At some point, every endeavor done to its utmost becomes elevated to the level of an art. I will never forget when my father came to visit almost 20 years ago and led me on a walk around my own neighborhood, pointing out craftsmanship and achievement I had never noticed, especially, most mundanely but most powerfully, the cement pourings that made up the sidewalk. Every corner was stamped with the name of the firm, “J. W. Mougham.” As a general contractor and builder for many years, my father was able to note how straight and true the stress lines were, which would allow the cement, under stress from roots and shifting soil underneath, to fracture along those lines rather than breaking elsewhere. “This man knew what he was doing,” Dad said. I have never looked at sidewalks the same way since.

Which brings me to the subject of this video, which will leave me thinking somewhat differently about one of the games we used to play around the campfire. Clearly, there’s an art to this as well. To me, this display of shadow hand puppetry is astonishing.

That’s right, the Bush administration is onto the threat from zombies.

(Thanks to newsfromme.com, where I first saw this.)

For a truly terrifying indicator of the threat we’re facing, make sure you watch to the end.

This video, courtesy Mad TV, has eerie ramifications for us all.

One great tonic for the fear-based culture is a strong daily dose of humor. One place I like to get that is from New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast. Chast finds dementia in the daily outlandishness of human relations and household appliances.

Another humorist I enjoy is Steve Martin, he of the stand-up act, the arch fiction pieces, the witty plays, the banjo and balloons, and recently several unfortunate family comedies.

Here is a wonderful video I found online today in which Mr. Martin interviews Ms. Chast about her work. If you’ve had a bad day, well, ever — this is the cure. The entire interview is positively delightful, the cartoons are hilarious, and Martin and Chast, who clearly adore and admire each other, are having the time of their lives. I think Steve Martin deserves an interview show all his own, and I hope that some day we get it. If used properly, this video, which you really should watch, could bring more good to the world than anything currently transpiring in the highest echelons of power.

I pity the kids of the era of Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon and Boomerang and Fox. They’ve got too much choice. For them, every day is a smorgasbord of animated wonderfulness.

For those of us who came of age in the late 1960’s, network cartoons were reserved for Saturday morning, the rest of the day and week were strictly off-limits but for “The Flintstones,” and Sunday was a wasteland unless you settled for the claymation Lutheranism of “Davy and Goliath.” (As I did.)

However.

We did have local kids’ shows, which featured a host and whatever old cartoons he or she could lay hands on. My kids have no idea what a friend my Philadelphia-area generation had in people like Captain Noah, Sally Starr, Wee Willie Webber (that’s him above), Pixanne, and Gene London.

Captain Noah showed terrific cartoons like “Popeye” and sang his own theme song in a thick Philadelphia accent I associated even then with police chief (and then mayor) Frank Rizzo. Gene London drew beautiful sketches (something I envied). Wee Willie Webber showed “Spider-Man” (!). Sally Starr, now an octogenarian, is still doing a regular three-hour radio show from my old stomping area of Vineland, NJ.

This delightful site logs information about the great Philadelphia kids’ shows of the 1960s. An email exchange between friends just now got me thinking about those old TV shows, and led me here.

And now I’m off to the tech rehearsal for my play.

Miss Teen South Carolina answers a question. Kinda. Sorta.

(This is in marked contrast to the lecture my colleague Aram Saroyan gave last night, effortlessly discoursing on William Blake and “shapely mind” with regard to writing, but that’s a topic for another post.)

Thanks to Rich Roesberg for sending this in.

The other night I saw “Rescue Dawn” and found it, like all the Werner Herzog films I’ve seen, strangely compelling and somewhat badly made.

The film, which concerns the shooting-down of Americanized German pilot Dieter Dengler in Laos prior to the Vietnam War, was previously the subject of a documentary (also by Herzog) called “Little Dieter Needs to Fly.”

The most immediately noticeable aspect of this film is the film stock itself, which is so bad that the movie looks like a 1970’s porno flick. I kept waiting for Johnny Wad to make an appearance. One could argue that this is an attempt by the filmmaker to return us to the period of the film’s setting, but in actuality I suspect “Rescue Dawn” was shot on degraded film left over from other ventures. The effect is jarring, but after a while, your eyes do adjust — eventually, human beings can get used to anything.

