My childhood was shaped by television events like the annual showing of The Wizard of Oz and classic movies on Friday nights when I was allowed to stay up past my bedtime to watch the whole thing. I have told you before how much I loved the comedy of Red Skelton. Another comedian who shaped who I am through his wondrously manic movie performances was Danny Kaye.
One of those Friday movie classics that really struck home was the wonderful, kid-friendly movie Hans Christian Andersen.
1952 movie poster from Wikipedia
The movie was about a storyteller from a previous century and embroidered his biographical story with his famous children’s stories in the form of songs. And Danny Kaye could trip through multi-syllabic, fast-paced musical numbers like no other rubber-faced clown I have ever seen. I wanted to be such a story-teller from a very early age. I even wanted to write the kind of stories that could be made into songs. Let me show you a few of the bits that amazed me and killed me with laughter.
This song from the Inspector General was doubly engaging because the corrupt businessmen were trying to poison the character Danny played with the wine he was supposed to drink during the drinking song.
The movies Danny Kaye was in were mostly about the musical comedy. But sometimes they were just about the music. He appeared in musicals like White Christmas with Bing Crosby and stage musicals like Lady in the Dark which won him awards on Broadway. He made movies about music like The Five Pennies and A Song is Born. He always said he couldn’t read music, but he demonstrated perfect pitch and scored a number one hit with The Woody Woodpecker Song recorded for the animated cartoons of Walter Lantz. How cool is that?
And you already know that The Wizard of Oz is my favorite movie of all time. In 1964 Danny became the host for CBS’s annual showing of the film. He was able to do funny songs that made you snort your hot cocoa through your nose from laughing, and he could also do beautiful ballads like these.
I will always take the opportunity to watch a Danny Kaye movie one more time, whether it comes on YouTube or a Netflix oldie or a $5 DVD from the bin at the front of the Walmart Superstore. And I will always think of him in his role as Hans Christian Anderson.
Oh, and he was a very funny comedian too when he wasn’t singing, as in The Court Jester and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
Yes, green men from outer space are among us. The thing is, they are invisible (and more than likely fictional too.) They have amphibian ancestors. They have sucker tips on their fingers and toes. And they can disintegrate you with their ray guns.
Of course you can learn more about these aliens and the amusing threat they are trying to pose in the novel Catch a Falling Star. Of course, of course, the greedy publisher of that book still has it insanely over-priced. You would be better served by getting a free copy of the sequel Stardusters and Space Lizards, available now in Kindle e-book form for free from September 24, TODAY, until midnight September 28.
The patent for this alien technology actually belongs to the ruling council of the Telleron Star Empire.
There are many things that make the fin-headed, amphibianoid Tellerons dangerous. Their dangerous technology includes the highly lethal Skortch Ray which disintegrates the target, dissolving sub-atomic bonds between molecules and turning people, things, and insane attack-poodles into piles of molecular dust. They also have personal cloaking devices that allow them to move around our planet invisibly.
But the most volatile and dangerous factor about these space men is that their species, heedless for centuries of the dangers of inbreeding, are now almost totally incompetent.
The two Tellerons in this spaceographic depiction are standing near a Galtorrian Space Lizard girl.
Being incompetent and totally failing to invade and conquer a small town in Iowa, let alone the rest of the planet, they flee back towards possible safety at a potential home-world. But, being incompetent, they accidentally end up at the planetary system of the Galtorrian Space Lizards, a highly treacherous race of cannibalistic saurian humanoids. And even worse, they find themselves in a situation where they either have to successfully invade and conquer a world far ,more dangerous than Earth or resign themselves to being nothing more than space-lizard food.
Brekka and Menolly, female Telleron tadpoles, demonstrate their love of Mickey Mouse Club music by dancing, something totally learned by watching Earther TV.
Although the Tellerons could not conquer the Earth, they did benefit from their visit there. They learned another way of life from Earther television programs. They learned to love music and dancing. They even learned that children are useful for other things besides being a supplemental food supply.
