Animating Apothecary - Perpetrations by Jim Middleton

Wednesday, May 21, 2025

Post 747 - Testing sketches from last November

Tossing in some details and other experiments amid a November 2024 stack of sketches, representing several "works in progress" (I'll have to live forever).

And a bit more play time -

And...

And now on to other doodles...more as this progresses...

Saturday, May 17, 2025

Post 746 - May Flower Moon Sketch - for ASIFA Newsletter

Wednesday, May 14, 2025

Post 745 - Splinter Groups and the Glory of Collecting Toothpicks

SLIVERS IN THE TEETH - AND OTHER DENTAL WOODWORK
Notebook Entry - February, 1988

    Like matchbook collectors, mavens of the toothpick tend to hang around restaurants, bars, and cocktail waitresses. The beginner starts young, relinquishing his Nuk nipple only for the finest quality woods, eventually transformed from the mere chewer of straw at the corner drugstore into a member of the most elite of associations, the Splinter Group. Among those in the SG, collecting toothpicks is not so much a hobby as it is a way of life.

    Becoming a member of the Splinter Group (or its spinoff, the Reformed Splinters, also known as "R-splint" or RS) has its advantages, the most striking being its dental plan, deemed by some to be the most comprehensive in the nation. Since the membership is renowned for its clean teeth, group coverage represents a minimal expense to the underwriters. In addition, potential members are drawn by the annual "It'll Never Get Better If You Picket" bus tour which encompasses the major forests and lumber mills of New England and the Northwest.

    How does the casual collector of toothpicks meet the strict qualifications of becoming a member of the Splinter Group? There are two ways: (1) the applicant must submit an affadavit attesting that his collection is his own and not an inheritance; that no part of his collection consists of plastic cocktail forks or the rubberized "reproductions" that plagued the market from 1924-1937; that his collection contains at least one specimen cut from (a) ivory (not the soap, and not from unintended sources--one applicant was denied membership for trying to pass off slivers from his Aunt Jessica's piano keys as the genuine article), (b) ebony or teak wood, and (c) sterling silver; or (2) he can send in sixteen bucks.

    I know I have derived considerable pleasure in collecting toothpicks for the past thirty years. In fact, my many duplicates were glued together last summer to patch a hole in the garage roof, thus reassuring me and scoffing at those who consider gathering these indispensable shards of wood a waste of time. My prized possession is a specimen either used by George Washington or a bit of fallout after some heavy teeth gnashing during the American Revolution. In any case, I keep it in a velvet-lined box somewhere in my basement. Someday I hope to find it.

Tuesday, May 13, 2025

Post 744 - Public Service Announcement - Sigmoidoscopy (nudge nudge wink wink)

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT - ETIQUETTE DURING SIGMOIDOSCOPIES

WHILE POLITELY DESCRIBED AS A SIMILAR SENSATION TO BEING CONFINED IN A TURKISH PRISON, SIGMOIDOSCOPIES HAVE A VALUABLE PLACE IN A PHYSICIAN'S DIAGNOSTIC TOOLBOX.

THERE ARE SOME RULES THAT SHOULD BE FOLLOWED:

(1) FAINTING AT THE SIGHT OF THE MAMMOTH HOSE ABOUT TO VIOLATE YOUR BODY IS PERMITTED; HOWEVER, AVOID COMMENTS LIKE, "HEY BUDDY, JUST WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING TO DO WITH THAT THING?" SUCH COMMENTS ARE RUDE, AND YOU WILL FIND OUT SOON ENOUGH ANYWAY.

(2) REFRAIN FROM EATING BEANS, ONIONS, OR CURRIED SHRIMP THE NIGHT BEFORE THE PROCEDURE. THIS IS FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE OTHERS IN THE ROOM, SINCE YOU WILL BE AN UNCONSCIOUS, JELLYLIKE MASS BY THIS TIME.

(3) BE VERY KIND TO THOSE PERFORMING THE PROCEDURE. REMEMBER, YOU ARE PROBABLY UNCONSCIOUS AND WILL NOT FEEL SOMETHING LIKE A TATOO BEING PUT IN A PLACE YOU WILL NEVER SEE.

REMEMBER THESE SIMPLE RULES DURING THE PROCEDURE AND YOUR SIGMOIDOSCOPY WILL BE A MORE ENJOYABLE, POLITE EXPERIENCE.

DISENGAGE

END OF PROGRAM

STOP

Saturday, May 10, 2025

Post 743 - Heresy At the Viaduct - Reimagining "The Cocoanuts" with The Four Marx Brothers

The Cocoanuts Reduction - 75 minutes

The Public Domain introduced the first Marx Brothers film, The Cocoanuts, into its arms this year. The 1929 early talkie is best taken in comparison to other films from Paramount, notably Follow Through, that were essentially filmed records of the stage success.

"Hey, hey! That's only for long distances."

What has always stood out for me is how the brothers, while uncomfortable in the new medium for this first outing, seem far less forced in their performances than others making the transition. In Follow Through, Jack Haley and Zelma O'Neal seem to be arching themselves to the overhead microphone ("You Belong to Me") or playing to an invisible back row ("I Want to be Bad"). The Marxes seem aware of their staging but are more comfortable in their own skins - the conversations are more directed to each other than to someone off-camera (although Groucho has several glances at the camera just to check where things are going). Follow Through is online, in two-strip Technicolor, in all its contrived plot line splendor - Follow Through - 1930 - youtube

What didn't age well in The Cocoanuts is the subplot. Oscar Shaw is hardly a youthful love interest, and Mary Eaton's voice is shrill even for 1920's musical tastes (they were an apparent "pair" at the time on stage). Their presence, along with their stilted non-comic lines, really drag the film into curio status.

So I committed heresy - I started cutting. Trimming. Peeling out about a reel's worth from the original film.

What couldn't really be helped was the absolutely feeble concluding scene, where the plot is all resolved, and Mary Eaton peels out yet another rendition of When My Dreams Come True. Even with the edits, even with the removal of flubbed lines, the faults in the structure of that segment can't be masked - they can only be made shorter. And just where did Polly get those two copies of the mysterious maps to Cocoanut Grove?

I found a 1926 Victor recording of "Gems from The Cocoanuts" in my audio archives, and it includes some music that didn't make the journey to the filmed version, so I took liberty to play with the opening montage, the Lovely Land Called Florida segment, and the closing reprise of Dreams Come True by replacing the final song with A Little Bungalow.

What remains is a brisk 75 minute version of The Cocoanuts, retaining the repeated confusion of whether Groucho's missed train is the 4:15 or the 4:30, but removing many of the distractions from the brothers' scenes. It makes their first film a logical prelude to their characters in Monkey Business, even if it doesn't completely lay the groundwork for their second film, the classic Animal Crackers (which will go into Public Domain in 2026, with the benefit of added clips that were discovered in an uncensored British print just a few years ago).

I have always found it interesting that it took so long for film producers to understand that the purpose of the chorus lines and the love interests was just to allow the Marxes the chance to rest between their dynamic scenes and reset the stage behind the curtain. In film, you can just cut, and the sweat equity is already taken care of. Bob Gassel of the Marx Brothers Council Podcast, - Link to that site here - a genius at creating lost continuity, did just that a few years ago, in his "Paramount edits" of their MGM films, where the potently flawed At the Circus and The Big Store were both trimmed to a fairly palatable 45 minutes.

Think what you may, The Cocoanuts is my current favorite tasty treat in this truncated form:

The Cocoanuts Reduction on Vimeo

And, while I was at it, I thought their "final" film could have some uninvited attention, too (it entered the public domain several years ago):

A Night in Casablanca Revisit - 74 minutes

Wednesday, May 07, 2025

Post 742 - Atticus (the Catticus)

Sunday, April 20, 2025

Post 741 - A Quick Overview of Battle Creek's Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and his Influence, ca 1993

Dr. Kellogg had determined that his Biologic Living could take care of any complaint. He had already decided that quinine was less effective than hydrotherapy for typhoid; so, when the depression hit, he decided to save money by walking into the San's pharmacy and firing the whole department. Now, in Michigan, there is a law that states if a hospital has more than 25 beds, it is required to have an on-site pharmacist. So a week or so later, Dr. Kellogg was in the situation of having to replace his pharmacy department. Most of the staff had found jobs elsewhere, except for one of the technicians, who was still working at the San, but in physical therapy. Dr. Kellogg tracked him down and put him in charge of the newly reorganized pharmacy department. I suppose by doing this, you could say he anticipated today's methods of health care management. By the way, the new employees of the pharmacy were encouraged to use the back entrances of the San.

Dr. Kellogg made a point of commenting on the contemporary women's fashions of the 19th century. He was especially disturbed with the use of corsets to get the "hour glass" figure so popular then, and made a point in his world travels of measuring the natural waistlines of the native population. Constriction of the intestines interrupted the natural flow of things and could lead to autointoxication. One day he set out to demonstrate this with an experiment on his wife's collie, fitting the dog with a patient's corset. The dog had other ideas and took off. Kellogg followed on his bicycle but the dog made it home first, still partially wearing the corset. There is no documentation of the conversation that followed between the doctor and his wife, just as there is no record of how the doctor coaxed one of his patient's from her corset.

In the end, he was a man of contradictions. While telling us we needed to relax, he worked upwards of 20 hours a day. He wanted us to eat properly, but was erratic in his own diet. He considered himself a philanthropist, but paid the lowest possible wages to his employees. He wrote over 50 books, was foster father to over 40 children, performed over 10,000 surgeries, and put Battle Creek on the map before anyone ever heard of corn flakes, yet there is not a single monument, building, or street named for him. Ultimately, he was a man of ideals and ideas, but a poor businessman who didn't have an effective plan to perpetuate his legacy.

With George Bernard Shaw, mid 1920s

Post 740 - A Public Service Announcement

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT from the American Society Against Society

If you are suffering from a lamina-propriate, densely-infiltrating and acidic schiff-positive macrophages, with villus structures obliterated within severe lesions, you may have WHIPPEL’S DISEASE - not to be confused with ZENKER’S DIVERTICULUM, an out-pouching of the mucosa, posterior through the criciopharyngeal muscle, considered too pseudo to be a true diverticulum.

The Consolidated Centers for Disease Control have also issued an alert following an outbreak of MUNKE’S KINQUE HAIR SYNDROME, formerly HASHIMOTO’S STROMA, resulting in Delhi boils, Hanoi stir-fry, and Catnip abuse. It is an autoimmune disorder, so do not drive unless you have been properly vaccinated against Teslas.

If you have any symptoms, or know of someone who has, REMAIN CALM, isolate yourself from children of mother-rearing age, and contact the young republican office nearest you. Bring cash, copper tubing, or in the case of WHIPPEL’S DISEASE, an extra case of unsqueezed toilet tissue.

You will be instructed to the market analyst who will be handing your case to help you to a safe and speedy recovery. This is all true. You read it on the internet.

Post 739 - The Laissez-Faire Pharmacy - An Article from 1997

With RFK Jr's brainworm/roadkill approach to healthcare these days, this article seemed rather relevant once more:

      Ninety-two years ago (note: this would have been 1905), the general public had direct access to nearly any drug available on the market. Morphine, cocaine, opium, and strychnine were available by mail from Sears' catalogue; a prescription was often but a formality and "patent medicines" containing unknown and often addictive agents made millionaires of unscrupulous entrepreneurs. Consumers believed the ads, took the "cures," and often died; their memories endured as "unsolicited testimonials" to the treatments that shortened their lives.

     When Theodore Roosevelt pushed for the creation of the FDA in 1906, lobbyist pressures saw to it that the agency would begin its life as a toothless child. It took medical disasters and consumer deaths to give it the power to determine which drugs should be available only with a prescription. That scrap of paper became the control valve on potentially harmful medications; products that didn't make the cut were considered generally safe if properly used.

     The 1980s, a noteworthy decade for its hands-off approach to governmental regulation, produced an ever increasing collection of drugs entering the marketplace, many representing only variations on existing treatments. The FDA seemed willing to approve anything that might further stimulate the piranha -churned economy; if one of the new entries later proved to be harmful, or perhaps deadly, it could always be removed.

     The past few years have seen a less passive FDA, yet, with all the criticism levied upon outgoing chairman David Kessler in his efforts to strengthen the agency, it was under his administration that several drugs were deregulated to nonprescription status.   There have been further deregulations on the part of other therapies, most notably of the naturopathic, or herbal variety. With each deregulation came the presumption of safety on the part of the consumer, and with each deregulation the main source of public information came primarily from advertising and mass marketing. Once again, consumers believed the ads and took the "cure." In a sad regression to the turn of the century, some have fallen ill; others have died.

     Consumers saw a commercial announcing that Anacin or Excedrin are now "aspirin free" and some presumed all Anacin and all Excedrin were aspirin free, with disastrous results. The natural products ephedra and golden seal have caused deaths from severe elevations in blood pressure. Both plants were, and are, promoted as "natural" treatments for infections or fatigue. Even the ubiquitous acetaminophen, more commonly known as the heavily advertised Tylenol, can cause severe liver damage in high doses.

     Of recent concern has been the deregulation of prescription antacids into "nonprescription strengths," heavily promoted as a casual alternative to previous antacids (one of the disturbing messages of these ad campaigns is that the consumer shouldn’t change his eating habits, he should just take another pill). One of these newer antacids is cimetidine, currently marketed as Tagamet HB. Cimetidine has been shown to interact with other drugs used as blood thinners to treatments for asthma and epilepsy; to reduce the effectiveness of some antibiotics; to increase the toxic effects of strong pain killers.   It's now available at your grocery store, next to "aspirin free" Anacin and capsules of golden seal.

     Then follow the drugs-du-jour: the melatonins, the DHEAs, the chromium picinolates. At best, they can be harmless (some could say worthless); at worst, can cause side effects that are difficult to predict and won't be listed on the bottle.

     Education becomes an issue here, since a nonprescription drug can be safe and useful when properly used. Unfortunately, the primary source of public information is from the companies who are selling the goods. They're businesses, after all, out to make money, and side effects won't sell a product--especially to a consumer looking for a quick fix. If a company is going to point out a flaw, it certainly won't be theirs. We have seen this in campaigns pitting one newly deregulated pain killer against another for its interaction with alcohol; again, it was a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

     With more deregulation on the horizon, consumers need to be increasingly wary of overblown claims, especially those made by marketing teams who treat their health as just another commodity
to be packaged and sold. They need to rely more on information from a properly trained, well-informed health care provider instead of hype from a glossy magazine spread.

Post 738 - Notes on "The Great Dictator" - presentation to GR Ford Museum, 1988

BEHIND "THE GREAT DICTATOR"
Notes for 28 January, 1988
Gerald R. Ford Museum, Grand Rapids

Thank you. I have been introduced as a filmmaker and I would like to clarify this a bit--I am a pharmacist and instructor in Battle Creek who makes films whenever he can. My last completed work was an animated piece that seemed to follow disasters in the third world -- it turned up in Lisbon just before the American embassy was bombed, it played in Tunisia about the time Arrafat showed up, and it may have caused a typhoon in Australia, but I'm not sure. So you guys in the back with the cheap suits and sunglasses, yes, I'm the one, and don't worry, I'm not showing that film tonight.

As far as my lecturing goes, I had a tense few moments this morning when getting ready for this presentation: I printed the wrong file from my word processor -- you all came very close to getting a test on the Function of Endorphins in Prostaglandin Inhibition.

*****
I am here because, like most of you, I devour films, I am a ceaseless filmgoer, and I have especial admiration for Mr. Chaplin and his work, without which we would have a large void and probably little if any interest in silent film. He remained stubbornly independent, making personal films with varying degrees of success until he was well into his 70s. He completed "The Great Dictator" when he was 51.

*****
The film you have just seen was banned, for obvious reasons, in Nazi Germany. It was also banned in Italy. And Spain. And occupied France. And for a nervous two weeks, it looked like it would have been banned in parts of California.

It was premiered October 15, 1940, over a year before we entered World War II, at a time when 96% of America was proudly Isolationist, when Adolph Hitler was "good press," and when an announcement that The Funniest Man In The World was going to make a satire about dictators would bring sneers, protests, and violent threats from pro-Fascist groups in the United States.

The Longshoremen's Union was prepared to stand guard at the Hollywood premiere in the event of pro-Nazi demonstrations.

And all this for just a movie.

These days it would be hard to envision a similar circumstance, perhaps someone satirizing the lunacies in Iran or Libya, but even then, our response would not be as so emotionally charged as the reception this film got. Perhaps the Evils we see today are not great enough, perhaps they are too closely woven into our everyday life to appreciate; the optimist in me hopes that we recognize these Evils for what they are, are not duped by them, and cannot, therefore, be angered when they are shaken in front of our faces with a leer and a funny hat. I would like to believe this. However, the pessimist in me knows that we have found far more subtle ways of controlling the media--a film is re-cut, a word is changed to give a movie a stronger rating and, with it, a smaller audience, theatrical distribution can be limited; and, if it's a foreign film with a politically charged theme, it can be quietly denied entrance to our country as "propaganda." On television, vice presidents find they can increase their popularity by arguing with newscasters instead of answering their questions.

Of course, I am referring to Spiro Agnew.

But I digress.

It seems that in the America of 1940 enough people had bought the Germanic fantasies. Praise was guarded for "The Great Dictator."

The few who congratulated Chaplin for having the nerve to make such a picture in the first place, at a time when the Hollywood Factories were skittish about anything anti-Nazi, wondered if Chaplin had not gotten in over his head. Many critics complained that it wasn't funny enough. Most reviewers tore the final speech to ribbons. The British loved the film, but you see, they were biased -- Hitler was bombing London to smithereens.

President Roosevelt's only comment was to complain that the film upset some of our pro-Axis friends in South America.

And at a time when anti-Semitic films were playing to packed houses in New York, the League of Decency condemned "The Great Dictator" because, in it, they claimed Chaplin expressed a disbelief in God.

For those familiar with Chaplin's working methods, this film is filled with contradictions. Chaplin had rarely worked with more than a sketchy outline, usually in his head: for "The Great Dictator" he devised a 300 page script. The bubble dance with the globe, which looks improvised, was carefully written out, shot over six days, and had its first appearance at a party eleven years before. The squawking, howling, gibbering mock eloquence of the opening speech by Hynkel was ad-libbed before the cameras. The music so integral, so carefully composed for "City Lights" and "Modern Times" was scored here in three weeks.

Even the closing speech, criticized by the left as being too sentimental and by the right as being too pro-Communist, turned up in such diverse publications from the Reader's Digest and the British Communist Party. On one occasion, Chaplin was asked to repeat it for the radio audience of 60 million. The man who had given the talkies "six months" had seized sound with relish.

Within two years it would seem that Chaplin had been pulling his punches in this film, at least when compared with the seething propaganda of a war-frenzied Hollywood. Every major studio was at War with the World -- the Three Stooges did their part, Warner Brothers sent Bugs Bunny into the Marine Corps, and the industry congratulated itself for its foresight by giving Walt Disney an Oscar for a cartoon called "Der Fuerer's Face."

Chaplin, the self-declared "peace monger," was not congratulated for having lead the parade. His championing the cause for `a second front' to help Russia during the war, in fact, resulted in having him denied re-entry to the United States after a European visit in 1952, and monitored in Switzerland by the FBI until even after his death (they were interested enough when his body was stolen in 1979 to consider enlisting the aid of a psychic in Portland, Maine).

Governments, like people without a sense of humor, have selective memories.