Day: August 5, 2006

Cartooning for fun and profit

Folks, I’ve shown you how to get lessons for playing guitar Cowboy and Hawaiian style, as well as how to get lessons for playing the saw. I know some folks have already done these things, profitted tremendously, and are planning on soon giving me a large grant to support my wild lifestyle for the rest of my life. For those of you out there that haven’t quite reached that level of fame, might I suggest you get away from trying to succeed in music and instead start working on that cartooning career you’ve always wanted to try?

cartoon-your-way-to-popularity-and-profit-sml.jpg

FREE BOOK Shows How To Make Money With Simple Cartoons
Cartooning, Commercial Art and Portrait Painting may open up a vast new future for you. You can now enjoy the thrill of a cartoonist’s popularity while earning. Our exclusive, revolutionary new inventions simplify and shorten students’ training time. Look at these sensational features that you get: LAUGH FINDER—COMIC CHARACTER CREATOR—MAGIC MARIONETTE, a sensational, yet simple device that will amaze you—also our new PORTRAIT COURSE just out-all at NO EXTRA COST. No previous art experience needed. 34 big lessons. Profusely illustrated. So simple even a sixth grade pupil can start learning first day.

Send no money, just name. Get booklet, “How to Make Money With Simple Cartoons”. Fascinating facts on your future in cartooning. Rush.

CARTOONISTS’ EXCHANGE, Dept. 351-D, Pleasant Hill, Ohio

By the way, this ad originally appeared in the January 1946 issue of Mechanix Illustrated. Thanks again to the Modern Mechanix web site for posting this tidbit.

[tags]Modern Mechanix, Cartoon your way to success, Ads[/tags]

The wisdom of children

Tonight, at dinner, my older son (6.75 years) was not listening very well.  After arguing about after-dinner plans, he walked away from the table:

“Get back here, if you want any more dinner before bedtime,” I said.

“I’m not talking to you ever again,” he said.

My younger son (3.5 years) then interjects himself into the conversation “But you just talked to him now.”

Sometimes, I think he is much wiser than his years suggest.  🙂

[tags]The wisdom of children, I’m not talking to you[/tags]

Break-dancing animals

No, no – not Break-dancing animals 2: Electric Boogaloo. This is just a small animated GIF of some costumed people, dressed as animals, doing some dancing. In fact, there’s no real break-dancing in here. But that’s the name of the image, so I put it in the title.

animalbreakgroupgif.gif

My younger son absolutely loves this picture, so I thought I’d share it for others who have young children.

[tags]Animals dancing[/tags]

Good-bye, Norma Jean

Well, you know what they say – “Your candle burned out long before your legend ever did.”

1962 Marilyn Monroe dies

On this day in 1962, Marilyn Monroe dies from an overdose of barbiturates. Her death was widely presumed to be suicide.

Monroe, born Norma Jean Mortensen and also known as Norma Jean Baker, had a tragic childhood. Her mother, a negative cutter at several film studios, was mentally unstable and was institutionalized when Norma Jean was five. Afterward, the little girl lived in a series of foster homes, where she suffered from neglect and abuse, and later lived in an orphanage. At 16, she quit high school and married a 21-year-old aircraft plant worker named Joe Dougherty.

In 1944, her husband was sent overseas with the military, and Monroe went to work as a paint sprayer in a defense plant. A photographer spotted her there, and she soon became a popular pin-up girl. She began working as a model and divorced her husband two years later. In 1946, 20th Century Fox signed her for $125 a week but dropped her after one film, from which her scenes were cut. Columbia signed her but also dropped her after one film. Unemployed, she posed nude for a calendar for $50; the calendar sold a million copies and made $750,000.

Monroe played a series of small film roles until 1950, when Fox signed her again. This time, they touted her as a star and began giving her leading roles in 1952 with films like Don’t Bother to Knock and Monkey Business. Her star continued to rise during the next few years with hits like Gentleman Prefer Blondes (1953) and Some Like It Hot (1959). Her tremendous sex appeal and little-girl mannerisms made her enormously popular. In 1954, she married baseball legend Joe DiMaggio, but they divorced only nine months later.

After the divorce, Monroe searched for more serious roles and announced she would found her own studio. She began studying acting with the famous Lee Strasberg at the Actor’s Studio in New York. She gave an impressive comic performance in Bus Stop in 1955. The following year, she married intellectual playwright Arthur Miller. Miller wrote a screenplay for her, The Misfits (1961), which was her last picture. She divorced him a week before the film opened. She attempted one more film, Something’s Got to Give, but was fired for her frequent illnesses and absences from the set, which many believed to be related to drug addiction. In August 1962, she died of an overdose of sleeping pills at the age of 36. Since her death, her popularity and mystique have lingered, with numerous biographies published after her death. Her ex-husband Joe DiMaggio continued to send flowers to her grave every day for the rest of his life.

[tags]Norma Jean Mortensen, Marilyn Monroe, Today in History[/tags]