Not safe for work: Mannequins you’d be proud to date

A few days ago I did a posting about a mannequin who was taken to dinner and parties, just like a real person. You can find it here.

It got me to thinking. A mannequin would be a pretty good girlfriend at that. You certainly wouldn’t have to worry about impressing her, and she wouldn’t eat much, so dining out would be cheap. The more I thought about it the more I liked the idea. I went searching online and found these modern, pretty examples of mannequins any man would be proud to take to dinner!

Oh, yeah...you will have to dress them, unless you elect to just keep them home.

The burglar’s big score

A former professional burglar tells of a really big score in this article from the February 24, 1969 issue of New York Magazine.

If you want to try any of the burglary techniques in this article, everything explained, step-by-step for your convenience, I can’t stop you. I can caution you that with modern alarm systems and security technology you're likely to get caught before you get out the door.

John Carter and the modern Victorian

John Carter, the movie, was considered a flop when it was released early in 2012. If you believe these numbers it cost an astonishing $250,000,000 — which translates out to a quarter billion, about what Mitt Romney has floating around in offshore bank accounts* — and according to the Internet Movie Database it earned worldwide around $285,000,000. In Hollywood terms that means it failed. I wonder if the same people who figure out the national debt and all of those astronomical dollar figures thrown around by economists do the same accounting for movie studios. Because of that, what was to be a major franchise with sequels died after the first movie.

I watched it today for the second time. Except for some annoying things like the portrayal of John Carter’s literary creator, Edgar Rice Burroughs, as a wimpy fellow (the real-life ERB** was anything but), I thought the action and special effects were excellent. It wasn't perfect. It was 20 minutes too long, and the framing device with Burroughs could have been cut down quite a bit, as could most all of the whole Wild West sequence.

Edgar Rice Burroughs’ original story was published in 1912 as “Under the Moons of Mars” by “Norman Bean” (a misspelled pen-name: Burroughs wanted the name “Normal Bean,” a pun for normal being) in the All-Story Magazine. The exotic locale placed it on Mars, but the story was deep in the Victorian tradition. Dejah Thoris, the princess that John Carter falls in love with is straight out of old-style novels where virtue is guarded, and death is preferred to dishonor. The movie perpetuates this sort of melodrama with an exchange between Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins) and her father, Tardos Mors (Ciaran Hinds), Jeddak of the city of Helium:

Speaking of Sab Than, Jeddak of Zodanga, Tardos Mors says to his daughter, “He will spare Helium — if you will accept his hand in marriage!” How could any actor nowadays say that line without cracking up with laughter? To his credit, Britisher Hinds does it straight-faced, and if you know Hinds, you know his straight-face is straighter than most.

In those days even the most evil-intentioned villain was demanding to marry the maiden rather than just take her to bed (to bed an unmarried woman would take a special kind of cad).

Taylor Kitsch (and by Issus I love his last name!) plays Captain John Carter, and he seems a good fit for the part, as does Lynn Collins as Dejah Thoris and even Ciaran Hinds as her father. Dominic West as Jeddak of Zodanga seems miscast, or maybe it’s because (and forgive me for saying this, because I believe West is a fine actor) I have him typecast in my mind as McNulty, the flawed cop in the HBO series, The Wire. Other actors are hidden behind CGI effects. Willem Dafoe, for instance, is the 15-foot tall Thark, Tars Tarkas. For what it’s worth, although I usually see CGI as just computer images, in this case I was able to shake it off and see the characters as the filmmaker intended them to be seen.

  
A Princess of Mars, the story’s book title, has been filmed before in a cheap 2009 video starring Antonio Sabato, Jr. as John Carter. The story itself is in public domain, although Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., a company formed decades ago to license Tarzan and other works of the popular author, has trademarked words like “Barsoom,” “John Carter of Mars,” etc., so anyone making a movie would have to pay. Very smart, and they are just doing what the John Carter producer, Walt Disney, has been doing for years, trademarking iconic characters.

The fact that no more of the John Carter series will come from Disney was a big disappointment to the people of Southern Utah where much of it was filmed. The desolate but beautiful red rock country probably looks more Martian to our earthly eyeballs than the real-life Mars.

As a kid I loved the John Carter novels by Burroughs, and still own all of the paperback editions. I have moved on in my literary tastes, even though as a young teen I was a member of the Burroughs Bibliophiles and a fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs. I found these pictures of the dust jackets of various early editions, and covers of magazines online. I still love the dynamic artwork, which looks magical to me and takes me back to an era past.***

*A cheap shot, I know. Kick a loser when he’s down. I’m sure Mitt's wealth is comforting to him.

