Bimbo's Initiation

Bimbo's Initiation (1931, Fleischer Studios) is one of my favorite all time cartoons.
It's remarkably wacky:
Bimbo, the cute little dog character, is yanked into a weird underworld. Hooded freaks from the "Mystic Order of the Hoopahoopa Hot Cha*" chant "Wanna be a member?" at him. He refuses, only to be teased and tortured through most of the cartoon.
Rooms flip over, trapdoors rise and sink, and sharp objects threaten. Our hero is jabbed, punched in the face, spanked, slammed through cement and laughed at...
...but things end happily.
It's a strange mix of cute and sinister. The first time you see it you'll never be sure what will happen next (except that it will be at Bimbo's expense!)
I'm guessing the plot was an excuse to string slapstick gags together, but it may accidentally hit a deeper chord. Myths from all over the globe send characters to the underworld...


Bimbo finds himself in a strange place...


In the upside down room. The blade about to cut him loose also stabbed him in the butt, then grew teeth and tried to bite him.


Guess what this rope is holding up?


I like the angle and the staging in this shot.


Bimbo often looks into the audience as if to say "Did you guys see that?!"




Bimbo has caught a glimpse of Betty Boop and wants more.


This part can be scene briefly in the movie version of The Twilight Zone.
The girl with no mouth watches it on television.



Yay! A happy ending.

For more stills from this cartoon, click here.

*not sure what they're really saying. Others have transcribed it as "Boom Boom a Latcha!" "Goom Gooma Hotcha!" and "Koo-Koo-Ma-Hatcha!"

Bat Crackers!

The strangest tongue lashing I ever got was because I was mean....
to a photograph...
...of a bat.
Nellie and I lived in the same dorm. She seemed nice, liked animals, and had lots of books about them in her room. One day I thumbed through her Field Guide to Mammals of North America.
The bat section caught me off guard. These were strange looking critters: beady eyed balls of fur with needle teeth. Ears and snouts that looked like alien leaves.
"Some of these look funny!" I giggled, holding up the book. "Check out this bat."
Nellie looked like I'd slapped her. She snatched the book away.
"How dare you make fun of him!" she hollered. "The bat can't help how he looks! What if you were that bat!? You shouldn't judge by looks, you know!"
I could understand her being upset if I'd joked about a person ("So-and-so looks funny, let's avoid her,") or if I'd said something like "And since I think bats look funny, I'm going to throw rocks at them."
Maybe I should have said "Look, lunatic. If this bat were in this room, hanging from your curtain rod, would he know I was 'judging' him? Even if he did know, why would he care? He's a bat! If he told all his bat buddies that humans looked strange, would you care?"
Instead I made some excuse for leaving.

Cirque du Squirreleil

Lawyer Squirrel has hung up his practice. He's Acrobat Squirrel now.
It all started when I put a rat baffle on my bird feeder pole. I knew it wouldn't stop squirrels.
Sure enough, within a day one of them was able to reach the feeders from above, with a daredevil leap from the roof. I don't know why they go the trouble, since they have their own feeder a few feet off the ground. Maybe they like a challenge.

The Food Court

My yard is tiny, but I crammed in some birdfeeders.
From left to right there's

• A hummingbird feeder
• Thistle Sock
• Suet feeder
• Nesting material ball
• Big Fancy Expensive Thistle Feeder (the sock is still more popular)
• All purpose feeder (nuts, sunflower seeds etc..)

Mostly I get house finches, house sparrows and jays. Recently I've been getting goldfinches.

The squirrel has his own feeder. It's a little box of peanuts. He has to lift the lid to get them.

There's a crow who shakes me down for handouts too...

...and a mockingbird who chases him off.

On Saturday I got off work early and snuck into the yard, eager to see if I'd catch any new species feeding at that time of day...

...and found Jumbo Super Rat chomping away!
Now I sprinkle the feeder with ground hot pepper to keep him away from it.

I Go See the Cracks Again: Part Four

As I watched the cartoon over and over and sketched the characters, someone else entered the coffee shop. It was my old pal Rice*, whom I hadn't seen in years.
"Rice?" I called out. "Hey, Rice!"
The barista probably thought I was odd already, and now I was calling an Asian customer "Rice."
"This is my old friend, Rice," I told Jon. "We went to art school together. Rice, this is my pal Jon. We..."
Well this was going to be hard to explain. We both have an insane interest in an obscure cartoon? He drove out of his way between family gatherings to let me see it? I asked Rice if he'd seen "the Sesame Street cartoon where cracks came to life". He hadn't.
"I'll explain later," I told him.
Soon it was time to go. Rice had a bus to catch, and Jon and I had plans in opposite directions. If you're reading this, thanks Jon!

