Graphic Grandeur (Supply and Demented Edition)

 

It's a truism in American politics that people vote with their pocketbook.

Sometimes to confusing effect:

Cartoon by Drew Sheneman.

Vital Viewing (Tails from the Darkside Edition)

 

With all the turmoil taking place here on planet Earth, you'd at least think the heavens above could offer a bit of serenity. No such luck! On July 1 of this year an Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile took notice of a comet newly arrived from outside the solar system. That it's acting a bit different from other known comets has scientists puzzled, and at least one scientist thinks it may not be a comet at all. Watch:

You heard that guy. If it turns out to be just a comet, don't worry. If it's a spacecraft, worry. 

Actually, I worry even if it is a comet, especially as I recall this movie from way back when:

Well, maybe there's nothing to worry about after all. That '80s teen slang is much too dated to make a comeback.  

Not that there aren't ominous signs elsewhere:

Better get out the tinfoil. 

 

Quips and Quotations (Roaring Twenties Edition)

 

I couldn't forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people...they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made....

--F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby 

Vital Viewing (And Now for Something Completely Diabolical Edition)

 

Halloween is almost here, the time of year when we take perverse delight in getting the hell scared out of us, and what better way to get the hell scared out of us than by a creature from Hell? Of course, I'm talking about the Devil, a.k.a., Satan, Lucifer, the Prince of Darkness, Mephistopheles, Beelzebub, Belial, Old Nick, Old Scratch, the Evil One, the Arch Fiend, the Serpent, and the Antichrist. 

Did I leave a name out? Oh, yes. Blair:

Scary, huh? But is it fair? Can there be another side to the Devil? Can Satan be misunderstood? 

John Cleese offers this perspective:

 

So you might want to consider chipping in a few dollars. It will do your soul some good. Assuming it hasn't already been sold.

Graphic Grandeur (A River Runs Through It Edition)

 

OK, you've seen all the news coverage, but what was the President's reaction?

Cartoon by Nick Anderson

Quips and Quotations (Uncommonly Good Edition)

 

1946-2025

Choosing the freedom to be uninteresting never quite worked for me.

--Diane Keaton (née Hall)

 

Read All About Her

 

 

 

Joan Kennedy, the oft-troubled and soon-to-be-divorced wife of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, glances up at herself in 1981.

1936-2025

 

 

 

Quips and Quotations (Not-So-Missing Link Edition)

 

When, in the early 1960s, I brazenly used such words as "childhood", "adolescence", "motivation", "excitement", and "mood" I was much criticized. Even worse was my crime of suggesting that chimpanzees had "personalities". I was ascribing human characteristics to nonhuman animals and was thus guilty of that worst of ethological sins—anthropomorphism.

--Jane Goodall (1934-2025)

Ancient Rights

 

Norman Rockwell. It's not his birthday or anything. He just happens to be on my mind. I think as time goes by, Rockwell's work is seen as increasingly sentimental, increasingly old-fashioned. Here's one such example:

Freedom of Speech, 1943

Given the current political climate, I'm afraid this particular sentiment may be getting more old-fashioned by the minute.

 This 1976 paean to freedom of the press must be old-fashioned, too. After all, I watched it on TCM!

1936-2025

  

 

 

 

Under the Radar: Mae Questel

 

Thespian Mae Questel was born on this day in 1908 (she died in 1998.) If you don't recognize the name, you at least may recognize the iconic cartoon character to whom she lent her voice:

 

 

When Betty Boop made her animation debut in 1930, she was a dog. I don't mean that unkindly, that she was a homely human woman. No, I mean that literally. She was neither homely nor human but a member of the species Canis familiaris. Allow me to explain. At the time another anthropomorphic pooch named Bimbo was animation studio head Max Fleischer's most popular character. Fleischer came up with a story for a cartoon short that had Bimbo as a dishwasher in a nightclub in love with a sexy canine singer, and asked his leading animator Grim Natwick, to come up with a design. Natwick's Betty was similar to the later human version, except that she had droopy ears and a little black nose. The subsequent short, "Dizzy Dishes", did well, and Betty remained both a supporting player and a sexy dog (she's seen in a lacy bra in one pre-Code cartoon) for the next ten or so shorts (sources vary.) Theater operators made it clear to Fleischer that they wanted to see more Betty and less Bimbo. And that it wouldn't hurt to remove any urge towards bestiality on moviegoers' parts if they were given an actual member of the species Homo sapiens to drool over. And so Betty was humanized, her droopy ears replaced by earrings, and the dark nose transformed into a pert dash. As for Bimbo, he stuck around for a while as a supporting player, remaining a canine. Needless to say, the relationship between him and Betty from that point on was strictly platonic. Around this time (sources again vary), Mae Questel took over vocal duties from Betty's original portrayer Margie Hines and enacted the squeaky-voice flapper for eight years, longer than any other actor. However, that wasn't Questel's only acting achievement, as you'll find out in this interview from the 1980s:

 

Still sounds like Betty, doesn't she? Probably the reason Questel was asked to do the character one more time in 1988's Who Framed Roger Rabbit?:

Recently, a musical based on Betty Boop opened and very shortly thereafter closed on Broadway. Perhaps if the show's producers had found some psychic who could have channeled Mae Questel's vocal talents, it would still be running today.