Now, you may think that invisible Tellerons infiltrating our society is not as big a problem as I am saying it is… well, based on what I have told you, that is probably true, They are more clownish than even we are.,, except for Boris Johnson. But Telleron-invasion awareness is important never-the-less.
I never actually planned to become a representative of Naturism and Nudism on the internet. It just sort of happened. I am now a writer of naturist fiction. Not all of my books feature nudism. But apparently enough of them do to qualify me to get positive attention from nudists on Twitter and nudist readers looking for good books that also include them.
The books I have written and published that include nudist characters and nudist plot points are;
Superchicken
Recipes for Gingerbread Children
The Baby Werewolf
The Boy… Forever
A Field Guide to Fauns
There are also some stories and mentions of my own history of being a sexual assault victim that encountered naturism and nudism by accident and gradually found psychic healing by reading about nudism, talking about naturism with actual nudists, and late in life trying social nudism for myself in my two books of autobiographical essays, Laughing Blue and Mickey’s Rememberries.
That is really the sum total of nudism in my 20 published books. A Field Guide to Fauns is the only book that is completely about nudism. Most of my other books are comic adventures featuring middle school kids from a small town in Iowa.
And being a writer of naturist fiction, books with naked people in them, is something of a mixed blessing. Being a Young Adult novelist, a genre often confused with “children’s books.” you get scrutinized by all sorts of prudes, activists, and judgmental people that assume kids younger than 18 should never read about or think about people not wearing clothes. I have gotten a couple of blistering reviews that suggest that what I write about, especially involving characters with improper motives toward naked people and nudists, makes me suspect as a potential child molester or corrupter of youth. Evil characters with evil intentions and imperfect characters that make questionable choices obviously means there is something wrong with the author. He can’t be simply writing fiction, right?
And that is the very reason I waited to publish some of these stories until after I had left teaching. I always try to write truth from the heart. But that leaves you naked even when you are not being a nudist or writing about naked people. As a child-victim of a sexual assault I have gone through periods of my life where I blamed myself for what happened to me, feared that I was doomed to become a child predator because so many of them, when caught, are revealed to have been victims themselves, and I even considered suicide to be a possible solution at one point. But I dealt with it by becoming a teacher, actively trying to protect adolescents from potential abusers, counseling them and teaching them. Never touching anyone inappropriately. Often not even allowing myself inappropriate thoughts. In fiction you can actually tell your own truth and facilitate healing even when you are basically telling the world lies to make that be truth.
I also know from some of the more enlightened reviewers that many readers do understand what I am trying to tell them in my stories. I am surprised sometimes at how deeply some of them are touched by the sensitive parts of my work and amused by the parts that are intended to be funny.
I have gotten many looks from WordPress viewers and Google users because I draw naked people and use the word “nudes” as a category and tag. They come looking for erotica or porn, and not finding any, move on.
But, in August, I started getting numerous hits on a nudism article called, “Nudist Notions.” (https://catchafallingstarbook.net/2017/11/08/nudist-notions/) which skyrocketed views as high as 388 in a single day. It became my most-viewed post ever and made August 2021 my top month ever on WordPress. That post even has first place so far today, a month later, with 20 views when last I checked. Of course, all of these thousands of views had no corresponding likes. I wondered about that. Then someone suggested that it might’ve been posted and viewed on Reddit. Or possibly Instagram. I am aware of two former students who read my blogs when posted on Facebook. They are a couple (either married or soon-to-be married, I don’t remember which,) who both got a kick out of me becoming a nudist after I retired and stopped being their teacher. They were both at my retirement party in the classroom, and both have Instagram accounts.
And, who knows? Now that my students apparently know my naked truth, the twin girls who used to tell me about going to nude beaches in Mexico and Texas may actually recognize themselves in the Cobble Sisters, the nudist characters in Recipes for Gingerbread Children, and sue me for writing about them, even though there is very little about the fictional characters that resembles them in any way that is actionable.
