Okay, I need to keep my string of daily posts going. So today, I will show you Pennie. She is a copper dragon. She’s been too shy to meet you until now. But better meet than eat you.
Beast Men
I recently broke out my old Talislanta Dungeons and Dragons book. It contains drawings from the late 80’s and early 90’s in which the never-ending adventure went to the world of Talislanta where there are no elves or dwarves or goblins. The primary enemy were the beast men. They inhabited the great plains in the middle of the world. They were ravenous, and mostly evil… but a few were adopted as heroes and heroes’ companions. Here’s a look at the good guys and bad guys I found in the Plains of the Beastmen of Golarin.
Filed under artwork, colored pencil, drawing, Dungeons and Dragons, heroes
Magical Moments
There comes a time, a moment of truth, in which a decision has to be made, a problem has to be solved. In the teaching business those moments can occur once per hour, or fifty times in the space of two minutes. You can bat 900, hit nine out of every ten out of the park, and still come out on the losing end. More often than not, you lose. You continue to get it wrong, and you feel totally defeated at the end of the day. No World Series of education for you. Sorry about that. But once in a while, you do not fail. You say the perfect thing to diffuse the situation. You think of the perfect example that, once explained, turns on every light bulb in every head in the room. That is magic. That is the reason you teach.
I am writing a novel right now, The Magical Miss Morgan, about a teacher. Without making a mystery about it, the teacher in the story, Miss Francis Morgan, is really me. I am basing this story on things that actually happened to me. Now, before the yelling and the accusations start, I will confess that I realize I am a male teacher and the main character is female, and there are things a female teacher does all the time, like hugging a student, that a male teacher can never do. And I must also confess that this teacher I am writing about loves all her students, even the ugly and stupid ones, and that is probably only true for teachers who really are magical. I further realize that the fairies in the story, just like the ones in Peter Pan, are not real outside of the story being told. I’m not insane… well, okay, I’m a teacher… a middle school teacher… so let’s just say I am not completely insane.
But there is real magic. It happens in that moment when you desperately need that perfect solution to pop out of the magic hat like a white rabbit and say, “Howdy!” Because if you have the courage to reach into that hat and pull the rabbit out, more often than not, it is there. And it doesn’t end when the teaching ends. I hit the wall with this novel at about 30,000 words. I wrote myself into a corner with no way out. But then I realized that I already had the answer. I am basing this story on what really happened. So, all I have to do is turn me into her and sprinkle some fairy dust, and voila! the rest of the novel is already plotted and as good as written. Everything fell into place in only a moment.
Filed under humor, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, teaching
Me, Myself, and It
I think it is provably true that any time an artist creates a work of art, it is actually a self-portrait. Did you see the works of Thomas Kinkade and Paul Detlafsen in my recent posts? Can I not effectively argue that those paintings give you a glimpse of the real person behind the paintbrush? Was Norman Rockwell not the man portrayed in all those lovely down-home, truly American oils he did? Was Theodor Giesel not also Dr. Seuss? Then I look back at some of the goofy pictures that I have created through the years and think, “Oh no! What have I done?” I sometimes think I don’t have to post nude selfies of myself for people to see me naked. Should I really have done that…? …Of course, I should! And that means I have seen William Shakespeare naked too! Good Golly! I have to quit thinking these goofy thoughts!
Filed under cartoons, goofy thoughts, humor, Paffooney
Homely Art – Part Two – Paul Detlefsen
Back in about 1968 my Grandma Beyer was seriously scandalized by an artist named Paul Detlefsen. Detlefsen did a lot of covers for the “Ideals Magazine” that Grandma always had on her coffee tables. He scandalized her by putting a painting on the cover that showed a young boy taking his pants off, the rear view only, so he could go skinny dipping with a group of naked boys. Truthfully the picture shown above is by Detelfsen, but it is not the one that offended her. I have discovered that this painter of old-timey things like blacksmith shops and one-room school houses has painted at least four different versions of “the Old Swimmin’ Hole”. And Grandma was easily scandalized when we were kids. She was a very conservative woman who loved Ronald Reagan and his politics most severely and thought that Richard Nixon was a leftist radical. She didn’t like for people to be naked, except for bath time, and maybe not even then. She is one of the main reasons, along with this painter whom she adored, that I came to learn later in life that “naked is funny”.
