As a comic cartoonist sort of artist named Mickey, I was as a teenager obsessed with making artsy goofy books. One of those was unaccountably called Dreams of the Mastiff. These surrealistic picturations are examples from that silly Donald-Duck thing.
This page is supposed to explain the title. So I guess all of the following pages are somehow supposed to be from the nighttime brain of the dog in the nursery.
And what is this supposed to be about? My old-man memory has not a single clue.
It occurred to me long ago that both Fantasy and Science Fiction were surreal by nature. What is the story behind Black Peter? Ich weiss nicht! I do not know! Old-man memory again.
Inexplicable Sci-Fi from this little surrealist art-book-thing.
And more of the same…
Now back to cockroaches from doggy dreams…
…And mice, monkeys, and tea-drinking ladybird beetles…
…And what…? The whole world in a nutshell?
To a thing I used in two novels, Catch a Falling Star and The Baby Werewolf.
I offer no explanations or excuses for these nonsensical and unaccountable things. I am not sorry I once did them, if you want to know the truth… but I probably should be.
I must confess that I chose to be a surrealist from about the time I discovered the artwork of Salvador Dali at the age of fifteen. I did a report on Dali and Surrealism for 9th grade Art Class. I wanted to be a surrealist because I realized that surrealists got to draw really weird stuff and then pretend it meant something real in the modern real world. So let me show you some of my weirder high school surrealist messings on paper.
Of course, like most teenagers, I was obsessed with death and mortality at a time in which I had not yet learned how to live and stay alive… one of the serious dangers of being a teenage half-brain in a post invention-of-the-atom-bomb world.
So, I start this gruesome dissection of teen-y art apoplexy with a depressingly angst-y picture and poem about the urgency of nameless coming doom.
And at the same time I was basically an angst-y pre-Goth Goth, I was also a lollipop Disneyphile romantic… A pre-My-Little-Pony Brony as it were. I was goofy as all get out and determined to latch onto all the big-eyed art ideals of the many girls I stalked and watched and comprehended incorrectly while never, ever talking to even one of them. (Well, not counting sisters and the several non-aggressive Mickey-lovers who were chasing me and courting me while I was totally oblivious to facts of it.)
But I was also aware of a spiritual something that lurked in my church-going Sunday self that needed to metaphorically tackle ideas of God and life-after-death notions of something that I knew in my head weren’t really real, but were necessary to the heart I possessed and its dire need for love and life and laughter.
And then too, I was seriously teaching myself to draw. And I drew things like nudes from pictures in National Geographic and Post magazines… but of course, only non-sexualized nudes like kids playing soccer in the nude and in the rain in a school yard in Indonesia so they don’t get their school uniforms soaked.
But what is Surrealism that I can accomplish it any way as an Art movement that is really probably in the past and not relevant to anything in the real world now? Well, what I always thought it was… was a way of seeing the world through a rose-colored lens of imagination (with flying purple jelly-bean spots in it). It is a way of taking my Mickey-and-Goofy strangeness and mixing it into the Donald-Duck Soup of Art. It is a way to simply be true to myself rather than the truth nature insists on putting in front of my face.
Communicating with a wife is complicated. In fact, I couldn’t do the whole writer-think thing about that topic without writing a book. But I can successfully ruminate for about 500 words on the that awkward first encounter, the first time I ever was embarrassed in front of a non-sister girl.
In grade school I met my first crush in kindergarten. Alicia Stewart was a honey-sweet little brown-haired girl with a bow in her hair. I was a boy. I was not allowed to like girls. Hating them was the only thing that made sense to my friends and I. But, secretly, I didn’t hate Alicia. In fact, if I was ever to be doomed to be married when I grew up, I would’ve only accepted that horrible fate if it was with her. And in my small town school I saw her practically every school day. In fact, in Miss…
Last night, in the middle of the downpour in Dallas, my wife dragged the Princess and I kicking and complaining to a special concert of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. It was one of those things… a Friday night after a long, hard week… tired bodies and aching arthritis… and she only gave us one day’s notice that she was going to do it. But we couldn’t waste the tickets once they’d been purchased. And the star of the show was Ashley Brown whom we’d seen in the Broadway version of Mary Poppins when it came to Dallas at the theater in Fair Park.