Some details about the cartoon:

• It doesn't look like work from any big studio. I suspect it was either made by a small studio or an independent project, perhaps by a professional artist or cartoonist who dabbled in animation.
• It's narrated (and partially sang) by a woman with a sweet Blossom Dearie-like voice.
• The girl (whom I should have taken more time to sketch) is tall and pretty with a dark complexion. Her shirt (sweater?) is light pink, her pants dark green. Her feet are tiny. When she returns to her room she walks backward. Was this a whimsical touch? Or was the creator trying to save money by filming the walk cycle backwards?
• The Camel Crack looks like a young child's drawing, with a semicircle for a body, a simple head/neck combo and long stick legs. He could easily have been Crack Turtle, Crack Horse, or Crack Brontosaurus. Crack Monkey and Crack Hen, while still line drawings, are more realistic.
• Crack Master (the real one, not my reinterpretation) looks a lot like real cracks when he first appears. It wouldn't surprise me if he was based on actual cracks that the artist saw, who then thought Ya know, if I put eyes there and made that part his mouth...
• Will it be seen again? Whomever gave it to Jon doesn't want it seen (we don't know why.) There's little chance he/she/they will post it themselves. Then again, my friend Sally, who's done animation for Sesame Street, says "The Street" buys the rights to show the cartoons, so they might have the final say. Maybe, just maybe, we'll see it someday in an official Sesame Street "Old School" dvd.

Just added (May 19, 2012)
A reader asked me what the other characters looked like, so I added this sketch.  They're not exact duplicates, but this is more or less what the Girl, Camel Crack, Crack Monkey and Crack Hen look like.

*That's really what he calls himself.

I Go See the Cracks Part Three:

I knew my battery was getting clunky, but I couldn't believe it would betray me like this.
Jon had brought a portable dvd player as backup, but this too needed an outlet. And there weren't any.
I asked the gal behind the counter where the plugs where. She pointed to the ceiling, and even provided a step ladder so the crazy cartoon people could plug in and watch the show.
The clip had no credits and in fact started with a few seconds of Ernie before fading into the cartoon.
There they were! The girl, Camel Crack, Crack Hen, Crack Monkey... hey, this was kinda cute.
Then came the the famous part. They friends walk "to where they'd never been..." The camera pans right "and in corner found a giant crack!" a shrill flutelike note sounds and we're facing him. Crack Monster!

Before I saw this I'd convinced myself he couldn't have been that frightening. Surly I'd been freaked out by something silly or benign. Not the case. Crack Monster (or, as he calls himself, "Crack Master") is startlingly creepy. He's cubist malevolence, with beady, mismatched eyes, a snarly cranky mouth, with cracks crossing his face and hanging from him like roots. Yeech. Good heavens, no wonder I'd been freaked.
And it gets worse! He "tries to make himself look very big and mean," growing more angry and qrotesque...

The narration tells us "then the wall plaster crumbled to the floor...," whereupon his features droop and melt off like something from a scary movie.
Creepy!
I watched it over and over and over. (Wow! It was really him!)
Jon claimed he'd shown it to a relative about our age who'd forgotten it until until now. She started crying! Startled by her reaction, she actually studied it frame by frame, convinced a that a subliminal horrors lurked somewhere. I think the explanation is more simple:
It's 1975. You're a little kid watching t.v. A crooked, scary face shows up, acts mean, gets scarier, then melts! You flip out.

Click here for Part Four.
Note- these pictures aren't from the cartoon. I sketched them. They're not exact replicas, and I don't think I've quite captured the creepyness of the original. Someone was a genius. I wish I knew more about them.

I Go See the Cracks Again: Part Two

We shook hands.
"You really showed up," I said. "Part of me didn't expect anyone to drive out of the way to show a cartoon to a stranger."
"Now do you think I have it?" he said, as I set up my laptop.
"I think so"
"By what percentage are you sure?"
I answered about ninety six percent now that he was here, then came the questions:
"Can you tell me where it's from? What studio? Who made it?"
He didn't know. (After he'd signed faxed paperwork promising it wouldn't post it anywhere, it had shown up in his mailbox- one of the barmy sounding details that made people question his story.)
I put the dvd in my laptop. A plain menu popped up. A lone thumbnail image showed something I hadn't seen in over three decades.
"It's him!" I said, like a crazy kid. "It's really him!"
Then something else popped up. The low battery warning on my laptop. I looked around. There were absolutely no outlets. Would I be able to watch the cartoon before my battery died?
Click here for Part Three...

I Go See the Cracks Again: Part One

You're crazy, I told myself, sitting alone in the coffee house. This is ridiculous....
It was 7:29 am, Sunday morning. It was here that Jon and I agreed to meet so he could show me his copy of the so-called "Crack Monster"cartoon: a long lost clip from Sesame Street that only aired a few times, yet managed to thoroughly freak out kids who saw it.
The internet buzz from those who did see it was consistently "Oh, that terrified me... ...never forgot it... ...where can I see it again!?"
Months, then years passed...
Then, Jon, got a copy! At least that's what he said.
He also said that he was forbidden to post it. No video, no pictures, no sound. The story of how he got is was strange too. Fellow searchers got suspicious. Sure he said he had it, but did he really have it?
Months ago he promised that he'd show it to me the next time he was in town.
Sure, I thought. A stranger is going to go out of his way to meet you and show you a cartoon. ..
Then the emails came. He was visiting family in Los Angeles and "bringing his crack friends" with him. We'd meet at 7:30 a.m. Sunday morning at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf...
How long should I wait?, I thought, as I sketched, glancing up at the empty parking lot every few minutes. This has to be some kind of prank...
Then a tall man came in with a bag.
In the bag there was a dvd...

