Book on Children's Animated Movies

When I was about 10 or 11 years old, I came across a book  called Make Your Own Animated Movies , by Yvonne Andersen, at the Athens, GA library.  It was about how children could make their own movies.  The picture to the left is from that book.  It shows a character from the film, “Al Kaseltzer Strikes Again.”  Now, 40 years later, I finally found the book again.  Somehow, parts of it stayed with me all this time.  I remembered enough details to track it down, although I hadn’t remembered the title or the author.  I even got to watch some of the films mentioned in the book, like “$50,000 per Fang” and “The Amazing Colossal Man” on YouTube, films whose titles haunted me for decades.   Still haven’t seen Al Kaseltzer though.  When I was a child I was always jealous that other kids got to do fun and exciting art projects.  Either the schools I went to didn’t have the budget for that sort of thing or I wasn’t the kind of child chosen to participate. 

Deafen Eggs

The Perfume Counter

I had a dream the other day in which I was at a department store of the Macy’s variety.  One of the workers there invited me to tour an art exhibit (which was later revealed to be more of an experiment than exhibit) in a hidden part of the store. The worker, a woman, led me through the exhibit. The rooms were huge, every wall smooth, dark gray concrete; massive square pillars holding up the ceiling, so high up you didn’t notice it.  The rooms were not uniformly lit, but had focused lighting from sources nearer half-way down the walls.  Each room was filled with artworks very similar to the one pictured, except they were more muted in tone, much rougher in execution, and in a variety of forms: paintings; drawings; small, bas-relief sculptures or assemblages.  These were large pieces hung on the walls in the first couple of rooms; the later rooms held many, many small pieces.  None were duplicates, although they looked anonymously made, as if they were the work of many hands acting to one vision or format.  The pieces in the final rooms were for sale.  They were stacked up on display tables; drawings on paper; small canvases; slabs of wood covered with attachments and pencil marks.  As the woman walked away from me in the last room, I started to wake up and take conscious control over the dream.  I stole one of the drawings, folding it up and putting it in my pocket.  When I opened my eyes I immediately put a name to the exhibit: “The Perfume Counter.”  I also realized that all of the other people attending the exhibit might have been in on the experiment: window dressing— the whole thing staged to see how I would react.  Was my theft of the drawing a monkey wrench in their plans?

The interesting thing to me about the dream is the sheer processing power of the human brain to conjure up such a plethora of images during the semi-conscious state of dreaming.  I was amazed that I put together this little movie in my mind seemingly out of nothing really.

A day or two later I came across a Crate and Barrel catalog with the above picture in it.  It struck me how similar it was to the artworks in the dream: amorphous, meaningless, non-representational, yet pleasant all the same. 

The Grenloam Assignment Part Three: "The Marijuana Millipede"

Only Van Trachner among the group of four people still smoked cannabis, yet the group had retained its informal designation, "The Marijuana Millipede."

"How did we come up with that name?" Easton struggled to recall.

Jaguar Stark, at the wheel of the rented vehicle, provided the answer.  "That letter that was anonymously mailed to us after--"

"Oh yeah", each of the others mumbled, none wanting to relive that night long ago.

Perhaps to ease the mood, or to counterpoint the memory, Van lit up a joint.

"Hey, pass that over here," Jaguar begged.

"I thought Van was the only one of us that still smoked," Easton teased.

"Look!" Midden Nux exclaimed, pointing ahead.

It was the famed Grenloam Shoe, sole survivor of who-knows-how-many giant shoes that had fallen from the sky eons before.

"Such a long trek to get here," Easton observed.

"That would make a good story in itself," Van mused in an exhalation of potency.

Jaguar pulled into a parking space.  The shoe was a fairly popular tourist attraction.  "No time for that now," he said.  "We have work to do."

As they approached the mighty relic Easton questioned how they would get any new insights into such a thoroughly explored destination.

"Lance has given me instructions on how and where to enter the shoe through a place no one knows about," Jaguar answered.  "We're going to see things nobody else has."

I won't drag out the details of how they found the secret entrance and got inside; suffice to say that they did so and soon found themselves in a passage with many doors.

"Let's try this one," Jaguar suggested.

"You and Van go in that one," Midden countered.  "Easton and I will look in here."  He had to reassert some of what he felt was a lost authority or protagonistic agency.

Now, what we see here is that various ideas for narratives in different media, not just illustrated books, are to be found in these rooms in the shoe.

Jaguar was quite taken with an idea for a film called Graybeard's November.  The following page shows a scene from it.

Van, however, liked a series of short films called, "Heuchler's Tobacco Bath."

Tonight we sail on the pizza clipper.

In their room, Easton and Midden discovered a comic strip titled, "Graspel Distopium."

"What a great idea for a magazine!" Midden enthused.

"What a great idea for an album!" Van added.

"I think we've got enough material," Jaguar panted, overwhelmed.  "We'd better get out of here."

"Your hand is hot," said Pichler.

                                                                                                    to be completed in part four...

Discourteous Debtors in Definition High

First in the Latent Illustrations, Series One

The Drift of the Brave Rhinapse