In a final note, I finished my novella, Horatio T. Dogg : Super Sleuth last night. It is headed for publication soon. And it doesn’t have a single naked person in it who is not a dog, rat, or chicken.
When I was in Cow College at Iowa State University I spent most of my study time listening to KLYF Radio in Des Moines. They would eventually transform into an easy-listening music station, but the time I truly lived a K-LYFe was when they played classical music. And it was there that I first fell deeply in love with the Saturday Matinee stylings of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, the first incarnation of John Williams of Star Wars fame. Yes, movie music. Classical movie music. And it seemed, mostly movie music for Errol Flynn movies.
My sister was always a lover of Errol Flynn movies, and when KGLO TV Channel 3 would play one on the Saturday Movie Matinee in the early afternoon, we would have to watch it, the whole thing, no matter how many times we were repeating the same four movies. Nancy would memorize the lines from the Olivia deHavilland love scenes. I would memorize the sword fight scenes with Errol and Evil Basil Rathbone (Good Basil was Sherlock Holmes, and we had to watch those too.) Early evenings on those Saturdays were all about playing pirate and Captain Blood adventures. Or better yet, Robin Hood.
But the music of adventure was by the composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold. He did the sound tracks for Captain Blood, Robin Hood, and the Sea Hawk.
I sincerely love the corny old movie matinee music because it was not only genius-level mood music and story-telling in a classical music instrumental masterpiece, but because even now it takes me back to the boy I was at twelve years old, playing pirate on Grandpa Aldrich’s farm. Making Robin Hood bows out of thin tree branches and arrows out of dried ragweed stalks. Sword fighting to the death with sticks with my cousin Bob, who was always Basil Rathbone in my mind. while I’m sure I was Basil Rathbone in his mind.
To be honest, there is much more to Korngold than I have relentlessly gushed about here like a hopeless nerdling fan-boy in the throws of a geeky movie passion. He was a musical child prodigy like Mozart. He wrote a ballet called Der Schneemann (the Snow Man) when he was only eleven, and became the talk of the town in Vienna, Austria in 1908. He became the conductor of the Hamburg Opera by 1921. He wrote some very fine classical music in the 20’s that still rings through orchestra halls to this day before coming to America in the early 30’s with film director Max Reinhardt. He scored his first film in 1935, adding music to Reinhardt’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. He was fortunate to escape Europe just as the Nazis were coming to power in Germany, and also at the right time to team up with new movie star sensation, Errol Flynn. He won his first Oscar for the musical score of the movie Anthony Adverse in 1936 and he won his second for The Adventures of Robin Hoodin 1938. He died in 1957, a year after I was born. But I promise, I didn’t kill him. I was in college in the 1970’s when his music underwent a revival, complete with renewed popularity.
His music was pure gold to listen to in the fields of corn in Iowa in the 1970’s. It was just as good as that last pun was terrible. So, in other words, really, really, spectacularly good. It was the music that scored my childhood fantasy adventures.
When I was a kid old enough to begin to see and interact with the real world in the tragic and magical 1960s, the first comic books available to me, long before my parents would allow me to pick up and buy Spiderman and Batman and (shudder) comics with monsters in them, were the kid-friendly comics of the Harvey Brothers.
Now, you have to understand that Harvey Comics had been around since the 1940s and made their money on characters licensed first from the Brookwood Publications company that Alfred Harvey bought out in 1941 to provide the building, equipment, and publishing personnel to start producing comic books.
Robert B. Harvey and Leon Harvey joined the company to help produce titles they now owned the rights to like Black Cat, the Shield, Shock Gibson, and Captain Freedom.
…………………………………………Of course, most of those characters didn’t last very long. Black Cat was the only title still being published by Harvey in the 1950s.
