Critics Are Raving About Hold the Beetroot!

Critics Are Raving 

About 

Hold The Beetroot!

Yes, the reviews are in! 

Destined to be a children’s classic, a colossal bestseller, blockbuster motion picture and pirated download… 

HOLD THE BEETROOT

by 

Rusty Pliers 

Here are just a few of the ravings from the minds of friends, family and lawyers about HOLD THE BEETROOT;

“It’s my son’s finest work,” said the author’s father. 

“It’s also his first, and am I proud!”

“I almost laughed out loud!” mimed Marcel Marceau.

“Really, I’m asking,” said his father again. “Am I supposed to be proud of this stuff? Half of it never even happened! What a liar! He doesn’t get it from my side of the family!”

“Reminiscent and imitative of Groucho Marx, only grouchier and not as funny!” claimed the lawyers of Groucho Marx’s estate. 

“We thought the same thing!” agreed the Samuel Clemens estate lawyers. “Only nowhere near as funny!

“We also thought the same thing!” said the Harpo Marx lawyers. “But we didn’t want to say anything.”

“We also also thought-a the same thing!” said the lawyers of Chico Marx’s estate.

“It’s almost funny in places, sometimes,” counterclaimed the author’s overworked lawyer. “I dare you to stay awake through it long enough to locate the plagiarisms! And that’s good enough, under the law!”

“Yeah? Under the law, eh? We wish he were under something… like the wheels of a truck!” counter-counterclaimed the lawyers from every Marx Brother’s estate.

“We won’t dignify this crap with the courtesy of a response!” said the heirs of Robert Benchley. “You’ll hear from our lawyers!”

“How come you didn’t plagiarize me?” wondered David Sedaris. “I’m every bit as funny as any Marx brother you can name. Except maybe Zippo! And I’m still alive!”

“You have to say this for HOLD THE BEETROOT, there’s nothing else like it in the marketplace today!” promised the author’s publisher. “And it’s strong on subtle, effective product placement!”

“Reading it made my eyes hurt,” effused the author’s ophthalmologist.

“It made me wish I were dead,” sighed Doctor Kevorkian. “Or Mr Pliers was!”

“It’s long, isn’t it?” queried the author’s brother, when asked to read it.

“It’s a daring concept for a humorist! Over 350 pages long, and only fourteen of them are funny!” said the author’s best friend, who declined to be named.

“I thought it was the funniest book I’ve ever read,” claimed the author’s wife. “At least the few pages I read were! Of course, I’m not much of a reader. I prefer yoga.”

“Tell us more about this Yoga fellow,” demanded Groucho’s lawyers. “Or did Mr Pliers shoot him in his pajamas, too?”

“I love HOLD THE BEETROOT! It couldn’t be better!” gushed the author’s sister. “A true masterpiece! Now, where’s my fifty bucks?”

“I couldn’t put it down,” raved Miss Sherman, the author’s former sixth grade teacher. “It stuck to my fingers like wet shit to a blanket!”

“He passed the sixth grade?” wondered the author’s third wife. “I thought he was illiterate!”

“That’s not true!!” objected his father. “I was married to his mother!”

“I never said he passed the sixth grade!” corrected Miss Sherman.

“A thousand monkeys on a thousand computers couldn’t come up with stuff this good,” said the author’s editor. “We’re gonna need more monkeys.”

“Its only weakness is the beginning, the middle and the end,” uttered Joseph Conrad via the crystal ball of a Gypsy fortuneteller. “And you will meet a tall, dark stranger… or soon take a long sea voyage, one of those.”

   I could go on, but why bother? 

All the reviews are as good as these.

Thank you.

And enjoy HOLD THE BEETROOT!

Animator! Carpe Diem! (Part 3)

Animator! 

Carpe Diem! 

(Part 3)

Sachi showed me into a small office and gestured vaguely towards the work piled upon an animation desk. 

“Take a look at the scene,” she said. “See if you can figure out what it needs. Nobody’s touched it since the animator left this morning. We’ve got to finish it by 10am tomorrow and get it to camera. Okay?”

“Okay,” I answered, sitting down at the desk.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” said Sachi. “Want a coffee?”

“Yes, please.” 

Show business, there really is no business like it. 

That morning I’d been at the right place at the right time and showed up with my demo reel, looking for a job. Now here I sat, at another man’s desk to finish his scene. 

A scene urgently needed in a timely manner.

Aha! It’s always better to be lucky than good! 

I rolled through the scene. It was an action scene of a big, burly guy throwing a body into the trunk of a car. I rolled through it repeatedly, trying to visualize it, get familiar with it, seeking its essence. It was quality work. The drawings were solid… the animation smooth and fluid. 

I breathed a sigh of relief. It was a good scene to show what I could do. The animator had used a system I could understand and the drawings were interesting without being too difficult. 

By the time Sachi returned with the coffee I was feeling confident I could finish the scene before the deadline, provided I could work all night.

“Well, what do you think?” asked Sachi.

I sipped my coffee. “Yeah,” I said. “I think I can handle it. It’s a fun scene, and it’s mostly done. All I have to do is not mess it up.”

“Good,” said Sachi. “Anything you need?”

I mentioned working all night and asked if that would be okay. Sachi nodded, saying, “Sure, a few of us will be.”

“Mind if I use the telephone?” I asked. “I’d like to call my wife and let her know what’s up.”

“Help yourself.”

“Thanks.”

Sachi left me to it, and after telephoning I began working on the scene. It was interesting in that the drawings were done straight onto frosted cels with colored pencils. Not graphite on paper, as I was used to. One had to be precise and clean with the drawing, rather than my usual scratch and search technique. I had never seen a frosted cel before and I quickly learned I had to be careful, as any erasing would leave smudges, destroying the drawing and meaning time lost in making another. Also, when handling the cels, soft cotton gloves had to be worn to avoid fingerprints, but I had used gloves before and was used to that.

I got down to work. After a while, I fell into a rhythm and began enjoying myself. I love animating. More than that I love making movies. And if you love doing something, it’s hardly work, is it? When I first started my working life, back at the Ministry of Works in New Zealand, we worked in muddy ditches at the ends of picks and shovels with our muscles and our backs and the sweat of our brows. Physical work! Dangerous and manly, with plenty of cursing! I wondered what the ghosts from my past would think of me now, sitting here in New York drawing little drawings in a Broadway film studio built to resemble a child’s playroom. For sure I knew, wherever they were, my ghostly workmates wouldn’t think that sitting on your ass drawing little pictures with colored pencils was anything remotely like working. 

Rest in peace, brothers. Your work is through.

I stopped for a late lunch, ducking out for a slice of pizza, a bottle of Rolling Rock and a cigarette. The beer was a most appreciated luxury, but I was working now and could afford it. A further luxury was a second cigarette, sitting on a bench in the sunshine, resting my sore leg and watching people go by. 

Funny how much friendlier New Yorkers looked after I’d had a meal, with a full belly and a job to go back to. 

Back at the desk working, I had an idea. The action by the burly guy when preparing to throw the heavy body into the trunk of the car (in animation, this preparing type of action is called anticipation) could be exaggerated more, or ‘pushed’ as we call it, to good effect. The body that was supposed to be heavy would have a much better chance of looking heavy this way, and the viewer would have slightly more time to appreciate what was happening. It would mean making the scene longer to accommodate the extra time that the action would take (a few tenths of a second), something that wasn’t always possible in a tightly edited film, so I would have to check with Sachi about it.

“Okay,” she agreed. “Let’s try it and see what it looks like. But, for now, don’t throw out any drawings and don’t change the original X-sheet. We can shoot it both ways and see which we like best. We’ll change the sheet later if it works out.”

I got down to work again and the hours flew by. I couldn’t see the day ending and the night beginning from the windowless office, but the tempo and noise of the busy studio during the day was gradually replaced by an eerie quiet. 

Around five in the morning, that dreadful hour after working all night when everything is gray and uncertain, including the animator, I struck a drawing I couldn’t get right. It should have been a simple drawing, too, making it all the more frustrating. I tried over and over, wasting cel upon cel, but still it wouldn’t come. I was tired. I decided to take a break. It would do me good to get up and stretch my legs for a bit, to focus my eyes on something further away than the end of my arm, maybe have a cigarette and another cup of ... 

“Coffee! Hey, Rusty, wake up! Fresh coffee.”

