The Robcat View

thank you, unknown person!

2009-11-11T23:59:00.003-06:00

Someone has kindly ordered me something from my Amazon wishlist, but it arrived in a plain shipping envelope with no invoice so I don't know who to thank.

Anyone want to fess up?

shake, rattle and squeeze

2009-11-06T10:45:00.003-06:00

For all of you who have had that nagging question in your mind, "What does an accordian virtuoso sound like?"

Myron Florin, step aside...Ukraine's Aleksandr Hrustevich:

He has a Youtube channel with many entertaining performances.

need a double wide?

2009-11-04T21:43:00.002-06:00

That's all I need to know except why the phrase was "wife" and not "ex-wife".

building a better (das) boot

2009-10-26T13:58:00.004-05:00

I didn't think the Germans were still building submarines, but here they are building a U-boat that runs on hydrogen powercells that is even quieter than our own nuclear submarines.

unspoken faces

2009-10-24T00:57:00.008-05:00

In silent movies you had to say it with your face, and these people had faces.

These are all from the 1920 D. W. Griffith melodrama "Way Down East".

getting yelled at by Walt Disney

2009-10-20T15:32:00.009-05:00

Back around 1991 I answered an ad in the back of The Dallas Observer for "animators". A local comic book artist was wanting to start an animation studio and his ace-in-the-hole was an old-time, golden age studio animator named Bill "Tex" Henson who was going to train us all.

Tex is probably most remembered as a (Tex said "the") supervising animator in Mexico for "The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show" but he had a long career that included many Casper cartoons at Paramount's "Famous Studios", many commercials and other work in TV thru the 80's.

However, he got his start just out of high school at Disney around 1943 where he was originally hired as a "story" artist.

But in 1991 we were sitting around our "studio" (Krash. Pow! it was called) practicing our inbetweens while Tex spun tales about the old days. Someone asked, "So what did you and Walt talk about when you were at Disney?"

Tex explained that he was very low in the organization and he did not have much opportunity to "talk" with Walt Disney.

"... I DID get yelled at by him once," he added but then turned his attention back to whatever he was drawing on at the moment.

"Oh, come on, Tex," I said, "you GOTTA tell us about that one!"

He told us how one day they were having a meeting where the story artists were pitching their storyboards to the directors. On this occasion Walt Disney was sitting in on the meeting although not saying much.

Tex had just finished presenting his ideas and one of the directors said "Gee, Tex, that's funny stuff... but it's really more like what they do over at Schlesinger's."

(Leon Schlesinger was the original owner of the cartoon studio that we now think of as "Warner Brothers")

To which Tex replied, "Well, it wouldn't hurt us to be more like Schlesinger's!"

"GOD DAMMIT!" Walt stands up and shouts, "They can make their cartoons THEIR WAY... and WE... will make OUR CARTOONS... OUR WAY!" And then he stormed out of the room.

No one got fired over this. Apparently screaming Walt was not common but not unknown either. Tex continued at Disney for several more years (he was the one who came up with the names "Chip and Dale" for the chipmunk duo) until he was hired away by Famous Studios.

That's the way Tex told us the story and that's the way I remember it... so it must be true.

still cranking 'em out

2009-10-14T11:05:00.004-05:00

Recent art news headline:

Art experts find possible new da Vinci

How "new" can it really be?

Well, Mr. Art Buyer, I've got a NEW 1978 Gremlin in my driveway I think you should snap up. Tests will confirm it's authentic. Original tires and oil, too.

I'll even include the blocks it's currently displayed on for free.

it's epic

2009-10-09T13:58:00.002-05:00

One of my old employers, the Canadian telecom "giant" Nortel declared bankruptcy last January. The collapse took 10 years, but through diligent dumbness and fraudulent accounting they got the job done.

The company I now deal with to try to extract my pension dollars is called "Epiq Bankruptcy Solutions, LLC". I wouldn't think there's money in handling bankrupt companies but there must be.

I can imagine their slogan: "If your failure is epic, please consider Epiq."

Nortel was the site of my most memorable on-the-job kerfuffle ever. After I created an animation to be printed on the edge of a catalog as a flip-book, a manager said it was "sexually offensive" because it was obviously a depiction of the male member. She didn't say "male member", she used the medical term, but if you use that word too many times in your blog you get flagged as "adults only".

Shield thine eyes, here it is, member and all:

I wrote about this at greater length in one of my "Greatest Hits" you can find a link to over on the right.

at least they weren't whirling

2009-10-08T00:49:00.005-05:00

You know it's an exceedingly British movie when even the written out English doesn't make sense:

That's from "Four Feathers", an Alexander Korda epic of 1939.

