It's almost Thanksgiving, so let's chew on "Food Fight"!

I have a talent for running into weird animation-related ephemera and stuff. Stuff like, oh, this:

This made me stop in my tracks. I seemed to recall Cartoon Brew bemoaning the existence of a movie by this title. I checked their archives and yes, they were discussing a film entitled "Food Fight".
In 2005.
There's a more recent discussion in early 2007. There is an IMDB page, optimistically saying the film was (or will be) released in 2009. And there is an Official Website, consisting of some phenomenally ugly art*. So apparently this thing is real. Whether it ever got past the book that makes noise stage is a mystery.
I didn't want to pay the five bucks at Mardens for this book just to find out what the hell was going on here. (More to the point, I don't want to become one of those Ebayers who buys things just to sell them on Ebay.)

* - The character designs on the cover may range from strange to bland, but I kinda like them. They have that "Ferngully"-ish "We like Disney a lot but we also want to make our characters a little stranger to be different" approach. (And the fact that there is a film out there that involves a scary CatGirl, a dead-effin'-serious looking moose, Chilly Willy, and D.J. Scatcat intrigues me.)
But the final film, according to the art in the website, will be incredibly cheap-looking, badly-rendered, sub-SciFi Channel made-for-TV-movie quality CGI. *sigh...*
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Feederwatch Friday!!!
First entry of the season and, uh, NMH:
Downy Woodpecker - 1
Blue Jay - 1
Black-capped Chickadee - 3 (Actually, this was kind of interesting as Chickadees usually show up in pairs.)
White-breasted Nuthatch - 1
Northern Cardinal - 1
House Sparrow - 50
And there was a trio of squirrels, of course, but we don't count them.
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Oh my God, tomorrow is SKETCHCRAWL! I might actually get some people together and actually do it right this year! To Facebook!
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I've been getting into the Thanksgiving spirit by watching the video clips included in X-Entertainment's truly epic recaps of Macy's Parades of the past. They are all linked in this blog entry; they take about an hour each to read but it's worth it.
It's really hard to pick out one favorite moment from these incredible clips, but I will say this: when I woke up this morning, I was not aware that the Cabbage Patch Kids line had a mythos as elaborate as any self-respecting 80's toy. With heroes and villains and a (deeply unsettling) origin story and a larger-than-life folklore hero a la John Henry or Paul Bunyan. Now I know, and my life is all the more enriched for it.
I also recommend Strongbad's Thanksgiving. And there is a new review of "La Planet Sauvage" at The Realm , because nothing says Thanksgiving like a movie that resembles what you see after trying every kind of drug there is at once.

And now for something that deserves it's own post.

Steve Chatterton has written a lovely song about Miss Claudia Inward Burrowdown (aka Moleman #42). And with my permission, he has illustrated said song with my portrait of Miss Burrowdown. Read the lyrics at his blog and here is the song:

In which Trish whines like an old lady about annoying trends at the Book Store.

So I was in a book store the other day and I brought my camera along. I went ahead and recorded some of the irksome things I've been noticing lately:

Now I know you've all run into these "Whatever-Ology" books recently. (SO much Flash in that website. All I wanted to do was learn who the illustrators were. They're Wayne Anderson and Douglas Carrel.) The art is nice for the most part, but the main thing that gets me all chagrined is that they're full of stuff. Maybe I'm being an old lady about this thinking that an illustrated book should stand on the merits of it's artwork and not on how much glitter they can package in, how many jewels can be embedded in the pages, and how many books-within-books they contain. One last thing:

People inventing creatures to inhabit alternate universe versions of Australia, please stop doing this. (Yes, that's a kangaroo-dragon and a koala-dragon. Because no matter what kind of animal you are, living in Australia will make you evolve into a marsupial.)

Manga, manga, manga. Now you know I like Anime. But it's also sadly impossible to discuss the "let's learn how to draw by drawing in this one style" trend without sounding Old (I wonder if earlier illustrators had the same problem criticizing the Draw Fifty Whatever books?) A gateway drug is a gateway drug (there's got to be a better analogy for "a thing that gets you into whatever your passion is"), but it just seems like every "learn how to draw" book out there is in this same one style. Wait a second...