Click here for Part Two

The Crack that Roared

Most people never saw the Sesame Street cartoon where cracks on the wall come to life:

Those of us who did see it as kids had remarkably similar reactions:

• "Crack Master," the mean crack, terrified us!
• We've never forgot the cartoon, and now would absolutely love to see it again.
  

Various comments about the clip:

"...not nearly as scary as the cartoon with the talking crack in the wall. That still haunts me." -Ann Arbor, Michigan1

"... that **** cartoon with the crack in the wall that came to life (btw, i *REALLY* want to see that so if anyone has it, please let me know!)"-Illinois2

"--One I have NEVER forgotten is the 'crack' video... ...I remember both anticipating and dreading the possibility of watching it every time SS came on. if anybody [finds it], POST POST POST!!!"3

"Good God, I have periodically searched for "crack, camel, master crack" for years .... ...This has to exist somewhere. God, I can't imagine how normal I might have been if I hadn't been exposed to [it]as a 3 year old?"4

"This is so strange. I thought I was alone in how this one little cartoon freaked me out and has stayed with me ever since... ...Anyway, if anyone does find it, please please share with the rest of us so we can finally close this chapter."5

" I was Googling around and found your reference to the Sesame Street "crack" cartoon, and I was wondering if you have ever found it? I am SO very relieved to see that it either really existed, or we all have some kind of mass psychosis! Seriously, I have been looking for this clip forever, because it scared me so much as a kid and I need closure! :)"
(email to me)

"...a child looking up at the cracks in the ceiling and spotting various animals. Suddenly... a horrible face appears in the wall and says something like 'I am Crack Master!' - But just then the wall plaster crumbled to the floor... 'He'd destroyed himself, being mean.' Yeeergh, that still gives me the shivers."- United Kingdom 6

"When I was a kid, there was an animated Sesame Street vignette that absolutely scared the living crap out of me. [It featured] a big evil-looking face composed of cracks behind some door. I'd run out of the room when it came on. I was terrified of cracks until I was about twelve. I'd pay good money to see this vignette today and see what scared me so much..."7

"When I was a kid, there was an animated skit that used to have me screaming and running from the TV... ... It was about this girl sitting in her room on a rainy day. She has a whole bunch of cracks on the walls in her room (I guess she had plaster walls). As she's sitting there, her imagination starts to go wild, and she sees the cracks form into different shapes, mostly animal shapes, and they start to come to life. There's a camel, and a monkey...
...and behind it is a horrible looking splinter crack monster in the plaster with a really scary face! ...It claims that it is the crack master... ...I remember when the skit started, I was like "Oh no!" And started to scream and then when the face appeared I became hysterical! I had horrible re-occurring nightmares based on it for the entire time it was on the show. I've been trying to find it ..." -Iowa x

An impressive legacy for a cartoon that aired less than a dozen times in the late 1970s and then vanished*.

Click here to find out how I finally saw it again.

*It's not on any dvd that's for sale. I've never seen it mentioned in books or articles about animation. It's not on the internet in any form (and probably never will be.) I'd buy it in a minute if it was legitimately for sale. Production art too!

Phantasia at the Old Towne Mall

If you scaled down Disneyland's Main Street U.S.A. and added a low ceiling, you'd have the long-vanished Old Towne Mall. I spent a lot of time there when I was little. Instead of the staples of most 1970s malls (the organ store, the fashion shops, the record store etc...) it had gift and hobby shops, a double decker carousel and two dark rides.
The dark rides were The Castle* and Phantasia. The former was a spookhouse ride ( which I rode twice, with my eyes shut). Phantasia was kid friendly. A chairlift took you through fairy tale scenes. The climax was a glowing green spinning tunnel. People who were older at the time remember the ride as "cheesy" and "cheap." My second-grade self thought otherwise. It was a ride! It took you into another world!
I'm not sure what went wrong. Maybe bored teenagers broke things. Maybe the mall (which had trouble staying afloat) couldn't afford to maintain it. Possibly both. Phantasia began to fall apart.
I was too little to understand why anyone could neglect or damage a ride. I was still in the It's another world! mode....
...and my other world was getting creepy! Why was it falling apart? Why was the main character in the scene slumped over his window like he was dead? It spooked me. I couldn't get the "dead guy" out of my head for a long time.

*Possibly Dracula's Castle or Count Dracula's Castle.

More Flash Preview

Other people go out to lunch, I stay in and work on my flash cartoon for forty minutes. I can't believe a two minute cartoon can take so long to crank out. From the impatient look on the tomato guy, he can't believe it either.