They would go on to license characters from Famous Studios, the animated cartoon works of Max Fleischer and his brother Dave. That’s when the kid- friendly, parent-approved comic books of Fleischer creations like Casper the Friendly Ghost opened up the world of comic books to seven-year-old Mickey circa 1963.
In spite of this cover art, Casper rarely wore clothing.
Now, it is probably obvious that there are many ways that Harvey Comics influenced me as a storyteller later in life. It goes without saying that my dedication to childish humor in stories derives from this comic-book source. The cuteness of characters is another necessity of comic storytelling gleaned from these ripe fields of baby faces. And stories advanced by magical means and absurd sidetracks also come from here. But did you ever notice that Casper and the other ghosts all perform in the nude? Yes, I think my childhood longing to be a nudist began with Casper’s naked adventures. But unlike Casper, my urges along those lines were suppressed and repressed by parents and society as a whole. So watching Casper and Spooky and Pearl (Spooky’s goilfriend) romp naked through comic book hijinks were a sublimated substitution for that childhood desire. (Sure, none of them had genitals, but it wasn’t about that.)
…………………………………………….Of course, there were many other Harvey characters to enjoy that actually did wear clothes. I was particularly fond of Hot Stuff because he made such an art out of burning things and being a bad kid and roasting the backsides of fools and hypocrites with his trident. And he only ever wore a fireproof diaper, so he was almost a nudist too.
There were many other characters licensed by Harvey as well, including Felix the Cat, Little Audrey, Baby Huey, and the characters from Walter Lance Studios like Woody Woodpecker, Andy Panda, and Chilly Willy.
Dell would later take over the comic book rights to Walter Lantz Studios creations.
So, now you know the true story of how my innocent childhood was warped and woven and corrupted by the characters of Harvey Comics.
Bobby and his book were perched in the rocking chair on the porch with Horatio curled up on the rug by his feet. The reading lamp was on, but otherwise the porch was mostly dark. Dad and Grandpa had finished closing the porch-window shutters over an hour earlier. Thunder rumbled eerily somewhere out in the dark of the early evening.
“It sure is spooky out there,” said Shane from his seat in the darkness around the porch sofa.
“It’s just a summer thunderstorm,” said Bobby, turning a page.
“Whatcha readin’?”
“Sherlock Holmes.”
“Oh? What’s the story called?”
“The Final Problem.”
“Is that a good one?”
“No. Sherlock fights Professor Moriarty at a waterfall in Switzerland called Reichenbach Falls. They both go over the edge and fall to their deaths.”
“Sherlock dies?” Shane sounded genuinely alarmed.
“Yeah. But he’s not real. And he comes back to life. The Hound of the Baskervilles happens after this story.”
“Oh.” Shane sounded relieved.
Then the place was briefly white with light from outside, and the thunderstrike that followed almost instantly meant that lightning had hit something nearby. ProbaHbly the lightning rod on the barn’s cupola.
But Bobby and Shane both jumped as the electricity went out, leaving them in inky blackness. A few seconds later, the lights were on again.
“What was that!?” Shane practically screeched.
“From the ozone smell in the air, I surmise that lightning struck nearby. Close enough to cause a brief power outage via electromagnetic pulse.” Horatio looked calm and unconcerned as he said it.
“Horatio says that the lightning struck the barn and caused the electricity to go out for a moment.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t wish to alarm anyone, but I smell rats out and about,” said Horatio.
“Professor Rattiarty?” asked Bobby.
“What?” said Shane.
“Yes, but not alone. He has the corpse of a poisoned rat with him. Possibly Darktail Ralph. He probably wants to tempt me to poison myself.”
“You won’t eat the dead rat, will you?”
“No! Yuck! I don’t want to eat any dead rats!” remarked Shane loudly and with disgust.
“I concur with your brother. I will not be eating any rats tonight either. Rattiarty is himself filled with rat poison.”
“What? Rattiarty is poisoned but not dead?”
