The Way to a Woman's Heart

(well, mine anyway)

Skywriting! I'm just putting it out there that any man who proposes to me in skywriting will win my hand in marriage*. If he is the pilot who does the writing, that gives him a bunch of bonus points.

Having gone to the airshow on a windy day and a not windy day, I was thinking about smoke and aerobatics. Which led me to think about skywriting. I think this is a fantastic craft, which apparetnly is making a bit of a comeback! I was informed today that I missed seeing some skywriting over my own town a couple of days ago. It's just as well, since the prop wash from my saffron-colored airship would mess up the letters....

Here is an educational film strip from 1935 about skywriting.




*Some exclusions may apply.

Chap Hop! Ukuleles! WAR!

This is kind of weird.... so, I've meaning to write a post for a while about ukuleles. No, really. I find it is impossible to feel sad when someone is playing a ukulele, particularly if it is 20s-ish music. For example, this is a delightful song I stumbled across on youtube.

Then I was reading The Chap, one of my favorite magazines of all time (on their website), and they mentioned Mr B the Gentleman Rhymer, who is performing at this year's ball. I remembered him because of the Chap Manifesto, which he set to rap in honor of the publication's tenth birthday. Anyway, here is one of his videos:

I think his banjolele is quite catchy, but apparently there is already a king of chap hop, and he is Professor Elemental. Here is what he has to say:

And the response? I think it's a response....?

Apparently some of the fans are pretty die-hard, but I like them both. Although, Prof. E. does have an album called Indifference Engine, so that gets him brownie points. Anyway, there is one thing we can all agree on:

More fun with youtube

So I made another video. It's not exactly steampunk, but it is from 1906 (apparently). Someone stood on the front of a streetcar going down Market Street in San Francisco, and they filmed everything that went by. It's pretty crazy, particularly the lack of traffic laws.

There are a lot of videos that use this film, and also this one, which I like a lot, that juxtaposes the same film with one taken perhaps two weeks later, after the devastating earthquake. The speed in these videos seems to be the speed at which the film was digitized, and I think it looks eerily slow.

Not mine though. I sped it up to the right speed - as we all know, people walked about 25 percent faster back then. It's how the West was won, people! Or it could have had something to do with undercranking the camera and then playing it back at normal speed. Anyway, it's way funnier if you speed it up, and of course, pair it Vernian Process's incomparable version of the Maple Leaf Rag. I picked an arbitrary speed for the video, which then ended up shorter than the song, so I added some remixy parts to fit the music better.

What you end up with is a Where's Waldo of chaos and insanity. As you watch, try to spot the following:

• 2, possibly 3, newspaper boys
• 1 newspaper man
  
• 2 men nearly getting run over
• 2 women nearly getting run over (at the same time)
• 2 horse-drawn wagons nearly getting run over
• a car driving the wrong way
• a horse galloping very fast
• a wagon going the wrong way
• 4 cars cutting off the streetcar
• a guy in an apron chasing another guy in an apron
• 2 guys hanging onto a car
• a wagon with a skinny horse cutting off a car, and a streetcar

Let me know if I have miscounted, or missed any other funny things.

Mysteriously Steampunk Old Cartoons!

So I was looking up "Come Take a Trip in My Airship" on youtube, because it's an awesome song, and a picture on deviantArt reminded me of it. It was a popular song in 1904, and it's a very cute love song. I found a few videos of a singer named Billy Murray singing it on old phonographs (odd, because the song is from a girl's point of view), and I also stumbled upon this cartoon.

There's this one too, which has the whole song with the lyrics, and is on acid. At 2:48, the adorableness begins, but the whole cartoon is pretty awesome. I like that the second cartoon has it as a duet. Johnny Cash sang it too, but not all the verses. Who would have been a good singer to sing the woman's part with Johnny Cash?

Here's another video using the song, with some really great old airship clips!

Baby's First Steampunk

Last night - yesterday morning actually (it's tomorrow again, if you know what I mean) - I made my first AMV. It combines a cartoon and and song that just need to go together - Abney Park's "Airship Pirate", and Disney's "Talespin", and it stars the airship pirate, Don Karnage

Talespin is one my favorite shows, and has been ever since it was on the Disney Afternoon, which may be the greatest block of TV programming in the history of the medium. But it is more than that. It is also Baby's First Steampunk. One might argue that that coveted title should go to Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, given its sympathetic portrayal of steam-powered machines versus diesel and electric shovels, but we should probably not overanalyze these things. Also, while the story does center around steam power, it takes place in a contemporary setting and is not really speculative. No, Talespin is clearly the steampunk of choice for developing minds (as I replayed the first four episodes over and over narrowing down my selection of clips, I realized just how fully my subconscious mind is steeped in this show)

Now, I don't think the mere presence of airships makes something steampunk, and I'll examine this in more detail later. But the sense of adventure, and the overall look and feel, while a bit late - 1930s, probably - has a lot of steampunkness, especially the pirates. Don Karnage's airship, the Iron Vulture, is particularly interesting. If you look at it, it's not really a lighter-than-air ship. It has large gas envelopes on the sides, but it only lifts off when it uses the rows of upward-pointing propellers along the sides. Why is this significant? It's like the design of Captain Robur's airship in Jules Verne's "Robur the Conqueror", which was made into the movie "Master of the World" starring Vincent Price. Aside from that, look at the control room:

It has a certain flare. It reminds me of the Nautilus, and there are lovely giant pipes and gauges everywhere. If you watch the early episodes (I don't know if they continue later in the series), it doesn't make the usual low, droning hum we usually hear from airship engines. Instead it makes a steamy chugging noise like a train. That's just cool and it goes to show the amount of thought and research Disney used to put into their cartoons (do they even make half-hour cartoons now?)

The engines on the back even look like the boilers from locomotives, complete with smokestacks and steam domes. In fact, Talespin does what so many things we call steampunk don't bother with, and gives a nod to the way steam machines actually work. (more on that later too).

And of course, one look at the pirates themselves, with their googles, shabby top hats, vests, and variety of weapons, and it's pretty clear that they are very steampunk pirates indeed.

The best steam car ever made!

Jay Leno's got a little steampunk in him it seems. Here's his Doble steam car. The video is long, but totally worth it.

update: 5/25/11 The video disappeared so I updated the link. Now you have to watch commercials before the video plays, but it's still very cool.