Buy My Art!

I've set up shop at etsy, http://www.etsy.com/shop/funonmars and am adding new pictures frequently, so please stop by. Sorry, no refreshments!

If I were free

My sister- Carol Cruikshank- was a very talented artist, even from a young age. I scanned one of her sketchbooks and put it up on Flickr- it plays as a slideshow
http://www.flickr.com//photos/funonmars/sets/72157629106907167/show/
(As long as you keep your mouse away from it the bottom tray of pictures won't show.)

She drew this when she was 15 or 16 in a little booklet tied together with yarn. This was in 1957! So many of the ideas are still fresh. She died twenty years ago. Today's her birthday.

Obsolete Formats

We've been printing many of my films in 35mm this last month, for archival reasons, and checking the prints at the Fotokem lab in Burbank, in a screening room.

I'm always uncomfortable looking at my own work, but when I saw these prints at Fotokem I was shaken up a bit. Film looks SO GOOD, so totally different from any dvd or digital format. Geez! Animation! Cels! But only a handful of specialty labs are even printing film now, and in the years ahead all the studio releases will be coming out as digital only. (2014 already declared by studios as no film releases anywhere.) So if you have film negs think about printing them now.

Although my cartoon "Quasi at the Quackadero" was put on the National Film Registry list of films worthy of preservation, the list comes with no perks as to preservation (or even a piece of paper to frame and put on the wall!) In fact even the link to the pdf which came to me as official notification was a broken link!
Government.

Film is the latest obsolete format. wow! The world is becoming so damn virtual.

I've often wondered if the monster magnet from outer space really appeared what would happen to our collective culture? Then the Republican candidate I find most unappealing, (though it's hard to narrow that group down),Newt G, mentioned this in some recent debate as a real threat.

I'm going to write about my own computer history. I poured so much energy and YEARS into Flash, and before that into some other formats that also scream obsolete format.

Stay tuned.

The very bad not good Granny (not my mom)

I went to visit my mother this weekend, aka "fun in the nuthouse".
As I came through the glass door on Friday morning, Toney, pictured above, was poised very still by the door waiting for her big moment.

The door was open and she ran out. Shouts of "TONEY!" and I turned to run after her but the same nurses aides called out, "Don't chase her, she's dangerous!" as they rushed past me.

Toney is 100 years old. She stands very straight and has a full goofy white haircut which you can see I could never get right in my sketches. She was RUNNING- she's 100 years old but she was running, and she jumped on the bus parked at the entrance. When the nurse's aide jumped on to catch her, Tony ripped off the aide's top "exposing her to the world", and scratched the aide too. She told her, "You have an evil heart and God will never forgive you."

Woah! No wonder my mother's one of their favorites. They say Toney is wearing a bracelet which locks the doors when she gets near them but she's figured out how to stand just out of lockdown range and then break out when someone opens the door unsuspectingly. She's 100 years old! She moves like an athlete.

As for my mother, her trip continues, but now it's sometimes by rail. We were in Florida on Friday and in England on Saturday. In England I was trying out for a stage role, but she didn't think I'd get the part. Something about not being forceful enough, and she wondered why I was dressed like I was Chinese. ? She carries on a monologue that's filled with curious details and funny comments, but I had the feeling I could have been there or not, for all the real impression it made on her: "so grand that you could come, taa taa".

When the 300 plus pounder nurse's aide waddled in to the small room where we were hanging, she said, "It's my husband!" My father was tall and slender and looked like Abraham Lincoln.

It was stuff that was funny but when it's your mom it isn't so funny. And there were all the other patients which I could have fun describing but I'll leave it alone. I only knew how to spell Toney's name because they've posted a sign for her on another door telling her to turn back (before it's too late?)

On the S.S. Xmas

Today when I called my mother she said "I'm back on the ocean."

