the goth scouts blog

Andrew Jackson's bullet

2008-05-12T21:59:00.001-07:00

I spent the bulk of the day trying to figure out what room of the White House was used by the physician Thomas Harris when he extricated a twenty year old bullet from the arm of president Andrew Jackson. In the process, I learned that Jackson suffered from the long term effects of lead poisoning, that the bullet had been flattened on impact with bone, and that the man who inflicted the wound was speaking on the floor of the senate at the very moment of the operation.

I emailed Michael Rhode at the Pathology Museum in Washington, and a very nice lady at the Library of Congress. They gave me lots of good links and much good information, but nowhere was there anything about where the president sat...or laid down...or stood...when the bullet came popping out of his arm. Yes, according to Remini and Parson, it popped right out. It didn't slide, it didn't struggle, it simply popped out.

Quite frankly, I don't much care about where Andrew Jackson might have been located at the moment of extraction, but it is vitally important to my daughter, Julia, who is writing a short piece of creative non-fiction about the incident. I do, however, enjoy doing research, which is why I allowed myself to be roped into half a day on the computer. In the end, even though I still haven't any knowledge of where Andrew Jackson underwent his little operation, I now know where I can go to find the editorial cartoons of the National Archive, and thanks to the lady at the Library of Congress, I know the names of the original weekly papers which began running cartoons on a regular basis.

It's amazing how one little ten page story could cause so much trouble.

Crazy Mama

2008-05-11T21:34:00.000-07:00

Of all the dumb things to do on Mother's day, I decided to play soccer in Farmington.

Added to the damaged big toe on my left foot from yesterday's game, is yet another lost toenail on my right foot, plus a huge bruise on the side of that same foot from a wayward cleat. There were no subs so I ended up playing the entire game at mid field. I don't think I'd ever run so much before. I'm barely walking now. My back hurts and I'm pretty sure I'm going to have some difficulty getting myself out of bed in the morning.

On the good side, all four of the kids wished me a happy mother's day.

And we won the game.

Blue Cat Collection China

2008-05-03T18:50:00.001-07:00

So I'm doing this dream project I've always wanted to do with my group of seven to ten year old cartooning students. To start things off last week, I asked them to tell me the name of their favorite cartoon. My youngest student, a little Asian girl, said "Blue Cat".

I'd never heard of Blue Cat. So today, I googled it and discovered a very popular Chinese cartoon character. According to Wikipedia, this is the first full scale Mainland Chinese animation character. A lot of what Blue Cat does is introduces animated science lessons for kids. The series is produced by "Beijing Sunchime Happy Culture Company". It's one of the longest running children's animated series in the world.

The Chinese name for Blue Cat is Lan Mao. His friends include a turquoise mouse Taoqi, a light pink mouse Gali, a fat mouse Feizai, a red fox Feifei, a hen Ji Dashen, and a goat with red hair Yang Boshi.

There are Blue Cat dinosaur adventures and deep sea adventures.

Lan Mao can be very impulsive and usually ends up in trouble.

When a kid walks in to my classroom and teaches me something about another part of the world, it's just the best.

Road Trip

2008-05-01T21:15:00.000-07:00

Well, my daughter Julia and I just got back from a road trip to Maine. She had to visit a pair of recruits up in Topsham, Maine, which is very close to my old haunting grounds. A little further down 201 from Mount Ararat High School sits the old cabin where we'd spend our summers on the Cobbeseecontee Stream back when I was a kid. By the way, Mount Ararat is a town or two over from the shipyards of Bath.

Watching the lacrosse game was cold, but the reception Julia received was warm. The parents were all very kind. They even offered to put us up for the night. We decided rather to stay at a fifty dollar a night motel and make the rounds of the local night spots. This meant watching hockey and red sox baseball at the Sea Dog brewery sitting by the rapids of the Androscoggin river. Back in the day, this was the location of a paper mill. We also watched Celtics basketball at Joshua's in Brunswick, just a short walk from Bowdoin College.

Though she's twenty-two, my daughter could easily pass for a thirteen year old. We made quite a pair. Still, we both ended up getting hit on by locals. Some half crazed guy who talked to himself approached Julia, while a married little league dad who had imbibed a little too much became unusually friendly towards me. It made for a lot of giggles. We had a great old time.

On the trip back, we made major hauls at the outlet stores both in Freeport and Kittery, coming home tired but with a lot of cool stuff. And now, alas, it's back to the same old, same old.

Lordi 2007 Helsinki

2008-04-29T21:18:00.001-07:00

From Youtube: Lordi's brand new Hard Rock Hallelujah music video presented along with the actual stage show in Eurovision Song Contest 2007 Helsinki. The film is directed by Antti Jokinen and it's the most expensive music video ever made in Finland.

Of course, this song was in fact the winner of the 2007 Eurovision winner.

France Gall. Les Sucettes

2008-04-28T19:01:00.001-07:00

This video goes along with today's cartoon. It's the 1964 hit single by France Gall. I tried to find the original video, with the psychedelic dancing lollipops, but it no longer exists on Youtube. I am sorely disappointed.

Anyhow, France Gall got a lot of flack for singing this song. Apparently, she was an innocent teen ager and didn't get any double entendres. Eventually, she slipped into the world of German Shlager.

Gall made a big splash at the 1964 Eurovision contest by winning with the first ever pop song. I wonder what kind of songs won Eurovision prior to that. Oh well. Eurovison remains a big mystery to me. That it's been around for so long gives me hope for the continued existence of our American Idol, and eternal homage to total schlock.

By the way, I kind of like France Gall's music. She has a type of sixties cool which appeals to yours truly.

Andy Warhol's inspiration

2008-04-27T19:03:00.000-07:00

This is for Rod, who pondered the possibilty of a cat being the inspiration for Andy Warhol's Sleep.

An Engineer's Guide to Cats

2008-04-27T08:20:00.001-07:00

This is for all my cat loving friends. I found this on the New York Times Website, which has a very nice online humor section.

It also just happens to fit in with the subject of my cartooning class yesterday. I have a group of cat crazy kids. This gives me the opportunity to try something I've been wanting to do for a long time: create a group driven story. Having just one dissenter in a class of six, it was the green light to put together a cartoon project featuring cats as the subject. Our sole dissenter was given the green light to join our fellowship by providing cartoon mutant animals to compliment the cats.

About our lone dissenter...he's a fabulous seven year old boy. One of the girls in the class asked, "Is he always this crazy?" Oh yes, that goodness. We need at least one kid capable of providing the punchlines, if not the cats.

The weird bird and bees

2008-04-24T21:20:00.000-07:00

For the past few days, I've been hearing noises in the pool room. It's from this bird which keeps attacking my window. At first I thought maybe it's a woodpecker trying to poke holes in my window jams, but it's not a woodpecker. It seems to be either a crow or a starling. I think it's trying to fly into the house. It's wings are what are making the noise. Maybe there's a nest that I'm not seeing, but I doubt it. There's really not much space there.

Spring brings out the crazy in all of us, birds, humans, bees.

I mention bees because today I observed a daft couple of bees hovering over the deck. I watched them for a long time, waiting for one or the other to fly into something which might harbor their nest. They didn't though. They just chased each other around the deck, and then simply hovered. I gave up watching after a while and went back to my drafting table. I'm pounding out inked pages of my son's Bio-Hazard story. I want it done by the end of next week. Now THAT's crazy.

Turisas does Rasputin

2008-04-22T05:07:00.001-07:00

Thanks to Joey and Kate, I have this Turisas cover of Rasputin to share with my six fans. According to Wikipedia, Rasputin rose to the top of the charts in Germany and autria and went to number two in the United Kingdom and Switzerland. Rah Rah! Rasputin!

Thomas Nast and candidate Garfield

2008-04-20T19:46:00.000-07:00

I don't want anyone to think that I've dropped the ball as regards to the history of editorial cartooning. Currently, I'm reading Albert Bigelow Paine's biography of Thomas Nast. It's an old book. Paine actually met with Nast. It's a very flattering biography. Nast was sort of a superstar in his time. Mark Twain offered to tour with him. Nast declined.

Editorial cartooning changed mightily with the advent of the magazine weeklies, but it remained a very partison activity. Nast worked for Harper's weekly, a Republican leaning magazine. Besides defining the modern version of Santa Claus, the Republican Elephant and the Democratic Donkey, Thomas Nast's biggest achievement was an extraordinary series of cartoons attacking a very criminal element in the government of New York City. You'll still see contemporary cartoonist borrowing his images, such as the politician with a bag of money for a head.

What I found particulary interesting, was Nast's approach to the Garfield candidacy. Harpers' naturally supported him, since Garfield was a Republican. However, Garfield had been involved in the Credit Mobilier scandal of the Grant administration. Various politicians, including Garfield, had been given shares in a railroad leading to investigation and castigation. Nast drew a picture of all those involved, including Garfield. Being somewhat principled, Nast decided to support Garfield's candidacy, but refused to draw him. What he produced, then, were cartoons supportive of the Republican ticket, but not of Garfield specifically.

I guess this piqued my interest mainly because this blind loyalty to party has been particularly strong among Republican leaning cartoonists during the Bush administration. It brings up a fundamental question I have regarding the purpose of editorial cartooning: Does it exist to please a partisan audience, or is it meant, like the Nast cartoons about Boss Tweed, to hold politician's feet to the coals?

boney m-rasputin

2008-04-20T13:55:00.001-07:00

Kate mentioned Lester Bangs in her comment on the blog at about the same time I was sharing really bad music with the regular gang of idiots on a list serve I subscribe to. Someone complained about being sick of eighties music, someone else suggested listening to european eighties music as a change of pace (like way yuck). One thing led to another and I stumbled over this classic Boney M song. It's probably in the top five of my favorite crappy songs list. That is, it's so bad it's good (like the movie Jack Frost)

When it's so bad it's good

2008-04-15T20:27:00.000-07:00

I watched two horror movies today. The first was Jack Frost. It's about a murderous snowman. The last scene is a classic. The snowman falls into a truck full of anti-freeze along with the family of the main character. It's rollicking good fun after which the remains of the snowman are doled out into a plastic anti-freeze jug.

The second was the Boogeyman. This is dated 1980. It's kind of an Exorcist wannabe wedded to the cinematic techniques of an Herschel Lewis. Like Jack Frost, has a classic last scene. The Boogeyman is set on fire at the bottom of a well...you got it... the evil one burns in well.

Rod and the Popemobile

2008-04-15T05:55:00.000-07:00

When we were in Stuttgart, we vistited the Mercedes Benz Museum. It's fabulous. A super high tech gear head's delight, spanning the one hundred twenty plus history of automobiles. We spent hours there. They had to kick us out.

One of our favorite exhibits was the famous car display. That's where I snapped this photo of Rod in front of the Popemobile. I figured I'd post that in honor of Pope Benedict's visit to the U.S.

This other picture is me in front of the care used in the movie Jurassic Park. It's the same car as Rod's, but with slats in the back window and a cool camouflage paint job. Note the gear on our heads. These were high tech audio guides. They would activate automatically when you'd go from one part of the museum to the next. If you wanted to hear something about one of the exhibits, you'd simply point and the guide would give you options about whether you wanted to hear about the mechanics, the history, some technical point or a spiel oriented towards kids.

The black car at the left of the picture is Ringo Starr's black 190E. We owned one of those for twenty years, until I got my SLK 230 last year.

Naturally, you can only really get to the Museum by car. We had to walk in the rain through some pretty dingy underpasses to get there from the ubahn.

Murders and Inquisitions

2008-04-13T20:16:00.000-07:00

I had my picture taken with that shrunken head we found in St. Augustine. I also had Rod snap a picture of me next to the Trolley of the Damned.

Today, I brought my brand new skull and crossbones soccer ball to a clinic. There were a couple of kids there plotting to steal it. I growled at them and they retreated. That's what I get for having the coolest ball in the entire league.

After practice, I went to the local Panera coffee shop with a group of my teammates. One of our younger players was explaining how she worked in the Mergers and Acquisitions department of Aetna. My other teammate's eyes opened to the size of saucers: "You work for Murders and Inquisitions? What kind of insurance company is THAT?" That had us all in stitches.

Rod's picture of a Urinal

2008-04-10T20:36:00.000-07:00

When we go on our trips, Rod and I like making ordinary observations of ordinary life. One pretty obvious place to do this kind of observing is in the public rest rooms we seem to frequent well, frequently. I guess that question of frequency comes up from time to time as witnessed by this Flomax ad Rod found hanging over the urinal at the Tampa Forum. Rod snapped it at great danger to life and limb as getting the shot required restraining a couple of irate not to mention anxious men. Yeah, I was going to make a witty reference regarding the mention of a "shot", but I refrained myself.

I, too, found an interesting advertisement in the ladies' room of the little grill across the street from the Forum. It was a picture of a lovely card playing girl and mentioned a "royal flush" in reference to a nearby luxury hotel. Alas, it was on the door opposite the urinal (well, duh) so I couldn't get a shot of both the ad and the toilet.

Dancing Tree

2008-04-09T16:31:00.001-07:00

Okay, here's a video I took of the dancing Stanford tree mascot. Crazy, man.

Gulfport

2008-04-07T20:50:00.000-07:00

The fifty minute airplane ride from Jacksonville to Tampa was pretty exciting. About ten minutes before landing there was a huge noise like an explosion and the entire plane shook. As I played back the words my friend Kathy said about her near death experience after a heart attack about remembering all your regrets, Rod leaned over and said "lightning" before going back to reading the paper.

True to form, bad weather followed us to Tampa. We got to the St. Pete's Forum only minutes before torrential rains hit. We managed to find shelter at a burger joint until the rain let up enough to let us run accross to watch the basketball game. We were seated behind the Tubas of the UCONN band. It helped that the guys playing the instruments were really nice. They kept sniping about how snotty the Stanford band was, hepped up on being painfully hip. They also mentioned that the UCONN girls basketball cheerleaders were a lot friendlier than the cheerleaders for the men. It's not exactly news you can use, but what the hey. The Stanford mascot is a tree. It's about the dumbest mascot ever, being as far from cute as you can get. In fact, it's downright scary. I didn't take pictures because I'd brought my video game to the Forum. It should have been confiscated at the door, but we didn't know that until after we'd gone through the door. We were damned if we were going to get our regular camera in the rain so we just stayed pictureless.

Uconn lost, unfortunately, so we'll be able to get pictures of the dancing tree tomorrow. Probably the only thing to come out of the loss.

We spent the day today with my mother. Well, at least it didn't rain.

St. Augustine

2008-04-06T05:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Rod and I decided to drive out from the resort to visit St. Augustine. We had seen the webpage of the Leightner museum and decided that Elena NEEDED to see the shrunken head. St. Augustine is not only the oldested settled city in the New World, but a fabulous tourist trap as well. It's a mixture of interesting Spanish flavored architecture and gaudy neon.

After a few wrong turns, we got to the Leightner. At the very moment we found a parking spot, our daughter Julia called to say the Wilkes University women's lacrosse team she's assistant coaching lost, badly. Twenty-one to six. Needless to say, she was mad. I handed the phone to Rod. All I could say was sorry, better luck next time. Rod's always full of good advice.

