But first I must digress..

As I alluded earlier, when the legal requirements of the television deal were at hand, I found my business partner had not been very upfront about funds. This is my fault. This TV sideline of mine was instigated on such a whim that I was treating it as an "Alice in Wonderland" rabbit-hole roller coaster ride, with me as a bemused high-concept/observer/creative type. But I didn't do proper due-diligence as I would later regret. My partner had quiet a rap sheet. Literally. Four Marriages, 18 months in white-collar prison (Cocaine), three failed businesses, and a functional alcoholic. He'd also produced over 200 hours of television, run some of the largest media outlets for network radio, invented the concept of "extreme sports" television for ESPN, and was the best pitchman I have ever seen. He also had friends in very high places in the entertainment world, including (and these are just the ones I know of) Joe Roth, Mel Karmizan, and Walter Cronkite at the heavy hitter level, and Maurie Povich, Heraldo Rivera, and host of other news talents like Bill Curtis down a level or two, whom he'd discovered and developed as talent decades ago. And they all seemed to like him. Think of him as a cross between Jackie Gleason and Ron Popiel. Looked like Gleason, pitched like Popiel on late night infomercials. A real iconoclast. Tons of talent, no restraint.

The fun is over when legal steps in the room and starts making everything official. My partner insisted on forming a corporation to handle our business end of things. Not knowing all of the above, my feelers still went up. I declined. I was willing to treat this as a joint venture, but not a partnership. Then I found out later my partner had asked the attorney for funds, or at least a float, until this whole thing was produced. They had a deal about percentages and first-cut of proceeds worked out and asked if I had a problem with it. This was not good news. Bottom line, my partner was broke. It was pathetic because he put on such a good show. I had other clients, and was quite busy in the main part of my business, but this turned out to be all my partner had going. Lucky for him, things seemed like we were going to get a great order for a series if all went well with the pilot. Then his few hundred thousand dollars would make it all better. This was the hope.

I mention all this, because these revelations were still in the future as we had lunch at the Algonquin Hotel some time before legal was settled, and this lunch was one of my first clues that something was amiss.

I was regaling my partner with details about the legendary poker games upstairs at the Algonquin with George Kaufman, Alexander Woollcott, Tallulah Bankhead, Harpo Marx and Dorothy Parker as detailed in one of my favorite biographies, Harpo Speaks!, in which Harpo Marx chronicles his involvement with the Algonquin Round Table crowd during the roaring twenties.

My partner didn't smile much during my hilarious recounts. This was not like him. "You feel alright?" I asked. "Yea, I'm just practicing not smiling on account of my tooth." At this point, he flashed a smile. It looked like he'd jammed a Halloween corn candy in his empty tooth space.

"What's that?" I inquired.

"That's my new tooth", he said.

I quipped, "Give me a better look, it stands out pretty strong."

"Did you notice?" he wondered aloud.

"I noticed there was something yellow in the space where there used to be nothing," I said.

"&%#*", he said.

"Why, what's up?"

"I can't meet with the orthodontist until next week and I've been looking into alternatives so I don't go to pitch meetings with a tooth missing."

A this point his produces a small pill bottle, rattles it and places it on the table.

"My buddy down at NYPD is high up and he scored me some teeth from the morgue" he said, smiling full-on so I could see the large yellow tooth jammed into the slot where his own tooth had once clung for dear life.

Silence.

He spilled the contents of the pill bottle on the table saying, "I've tried all of these, but the one I have in is the only one that will hold for any kind of duration." He smiled again, as if to say, "Is it really that bad?"

My drink, in response to this sight, came up through my nasal cavity before I could get a napkin in place. I turned my head quickly, but was unable to stop the seltzer from spraying. Then came the stifled, uncontrollable, gut wrenching heaves of laughter. Then the tears. I totally lost it. My partners calm delivery was the best part. He had just describe something unthinkably vile in a wonderfully normal deadpan demeanor. I was a gonner for a short time.