I don’t normally associate the DSO with Broadway musical music. I tend to think Tchaikovsky and Beethoven. But it couldn’t have been a fairer treat as a compensation for yielding to wifey’s whims. Ms. Brown was vocal-tastic and utterly spell-binding as she sang “The Bird Woman” from
It has recently come to light that this fowl conspiracy is now a thing again, even though Alex Jones is being seriously curtailed in his own chicken dance.
You’ve heard of the sinister 9-11 tale of the dancing Israelis? Some conspiracy theories are very concerning. You have to be concerned about whether the conspiracy theory is true and aliens from Zeta Reticuli really have been cloning Elvis, or whether the conspiracy theorist is a nut-bag like Alex Jones who simply needs to be locked up to protect him from himself.
But no conspiracy theory worries me more at the moment than one about the existence of German ninjas who advance the neo-Nazi agenda by the use of the secret martial art of der Ententanz. That’s right, they do violence to opponents (and possibly themselves) by aggressively doing the Chicken Dance.
You really have to watch the video above to truly appreciate the perfidy of Ententanz Fu. Notice how it starts with the pinching-fingers castanet attack, useful for grabbing the opponent’s nose or other sensitive protruding appendage. It…
The question arises from this most recent illustration I drew, “Are you saying, Mickey, that kids can learn better if they go to school naked?”
No! Are you crazy?
I used to teach middle school students. Can you imagine kids from this current modern culture being giving license to come to school starkers if they wish to do it? In the middle school world of half-brained sub-intellectuals passing judgement on everything? Especially judgments about appearance and attractiveness… or non-attractiveness? With brains fueled by hormones and the questionable values taught by TV and movies? Chaos! Fires being lit! Real and metaphorical! Windows being broken! Derisive laughter! Tears and sobbing from the offended! And that would just be the teachers.
But the truth is, if we look at the studies of B.F. Skinner and his recommendations for child-rearing in his Utopian propositions in the book Walden Two, children not taught to be ashamed of their nakedness from early on would develop more peacefully and naturally into perceptive and intelligent learners if allowed to be openly and happily naked.
Skinner, an experimental scientist, believed everything in life should conform to findings from scientific observations and scientific experiments. How loony is that? Why would we do something that is practical, natural, and beneficial just because it might enhance your ability to learn and enjoy your experience of the world?
In my illustration, I was actually intending to convey a notion of the relationship of openness and innocence to learning. The two children sharing the big danged book on the floor are nude because they are willing to approach the material with a sensory receptivity that can only be hampered by the barriers and limits we put on ourselves, like the clothing that we shield and limit our bodies with. So, I would never suggest it was appropriate to learn things while naked. Or even that, with the right training and cultural shifts, that going to school naked would be a good thing.
Even I have nightmares about being naked in school. In my dreams I sometimes dream about forgetting to put on clothes before going in front of a hostile classroom to teach something they all find boring and awful… while I am naked and awful myself. I still have that nightmare even now that I am retired.
No, I would never suggest that. Unless, somehow, you can suggest something by not suggesting it. Surely I am not tricksy enough to try to do anything like that. And remember, I was an actual teacher in an actual classroom for many years where I merely thought of them all as naked, because kids are all transparent about their lives and motivations and can’t keep a secret even if they didn’t want me to know everything about them, even the bad kids, and even things they wanted to hide from the teacher.
So, can you say everything you need to say about a topic with only a picture to represent several main ideas about reading and writing and how children learn? And then, to make matters worse, you don’t explain the metaphor that makes the two learners represented be depicted nude? I hope it is possible. Being ill yet again, and working on finishing a novel, I have to hope it is enough. Other things have absorbed almost all of my words for the day.
Valerie-squirrel found that even though she had rapidly
ascended through the hollows of the brickwork, dodging obstacles, squeezing
through narrows, and working her paws at a high rate of speed, she reached the
top with energy to spare. Her
squirrel-body was almost infinitely flexible and full of muscle. What skateboard miracles she could perform if
her body were only like that as a human!
But she came out under the eaves of the Philips’ house and
was soon racing across the roof. She
leaped into the branches of the tall maple that stood in front of Mary’s
house. The leaves were mostly yellow
with fall color, but bright reds and scarlet colors tipped the five points of
almost every leaf. The view was amazing
from the heights of the tree, especially because of her squirrel eyes that gave
her very nearly a 360-degree view around her.
It was like three-dimensional vision warped into surround-see super-reality. And yet, as amazing as the view was, her
squirrel heart knew despair because the Pidney and Mary squirrels were nowhere
to be seen. Had cats eaten them already? She shuddered to think it. Was it up to her to save them? Could they somehow save her?
There was no squirrel-plan that made sense at that
moment. Her instincts were screaming at
her to run and climb and jump… and eat nuts.
But how could any of that be helpful?
Especially eating nuts?
She knew this predicament had to be the result of magic,
probably evil magic. How could she turn
herself back into a human girl? The only
real magic she was aware of before this terrible curse was the magic revealed
to her by the witch, Mazie Haire.
Somehow she had to go and find the Haire woman, and somehow she had to
make the woman understand, through a stream of screamed-out squirrel curses,
chreeks, and chit-it-its, that magically somehow the witch would interpret,
what had happened to Valerie, and that she needed the old witch to change her
back. But how to get there?
“I see you up there!”
The cat’s voice startled her because, even though she could clearly see
the cat on the ground far below, it sounded as loud as if she were face to face
with the ugly old cat. She calmed herself
with the realization that the cat was somehow telepathic.
She looked intently at the cat, wiggled her blond tail, and
thought intensely in its general direction.
“Can you read minds, damned old cat?” she heard herself say.
“I can hear you animal-talking,” said Skaggs from below. “I can’t hear what you’re thinking. But I don’t need to know that to know you must come down from that tree to get the help you need.”
She ran along a maple branch and launched herself through
the air, landing in a branch of the elm tree next door in the Pixeley’s
yard. “I can travel from tree to tree!”
she cried out with her mind.
“Not all the way to where you need to go. There is too much space for you to cross to
go north to the witch’s house.”
“How did you know I wanted to go there?”
“Where else would you go in your present situation? You need that old witch’s magic to undo what
Oojie did. Am I right?”
“You are about as wrong as anything could be… because you
are… you’re evil! Evil is always wrong!”
“I am not evil. But I will admit, to a squirrel a cat surely seems evil.”
“I will find a way.” She leaped down onto the red tar-paper shingles of the Pixeley house. There was no tree near enough going to the north, but there were bushes around the house. And there was a line of pine trees in Tom Kellogg’s yard to the north.
Have you ever noticed that some celebrities with weird names are recognizable no matter how badly you mess up or mangle their names?
For example, take a name like Justin Timberlake.
If you call him Timber Just-in-the-lake, everyone still knows who you mean.
Yes, I’m talking about Laker Timberjust, that singer who used to be famous when he sang with that group Out O’ Sink. You know, that guy named Joozin Mimbolake who caused Joanie Jackelson’s wardrobe malfunction in the Superbowl. Muffin Limbersnake… you know, that guy.
Well, there’s this other actor named Ving Rhames.
Actor Ving Rhames (Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images)
Okay, that’s too scary to contemplate. Well, there’s always Kenderbick Bumbersnatch! He’s always good for a name-mangling good joke.
Very astute literary allusion delivered with Sherlockian poise, Benickle Bumberbatch!
I can think of a number of name mangles that make me laugh. Bumbershoot Bandersnatch, or Bimbleroot Snoodersnatch, or Smogthedragon Paddlebatch. What mangled names can you think of for the Mangled Name Game? You can put your bubbling genius-type answers to that question in the comments. For these guys, or any other mangle-able celebrity names you can think of.
Catch a Falling Star 