On The Magic Island

By W.B. Seabrook with illustrations by Alexander King.

In 1929 a travelogue was released that would, through the chain reaction it set off, have a profound effect on American popular culture and by extension the American collective consciousness. It was written by a fellow with a questionable resume of personal traits said to include alcoholism, occultism, sensory deprivation, and sadism, who would ultimately commit suicide by pill-overdose. His is not a household name, and is rarely spoken, yet it is through the continued fascinated invocation of another name altogether that we unknowingly evoke his legacy: Zombie! Zombie!! Zombie!!!


Everyone loves Saul Bass. It’s a deserved love. He’s a design giant and designers pay the respect due. But even those amongst us who don’t get hot under the collar for fonts and logo treatments love him, whether they know his name or not. They love his his incredible title sequences for films like The Man with the Golden Arm, Vertigo, and Anatomy of a Murder. I recently came across some commercial work he’d done for television in the 50’s, and upon doing some google-sniffing to search out more information, was surprised to find none of it was already represented on the web. With that in mind please consider the following images my small contribution to the digital remembrance of all things Bass.


Mr. Men: The Movie

Way back in 1971 Roger Hargreaves, a London Ad man, wrote and illustrated a little book called Mr.Tickle. It was the birth of the immensely popular Mr. Men franchise which would make Hargreaves the third most selling British author in history, published in over 22 languages. Some of the older among you surely remember these.

If you do, or if you have kids of your own, you might be interested to know that there is actually a big screen adaptation in the works, slated for a 2008 release.(Here’s the IMDb entry.) Why am I telling you all this? Why would a person like myself, with an admittedly acerbic sort of outlook, put myself in a position to have to post an image which contained not just rainbows and butterflies and picnic blankets but kites and hot-air balloons to boot?! Read on…

10.17. filed under: film. lies. play. 6

And you shall know us by our doodles!

Oh, the tortured and convoluted minds of the insane! What a horror, the knowledge that they slink down the evening streets, pass us on rainy highways, stand behind us on line at the supermarket. They mutter, they stammer, they crane their necks and wail with bloodied hands during every lighting storm. But when they are silent? When their tumultuous souls are temporarily still? How shall we know them then? I ask you, how will we safeguard our slumber parties and campsites and abandoned gas stations? How will we ever again feel safe walking through poorly lit parking garages at three in the morning? How will we change flat tires on remote rural roads knowing deranged minds lurk all around us?!  Fortunately, good citizen, there is an answer- for so deranged are these crazies that their madness spills over, not only into their ramblings and murderous hands, but onto the very walls around them! Lunatics simply can not resist the urge to scrawl their turbulent thoughts over every inch of bare wall available to them. They are, one and all, compulsive doodlers… evidently.

10.02. filed under: film. observations. play. 7

Truth of words, larkless, here the possibility of greatness ever a page existing. Crazy pulchritude with incomprehension. Each vision a riddle with silent smilings! The mystery is additive to all, however, with production of private head tales, tongueless! like Pinker in Chomsky’s night pillow. No memory, even as childish, these wonders. Smurfs? The Terrific Space Coaster? Kangaroo Commander? Bah! The sadness does hover at missing the most great entertainments young eyes might glance on screens, it’s certain. Old eyes now and glancing at screens. Different but approaching what was. Together our tongueless eyes! We, all of us, glance at screens!

09.27. filed under: film. play. 1