Just as I caught my breath for the first time, he slipped in, "my buddy said it belonged to one of the most notorious Madams of the 1960's." He smiled again, displaying the prostitute's pearly yellow, long dormant incisor,

I folded again. The maitre di came over to see if I was alright. I was choking, my nose was running, and I couldn't breath. I held up my hand and waved him off as best I could, but I got the message. The whole restaurant was watching. As I straightened up and gazed upon the spilled teeth across the table cloth and my partner threatening another smile. I employed Lamaz brething techniques learned from the birth of my first child. I begged him not to smile again. I was able to keep from going off again by pondering what it must have taken for his friend to secure the selection of teeth. Sneaking into the morgue, knowing where the teeth were kept, choosing the largest sizes, noting the place from whence they came. What a friend. And a NYPD officer to boot. Who did this guy not know.

We ended up finishing lunch. I paid.

I asked if I could use his tooth story somewhere, sometime in the future. Which I have just done.

This was an omen. It was also a symbol. The old gaurd in Television was falling apart, literally. Bit by bit. I was watching it happen, biting my tongue, and hoping I had not made a big mistake becoming associated with this lot.

Harpo was one of the first classical clowns to realise that it was important to play to the camera like it was your favourite audience member and he would play live straight into it so that the reponse when looking through it at him is not to the clownish gesture but to the compassionate, passionate spirit beneath. He was also a mean croquet player, a skill which meant more than knocking balls through hoops at that time.

There are so many quotes available and you know me, I could go on and on, but eventually my schlepping and grammer will breakdown,

In the good old days of Classic Hollywood, famous actors and actresses lending their name to products wasn't a big deal. If anything, it was the standard. Unlike today's actors who go overseas to do commercials because they don't want you to know they're doing them, you could flip through any popular magazine from the 40's and see Barbara Stanwyck recommending Chesterfield cigarettes to her friends and fans. Imagine her doing that in today's PC age! She'd be hit with lawsuit after lawsuit by fans who claimed that she encouraged them to smoke and since they're dying of cancer, she should foot their bills. Complete and total madness.

One more interesting thing I've noticed is that in the majority of the cigarette ads, there's also a promotional line for whatever movie they're appearing in at the time. So of course, it begs the question--were these stars really smoking Chesterfields, or were they just sold out to the company by their home studio or agent? Look at Claudette Colbert--she's practically Chesterfield's poster girl, appearing in no less than 4 ads during a span of 6 years! Either agent must have been getting good money from the Chesterfield people or Claudette really loved her smokes.

And of course, look how glamorous they look while smoking and drinking! Honestly, I haven't smoked in about...ten years and I could kill someone from a cigarette right now. For some reason, I'm thinking if I lit up a Chesterfield, I'd somehow look like Rita Hayworth. Yeah, if I had a face lift maybe. And even that's pretty suspect.

But on a personal note, my mother told me that my grandfather's favorite brand of smokes were Chesterfields and he lived well into his 90's, the miserable old coot.

Enjoy!

Chesterfield ads (click on thumbnail for larger version):

Rosalind Russell, Ethel Merman, Tyrone Power, Rita Hayworth

Virgina Mayo, Jane Wyman

Beer (click on thumbnail for larger version):

Edward G. Robinson and wife, Arthur Kennedy, Dan Duryea

Smirnoff Vodka and Jim Beam (click on thumbnail for larger version):

Joan Fontaine and Collier Young, Tony Randall, Harpo Marx, Robert Wagner and Bette Davis

For those of who abstain from vice - Cola and Gum! (click on thumbnail for larger version)

Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford for RC COLA (she's rolling over in her grave), Van Heflin

Note: I collected all these ads over the years off ebay, where you can find many of them for sale. The only thing I did was straighten them out and color correct them

*According to this article, that advertisement of Joseph Cotten is supposed to be aimed at the 1950's gay market. Uh, I really didn't get that. I just thought there was two Joseph Cotten's in one ad. I wonder if he would have posed if he knew that. Hmmmm.

Of course, only Harpo can do the Harpo face. The rest of us lack the crucial ability to channel the qualities of papier maché into our cheeks. Above is a whole scene, from MONKEY BUSINESS, showcasing the Harpo physog and its unique subhuman qualities. In the words of Groucho, "The last time I saw a head like that it was floating in a bottle of formaldehyde."

Here are FIVE HARPO FILM FACTS:

(1) Adolph "Harpo" Marx was not actually mute, nor could he play the harp. Onscreen, he would simply wave his arms about in front of the strings and specially composed music would then be added that approximated to his hand movements. Among the greats who got their musical start composing for Harpo's hands were LAURA composer David Raksin, and future BeeGee Barry Gibb.