There are also the usual lapses in storytelling. Before the action of the movie (our hero getting shot down in Laos), we get all of about 1 minute of his getting his flight gear specially tailored in a way that, later, plays absolutely no relevant role in the movie, and another 1 minute of his watching an Army jungle survival film that also plays no role. (None of the skills demonstrated is ever needed.)

Most disastrously, the ending is very badly considered and feels summoned from a Michael Bay movie I’m glad I missed. Dengler, having now survived the horrors of torture and survival in the jungle, is upon his return hoisted aloft by the crew of his ship and carried around, his arms upthrust in victory. I think I’ve also seen this scene in every single movie about nerdy kids who triumph at summer camp. Its awfulness is maximized by the bad shooting, the bad dialogue, and the utter lack of fresh ideas.

And yet, as is usually the case with Herzog, much of the movie is amazing.

The scenes of torture are inventive and difficult to watch. They ring with truth, especially in the self-evident and very real changes to Christian Bale’s physique. (He lost 80 pounds over time for this role.) So too with the escape of Dengler and his fellow prisoners, a plan that goes all too wrong for what can only be described as very real but very stupidly human reasons: the one prisoner simply doesn’t show up for the shoot-out. (He never gives a good explanation, and that comports with my own findings about people who don’t show up when they’re supposed to.) Bale puts his all into his performance, running barefoot over treacherous terrain, eating wriggling earthworms and even ripping into a live snake with his bare teeth. (It is either absolutely a live snake or this is brilliantly edited — which is not the hallmark of a Herzog movie.) Bale does an excellent job of capturing Dengler’s loopy optimism and blockheadedness. And, finally, the terrible and sad decline of the escapee played by Steve Zahn is a tragedy unfolding before our eyes. Zahn’s performance is harrowing.

I can think of no other director who so perfectly conveys the terrors and chaos hiding behind the beauty of unruly nature. Every scene in a Herzog film carries an implicit threat, whether it’s Klaus Kinski turning from friend to fiend frame by frame in “My Best Fiend,” or the deluded naturalist cavorting with the bears he believes his friends in “Grizzly Man.” It’s the dangerous art that’s most exciting — think Stravinsky, Picasso, the Sex Pistols — and that’s why, although I’m not terribly interested in film, I keep returning to the films of Werner Herzog.
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Now playing: Brian Eno – Here Come The Warm Jets
via FoxyTunes

 Former teen heartthrob has built a 1/5 scale model of Disneyland in his back yard.

This makes me think of “The Music of Chance,” by Paul Auster, in which a grieving man and his ne’er-do-well partner are forced into indentured servitude and made to build a medieval wall in the back yard of two lottery-winning yokels who, it seems, also have a mini-scale replica of their home town occupying an entire room of their mansion.

Whether or not truth is stranger than fiction, they are certainly on speaking terms.

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Now playing: The Beach Boys – Surf’s Up
via FoxyTunes

Because the gays are getting married.

Which will not be news to the pastor in Ohio.

Fishin’ for old comics, that is, as my comrades and I troop down to the San Diego Comic Con for five (!) glorious days. For the first time in, probably, 10 years, I’m not taking a laptop and not checking email, so what happens at Comic Con truly stays at Comic Con.

In the meantime, here’s a heads-up: For the first time in its history, Comic Con is sold out. (For Saturday, at least.) No four-day passes, no on-site registration. If you’re not preregistered, you can probably drop in on Thursday (if you don’t mind braving the line), and maybe Friday (we’ll see). Sunday? Probably not so much. And again, in the infamous words of my son, “You mean there are going to be more people there this year?” Yep — 150,000 or so.

If you can’t make it to Comic Con, then may I heartily recommend this show? I’ve seen 5 or 6 installments now and it is a hoot and a holler. Seriously, I’m trying to remember the last time I saw a live show this bulletproof — it is consistently entertaining. The guests change every week, and lately there have been rotating hostesses. But the show is always a bucket full of fun (and my guests have agreed). These guys have a lot of talent and, I guess, good karma. (And I got to meet Peter Falk, however fleetingly.)

I’ll check back in here next Monday.