Bentley animation

 

My first attempt to animate my cat Bentley. After my experiments with Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine at the Oscars, their faces bordering on total hysteria, I thought, well, why not my cat? He is so sweet and photogenic that it was almost easy. Seven frames does limit the range of expression, however. From sleep, to alarm, to sleep.

Bentley's on TV!

Bentley never ceases to amaze us with his awareness of things. We've seen him watch TV before, ads and things like that, where patterns move rapidly. Cartoons are a favorite. But this time it was a show on CBC's The Nature of Things, all about the domestic cat. For the first five minutes he sat demurely, facing the TV with his ears alertly pricked. Then suddenly he jumped up on the TV stand as if he wanted to become part of the action on the screen.

Obviously he knew these were cats, but because we adopted him so young, I'm not sure how many cats he has actually seen or interacted with. But he knew. At some point he even looked around behind the screen, as if he thought the cats were actually there. Then he pawed at the screen the way he sometimes paws at the window. This carried on for at least half of the hour-long show, meaning my cat has a longer attention span than most humans.

He often did look like part of the show, which was a bit eerie. He fit right in. It gave the program an oddly 3D look. The first gif looks a bit like one of those silhouettes of a movie audience watching a romantic encounter on-screen.

Until that old geezer/cat expert comes on-screen, it looks for all the world as if Bentley is scratching at a real fence.

Bentley doesn't just want to be on TV. He wants to be in TV. 

What the hell is happening in my neighborhood?

I hear noises in the house, all the time. Hums and buzzes and low-key, ultraviolet, infrared sounds below the threshhold of consciousness. I seem to be able to hear things that other people can't.

I had a hearing test a couple of years ago, and they put a headset on me and played noises that got softer and softer. I had to hold my hand up when I heard one. They were about to pack it in when I held my hand up one last time.

"Wait. No one hears that one."

But there was "one", one more that people don't hear, just a few molecules of sound that were more of a tap than a noise. The air was ever so slightly disturbed.

I'm definitely hearing something, these nights, and I know it will be worse in the summer when I have the windows open.

This is my second attempt to record/post the night noises, and I think this one is more identifiable as an aircraft, but that depends on what you think. Turn the volume up high.

Myself, I can't play it any more. I'm too creeped out.

"Thank God he's alive!"

Our old friend Bosley the (former) Mystery Duck is alive and well! He disappeared over the worst of the winter, along with most of the mallards. Now he's back, fat and happy. His markings are so strange and ornate that we keep thinking there are more like him, but we've never been able to pin it down.

I was so curious about this duck that I sent a gif of him to the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and asked if they would try to identify it. I was amazed to get a prompt reply. They believe he is a hybrid of a domestic fowl called a magpie duck, raised for meat, and one of the more promiscuous mallards in Como Lake.

His featherings are exotic, and because of that, and his sheer size, he sticks out like a sore duck thumb, but we love him. It's his loyalty, I think. He and the mallard flock are closely bonded. No doubt one of his parents fled the barnyard when he/she realized what was coming next. "Duck dinner," as Wimpy used to say. "You bring the duck."

Very dear to me

Cat Puts On Bunny Hat

It might be food (but probably not)

And here is the latest edition of "it might be food". You have probably noticed (or not!) that one of my recurrent obsessions is "bad old food": specifically, horrendous recipes from the post-War era that people must actually have prepared and eaten. In some cases, it's almost understandable: food rationing was a reality, giving rise to such monstrosities as "apple pie" made entirely of Ritz crackers, and "mock duck" (cheap chuck beef pounded thin and wrapped around bread stuffing, tied with string, and baked.) Real meat was almost nonexistent, except for the canned/processed variety made of lips and ears and other floor-sweepings. 

Gelatinous things abound. Molds seem to be an obsession. My mother had an entire set of copper jelly molds hanging on her kitchen wall. I confess to you right now: I have a jelly mold (they're never called Jell-o molds, though that's all you do with them). It's shaped like a strawberry and it's hanging on my kitchen wall. I just thought I should have one to have a proper kitchen. I sent away for it, I remember, to the Jell-o Corporation, sending boxtops or whatever, and two dollars. I also have a very nice recipe box made of blonde wood, which I also sent away for, God-knows-how-many years ago. It has an image of a giant cartoon Chip-it burned into the front, causing me to cover it with stickers which I have to replace every few years because they peel off. These days I use those nice free ones from the Humane Society.

I wonder if this sending-away stuff hearkens back to my childhood, when I had to send so many box tops to Battle Creek, Michigan, to receive my swell plastic submarine (operated with baking soda to make it go up and down) from the Kellogg Corporation.

Old things stick, they stick around. Or they did. I don't know if they do now or not. I'm too old to know what younger people do. We look back at these recipes, and - ugh, they seem horrendous, but I did eat similar things back then: creamed chipped beef on toast; fried bread; pork hocks (jellied pigs' trotters); and Jell-o molds of all kinds, usually with cottage cheese heaped in the middle (which no one ate) and pointless sprigs of parsley that were always thrown away. 

There IS a good Jell-o mold called Sunshine Salad, not very sweet, but you have to like pineapple and grated carrot, which I do. The gelatine is tart and contains nuts.

My gif slideshow maker, which has been working overtime lately, doesn't like these recipe things because they are all different shapes and sizes. So long as the ratio is the same (i. e. if they're all 8 x 10 or 4 x 6), it's cool. These were wildly different, so I had to put up with white borders, but the hell with it, it's Friday and who has the time or the inclination to try to get everything to be the same ratio? I've done a couple of these presentations - cuz I like doing them - and in this case, I really tried to pick recipes I haven't included before. That isn't too difficult, because the list seems to be endless.

By the bye-bye, if you like this sort of thing, you'll probably love the YouTube channel below, which is entirely dedicated to testing (and eating, or trying to eat) vintage recipes. I just discovered it in the last two minutes and plan to explore it further.

https://www.youtube.com/user/GlamorousHousewife

Pac Man meat loaf

I am sorry for this. I was putting together a post about terrible recipes, and the rabid urge to animate swept over me once again. I couldn't contaminate my post with such a thing, but somehow couldn't delete it either. At least you were warned.

Neon nights: an animation

       

Bear video of the week!

The horror! The horror!

Shirley MacLaine ‘processing the horror’ of Warren Beatty’s Oscar fiasco

Bryan Alexander , USA TODAY

Published 5:59 p.m. ET Feb. 28, 2017 |

Updated 9:06 a.m. ET March 1, 2017

Shirley MacLaine felt her younger brother Warren Beatty's pain during Sunday's big Oscar flub.

Beatty was given the wrong envelope and thus co-presenter Faye Dunaway read the wrong winner for the best picture award. There was an historically chaotic scene and MacLaine, who had presented an award just before, was in the audience watching.

“I think we’re all processing the horror of it," MacLaine tells USA TODAY. “I’m still dealing with it.”

“I’m concerned with how (Beatty) must have felt being so close to him. I’m three years older and I’m protective," MacLaine says. “We know how difficult it was for him, but it was also for me.”

MacLaine, 82, says she called Beatty, 79, "immediately" after the show.

"He was backstage dealing with what he was going through. He didn’t answer his phone," MacLaine says. "And then I called the home and (wife Annette Bening) answered and we talked. And that’s all I’m going to say.”

MacLaine stopped briefly at the Governors Ball party after the show. But ended up heading out.

"I just wanted to go home. It’s something to really think about, what if it happened to you?" MacLaine says.

“I’m basically a mystic. And I’m wondering what was that all about? And I am not sure yet. I have to think about it some more," says MacLaine. “The one thing you learned about what occurred at the Oscars is that every instant of life is important. And anything like that can happen to you, driving in a car, leading a seminar, working at your desk and presenting an award."

Blogger's Commentary. It's hard to know where to begin here, but at the same time, I really don't need to say anything, do I? When you think of the real horrors that have happened in recent times with terrorist attacks in public places, the bloodshed and mayhem, this was a harmless little boo-boo which should be laughed off. It was NOTHING compared to those atrocities. 

The implication is that in a spectacle as posh and elite as the Oscars, you can't have anything embarrassing or painful happen. It's like a rich man suffering misfortune. Everyone gasps, not in horror so much as surprise.  A mistake has been made. Wait - what?