I had fallen asleep at the desk. 

“Huh? Who?” I lifted my head from my crossed arms on the desk, blinking in the strong light of the Luxo lamp, which I had neglected to turn off. “I wasn’t asleep,” I lied, and I heard Sachi laugh. My mouth tasted of pencil shavings and pink erasers. The side of my face was hot where it had been exposed to the drawing lamp.

“Coffee?” repeated Sachi.

“Oh, yeah. Thanks.” I accepted the hot coffee with gratitude. “It’s been a while since I’ve pulled an all-nighter,” I said. “Working, that is.”

Sachi smiled and asked how it was going. She looked fresh and awake.

“What time is it now?” I asked.

“Seven-thirty.”

“Two more hours, no more,” I promised.

“Perfect!” she said. 

To be continued…

Three More Zen Poems

Three More Zen Poems

(2)

“Zen Only Takes a Minute”

Good morning, fellow traveller.

Or afternoon, if that applies.

Care to join me 

In a little zen?

Okay, get comfortable.

Relax.

Empty your mind.

Now, take a deep breath.

Hold it…

Breathe out.

Breathe In. 

Hold it…

Breathe out.

In.

Hold…

Out.

Think of nothing 

But your breathing

Breathe In… 

Hold it…

Breathe out.

In… 

Hold…

Out.

There. 

Feel better?

Perhaps for a moment

You’ve stilled the monkey noises

In your head.

That was easy, wasn’t it?

Zen only takes a minute

To learn.

A lifetime to master.

(3)

“No Internet, Plenty of Zen”

No internet this morning.

But surprise surprise we didn’t panic.

Our world didn’t collapse.

After all, we’ve still got our health

And our golden house 

With rocket car in the garage.

There’s a nice

Zen garden in the back, too,

Just a few steps from my office,

Where I’ve spent many happy hours.

So, I put my computer to sleep

And went outside

With an eye of zen

(Which is to say an eye of love!)

To take photographs

Of flowers and plants 

And things from nature,

So close at hand.

Because beauty is everywhere,

If we would just see it.

Like zen is.

Hmmm, no internet, eh?

Good!

Think I’ll knock off

And head for a garden.

See you tomorrow.

(4)

“Morning Zen”

With the morning sun 

I feel my zen rising.

I suppose I’m a morning person, 

As they call it.

But really I’m just a person.

Morning, noon or night.

I have my victories and defeats.

Like you do.

One day I’ll be dead.

Then it won’t matter 

Which was which.

And if it won’t matter 

Which was which after I’m dead,

Why would it matter now?

Zen!

Animator! Carpe Diem! (Part 2)

Animator!

Carpe Diem! 

(Part 2)

Sachi stopped halfway down the corridor.

“Well,” she said, turning to me. “Today’s your lucky day!”

“Oh yeah?” I answered hopefully. “I like the sound of that!”

I had just been interviewed and had shown my demo reel, hoping to land my first animation gig in New York with the company Sachi worked for, Broadcast Arts.

Now we stood chatting in the corridor.

Sachi said they had a problem, and maybe I could help. Nothing to do with White Cloud bathroom tissue, the job they had called me about which started next month. This was something else, an emergency, but if I did well, then the White Cloud job was as good as mine.

“An audition, eh?” I answered. “Sure, if I can help.” 

What else was I going to say? 

“Call it a chance to prove what you can do,” answered Sachi. She explained that the animator who had been working on the scene, after working more than two days and nights straight, told the boss (Wolf) to shove his deadline, and had gone home to get some sleep.

“I totally sympathize with the guy,” said Sachi. “The hours on this one were murder and getting worse! But, you know art directors, we had to change something at the last minute and now the schedule’s all screwed up! Wolf! He took this job knowing the deadline was crazy. Hope he’s charging them plenty.”

The problem was, said Sachi, they needed the scene now. Right now.

I nodded my head. Sounded like animation in America wasn’t any different from animation in New Zealand… a job fit for lunatics, optimists, geeks and dreamers.

I’ll let you decide which of those I might be.

“I want to ask you something,” I said to Sachi. “I wouldn’t want to steal someone’s job or anything like that. He went home to take a break, right? And here I am, in the right place at the right time. A miracle! You know, like those old movie musicals, where the star twists an ankle and the understudy, in this case me, gets his big chance!” 

“Yeah,” laughed Sachi. “That’s pretty much it.”

My life wasn’t about making movies, I told Sachi, my life was becoming a movie!

“Let’s hope it’s not a tragedy, where we all die in the last act,” said Sachi, and we laughed together.

We had stopped in the middle of the corridor and people streamed past in either direction. The buzzy energy of the studio was very positive, and I felt myself becoming energized too, and swept up by the rightness of the moment.

Now was my chance, I must seize it!  

“Don’t worry about John,” said Sachi. “You’re not taking his job, you’re helping him out.” She looked me straight in the eye for a moment, before adding, “If you can do the work like you say you can.”

“No worries there,” I bragged, trying not to look worried. 

What else was I going to say?

“Hey! Sachi!” Up rushed a young man wearing lab coat and white gloves. He nodded to me before turning to Sachi, saying, “Wolf says where’s the polarizing filters for the big Mitchell? He was sure we had some and I can’t find them anywhere!” 

He didn’t look very well, kind of clammy and quivering. But you see that a lot in the animation business. His gloved hands (he wore soft white gloves for handling cels) were trembling slightly and he had that odd, greenish cast one gets from lack of sleep and too much caffeine. He must have been a camera operator, I figured, because he was looking for polarizing filters for a Mitchell, which is a type of animation camera, and he had an X-sheet (exposure sheet, the guide to how a scene will be photographed) on a clipboard under his arm. With a deadline approaching he’d probably been working long hours, too, like everyone else. Maybe longer. Hours of tedium alone in the dark, adjusting the camera incrementally and photographing cel after cel, frame after frame, painstakingly building up a movie one-twenty-fourth-of-a-second at a time.

Camera operator. I’d done that too, when making my own films. You had to be crazy to do it. Crazy, and geeky because it requires an incredible amount of focus and accuracy.

“We need the polarizers for 18B!” he explained excitedly, adding, “It’s the scene with all the elves!” as if that made all the difference.

“Okay,” said Sachi. “Take it easy.”

He appeared to be a geek on the edge of exhaustion, green and trembling. Just wait till the rest of you starts twitching, I thought. Better ease up, brother, or curl up somewhere and get some sleep. 

I recalled how my dad, exhausted after a ridiculous number of hours on the job, would curl up under his Disney animation desk and take himself a well earned snooze. (He had proudly hauled that desk from the Disney studio in Burbank, where he’d spent seven years animating, all the way to New Zealand when we immigrated there in the 1960s. Later, in one of life’s strange twists, at my dying mother’s request I became my father’s apprentice, and learned animation from him.) When, from exhaustion, his eyes could no longer see and his hands could no longer draw, dad would curl up in the spacious footwell of the giant desk, the chair rolled back out of the way, and have a nap.

“Call me at three o’clock, please, son,” he’d say before closing the door to his office. “I’m going to get a little shuteye.” Inside, he would lift the phone off the hook (purely habit, for who was going to call at three A.M.?) switch off the Luxo lamp above his drawing disc and lastly, turn off the music he always had playing as he worked. 

He would pause for a few seconds with his hand at the recording machine, listening with pleasure, before turning the volume down and off with a soft click.

My father loved music. Country and western music, mostly.

You’d think that I, after listening to my father’s music all those years while I learned animation at his side, would love country and western music too, wouldn’t you?

Well, you’d be wrong.

It was a bittersweet day for me when for the first time I stayed awake and carried on while my father had to succumb to exhaustion and take to his desk for some sleep. Yes, I was proud of myself for having the strength to carry on where I saw my father stumble, but I was also sad because I had crossed an invisible line I knew I could never recross. For the first time in my life, my father seemed smaller than me. 

I hadn’t seen the line or even noticed the crossing of it, but I knew I would never think of my father in the same way again. 

“Okay,” said Sachi to the young cameraman. “Tell Wolf I’ll be right there.” 

He hurried off. Sachi leaned against the wall and breathed a deep sigh. She was tired, too.

“There’s no business like show business,” I said, trying to indicate I understood.

“How would I know?” laughed Sachi. “I used to be a school teacher. Now I work in an insane asylum!”

   To be continued…