It's a Bird!

As an animation fiend, I can't believe I've never seen or heard of this before. It was done in the 1930s by cartoonist/comedian Charles Bowers. I'm impressed!

Cartoon Update

Still working on that blankety-blank cartoon in my spare time. My real job is encroaching into weekends and evenings, so I work on the 'toon on my lunch break.
It took me longer than I'd like to admit to get the purple guy to reach up and grab his horns. Early attempts looked like he was being electrocuted. A lot of the time I can get away with animating jointed symbols but here I had to redraw his wings/arms/hands for each frame to get the look I wanted.
Pictured above is a frame from that part.
I just realized, that, out of context, it'd be harder to find a blander, more clinched pose. Believe me, he doesn't spend most of the cartoon staring at the camera with his hands in the air.

Deloris

Everyone has some details about themselves that make them different. Maybe they're allergic to wheat and soy. Maybe they know someone famous. Maybe they survived smallpox when they were five. Some people bring these tidbits up once or twice. Others find excuses to cram them into any conversation:

• "Your kid has a fever? That's nothing. I had smallpox when I was five...!"

• "You went to Disneyworld when you were five? Heck. WhenIwas five, I had smallpox!
• "You're worried that the six inch gash over your eye will leave a scar? Hell, when I was little I had smallpox and my parents were totally worried I'd end up spotted like a leopard but I only got a few pockmarks near my butt. Wanna see 'em?"
  

Deloris didn't have smallpox. She did have diabetes. She was a master at working it into any conversation. Had we watched Neil Armstrong land on the moon together, she'd probably interrupt the "One small step for a man," speech with "If I went to the moon I'd have to bring insulin with me because I could die if I didn't have it."
Other people I knew with the same condition were discrete. They might mention it once or twice, but it wasn't something the babbled on and on about. Deloris was different. Not only did she talk about it, she made sure she got her daily fix in front of as many people as possible. Heaven forbid she shoot up in another room most people did. Anyone who questioned her etiquette got a lecture about how "insensitive" they were to her plight.
She complained about other symptoms too. This hurt. That hurt. She often carried a book of symptoms with her so she could read up on what might be wrong with her. A "maybe I have [condition X] or [disease Y] because [body part z] is bothering me!" statement would follow.
It was ridiculous. It was annoying. Her You should feel sorry for me act slowly coaxed my evil side to speak up. "I don't care what's wrong with you and I don't want to hear about it any more." I blurted.
"You're insensitive!" she huffed.

Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea

I have a copy of this dvd but I'm doing a lot of overtime these days, so I can't watch it any time soon.

Flash Shape Tweens

Flash shape tweens are a lot like flying trapeze acts or dangerous stunts. The can be spectacular...
...but if something goes wrong they can be horrifying.

Dumb and Number

You'd think I'd be better at math. It's reliable and logical.
Math problem you don't ask you to determine what the author was "really" trying to say or worry about subtle themes, metaphors, allusions or motives. There's one answer.
My problem? It didn't help that I had poor clerical skills and the random access memory of a toaster. Worst of all:
Numbers look alike to me.
Single digits are recognizable, but strings of them are trouble. For example, 520, 502, 512 look like the same number. To complicate things, I strongly associate each digit with a color*:
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

Thus 520, 502 and 512 are pink all yellow. And easy to confuse.

This brought trouble through school. My 6th grade teacher told me she gave me a C in math when I "really deserved a D. " A standardized test later that year put my math skills at the 2nd grade level.
Then came college.
Like all freshmen, I took placement tests to see which math class was appropriate. Would I be smart enough to get into Math 004? Or would I be stuck in no-credit Math 003 (a.k.a. Dumbbell Math)?
I knew I was in trouble when an adviser wanted to discus the results test results with me. How dumb was I? I'd gotten almost everything wrong. I was too dumb for Dumbbell Math!
The adviser said I should hire a tutor to get my math up to speed. Then, maybe I'd be ready for Dumbbell Math. I don't remember the details, but the idea seemed like a bunch of trouble. Maybe I could do Dumbbell math, I thought, but why spend money on a class I won't get credits for? What if I signed up for Math 004...?
I signed up for Math 004. It wasn't slide rule stuff. Just word problems and maybe some algebra. Could I pull it off? Was I crazy to try?
I remember the final exam well. Most people finished much earlier than me. I sat in the near empty room, slowly bushwhacking though the test. If train A leaves at 5 am at 30 miles per hour... If Susie is twice Cathy's age but half of Billy's age... Blah blah blah...
"Only two kinds of people take so long," the professor told someone outside, "Those who do well and those who fail." Uh oh.

Guess who got a B+?!

*1 and 0 are colorless. The other colors aren't an exact match but you get the idea.

Carpet Beetles

Most houses have a few of them. They look like tiny ladybugs and their larvae look like tiny, pokey fuzzy caterpillars. Their mission: Eat your clothes and furniture.