http://www.freeplaypost.com/PaulDetlefsen_VintageArtPrint_A.htm
Grandma Beyer also seriously loved puzzles, and besides “Ideals” covers, Paul Detlefsen did a beaucoup of jigsaw puzzles. (Beaucoup means a lot in Texican, I tend to think in Iowegian and talk in Texican and completely forget about the need to translate for those people who don’t know those two foreign tongues) One of the puzzles we spent hours working on was “Horse and Buggy Days” that I pictured here. They were the kind of puzzle paintings where every boy was Tom Sawyer and every girl was Becky Thatcher. And there were a lot of them. Here is another;
http://www.bigredtoybox.com/cgi-bin/toynfo.pl?detlefsenindex
Grandma had this in puzzle form also. We put the puzzle together, glued it to tag board, and framed it. It has hung on the wall in a Grandparent’s house, first Grandma Beyer’s and then Grandma Aldrich’s, since the early 1970’s. My own parents now live in Grandma Aldrich’s house, and that puzzle-painting may be hanging in an upstairs bedroom to this very day. Detlefsen is not known as a great artist. He was a humble painter who painted backdrops for films for over 20 years. In the 1950’s he switched gears and started doing lithographs that were turned into calendars, jigsaw puzzles, laminated table mats, playing cards, and reproductions you could buy in the Ben Franklin Dime Store in Belmond, Iowa and hang on your back porch at home. I believe I saw his paintings in all these forms in one place or another. According to Wikipedia (I know, research, right?) “In 1969, UPI estimated that his artwork had been seen by 80 per cent of all Americans.” That is pretty dang good for a humble painter, better numbers than Pablo Picasso ever saw. Let me share a few more of his works, and see if you recognize any of these;
Filed under art criticism, art my Grandpa loved, artwork, homely art, oil painting
Homely Art – Part One – Thomas Kinkade
These images can be found at http://thomaskinkade.com/
I honestly have a thing for artists that critics hate and common folk like my parents and grandparents loved. Norman Rockwell is a bit like that. He enjoyed commercial success as a magazine illustrator. That is about as far from avant garde art as you can get. But what can I say? I don’t call myself an artist. I am a cartoonist and all around goofball. I don’t do serious art. So the questions surrounding Thomas Kinkade bounce off my tough old non-critical hide like bullets off the orphan of Krypton. I love his pictures for their gaudy splashes of color, his way with depicting puddles and water of all sorts (splashes of splashes), and his rustic homes and landscapes of another era. This is a man who does lovely calendar art and jigsaw puzzle art. He is roundly criticized for factory production of “original” oil paintings which are actually a base he created and made a print of painted over by an “assistant” artist or apprentice. But I don’t care . I like it. And you used to be able to see his originals without going to museums, in art stores at the shopping mall. He is unfortunately dead now. For most great artists, that makes their work more valuable and more precious. Kinkade’s art hangs in so many homes around the country already that his fame has probably already reached its peak. Look at these works that he did for Hallmark and Disney and various other mass-market retail outlets. I dare you not to like it.
Filed under art criticism, oil painting, Thomas Kinkade
My Own Race of Aliens
In Catch a Falling Star, the only good novel I have actually in print so far, I have a race of aliens called the Tellerons. They are an unusual sort of green men from Mars. They are green,and they have a base on Mars, but they are from a distant star system in the local group and the swampy world called Telleri that orbits that far star. The ones in my book come from the space station their empire established in the Barnard’s Star system, where the characters in my stories were all born. They are also not men. They are amphibianoid beings, frog people. They have never set foot on the home planet. Here are two aliens who are crucial characters in Catch a Falling Star.
