more yesterdays

Hello, Dr. Zork here. No, there was no animation again yesterday. And by yesterday, I mean the immediate past day. But in the yesterdays more than yesterday, in the many days past in the years in the hours and months, there was animation, yes there was. The fictional animator Akre got his start at an early age, and here I continue the legend.

He was about 13 or 14 when he first encountered clay. He had heard and read about animation done with clay and found or bought some clay in bright colors, yellow, red, blue, green. He molded the green clay into a dinosaur, and some blue clay into a small person, and he called that person a Prim.

He took his god-like powers further with flour and water and newspaper. He put them together as paper mache and made a mountain, and made a set, and spray painted it bronze so that it would look otherworldly. And so he began to work, frame by frame, on his clay animation epic, The Planet.

A small creature called a Prim is terrorized by a mighty dinosaur. But when a piece of space junk (a U.S. deep space explorer probe) falls to the planet surface, the Prim pulls off some of the metal and has a weapon. Akre animated these first scenes, not quite sure where his movie would take him, but he built it piece by piece as the Prim, the barbarian, descended into the great civilized city of the Hiblings.

Akre set up his sets on his fold down desk in his bedroom. The set stayed there for months. He had a desk lamp which was his lighting rig. He moved the figures millimeter by millimeter and then took an exposure with his super 8 camera which was mounted on a tripod.

There is more to be told of this bold animation experiment, which is so far back in yesterdays. But that is enough for today. Now comes the pome.

easter bunny massacre
all the eggs are oozing blood
on pain of force the partiers
go tulip tripping in the mud

window glass has gone on trial
man or molehill is the judge
seems the case is not so clear
could be all that smeared dark fudge

world she spins on slippery ooze
and so she makes the golden hours
some are crazy, some are smooth
and some possess illusive powers

i dont' know but i've been told
animals are on the loose
i could walk a dozen legs
or feed them smokes and war and booze

Written in sincerity and with fingers,
Dr. Hubert Zork