.

Here's two minutes of, for me, pure unadulterated joy from an old LP of songs from the Mickey Mouse Club. Buddy Ebsen, just then working on the Davy Crockett series, teams with Mouseketeer Darlene Gillespie in a homespun paean to the humble buckwheat pancake. Accordion and pedal steel guitar figure prominently in the accompaniment, along with clarinet, and unobtrusive rhythm.)

Buddy & Darlene:
Buckwheat cakes, buckwheat cakes, along with crispy bacon!
Yes it is your buckwheat cakes that sets my heart to achin'!

(The accordion echoes the word "bacon!" Buddy and Darlene sing in harmony.)

Buddy:
It can't be your chocolate cake, or your Irish stew
It can't be your chocolate cake that makes me fond of you!

(Listen to the warmth Buddy can put into a recital of foods. He twinkles with his voice, just enough that I can feel it in 2012, and not so much as to cloy.)

Both:
It's buckwheat cakes, buckwheat cakes, along with crispy bacon!
Yes it is your buckwheat cakes that sets my heart to achin'!

Darlene:
What about my girlish ways, and my purty hair?
What about my girlish ways, or maybe you don't care?

(Darlene's voice is clear, with a melodious hillbilly accent that doesn't interfere with her diction.)

Buddy:
No, it ain't your girlish ways, or your purty hair.
No, it ain't your girlish ways that makes me set and stare.

(It's not as if he's rejecting her here. He just has different reasons.)

Both:
It's buckwheat cakes, buckwheat cakes, along with crispy bacon!
Yes it is your buckwheat cakes that sets my heart to achin'!

(A sprightly instrumental solo follows, with some tasty work on clarinet and pedal steel guitar. It goes around twice.)

Darlene:
How about my friendly smile, 'specially for you?
How about my friendly smile? I see you're smilin' too.

Buddy:
No, it ain't your friendly smile, or your dimpled chin.
No, it ain't your friendly smile that brings me back again.

(Listen to Buddy: "nnnnNNNO!!" He finds something that's probably not in the music; a little moment where he can make something out of nothing, adding to the song without even slowing the flow. And he doesn't waste it in an early verse, either. The second "no" suggests, but doesn't repeat, the first snap. And it's still playful.)

Both:
It's buckwheat cakes, buckwheat cakes, because I'm only human.
I just love the buckwheat cakes, made by a purty woman!

Buddy:
I just love the buckwheat cakes, made by a purty woman!

Darlene:
(spoken) Aw, Pa, quit your kiddin'!

(And Darlene rescues the song from what could have been seen as creepy by a cynical 21st century listener, putting it back squarely into the heartwarming category. Darlene may be eclipsed somewhat by Buddy's innate talent honed by decades of experience, but make no mistake: these are a pair of pros at the height of their powers. How much time do you suppose they had with this? A quarter of an hour? A half hour, from the time they were given the music to when the director said it was a wrap? I'm guessing closer to the former. This is star power, and it works for me every time I hear it.)

Music, lyrics, performance and recording ©Walt Disney Studios. If you liked this sample, go buy something.
.

.
When the director in "Where's Charley?" asked if I could drop a bill during my song and dance and catch it in the air, I told him that science has proven it's just about impossible to do. Why, I said, you'd have to attach a black thread to it, and…

A few minutes later, I was attaching a black thread to a bill and on my way to amazing the audience with my uncanny ability to pluck that negotiable tender out of the air.

A couple of days ago I was in line at the record store, and the guy ahead of me dropped his receipt. I stabbed at it, and (in two swift moves) got it before it was a yard from the floor.

It's important that I mention that here, because it may never happen again, but I impressed a couple of strangers who I may never see again, so I'm good.
.

.
"You had me at 'Stop or I'll blow your brains out!'"
.

.
Cathy brought me pancakes.

I was flat on my back for the second day, following a Friday when my back went out (though I could still get around, and even went to Sarah's soccer match in Webster) and a Saturday when it was a long and strenuous effort to turn onto my side in bed, let alone get out of it.

Luckily, Sarah had done most of the groundwork. We had worked up a menu together (at her instigation) to give Cathy, and she made a card with a poem. I had picked up a Whitman Sampler earlier in the week, when I was whole.

So Sarah made pancakes, and Cathy brought me mine.

I'm finding that doing some version of my stretches before I venture out of bed reduces the time it takes to be able to walk without clutching the furniture like a toddler.

I'll get up soon, and get dressed. I hope you're all having a nice day.
.

.


Arthur Kraft — Private First Class Arthur Kraft, at the time — painted this during World War II. It was part of an exhibition called "Soldier Art," from which came one of those oblong GI paperbacks of the same title. In fifth or sixth grade, I saw the small, black and white photo of the picture and was struck by the technique and the infinitely sad subject matter. I looked online and couldn't find a color copy of it. I know now that it is probably because the picture is now known as "Soldier with Death before Carousel" instead of the Oscar Wilde quote that was with it in the book.

Kraft, who died in 1977 at age 55, lived in Kansas City, Missouri, and according to a website dedicated to his life and work, Kansas City has many examples of his work to be found, including several murals. This painting hangs in the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, which I'd like to visit some day.

I pride myself on having gotten the best scan I could from the halftone picture in the book, but this color version (which I've adjusted slightly to correct for a yellow cast) has shown me much more detail. Interestingly, my mental image has been off all along — the color choices I'd imagined, such as a rich purple robe on Death (and I didn't know that was Death!), turn out to have been mistaken. Soon, I probably won't even remember what they were.

