josh pincus is crying

The illustrationfriday.com challenge word this week is “balloon”.
This is the second of two illustrations I did for the topic. Here is the first.

On Thanksgiving Day 1997, Kathleen Caronna was watching annual Macy’s Parade at 72nd St. and Central Park West alongside her husband and her infant son. In 40 miles-per-hour winds, handlers marching in the parade lost control of the six-story high Cat in the Hat balloon. The errant balloon crashed into a streetlamp. A piece of the streetlamp broke off and struck Ms. Caronna in the head, knocking her unconscious. Caronna was in a coma for 22 days after emergency surgery. She suffered skull fractures, brain damage and partial loss of vision. She filed a $395 million lawsuit against the city, Macy’s and the lamppost manufacturer. In 2001, she settled for an undisclosed amount.

On October 11, 2006, a Cirrus SR20 plane piloted by New York Yankees’ pitcher Cory Lidle crashed into the Belaire Apartments at E. 72nd Street on New York City’s Upper East Side. Lidle and flight instructor Tyler Stanger were both killed. Their plane crashed into Kathleen Coronna’s bedroom.

This week’s challenge word on illustrationfriday.com is “balloon”.

Just prior to turning nineteen, I went to Walt Disney World with three of my friends. This was my first vacation without my parents. I told about this trip in a previous blog. My first day in Walt Disney’s Magic Kingdom was great. After spending a fun but exhausting day, my friends and I headed back to our hotel. Somnolent, we slogged the length of the sparsely-lit Main Street USA towards the Monorail that would take us to the parking lot. Just before we exited, I purchased a Mickey Mouse-head balloon for fifty cents (remember, this was 1980). There I was, eighteen-years old, springing toward the Monorail with a balloon string in my fist and a wide grin across my face.

We waited on the platform, in the thick and shifting throng, for the next Monorail to arrive. The sleek transport snaked into the station. It came to a silent stop and the hydraulic doors opened with a hiss. The individual cabins were fitted with futuristic bench seats, upholstered in undentable teal plastic. They were not unlike the back seat of my father’s 1968 Dodge Dart. They seated approximately ten passengers. My friends, my balloon and I chose an empty cabin and slid across the seat to accommodate everyone. A young couple and their son joined our cabin and occupied the bench seat opposite us. The boy was about nine or ten and he had a balloon, too. The balloon looked more age appropriate for him than it did me.

The doors to the Monorail shushed back into place and we began moving. I sat, holding my balloon and smiled at the young boy across from me as he held his balloon. Suddenly, without warning, his balloon burst. BANG! It hadn’t touched anything. It hadn’t bumped the low ceiling. It just burst- BANG! We were all startled, but even more so, when the boy spontaneously erupted into a spewing fountain of inconsolable cries and tears. His parents tried unsuccessfully to comfort him. Instantly, I spoke up and offered my balloon to the boy. “Here”, I said, “you can have mine.” His parents looked at me with expressions of relief and gratitude as I relinquished my balloon. His mom wrapped one arm around the boy’s shoulders and gestured to me with her other arm—her hand palm up and extended in my direction. “What do you say to the nice man?”, she prompted her son. The boy looked up at the balloon. Then, he looked, expressionless, at me.
“I wanted a red one.”, he said.

Last week, I resigned as a member of the weekly illustration blog, sugarfrostedgoodness.com. I had been a contributor and member since May 2007. The duration of my membership was not without its controversy (and I am all about the controversy!) In recent months, however,  I have not been pleased with the direction in which the website was headed. It had gone from a great forum for artists to display their work to a preachy, needy, clingy “hugfest” proliferated by people who feel the need to impose their religious dogma on those who do not necessarily share their views.
I just wanted to draw.
So, I found another blog, Inspire Me Thursday, to which I will contribute. It works is basically the same as Illustration Friday and Monday Artday (except they post their word on Thursdays… get it? Of course you do!) Here is my first contribution for the inspiration “Albert Einstein”. Here we go, Inspire Me Thursday, hope you don’t piss me off.

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”
— Albert Einstein

When Herbert Khaury was five, his father brought a gramophone to their small New York City apartment. Young Herbert immersed himself in the music of the past. He would spend hours in his room listening to artists like Rudy Vallee, Al Jolson, and Bing Crosby. He began singing and playing the ukulele in his naturally tenor voice. Soon, he entered into a local talent show and sang “You Are My Sunshine” in his newly discovered falsetto voice. It brought the house down. Bitten by the performance bug, Herbert experimented with different stage names like Darry Dover, Vernon Castle, Larry Love, and Judas K. Foxglove. He finally settled on Tiny Tim in 1962 at the suggestion of his manager at the time. In the 1960s, he was seen regularly near the Harvard University campus as a street performer, singing old Tin Pan Alley tunes. His choice of repertoire and his encyclopedic knowledge of vintage popular music impressed many of the spectators. One fan recalled that Tiny Tim’s outrageous public persona was a false front belying a quiet, studious personality. “Herb Khaury was the greatest put-on artist in the world.,” this admirer said, “Here he was with the long hair and the cheap suit and the high voice, but when you spoke to him he talked like a college professor. He knew everything about the old songs.”
Tiny Tim’s big break came when he was booked for an appearance on the wildly popular Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. Dan Rowan announced that Laugh-In believed in showcasing new talent, and introduced Tiny Tim. Tiny Tim entered, blowing kisses, and sang “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” to Dick Martin. For years, Dick Martin delivered the panicked outburst of “You’re not bringing back Tiny Tim, are you?” to Dan Rowan at the threat of a potential surprise visit. Tiny Tim’s performance led to many appearances on Jackie Gleason’s variety show, The Ed Sullivan Show and Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. Tiny Tim released his first album in 1968, a collection of Tin Pan Alley classics that were beloved by him as a child.
On a publicity tour in 1969, Tiny Tim met seventeen-year-old Victoria Budinger. She asked for an autograph and Tiny Tim was immediately enamored, although he was twenty years her senior. After several more encounters with “Miss Vicki”, as he called her, Tiny Tim announced his engagement on The Tonight Show and Johnny Carson offered to have the wedding televised on his show. The wedding was seen by an estimated 40 million viewers. The cake was seven feet tall, and 10,000 tulips were used as decoration. The couple honeymooned in Bermuda. However, Tiny Tim and Miss Vicki mostly lived apart, and divorced eight years later. (Vicki resurfaced in 2002 as Victoria Lombardi, the girlfriend of convicted murder conspirator Rabbi Fred Neulander.)
Tiny Tim’s popularity began to wane as the years went on. He was a yearly fixture at at “Spooky World,” an annual Halloween-themed exposition in Massachusetts, just outside of Boston. He also made frequent appearances on the Howard Stern radio show in the early 1990s.
While playing “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” at a Gala Benefit at The Woman’s Club of Minneapolis on November 30, 1996, Tiny Tim suffered a heart attack on stage. He was led off stage by his third wife, Susan Marie Gardner. She asked him if he was okay. Tiny Tim replied, “No, I’m not!”, his final words. He collapsed and died after doctors tried to resuscitate him for an hour and fifteen minutes.
A self-proclaimed deeply religious man, Tiny Tim gave an interview to Playboy Magazine in 1970. In the interview he said, “I’d love to see Jesus Christ come back to crush the spirit of hate and make men put down their guns.
I’d also like just one more hit single.”

The illustrationfriday.com challenge word this week is “opinion”.

“A yawn may not be polite, but at least it is an honest opinion.”
—Unknown

Joe Flynn almost made his motion picture debut in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, however his scene was left on the cutting room floor. But after a run of bit parts in movies and TV through the 1950s and early 1960s, Joe’s career took off. He enjoyed major success as Captain Binghamton, the spoiler to Ernest Borgnine’s schemes in McHale’s Navy, including two theatrical spin-offs. He was also featured in a number of Disney live-action comedies, including three in which he played perpetually agitated Dean Higgins of Medfield College. Joe’s comedic talents were in high demand for sitcoms, films and commercials through the 60s and early 70s. In the early 1970s, Flynn was one of the leaders of a Screen Actors Guild group that sought a more equitable distribution of TV residual payments.
In the early summer of 1974, Joe had broken his leg just after completing his voice-over work on the Disney animated movie The Rescuers. Alone one afternoon, he waded into his backyard swimming pool. Joe suffered a heart attack. Hours later, his family found his lifeless body at the bottom of the pool, held down by the weight of his wet and waterlogged leg cast. He was 49 years old.
How prophetic was McHale’s nickname for Captain Binghamton — “Old Leadbottom”.

The illustrationfriday.com challenge word this week is “pretend”.

In the summer of 1980, I took my first real vacation without my parents. It was just before my nineteenth birthday. My two best friends, Alan Salkowitz and Scott Sadel, and I decided that another summer with a three-day trip to Betty’s Rooms in Atlantic City was more than we could stand. We thought a trip to the magical land of Florida was what we wanted. Wanted? No, deserved!  We discussed our Sunshine State destinations — Miami? Fort Lauderdale? Daytona Beach? Someone (possibly Alan) suggested Orlando. “Orlando? What’s there to do in Orlando?”, I asked. The answer was “Disney World”. “An amusement park?”, I countered, “You’ve GOT to be kidding!” We went back and forth for a while and, under protest (I voted for Fort Lauderdale), it was decided for me. I was going to Orlando.

