Sunday, November 20, 2011
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
APOLITICALYPTIC
That isn't because of any reticence on my part to espouse a political viewpoint; Believe me, I can whip up a category 5 maelstrom of opinionated bluster as effectively as any other armchair pundit when viewing the evening news (though typically it's from a viewpoint one would never find supported by the Mainstream/Conservative media).
Instead, my reluctance to delve into topical humor stems from the very basic fact that I'm not a very fast drawer.
Usually, by the time I get a cartoon penciled, inked, colored, submitted, rejected, and re-submitted to another possible outlet, it's topic has become yesterday's news. Editorial cartooning is for the fleet of pen (or at least those not so easily distracted by chores, errands or nagging, interfering day jobs)! Tom Toles and Mike Luckovich, bless 'em and their ilk, can go from vague idea to published 'toon in 6 hours flat. I just putter along.
Still, with the immediacy provided by this blog site, perhaps I can step up my game a bit and actually produce more incident-specific 'toons. Or perhaps you'll prefer I stick with my more generalized topics? We'll just have to see...
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
LOST in Time (Part Two)
(...Continued from last post)
So, what am I doing now to fill the void left when the Island permanently relocated itself to television limbo (or perhaps I should say moved on into the light)?Without any new episodes to look forward to, I've decided to engage in a little archaeological digging into LOST's primordial past.
You see, even during LOST's first couple of seasons, I always felt the show bore a strong resemblance to other tv series I had come across as a youth (back in the days when Zenith consoles roamed the Earth). My suspicions became even more aroused as the series progressed.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not accusing LOST of being derivative; It was a brilliant show. But when I break it down into its component parts I find that many of its plot elements have more than a passing resemblance to tv series long since passed.
So, below are the results of my paleolithic excavations, presented for your review. Are these, in fact, direct antecedents of our beloved time-twisted, monster island series? The show's creators seem rather tight-lipped about the whole subject so there will probably never be a way to tell for sure. For now just think of them as some antediluvian evolutionary branch from the show's family tree...a sort of television Australopithecus to Lost's Homo Sapiens.
The New People always struck me as having the most similarity to LOST. Both were broadcast on the ABC network, but The New People aired in 1970.
The plot: An airplane carrying 40 some-odd young, beautiful people crashes on a mysterious tropical island. The island was once part of a military nuclear bomb test site (Lost Season Five's Jughead?) and has a fully built village with modern buildings, vehicles, weapons, food and electricity (Otherville?) The people try and carve out a new civilization on the island and fight each other a lot.
Granted, I never saw this series, or I was too young to remember it. My only memory came from an old Dell comic book adaption I had when I was a kid in 1973. I lost the comic several years ago but I discovered another copy at a book store just last month. Below is a posting of it. Artwork is by Frank Springer:
Fantastic Journey was a short-lived sci-fi series that ran in the late 1970s. It starred Jared Marten, Ike Eisenmann, and Roddy McDowall.
The show centered around a small band of castaways shipwrecked on a mysterious island in the Bermuda Triangle. Different parts of the island occupied different time zones and dimensions and walking in any direction could land a cast member in a different time without notice (sound like LOST Season Five to you?). As the series progressed some characters would drop out and new ones would pop up.
Here are the opening credits:
You can view a snippet of the pilot episode by clicking this link.
This one might be a stretch, but Land of the Lost may have shared more than just 25% of its name with our island epic. This sci-fi series came out in 1974 and centered on a family stranded on a mysterious alien planet in an enclosed pocket universe. Creatures, humans and aliens from all different time periods would involuntarily drop in and become trapped. The planet was surrounded by a swirling time vortex and the only way to escape was through a carefully calibrated time portal. The planet was dotted with ruins, temples and cities from an ancient, yet advanced, civilization, and the family were often in conflict with the hostile, indigenous inhabitants of those ruins (much like the Others).
Many other similarities existed between shows. LOTL had strange mechanical pylons that each performed different functions on the planet (similar to LOST's Dharma hatches), Both the LOTL's planet and LOST's Island contained mysterious energy sources at their hearts that seemed to power everything around them. Well, you get the idea.
