Monday Artday: bunny

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The Monday Artday challenge word this week is “bunny”.
run, rabbit, run/dig that hole/forget the sun title=
Elroy Bunny eyed his prey from a distance. From fifty feet away, he could see neat rows of emerald flora as they cascaded over the dirt mounds. A hint of thick auburn taproot poked out of the earth beneath each lacy green canopy. Elroy stood motionless, his back pressed flat against the whitewashed garden fence, his chest barely moving with shallow breaths. In the fading light of dusk, Elroy’s eyes were wide, straining to stay trained on his predetermined path of invasion. In his mind, he carefully played and replayed his maneuver. He would stay low to the ground, sticking stealthily close to the orderly succession of carrots. As he crept along, he would quickly scrutinize each rust-colored specimen and select the perfect one for tonight’s meal. Elroy closed his eyes and envisioned himself munching and savoring that sweet and wonderful root.

Back at his clan’s nest, food was scarce. Elroy’s mother dutifully rationed the meager provisions. The weekly allowance, usually filched from unattended gardens or nearby garbage receptacles, was stretched diaphanously thin and provided little sustenance. To make their situation worse, the family had to fend off foxes or rats who would steal their food right out of the nest. After all, Elroy and his brood were cottontails and they didn’t have the luxury of an intricate network of underground warrens in which to hide their food like other rabbits. Elroy didn’t like feeling helpless as much as he didn’t like the empty feeling in his belly.

As nighttime advanced, Elroy knew he had little time to make his move. He hunched down, prone against the slightly damp soil, shrouded by the overgrown leafy greens. To his left, the carrot’s stout, thumb-like heads peeped out of the terrain. He skulked silently alongside the queues, inspecting the bounty offered before him. Elroy spotted a glistening, orange-skinned beauty. He craned his little neck and wiggled his little pink nose at the vegetable. The aroma of clean vegetation and honeyed goodness overwhelmed his olfactory nerves. In one fluid motion, Elroy yanked the carrot out of its dirt trammel, aimed it at his salivating maw and sank his incisors into its firm but yielding flesh. It crunched. Elroy shivered with elation. Tears welled in his eyes as his mouth was filled with crisp, delicious morsels and his appetite was quenched. That carrot was pure jubilation for Elroy’s very existence. Suddenly, Elroy’s euphoria dispersed. The porch light at the distant farmhouse snapped on, illuminating the garden with a harsh, tungsten-filament beam. The bathrobe-clad farmer bounded out from the splintery wooden doorway. He gripped a shotgun in his withered and twisted hands, from which he blasted several warning shots into the evening sky. Elroy panicked. He leaped over the green herbage, wedged himself under the fence and scampered away.

This was what Elroy Bunny’s life had become. Years ago, his father disappeared. Unbeknown to the family, he, along with hundreds of other rabbits, had become part of a woman’s coat. Out of necessity, his mother became adept at gathering food. Early on, she brought home overflowing surpluses, but in recent years she had become too old and feeble to perform this task. The few crumbs that she was able to provide certainly didn’t last very long. If Elroy wanted to eat, he had to locate food for himself. He knew he couldn’t rely on anyone else especially his sloth-like brother. Elroy’s brother was treated like royalty by Mother. The general routine was Mother and Elroy maintained order in the nest, while he sat on his fluffy ass, scarfing down more than his share of the food. He exerted no energy, save for that one day a year. Elroy would periodically ask him to pitch in, but he protested, reminding Elroy of his importance and claiming the need to conserve his strength. And, of course, Mother would always come to his defense. Elroy fully understood his brother’s worldly responsibility, but he felt it was unfair. Elroy was kind, humble and considerate, but he knew his place and, although he felt slighted, he never complained. Though the reasons weren’t exactly clear, Elroy accepted the hand that life dealt him. When characters were chosen to represent each of the major holidays on the calendar, Jesus himself skipped Elroy and selected his brother to be The Easter Bunny.