These two are Farbick the Navigator and young Davalon the tadpole. Farbick is a very wise and loving male Telleron who gets foully treated for his racial differences. I know you and I can’t really tell by looking, but his race is Sindalusian Fmoog. You can tell by the yellowish cast to his amphibian face. Oh, and there’s something funny with his ears. Davalon is the son of the Telleron captain, Xiar. He loves Farbick who has been more of a father figure to him than Xiar has. Dav is unusually bright for a Telleron, just as Farbick is recognizably more competent than others of the Fmoogish race. You might actually think, if they were the only two Tellerons you ever met, that their people are highly inquisitive, intelligent, and have no racial prejudices at all. Of course you would be highly incorrect and most sincerely wrong.
I have started work on a sequel to Catch a Falling Star. I am calling it Stardusters and Lizard Men. It follows the crew of Xiar the Slightly Irregular’s Base Ship in their adventures following the invasion of Earth. They accidentally fix the on-board computer systems by correcting a math error in navigation that had been present for more than 100 years of star travel in the Telleron Empire. Of course this means that all of their space coordinates for every destination they know are wrong. And so, without hope of ever returning anywhere else in the universe, they arrive at Galtorr Prime, the planet of the infamous carnivorous reptile people. They will have to colonize or die. And the Galtorrians are just like Earthers, except, they have a society that is even more corrupt, greedy, prejudiced, and hateful (if such a thing is even possible). I hope to show in this story what human society may become on the path we are currently following, so it will be a kind of post-apocalyptic bit of science fiction set on a world that is not Earth.
These two female Telleron tadpoles are Brekka and Menolly. They are dancing to Mickey Mouse Club music because Tellerons, quite naturally, have been totally corrupted by Earther television shows. Galactic English, the language all Tellerons speak, is based on the language of old I Love Lucy television episodes, the favorite show on the home-worlds of the entire empire.
Meet George Jetson. He is named after one of his father’s favorite shows from the 1960’s. He is one of the Telleron tadpoles that will take the lead in exploring the dark and dangerous planet of the lizard-guys.
Fog in the City (a melancholy poem)
It doesn’t come in on cat feet.
That’s probably Chicago you’re thinking of.
It comes in on the sound of screeching tires…
and ambulance sirens…
because of all the idiot drivers…
in their silver-gray WASP rockets…
that don’t know how to slow down…
or turn on their low beams…
for safety in the big, cold city of Dallas…
where the air is yellow…
except in the fog…
and rush, rush, rush…
business never waits…
for a foggy day.
Final Star Trek Confessions
I am sorry, but today’s post will probably bore you unless you are a doll-collecting, obsessive-compulsive bag of mixed nuts like I am. These are the kinds of details that only interest the true collect-a-holic. You see in the picture my mint in-the-box Star Trek Barbie and Ken, 1996 30th Anniversary Edition. It was a difficult track-down. Now, you Google it and you can get one for 25 dollars on e-Bay without breaking a sweat. When I got hold of this in 1998, however, it was a bit tougher to find. It started with a trip to Goodwill. My wife loves the bargain clothing and especially the shoes. (She’s from the Philippines and has a touch of Imelda Marcos Footwear Disease.) While there, with my young son in tow, in the toy section… I discovered two loose Barbie and Ken dolls that actually weren’t naked. Barbie’s head was severely damaged, and she had lost a leg. Ken was in practically un-loved, un-played-with condition. Both had uniforms. The Star Trek uniforms you see here on the two figures in front. (Ken was missing the shoes, phaser, and communicator, but the original accessories were pretty small and pitiful anyway. Barbie had no fishnet stockings and no shoes, along with no working head.) Of course I had to buy these wonderful items. They cost me 25 cents apiece. Gonga! I hadn’t known that such a 12″ action figure existed! (Okay, really a doll, but, you know…) I immediately began a search of toy stores and junk shops in South Texas. At the time we had relatives in Dallas. So I went prowling there too. You wouldn’t believe the looks I used to get from parents wondering what a forty-something old man by himself wanted in the Barbie section of KayBee Toys. Now they see my gray hair and figure, ah yes, shopping for his granddaughter (of which I have none, but I digress.) Finally I found the rare item in a San Antonio flea market stall. And it only set me back fifteen dollars. Wotta find! It made my goofy old collector’s heart glad for a couple of months afterwards… heck, that’s not true either! Sixteen years later it still makes me giddy.