Below is an episode (albeit crudely truncated) from LOTL's second season. I always felt elements of this story paralleled LOST's fifth season story Dead is Dead.
...And the Rest:
These were shows that NOBODY ever heard of...unaired pilots that languished in the studio film archives until, perhaps, chanced upon by Carlton Cuse or Damon Lindelof trowling about for a dose of inspiration?
Lost Flight certainly looks the part, both in the title and the violence. Lloyd Bridges is looking very Frank Lapidus-like in many of those shots.
The Stranded clip shows a dog that could be a dead-ringer for Vincent
And the show with Meadowlark Lemon? Well, I'm willing to bet he survived the show to become this island's true guardian!
I welcome your observations.
Namaste.
Friday, June 4, 2010
LOST in Time (Part One)
Well, it's over. Kaput.
Two weeks after the event and the realization has finally settled in; no more LOST.
The final Cliffs Notes rerun of the final episode just aired this past Sunday so there is no more gristle left on the bone to gnaw. My Tuesday nights are free again.
What does one do now?
Normal people would just shrug and move on to something else...perhaps find another show to obsess about. A few hardy souls may even switch their TVs off entirely and dare brave the outside world. More power to them. I, too, would attempt such a daring feat but I know that crossing the threshold to that great Outland would only bring me face to face with Atlanta air in summertime. The Smoke Monster's got nothin' on our Smog Monster! I'm staying put.
The most obsessive of our Lostie lot will probably pull out their DVD collections and begin an endless cycle of viewing the series from beginning to infuriating end looking for deeper subtexts, overlooked foreshadowings, and plain ol' forgotten plot threads.
Others will probably sit glumly before their now blank tv screens and pray to Jacob for any form of series continuance, no matter how improbable its construct; like perhaps a spin-off sitcom with Hurley and Ben becoming mis-matched roommates in an apartment in OtherVille. Rose and Bernard would guest star as the wacky neighbors.
Hmmmm, maybe not.
More to come.......
Two weeks after the event and the realization has finally settled in; no more LOST.
The final Cliffs Notes rerun of the final episode just aired this past Sunday so there is no more gristle left on the bone to gnaw. My Tuesday nights are free again.
What does one do now?
Normal people would just shrug and move on to something else...perhaps find another show to obsess about. A few hardy souls may even switch their TVs off entirely and dare brave the outside world. More power to them. I, too, would attempt such a daring feat but I know that crossing the threshold to that great Outland would only bring me face to face with Atlanta air in summertime. The Smoke Monster's got nothin' on our Smog Monster! I'm staying put.
The most obsessive of our Lostie lot will probably pull out their DVD collections and begin an endless cycle of viewing the series from beginning to infuriating end looking for deeper subtexts, overlooked foreshadowings, and plain ol' forgotten plot threads.
Others will probably sit glumly before their now blank tv screens and pray to Jacob for any form of series continuance, no matter how improbable its construct; like perhaps a spin-off sitcom with Hurley and Ben becoming mis-matched roommates in an apartment in OtherVille. Rose and Bernard would guest star as the wacky neighbors.
Hmmmm, maybe not.
More to come.......
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Stop Making Sense!
Right now my head is a theatre of combat in the ongoing Allergin Wars. The Pollen Battalions of the Privet Republic and the Stealth-Ninjas from the Honeysuckle Empire have allied themselves with the Spores of Grassland in a solid offensive against the meager ramparts the Generic Antihistamines of the Dollar General Store have set up. Through the drowsy fog of my brain I can faintly make out the percussive rounds of sneezing. The battlefields in my nasal passages run green with mucus. May is war, and war is Hell.
The biggest casualty of this terrible conflict has been coherent thought. The simplest sentence is a challenge to construct. A spoken phrase as mundane as "I'm going downstairs to the mail room" seems to blurt out as "Potato-spatula Malamute!" Logic has leaked out of my head. All that's left is absurdism.
At least I can deal with that; absurdism is one of my favorite forms of humor.