Cabinet Cabaret

 

 

Overture, curtain, lights
This is it, the night of nights
No more rehearsing and nursing a part
We know every part by heart
Overture, curtain, lights
This is it, we'll hit the heights
And oh what heights we'll hit
On with the show this is it.

"Mr President, you ARE the Second Coming!"

 

Outback Pride

 

I just didn’t believe I was up there in fishnets and high heels actually doing it...It’s one of my strengths as a performer. I’ve got a kind of more developed feminine side so it was a chance to knowingly explore that.

--British actor Terence Stamp, on playing transgender woman/drag queen performer Bernadette Bassenger in the 1994 Australian comedy The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

1938-2025

May the Force Live Long and Prosper

 

Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry shakes hands with Star Wars creator George Lucas at some science fiction convention in 1987. No hint of a rivalry between them that I can tell. I guess they figured the cosmos (as well as Hollywood) was big enough for the both of them.

The Apprentice

 

"YOU'RE HIRED!"

Graphic Grandeur (In Lieu of a Breeze Edition)

Oh, who cares how one develops? What the true entrepreneur wants to know is, how best to capitalize on it once it does develop?

Here's one chilling possibility:

 Cartoon by Liza Donnelly

Quips and Quotations (Transcendentalist Meditation Edition)

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.  

--Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or, a Life in the Woods, first published on this date in 1854.

 

 

Playing Platinum

 

Sure, she wanted to make it big in Hollywood, but that didn't mean she was going to...

...compromise her principles.

Loni Anderson (1945-2025) 

Best known for the highly-capable, and highly-paid, receptionist Jennifer Marlowe on WKRP in Cincinatti.

 

Quips and Quotations (Ivories That Tickle Edition)

 

1928-2025

I would listen to the radio and think, 'I can write a song as good as that,' and the problem is, they already have people who can write songs 'as good as that' so what do they need one more for? What is necessary is somebody that can write something different.

--Tom Lehrer

Graphic Grandeur (Dangerous When Wet Edition)

 

Fifty summers ago, this Roger Kastel-illustrated poster made its debut on the exteriors, and in the lobbies, of movie theatres across the nation and around the world, promising filmgoers a terrifying cinematic experience. However, movie posters often promise things that the actual movies then fail to deliver. Did Jaws live up to its poster's promise? Well, if you were a filmgoer fifty summers ago--and most people didn't bother with movies during the summer until this one completely changed the business model--you already know the answer to that question, but play along with me anyway as we watch the trailer: 

Trailers also sometimes promise more than the actual movie delivers, even as it's a slicing and dicing of the actual movie. Trust me, though, Jaws delivered (with a lot of slicing and dicing of a different sort.) Personally, I've always found the film more exciting than out-and-out scary, but that's fine with me. Whatever gets the heart thumping. Based on a then-recent bestselling book by Peter Benchley (Robert's grandson) and only the second feature film by the then-still-in-his-20s Steven Spielberg, it quickly became the all-time box-office champ and remained so for the next two years until topped by another summer blockbuster Star Wars (which in turn was topped a few years later by Spielberg's E.T., the Extraterrestrial which made its debut during--you guessed it--the summer.) One thing that had no chance of topping it--at least not in the commercial sense--was some magazine parody, but that doesn't means my then-middle-school-age-self couldn't get a giggle out of this:

Looks like unsafe swimming conditions all around.

Illustration by Mort Kunstler

 

Truth Socialites

 

NEWS FLASH: Employees of the Justice Department were told to flag Trump's name in the Epstein files.

That begs the question, just what was this "flag"?

 

Below is the dirty laundry.

 

Quips and Quotations (Car Hop or Pop Shop Edition)

 

1937-2025

[The hit singles] were the least-artistic endeavor of my career. They were bubblegum songs. They were teenybopper songs. But I enjoy seeing the reaction of people when I do them.

--Connie Francis

 

(Currently an internet sensation 63 years after it was released--Kirk)

Period Pieces

 

You've read it right here in Shadow of a Doubt (actually in Wikipedia by way of Shadow of a Doubt.) To repeat, today is World Emoji Day. The general reaction to such a holiday?

Feelings are mixed.