**The movie places ERB in New York in 1881 as an adult. ERB was actually born in 1875.

***Frank Frazetta did some great illustrations from this series in the 1960s and '70s, but they are easier to find than these I'm showing.

Funny side of Life

Life editors had a sense of humor. Somebody had fun with these two articles, “Life goes to a Hitler party in West Virginia,” and “Life Goes to a party With a New York café socialite named Cynthia.”

“Cynthia,” as you’ll see, is a mannequin taken to various functions. Haven’t we seen similar plots in a couple of movies within the past decade or so? The article is from the issue of December 13, 1937. The Hitler party was held at the University of West Virginia by the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity, and is from December 5, 1938. The thing I find most absurd about a bunch of frat boys dressing up as Hitler is not the political satire and ridicule of Nazis, but that they served no alcohol at the party! Now that is funny.

Copyright 1937, 1938 Time-Life

The kind-hearted, helpful rapist

There was a nice obituary today for 63-year-old Stephen VanDam. There were nothing but positives and pleasant things said about the deceased. Among others, he was “kind-hearted and helped many people. . .he will be missed by all who knew him and loved him and there were many!”

That was on page B7. But on page B2 a story by Salt Lake Tribune reporter Brooke Adams is headlined, “Rapist, 63, serving life term in Utah prison dies.” It told the story of the same person, Stephen Van Dam (spelled differently in the news story than the obituary, but it's the same man), who had died after a long illness. When VanDam was 33, and “already had a criminal history,” according to the story, he “was convicted of multiple counts of aggravated sexual assault and confessed to at least 17 other attacks.” (On KSL.com a story claims he confessed to 27 rapes. Perhaps a typo?) VanDam was sentenced to prison, but at some point he escaped. He was returned in 1985, had a parole hearing in 1993 “where he was erroneously given a parole date of January 1996.” But that parole date was revoked and he was given a sentence of natural life, which, according to his obituary, ended on January 1, 2013.

In the obituary it is claimed, “He is at long last free!”

I think to the person or persons who composed his obituary the old dictum is true: If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. It is kind of hard to say something nice about a man who has confessed to 17 rapes, though, isn’t it?

Maybe at some point Vandam (another spelling I’ve found of his name), who had some intelligence (he had earned a B.S. degree in Business Administration), felt bad about his crimes. Maybe he expressed regrets to his family or friends. I don’t know. He was convicted of first degree felony rape as far back as 1970. I believe to rape, to violate another human being in that way takes a special type of sociopath, and by his crimes he fit that definition.

In a 2010 story on KSL.com the convicted rapist claimed to the Parole Board that he was a “changed man who wants to rejoin his church and return to Salt Lake City in peace.” Two of his victims from 1983 wanted him kept in prison. To them he was “a disturbed sexual predator beyond rehabilitation.” And so his pleas to the Parole Board fell on deaf ears. They accepted the wishes of those victims, and he spent the rest of his natural life in prison. I’ll bet none of his victims are shedding tears over his death.

More unreal reality

The December 11, 2011 Los Angeles Times reported that Dave Hester, one of the cast of A and E’s Storage Wars has been fired. He is suing the producers, alleging the show is faked. He claims items are salted in storage units which have been supposedly unopened until they are bid on and won. The show's producers deny his accusation.

I’ve written of this before, that “reality” shows are just not reality, but are mostly real-life people (not actors*) followed by camera crews, put into situations that are simulacra of ordinary lives or occupations. Of the few shows I watch regularly, American Pickers, Pawn Stars, and Storage Wars, all of them are mostly entertainment. And why spoil what is entertaining with dull reality?

Dave Hester is the obnoxious bad guy in Storage Wars, the guy we’re supposed to boo when he shows up and calls out with his braying “Yuuup!” Now that he’s off the show they will need another bad guy, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see someone else set up to take Hester’s place.

I also believe the producers of Storage Wars will settle with Hester for an undisclosed amount of money, and they will not admit to any wrongdoing. Hester will sign off on the agreement by saying he won’t reveal what he was paid.

I’ve noticed that when Mike and Frank of American Pickers roll up on a site to pick, they ring the doorbell and the person comes to the door to greet them but doesn’t look at the camera. Can you imagine opening the door to find Mike and Frank on your doorstep with an entire camera crew behind them, and you don’t ask what is going on? No one in this show does. I suppose the locations and people are scouted before the show is filmed, and there are rules those people agree to follow, such as not to react to the cameras. There was an episode where the pickers went to a house where a man told them he wasn’t interested and slammed the door in their faces. I’m not 100% sure that was staged, but if the man didn’t want anything to do with being picked, he still signed a waiver agreeing to have his face used.

My contention is the use of the term “reality” is a misnomer, because even if the shows were not juiced up or manipulated for added entertainment value the presence of the camera changes reality. Maybe they should call them assisted-reality shows.

There are so many of them…I’ve watched programs like Dog the Bounty Hunter, Property Brothers, American Restoration, The Little Couple, Cajun Justice (cancelled after one season), What Not to Wear (my wife’s favorite) and individual episodes of several others, and never come away with a feeling that I have just watched something altogether real.

* I refuse to call the Kardashians or stars of shows like theirs real-life, thinking of them instead as entities created by television, and who live in an alternate, digital universe.

The New Year’s elopement and anniversary

I’ve told this story so many times over the years it has begun to sound to me as if I'm telling it about someone else. But it is about Sally and me.

On December 31, 1968, Sally and I, who were engaged but had not set any plans for a wedding, went to a New Year’s Eve party with our friends, Dick and Lynda. The party was boring, but I’d had a few drinks and a wild idea: “Let’s drive to Wendover and get married!” Wendover is a town that straddles the border of Utah and Nevada. The Nevada side was the destination because at the time Utah required a blood test and a three-day waiting period from getting a marriage license to having the ceremony. Dick and Lynda thought it was a good idea. Sally thought it was a good idea. I thought it was a good idea until we arrived in Wendover a couple of hours later, and by then we were all sober. When I found out there would be no wedding in Wendover, that I would have to drive on to the county seat I tried to back out. My friends were having none of it. The county courthouse was in Elko, which meant I had another long drive on icy roads in my '67 Dodge. We got to Elko at about 5:00 AM. At that hour the casinos were cleared out except for some drunks and a few people pulling slot machine handles. Two cops came in and hauled out a drunk. Lynda, who took it upon herself to be in charge of the whole affair, asked the cops for information. She told them we wanted to get married. She found out from them the courthouse would open at noon, and it would cost $15.00 for a wedding license. Ulp. I didn’t have $15.00.

One of the cops said to Lynda, “Tell them to go upstairs and practice up.”

Dick had been playing nickel slots and winning, so I joined in. We had a long row of slot machines at our disposal, and when I played I won. By the time I was finished I had $65.00 in $2.00 rolls of nickels, bulging my jacket pockets. More than enough for everything, a wedding license and gas to get home.

Sometime after noon on January 1, 1969, after being up all night and looking like people dragged through the desert behind horses, we stood in front of the judge and said our I do’s. Dick and Lynda signed as witnesses, and we were ready to leave when the judge said, "I accept tips.” I asked, “Will you take it in nickels?” He came back with an answer I assumed he’d given countless times before: “If the bank will take it, I’ll take it.” I not only gave him a tip in nickels, I paid for gas home, the room in the Motel 6 for Sally and me on our wedding night (Motel 6 really did cost just $6.00 for a room in those days. Hey, nothing was too good for my bride!), and breakfast the next morning, all in rolls of nickels. In those days $65.00, even in nickels, went a lot further.

A couple of weeks later my mother-in-law, Virginia, held a wedding reception in her house. Above is a photo from that reception, Sally and I are sitting on Ginny’s sofa, laughing about something. The picture was taken by Sally’s sister, Sharon. I don’t believe it has seen the light of day since 1969, until Sharon posted it recently on Facebook. I don’t recall seeing it before. My son commented that I look like Ron Burgundy, Anchorman, and Sally looks like an assistant on The Price Is Right. The suit I’m wearing in the picture was from my high school graduation, three-and-a-half years earlier.

Sally looked cute. She still does.

Looking back on it all it seems that had I thought about it and not been so impulsive I probably would not have mentioned eloping, and we would have left the party. I would have taken Sally home, then gone home myself and slept off the effects of the party. Another auld lang syne. It’s useless to speculate because what happened that night did happen, whether because of my immature impulse or by cosmic design. In 1974 I broke off my friendship with Dick because it was the Watergate era and we argued politics every time we got together. Dick and Lynda broke up eventually. Dick died a couple of years ago. I don't know what has happened to Lynda.

Sally and I went on to build our lives together and today it’s been 44 years since we eloped. We're parents and grandparents. So Happy New Year to you, happy anniversary to Sally and me.

Gil Elvgren’s goodbye to 2012

I’ll miss 2012. Not for anything that happened, but for my Elvgren calendar. Gillette “Gil” Elvgren (1914-1980) was a top pin-up artist of the middle years of the last Century, and his sexy-cute girls are still sexy, still cute.

I can save the calendar and look at it anytime I want. I wouldn’t want to re-live 2012 for anything else.

Here’s looking at a better year in 2013. Happy New Year!

Copyright © 2012 Brown and Bigelow, St. Paul, Minnesota