I don't mean Absurdism in the Kierkgaard/Existentialist manner; that level of academic psychobabble is a bit more than I can muster in my pseudoephedrine haze. Instead I'm referring to the punchline that revels in the preposterous; one that tosses all logic aside for the sake of a good laugh. Something you'd find in a Monty Python skit...or a Young Ones episode...or The Mighty Boosh...something British.
The British are masters of absurdist humor. Any culture that could introduce "bubble and squeak" and "spotted dick" to the culinary lexicon and keep a straight face has got to be a pro!
Of course America has done pretty well in serving up its fair share of ridiculous brilliance. Take a glance at several decades of Warner Brothers cartoons and you'll find absurdism dancing a merry pirouette with its sister genre slapstick before pulling an improbable anvil from its pocket and dropping it on her head. Dr. Seuss even managed to meld the form with some sort of message to create mutated morality plays. Bob Burden's Flaming Carrot Comics refrained from such aspirations and simply reveled in its own nonsense. And then, of course, there was the Far Side. Two words: Cow Tools.
But sometime after the 1990s America's humor landscape changed. Nobody seemed to have much appetite for brazenly illogical humor anymore. Why? Who knows?
Maybe it's because reality became more absurd; The real world suddenly had Sarah Palin, Balloon Boy and the Tea Party Movement. It's hard to compete with that. It had to change. But was that change good?
It seems the entire genre rebooted itself to its default setting, that most reptilian part of the comic brain: the scatalogical. Cartman gets an anal probe; cue laughtrack. Stewie poops in his diaper; everyone guffaws. Shrek and Donkey pass gas; millions of dollars pour in. I'm not getting it.
Oh, I tried. I wanted to be all liberal and open-minded about embracing this paradigm shift of jocularity. I even attempted to incorporate a fart joke into a performance art piece I was doing on a crowded elevator. All I got were looks of disgust and anger from the crowd. I guess my delivery was off.
So now I sit off the radar scope with my cheap pharmaceuticals and my Zippy the Pinhead books, scratching my snotty head and trying to figure out how to tap the current humor zeitgeist.
But I'll think of something. And when I do I'll potato-spatula Malamute!
Awww, screw it! Here's a cartoon:
The biggest casualty of this terrible conflict has been coherent thought. The simplest sentence is a challenge to construct. A spoken phrase as mundane as "I'm going downstairs to the mail room" seems to blurt out as "Potato-spatula Malamute!" Logic has leaked out of my head. All that's left is absurdism.
At least I can deal with that; absurdism is one of my favorite forms of humor.
I don't mean Absurdism in the Kierkgaard/Existentialist manner; that level of academic psychobabble is a bit more than I can muster in my pseudoephedrine haze. Instead I'm referring to the punchline that revels in the preposterous; one that tosses all logic aside for the sake of a good laugh. Something you'd find in a Monty Python skit...or a Young Ones episode...or The Mighty Boosh...something British.
The British are masters of absurdist humor. Any culture that could introduce "bubble and squeak" and "spotted dick" to the culinary lexicon and keep a straight face has got to be a pro!
Of course America has done pretty well in serving up its fair share of ridiculous brilliance. Take a glance at several decades of Warner Brothers cartoons and you'll find absurdism dancing a merry pirouette with its sister genre slapstick before pulling an improbable anvil from its pocket and dropping it on her head. Dr. Seuss even managed to meld the form with some sort of message to create mutated morality plays. Bob Burden's Flaming Carrot Comics refrained from such aspirations and simply reveled in its own nonsense. And then, of course, there was the Far Side. Two words: Cow Tools.
But sometime after the 1990s America's humor landscape changed. Nobody seemed to have much appetite for brazenly illogical humor anymore. Why? Who knows?
Maybe it's because reality became more absurd; The real world suddenly had Sarah Palin, Balloon Boy and the Tea Party Movement. It's hard to compete with that. It had to change. But was that change good?
It seems the entire genre rebooted itself to its default setting, that most reptilian part of the comic brain: the scatalogical. Cartman gets an anal probe; cue laughtrack. Stewie poops in his diaper; everyone guffaws. Shrek and Donkey pass gas; millions of dollars pour in. I'm not getting it.
