Three business cards from the archives.
I dusted them off and altered the email addresses/phone numbers so I could use them as portfolio samples without endangering the privacy of the owners.
I just realized that as certain friends become more and more famous, I have to be more sensitive about what I put on the internet (like, photographs or personal information). Or… I could also become a blackmailer.
I’ve had a shitty past couple of days but rather than hash it out here I’ll put up a bunch of random art I found or made in the past month.
Someone should start a group or do a show called “Astronaut.” Here is your logo. (From an early 80s pinball machine, recolored)
These eyes were creepy. I started doing a face to go with them, but scrapped the portrait and started over.
This ad ran in the Los Angeles edition of the Onion.
Q. What are sensory integration cookies?A. Sensory Integration Cookies for Puppets that Swallow are pretend cookies made out of varying textures designed to stimulate tactile awareness when children explore them. For children who have sensory defensiveness, the cookies are a nice way to allow them opportunities to explore at their own pace and will.
Just in time for Homeland Security’s blockbuster new prohibition on “gels and liquids” in carry-on luggage, I’m leaving for Austin, TX this afternoon. I’m out for a wedding and an improv workshop. Back on Tuesday.
Neil and I went to see The General yesterday. We both had seen it before, but I was a frownie-face for the lacking of “more jokes.” That’s what I will say about all film classics… needs more jokes. We both appreciated Buster’s unmotivated “baseball slide” whenever he was running up to something.
The General is a comedic (well, slightly comedic… more jokes!) take on an actual event of the Civil War where a Confederate train was stolen by the Union to disrupt supply lines. Buster was a life-long train enthusiast and got the idea to make a Civil War set comedy after seeing the flashback scene in Grandma’s Boy... that’s right, the Adam Sandler produced granny-fucking “comedy” (more jokes!). (Actually, I wonder if Sandler named this piece of shit with the same title as Harold Lloyd’s movie to get back at his estate for suing him over plagurizing The Freshman in The Waterboy. Full disclosure: I hate Adam Sandler.)
Neil also mentioned that The General is a primary (or primary-and-a-half) source for Civil War research since it’s made in living memory of Civil War battles, while the photographs of the time only depict aftermath(s) of battles.
I still had Movie Crazy at home and thought it was retarded. Kirk was into it and had seen it before. But I discovered a weird connection… the credited director of this was Clyde Bruckman, who also directed The General, who also did gags for the Three Stooges and was considered this great gag writer back in the day(I also read that Buster Keaton wrote gags for the Marx Brothers after the sound era, but that’s neither here nor there), but by the ‘30s was an out of control drunk and the only person who gave him work was Harold Lloyd, who insisted on giving him credit even when he was too wasted to actually do anything. Ironically… or tragically, his last film job was contributing gags to this other movie but all his material was lifted from Movie Crazy and Harold sued him (a family legacy of lawsuits).
Broke and bottomed-out, he borrowed a gun from Buster Keaton, ate in a restaurant and realizing he couldn’t pay the bill, he went into the bathroom and shot himself (other versions have him shoot himself in the phone booth).
His name was used in an episode of The X Files (Peter Boyle played him), but the character isn’t meant to be him, as far as I can tell.
You can now buy food on Amazon, which seems like a pretty terrible idea. What is funny is they’re using the same template from their book/music/other crap so fucking bananas have “product features” and “If you like _, you’ll like _” only it’s a fucking avocado because you gave lettuce five stars. [I’m seethingly furious and hate everything in the world]. Check the reviews before you buy, friend.
I also got too much glee out of this online mag of cinema review, for one article on silent comedians for referring to the party where Fatty Arbuckle allegedly raped an actress with a bottle as “...little more than a one-man orgy featuring Fatty and half a dozen naked whores.” Elsewhere in the article, a footnote states “It was always difficult to imagine why a woman would want to mate with Harry Langdon,” which also makes me laugh. I think I like sex jokes at the expense of the long-dead.
I’ve also been obsessively watching silents lately, working my way (via Netflix) through 9 disks of the Harold Lloyd box set and catching Buster Keaton Mondays at Film Forum for the next two months.
Today I went to the nominally “dramatic” Douglas Fairbank’s Mark of Zorro... which was pretty much physical comedy seperated by wordy screen-filling intertitles and constant denouncement of “oppression.” Zorro was less a master swordsman in this incarnation than a master jump-over-a-lot-stuffs-man.
(Next I will write about the most specific downside of seeing silents in a live audience… there’s less distraction from the horrible rude/senile old people in the audience.)
This came out pretty well, I think.
Will be running in the LA edition of the Onion next week.
(The font is from Cape Arcona)
I answered the weekly Film Forum trivia question without googling and kinda weirded myself out for instantly knowing it.
On Friday, we open our 3-week SUMMER SWASHBUCKLERS series with a double bill of THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL (1935) and CAPTAIN BLOOD (1935), starring Errol Flynn as the original pirate of the Caribbean and based on a novel by Rafael Sabatini. Name a famous play of the 1960s in which one of the characters uses “Rafael Sabatini” as one of several pseudonyms.
I saw the movie based on this play once on TV when I was in high school. The pseudonym is mentioned in a list of other pseudonyms pretty casually in one monologue in the movie if I remember. But for some reason, it stuck with me.
My mother had mentioned the movie was playing in her town when she was growing up and was held over (for popularity) week after week and she saw it a dozen times… just because they went to the movies every week.