A. WTF?
B. Hmmmmm?
For a while, it looked like I was safe from the 3-effin'-D trend in the bookstore... until I saw this:

(Note: I couldn't find the credits for the illustrators for either this or the Manga books. Go figure.)
This series of oversized books might be the most annoying thing I saw at the book store. Again, maybe I'm an old lady but I thought the point of an illustrated book about dinosaurs was to -call me crazy- illustrate the dinosaurs, showing what they looked like. Can you even identify the animal at right? Did the person who drew (or badly rendered, from the look of it) this picture even know what this animal looks like? (HINT: Draw a cross between a weird emu and a weird ground sloth. Add fluffy feathers. Add Wolverine's claws.)
A less recent trend in Books that Do Things Books Don't Normally Do is the Book That Makes Noise. These were wildly popular about fifteen years ago, and I recall thinking to myself the first time I saw one, "man, why don't they do a Guide to Bird Calls in this format?" (They eventually did, a decade later. Which is kind of hilarious.)
You don't see publishers making these very often anymore. The most recent variation I found was this, which hurts my inner child:

Why, why, why?

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Hey, take a look at this thing, which exists:

Now, why do I not think strapping a hummingbird feeder to your face is a good idea?

Old reviews of "Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories" and "KH2". And the awesome that is Snaiad.

But first - I was just flipping channels yesterday when OMG WTF LOONEY TUNES MARATHON!!!???!!!
Yes, I know I have the DVDs. It's not the same.
Switching from Warner Bros. to Disney, I don't think I've ever mentioned my love of "Kingdom Hearts" before on this blog, so rescuing this old review from MySpace (originally posted 9/27/07) is as decent an excuse as any.

"Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories".
Let's not EVEN compare this to the PS2 "Kingdom Hearts" (which I maintain is the best Disney movie -so to speak- in years). It's not remotely fair. I did enjoy revisiting the characters and story. The animation is gorgeous and the music is terrific.
Now for the bad news. It is very close to being too f**king hard. Hard to the point of not being fun, really. It's almost entirely the fault of the combat system, a bizarre combination of a card game and a melee "button-masher". It's hard to explain, but the best analogy I can think of is trying to play chess and as you are trying to think through your strategy, your opponent is throwing pawns at your face. In the climactic battles, this approach is downright infuriating.
That said, this game is sort of a breakthrough in interactive storytelling, as it sets up major plot points in the official "Kingdom Hearts" sequel. And the idea of finishing the game only to discover that you may now play through the story again from an entirely different character's point of view is inspired.

