that participation.
All best wishes from your native country and here’s hoping that you have purchased, at some point in the past, a microwave, making all of the above moot.
Most sincerely yours,
Mr. Woodson Flent Hawkins Undersea Exploration, Ltd.
It’s The Violano-Virtuoso, of course. Who are we to say that our government was wrong?
I had an idea some time ago to do a TV show focused exclusively on things that remained just the way they used to be: people, events, ideas and traditions which surprisingly had survived the years more or less intact. I shot quite a bit of footage, using the downtime I had with my crew from another TV series. We covered a national marbles championship, visited with Ray Broekel, the world’s leading authority on candy bars, and went to Pride Lines Corporation at the time they were hand-making perfect replicas of 30’s Disney toys, including the Lionel Mickey/Minnie Handcar.
I re-cut the automated musical instruments section into a 40 minute documentary that ran on a local PBS station. This is a clip from that edit, narrated by by the machine’s owner, Harvey Roehl.
The BBC – specifically BBC 4 – has posted a new half-hour audio Documentary about George Herriman and Krazy Kat that aired in the UK last Thursday. Hurry over if you want to hear it; the BBC giveth, but it also taketh away, usually a week later.
"Isn't Life Terrible" is a Charley Chase short from 1925. The title was derived from a 1924 D.W. Griffith film, "Isn't Life Wonderful?" Other Charley Chase film titles that ask questions are "What Price Goofy?" (1925), "Are Brunettes Safe?" (1927), and "Is Everybody Happy?" (1928). Chase abandoned his titles with question marks for titles with exclamation points during the sound era.
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I love buying computer books. I’ll see one in a bookstore and think to myself, “I really should learn Photoshop.” Or maybe how to create mash-ups with Sony’s ACID. Or how to use Microsoft Expression Web, the program that replaced FrontPage.
