August 2006 Archives

As much as I like iPods, I am dismayed by how easily they collect scratches. The displays become gouged by anything that happens to be brushed over them (are they are made of wax?) and the mirror-finish on the back of the iPod is a cruel trick on the part of Apple. Within hours of use it becomes noticeably scuffed.

Why can't Apple design the iPod to look better as it ages, not worse? Make the case out of wood, or leather? I know there's a heat transfer issue, but c'mon!

I suppose I should just let my iPod become scratched to hell and forget about it, but I can't bring myself to do it. When I bought a Nano for my daughter, I also bought a product called Invisible Shield, a thin, tough, plastic film that does a wonderful job of protecting the iPod's oh-so-delicate exterior. You spray some kind of liquid supplied in a small bottle on the film, slide it into place, and then squeegee out the bubbles. It becomes all but invisible, but it's there, silently doing the grim job of protecting your techno-bauble from environmental insults. Invisible Shield, I salute you! $22.95 on Amazon

This is a book I've dreamed about writing for years. Fortunately, I procrastinated long enough that someone came along who is much more knowledgeable than I am about mid twentieth century animation. That someone is Amid Amidi, an animation history veteran and the publisher and editor of the great Animation Blast magazine. When he told me, a few years ago, that he had a proposal for a book about fifties animation, I immediately hooked him up with my editor and friend at Chronicle Books, Alan Rapp, and told him he had to pounce on this. Alan didn't need any arm twisting — he recognized Amidi's talent as a writer and animation connoisseur.

Cartoon Modern traces the history of this era of highly stylized animation, which drew heavily on jazz music, surrealism, and a sense of "rebellion against the fluid realism of Disney animation" (although a number of Disney animators pioneered the look of 50s animation).

If you've ever marveled at the flat, bold, and sophisticated art in Gerald McBoingBoing, you'll love finding out more about this wonderful era in animation, an era that today's animators like Craig McCracken (Powerpuff Girls) mine for inspiration. $26.40 on Amazon

It's been over 10 years since Myst came out, and I recently bought this 10th Anniversary edition to introduce the world's best computer game to my daughter. The 3 DVD set runs on Mac and Windows and contains three titles: Myst Masterpiece, Riven, and Myst III: Exile. My daughter is spooked and enthralled by the creepy, lifeless world filled with abandoned buildings and machines. She having a great time discovering the world of Myst, and I'm having a great time rediscovering it. $14.82 on Amazon

The first time I saw Basil Wolverton's grotesque and absurd drawings in a reprint of Mad magazine it gave me hope, because I realized that you can be an adult and still have a sense of playfulness.

Wolverton was billed as a "producer of preposterous pictures of peculiar people." His characters have giant, throbbing warts, unchecked tumorous growths, dilated pores oozing with viscous sebum, tongues with luxuriant coats of hair, organs growing on the outside, and ears inhabited by creatures that are even uglier than their host. But instead of being repellent, they're funny and lovable.

I stand in awe of this genius, an artist whose work can stand proudly next to Dali or any other surrealist. $37.71 and up on Amazon

I really think John Kricfalusi is the only contemporary animator that has a direct link to the hilarious and brilliant animators of days gone by like Bob Clampett and Tex Avery.

These special episodes of Ren & Stimpy were created (long after the characters' debut in the late 1980s) for Spike TV, a young men's cable channel, and John K was pretty much give free reign to be as crude as he wanted to be. These cartoons are not for kids, because there's a lot of nudity and sexual situations. But they're funny, and if your kids do happen to get their hands on them, they are going to love them.

As a bonus, John K talks at length about each cartoon, and invites his animator pals to stand in front of the video camera pointed at the corner of the den in his San Fernando Valley ranch home to talk cartoons. For a cartoon fan like me, it's pure Heaven. $19.87 on Amazon

For the first several years of Wired's existence, the front four pages of every issue consisted of two-double page spreads filled with stunning art and a profound quote from one of the stories in that issue. Creative director John Plunkett oversaw the design and editor Louis Rossetto selected the quote. It was one of my favorite parts of the magazine, and I was sorry to see it go.

In 1996, Wired's short lived book division, Hardwired, published an anthology of these intro pages, calling it Mind Grenades: Manifestoes from the Future. Ten years (!) later, the quotes and art still have impact.

Best of all, the book is dirt cheap on Amazon. Used copies go for as little as 50 cents.

Science project books usually fall in one of two categories: ones filled with easy projects that aren't very exciting, and ones with nearly impossible projects requiring lots of time and or money. Cy Tymony's two books, Sneaky Uses for Everyday Things and Sneakier Uses for Everyday Things fall into a rare third category: moderately easy experiments that can be completed in an hour or two, don't require exotic materials, and are exciting.

Here are some of the projects in his books:

Learn how to:

• Turn a Calculator into a Metal Detector
• Carry a Survival Kit in a Shoestring
• Make a Gas Mask with a Balloon
• Turn Dishwashng Liquid into a Copy Machine
• Convert a Styrofoam Cup into a Speaker,
• Make a James Bond Spy Jacket
• Turn a Penny into a Radio
• Make a Flood Alarm with an Aspirin
• Change Milk into Plastic
• Extract Water and Electricity from Thin Air
• Turn on a TV with Your Ring

You can do almost all of the projects without going to the store, because they use materials you have in your kitchen, bathroom, medicine cabinet, and desk drawer. Cy Tymony's books on Amazon

Eric Detzer was a drug rehab counselor, and a former drug addict, who became addicted to opium poppy tea. Living in Bellingham, WA, he would raid little old ladies' gardens at night, cutting the poppy pods from their gardens, and grinding the pods up in a blender to make a power opium cocktail as strong as any street bag of heroin.

Detzer's story is sad and fascinating. The parts where he tries to make a connection between his addiction and that of his distant-relative, Vlad The Impaler (the real-life, blood-drinking-from-human-skull-cups basis for Dracula) are a little weak, but fortunately he focuses on his desperate search for more poppies as his life unravels around him.

Poppies was written in 1988. I don't believe Detzer has written anything else, which is a shame. He's an excellent writer.

From the back cover:

Eric Detzer was the other kind of junkie. His clothes were clean, his arms clear of needle marks. He held a responsible, interesting job. His wife and two children could depend on him for love and support. And for eighteen years Eric Detzer's mind and body could not function without regular doses of opiates, the same opiates in the heroin mainlined by street junkies.

From his early days, sharing needles with hookers in San Francisco tenements, to his midnight forays stealing poppy plants from old ladies' gardens in rural Washington, Detzer's picture of drug addiction conveys both the absurd and the frightening facets of the disease.

The ravages of withdrawal during the poppy's off-season, the euphoria induced by Detzer's special narcotic tea, the impossible Jekyll and Hyde act of an addict's daily life are discribed without sel-pity or sermons.

Poppies is not for the squeamish. You will be immersed in the nightmare of Detzer's addiction and exhausted by his battle to regain sanity and self-respect. Above all, you will discover an exciting narrative voice that entertains with outrageous humor while telling an extraordinary story.

Eric Detzer is a psychiatric social worker who has publshed numerous articles in his field. He lives and works in Washington.

$10 on Amazon.com

I have never taken opium, and at my age, I don't feel the need to start taking an addictive substance. But I found Opium for the Masses, by Jim Hogshire, to be fascinating. Part history, and part how-to, Hogshire looks at opium use over the centuries, how it works, and how to make opium tea from poppies that you can buy or cultivate yourself.

Excerpt:

Very potent, low cost opium is available in virtually very town in the country. It is entirely possible that it is carried by your local grocer. It's even possible that you could walk into a grocery store and come out with all the ingredients you need to make your own morphine and perhaps even heroin if you're clever.

Here's an excerpt from an Amazon review:

Following Mr. Hogshire's advice I took my self down to West 28th street and bought a bunch of dried ornamental poppies. I ground them, sifted them, made tea out of them, drank it and got as high as I have ever been. As a point of reference, I have had morphine for a broken leg; this tea was both stronger and longer lasting.

Like all narcotics occasional use led to daily use which led to addiction and to a nightmare of recovery that took over a year out of my productive life. I very nearly ruined my marriage, my career and everything else that mattered to me. Finally in abject humiliation and with the deepest gratitude I found people who could and did end my nightmare. My life is improving as is my health, but I have a long way to go to make up for the lies I told everyone including myself.

$13.95 on Amazon