We talked about that a while, and I tried to steer the boat elsewhere by saying we were decorating our tree. She said, "Oh we had a big Xmas party on the ship yesterday but the staff was running around snatching people's presents. Then they gave us castor oil."

Not sure this is the ship we want to be on.

Finger Paintin

well it won't make the cover of the New Yorker, but I drew this with my finger on my phone while I was visiting my mother last week and it expresses what the visit was like.

What came to mind about it most was this- imagine the span of a lifetime as a dirty windshield. Think of the worn wipers going back and forth, getting stuck in a certain spot each time. That's what it's like for my mother right now. All different parts of her life are recurring, but the place where she gets stuck the most is in Princeton, where my brother is rowing in a race (40 years ago) and she can't get to the race in time. Or she can't get the paper where the race is written up.

When I'd see her first thing in the morning she'd be pretty lucid, but then the little cups of pills which I guess she needs for all kinds of reasons, would start jamming her mind. Her eyesight is poor now too so that makes it easier for her to imagine these other places and times. Another recurrent theme was that we were on a not very nice ocean liner, and when were we going to reach land?

I was glad for the lucid moments but it also makes it even harder dealing with the dementia, because Ithink I can just straighten her out by explaining a few things.

Thanksgiving Day was great, but the buildup was really rough going, especially since we never reached land.

on to the garage

Poor Elle, my 8 year old rooster. The house sitter gets an F. Just got back from the vet, a $250 bill and he may or may not make it. I declined the x rays. Diagnosis was lack of food, general neglect. EEK!

He was looking poorly yesterday so we moved his overnight hutch back in the garage and put a heat lamp on it. But first we gave the unexpected resident, seen above, a ride in a box to wilder country. I was looking closely and nervously at the head shape- diamond or not diamond? till I saw the little legs emerge in the straw. A very large lizard. I thought it was unlikely there would be a rattlesn. in the garage but in L.A. anything's possible.

Our neighborhood is going downhill, and it's not because we live here. Honest! During the "you've got the green light"free finance era houses were bought by unknown neighbors who then rented individual rooms to families.

The house catty corner to us seemed especially suspect for several years. We thought it might be a drug drop off house. The people didn't live there, they just came there for short periods every couple of days. They would never speak to anyone in the neighborhood. They built up the fences so they were as high as you can go. Now that house is in foreclosure, and we went to the open house yesterday.

Creepy extraordinaire, especially the closet right by the sliding doors to the pool. It was only big enough for a person to stand in, and it was sound proofed, all four walls, ceiling and floor, with foam shaped like an egg carton. Okay, so what was that for?

Buck

And Obama is declaring Saturday National Hunting and Fishing Day, poor buck. Don't get me started. We were this close, it's not a zoom in.

How's yer Mall?

Talking to an L.A. friend today who owns a theatre in a mall in Riverside. His theatre is bedevilled by gangs, who scratch their gang names in the bathroom mirrors and shove seats loose from the concrete floor.

He said he thinks commercial real estate could be the next financial bomb in the country, said that if a mall is only 15 % vacant it's doing really well, said boutiques, karate parlors and restaurants are going belly up in a hurry.

Have YOU been to a local mall lately? Is your mall looking a little lonesome?

I was puzzling over what would become of empty malls. And all those gang members. Then it came to me, of course. The new prisons! Just what Arnold's been asking for. It's already hard to get into underground parking lots- just fence them off. (Reminder to self: contact Lou Dobbs in morning.) jk

We saw "Julie and Julia" tonight. I was squirming. I am such an intolerant contemporary film viewer. The cuteness was gagging me. Besides, I have tried to cook from that cookbook and it is not easy and sometimes impossible, with ingredients like goose fat and procedures sure to make you ill. Amy whatever is not someone I enjoy listening to, the blogging delights made me mighty uncomfortable, and though Meryl Streep seemed great and reminded me of old relatives, she was also starting to remind me of Bozo the Clown.

Got a job for you Sally!

So I haven't had work in a couple of years.

By work I mean where someone calls you up and says, "I'd like you to do this for x amount of $".

I'm not talking about those vulture animation "contests" where they say "hey kids, animate something really funny with original characters to this song about our corporation and you may get a chance to have your own series!"

In other words, trolling for talent by requesting spec work, and if they like it they own all rights because you didn't read the small print. And you get "prize money" in return for animating a series for them.

So I'm excited when I get an email this morning about a music video. I love animating to music, my favorite thing about animation. "Oh goody", I think, and read on.

"Now the kicker about this song is that it is very taboo!! It is about me going to the store to pick up a mentally handicapped hooker.. We fall in love then i train her for the special Olympics.. Now this song has received major press on the net for its crazy humour and I think it would be a perfect job for you.."

I go downstairs to make coffee. Is there anyway this doesn't totally offend me? I mean, I thought "Pretty Woman" was offensive and every other preteen girl in the country adored that movie. I come back upstairs and press the play button.

Offensive? I had no idea how specifically dirty a "song" could be. I played it about 2/3 through and couldn't take any more. It'll probably be a big hit in whatever area of the internet loves "songs" about mentally handicapped hookers.

Sunday Dinner at Medford

My mother warned me that the menu writer used so many adjectives you expect the food to actually taste good. It's always a big disappointment. We both ordered crab cakes ("our SPECIALTY!!") and asparagus. She also ordered baked potato soup. I had the pear salad.

This was Sunday dinner at 12 noon at my mother's senior living center. We were eating in the assisted living dining room. Most of the guests arrived with walkers or wheelchairs. The table was set nicely with white linen and goblets.

We were in the center of the room, with only one other person at our table. She had a most intense fragrance of Ivory Snow that was blowing my way. It took me a while to place the fragrance.

There was trouble in the corner near us, at a bigger table. Someone had taken someone else's seat. CHAIR WARS!!

"That's my seat. You can't sit there!" the lady with lots of gold jewelry yelled at the little Asian lady. She repeated this many times. The Asian lady just sat there staring straight ahead. The ruckus got worse.

The general manager waltzed in dressed up like Sarah Palin and told them all "Just go with the flow," and she flowed on out but that didn't help. Gold jewelry was on fire. "I pay for this seat and I'm going to sit here." Another well intended helper came over and said, "We're trying something new, just sit over here." "NO! That's my SEAT!"

Over in the other corner a man was moaning loudly because he didn't get what he ordered.

The crabcakes arrived. That's crab cake, one per person, and you wouldn't have wanted two. It looked like a little brown fried falafel ball, and that's a nice way of describing it. Next to it were two gray and droopy asparagus spears.

When I looked back at Chair Wars the Asian lady had lost and vanished, and big mouth and her pals were now gloating over the victory. Awful.

We got talking with the lady at our table. She was 103 years old! Second oldest at Medford. She said she went to Smith class of '28. I said I went to Smith, class of '71. She said not many women at Medford went to colleges where you had to take an entrance exam.

My mother said, "Who wants to live so long?" Our friend said, "If you're in good health, why not?"

She said 25 years ago she had a stroke, and at the hospital they told her that her veins were 75% clogged. She stopped eating fat. She said she's told the Medford doctor many times that the Medford kitchen was cooking the wrong food for old people. She sent her plate back because the meat was covered with gravy.

Then it turned out she had lived in the apartment with the fish pond where my mother lived when she first moved to Medford. In fact this lady put the fish pond in. This all seemed so amazingly coincidental and wonderful to my mother and me. Unfortunately it turns out my mother eats with her every night and they've been around the fish pond story many times before.

Grand Junction

I'm flying out of Grand Junction CO in the morning. The next day President Obama flies into the same airport, the first US President to visit Grand Junction since around 1908. He's conducting a town meeting. I'm in favor of health care reform. I know plenty of people who pay cash for medical appointments just to stay clear of pre existing conditions which cause insurance payments to boomerang. I know plenty of people who have no insurance at all.

I'm going to visit my mother who's now 94 1/2. She's been getting a bit agitated lately but is taken care of well.

I've been so uninspired creatively the last couple of months. It's never happened to me before. I am interested in the social games on Facebook: Lexulous, Pet Society, and Farmville. That's my farm above. They are masterpieces of Flash code to date, (and take way too long to load.)

But I think the latter two are waiting for a next stage development. They need interaction between characters, conflict, conversation which seems to be generated by the situation. It wouldn't be impossible. I've done so much experimenting with Flash code over the years, including setting up characters to say something depending on several variables.

Then it will really be a social game. As it is now in both of these games you're basically just acquiring and decorating and visiting your friends. There's no surprise in what the friends do when they encounter you.

Lexulous is just a well fashioned scrabble game and works pretty well.

This free content phenomenon is affecting artists of all kinds. The L.A. Times reports that even the porn industry is being taken down by it!

I'll be back Monday night and maybe will check in over the weekend. Enjoy the summer.

Booking Airlines is Hell

I've spent the last three hours trying to book a flight from somewhere nearby like Montrose or Grand Junction to Philadelphia to see my mother. My dates are open. It's been HELL!

I don't want to arrive at the Philly airport at midnight. No thanks, United. Oh, Frontier has a nice set of flights, only $1132...

I thought my friend Southwest Air was going to help me out, especially since I have a roundtrip rapid reward I won last year, and I even saved the winning number. But they didn't like my password so I had to go into the retrieval of lost passwords sub basement and answer questions that made no sense to me. "Where were you travelling on May 6 09?" I was in L.A. then. Nowhere isn't an option.

And now Southwest has a new ticket level- you have to be a Freedom Flyer to book certain flights, like the one that gets me to Philadelphia at 7 pm instead of midnight. You have to turn in double rapid rewards, (ie two free round trips) in order to become a Freedom Flyer. But maybe it comes with freedom fries... and gives you that warm and fuzzy patriot feeling too.

And every day you get fed up and think "I'll try this in the morning", you wake up and learn all the fares have gone up another $75 or more or the flight you were looking at that gets in at midnight is now sold out.

Time for a hike, and this time we're taking the French Rabbit.

When there were travel agents like the lady above, aah. You called, told her where and when you wanted to go, and she called you back a little later and had it all worked out.

Sucker!

This is a picture of how an octopus sucker works. This is a story of a sucker who bought a new skin cream product: me.

About a week ago the local news did a feature on how you could get really good skin products for much less money at your local drug store. They had a dermatologist interviewed as she shopped, and she especially liked the ProX line made by Oil of Olay, an old time company of dubious value. The dermatologist was so perky and cute as she loaded her little shopping cart.

Then I saw in the L.A. Times an ad signed by three yes three dermatologists certifying that using this cream would make a big difference in six weeks. Or rather if you buy the three creams together. They love to do that.

And Clinique has gotten so pricey. I fell for the line. I bought two of the three products. They cost more than Clinique when you combine them. And Oil of Olay? It's not just a weird old time product. It's part of Proctor and Gamble.
Pro X.. oh yeah...

The products have way too much surround packaging. Deep red seems to be the new color of beauty virtue products.

Today on the way to the track I kept rubbing my hand over my face- it felt strangely sticky, as if a thin layer of glue that hadn't quite dried was all over it.

And then I thought, could it be?

That they've created some kind of "high tech" appealing glue that holds the wrinkles together until you stop using it? That's what it feels like. It doesn't soak in, it's just this weird gel glob on top.

Sucker! me! yes I admit it. Make your own shopping choices, but don't trust the cute dermatologists on tv, even if it seems to be tv news.

La Bamba Lately

I think Obama is doing an amazing job meeting problems of unthinkable magnitude with zest and flair. And I just love when Austan Goolsbee (above) is interviewed. Not only is he cuter than Parviz Musharraf, but his name is straight out of W.C. Fields. A brilliant interview with him here. A classic inspirational professor!

How about the millions of acres preserved as wilderness, signed into law? Go La Bamba.

How about throwing the bum out at GM? But wait, where's the stylist? The new guy, Fritz Henderson, looked like he was going to pick up a banjo at a pizza parlor in 1977 on tv last night. He was wearing a red and white striped shirt with a giant white collar and big blue tie. We were cracking up . But try as I might, I couldn't find man with shirt through google image. But I did come across this picture of yellow cars with snazzy rear ends! Soon the world will be looking like my cartoons!

Skatrina

Am I in New Jersey yet? I hate ice, but I'd like to be graceful.

Last Minute Valentine

My college pal Ellen Lynch sent me a Christmas card and the construction was ingenious. Using one piece of letter sized paper and no staples, she constructed an 8 page booklet. (Not an 8 pager if any of you know the sleaze implied!)

It only involved making one slice along a fold line and nice tight tight fingernail reinforced folds. I uploaded it here for anyone who wants to fold laundry, I mean valentines. Generic enough that anyone will find it a peculiar Valentine and not be offended.

If you like doing paper architecture like popups etc. I recommend you give it a try. There's something so amazing about the structure of it, with no staples. I put a pop up of instrux on the pdf, on how to fold it, but it gave me trouble describing the relatively simple fold and snip instructions. Let me know if you're lost and I'll post pictures of how to fold.

Story from North America

wow! (doesn't look like much at outset, but let it play-- amazing.) if you roll over the image all the extra stuff goes away.

Get Artists into Schools

Bill Irwin gives a thoughtful presentation on why artists should be hired to visit schools. The organization "National Campaign to Hire Artists to Work in Schools" has a group on Facebook too. I sent some of you invitations, but honestly I don't know what joining a group on Facebook does!

L.A. '84 weirdos aplenty

I wrote what follows in 1984. I don't remember this guy (hope he's not a visitor here), but I do remember he commissioned the illustration above for the back cover of a little magazine he published. It was at a time when my career still seemed promising! I thought you all would enjoy this bizarre story that I'd written in my sketchbook. Came upon it yesterday. Here goes:

When I first met Brian, he came in the house with a yellow telephone. I thought it was because he didn't want to miss any calls. But he'd brought it along so I could autograph it. He thought it looked like something I'd designed. (? I hadn't designed it!)

Autographs mean a lot to him. He collects first editions signed by William Faulkner and would collect signed first editions by other authors too but his vacuum cleaner collection takes up too much room already and it's either give up one or the other and the vacuums won out.

He keeps them arranged in a semi-circle around his desk in his office. I said I'd like to see them.

His girlfriend Brink, who's breathy and beautiful, was very enthusiastic about the Kirby vacuum cleaner Brian had given her. She said it has all kinds of wonderful attachments including a paint sprayer and a massage unit.

You can't just buy these Kirbys in stores, they both explained, nodding their heads. Kirbys are the Rolls Royce of vacuum cleaners, as they put it. You have to call the company and then a salesman pays you a visit. But does he demonstrate the massage unit?

Brian is very good friends with his vacuum cleaner repairman. They invite the repairman to their parties. He used to work in the aerospace program but when that went bust he switched to vacuum cleaners.

I told Brian I'd seen a wonderful exhibit of carpet sweeper in London, in the basement of the Science Museum, but he said carpet sweepers didn't interest him. "No suction" he explained.

He and Brink have told me that they are into dream control and have an EEG but so far I've let that pass. I've also heard sketchy details about the time travel party they held with lectures by three people famous in their fields.

We went outside to pick apricots from my tree and he was excited. He'd gotten fruit from two science fiction writers already that week. "And now, apricots from you," he said. "Celebrity fruit." I wondered if I should sign the bag.