“What… what?” gasped Shane. “Are you talking to Horatio again?”
“Rats often ingest poison slowly enough that, instead of slaying them, they become immune to it.”
“What are we gonna do if the rats are now immune to poison?”
“They are? Bobby? What is Horatio telling you?”
“What are you telling me, Horatio?”
“Professor Rattiarty is out there now in the storm. He’s out of evil minions and wants to challenge me to a final battle.”
“Horatio says Professor Rattiarty wants a final showdown now.”
“The evil rat is out there in the storm?”
“He is.”
“Bobby, if you open the porch door for me, I must answer the rat’s challenge.”
“Now? In the storm?”
“Yes. If not now, then never. My aged body is soon to give out, and I would not let that evil rat continue to threaten the Niland family that I have loved for so long, and who loves me in return.”
Bobby put Sherlock Holmes aside and rose from the rocking chair.
“Bobby, why are you crying? What did the dog say?”
“Not now, Shane.”
Bobby moved to the porch door. He opened the screen door inward and the storm door outward against the wind and the driving rain.
“Bobby! What are you doing?”
Horatio leaped up and bolted out of door as a lightning strike illuminated everything with a burning blue-white light.
Bobby thought he saw the rat scampering across the farmyard as the light faded to blackness.
Shane, terrified, jumped out into the downpour.
“Horatio! Come back, doggie!”
Bobby, too, went out in the rain. Straining his eyes to try to find Horatio and the rat he was chasing. He could see nothing. A car out on the gravel country road had its brights on as it barrelled along towards Highway 69 going much faster than it should in the rain.
“Horatio! Come back, it’s not safe!” Shane screamed, crying as he shouted it.
Grandpa Butch was suddenly directly behind Bobby.
“What’s going on? Why are you boys out in the storm?”
“It’s Horatio and the rat.”
“Shane! Come back to the house!”
“Grandpa, Horatio is out here in the rain somewhere! Bobby let him out the front door!”
A car horn blared. Brakes screeched. Bobby thought he heard a sickening thump out there on the gravel road. And the car skidded to a stop in the dark and the rain.
“Oh, god, no! Shane!”
Grandpa ran toward the car. Bobby followed right behind. As they drew near the stopped car, they heard Shane crying as if he were heartbroken.
“Shane! Are you all right?”
“Grandpa, it’s Horatio.”
“Butch, I am sorry,” said Mr. Beetle Jones, out of the car and kneeling by the lump of soaked fur on the gravel road, illuminated by the headlights.
Bobby’s stomach quivered, leading to an uncontrolled string of chest-constricting sobs.
“Ah, Horatio. You have been a good and faithful friend,” said Butch Niland wearily as he kneeled down and petted the badly damaged body.
“Is he…? Is he dead?”
“I’m sorry, boys. He was an old dog. It is a blessing that it was over quickly. It means his life won’t end in prolonged suffering.”
“Bobby, how could you?” cried Shane. “It’s your fault! You and your dumb old imagination. You shoulda never let him out of that door.” Bobby could take no more. He lit out for the house as fast as he could run. The lightning and thunder lent drama and illuminated his path.
It is normal for the world we live in to inspire us to draw pictures of it. But architects do the opposite. They imagine a world we could live in, and then build it.
David and Me in Cotulla
Sometimes, like in the picture above, I draw real people in imaginary places. Other times I draw imaginary people and put them in real places.
Gyro and Billy on the planet Pan Galactica A
Sometimes I put imaginary people in imaginary places. (I photo-shopped this planet myself.)
Superchicken and Sherry before school
In fiction, I am re-casting my real past as something fictional, so the places I draw with words in descriptions need to be as real as my amber-colored memory can manage.
Valerie and her skateboard in front of the Congregational Church
When I use photos, though, I have to deal with the fact that over time, places change. The church does not look exactly like it did in the 1980s when this drawing is set.
