You gotta hand it to me

"But I'm auditioning to play Senor Wences' wife tomorrow!"

-- Jenna Maroney, 30 Rock, "The Shower Principle"

(after catching her hand in a mousetrap hidden in a refrigerator)

My hand as Medusa, with rubber snakes, jiggle eyes and lipstick 11-8-13

"There's only one genius in the business: Senor Wences! 

Lipstick, hair and his hand! He had an 85-year career!"

-- America's Sweetheart: The Mary Pickford Story

If you're old, like me, then you probably remember Senor Wences (Wenceslao Moreno), the Spanish ventriloquist famous for his character "Johnny," which consisted of a face drawn on his hand, his index finger and thumb creating Johnny's mouth.

I always loved it when Senor Wences showed up on The Tonight Show, or The Muppet Show. My Dad liked to use one of Wences' catchphrases -- from his "Pedro" character, which was a disembodied head in a box -- "S'awright." 

Senor Wences and "Johnny"

I'd always try to copy Wences' schtick and curl my little hand into a fist -- try and make it move like a mouth. But I didn't have the dexterity Wences had. Plus, he could make his fist's lips talk without moving his own lips. Me? Not so much.

Anyhoo ... 

I am trying to decide whether to do a 365 days project next year, and was considering 365 days of Medusa. But I don't think I could realistically come up with enough Medusa images to fill a whole year. And I have a sort of unwritten rule about these kind of projects: if I come up with an idea, I have to use it now, when it comes to me. No stockpiling. No saving for later.

So ... this is my Senor Wences/Medusa tribute.

Some people save lives. 

Some people move mountains. 

Some people change the world.

Some people can talk without moving their lips.

I don't do any of those things. As Johnny often said, in his high falsetto: "Easy for you, for me ees very deefeecult!"

But I did glue snakes to my hand, and then drew a funny face on it. 

That has to count for something. Right?

Fingerplay

"Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art."

-- Leonardo da Vinci

These are my fingers.

Finger faces 10-11-13

These are my fingers in disguise.

Finger faces in disguise 10-11-13

"In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I'd like to see a flag made not out of stars and stripes, 

but rather fingers and knuckles, 

so that it could really wave in the wind."

-- Jarod Kintz, 

The Days of Yay are Here! Wake Me Up When They're Over

On the other hand

"These fingers of mine, they got brains in 'em."

-- Jerry Lee Lewis

A handful of zombie faces 10-7-13

"Try to have as diverse a group as friends as possible 

and don't get into the clique scenario."

-- Andrew Shue

"On the other hand, you have different fingers."

-- Steven Wright

This is my hand, disguised as a band of paparazzi-crazed zombies.

Seriously, they were all like, "Take our picture! Take our picture!"

(Well, it sounded like "Mmmwarrrrah ggghrrrllllll!" So I checked with Google translator and they were in fact saying "Take our picture!")

So I took their picture.

Hey, I wasn't about to make a handful of tiny zombies mad at me.

They may not have bodies, but I'll bet they can scuttle along just fine on those creepy, bony, over-sized arms and hands they have growing straight out of their zombie necks.

I wasn't taking any chances.

Besides, just look how happy it made them.

Just asking

"He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Self portrait 8-3-13 

"Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart.

Try to love the questions themselves,

like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language.

Do not now look for the answers.

They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them.

It is a question of experiencing everything.

At present you need to live the question.

Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it,

find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet