Frankie & Annette Catch A Wi-Fi Wave

Someone fell off the blog wagon, and hasn’t posted much lately. Blush! That would be me.

My apologies to all my fans and followers. I’ve been busy with assignments. Yes, I know: a poor excuse.

I’ve been posting single images on my Facebook page. Kind of a quick and easy alternative to blog posts when I’m busy. If you’re on Facebook and would like to see more of my work, you can Like my Facebook page. Just a thought.

As noted in an earlier post, I have friends in local community theater. I help them out, and they give me free ads in their theater programs. Branch River Theatre‘s latest production is Neil Simon‘s Brighton Beach Memoirs. I came up with the following for my ad:

I suspect my younger readers are scratchin’ their heads and thinking: “Yeah, yeah, ha-ha, surfin’ the internet, I get that, but what’s this Brighton Beach Blanket Bingo business?? Is that supposed to be a joke??”

Well, um, yes, it is. It’s a reference to the teen-oriented beach party films that came out in the early to mid-60’s. Most of them starred Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello as the romantic leads, and featured the same “teenage” actors (most of whom were in their 20’s). They had names like Beach Party, Muscle Beach Party, and Beach Blanket Bingo.

I decided to do a color version of the drawing.

Here’s a detail image. When the folks at Google see that incredibly clever “snorkel mask” standing in for the double-o, I know they’ll want to hire me and pay me big bucks to do Google doodles. It would spoil me, of course…

How good are the Annette and Frankie caricatures? Here are a couple of publicity shots for their beach movies.

Alas, I wasn’t a glamorous teen. Glamor came to me later in life– after I became an illustrator.

Frankie and Annette, however, were glamorous “teens,” even if most of it was Hollywood fakery. But unlike many of today’s pop stars, they never took themselves very seriously. That gives them an enduring charm. They left a lot of us with some very happy memories.

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Are you a Neil Simon fan? Do you have a favorite Neil Simon play?

Have you ever done any surfing?

Have you ever left a movie theater with sand between your toes??

Hope you’ll leave a comment.

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