ONE OF MY EARLIEST and most special memories is of sitting in front of a big television on a very early weekend morning watching a supposedly harmless Betty Boop cartoon. It was one of those wonderful pre-World War II productions – lots of detail and meticulous shading, as was the custom in the days before assembly-line simplicity took over and people were led to believe that color is compensation for craftsmanship – and it featured our gal Betty (that feisty little bubble with monstrous eyes and a head roughly three times the size of the rest of her body) in the clutches of a typically surrealist situation. She was seated at a table in a nightclub straight out of the Thirties, trying desperately to maintain her composure as spectral figures fluttered transparently in the air performing curious acts of mime and choreography.