(2) Despite "playing dumb" onscreen, Harpo was in reality a skilled ventriloquist, and would sometimes "voice" his more gabby brothers' lines while they simply moved their lips in silence. There are persistent rumours that Zeppo was in fact genuinely mute as a result of his First World War aerial combat experience.

(3) After he suffered an aneurysm in later life, Harpo's face really did "stay like that". He was able to conceal his disability by pretending he was "just mucking about," and was eventually cured by Professor Eggelhoffer of Vienna's patented "car horn therapy".

(4) Harpo's curly blond locks required three hours of grooming by the make-up department before and after every single "take". When Harpo had a haircut, the trimmings would be meticulously gathered up and used to make wigs for Shirley Temple (a congenitally hairless dwarf).

(5) Harpo's great gifts as a sympathetic listener allowed him to bed or wed a multitude of Hollywood lovelies, including Jean Harlow, Constance Bennett, Ann Sheridan and, controversially, Trigger, whom he married in a blasphemous midnight nuptial presided over by Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey. This is detailed in chapter 13 of Trigger's unpublished autobiography, Hooves Across the Table, and resulted in a scandal that ended the celebrity horse's career in the U.S. Senate.

Love-gutted and weak
I watch and listen in vain
for Harpo to speak

You can work at whatever you want to as long as you do it as well as you can and clean up afterwars and you're at the table at mealtime and in bed at bedtime.

Respect what the others do. Respect Dad's harp, Moms paints, Billy's piano, Alex's set of tools, Jimmy's designs, and Minnie's menagerie.

If anything makes you sore, come out with it. Maybe the rest of us are itching for a fight too.

If anything strikes you funny, out with that too. Let's all the rest of us have a laugh.

If you have an impulse to do something you're not sure is right, go ahead and do it. Take a chance. Chances are, if you don't you'll regret it - unless you break the rules about mealtime or bedtime, in wich case you'll sure as hell regret it.

If it's a question of whether to do what's fun or what is supposed to be good for you, and nobody is hur by whichever you do, always do what's fun.

If things get too much for you and you feel the whole world's against you, go stand on your head. If you can think of anything crazier, do it.

Don't worry about what otehr people think. The only person in the world important enough to conform to is yourself.

Anybody who mistreats a pet or breaks a pool cue is docked a month's pay.

I love Chico in the background when Groucho's doing his Chevalier imitation.

Note: No sound.

I taught myself bookbinding by reverse engineering what I now know to be a very poorly made hardcover book I bought for a dollar at the Los Feliz Public Library's monthly book sale. About a month into making books (heavily influenced by the structure of the Golden Gate Bridge and Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House) I decided I'd like to do something deluxe, an embossed spine. I called up an embosser and had what I think of as a "Harpo Marx moment": not only weren't my books being made in any form that would make it possible for him to emboss the spine, he couldn't imagine how they were made at all, and wanted me to bring one in for him to look at.

When Harpo Marx's mother, Minnie, bought a Harp for Harpo she just sent it along on the road, with no instructions. Harpo had to figure it out for himself. He did pretty well but one day he was walking past the window of a Woolworths store and saw a greeting card that featured an angel playing a harp and she was resting it on the other shoulder. Harpo realised he had the technique all wrong and went to a teacher to try and straighten things out: it turns out that this teacher (not Mildred Dilling, who came later, who would truly appreciate his growing artistry with the instrument) wanted to figure out how Harpo was playing and didn't want to teach him anything.

I didn't want to learn bookbinding as a handmade craft: where books are corseted in fabric and laced tight, and their weak glues have to sit under weights for a long time. I have a great respect for the craft of bookbinding, but I wanted to be in the manufacturing business, to make something not mass produced, but machine made. I wanted to use fast drying strong glues. I wanted to be the Santiago Calatrava of bookbinding.

There were plenty of books in the library about the craft of bookbinding but very little information that I could find about the manufacturing of books. And then I found the Acme Bookbinding website. I've often referred to the site and I almost feel as if I went to Acme University.

