Happy New Year #7 -- January 1, 2014

I wish everyone a happy and prosperous New Year.

 The drawing is from the 31-December-1913 San Francisco Call. It isby Hearst artist Nell Brinkley, who was famous for her "Brinkley Girls."  In 2009, we saw a Nell Brinkley exhibit at the Cartoon Art Museum.  As we looked at a page from "Golden Eyes and her Hero, Bill, Over There," I said to my wife "You can say a lot of bad things about William Randolph Hearst, but he liked comics and illustrations." My wife said "And scantily clad blondes." In fact, my wife said the character looked like Marion Davies. I thought that relationship had started later, but actually they were already together when the stories were published.

My new mostly-movies blog launched today:  The Big V Riot Squad. 

Last night we went to a nice four-course dinner at the Moonraker in Rockaway Beach.  It was a four-course tasting menu.  We enjoyed it very much. 

Metreon, Yerba Buena Gardens, Cartoon Art Museum -- February 18, 2012

It was cold and windy today.

The cat jumped on the bed to wake us.  We went downstairs and found that Turner Classic Movies was showing M. Hulot's Holiday.  After breakfast, we drove downtown to Fifth and Mission.  We went to the Metreon, which recently reopened after extensive remodeling, which is still going on.  We had lunch at the San Francisco Soup Company.  We went upstairs and took some pictures, like the one above, showing the Museum of Modern Art and Timothy Pflueger's Pacific Telephone Building. We walked around Yerba Buena Gardens and took more photos.

I didn't notice any problems caused by this weekend's Bay Bridge closure. 

We went to the Cartoon Art Museum. They had an exhibit of art related to the Wizard of Oz, from a comic strip that L Frank Baum wrote and a 1930s comic strip, to more recent comic books and graphic novels. My daughter has been enjoying the Marvel graphic novels. They also had an exhibit of contemporary comic strips, including Pearls Before Swine and Lio. 

We went to 5 o'clock mass at Good Shepherd, then had dinner at Guerrero's Taqueria.

Cartoon Art Museum #2 -- May 22, 2010

We were going to do a walking tour today, but one of the people we were going to take got sick. We headed downtown anyway and parked at Fifth and Mission. We took a walk out Kearny to Portsmouth Square and then up to the Fortune Cookie Factory.

We walked back on Stockton, through the tunnel and on to Macys. I dropped the cookies off at the car and met them back at the store. They shopped a bit and then we went down Stockton and dropped off their purchases.

We had lunch at AG Ferrari on Mission, then went to the Cartoon Art Museum. I wanted to see the Batman exhibit before it closes in early June. They had a copy of the original artwork from Detective 27, Batman's first appearance. The cover of Detective 27 is from a wonderful site called Cover Browser: http://www.coverbrowser.com/. They also had scenes from The Dark Knight, Digital Justice, and Year 100.

There was a new exhibit on Mort Walker and Beetle Bailey. I never paid much attention to it in the Sunday paper and then after Hearst took over the Chronicle, but I remember its occasional controversies. I liked one where the Sargeant yells at a Private for shooting a machine gun at a deer and tells him never to do anything so cruel again. "This is meant for people."

The third exhibit was about Ed Hannigan's covers for DC and Marvel. He has MS and the show was helping to raise money for him. I put something in the box.

We went from there across the street to the California Historical Society to see the Think California exhibit. I particularly liked the painting "Larsen's Chicken Farm, 19th Avenue, San Francisco." There were sections on different themes like people coming to California, California's abundance, and our expositions.

We went to 5 o'clock mass at Good Shepherd, for Pentecost. Now Easter season is truly over.

Cartoon Art Museum -- August 30, 2009

Yesterday we visited the Cartoon Art Museum (http://www.cartoonart.org/). The Disney fans in the family wanted to see an exhibit marking the 50th anniversary of Sleeping Beauty. The exhibit talked about how Walt Disney wanted the style Eyvind Earle's to carry through to the finished product.

"Monsters of Webcomics" had examples of several artists' work, and a set of questions that had been posed to each artist.

The third exhibit was "The Brinkley Girls," about Nell Brinkley's work. It included several pages from Examiner Sunday pages that featured stories or verses illustrated by Brinkley. As we looked at a page from "Golden Eyes and her Hero, Bill, Over There," I said to my wife "You can say a lot of bad things about William Randolph Hearst, but he liked comics and illustrations." My wife said "And scantily clad blondes." In fact, my wife said the character looked like Marion Davies. I thought that relationship had started later, but actually they were already together when the stories were published.