I never get normal pests. No ants, no roaches, not even a crummy silverfish.
Instead I get destroy-your-stuff pests like mice and carpet beetles. Can termites be far behind?

Last March they moved in. In a day.
I came home from work to a dozen of them flying around. The last thing I needed was for them to turn my stuff into their food court. What if they laid eggs and had kids? Would they chew up my wardrobe? My bedding? The curtains? No trap 'n' release tactics were considered. This was war.
I sprinkled Borax* on the carpet. I sprayed the furniture (and the window screens) with pet-friendly** orange oil bug killer . The invaders succumbed.
This year I planned ahead. Borax was sprinkled, orange oil was sprayed. Would they return?
So far I've found a few, but they weren't flying around. Most have been dead with their feet in the air. Suckers!

*It kills bugs! It's less toxic than most insecticides (not that I recommend sprinkling it on your cornflakes!)
**I didn't want my harm my bird.

How Do You Sleep?

I heard John Lennon's How do you sleep? on the radio and threw this sketch together.
It was written after the Beatles broke up. The song oozes with contempt for Paul McCartney.*

• Those freaks was right when they said you was dead
• The only thing you done was yesterday/And since you've gone you're just another day**
• A pretty face may last a year or two/But pretty soon they'll see what you can do
• The sound you make is Muzak to my ears

Don't get John Lennon mad at you.
As I said elsewhere, I kinda like this song. His "nicer" songs like Imagine sound preachy too me. I like Lennon best when his work has a hostile, wacko bite, like I am the Walrus or Glass Onion.

*According to Songfacts:

• To be fair, McCartney had taken some shots at John in the album Ram
  
• Later John claimed a lot of the contempt in the song was actually aimed at himself.

**Another Day was McCartney's first post-Beatles hit. It's Muzak to my ears too.

Sine Wave Speech

Ever heard of Sine Wave Speech? It's where they take a clip of speech and distort it into a weird mess of mechanical squeaks.
Here's the strange part:
The distorted version doesn't sound like speech at all...
...until you hear the undistorted version. Then you can make out the words in the garbled sentence. It's weird!
Click "Play Garble" to hear the garbled sentence (you may need to boost the volume). Then click "Play Nice" to hear the ungarbled version. Then replay the Garble version to hear what you didn't hear before...

More examples (including the one I used) here.

p.s. I'm still working on my cartoon, this was just a quick diversion.
p.p.s. Yes, I know the "sound waves" on the screens aren't sine waves.

Land of Duh

I could really use an extra 20 or 30 I.Q. points.

Complicated written instructions grind my brain to a halt. When I bought my Hav-a-Hart mouse trap, the instructions made little sense. They may as well have said:

Take part you can't find A and put it [preposition that makes no sense in context] part you can't find B blah blah and then refer to something mentioned a few sentences ago that's already fallen out of your head blah blah...

I gave up on the instructions, played with the trap and figured out how it worked right away.

My latest trip to the Land of Duh was a "quick" Flash thing I wanted to throw together: There'd be two buttons, each triggering a sound and short animated clip. How hard could that be?
Two problems:

• I was out of town and away from my reference books
  
• The missing thirty I.Q. points

The Action Script baffled me. What the...? Where does...? How the...?
There was no way I could do this from scratch.
Thus this post instead of the "quick Flash thing I wanted to throw together."

Salads

Remember when you ordered a salad and and it came on a salad plate?
A salad used to be what you chose when you wanted something light and healthy.
Order one today and you'll get a pile of lettuce the size of your head,
topped with one or more of the following:

• A shredded wheel of cheese
• Two scoops of bacon.
• A bazillion beans.
• A pile of greasy, shredded (or ground) meat.
• A slab of meat, often battered and deep fried.
• Fried onions or tortilla chips.
• Croutons the size of ice cubes (remember when they were smaller than sugar cubes?)

Plus it's oozing with dressing. Yep. Light 'n' healthy.
These things should be served in a trough. There's probably a day's worth of calories in them. Yet you'll still hear people say things like "I'm trying to lose weight, so I'll have the southern fried chicken biscuit 'n' gravy salad" or "I'm eating healthy so I had the taco salad with extra cheese."

p.s. I incorporated a famous (but unrelated) piece of artwork into the picture. Can you spot it?

Red Devil Rules

Red Devils are beautiful and mean.
For the unfamiliar, imagine a large, neon orange, doubledecker goldfish* with the personality of a pit bull. This their agenda:

1. Uproot and destroy every plant.
2. Topple any decorations.
   
3. Rough up heaters, filter intakes, and airstones.
4. Shove all the gravel into a corner to make a hideout.
5. Any fish who swims near the hideout is the enemy and must die.**
6. Any human who walks by the tank is an enemy and must die.

(Seriously, they charge at you like a bull. Stand your ground and so will they, in full I'm gonna pound you! fury.)
Rule six has some exceptions:

1. If said human offers food, he is in fact your best friend.
2. Train your new friend to give you food by splashing water to get his attention.
3. Let him/her pet you and boast that you're "just like a dog."
4. That being said, your friend's friends are the enemy and must die.

