Sunday, March 29, 2009

I went to the Doctors the other day, and I now weigh 150lbs!

...I haven't weighed this much since I lived with my Mom 30 years ago! Attribute it to 3 months without smoking and sucking on a lot of lozenges I guess.

This one was supposed to be entitled: "A story for my Grandchildren." but I just can't get over the fact that I'm a fatty. I am walking an average of 17-18,000 steps a day (even though I have been putting in some bench time watching the NCAA the past few weeks) according to my pedometer so I'm not turning into a slug... I'm just not so "Ecto" anymore, more of a healthy weighter.

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When I was young I was fascinated with animation. I remember seeing these Lifebuoy Commercials:



Actually there was another one where the people in the commercial were on an invisible Train moving along a Train-track too. I loved this kind of thing. Does anyone remember that besides me?

I remember I had a copy of "Mighty Joe Young" on super 8 and I watched it in slo-mo over and over again. I read about the filming of "King Kong", and imagined myself moving him around while I read "Famous Monsters of Filmland Magazine".



I was obsessed with Walt Disney for a long time and the story I heard about him scrapping "Snow White" after it was completed in Black and White, then starting over when he came up with an arrangement that involved building a series of something like 17 platforms placed under a camera mounted up near the ceiling and beginning again. Weather it was 17 or not, he then slid Snow in and out of these glass levels so that when she ran through the woods she really ran through the woods!

This was the impetus for my style of painting on layers of glass and the rest has been my history.

I remember pestering my Dad endlessly until he gave in and took me to a Used Camera Shop and we bought a "Regular 8" crank Movie Camera. (...yeah, that was the format BEFORE Super 8...) I spent many a summer day with my friends on the schoolyard, in the woods, and out in front of the house in the street filming epics of "Butt" Car Racing down streets drawn on the concrete with chalk and stop action filming it so we could run it back in the basement on an old slide projection screen that had once belonged to my Nana. It didn't get me a job in Hollywood, but it kept me from youthful mischief.

I never forgot the stop motion thing. It is still there. So last week, when bIRD showed up with his tri-pod and I had a chance to try it again. BANG! Out we went, and it was GREAT FUNN!



This is really poor quality transfer to the Youtube, but you get the idea anyway.

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I posted this in my VideoPlayer last week when I did the "Peter a Ready-Made" blog but I found out from folks that the player in many peoples monitors was being cut off. It was all there on my monitor so until that info was passed along I had no idea. Sorry.

From now on (as I know I said before) I will post what I am blogging about in the blog even though it may be more labor intensive. I didn't do away with the player completely, I just moved it to the bottom of the blog. If you bother to scroll all they way down there you can view anything I have posted on my Youtube Channel.

GO UCONN!

obeedúid~
30/Mar/09