Log24

See also this journal on February 24, 2024:  Wittenborn.

In memory of a comic-book artist —

His views on physics at

http://web.archive.org/web/20060805085915/
http://nealadams.com/PhysicsOfGrow.html

… and a New Yorker  cartoon from
his reported date of death — April 28 —

A different sort of scourge —

The Source:

“I need a photo opportunity, I want a shot at redemption.
Don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard.”
— Paul Simon

The title was suggested by the previous post.

See as well posts now tagged Crumbs.

In memory of Gahan Wilson, "too cool for  school" —

Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst
in "Spider-Man 2" (2004) —

Spoilers for another Kirsten Dunst film,
"Midnight Special" (2016) —

"When they all finally reach their destination —
a deserted field in the Florida Panhandle…." 

" When asked about the film's similarities to the 2015 Disney movie 
Tomorrowland , which also posits a futuristic world that exists in an
alternative dimension, Nichols sighed. 'I was a little bummed, I guess,'
he said of when he first learned about the project. . . . 'Our die was cast.
Sometimes this kind of collective unconscious that we're all dabbling in,
sometimes you're not the first one out of the gate.' "

From another obituary for
the "Spider-Man" screenwriter —

“When I die,” he liked to say, “I’m going to have written
on my tombstone, ‘Finally, a plot!’”

— Robert D. McFadden in The New York Times

See as well . . .

http://www.walterkaufmann.com/articles/1970_Prologu_Ich_Du.pdf .

(Continued)

Two visions of happy neurons:

This post was suggested by a link in today's New York Times —

"Simon Denny, the New Zealand artist whose work incorporates
board games, intervenes by introducing his own pieces into an attic of
the late-18th-century Haus zum Kirschgarten, already filled with
'old historical dollhouses, board games, chess games' and the like …."

The previous post illustrated 
"Decorations for a Cartoon Graveyard."

A search for Psychonauts in
this journal yields …

In other news …

"Try the grey stuff, it's delicious
Don't believe me? Ask the dishes"

— Disney's "Beauty and the Beast"

Related material —

Happy birthday to Saoirse Ronan.

The New York Times  today—

Stuart E. Hample, Humorist and Cartoonist, Dies at 84  Enlarge This Image "Dread & Superficiality: Woody Allen as Comic Strip"/Abrams Mr. Hample, who was also a playwright and performer, wrote “The Silly Book” and was the co-author of “Children’s Letters to God.”

Hample died on Sunday.
 

"Don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard.” — Paul Simon

"Or tangled up in blue." — Steven H. Cullinane

* A title for Harlan Kane, suggested by obituaries
from The New York Times  (this afternoon) and from
CBC News (on May 14, below) . . .

. . . as well as by illustrations shown here on May 13 and by
a screenwriter quoted here on May 12 —

“When I die,” he liked to say, “I’m going to have written
on my tombstone, ‘Finally, a plot!’”

— Robert D. McFadden in The New York Times

Another quote that seems relevant —

“I need a photo opportunity, I want a shot at redemption.
 Don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard.”
 — Paul Simon

"I need a photo opportunity, I want a shot at redemption.
Don't want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard."
– Paul Simon

From the previous post —

From a cartoon graveyard —

See also, in this  journal, Smallest Perfect and Nocciolo .

“I need a photo opportunity, I want a shot at redemption.
 Don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard.”
 — Paul Simon

From a cartoon graveyard on yesterday's date in 1957 —

For the photo opportunity of the Paul Simon song, see
my former sixth-grade teacher on that same 1957 page.

For Greta Gerwig and Saoirse Ronan —

See also a Log24 post from the above Cube Theory date —
April 12, 2016 — Lyrics for a Cartoon Graveyard — as well as . . .

“I need a photo opportunity, I want a shot at redemption.
 Don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard.”

 — Paul Simon

See also John Collier's short story "The Lady on the Grey."

Note that the title of the previous post was "Black Well,"
almost the same as that of Tanner's graphic novel above.