Now there's a fish with personality!

*actually they're not closely related to goldfish (not even in the same order).
Red Devils are from the same family as Angelfish (freshwater), Discus, Tilapia and Oscars.

** some people house them with other fish, especially when they're younger, but I think it's risky. If I were a fish, I would not want this guy to be my neighbor.

Flash 'Toon Screen Shot Preview

Here's a screen shot at the half way point of my cartoon effort.
It's getting easier each time I fight it work on it, as I've slowly learning what works and what doesn't.
I can never predict what parts will be easy or hard.
For example, I dreaded animating the phone cord to the point of leaving it out, but it wasn't as much trouble. But a scene where the purple guy gets shoved in the wall? It drove me crazy trying to get it right!

Optical Illusion Girlfriend

This is clever.
Worth klunking up my blog for an entry.

The Unwanted Oscar

Oscars were popular when I worked at the tropical fish shop. They're cute, pugnacious, and intelligent. They have personality. Some even like to be petted. They have one serious drawback: they grew very large. Inch long youngsters become ten inch* bruisers. Unless your tank holds more water than your tub, you've got a problem. Owners sometimes returned the big guys in exchange for smaller fish.
This had its problems. While magnificent to look at, they cost more to feed, took up a lot of room, and were harder to sell.
Still, I didn't expect it to lead to the callous treatment one Oscar got.
He was almost a foot long. A scar over his eye resembled a disease called hole-in-the-head**. As you probably guessed, the super-sized, diseased-looking fish wasn't selling.
One day I took out the trash. Something in the dumpster moved. It was the foot-long! Someone had thrown him in the trash, alive! I couldn't believe anyone could be so mean. He lay gasping amongst the trash, in the hot sun.
I ran in, got the biggest, longest net, went to the rescue. I almost toppled into the dumpster to get him out. I splashed him back into his tank. He seemed okay.
"Someone put the big Oscar in the trash," I told my boss. He seemed surprised.
Was he? Or was he in on the plot?
A few days later, the fish was gone. Was he re-dumpestered when I wasn't there to save him? Released in a local pond? Or did he actually find a good home?

*Wild ones can be over a foot long.
**Really, that's the name of the disease.

Life's Been Good

Here's another draw-the-picture-before-the-song-stops-playing effort:
Joe Walsh's "Life's Been Good."
Had the song been longer I'd have included at trail of damage and excess behind the song's protagonist: a spoiled, egotistical wreaking ball.
I was little when the song first came out and didn't realize how funny/satirical it was until years later.
The lyrics still make me laugh:

• "I own a mansion, [I] forget the price/ain't never been there, they tell me it's nice"
• "I live in hotels, tear out the walls/I have accountants pay for it all"
• "My Maserati does one-eighty five/I lost my license, now I don't drive.
• [Call:]"Everybody say I'm cool!" [Response:]"He's cool!"

p.s.
I cheated and added the frame after the picture was done.

Lawyer Squirrel is Back!

Click the pictures for larger images.


Lawyer Squirrel has forgiven me for relocating mice and holding him prisoner. Actually it was a settlement. He'd drop charges if I bribed him with treats.
I've been scattering shelled peanuts for him and the birds. Usually he springs away when the back door opens, but today he came right up to me. After a few false starts, he was eating peanuts from my hand. Most squirrels will grab the nut and run off . Not him. He put his paws on my cupped hand and started munching away! Intellectually I know this isn't wise: he's a wild animal! my smarter side warned, He cracks walnuts with his jaws! If he bites you, you'll get laughed at in the E.R....! ,
... but the whoa! cool! part of my brain was running the show.
How'd he get so tame? This wasn't desperate action from a starving creature. I suspect he has other "friends" on the block who help keep him fed. Why forage for food when you can go door to door?

Ghost Stories

I don't believe in ghosts now, but I did when I was little. I was a sucker for "true" ghost stories I read in books. By day I'd find them spooky and thrilling. At night I'd be petrified. What if, I wondered, just thinking about ghosts will summon one to my bedroom? When the sun rose, I was back to reading ghost stories.
Here's the scariest one I remember:
It took place in a junk shop in (or near) Brighton, England. A book lover hears there's lots of old books in the basement and goes down to check them out. He finds an old kitchen and a zillion books. He starts reading and loses track of time when...

"Suddenly he saw something move. He looked up. Across the room stood the back of a woman. She seemed to be working at the sink.
"Who are you?" he shouted. "Who are you? What do you want?"
She turned and looked at him. She looked like she'd been dead for years. Her eyes were empty sockets. Her cheeks were rotting holes. It was the ugliest thing he'd ever seen...*"

He throws his book. It goes through her. She vanishes. He dashes up the steps.
Upstairs he meets the land lady, who can't believe the shopkeeper let someone down there after dark. It's the ghost of a murdered woman, she explains. Her husband killed her...