It turns out the "Dervishes" are an Arab faction the British are fighting:

and the "Fuzzy-Wuzzies"?... they had big hair before big hair was cool:

If you wonder why old movies look the way they do, a lot of it is the lighting.

After the very expensive on-location debacle that was the 1925 version of "Ben Hur", studios tended to confine shooting to indoor sets whenever possible.

"Four Feathers" doesn't look like a lot of old movies because instead of trying to light indoor sets to pass for outdoors they actually went outdoors to shoot outdoor scenes.

These daylight shots look quite modern to my eye.

But when they get inside it's golden age studio look again.

saws all

2009-09-27T16:42:00.004-05:00

"Britain's Got Talent" non-winner Austin Blackburn performs grand opera on the musical saw. Infinitely better than the un-musical saw version.

His "Ave Maria" isn't bad either:

His only partially well-received BGT audition:

The musical saw is not a new instrument, its heyday was probably in the vaudeville era. Marlene Dietrich entertained troops during WWII with her saw performances. I'm sure the jokes probably wrote themselves on that occasion.

to the situation room!

2009-09-27T10:54:00.003-05:00

I can see President Obama picking up that ringing phone at 3AM... some new international crisis must be brewing.

Has Russia invaded Georgia again? No.

Has Israel bombed Iran? No.

Roman Polanski has been arrested in Switzerland!

It would have been simpler for everyone if he had stayed out of reach. Not necessarily just, but simpler.

The Swiss must be trying to create awkward circumstances for Obama after the US made them give up some of their secret bank account customers. This can't be the first time in 30 years that Polanski has been thru Switzerland, but they decide to nab him now?

worst virginity pledge ceremony ever

2009-09-23T00:59:00.002-05:00

for me, it was "sky and telescope" magazine

2009-09-22T00:22:00.004-05:00

A Republican Senate staffer tells Values Voters that straight porn will make you gay.

“And if you tell an 11-year-old boy about that, do you think he’s going to want to get a copy of Playboy? I’m pretty sure he’ll lose interest."

except that we were in minnesota

2009-09-21T11:34:00.002-05:00

This guy used to be Secretary of Education under Reagan and it fit. He looks like every overstuffed, red-faced principal I had in elementary school.

For the first few grades I was confused. Why is the same overstuffed, red-faced man appearing as principal at these different schools but under different names? It was a very specific look, very similar to the stereotype of the rural southern sheriff.

and next year we're not going to tahiti*

2009-09-19T12:31:00.005-05:00

Russia has canceled plans to put missiles they couldn't afford next to Poland after the U.S. canceled plans to put missiles we couldn't afford next to Russia.

Neither admits it's about the money, of course.

This is a novel new approach to international affairs... calling off the war ten years before you stomp into it. How will we ever get a good war off the ground with planning like that?

*punchline from an old joke where a down-on-her-luck socialite has explained that she didn't go on an expensive vacation to Cannes because it was just "too boring" there.

guns don't kill people...

2009-09-18T11:19:00.004-05:00

... crazy people with guns, who want an easy way to kill someone as they drive by, kill people.

Too big to fit on a bumper sticker, I'm afraid.

The gun lobby promotes gun possession as a defense of liberty. But I can't think of any case in American history where an oppressive government policy has been rolled back because ordinary citizens took up guns against it.

The Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790's did not succeed in getting the whiskey tax repealed. It got repealed some ten years later when the people elected new representatives in Congress who voted to repeal it.

Certainly the South's rebellion in the Civil War was the biggest example of taking up arms against Federal policy, but I recall that rather backfired for them.

Some might say the American Revolution was an example of people taking up arms, but that citizen effort floundered until it was organized into a real army under Washington and even then it required the intervention of the French to tip the balance.

(Washington and French General LaFayette)

The only examples I can think where people achieved an objective by taking up guns have been for totally nefarious purposes, such as the Klan suppressing the legal rights of minority citizens, or gangsters intimidating lawful authorities from curbing their illegal businesses.

People point to the Nazis' confiscation of private guns in Germany as proof of something or other but fail to note that the Nazis came to power while the guns were legal and consolidated their power while the guns were still legal and didn't get around to taking the guns until years later. The right to bear arms in Germany didn't do anything to stop tyranny.

Likewise, ordinary people could own guns in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It's hard to detect that that improved their liberty situation.

leavin on her jet plane

2009-09-17T02:26:00.003-05:00

Peter, Paul and Mary are one THE memories I have of growing up in the 60's. When I was little we simply did not have rock music records in our house, but folk music was permitted and Peter, Paul and Mary got played quite a bit.

In retrospect, they were the one folk act that didn't seem to become a self-parody. And as a college friend of mine once noted, no one could swell like Peter, Paul and Mary. It seemed like ghosts singing. In a good way.

So I'm sad to hear that Mary Travers has died.

And Henry Gibson has died too. He was part of that signature TV show of the 60's, "Laugh-In". That was another big memory of the 60's. If you see clips today it seems insignificant, but every week something on that show would leave us gasping with laughter and asking "can you SAY that on television?"

And of course he was the Nazi in "The Blues Brothers".

watch your back, guys

2009-09-16T10:41:00.004-05:00

Dick Cheney, toxic asset.

Although ex-vice-presidents do not usually get any Secret Service protection, President Obama has extended Dick Cheney's protection indefinitely.

Dick Cheney is probably the first time in the history of the Secret Service that they have to worry about the person they are protecting having a gun.

bob the seer

2009-09-11T12:50:00.006-05:00

A college friend, Bob Como, correctly identified the origin of the problems we're having today.

Years ago, when we were sophomores at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, he said to me, "Robert, can you believe this school has a Young Republicans chapter?"

Trying to be fair and balanced I answered, "Well, isn't there a Young Democrats chapter here too?"

"Yes," Bob replied, "but the Young Republicans actually have meetings."

.

but... it worked for arnold!

2009-09-09T11:48:00.014-05:00

By now, you've heard about the California right-wing, family values politician who wasn't quite that.

Yes, that's a large group... I mean this one who thought his state assembly colleague wanted to hear about his lobbyist girlfriend's crotch.

I'm surprised he rolled over and resigned so quickly. That tape is so unintelligible I think he could have claimed he wasn't saying what they say he's saying.

"...I like to spank her..."?

Oh, no, no, no... it was really "I BIKE to BANK there..."

even safety isn't safe anymore

2009-09-07T15:22:00.003-05:00

The AP reports that "nanny" software that you use to monitor your kids' online chats is also recording their comments and selling them to advertisers.

This is so the corporate powers that be can be ready for the moment when "tween" desire reaches critical mass for a product that somehow involves the mating of the Jonas Brothers with the Olsen Twins and to correctly identify which Jonas Brother should be the odd-man-out.

It's probably all buried in the EULA somewhere but I think most people stopped reading EULAs when they noticed most begin with something like "This software is not warranted to ever perform any useful function from the moment of purchase until the Sun runs out of fuel..."

the smell of manliness

2009-09-05T22:40:00.003-05:00

From the what-were-they-thinking division of Hollywood we get the Charlton Heston movie "The Far Horizons", an almost completely fictional account of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

In which you will see:

Fred MacMurray... in satin knickers... descending a staircase... after a felicitous discussion... in a private room... arm in arm... with "John Hancock":

Sacajawea, the Indian guide, portrayed by... Donna Reed:

Charlton Heston kisses her quite a bit in this movie and I would too seeing as she appears to have the entire contents of a box of Betty Crocker Brownie Mix smeared on her face.

But Charlton is the focus of this movie, and I know that because he goes through...

... about a third of the movie...

... with a skunk on his head:

Imagine if this film had been a hit instead of "Davy Crockett" a year later.

BTW, that's William Demarest on the left...

... who would later be "Uncle Charlie" to Fred MacMurray in "My Three Sons"

four men, one cello

2009-09-04T14:56:00.003-05:00

You know things are bad when four guys have to split one cello between them. And it's clear to me that termites have gotten the better part of that cello.

WARNING: contains Ravel's "Bolero".

obama will unplug grandma's clapper

2009-09-03T22:03:00.005-05:00

But, shhh! Don't start shouting it until we've worn out the "death panels" thing.

Pass it on.

I'm reminded of an old porn movie where one character slaps another character on the butt twice... and the lights go off!

the stupidest man in America?

2009-09-03T00:17:00.004-05:00

Here's my reading of the current political situation:

The right wing bet everything, including a trillion dollars of Iraq war debt the rest of us will have to pay, on George W. Bush and his follies.

Now that everyone knows Bush was a disastrous President (you don't even hear Republicans referencing him as a model these days), the right wing is trying to save face by making sure that everyone who follows fails even more disastrously than Bush, even if they have to create the disaster themselves, even if they have to burn the whole country down to do it.

Either that is their clever plan or someone like Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe really is the stupidest man in America with his claim at a town hall meeting last night that President Obama is planning to release terrorists into the U.S.