The Shock House 2009 (plus Zombie musings)

Scary fun for everyone. The Shock House is in Regina this year (it was in Melville the last 3 years). It was 8000 square feet of zombie fueled good times.

To go along with this theme, I will also share some zombie-related tidbits I've been saving up.



You know, I recently read "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" (which is funny and also inspired me to finish reading Pride and Prejudice so I could compare and contrast).










As a taste, here is the first line comparison:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession
of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

vs.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains."

And so it goes. Anyway I enjoyed it for sure.

It also reminded me of how I promised LP I'd do a post on the Zombie Survival Guide (which he gave me for Christmas last year). Thanks to this book I size up houses I see for potential survivability in a zombie attack. I'm ruined forever now (but I love it). For example, when picking a house to hole up in during a zombie outbreak, remember to find one with a second floor that cannot be accessed from the ground, then you destroy the stairs and voila! Safe zone (but be sure to fill up the upstairs bathtub with water and stash as many tools and provisions upstairs as you can get your mitts on beforehand). For practice, here's a link to a fun flash zombie survival game.

Lastly, here is a link to Jonathan Coulton's song "Re: Your Brains". He did a project where he wrote a song every week for a year. This song is my favorite (careful it gets in your head...much like a zombie... hahaha! Weee.), but he has many other awesome ones. It was featured in How to Succeed in Evil "Cheap Labor" Part 2 (there is also part 1 and 3). How to Suceed in Evil is a podcast/comic book about Edwin Windsor, evil efficiency consultant.

Simpsons Spoofs: Old Art

Since the last Simpsons art spoof was so popular, let's take a look at some pre-20th Century Simpsons art. This time we'll have a peep at some Italian Renaissance painters (turtle power!) and some influential Dutch artists. Learning is fun! Hurray!

Here we have Bart in the most well known panel "The Creation of Adam" from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling created for Pope Julius II. FYI That isn't the only Simpsonized version of that Sistine Chapel panel, in fact check the end of the Simpsons episode in this post for Homer's Sistine chapel ceiling. Anyway, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni painted the Sistine chapel for 4 years between 1508 and 1512. The ceiling is in the large Papal chapel in the Vatican in which Papal conclaves and other important ceremonies take place. The Sistine Chapel also features the work of other important Italian Renaissance painters including several large tapestries by Raphael.

Which brings us to our second feature. Here are two Simpsons takes on the detail of the cherubs at the bottom of Raphael's painting "Sistine Madonna" (c.1514). Raphaello Sanzio (1483-1520), like Michaelangelo, was an Italian artist during the High Renaissance. He lends his name to one of the 3 High Renaissance ninja turtles (Donatello was the odd man out because he was in the early Renaissance). This detail image has become much more recognizable than the complete original due to it's widespread use in pop culture, greeting cards, coffee mugs, etc.

And now, just to make our High Renaissance ninja turtle triumvirate complete we have Homer as Leonardo Da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man". This famous sketch was named after the Roman writer, architect, and engineer Marcus Vitruvius Pollio. Da Vinci illustrated his Vitruvian Man from Vitruvius' writings on geometry and human proportions in Book III of De Architectura. The sketch is probably the most recognizable Renaissance image as it has been used for many different kinds of symbols for logos, medical professional, etc. and it's even on the Euro. It is the embodiment of the Renaissance idea of the marriage of art and science. Da Vinci's notebooks are available at Project Gutenberg. Also from Da Vinci we have Homer painting the "Mona Lisa" (Simpson). The painting itself is smaller than you might think (only 77cm x 53cm)and is a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo. The Mona Lisa is owned by the Louvre in France but has actually been stolen twice. In probably the most famous art theft ever, the painting was removed by a museum employee Vincenzo Peruggia who was an Italian patriot who believed the art should be back in Italy. After hiding it for 2 years he tried to sell it to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and was caught. Italians in general agreed with his motives however so he only did a few months in jail for it. The painting was taken again in WWII and moved around. It has also survived several vandalisms as well as aggressive preservation techniques to continue to smile enigmatically at us today.

And last we have three drawings imitating some famous works by Dutch painters from www.limpfish.com (the artist has some pretty neat and funny art, mostly politically and/or socially relevant mash-ups, cool beans):

First, here is Homer as Rembrandt's "Self-portrait". Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn is generally considered one of the most important painters in European art history. He painted during the period known as the "Dutch Golden Age". So many brilliant paintings! I love his landscapes like "Mill", "Stone Bridge" and "Stormy Sea". I generally don't prefer his portraits but I like "Monk Reading". I also love "Philosopher in Meditation" and "Artist in His Studio", the way he uses light and shadow in the indoor scenes is beautiful! It has been suggested the Rembrandt may have had stereo blindness, which would have played havoc with his depth perception but would have allowed him to better adapt the 3D world to a 2D canvas.

Here is a Simpsonized version of Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring"(and here's a version with Lisa instead of Marge). Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) was a Dutch Baroque painter, famous for his vivid and detailed paintings often featuring individuals or scenes from every day domestic life. Baroque art was characterized by dramatic, vivid images using rich colours, intense light and dark shadows. The painting is undated but is considered a Vermeer masterpiece and is often called the Dutch Mona Lisa.

And finally, our most recent feature is Willie Van Gogh, a re-imagining of Dutch painter Vincent Willhem Van Gogh's September 1889 self-portrait (and here's a version with Homer instead of Willie). Van Gogh is was a highly influential Post-Impressionist painter and was the pioneer of the Expressionist style. This painting was one of several famous self-portraits Van Gogh created while in Saint-Rémy de Provence at Monastery Saint-Paul de Mausole sanitarium. He went there after "the unpleasantness" which included stalking Gauguin with a razor, chopping off his own earlobe (probably) and giving it to a prostitute, and all in all going pretty cuckoo although no one knows exactly why. All of the self-portraits from this period show the artist's head from the left (i.e. the side with ear not mutilated) and one of them, "Self-Portrait without beard", was one of the most expensive paintings ever sold, going for $71.5 million in 1998. Some of his most well known works date to this year in his life including what is widely considered to be his magnum opus "Starry Night", painted in 1889 and depicting the view outside his sanitarium window at night using swirls and densely painted impasto. The next year Van Gogh, in a deep depression, walked into a field and shot himself with a revolver, dying 2 days later, with the final words "La tristesse durera toujours" (French: "the sadness will last forever"). Despite the popularity and melodrama associated with his later works, one of my personal favorites is his early work "Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette" (painted in 1885). I guess I'm just a sucker for comedic yet anatomically correct skeleton art.

Simpsons Spoofs: 20th Century Art

It's time once again for The Simpsons spoofs. Today we're going to learn about famous 20th Century (mostly) art/artists. Woohoo! There have been quite a few art parodies produced officially by the Simpsons people over the years, mostly for posters.

To start with the most recent we have the ubiquitous "L'Enfant" poster of a photograph of a male model holding a baby. Taken by photographer Spencer Rowell in 1987, the poster has sold over 5 million copies since it was first published. Hmmm... I wonder who it's target audience is?

Inching our way back in time we have Lisa as Roy Lichtenstein's "Hopeless" image painted in 1963. Lichtenstein is most famous for his 1950's/60's comic book inspired pop art images. Though the images are painted in oil and Magna paints they will often depict Benday Dots to mimic the appearance of printing.

Continuing in the pop art vein we have a homer painting in the style of Andy Warhol. This most closely resembles Warhol's celebrity paintings made during the 1960's when he was focusing on iconic American symbols, excepting that Warhol's portraits would typically depict 4 (or more) identical poses with altered colour schemes.

Next is a spoof of Edvard Munch's The Scream (Norwegian: Skrik). This was actually a series of images that Munch made featuring this theme (and variations thereon) in different media starting in 1893 and continuing into the early 1900s (so it's still 20th century). It is painted in the expressionist style in which the artist will tend to distort reality to achieve a truer image of the emotional reality (usually angst-ridden). The painting depicts a happy little character expressing himself, bystanders in the background, and a landscape in Oslo at sunset.
Next we have a spoof of Georges Seurat's painting Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte). Painted in 1884 it is one of the most famous examples of the style of pontillism, in which a mosaic of distinct dots (using a reduced colour palette) forms the image. OK fine this painting isn't 20th century... and Seurat died in 1891 so I can't even say he still painted in the 20th century. Oh well.

Finally, just to bring us back into the 20th century, we have "Nighthogs". A spoof of Edward Hopper's most famous painting "Nighthawks" which was painted in 1942 (oil on canvas) and depicts a diner that used be on Greenwich Ave. in New York. Edward Hopper's art is some of the most recognizable of all of America's 20th Century realist painters. Meaning his paintings look like the things they look like - mostly scenes and people from 50's America, which makes sense.

Simpsons Spoofs: Album Covers

It's time for super-fun Simpsons spoofs! Album cover edition. Hurray!
First, here is the spoof of The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album that was done for the cover of the Simpsons' "Yellow Album" (which featured the "Hail to Thee Kamp Krusty" song and a bunch of stuff not from the show). Besides this there are quite a few album cover spoofs kicking around that were done up as alternative magazine covers for the Rolling Stone. These included three of the most influential albums of all time: The Beatles' "Alley Road", Nirvana's "Nevermind", and Springstein's "Born in the USA".





























There was also the rejected Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" spoof










and David Bowie's "Aladdin Sane".










Educational Sidebar: Origins of the word 'spoof' from Dictionary.com
Dates back to the British comedian Arthur Roberts (1852-1933) who invented a game called Spoof, which involved trickery and nonsense. Later, the word spoof took on the general sense meaning of nonsense or trickery (first recorded in 1889). The verb spoof is first recorded in 1889 as well, in the sense "to deceive." These meanings have fallen out of use in favour of the noun form meaning "a light parody or satirical imitation," first recorded in 1958, and the verb sense "to satirize gently," first recorded in 1927.

Treehouse of Horror Facts

The first Halloween Simpsons special was in the second season (1990) and was called "Treehouse of Horror" and featured Bart and Lisa (and Maggie) telling stories in Bart's treehouse.
The first story parodies the Amityville Horror, the second parodies the famous Twilight zone episode "To Serve Man" and features the very first appearance of Kang and Kodos, and lastly is the ever popular James Earl Jones reading "The Raven" (omitting stanzas 5 and 8 through 16). Good times.

So this yearly custom became an annual tradition and every Halloween special since has been named after the first Treehouse of Horror. The first 5 featured warnings in the opening segment as well as a fly through cemetery with amusing tombstones (TofH V had a tombstone that said "amusing tombstones"), which was subsequently ditched for other forms of opening clips.

The Halloween episodes usually have special "scary names" credits (inspired by EC Comics, which would do this sometimes). These were dropped in XII and XIII because they were too hard, but everyone complained so they brought them back. Also, TofH II through X had Halloween-y couch gags, in season 11 they broke that run by doing a Munsters opening parody.

All the Halloween episodes have 3 separate stories. The first four also had overarching settings: treehouse stories, candy induced nightmares, Halloween party stories, and scary paintings (a spoof of Night Gallery, which aired in the early 70s, by the same guy who did Twilight Zone). But these were dropped because they ate up too much time. Most of the stories are parodies (of scary movies, TV shows, books, etc.) and, besides movies in general (everything from The Shining to Harry Potter), the single most commonly parodied source is "Twilight Zone" with at least 8 parody segments to date ("To Serve Man", "A Small Talent for War","Living Doll", "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet","Little Girl Lost", and "The Little People", "It's a Good Life", and "A Kind of a Stopwatch"). FYI: They parody Twilight Zone in regular episodes too ("Bart's Comet" is a parody of "The Shelter", "Strong Arms of the Ma" spoofs "Time Enough at Last", etc.) .


p.s. The new Halloween episode, Treehouse of Horror XIX, airs tomorrow (continuing FOX's schedule of airing Halloween episodes in November because of their contract with the World Series). A segment of the episode (with Spanish subtitles) has been leaked, which features Homer running afoul of a rigged voting machine. Mayhem ensues.