"cut her up, and buried her under the sink... ...I met it once on the basement steps. It went right through me and left a chill that didn't go away for weeks!"

It was the grand slam of a ghost stories. A scary ghost! A murdered woman! A chopped up body! A chill that woudn't go away for weeks! Scary!

Two thoughts in retrospect:

• The story is well told. The ghost doesn't just pop out and go "boo!" First we see a mysterious woman (Who's this?), then we discover she looks hideous (yikes!), then we discover stuff goes through her (!) and then she vanishes. Then we get a gruesome explanation (Her husband did what!?) plus the blow off detail of the landlady having the ghost walk through her.
• This story was in a book aimed at school aged kids. How on earth did a story that included a guy chopping up his wife end up in a kids book?

*It's been almost 30 years since I've read it but I remember most of the words.

Mouse Party V:New Guests

This one has three grams of protein, according to the label.

Best buddies.

The mouse supply was dwindling, but two more showed up last night. A grand total of seven.

Mouse Party IV: Sabotage

By Friday I'd caught five mice. Each day showed less evidence of mice and longer hours between catches. I was going away for the weekend. I deactivated the traps. I figured that it'd be mean to trap them if I wasn't around to spring them after a few hours.
The exception was my Hav-a-Heart rodent trap. It was much larger. With extra bait, any mouse would have plenty of food and room.
Wait! I thought. The mouse, if you catch one, will make a mess. Why don't you put the trap outside? Between your back door and the bushes they hide out in? That way you can hose off anything left over.
Over the weekend I read the blog comments congratulating me for my kindness. Yes, I thought, the rodents of the world are lucky to have me. I'm a kind person. I'm a good person!
When I got home, I checked the Hav-a-Heart. Inside was a very freaked out squirrel! Had he been trapped all weekend? There was enough food (and room) for a mouse, but this guy was huge. Chihuahua sized! I'd let a cute furry animal be stuck in a tiny cage- perhaps over twenty four hours. So much for kindness. And no water! Mice get most of their liquid from their food- but maybe squirrels needed extra. He stared at me with big black eyes as if to say You! You did this to me! I apologized and and opened the door. Or tried to. Apparently the captive had broken at the mechanism that releases it. It wouldn't open. It took me ten minutes of prying with a big knitting needle to pop the door, which freaked the squirrel even further.
Finally the door sprung. The captive stuck his head out but just sat there.
I hope you're happy, I told myself. He's lost his will to live. Nice work! I put some peanut butter and crackers out for him, and a dish of water. Was it too late?
When i checked a few minutes later, the food had scattered, the dish was overturned and he was gone. I guess he changed his mind about the will to live.

Mouse Party III: Hostages

The mousetrap arrived yesterday. It's a little green thing.
The mouse sneaks and triggers a mechanism that locks him in.
I caught Clyde last night and Bonnie this morning. Both were caught in the cupboard- I just stuck it on the counter for the photo. Then I realized there was only a few millimeters between my kitchen counter and whatever diseases he might be carrying. D'oh! Where'd I put the bleach?


Here's their holding tank. Bedding and snacks were included so they wouldn't notice they were in a plastic jar and could chew their way out.




I freed them in a vacant lot several blocks away. A third mouse* is still at large has since been apprehended.

When I returned from mouse deportation I heard chattering. I opened the back door. This squirrel stared me down a few feet away from the fence. I think he's their lawyer.

*A bunch of them probably either live under the foundation or in nearby overgrown shrubbery.

Mouse Party II

Guess who's back?
I my mouse problems were done after I cleaned my cupboards and ditched the Backyard Critter Snax. Still, I inspected the scene of the crime regularly just in case.
When I checked last night, a little mouse head popped up where the cupboard floor met the wall. He didn't seem to concerned I about me. His attitude was Oh, hi there. Do you live here too? I growled. He retreated.
Further inspection found he'd gotten into a bag of tiny black thistle seeds I feed finches with. I'd never seen wild rodents at that feeder so I figured they didn't care for it. This mouse wasn't picky.
I sent away for a catch-and-release trap. Stay tuned for what happens next.

21st Century Bragging

People who brag annoy me. I'm not sure what's more irritating:

1. A lecture on how special they are.
2.The fact that they think I'll be impressed by this.

Recently I've noticed a new form of bragging that makes typical braggers seem as modest as dust. This species doesn't brag about how wonderful he is. He brags about how wonderful he plans to be!
You've probably heard from him. He's the guy who still lives with his parents who brags about how much money he'll earn in the future. He's the out of shape slug who tells people how much weight he's going to lose. He (sometimes she) is the hack who won't shut up about the bestselling book (or blockbuster movie) he'll write someday.
I don't have a problem with someone stating that they'd like to accomplish something. It's the person who acts as if stating their plan is as impressive as accomplishing it.
And since he (or she) has announced their plan, they think this gives them the right to criticize others who have accomplished something. For example, the "I'm going to write bestselling fiction" is quick to tell you how his yet-to-be-started novel will be way better than the "crap" that's selling now. He'll tell you why too. Yes sir, he's so smart that he doesn't need to write to be an expert on writing. Are you impressed yet?

Things I Should Have Figured Out by Now

(Pardon the crude picture- my Flash project is hogging my free time)

I must be a slow learner. Here's some tidbits I haven't mastered in my four decades on this planet:

• Hot surfaces are, in fact, hot.
• Sharp objects are, in fact, sharp.
• Wet floors are, in fact, slippery.
• Wet paint is, in fact, wet.
• Pens have caps for a reason.
• Pointing out that you "hardly ever watch television" impresses nobody and makes you look like an ass, particularly if you bring it up more than once.
• Ignore your maybe I shouldn't park here intuition at your own peril.

More Flash Preview

Here's another screen shot from the Flash animation I'm working on. It's fun.
It's also taking way longer than I hoped, even though much of it is limited animation. Probably the most time consuming part is getting all the layers to sync up, as it's divided up in a million layers. I'm sure there's an easier way.
If any of you have tips on how to speed things along, let me know.
I downloaded a plugin called Animslider Pro. It's great for controlling nested animation. It also has a feature called AnimPack Pro, but I haven't figured it out yet.

Summer Samba

My Flash project is hogging my blogging time, but I found a few minutes to throw this together. That old chestnut Brazilnut, "Summer Samba" was playing (on an electric organ, no less). I had to sketch this.
This is the kind of song the easy listening stations played when I was little (and when I was in college). No new age or soft rock. You'd hear stuff like this at the grocery store too. Makes me think of back when the frozen food section didn't have doors (it was cold!). Bags were paper and didn't have handles. T.V. dinners had aluminum trays and you had to peel back foil over selected items (and wait up to forty minutes for them to heat). Soda opened with pull tabs and diet soda tasted like hairspray.

Little Red Ball

This early 70s era Sesame Street clip aired when I was little.
I thought the ball was very cute, especially when he rode in his little roller coaster car.
Alas, he came to a shocking end!
I remember being very upset about his demise. How could they do that to him?

Flash Preview

Here's a preview from the cartoon I'm working on. As you probably guessed, you're seeing a rough drawings for his legs and final drawing for his head and wings. The background is temporary- dyed yellow to remind me to color white areas white.
I don't know what his name is. Not that it's necessary in the context of the cartoon, but he should have a name. I'd do a contest, but I don't have any cool prizes!
Am also considering throwing the infamous Crack Master character in as a cameo. Then again, that may get it bounced off You-Tube faster than you can say "copyright infringement." Or get the rumored legal owner of the cartoon so mad at me that I'll never get a copy...

Face Like a Frog

Sally Cruikshank directed and animated this zany gem in 1987. It has a some elements from the old Fleischer cartoons- surreal settings, morphing characters and catchy music, yet all done in her original, colorful style. (Did I mention I bought a cel and background from it? It appears forty something seconds into the film when the frog lady rises up and winks at the camera.)
We met for lunch yesterday. The cartoons most devoted fans, she said, are the generation Y crowd. I think this is because these people grew up with increasingly fast paced television commercials* and music videos. They expect quick editing, lots of action and color. I say Face Like a Frog was ahead of its time!
Here's a bonus pic of us for Linda (I think I understand why I got a C in photography class):

Trees on the Curb

I know they're plants. Dead plants.
I know they have no feelings.
Yet part of me feels sorry for curbed Christmas trees.
They just look so sad, lying tipped over like a fallen animal.
I imagine the tree being confused, since for all these weeks he's been fussed over and now he's next to the hefty bags, awaiting the garbage truck. Perhaps thinking, What'd I do? or They don't love me anymore!
I'm glad some things don't have feelings.

Party Animals

The trouble started when I ordered a big bag of Wildlife Snack Jax
to feed backyard birds and squirrels. I stored in a cupboard close to the back door.
This is a bad place to store rodent food.
Weeks ago I noticed some had spilled out. I opened the cupboard to find:

1. Spilled Wildlife Snack Jax
2. A hole chewed in the bag.

Someone was eating in!
I cleaned up, put the rest of the food in a sturdier bag, and forgot about it.
Then I returned from a holiday trip: More cracked corn on the kitchen floor. Then I opened the cupboard.
It was trashed! They'd thrown a mouse frat party. Cracked corn, peanut shells and assorted nuts covered everything. They thanked me for the free food by relieving themselves on my wine bottles, one champagne bottle (a former collectors item) and a bottle of amaretto. Wisely, they'd fled the scene of the crime.
As I swept, scrubbed and disinfected, notions of sticky tape and mousetraps suddenly seemed like a good idea. So did dynamite and nuclear weapons. This was war!
Of course, I wimped out and used a different strategy: No more wildlife food until I find a mouse proof container. It seems to be working.
If they come back I'll use a havahart trap.
Or maybe I'll line the cupboard with sawdust and install a hamster wheel.