Decorations for a Cartoon Graveyard, Continued .

See also some remarks by Wallace Stevens
from a 2016 post "For Crimson Jill."

From "In the Park with Yin and Yang" (May 10, 2017) —

Decorations for a Cartoon Graveyard

In Memoriam —

From an Anthony Lane movie review in the April 8, 2013,
issue of The New Yorker —

"When the Lord God forbade his worshippers to bow down
before any graven image, [Rosario] Dawson’s face was
exactly the kind of thing He had in mind. No other star can
boast such sculptured features—except Vincent Cassel,
who is pretty damn graven himself. When the two of them
make love, in 'Trance,' one strong bone structure pressed
against another, it’s like a clash of major religions. What if
they had a family? The kids would be practically Cubist."

As for the other film Lane reviewed in that issue, "Blancanieves" —

See Snow White + Cube in this  journal.

See as well a related cartoon graveyard, also from April 8, 2013.

I first encountered the title phrase, of more significance in art than
in science, yesterday in a review of a book by Sydney Padua —

"This could be Heaven or this could be Hell." — "Hotel California"

"Some cartoon graveyards are better than others." — Log24

See also today's previous post and Cartoon Graveyard.

(Continued.)

“I need a photo opportunity, 
I want a shot at redemption.
Don’t want to end up a cartoon 
in a cartoon graveyard.”

— Paul Simon

Photo opportunity
for the late John Bayley and Iris Murdoch —

From a cartoon graveyard, in memory of
a British artist who reportedly died yesterday: 

Against Dryness —

Cartoon by Martin Honeysett

“I need a photo opportunity….” — Paul Simon

I need a photo opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard

— Paul Simon

See also the name Romanova
and the name Anastasia.

(Continued)

A meditation suggested by the April 20 post Complex Reflection
and by the life and April 20 death of a scientist who worked
at Los Alamos (home of the Monte Carlo method) and at
the Santa Fe Institute (home of complexity theory).

A search for 286 in this journal yields "Yet Another Cartoon Graveyard."

That June 1, 2008, post linked to poem  286 in a 1919 anthology.

Here is that poem, together with poem 823.

Together, these poems may be regarded as a meditation on
Simone Weil and her brother André Weil or, 
more abstractly, on Love and Death.

Happy birthday to Al Pacino.

"I need a photo-opportunity,
I want a shot at redemption.
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard."
— Paul Simon

For Sabato's photo opportunity, click here.

The link is to a weblog post in Spanish published
on St. Thomas Becket's Day, 2010.

See also Helen Lane in this journal. Lane translated
Sabato's "On Heroes and Tombs."

Where Art Thou?

One possible answer—

"I need a photo-opportunity,
I want a shot at redemption.
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard."

See also the page linked to on
Becket’s Day last year,
as well as…

This meditation is prompted by memories of suicidal alcoholics Hunter S. Thompson and Ernest Hemingway, as well as by the title of Mel Gibson’s latest project, “Apocalypto.”

A search on Gibson’s film title leads to this quotation:

“And what does apocalypse mean? It means revelation: apocalypto means to open up and to show the truth. But it also means absolute violence, so the apocalypse is a violent revelation and a revelation of violence and immediately you see the relevance of this.”

— Interview with Rene Girard in the June 1996 issue of UCLA’s Anthropoetics: The Journal of Generative Anthropology

It is by no means clear that “apocalypse” means “violence,” let alone “absolute violence,” except in the Christian tradition.

For apocalyptic Christian violence, see “Apocalypse and Violence: The Evidence from the Reception History of the Book of Revelation” (pdf), by Christopher Rowland of Oxford University.

As for “the relevance of this,” see the definition of “generative anthropology” (GA) at

anthropoetics.ucla.edu/purpose.htm:

“The originary hypothesis of GA is that human language begins as an aborted gesture of appropriation representing–and thereby renouncing as sacred– an object of potential mimetic rivalry. The strength of our mimetic intelligence makes us the only creatures for whom intraspecific violence is a greater threat to survival than the external forces of nature. Human language defers potential conflict by permitting each to possess the sign of the unpossessable object of desire– the deferral of violence through representation.”

