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Looper's Delight
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At 6:36 PM -0500 10/1/02, jim palmer wrote: >i hadn't ever gone looking for his stuff online, but i just found this: >http://www.well.com/~demarini/pomeroy.html An excellent article; it really does Jim's work justice. Paul Demarinis was naturally familiar with Jim Pomeroy, both being active on the Bay Area arts scene throughout the same period. The "Hat Dance" was my favorite of Jim's performances. Paul D's description is good, but omits some details that made the piece especially effective for me. Jim's stage persona was especially powerful because Jim himself had a commanding presence. We was a long tall Texan with a strong jaw and a dimple in his chin, rather jowly and with a well-cultivated beer gut. He was massive and obviously strong. He could have been threatening, but instead he chose to be amusing and bear-like. When Jim hit the stage wearing electric hat and white Long Johns he had some of the character of an overstuffed sausage. When the striped projections hit his body the stripes really wrapped around, forming concentric ovals. His demeanor was innocent, almost infantile, and when he approached the interface between the light-field of black and white stripes and that of bright red, he did so with equal parts awe and curiosity. At first he poked an index finger tentatively into the red light, probing gently and marvelling as his digit turned bright crimson. He pulled out out and it reverted to black and white stripes. Then he thrust his whole hand through and wiggled his fingers. Then he inserted the entire arm and flopped it about, growing more exuberant all the time. Finally, will full commitment, he threw his entire body across and he turned completely red as he danced a frenzied jig. At this precise moment he also hit a foot switch that turned on a fuzz box, so that the previously gentle tinkling of the wind chimes on his hat abruptly burst into a searing cascade of distortion. >check out the mr. wizard reference. >interesting how the circles back around... I was another rapt fan of Mr. Wizard, though I never got into the Boy Mechanic thing the way others did. Don Herbert, who played Mr. Wizard, was sponsored by the American Breakfast Council, and there was a single "commercial" that was integrated into the show. At some point one of the experiments would reveal the letters "FCMBB" in a clever way. It might be an invisible ink experiment or a demonstration of anamorphic lenses, but it always fit into the flow of the show. The letters stood for Fruit, Cereal, Milk, Bread, and Butter, and Mr. Wizard would spend a moment reminding his audience that a good breakfast was an important start of any day. -- ______________________________________________________________ Richard Zvonar, PhD (818) 788-2202 http://www.zvonar.com http://RZCybernetics.com