We made an appointment with a travel agent (remember those? ). After a lesson in “vacation without parents” (read: no one to pay for stuff except you), we found we would need a fourth person to cut expenses. Alan suggested Wayne Cohen, a high-school classmate we all knew casually. It was agreed that Wayne would be monetary equalizer.

I scraped together and borrowed the money for airfare, hotel, meals, souvenirs and two-day admission to Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom. Soon enough, Alan, Scott, Wayne and I took off from Philadelphia International Airport on our “big-boy” vacation.

During our flight, Scott go up to use the bathroom, which was about ten rows in front of where we were seated. He emerged from the lavatory with a paper seat protector around his neck and he tossed a tampon over the heads of several passengers to me. This set the tone for the next six days.

We landed in Orlando. A set of rolling stairs was wheeled up to our plane and we exited. We walked across the tarmac toward the tiny Orlando terminal to retrieve of luggage and begin our week of planned debauchery. We picked up our pre-arranged rental car — a Chrysler Cordoba, minus the rich Corinthian leather (an additional ten bucks a day we couldn’t afford). Our next stop was The International Inn on International Drive, a mere fifteen minutes from Walt Disney’s tourist mecca. Spotting our hotel and measuring its proximity to the nearest liquor store, we ranked our priorities and hung a quick left in order to acquire beer. And a lot of it.

It was early on the day we landed and we were anxious to get our vacation started. After downing a few canned malt and barley cocktails, we headed out to Mystery Fun House. It was one of many hokey fringe attractions that were erected to cash in on Disney’s overflow. (Yes. We drove. In our car. After drinking alcohol. I do not condone this activity, but it was 1980 and we were dumb teenagers. Plus, it gives great support to the raising of the legal age of alcohol consumption to 21.)

We spent to next two days at Walt Disney’s Magic Kingdom. We gleefully enjoyed rides that were meant for six-year olds. We bought useless souvenirs emblazoned with Mickey Mouse. We drank sodas that, even by 1980’s standards, were overpriced. And we loved it. We were intrigued by countless advertisements for a Disney project called EPCOT Center that would be constructed on an adjacent tract of property ten times the size of the Magic Kingdom.

On the days that we didn’t spend at Walt’s place, we ate our meals at Davis Brothers endless buffet. Here, these four sheltered Jewish kids from northeast Philadelphia experienced the Southern delicacy known as “grits”. And we drank. And drank. And drank.

One evening, we made reservations for Disney’s Wild West dinner show, The Hoop-Dee-Doo Revue. In addition to the stage show, the evening included all-you-can-eat barbecued ribs, chicken, beans, corn-on-the-cob. It also included giant pitchers of all-you-can-drink sangria, of which we took full advantage. By the end of our week, three of us had the greatest time and we were keeping ourselves from killing Wayne. We were tempted to make a break for it when he set off the metal detector at the Orlando airport.

Our entire trip was supplemented with a musical soundtrack provided by WBJW — BJ 105 — Orlando’s top 40 radio station. We sang along to every song that blasted from that Cordoba’s dashboard console. One song played constantly. One song was in BJ 105’s heaviest of rotations. “Brass in Pocket” by The Pretenders. We had never heard anything like this song. Between the plodding rock beat of “Another Brick in The Wall” and the throbbing disco beat of “Funkytown”, Chrissie Hynde’s sultry and unintelligible lyrics shone like a punk bonfire.

Upon our return to Philadelphia, I purchased the 45-rpm single (that pre-dates CDs, kids) of “Brass in Pocket” at Peaches Records. Unprompted, the cashier gave me her phone number on the back of my receipt. (We dated once, but I ended it when she informed me that she was bisexual. Oh, shut up, I was nineteen, for chrissakes!)

Time changes things….
Orlando’s airport is a sprawling transportation center with a monorail that takes passengers to luggage pickup. Walt Disney World is home to four theme parks, two water parks and twenty-three themed hotels. I haven’t spoken to Alan or Scott in years and (ironically) I believe Wayne is dead. I love eating grits, however I am a vegetarian so the ribs and chicken are out. I don’t drink alcohol anymore. I read about the bisexual cashier’s engagement in the Jewish Exponent several years ago. Two years after this vacation, I met my wife. Next year we celebrate our twenty-fifth anniversary.
In 1982, Pretenders’ guitarist James Honeyman-Scott died of a cocaine overdose. In 1983, bassist Pete Farndon overdosed on heroin. The Pretenders essentially became “The Chrissie Hynde Show” and have been releasing albums that (arguably) never equalled the power or consistency of their first.

The challenge word this week on illustrationfriday.com is “wise”.

Book of Kings (chapter 3 verses 16-28)
16 Now two prostitutes came to King Solomon and stood before him.
17 One of them said, “My lord, this woman and I live in the same house. I had a baby while she was there with me.
18 The third day after my child was born, this woman also had a baby. We were alone; there was no one in the house but the two of us.
19 “During the night this woman’s son died because she lay on him.
20 So she got up in the middle of the night and took my son from my side while I your servant was asleep. She put him by her breast and put her dead son by my breast.
21 The next morning, I got up to nurse my son—and he was dead! But when I looked at him closely in the morning light, I saw that it wasn’t the son I had borne.”
22 The other woman said, “No! The living one is my son; the dead one is yours.”
  But the first one insisted, “No! The dead one is yours; the living one is mine.” And so they argued before King Solomon.
23 King Solomon said, “This one says, ‘My son is alive and your son is dead,’ while that one says, ‘No! Your son is dead and mine is alive.’ ”
24 Then King Solomon said, “Bring me a sword.” So they brought a sword for the king.
25 He then gave an order: “Cut the living child in two and give half to one and half to the other.”
26 The woman whose son was alive was filled with compassion for her son and said to King Solomon, “Please, my lord, give her the living baby! Don’t kill him!” But the other said, “Neither I nor you shall have him. Cut him in two!”
27 Then the king gave his ruling: “King Solomon gets to cut…”
28 “But, Cody gets to choose.”

The Monday Artday challenge word this week is “speed”.

Neil Simon’s 1965 play (and subsequent 1968 film) “The Odd Couple” told the story of Oscar Madison and Felix Unger. Oscar is a New York City sports writer and a horrible slob. His recently-divorced friend, Felix, has been kicked out of his home. Oscar invites Felix to move into his Upper West Side apartment. Felix is an obsessively neat hypochondriac and drives Oscar nuts within a week.
Oscar has a weekly poker game at his apartment. The game includes Oscar’s accountant Roy, Murray the cop, timid and hen-pecked Vinnie and gruff, sarcastic Speed. Since Felix moved in, he has provided a varied menu specifically accommodating each participant. Prior to Felix’s arrival, the poker game fare consisted of whatever Oscar had rotting in his broken refrigerator… which led to this exchange between Oscar and Speed:
Oscar : I’m through being the nice guy, you owe me six dollars each for the buffet!
Speed: What buffet? Hot beer and two sandwiches left over from when you went to high school.

Everyone on this earth has felt some kind of unsubstantiated prejudice. At some point in their lives, everyone —the cashier at Target, Michael Douglas, the woman who takes your picture for your new driver’s license, The Pope— dislikes someone for a stupid reason. If you say “Oh no. Not me.”, then you’re prejudice and a liar.
In the weeks leading up to the recent presidential election, I have witnessed plenty of prejudice. Most people believe that everyone thinks like they do. It’s amazing the things that total strangers will say to you just because you “look like they do”. People loudly make the most racist comments and think nothing of it. While my wife was getting a manicure, a woman publicly expressed her concern about having a black president. Even Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin hinted at it.
That fact never concerned me at all. I had another concern.
Barack Obama is 47 years old, one week older than I am. In history books, in movies, on money, presidents are old guys. From the powdered wigs and mutton chops, the country’s leaders have always been stodgy, old windbags. I can imagine the fear my parents’ generation felt when they saw this inexperienced kid mounting a campaign for president! Prior to the election, I asked my father-in-law how he felt about the possibility of having a 47 year-old in the White House. I said “You don’t think a 47 year-old can back a car out of your driveway, let alone run the country.” Honestly, a president my own age didn’t sit too well with me either.
Until my 21year-old son put it into perspective.
He said “What have old white guys ever done for you?” I pondered the question. I answered, “Well, they’ve criticized my work, talked down to me, pushed me around, exhibited incompetence in the workplace, screwed up the economy and gave convoluted and incoherent answers to questions.”
My son then asked, “What have black guys your own age done for you?” I thought about that question. I answered, “They have been pleasant, funny, helpful and shown mutual and professional respect.”
He looked at me with that look.

I hope Barack Obama takes that driveway at ninety miles an hour.