Oh, I tried. I wanted to be all liberal and open-minded about embracing this paradigm shift of jocularity. I even attempted to incorporate a fart joke into a performance art piece I was doing on a crowded elevator. All I got were looks of disgust and anger from the crowd. I guess my delivery was off.
So now I sit off the radar scope with my cheap pharmaceuticals and my Zippy the Pinhead books, scratching my snotty head and trying to figure out how to tap the current humor zeitgeist.
But I'll think of something. And when I do I'll potato-spatula Malamute!
Awww, screw it! Here's a cartoon:
Sunday, May 16, 2010
INTRO
A. Owsley
A selective (and partially true) history.
A selective (and partially true) history.
1965: A. Owsley is born on a mountain top in Tennessee. However, his attempts to “cill a bar at the age of three” are thwarted by the Great Smoky Mountain National Park Service
1975: At the tender age of 10, A. Owsley’s first cartoon is published in the Electric Company Magazine. His name is misspelled.
1983: He enters the Art Institute of Atlanta to learn the arcane tools of the graphics trade. He graduates with honors and a brain brimming with knowledge of pica rules, em quads and photostat cameras. The MacIntosh computer is promptly invented, rendering it all obsolete.
1987: After viewing a six-hour documentary about Martin Luther, Owsley marches down Peachtree St. and nails his cartoons to the door of a Midtown art gallery. Many art patrons take notice but no one offers to name a religion after him.
Sept. 1990: He contributes spot illustrations and graphics to the Japanese language/comics magazine Mangajin. Japan responds by collapsing their economy.
Dec. 1990: He joins up with the rag-tag art collective 800 East The next seven years are spent in a haze of guerrilla art, freak shows, drag queens, improv, black light proms, one-night stands, raw meat, and way too many hand puppets.
April 1991: He curates the first Cartoon Show at 800 East which manages to lure all local cartoonists out of their subterranean hidey-holes to rub elbows with the freaks. Fortunately the matings do not produce offspring.
April 1992: The second Cartoon Show is lovingly debuted to the outside world. Unfortunately a scheduling conflict with the National “Riot for Rodney” festival prevents anyone from attending.
1993: The local free bi-weekly newspaper Highpoint offers a pity page to Owsley to fill with scribbles. He promptly calls up his most cynical cartooning buddies to submit stuff. For two years “The Funny Pages” dares to mock any public figure who crosses its path. Then Highpoint reaches low-ebb, and subsides leaving only the public to mock back.
February 1995: Owsley, along with fellow cartoonists Shira Levine, Alex Burns, Patty Leidy , Mark Buford, Walter Czachowski, Hart Chamberlin, and Skip Williamson decide to knock heads and produce a collective comics-only paper called DRAWL. Shira offers to act as publisher and take all the blame. Owsley offers to edit the mess around. Everyone else just asks for groupies.
March 1995: One month after unleashing the lumbering Golem of DRAWL to the world, Shira Levine flies off to Metropolis in search of Superman and Sarah Jessica Parker. She later sells her soul on eBay. Alex Burns picks up the pieces. Owsley keeps editing.
1996: While the rest of Atlanta is off to the Olympics, Owsley sits at home illustrating the book “Senryu, Haiku Reflections of the Times” for Mangajin and the Japanese Foreign Ministry. Mangajin implodes immediately after the book’s release and all copies are whisked off to the rising sun. He’s told that the book is big in Japan but no one offers to buy him sushi.
1997: The 800 East era ends in a tune of Smoke when all involved move on to enlightenment, Heaven, Hell, re-hab or Brooklyn. Owsley remains in Brokeland.
1997: Alex Burns runs off to Athens, GA in search of his heart and cheap housing. Owsley takes over DRAWL to finish its resolute journey to the grave.
1998: Jon Waterhouse foolishly asks Owsley to run a truncated edition of DRAWL in the back pages of Waterhouse’s Atlanta Sideshow magazine. Owsley plays him for a sap and proceeds to do just that.
