{"id":428,"date":"2007-05-01T09:36:00","date_gmt":"2007-05-01T15:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/?p=428"},"modified":"2007-05-01T09:36:00","modified_gmt":"2007-05-01T15:36:00","slug":"0013-matinee-soup-alzheimers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/0013-matinee-soup-alzheimers\/","title":{"rendered":"0013 Matinee Soup &#8216;Alzheimer&#8217;s&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\">.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }<\/style>\n<div class=\"flickr-frame\">\t<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/royblumenthal\/479777200\/\" title=\"photo sharing\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm1.static.flickr.com\/213\/479777200_8877030392.jpg?w=605\" class=\"flickr-photo\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><br \/>\t<span class=\"flickr-caption\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/royblumenthal\/479777200\/\">0013 Matinee Soup &#8216;Alzheimer&#8217;s&#8217;<\/a>, originally uploaded by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/people\/royblumenthal\/\">royblumenthal<\/a>.<\/span><\/div>\n<p class=\"flickr-yourcomment\">\tYe gods. Winter has set in, and I&#8217;ve been zwanged by flu. Not the terrible, snuffly, sore-as-hell flu. Mine&#8217;s the slow, insidious, sap-the-soul kinda flu.<\/p>\n<p>Which means I&#8217;m able to be out and about and active, but that there&#8217;s an energy and sleep cost associated. Blah. Poor me. How miserable.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway. Regardless. It&#8217;s onward and upward.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s my latest <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/royblumenthal\/sets\/72157594432870140\/\">MATINEE SOUP<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>A while back, I made a painting of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/royblumenthal\/356152723\/\">a woman in an old-age home<\/a>. She&#8217;s tied to the bed.<\/p>\n<p>A friend of mine emailed me to say that one of the reasons that sufferers of advanced Alzheimer&#8217;s Disease get tied to beds is cos they tend to fall out of bed and seriously injure themselves. So short of mounting a 24-hour guard, the only way to keep the person in bed is to tie them to it.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t recall if Clive actually suggested I do a MATINEE SOUP on the topic, but I certainly thought it might be an option. Problem is that I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s a particularly funny topic. At the same time, ANY topic is actually funny. And whether it&#8217;s funny or not, sometimes topics NEED to have humour poked at them, simply to make life more bearable.<\/p>\n<p>And anyway, this week&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/illustrationfriday.com\/\">Illustration Friday<\/a> topic is &#8216;Remember&#8217;. So it fits.<\/p>\n<p>The first version of this joke had Bambi asking, &#8216;Did I ever tell you that my gran had Alzheimer&#8217;s?&#8217; Then there&#8217;s a blank panel. In the third panel, Bambi says, &#8216;Did I ever tell you that my gran had Alzheimer&#8217;s?&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Probably quite funny. But it completely breaks the world that Bambi inhabits. Firstly, it&#8217;s out of character. Secondly, it implies that she&#8217;s got Alzheimer&#8217;s, which isn&#8217;t possible, cos she&#8217;s an adolescent puppy. Thirdly, it leaves a nasty taste in my mouth.<\/p>\n<p>In the version I&#8217;ve opted for, I had almost finished the cartoon with this line in place: &#8216;I can&#8217;t remember when I last thought about Alzheimer&#8217;s.&#8217; This is a weak line, in my view. It feels soft. <\/p>\n<p>As I was finalizing the lettering, I realised that the line has to involve the viewer. It has to draw the viewer into the world of Alzheimer&#8217;s, and make them ask questions of themselves. In this way, the line&#8217;s quite funny, but also quite poignant. And it doesn&#8217;t tread on toes, nor leave a bad taste in my mouth.<\/p>\n<p>The best thing for me about this current version is that it keeps Bambi young and innocent. She&#8217;s not implying that she&#8217;s got Alzheimer&#8217;s. And she&#8217;s not jokng about it. Instead, she&#8217;s making YOU, the reader, the originator of the joke.<\/p>\n<p>Now I think I&#8217;ll just hop back into bed and have yet another blissful nap until J comes back from visiting her gran. And her gran DOES have Alzheimer&#8217;s. The good news is that J laughed at this joke.<\/p>\n<p><i>This painting was made at Mugg &amp; Bean in Cresta in two hours. I had to speed through it without being precious, cos I was heading off to my weekly Al-Anon Adult Children of Alcoholics meeting. The painting was made using ArtRage 2.2 on my Toshiba Tecra 4 tablet pc.<\/i><\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\">Roy Blumenthal is a writer, director, artist, and <a href=\"http:\/\/snipurl.com\/visualfacilitator\">visual facilitator<\/a>. Hire him to make pictures of your meetings or workshops.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>0013 Matinee Soup &#8216;Alzheimer&#8217;s&#8217;, originally uploaded by royblumenthal. Ye gods. Winter has set in, and I&#8217;ve been zwanged by flu. Not the terrible, snuffly, sore-as-hell flu. Mine&#8217;s the slow, insidious, sap-the-soul kinda flu. Which means I&#8217;m able to be out &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/0013-matinee-soup-alzheimers\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">0013 Matinee Soup &#8216;Alzheimer&#8217;s&#8217;<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p521FP-6U","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}