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IMT: ghost

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The inspirational word this week on the Inspire Me Thursday illustration blog is “ghost”.
...and hanging from the rear-view mirror was a bloody hook!
Resurrection Mary is the Chicago area’s best-known ghost story. The story takes place outside Resurrection Cemetery in Justice, Illinois, a few miles southwest of Chicago.
Since the 1930s, several men driving northeast along Archer Avenue between the Willowbrook Ballroom and Resurrection Cemetery have reported picking up a young female hitchhiker. This young woman is dressed somewhat formally and said to have light blond hair, blue eyes, and wearing a white party dress. Some more attentive drivers would sometimes add that she wore a thin shawl, or dancing shoes, and that she had a small clutch purse, and is very quiet. When the driver nears the Resurrection Cemetery, the young woman asks to be let out, whereupon she disappears into the cemetery. Sometimes, the story ends there. Other times, the curious driver follows the girl into the cemetery and finds her shawl or purse on a grave marked “Mary”.
The origin of the legend tells of a young girl named Mary who had spent the evening dancing with a boyfriend at the Oh Henry Ballroom (now the Willowbrook Ballroom). At some point, they got into an argument and Mary stormed out. Even though it was a cold winter’s night, she thought she would rather face a cold walk home than spend another minute with her boyfriend.
She left the ballroom and started walking up Archer Avenue. She had not gotten very far when she was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver, who fled the scene leaving Mary to die. Her parents found her and were grief-stricken at the sight of her dead body. They buried her in Resurrection Cemetery, wearing a beautiful white dress and matching shoes.

This post marks the two-year anniversary of the josh pincus is crying illustration blog.

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from my sketchbook: joe palma

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heep heep heep heep heep
On November 22, 1955, while returning home by taxi from attending a boxing match, Samuel “Shemp” Howard, of the Three Stooges, died of a massive heart attack. Shemp was lighting a cigar after telling a joke when he suddenly slumped over. The Stooges still had four more shorts to film in order to fulfill their contract with Columbia Pictures. Producer Jules White recruited longtime Stooge supporting actor Joe Palma to fill in for the late Shemp. Through editing, redubbing and strategic staging — that ranged from clever to horribly patchy — White made good on the studio’s contract.

The four final shorts, Rumpus in the Harem, Hot Stuff, Scheming Schemers and Commotion on the Ocean, were remakes of earlier Stooges one-reelers. White shot new scenes with surviving Stooges Larry Fine and Moe Howard, Shemp’s younger brother. Joe Palma appeared in these new scenes usually filmed from behind or with some prop blocking his face. One scene even had Moe, Larry and Joe Palma wearing beards as part of the storyline. Shemp’s limited dialogue was lifted from previous films and dubbed onto the soudtrack.

In Commotion on the Ocean, Moe and Larry slyly discuss the mysterious whereabouts of Shemp. Moe asks, “I wonder what became of that Shemp?” Larry answers, “You know he went on deck to scout out some food.” “Oh, yeah. That’s right.”, replies Moe.

Palma spent his last years in the entertainment industry as an assistant to Jack Lemmon. He appears as “Mr. Palma,” the mailman, in Lemmon’s 1964 Columbia comedy Good Neighbor Sam. His final film appearance was as a butcher in Lemmon’s 1968 Paramount film The Odd Couple. He died of natural causes on August 14, 1994.

The term “Fake Shemp” was adopted by director Sam Raimi and can be found in the credits of his Evil Dead films, as well as other movies.

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Monday Artday: the old west

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The current challenge on Monday Artday is “the old west”.  In addition to my finished illustration, I included my original pencil sketch. (I showed a pencil sketch once before on this post.) Coincidentally, almost two years ago, I did this drawing when another illustration blog posed the same challenge.
we got a right to pick a little fight
When I did an illustration for “the old west” in 2007, I presented a rather somber subject. This time, I’m taking a more light-hearted route. Well, it has a terrible ending, but there’s some fun before I get there.
Bonanza was one of television’s longest running series, entertaining loyal audiences for 14 seasons. As far as the show’s ratings, it finished in the top 10 for ten of those seasons.

My parents watched Bonanza, although they liked Gunsmoke better. (My brother is named after Marshal Dillon.) Recently, I’ve been watching episodes of Bonanza on TV Land in between episodes of The Andy Griffith Show. After watching the adventures of the Cartwright clan, I have come to a revelation. Every show was identical and it was a totally unrealistic portrayal of the old west. Bonanza presented the trials and tribulations of patriarch Ben Cartwright and his three sons from three different mothers. There was the eldest Adam, the gentle giant Eric (known as Hoss) and hot-headed Little Joe, the youngest. The stories were formulaic. Someone tries to do the Cartwrights wrong or tries to frame one of the four family members for murder. There’s a gunfight, a fistfight or one of the four gets wounded within inches of their life. But, approximately forty-seven minutes pass and everything is back to normal. Pernell Roberts, who played Adam, left the show in the sixth season. Lorne Greene and Michael Landon, who played Ben and Little Joe respectively and stayed with the series through its entire run, had continued success after Bonanza’s cancellation. Greene and Landon eventually ended up together here.