1999: Mysterious organizations with cryptic names like Primal Screen and Wild Hare Studios offer Owsley money in exchange for helping draw little moving pictures of characters like Aquaman, Power Puff Girls, Super Friends, Dexter’s Laboratory, and Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Not having cable, he has no idea who these characters are. He only knows that the other people who draw them throw great parties. The party finally comes to an end when some idiot stands up and says, “I, George W. Bush do solemnly swear.....”
2000-2008: Dark, evil years of which we will no longer speak.
The Present: Shiny and new, with more to come.
1975: At the tender age of 10, A. Owsley’s first cartoon is published in the Electric Company Magazine. His name is misspelled.
1983: He enters the Art Institute of Atlanta to learn the arcane tools of the graphics trade. He graduates with honors and a brain brimming with knowledge of pica rules, em quads and photostat cameras. The MacIntosh computer is promptly invented, rendering it all obsolete.
1987: After viewing a six-hour documentary about Martin Luther, Owsley marches down Peachtree St. and nails his cartoons to the door of a Midtown art gallery. Many art patrons take notice but no one offers to name a religion after him.
Sept. 1990: He contributes spot illustrations and graphics to the Japanese language/comics magazine Mangajin. Japan responds by collapsing their economy.
Dec. 1990: He joins up with the rag-tag art collective 800 East The next seven years are spent in a haze of guerrilla art, freak shows, drag queens, improv, black light proms, one-night stands, raw meat, and way too many hand puppets.
April 1991: He curates the first Cartoon Show at 800 East which manages to lure all local cartoonists out of their subterranean hidey-holes to rub elbows with the freaks. Fortunately the matings do not produce offspring.
April 1992: The second Cartoon Show is lovingly debuted to the outside world. Unfortunately a scheduling conflict with the National “Riot for Rodney” festival prevents anyone from attending.
1993: The local free bi-weekly newspaper Highpoint offers a pity page to Owsley to fill with scribbles. He promptly calls up his most cynical cartooning buddies to submit stuff. For two years “The Funny Pages” dares to mock any public figure who crosses its path. Then Highpoint reaches low-ebb, and subsides leaving only the public to mock back.
February 1995: Owsley, along with fellow cartoonists Shira Levine, Alex Burns, Patty Leidy , Mark Buford, Walter Czachowski, Hart Chamberlin, and Skip Williamson decide to knock heads and produce a collective comics-only paper called DRAWL. Shira offers to act as publisher and take all the blame. Owsley offers to edit the mess around. Everyone else just asks for groupies.
March 1995: One month after unleashing the lumbering Golem of DRAWL to the world, Shira Levine flies off to Metropolis in search of Superman and Sarah Jessica Parker. She later sells her soul on eBay. Alex Burns picks up the pieces. Owsley keeps editing.
1996: While the rest of Atlanta is off to the Olympics, Owsley sits at home illustrating the book “Senryu, Haiku Reflections of the Times” for Mangajin and the Japanese Foreign Ministry. Mangajin implodes immediately after the book’s release and all copies are whisked off to the rising sun. He’s told that the book is big in Japan but no one offers to buy him sushi.
1997: The 800 East era ends in a tune of Smoke when all involved move on to enlightenment, Heaven, Hell, re-hab or Brooklyn. Owsley remains in Brokeland.
1997: Alex Burns runs off to Athens, GA in search of his heart and cheap housing. Owsley takes over DRAWL to finish its resolute journey to the grave.
1998: Jon Waterhouse foolishly asks Owsley to run a truncated edition of DRAWL in the back pages of Waterhouse’s Atlanta Sideshow magazine. Owsley plays him for a sap and proceeds to do just that.
1999: Mysterious organizations with cryptic names like Primal Screen and Wild Hare Studios offer Owsley money in exchange for helping draw little moving pictures of characters like Aquaman, Power Puff Girls, Super Friends, Dexter’s Laboratory, and Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Not having cable, he has no idea who these characters are. He only knows that the other people who draw them throw great parties. The party finally comes to an end when some idiot stands up and says, “I, George W. Bush do solemnly swear.....”
2000-2008: Dark, evil years of which we will no longer speak.
The Present: Shiny and new, with more to come.
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