Also, the canopy of the carousel is interesting to me for personal reasons: I drew a graphite scene with an awning that was similarly striped, and viewed closely, it's a lot like the one in this picture. Was that unconscious inspiration? Or just the best way to draw a striped awning? No idea. At the risk of comparison, here's my drawing (graphite on copy paper):



Well, they're not that much alike after all. I've been flattering myself. Anyway, I'm putting it there for my audience to enjoy. Last one out turns off the lights.

Originally posted at the New Pals Club Web-Log, where the pictures are shown larger than here. I don't want to break your friends page.
.

.
Before I start, I'd just like to say something to my computer, which likes to interrupt my typing to grab control away, tell me something I could find out myself in one second, and applies my latest keystrokes to something I didn't intend, and (in the most recent case) actually taking away what I'd written so far. "STOP IT." Okay, on to the post itself.

You know what I think would find a needle in a haystack really fast? One of those big electromagnets they pick up cars with at junkyards.

(Seems anticlimactic now.)
.

.
And how about a Library of America volume of Walt Kelly? They printed cartoons in the Thurber volume, and they looked great. All the poems he wrote. The prose portions of Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years with Pogo are classic.

Failing that, a book of his poems.
.

.
Now that they've proven they can get it right when making a movie with super-heroes and top-secret agents, I think it's time to start a T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents franchise. Set it in 1966.

Be sure and light NoMan from above so his eyes are pools of dark. For Dynamo, strong blue gel from one side with a smaller yellow gel on the other for the highlight.
.

.
Sarah requested and got her introduction to the use of the lawn mower. She watched me check the oil, explaining as I went, and then I put in gas. I told her she can do that soon. She wheeled the mower into the back yard, where I determined that the part between the back deck and the hill was back to being very muddy after having dried out to where it was only somewhat muddy. We found a dry portion to work on.

She now knows that starting the mower is not an easy thing to do. She cut practice swathes through the once and future spot for the trampoline (I'm going to try and alternate places for it, as it seems to have an unfortunate effect on the place it sits). Then we were called in to dinner.

She's been keen on the lawn mower for a while. I think she even pushed our old one a time or two, back in Virginia, and again here. I'll be happy if she continues to have some interest in the lawn mowing chore.

I may update the 'Sarah' userpic some time. That one's from Massachusetts, and she's like twice that old now.
.

.
There was some organized excursion to go see the Avengers movie yesterday, and I decided to go along with Sarah. I bought my ticket online (they already had purchased hers) and at the theater I found that everybody else was booked into the 3D showing. James's mother said I should just go in with them and gave me a pair of glasses to wear. I didn't want to be separated from everybody in a show that ended fifteen minutes later, so I went.

They must have been children's glasses, as they were at least an inch narrower than my skull. I carefully pulled the temples out and balanced the rest inside my glasses, like my sunglasses inserts. I needed to adjust every couple of minutes for the rest of the movie, which knocked me out of the show more than the illusion of depth pulled me into it. Perhaps some sort of head vise would have kept me properly oriented instead of allowing me to move microscopically in ways that made multiple images appear.

I tried turning the glasses the other way to see how things looked in negative 3D. It's a strange effect that I've had before with stereo slides that were pasted up the wrong way, and even more strangely by looking at a hologram from the back. In this case, it resulted in double images that would not resolve. (Beamjockey, if you're reading this, why double images??)

Anyway, the movie exceeded any and all expectations, even my expectation that it was going to be good and that I would enjoy it. I seem to have missed all the prequels except Iron Man and maybe the version of The Hulk that they consider canonical this week. The action sequences are exciting, fun, and totally implausible. The characters are all worth watching even when they're not supering around. I rather liked Agent Coulson, who is sort of like a fan who made it. The Black Widow is actually more impressive when she's not fighting than when she is. Her interrogation of Loki is one of many moments when I couldn't help smiling.

The level of wisecracking is very good, and not excessive. Whedon has enough confidence in his audience to set things up that don't pay off for a long time. There are tons of great lines, such as [transmission suddenly cuts out]
.
.
.
[transmission suddenly resumes] "Smash." Sarah was still quoting it when we got home. There's also a wonderful response to Loki's I'm-a-god-and-you're-just-riffraff moment. I was a little distracted waiting for Stan Lee to show up and get it over with. It's something like 4/5 of the way through the climactic battle. He'll be on a TV screen of reaction shots.

It's over two hours, though I didn't look at my watch until I was in the lobby. I got up and stood in the wheelchair gap in the back non-balcony row to see if the 3D was better away from the periphery of the theater. "He was with them," somebody said, and a moment later a man sitting by the gap asked me if I was with the row of kids that had just left. I said yes, and he said that after they were gone, he found a $20 on the floor right there (He indicated a spot. Oddly, when I think of the moment, I 'see' the bill just where he said.) and said it was in front of a seat right by Sarah's (he had seen me bring her her popcorn). I thanked him a half dozen times, and we chatted briefly, on the surprise appearance of a familiar-looking portion of a face at the end (my first thought was of this one character from the DC universe), and on the movie as a whole. I said it reminded me of why I used to read comic books in the first place, and it really was. It was all there — the repartee, the sets (their S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier is more believable than Steranko's), and the hitting each other. I thanked him a couple more times.

Then I left the text credits rolling and went out for fear everybody would have vanished if I waited any longer. I saw a manager and accosted him, telling him my tale of being led into a life of crime by my daughter's friend's mother, and offered to settle the difference, and he said everything was fine and he hoped I'd enjoyed the movie. Then I talked to Sarah, who said that Jacob had dropped a big bill during the show, and she had stopped looking for it after she bumped her head on the seat.

Then we went home, and Sarah told Cathy the best lines before I could.
.