Finding the shrunken head was no easy matter. Walking through the Leightner is like walking through someone's attic...albeit a very rich someone. Finally, in the very last room we visited, we found it, right next to the dinosaur egg. That was also the same room with the Egyptian mummy kid. Naturally, we took lots of pictures.

This morning we saw Charlton Heston died. I had dinner with him once. He gave a very famous NRA presentation at a meeting of Editorial cartoonists. I had brought along a book I'd bought which Heston had written to his grandson. He signed it three times. I should have realized then that he had Alzheimers', despite his excellent humor and friendliness.

The Stuttgart Chainsaw Massacre

2008-04-04T05:11:00.001-07:00

I've begun to feel funny just posting without visuals, so I found this German commercial on Youtube. It fits in with my general love of all things weird and frightening. I was so proud of myself yesterday for buying an Orland Pirates soccer ball. It's black with a huge skull and crossbones on it.

We're off to Florida. Originally, the plan was for the two of us to spend time in Jacksonville on business, then Rod would come home and I'd stay on in Tampa. However, since UCONN is in the women's finals, plans have changed.

We've always gone to these finals. We thought this year we might skip it because we have a pretty exhausting travel schedule. However, this Jacksonville thing came up, then blah blah blah one thing led to another and we're going to yet another final yet again.

Graffiti

2008-04-01T18:24:00.000-07:00

One obsession I have is graffiti. I love it. I took this picture from the train going to Frankfurt. It's just the coolest.

Taking pictures of graffiti with my digital camera from a moving train is not small trick. The darn camera has a delay. I have to anticipate a shot and click in advance. Sometimes I forget and expect an instant shot. This is what happened when I tried to photograph some cranes being moved through the interior of the Dom. By the time I clicked, the cranes were out of position.

In short, getting this photo of a graffiti skull from the window of a moving train (The superfast ICE train no less) happened by sheer luck. I basically clicked as I saw something approach which I thought I maybe might could perhaps want.

This past Saturday was my last day of the Winter session teaching cartooning. I received such a nice piece of news from one of the mothers. Her son was required to write a paper for his class about someone who influenced him the most. He wrote about me! I already like the young man a lot, but now I like him a real lot.

We had a little party for the last class. We watched cartoons and ate cookies. The kids had a ball. I came home and slept for one and a half hours.

Soulja Boy - Crank Dat Superman (Burntpiano)

2008-03-28T19:44:00.001-07:00

Superman royalties will we reverting to the heirs of Siegel and Schuster. It's way too late, since the two creators died a while back. Their heirs had as much to do with the creation of superman as the people who are peddling the man of steel. I guess I could say better late than never, but it may as well be never in this case. It must have been a very bitter thing for Siegel and Shuster to watch so many strangers making money from their own creation. I think the entire comic book community really felt for those guys. Jerry Robinson took up their cause. If nothing else, he should be feeling very happy.

Creative Recap

2008-03-28T04:54:00.000-07:00

Our trip to Germany is starting to fade further into the past.

A lot of good artistic mojo happened there. As I said in an earlier post, I took lots of pictures of details, among these being gargoyles. I have it in my mind that I'd like to paint these gargoyles. I've decided to make one of the kids' old rooms into a dedicated painting room, where my paints and easels can stand undisturbed. Actually, I read this story in the New Yorker about a couple who made their entire apartment into a working area for painting and sewing. I love that idea.

I also picked up European comic books which are hard to find around here from a store selling used comics. European comics, like Japanese comics, tend to be neat in terms of perfect binding. The stapled comics come in plastic with little toys for kids. I'd like to sit down and study the styles. I'm just crazy about them.

My biggest European creative jolt came at the opera where I would imagine scenes from my very own Heino opera. Afterwards, I'd try explaining the Heino opera to my daughter and her boyfriend. Daniel would often laugh (jot that scene down as a keeper) while my daughter would look at me for a moment then bring up another subject.

I'm feeling a lot better today. I'm a lot less hoarse. I have cartooning class for which I need to get ready. It's a make up class from a snowstorm we had four weeks ago. It's like a cartooning class in the middle of nowhere. The last class was on March 8 and the new classes begin April 26. I haven't figured out what we're doing, except we're definitely having cookies and watching cartoons. In Germany, I found this cool cartoon book in which you can make numerous captions appear above one cartoon or conversely, many different cartoons appear for one caption. I thing doing something like that might be fun for the kids...the only question is how.

Skulls for Cranky

2008-03-26T04:46:00.000-07:00

While in Europe, I spent a lot of time photographing junk. Just junk. I was most interested in details of either ornamentaion or of the macabre. I have a lot of pictures of gargoyles. I also have a lot of pictures of skulls.

The first picture is a detail from the tomb of Maria Theresa in Vienna, I think. It's a fairly typical ornament for the tombs, beautifully executed, about as near to a real skull as you can get. The tomb of Maria Theresa is humongous because it's a tomb built for two. She bore her husband sixteen children before his untimely death. I think Franz Josef fell off a horse or something. She went on to live another fifteen years. She's an imposing figure historically as well as in statuary. The queen of all things Viennese and Baroque. She was a nice lady, too. The only tomb in the crypt not belonging to royalty belongs to Maria Theresa's beloved maid.

Only the bodies of the royals are entombed in the Kaisergruft. You can see shelves of copper urns containing royal innards in the crypts under St. Stefan's Cathedral. Some other parts of the bodies are located at St. Peter's, but I can't remember what. The royals were obviously generous people.

This second detail is from the Dom at Cologne. It's a huge Cathedral which dominates the countryside. The locals claim God spared the Dom from being blasted to oblivion like the rest of Cologne during the Second World War. According to Wikipedia, however, the Dom made a great visual reference for allied bombers who flew without radar. In short it was spared because it was used to help destroy everything else. I told that to a few people and they laughed.

Today, I'm in the third day of some kind of virus which has left me with no voice whatsoever. Moreover, I realized this morning that I've also lost the sense of taste. It's annoying more than anything else. Lydia called from Germany yesterday. Apparently, Daniel has been missing performances because of an illness which sounds identical to mine. While we were in Cologne, a few key performers had been struck down. The lead bass had to be replaced from a guy from another opera house rushed in only hours before the performance. There's no way on earth anyone can sing with this virus. I don't think I'm even capable of answering the phone.

Miracles

2008-03-25T05:22:00.000-07:00

I tried so hard to get that YouTube video to pop up on the blog when I first came home from Germany. Nothing. It completely refused. So I went on my blogging way until this morning when, bang, there were five youtube videos of The Flying Dutchman up on the blog, all my attempts had suddenly succeeded. I tell you, cyberspace is a strange and mysterious place.

While we were in Germany and Austria, we visited a lot of churches. Back in the day, churches were the convention centers of their time, attracting people far and wide to bring tourist dollars to the region. Competition was tough, however, and this meant the acquisition of saintly relics. The better quality of relic, the bigger the attraction. The Dom in Cologne had the local saint's relics, that it, the bones of St. Ursula, plus it had acquired something what was left of the Magi. When we were in Vienna, we were at the Cathedral of St. Peter where I snapped this picture. The Cathedral itself is an explosion of color. A Baroque extravaganza. Whereas Medeival churches are overwhelming with their huge coldness, here was a warm, inviting, happy church. Not surprisingly, the relics as well are likewise encased in color and excess. Maybe they aren'e even relics. The original church had burned down in 1601, allowing this baroque extravaganza to be erected in its place. At this point of time, the distribution of royal body parts seemed to be the attraction, with every dead Austrian king, queen, Duke, arch duke, prince and princess divvied up between no less than three churches.

Anyhow, for what it's worth, here's a really cool skeleton.