William Horberg

The Blog

And the winner of the best Blog one-year old birthday card is the irrepressible Maiz, new third time Mom but still finding time to surf the web and leave a comment - thanks, Maiz!

william

Happy Birthday Blog

A picture speaks a thousand words, so I think today I will let this one do all the talking for me - a group portrait of Elsa and the 3 Amigos, taken at Natalie's sixth birthday party.

And speaking of birthday's, it was a year ago that Elsa dragged me kicking and screaming into the notion of writing this blog. One year, hundreds of posts, and almost 50,000 readers later, I have to give props to my wife and say how much I've enjoyed writing and sharing stories and photos and ephemera with all of you here.

And most of all how much I've enjoyed your comments and the regular readers who have been following along and writing back and sharing stories and links of their own that have opened up whole new worlds of knowledge and information and entertainment for me.

So THANKS today! To my FAMILY! And to my BLOG FAMILY!

Happy Birthday, Blog!

Leave all of your birthday wishes for Blog here, and I will be sure to pass them on to him.

william

What You Blog, So Shall You Receive

Kismet.

Just the other day, I was posting about Reynold Brown, a master of 20th Century illustration. 

And on Sunday, Elsa and I were rummaging around the Rose Bowl Flea Market when I stumbled across a dealer with a rack of fine condition, original Popular Science magazines. Now normally I might have given them a glance and walked on by, but because I had blogged about Brown's stint as a cover artist for Popular Science, I decided to take a closer look, and lo and behold, they had this beauty, a great piece of cover art signed by Reynold Brown.

The magazine was chock-a-block full of funny, interesting and anachronistic articles - nothing like 20-20 hindsight, or even 21st Century hindsight - to make some of the science stories therein seem quite quaint. But this one was a gas, and the illustrations by a gentleman named Lester Fagans felt worthy of inclusion here.

As the article says: "Everybody has his own pet idea of some gadget he would like to see in general use. What is YOURS?"

(Wow, a little bit of gender bias in that sentence. I guess they knew their readership was fairly exclusively male!)

Anyway, what are YOUR fun ideas, now that washboards are fairly extinct!

:)

william

Do The Math

Today I want to welcome a new entry to my "Blogs I Like" link - The Bad Plus.

Not just for sharing with us such incredibly cool images as this one of big band era jazz drummer Gene Krupa in action:

Or for giving us this hand-written memo of insightful musical advice scribbled down for posterity by saxophonist Steve Lacy when he was a regular performer and acolyte of the brilliant Thelonious Monk:

"What you don't play can be more important than what you do..."

"A note can be as small as a pin or as big as the world, {it} depends on your imagination..."

Isn't it interesting how the deepest truths of one art form tend to hold true for all art forms; like when things get distilled by experience down to the ESSENCE, we find that the essentials are often universal?

THE BAD PLUS are a performing, touring and recording jazz trio, but manage to still have time to maintain this highly informative blog called "Do The Math" and have a lot to share with us and teach us there from their fertile perspective in the music world.

So regardless of whether you are a musician or not, into jazz or not, or indeed wherever your creative passions fall on the vast spectrum of possibilities, I hope you'll check out The Bad Plus/Do The Math as I'm sure you'll find something essential and universal there to interest or inspire you.

Enjoy!

william

Reader's Write In

Thanks to Margaret Oomen from our neighbor up north for yesterday's comment and biographical information on Canadian-born cartoonist Richard Taylor. 

And here is a picture of the actual Fort William where cartoonist Richard Taylor was born in 1902.

What a different world that must have been? Who would think that from those distant northern walls would spring the sophisticated wit and wide-eyed wonder of this mid-20th century Manhattan marvel.

And thanks to Peter Hannan who wrote in to remind us of this other side of Richard Taylor, back when booze-filled humor was a staple of mainstream culture.

Here is a self-portrait of the artist in his hair-of-the-dog state:

In "By The Dawn's Ugly Light" he writes: "I receive my greatest inspiration after a hearty repast of hot buttered crumpets, shrimps, and root beer, topped by a cheap cigar."

But this fellow looks like he had a bit more than root beer to partake of:

This little bit of extra biographical information also really intrigued me: "Taylor began his art studies at the age of twelve. (JUST LIKE MY WIFE ELSITA!!). At fourteen he was imitating Rubens. At sixteen, due to reverses in the family fortunes, he was painting garish posters in the basement of a movie theatre in the Mexican quarter of Los Angeles."

Was this true, or just another piece of Taylor drollery? What dire circumstances lead him from Ontario, Canada to East Los Angeles in 1918? Was he alone or with his family? Wouldn't you love to see one of those garish Mexican movie posters painted by Richard Taylor today?

My favorite thing about the blog is when readers write in and expand our circle of knowledge. Thanks to all of you who have been posting your comments here.

william

Sunday

Gone fishin'!! 

(actually taking the kids today to a premiere of "Madagascar 2" courtesy of our friend Marty the Zebra - Chris Rock).

See you tomorrow with a discussion I hope you will engage in about the power and problems of Genre in filmmaking.

william

Tomorrow's News Today

Well, in the "best laid plans" category, my blog seems to have taken its own initiative to publish tomorrow's post today. 

If only we could use this entreprenuerial spirit to get the blog to post tomorrow's horse racing results at Santa Anita! 

C'mon blog, where are you when we really need you?

:)

I'm sure my own human error is behind this folly, but the result is that 2 posts have gone up in the place of one, and for those of you wanting an answer to the question "Who Is Sem?" posed on Monday, you have to scroll back one post to satisfy your curiosity on that one!

Hopefully the clock goes back to one day, and one post, at a time, tomorrow!

william

Coming Soon

When I got home from Utah yesterday, I got my first sneak peek at a work-in-progress. My wonderful wife, the artist and blogger and Etsy store proprietor known online as Elsita, has been working on the banner for my new blog.

Every blog needs a banner, and they can be as plain as vanilla, or as ethereal as her own at Elsita, which was so admired it got written about in Artful Blogger magazine, a niche publication which caters to this growing community of Artists who blog.

Although not a requirement (there are no rules!), the design and content of the banner can suggest something about the nature of the blog - it is a visual invitation, a portal to what lies within.

Elsa's idea for my banner is to use collage to express the various elements of my life and interests.

So in designing the banner, it has me thinking about what I will write about here, and how to define it, and I reflect back on the various elements and ingredients of my life.

Geography (Chicago, my home town, Cuba, my wife's country, our travels).
Career (music school, Hollywood, film, writing, Producer's Guild, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences).
Family (our children, my relatives, my in-laws, my parents, autism, autistic research).
Passions (books, literature, jazz, blues, world music, politics, sports, art, folk art, comic books, graphic novels, the Chicago Bulls, the Chicago Bears, drawing, photography).
Collections (78 rpm recordings, vintage paperback books, vernacular photography, vintage movie posters, books, illustrated children's books).
Miscellany (friends, topics of interest, conferences, productions, Idyllwild, activism, fund-raising).

Hmm. I hope this sounds neither scattershot, nor limiting, as the main goal here will be to keep it fresh and interesting and informative.

I can't wait to see how Elsa puts it all together in the new banner.

It's coming soon!!

:)

william

My new blog

Well, they say that you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

But this old dog has finally opened up a blog, courtesy of the prodding and pleading of my better half.

I guess time will tell who wins - this Old Adage, or My Wife? I don't know about you, but I know where I'm putting my money.

In seven short months, Elsita has mastered this new weblog medium the way she has done pretty much everything else in her amazing life - by rolling up her sleeves and teaching herself the whole shooting match from scratch. For those of you who haven't caught on yet, www.elsita.typepad.com has become a must-visit destination for a worldwide audience who have come to view Elsa's unique world of art and insight and creativity, and once they discover her blog, they usually stick around.

In fact, I came to realize that I could find out a whole lot I didn't know about my very own family by checking in there every day. Thanks, honey.

But you know how it is. As I once heard poker legend Amarillo Slim put it "Get a little winner, gotta go to dinner." Things have been going so well for her with all this internet stuff, that now she's gone and taken up a (truly) lost cause, yours truly, and unleashed me on the wired world.

So here it is, my new blog, all shiny and unwritten and green and naive and un-designed and yet uncommented upon. Inspired by my wife, and perspired by me.

Remember, if you stumble in here and read anything remotely interesting, write me and thank me, but if this blog gives you the blaaahs, Blame Her!

:)

More soon.

william