 What was most useful to me, and luckily I printed it out, because it doesn't seem to be on the website any more, is an essay called The Making of the Modern Book, where Paul Parisi, President of Acme Bookbinding points out the drawbacks of contemporary high volume book production. From this essay I learned why the library book that I'd pulled apart to teach myself bookbinding was so poorly made.

I have explained why trade books will inevitably be of a lower quality than libraries require. They will have fragile bones, perfect bound rather than Smyth sewn through-the-fold. They will have weak muscles, reinforced with skimpy spine linings. They will have thin skin, covered in paper rather than in durable cloth. The economics of mass production is the culprit not the unscrupulous publisher. It is possible to manufacture books that will meet library needs. The problem is that the publisher produces books for the average consumer not for the library. Even if the book is intended for the library market, use patterns vary and books invariably get caught up in the routine production stream that the publisher is familiar with. There is no advocate for the economics of better quality that has sufficient clout with the publisher to get any results.

As I recall the title of my talk was the making of the modern book. It seems to me that the mass production techniques of past years were built around a paradigm that books are produced in the greatest quantity possible in order to get unit costs down. The problem is that these books have to be stored in a warehouse, shipped to the point of sale when orders are placed and often discounted or destroyed if they do not sell. Remember that publishers are truly risk takers since they allow book stores to send books back for full credit if they do not sell.

This essay was the transcript of a talk given in 1991, which predated the mania for print-on-demand books that would erupt seven or eight years later and become enveloped in the illogical hopes for digital technologies. I always heard print-on-demand technologies (where an individual book is made instantly, onsite at a bookstore) described as if they were like the replicator from Star Trek the Next Generation. The final print-on-demand document was more like something printed on an ink-jet printer and comb-bound like a business document. I happen to admire this kind of process: it's what my books are close to (as if Mies van der Rohe had developed a comb bound document, that is) but these 'books' were uniformly ugly and ignoble. The concept quietly fell by the wayside.

It was as though all of the variety and beauty and unusual colours and typefaces and paper stocks and illustrations and covers were being put through a grinder and coming out as the same kind fast-food sausage. Something similar is happening with the print services offered by Apple and online photo sharing services: anything is possible online with manipulation of the image and its size and putting text around it, but to print it out there are five colours, landscape or portrait, three sizes, text in two or three styles and placements, and none of these have ever struck me as being particularly interesting.  

Acme was ahead of its time and Paul Parisi's suggestion of small binderies being uniquely placed to handle special, small runs would apply to the paper by-product of online image collections.

As this new model emerges, it seems clear to me that the logical industry to bind these small orders of single sheet books is the library binding industry. We should re-christen ourselves as On-Demand binders or Custom binders. Library binders are uniquely organised to manage a production line where every book on the line is different. Whatever quality, service or specification the customer requires is possible. Our production facilities are continuously assimilating new technology that streamlines our process without restricting our flexiblity regarding quality. In envision a bright future for tomorrow's morphed library binders and for libraries that will be able to purchase books books made to their specifications, capable of meeting their use requirements.

This lecture is almost fifteen years old, and was delivered at about the time that Sony introduced the howlingly awful electronic book reader, the Data Discman, and when computers and screen technologies were far less fine and user friendly than they are now. But he made an interesting suggestion about a possible new business model that still seems workable and logical today: that books be available on download, the publisher gets their revenue from the download and the consumer decides whether it's something they want bound up (by a specialist like Acme) or kept as a digital file.

My optimism about the viability of the printed book is mostly driven by the four young children that I have at home. I sincerely hope that they and their children can look forward to a lifetime of reading -- exploring the wide world, nurturing their imaginations and sharing the experiences and dreams of generations past.

A great part of that experience is in the design of the book, the tactile connection to the feel of the paper, the richness of the printing and the structure of the binding. Yes, now I praise structure because good book structure, like good design, is important and valuable. You may not see it,but you know when it is absent. It adds to the experience and joy of reading. Quality is possible in a world of custom manufacturing, becuse you will not have to settle for the product that the mass-market average-consumer will accept. Strong bones, firm muscle and vibrant skin will be possible for the books of the future. Basic values never change, they simply must be reinvented now and then.

today.

violeta parra

&

leandro katz -- ANIMAL HOURS

much like

wonderful

wonderful

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