Dan Blocker, who played middle son Hoss, was as vastly different from his character as he could be. Hoss was written as “lovable but slow-witted,” however Blocker was the only cast member with an advanced college degree. Prior to embarking on an acting career, Blocker was a high school English teacher, a rodeo performer and a bouncer. He was actively persued by director Stanley Kubrick for a role in Dr. Strangelove. When Blocker declined, the part went to Slim Pickens. Blocker was a shrewd businessman and invested wisely. He received partial ownership in a successful chain of Ponderosa/Bonanza steakhouse restaurants in exchange for serving (in character as Hoss) as their commercial spokesman and making personal appearances at franchises. In 1972, Blocker died suddenly at age 43 of a pulmonary embolism following routine gall bladder surgery. The cast and crew of Bonanza were shaken by his death, and the writers took the then-unusual step of making Hoss’ death part of the show’s storyline that autumn.

Victor Sen Yung played Hop Sing, the Cartwright’s cartoonish houseboy and cook. It was one of the most poorly written, one-dimensional and racist characters in TV history. Hop Sing was constantly taunted by Hoss and their relationship was played for comic relief. Sen Yung, in real life was an excellent cook, and in 1974 authored The Great Wok Cookbook. Prior to his role in Bonanza, he was Charlie Chan’s number two son, Jimmy, to Keye Luke’s number one son, in eleven films in the 1940s. In 1972, a Pacific Southwest Airlines plane on which Sen Yung was a passenger was hjiacked. The FBI assaulted the hijackers, and in the ensuing gunfire Sen Yung was shot in the back. He and another wounded passenger survived, but a third passenger and the two hijackers died. A year after the well-publicized incident, he appeared on To Tell The Truth and related the events of the hijack. With Sen Yung dressed in a sport coat and flanked by two dissimilar impostors, none of the four panelist were able to choose him as the character actor, although he appeared on one of the most popular weekly TV shows of the last decade.

In the late 1970s, he did promotional cooking demonstrations in department stores across the country. In 1980, Sen Yung was creating clayware and curing the items via an oven in his home in North Hollywood, and died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

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IF: subtract

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The illustrationfriday.com challenge this week is “subtract”.
you got monkey in my peanut butter. you got peanut butter in my monkey.
I read the following article in National Geographic Magazine in February 2009:

Monkeys Can Subtract, Study Finds
February 18, 2009
Add this to the growing list of reasons humans aren’t so special, after all: Monkeys can subtract.
The discovery marks the first time a nonhuman species has been seen having “widespread success” with subtraction, scientists announced last Thursday. A group of Rhesus macaques placed in front of touch screens in a Duke University laboratory were able to subtract dots—not by counting them individually but by using a more instantaneous ability researchers call “number sense”.
In each session a monkey was presented with a number of dots. Next, a large square would hide all the dots. Then some of the dots would glide off the screen from “behind” the shape. Only the big square, with the remaining dots “hidden” behind it, would be left on screen.
Finally, decision time: Two groups of dots would appear on screen—one of them the correct number of remaining dots—and the monkey would indicate its answer to the math problem by touching one of the groups. Each correct answer was worth a serving of Kool-Aid.
In the vast majority of trials, the monkeys chose the right answer without counting, said psychologist Jessica Cantlon, who co-led the studies at Duke. Speaking before an American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago, Dr. Cantlon said, “In fact, college students used as controls in the study had the same success rate as the macaques—each group choosing the correct answer in as little as a second. Such similarities ‘suggest that these abilities are part of a primitive system for reasoning about numbers that has been passed down for millions of years of evolutionary time.'”
After the study concluded, Dr. Cantlon and her staff slaughtered and consumed the primates. The monkeys were prepared in several different ways, including stews, casseroles and barbecue.
Because there’s no wrong way to eat a Rhesus.

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