Compare with the remarks of Jung on Transformation Symbolism in the Mass:

Antecedents and parallels are found for the ritual of the Christian religious Mass in Aztec, Mithraic and pagan religious practices. “The Aztecs make a dough figure of the god Huitzilopochtli, which is then symbolically killed, divided and consumed….”

Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 11. 2nd ed., Princeton University Press, 1969. (pp. 222-225)

Mel Gibson’s interest in religion and violence is well known.  His film “Apocalypto,” scheduled for release on Dec. 8, 2006, deals with human sacrifice among the Maya, rather than the Aztecs or Jews.  (Cf. Abraham and “Highway 61 Revisited.”)

It seems unlikely that Mel will learn more about these issues in his recovery program. Too bad.

x

Related material:

Nine Gates to the
Temple of Poetry
and
Law Day 2001:
The Devil and Wallace Stevens

In response to this morning’s Wizard-of-Id example (see 1:22 PM entry) of a political Bob-Hope-style Christian wisecrack (a style more apt to make me gag than laugh), some further quotations:

I need a photo-opportunity, I want a shot at redemption. Don’t want to end up a cartoon In a cartoon graveyard. — Paul Simon

Laurance Rockefeller

The Washington Post on the gigolo candidate in Boston Monday:

“In a lunch speech to more than 1,000 women who had donated $500 to $2,000 to his campaign or the Democratic Party, Kerry was joined on stage by his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry….  He focused his comments on improving health care and creating more jobs — notions that he said ‘are not Democratic values. They’re not Republican values. They are American values.’ “

Let us pass over Kerry’s ignorance of the difference between desiderata (things considered desirable) and values (principles, standards, or qualities considered desirable).

A definition of “values” in a different sense, one that might appeal to the late St. Laurance Rockefeller, dead on 7/11, who majored in philosophy at Princeton:

“In an artistical composition, the character of any one part in its relation to other parts and to the whole — often used in the plural: as, the values are well given, or well maintained.”

— Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, 1913

Rockefeller is, I hope, now in a place where he can discuss this definition with Bach as it applies to, say, that composer’s “Goldberg Variations.”

Here below, another sort of Goldberg Variations seems appropriate to the times we live in …

The following composition was inspired by Whoopi Goldberg’s remarks at last Thursday’s Radio City Music Hall Democratic Party fund-raiser.

Sources:

Ike Turner, Bad Dreams album,
Mom’s Apple Pie album (X-rated),
and Log24 entries of
July 9-10 and July 12.

Update of 3:17 AM July 13, 2004:

A place in Heaven next to St. Laurance
seems to have been reserved:

Cartoon Graveyard,
or Betty and the Third Eye

I need a photo opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don’t want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard
     — Paul Simon

One of my favorite movie scenes is the entry into paradise, through a looking glass, of Kilgore Trout (played by Albert Finney) in “Breakfast of Champions.”  Trout encounters a beautiful (indeed, angelic) maiden on the other side of the looking glass and asks of her, “Make me young again.”  His wish is granted.  Those who wish to may imagine — through a glass, darkly — a great artist’s entry into heaven with the aid of the very popular website Betty and Veronica.

PARENTAL ADVISORY:

The “Betty and Veronica” link above is more suited to Kilgore Trout’s usual publisher,  The World Classics Library, than to, say, the Harvard Classics.  Since Betty and Veronica have been attending Riverdale High for about 60 years now, I think we can assume they are 18 by this time, and can appear in an adult website.  Their cartoonish appearance may be helpful to newcomers to paradise; it does not mean, as Paul Simon fears, that the afterlife consists only of cartoon characters. 

For further details, see I Corinthians 13:11-13.

Not Amusing Anymore

I need a photo-opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don’t want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard
— Paul Simon

From The New York Times, Dec. 16, 2002

(See yesterday’s notes) —