Filed under Barbie and Ken, doll collecting, goofiness, irony, toystore quests
My Tinfoil Hat for UFO’s
I have been a conspiracy-theory nut for some time. Back in the 1970’s, my father and I went to a movie called Chariots of the Gods. It presented the insane theories of Erich von Daniken as if they were fact. It mentioned the Nazca Lines, Stonehenge, the Great Pyramid, and other ancient wonders and seemed to show depictions of ancient aliens in the art of those cultures. My father and I were convinced by his arguments and thought there really must be something to it. I went to college with a real hunger to learn more.
I was disappointed to learn later that the man was a completely unprofessional, untrained archeologist, and that he may have actually stolen his main thesis for the Chariots book from Carl Sagan and I. S. Shklovskii in their book, Intelligent Life in the Universe. Sagan would go on to say;
“That writing as careless as von Däniken’s, whose principal thesis is that our ancestors were dummies, should be so popular is a sober commentary on the credulousness and despair of our times. I also hope for the continuing popularity of books like Chariots of the Gods? in high school and college logic courses, as object lessons in sloppy thinking. I know of no recent books so riddled with logical and factual errors as the works of von Däniken.”
—Carl Sagan, Foreword to The Space Gods Revealed (quote and citation borrowed from Wikipedia)
So I went through a number of Sagan-influenced years of my life saying that there was no sound reason to believe that out of an infinity of places to visit, interstellar tourists would want to come and visit here. Does a normal, sane tourist want to go to an island full of cannibals? Our movies, after all, always depict us killing, dissecting, or taking advantage of alien visitors.
But then I discovered the whole story of the Roswell, New Mexico crash in 1947. Convinced at one point that the crash really was a Project Mogul weather balloon, I began to discover the work of another alien-visitor-obsessed gentleman by the name of Stanton Friedman. This man is much harder to dismiss. He has a master’s degree in physics and spent fourteen years as a nuclear physicist “for such companies as General Electric (1956–1959), Aerojet General Nucleonics (1959–1963), General Motors (1963–1966), Westinghouse (1966–1968), TRW Systems (1969–1970), and McDonnell Douglas, where he worked on advanced, classified programs on nuclear aircraft, fission and fusion rockets, and compact nuclear power plants for space applications.[2] Since the 1980s, he has done related consultant work in the radon-detection industry. Friedman’s professional affiliations have included the American Nuclear Society, the American Physical Society, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and AFTRA.” (quoted from Wikipedia… I know, I know… but this is all verifiable information, not made up or imaginary like von Däniken’s.) He is also the first civilian to investigate the Roswell crash. He began by interviewing the air-base’s intelligence officer during the incident, Major Jesse Marcel.
More and more I became interested in the phenomenon and the people who research it. I have a pretty good list of liars and clowns who talk about aliens, and I will use some of that in a future post. There is comedy gold in that topic.
But I do believe that aliens are real and have visited our planet. I began researching the topic again for my novel, Catch a Falling Star, because it centers on an alien invasion and a clash between incompetent space travelers and single-minded Midwesterners who can’t possibly believe. There are just too many people surfacing with stories to tell about alien encounters, UFO sightings, and government cover-ups. People like Nick Pope, a former Minister from the British government, Paul Hellyer , a former Defense Minister from Canada, Edgar Mitchell, an Apollo astronaut, and numerous technicians and inventors from McDonnell-Douglas and other aircraft manufacturers are coming forward in legions to testify that things like this are very real.
Filed under artwork, colored pencil, Paffooney, tinfoil hats
Catch a Falling Star 