No matter what the Academy believes, the Oscars is (are?) not immune to real horror. That "improvised" episode with the busload of tourists (not spontaneous at all but carefully planned and rehearsed) included a convicted felon who had just gotten out of jail for, among other things, attempted rape. He glad-handed and stole the show for several minutes. Obviously, Oscar security was lousy if it let a scumbag like that enter the building, let alone hog the spotlight for several minutes.

All this bumph about how meticulously-prepared these shows are, about how many fail-safe systems they have built in so that NOTHING can go wrong. . . it makes me feel worse, actually, about that convict getting in and flying under the radar. Think what might have happened if his mind tilted in a slightly different direction, or if he was slightly armed.

So now we have this shrivelled old grand dame who is "basically" a mystic (so she doesn't come with mystical accessories?), calling the Best Picture bleep-up a disaster on the scale of the Titanic. I used to like Shirley MacLaine, but something happened to her at some point. Her values, if she ever had any, have disintegrated. "Processing the horror", indeed. It was a mistake, Shirl, so get over it. By Oscar standards, it was a big one. There will be repercussions. But no one was hurt. No one died.

And everything else is replaceable.

Cozy cats

Horse Playing With Rubber Chicken

Cat with cherry blossoms

Can't get the damn thing started

                                         
                        Happens to me all the time.

My last word on the Oscars screwup

There's a kind of magic in being able to read the Best Picture winner from an envelope clearly marked Actress in a Leading Role.

Either that, or it's just plain stupid.

Even more stupid are these accountants! They had ONE JOB, and they (or he - it was Brian Cullinan who actually screwed it up) were unable to perform it correctly. 

Their earnest explanation of how foolproof their little system is now rings sort of hollow. This is a quote from the Huffington Post:

In a blog post published on Medium this month, Brian Cullinan and Martha Ruiz of the firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, explained the process of handling the envelopes for the Oscars. Mr. Cullinan wrote that he and Ms. Ruiz each had a full set of envelopes and stood on opposite sides of the stage, where they handed envelopes to presenters.

“It doesn’t sound very complicated,” Mr. Cullinan said, “but you have to make sure you’re giving the presenter the right envelope.”

Ahead of the show, both Ruiz and Cullinan seemed assured that no mistake of that kind would be made.

Cullinan told The Huffington Post before the ceremony that if a wrong winner were to be called, “We would make sure that the correct person was known very quickly. Whether that entails stopping the show, us walking onstage, us signaling to the stage manager — that’s really a game-time decision, if something like that were to happen. ”

He added, “Again, it’s so unlikely.”

 

                      (Proud of yourself, Brian?)

Blogger's note. The above image may be a clue to the whole thing. Brian Cullinan, whose sole responsibility was to hand Warren Beatty the Best Picture envelope, got starstruck and distracted, posting this tweet of Emma Stone only a couple of minutes before he was to perform his incredibly difficult envelope-handing duty. Somehow or other, he neglected to look at what was written on the envelope, or didn't bother, or just assumed it was the right one. Or - didn't care.

What was written on the envelope was: Actress in a leading role. The category Emma Stone had just won. The same Emma Stone he was tweeting photos of and drooling over. 

So did the real envelope get stuck to the bottom of his shoe with a blob of gum, or what? Nobody ever sufficiently explained where the actual envelope came from, who found it, ANY of that.  The obnoxious La La Land guy, the one who snatched the card out of Warren Beatty's hand, later said "it just appeared out of somewhere". Great. With this level of insight, I am sure things will function much better next year.

But here's another weirdball detail. Brian Cullinan and that chick, you know, Martha Ruiz, kept saying there were TWO briefcases, containing two identical sets of envelopes with the names of the winners.

One for Brian. One for Martha. 

Explain this, then!:

I see three. Do YOU see three? Can't these guys count? They're accountants, aren't they? What the fuck is going on here?

With so many identical black briefcases being juggled around, each containing God knows what, is it so surprising that it got mixed up?

Well, yes, it IS surprising, to me. Any alert five-year-old could hand over an envelope without screwing it up. I think I did it in kindergarten.

You will always be remembered as the man who fucked up the Oscars, Brian. That sound you hear? It's not a waterfall or a rushing stream. It's your career being flushed down the toilet.

(Let's see this one more time.)

Update. All right, just ONE more thing! Look at these tasty photos of Brian Cullinan (as if we needed any more evidence that the envelopes were screwed up):

Brian Cullinan backstage (that looks like Warren Beatty getting hugged, and Emma Stone with her hair pulled back). Note the red circle marked "envelopes".

ZOOM IN! We see that in his left hand, Cullinan has two envelopes and a phone. ONE of those envelopes must be the right one for Best Picture! And the other one is, well. . . uhh. . . (the one he gave Warren Beatty).

And here he is tweeting away, starstruck and wanting to align himself with all that glamour. (These are tweets that he madly deleted as soon as the shit hit the fan). The theory is, he was too distracted by social media to do the ONE JOB he was supposed to do that night. 

The more I think about this, the worse it gets. He obviously did not even look at the envelope he handed over to Warren Beatty, nor did he look at the one he still had in his hand.

Or maybe he did!

Maybe he KNEW he got it wrong, panicked, didn't know what to do, and pulled a Teddy Kennedy at Chappaquiddick (sorry, you have to be pretty old to remember this) and just pretended it didn't happen. 

Hoped it would go away.

Most people are thinking in terms of: "they" only knew when the title came out of Faye Dunaway's mouth. But it's possible this guy knew almost right away - if he even glanced down at the card he still had in his hand. If so, he stood there doing nothing, not just while they announced the erroneous winner, but all through the reading of the nominees and the relevant film clips (a process which seemingly takes forever). That's a lot of time to stop the proceedings, go onstage and say, "Sorry, folks, I screwed up."

We hear today his involvement with the Oscars has been terminated, but he still hasn't been fired. It's a mystery as to why. As one wag put it: "Would you want HIM doing your taxes?" But perhaps the firm believes that firing him would be too much of an admission of guilt and would wreck their chances at the Oscars next year.

Italian Spiderman Trailer

Meryl Streep at the Oscars: my new, improved gif!

I managed to salvage five images from the internet of Meryl Streep's unforgettable reaction to the Oscars screwup, in which Best Picture was awarded to the wrong movie. Turned out that, because they were taken quite close together and she was looking straight into the camera (gee, I wonder why?), they made quite a nice gif. It does seem amazing, however, that she wasn't looking at the stage at the time. She was looking at. . . whoever. Whoever had the camera on her at that moment.

Speaking of Oscars, can't we give her an honorary one just for this?

Pop my laces: swordfight in a corset

Desert horse

I'm not sure I understand this

                               Is that water, or. . . ?

Turkish Superman (1979)

"Jaw-dropping": Celebrities react to the Oscar screwup

These reactions are unlike anything you'll ever see again (I hope) at the Oscars. People have just realized that the wrong movie was announced as Best Picture (La La Land instead of the real winner, Moonlight). This was jaw-dropping in the most literal sense of the word. Just look at all those open mouths! People seem stunned. Frozen. Hands shoot up to faces. Meryl Streep's eyes bulge out melodramatically. She looks utterly horrified, shocked, as if it were the end of the world. Shirley MacLaine just needs help! Her brother Warren Beatty has just screwed up in front of the whole world (or so everyone claimed - in truth, he was just given the wrong envelope and didn't know how to handle it).

People are comparing this image in particular to a Renaissance painting, one of those group ones where everyone's in a snit about something, or waiting for the Judgement Day, or whatever. Due to my blog limitations, I can't blow it up very much unless I cut it into little pieces:

Here you can truly see where these people's priorities lie, and how ill-prepared they are for anything outside a movie studio, where you can fix a problem with one more take (or gobs of money).

Though these are not an exact match - hey, I don't have THAT much time to spend on this! - and I don't know who the artists are (ditto), you get the idea.
People don't know how ridiculous they look when caught off-guard. I couldn't help but notice that Sammy Davis Jr., the standup comedian and stage actor, handled the wrong-envelope fluff much more smoothly than did his movie star counterparts. These people don't even face audiences except at awards shows. They don't know how to do anything live. 

Warren Beatty has always struck me as looking like a stunned rabbit. He has been so worked-on that you can't tell if he's panic-stricken or not. Maybe he's just being himself. The plastic surgery just hasn't worn very well, as it never does: it all comes unstuck after a while, the nose caves in, the muscles begin to tug and pull unnaturally - or naturally, trying desperately to get the face back to some sort of original shape before death.

ALWAYS FINDING MORE DEPT. Here's perhaps the best group shot I've found:

. . . with this outstanding detail: