2012 Calendar Cover

It's another slow process, but there may be a 2012 calendar after all - slightly truncated, but it's evolving.....

Ultimately, this should be posted to www.lulu.com/spotlight/UncleStan

Homes in "the Hood" - Battle Creek's Historic District

Elm Street

This may be on Garfield Avenue...where is that notebook!?

Orchard Place, South

Fremont Street

Frelingheuysen Street

Orchard Place, North

Repaired - well, sort of - Banned Pharmacy Promotion Film

Found out that the earlier posting for the Ferris pharmacy promotion film was glitched beyond comprehension.  Such is the fate of a 1976 1/2 inch video master.  This one has the sound slightly corrected...maybe it is viewable now...oh these archives...who came through with a magnet!!!! EGAD!!!!!!

The youtube link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4nrKIep0Uw
(about 10 minutes)

Celebrating Kevin Matthews

(c) 1989 The Animating Apothecary

(c) 1989 The Animating Apothecary

(c) 1989 The Animating Apothecary

(c) 1989 The Animating Apothecary

(c) 1989 The Animating Apothecary

I got to work with Kevin Matthews on his KEVHEAD magazine back in the 1980s, and some things fell out of the archives recently!  Now he's been let go from WLAV-FM in Grand Rapids, and I have no longer any reason to listen to them ever again.  Apparently he has mended fences with Steve Dahl of Chicago and plans to do some podcast work at www.dahl.com - so Jim Shorts may ride again!

Intelligent Design Pharmacy



(c) 2006 The Animating Apothecary

Illustration compilation at lulu press.  Here's the link:  http://ar.gy/3UB9



The HMO Hydra



(c) 1998 The Animating Apothecary

With Medco and assorted mail-order companies essentially obliterating the independent retail market, it's only proper to share some experiences with these knuckle-draggers.  This is pretty much what it's like to deal with their 'help line.'  My favorite waiting message is that a "Certified Pharmacy Technician" will be available soon to direct my clinical pharmacy needs.  The last one I spoke to was "certified" after a 6 week training course at Walgreen's.  

Another Red Letter Day in Drug Enforcement - Nixon and Elvis

A Brief Tribute to Male Nurses....

It's tough to be a nurse, but it can be an added challenge to be a male nurse...

(originally for the Journal of Nursing Jocularity in the 1990s...miss ya, Doug Fletcher!)

Illustration compilation at lulu press.  Here's the link:  http://ar.gy/3UB9

Jabberwockies ... Two Versions

The first, from 2006, and then as second run at the exercise, in 2010.  Ah that Lewis Carroll!
2006:

And from 2010.....because a public domain poem is PRICELESS!!!!!

Some Ideas That Didn't Quite Catch On

(c) 1985 The Animating Apothecary

(c) 1988 The Animating Apothecary

Working Out Some Genres

A goal is to get two cases of drawings scanned before 2025.  Another goal is to get a nap before 2025.  The nap may win out.

Another Celebration of Winsor McCay

Splicing together a few clips and images reveal that Winsor McCay may have had a subconscious influence on the motion picture from his early strip, "Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend."  Without it, there wouldn't have been the Edwin S. Porter film, or a reference to set up a dream for Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., or a later short film featuring bad dreams and lobsters, or even dancing on the ceiling!

The clip runs about 20 minutes on Youtube...

Something from THIS Century - in time for flu season

OK, this one's still five years old, but it does have to do with flu season.  OK, not so much.  In fact, very little.  It's something inspired by drawing various chickens one afternoon, and then hearing "Hungarian Rhapsody #2" clucked by some 1920's Europeans.  It also really, really annoyed Flash, or at least that's how the fantasy goes.  A whole weekend never to be returned....

Another crumbling artifact - 1993 animatic for "Channel Surfing"

Kevin Matthews, now back in Grand Rapids at WLAV-FM with Ed Buchanan in the morning, was one of the power players at WLUP in Chicago back when it played music in the 1990s.
At that time, he approached me to contribute to a proposed TV series he was going to produce - the project "Channel Surfing."  This was back when it was still possible to do six impossible things before breakfast.  This clip, meant to bracket either end of the never-completed pilot, took almost an entire weekend.  It was a challenge for the 286-lead sled and gen-lock in the office, and again a DOSsy project, with all the resolution of 8mm film, and remains a product of its time.  So here 'tis....

Losing Weight - Circa 1905

This has another Battle Creek connection.  Frank J. Kellogg was not related to either W.K. Kellogg (whose cereal used to be made in Battle Creek) or Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (whose 'biologic living' was ridiculed in the 2% accurate "Road to Wellville").  He sold a combination of laxatives and thyroid extracts by mail as a "obesity cure" and became one of Battle Creek's first millionaires - and was noteworthy for tying up the divorce courts so much that the Michigan Supreme Court annulled one of them, citing that the couple "deserved each other."

It took forever (it seemed) to track down a photograph of this Civil War supply sergeant-turned medical entrepreneur.  One emerged when this letter fell from the insides of a wall being torn out during a home remodel in Battle Creek.  It also gives an idea of how he did business AND how he was very, very proud of his signature.

The "Professor" is a title he bestowed upon himself. 

There's an article about his life and times, and multiple marriages, at this site:  The Kellogg Who Would Be King (shameless self-promotion alert - I wrote it!)

A Bit of Pharmacy History - 1919

A couple of drug pages from the E. R. Squibb and Son's "Materia Medica" book of fine, pure products from 1919.  At this point, the FDA had been in place 13 years....

...I am pretty certain that by 1919, these products required a prescription...
The text on cannabis reads:

"Cannabis has been employed as a Sedative, Anodyne and Hypnotic, in cases where opium does not agree with the patient. Unlike the latter, it causes neither nausea nor constipation. It produces at first a mental stimulation, which is later followed by a calmer mood and finally by sleep. It is used in acute and chronic mental derangements, in neuralgia, migraine, gout and rheumatism. In combination with the bromides (see Tab­lets Triple Bromides and Cannabis Compound) it is employed in hysteria, delirium tremens and mild cases of mania. All patients do not respond to it alike; and while no doubt idiosyn­crasy plays a great part, yet the quality of the drug has much to do with its constitutional effect. In all our preparations of this drug the best quality of hemp is used. "

Benny Says HI! (ca 1995, via DOS 6)

Here's a clip I found while converting files from *.flc format from my old Autodesk Animator Pro program, something that should have become Flash, but nooooooooooooooo that would have been too easy!

A Moment of Snarkiness from the 2010 Edition...


 Because sometimes you can smell people before you see them.....



(c) MMIX The Animating Apothecary

        (well so much for making an animated GIF out of this one!)  

Images That Make a Collector Cringe

This came from a Popular Science issue in 1936.  With the Great Depression in full force, and radio being free, those clunky useless phonographs had to be put to some use.  After all, who'd pay money for music when you could get anything in the world for FREE on the radio? 

Now, let's jump to today and the news that electronic books are outselling paper-based books.

Sorry, gang, I'm not going to rely on perpetual easy-access to the internet or digital media.  The books are staying!

Celebrating 1911 and Winsor McCay

In 1911, Winsor McCay created his first animated film, Little Nemo, and things haven't been the same since. 
Click here to see Little Nemo (2 minute clip on youtube)

In 1930, he wrote and illustrated (at least some of it, the graphics seem a bit variable) a guide to animation for Modern Illustrating, an artist correspondance course from Minnesota.  Here are the 17 pages he created: