Thursday, March 21, 2019

"My God! There's a Lost Civilization in Our Refrigerator"


It's happened at last. One of my optioned stories has been made into an animated episode of Love Death and Robots, now streaming on Netflix.

The adult science fiction animation series  takes advantage of the nature of its medium. Each story takes exactly as much time to tell as the story requires--anywhere from five to fifteen minutes for the first series. So the plot doesn't have to be cut or padded out to make it fit a Procrustean time-slot. That's brilliant.

And what do I think of what Tim Miller, the director, did with "Ice Age?"

 I think I really lucked out. The combined live-action-and-animation adaptation stayed remarkably true to the original story. And where changes were made, they were all to the better. I laughed out loud when Rob said, "Too soon."

A lot of the success of the piece is due to Topher Grace and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who play Rob and Gail, a newlywed couple moving into a new apartment who discover something unexpected in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator. The original story relied heavily on a kind of deadpan humor in the characters' reaction to this absurd event. It couldn't have been easy to convincingly deliver lines like "My God! There's a lost civilization in our refrigerator. (Try it yourself.) But Grace and Winstead really nailed it.

So I'm delighted. If you watch it, I think you'll be happy too. Probably not as happy as I am. But happy.

And of course . . .

The question has to be asked: What did Gail and Rob, the then-newlywed couple I based the story's characters on, think of the film?

They loved it.


Monday, March 11, 2019

The Devil's In the Tarot Deck


Rachel Pollack, who is an authority on the tarot as well as a very fine writer, once told me the reason why stores selling tarot decks usually keep them in locked display cases. There is a belief or tradition, it seems, that for a tarot deck to work it has to be given to its owner. And, human people being the swine that we are, some of us interpret that meaning that a stolen deck will suffice.

So, to make sure that a) it works and b) I don't force my wife into a life of crime, I bought Marianne the Philly Tarot.

There's a nifty story behind it. Artist James Boyle was commissioned to create an illustration for a Philadelphia Magazine article on the rising popularity locally of Tarot cards and the occult. (An article, incidentally, that could have been written any year I've been alive.) His illo (below) was so very cool that both he and the magazine were inundated with requests to know where people could buy the entire deck.

So Boyle opened a Kickstarter account and in one day got orders for three times his target amount. Then he got to work, not just making the drawings but coming up with witty local associations for the cards.

So in thie deck, the Devil is (of course) Gritty. The Emperor is Ben Franklin, the Empress Betsy Ross, and The Lovers are of course Rodin's The Kiss. So far as I can tell, there's not a dud image in the lot.

It's also better made than it had to be. The edges are gilt, the cardboard is of excellent stock, etc., etc.

I would have loved this deck just for Jason Kelce (who, wearing Mummer gear after the Eagles won the Superbowl, famously said "No one likes us and we don't care") as Justice.

Not that the artist needs more business, but if you have a desire to buy the deck, you can do so here.

And as always...

I'm on the road again! Details when I return. In the meantime, the house is protected by My Son the Black Belt and Miss Hope, the noted mad scientist cat. So don't even think about it.

Immediately above: Miss Hope on her Spectromic 20 Photometer doing important science stuff.