Drawing things I once saw, and by “drawing” I mean “making pictures,” is how I recreate myself to give my own life meaning.
“Lately Mickey hasn’t been doing much of any writing on his work in progress. I, a professional Professor of knowing practically everything and knowing most of it wrongly, am here to give the hopeless goofy guy some much needed advice. Of course, I shall offer that advice incognatively… err, incontranatively… err… anonymously because Disney enjoys suing schoolteachers and other criminals who misuse their intellectual property.”
“But I can’t help myself when it comes to giving opinions on stuff that ain’t really my business but fascistinates… err, fusstinates… err… highly interests me. So, here goes.”
“Write about something Over the Rainbow. I mean your imagination is really garganteelian… err… gigantickingly… err… really pretty big. You can make up something being about made-up worlds, witches who fly around in soap bubbles and other such nonsensical things. Maybe talking scarecrows and heartless metal guys and really big kitty cats… make a story with something beautiful and imaginative, though maybe not as beautiful as that Judy Garland chick… she was really georgeous… err… magnifical… err… really hot-looking! But she is so old she is dead now. So, you can’t put her in the film version of what you write.”
“Or you could write something extra creepy. Something totally like the Addams Family. You’ve got a talent for writing stuff that seems extra morbeedious… err… mackahbreebrious… err… extra spooky. You can turn peoples’ stomachs inside out and make them feel all gooey in their courageousness because of weird evilness and dark happenstances… err… murderiferous scenarios… err scary stuff. It helps that you can be funny here and there when you scare us. You can be totally spooky-ooky in your stories and sometimes you make us sharpen wooden stakes and make necklaces of garlic. Do an Uncle Fester shtick. Of course, Jackie Coogan is so old he is dead now, so you can’t use him in your film version.”
“Or there is always the absolutely romantical… like a story about a three hour cruise where funny guys get shipwrecked on a desserted island with girls that wear bikinis where you don’t see the cutie’s belly button. And “desserted” is the right word because the dessert is actually coconut-cream pie. But you are good at writing about faskinating… err… interesstrial… err… attention-requiring young women and really dorky guys and how they can fit together like puzzle pieces that you don’t even have to use scissors to make them fit together. Romantical comedy is a thing you can do too. So, we don’t even need to talk about Dawn Wells who played Mary Ann. You couldn’t cast her in the movie version because you’re still sad about Covid having taken her away in 2020.”
“But anyway, you got no excuses now, Mickey! You know you can write It’s just getting anybody to read the danged thing you can’t do. So, write something!!!”
Drawing with increasingly painful arthritic hands is still worth it. I suppose I should feel a little embarrassed about drawing so many young girls. Especially when I draw them naked.
But drawing someone who is naked, yet totally confident in their own skin and unafraid of the world they have bared themselves to, captures a feeling I have aspired to my whole life.
That is the purpose of art. To show the deepest insights life has forced upon the artist.
Not all the nudes I draw are female.
Sometimes it is the top of the head that is naked. That makes it easier to show what you are thinking. No hairy stuff between the viewer and the mind of the man.
Mere shapes and lines can make you feel something deeply.
There is a joy that can come from drawing something that begins with a spark from your secret heart.
But people will know at first sight what things you used to keep secret and to yourself.
And some people will hate you for it. They detect a little nudism or a little bit of gayness (and I am definitely not gay) and immediately default to hating your drawings, and, beyond that, hating you.
But I don’t accept hate. Because I don’t know hate. It is a stranger to me, from a country I have never been to. And I don’t recognize that stranger. But I don’t hate him. Because I don’t know hate.
Catch a Falling Star 
Short and Sweet
No, I am not talking about a midget girlfriend today.
I am talking about brevity.
Some of the best writing gets directly to the point.
You have to know how to say exactly what you want to say.
Then say it.
Like, “Tootie is a Cutie.”
And once said, the point made is…
Sheer poetry.
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