"Kingdom Hearts 2"
This game is *reeeeeeeally* long.
Oddly enough, it's only a few actual hours longer than the first game. But the thing is, the first game didn't feel long. It started out coasting along on the novelty of "Final Fantasy" and Disney characters mixing it up, and then you got caught up in the main story. While there were a few awkward interruptions (Gummi. Ship.) the pacing never felt off. That's not the case with "KH2".
Perhaps you have heard of the infamous five-hour-long prologue?
Seriously. It's five hours long. A five hour long Prologue. It's a hell of a lot to ask of the audience's patience. It came dangerously close to reminding me of what people who hate, hate, hate the Shire-set opening chapters of Fellowship of the Ring say reading those opening chapters is like. (NOTE: People like that exist.)
In this five-hour-long Prologue, there's no sign of the main characters from the first game. (I have a serious problem with any sequel where the main characters and/or main storyline are completely ignored for the first five hours/twenty chapters/three episodes/whatever.) Instead, you're playing as some random new character. And to top it off, this new character *disappears* at the end of the prologue. Admittedly, he does figure into the plot to a small degree; but I figured out how in the *opening credits*. (Which are absolutely the best part of the game. This has even more of a "this is less a video game and more an animated film with some interactive bits" feel than the first "KH".) However, the game itself doesn't clarify how until the very ending - which also happens to be the one other time the character appears in the story. Hilarious.
And did I mention that the nature of this aforementioned character will actually ruin other role-playing games for you? Especially if you're like me and you tend to analyze every work of fiction you consume? I'm serious. Every time you run into an enemy in an RPG, you are going to feel a twinge of guilt before bashing their skulls in for hit points.
It's Spoilertime: It's a pretty controversial example of the aforementioned What Measure is a Nonhuman Trope. In the game, we're introduced to these new enemy creatures called "Nobodies". Most of them are just mooks, like the Heartless in the original, but some of them are bosses. These boss characters are basically just normal people - but there's something different about them, so they aren't normal. Turns out most of them really want to be normal and there is a lot of poignant character development and attention paid to the Nobody characters, Roxas, Axel, and Namine. Roxas doesn't even know he's anything other than a normal person for the five hour long prologue!
And then later on, after Roxas is "dead" and Sora takes over the story, practically every mentor-type character assures him that it's okay to kill all the Nobodies, major characters and otherwise, because they "don't count" as real people. The fact that Sora does not question this and the player is basically forced to agree with him ensures that you will need lots of marshmallows if you join (or, God help you, start, as I did) any discussion about the nature of Nobodies in this game.
I'd feel less grumpy about the length and the pacing if the prologue didn't set the standard for the game as a whole. The further the story strayed from "random Disney and Final Fantasy people help a boring kid in Hammer Pants battle evil and search for his significant other", the more it tried my patience. And it strays from the main plotline quite a bit.
Think of how people who hated the second season of "Lost" felt about the second season of "Lost" and you have the idea. (NOTE: These people also exist.) Organization XIII = The Dharma Initiative.
Furthermore, if you're going to dump a vast all-reaching conspiracy and a Guild of Calamitous Intent-style organization into the mix, for crying out loud please focus on it. We barely learn what's going on until the last third of the game (really, in the end it feels more like "KH 1.5", "KH 2" and "KH 2 and 1/3").
Last night, I was at that magical point - and I'm sure every game in the role-playing genera has one towards the final chapters - where the play is just like work. I had level grinding to look forward to (fighting enough enemies so that the hero does not crap his Hammer Pants and keel over when he finally meets the final boss villains). Not to mention the final villains, and there are five of them; one for each hour of the Prologue. Two of these villains are hard, one is really annoying, and the leader, in the grand tradition of "Final Fantasy" bosses, just won't f-ing give up (actually, I think you have to battle him five times - one Epic Battle for every hour of the Prologue hahaha).
And I didn't think it was possible, but the Gummi Ship is even more annoying than it was the first time around. To the point where *part of the fight with the final boss includes a Gummi ship battle*. I sh*t you not. And whoever came up with the "Little Mermaid" *sing-along* level / "Guitar Hero" rip really needs to sit and think about what they have brought into this world.
BUT!!! (And this is plainly a big "but".)
I stuck with it until the end. Granted, I was largely curious to see how the hell they were going to wrap everything up, but I really and honestly did get really into it in the end. Also, the "Lion King" level is great fun and seeing Donald and TRON together made the 80's-era Disney fan in me go "yay".

Update: There is a new chapter in the "Kingdom Hearts" series released on the Nintendo DS. And it is AAAaaaaaalllll about Organization XIII. I can't say whether I've truly fallen out of love with this series, but I don't know if I can do this game.
That and I still haven't even finished "Platinum" yet...
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So what is Snaiad? It's a fantastic world-building project started by science fiction illustrator Nemo Ramjet (who, incidentally, has the greatest name of any sci-fi artist*). And it includes some of the most insane -yet totally believable- alien creature designs you'll ever see. It's a little overwhelming but it's definitely worth an archive binge.

* - Brynn. Terryl. Aya. Nemo. I ought to just change my name to Trych and see what happens.
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So if anybody out there saw "2012" "2112" "Roland Emmerich Destroys The First Three Cities That Everyone Can Name. Again." "Tragedy Porn", and thought "Oh noes that could really happen waaargarble!!!", please take a minute to watch this:

LIL' APOCALYPSE THAT WASN'T - watch more funny videos

Project Feederwatch -and- A Very Richard Williams Christmas Carol

Project Feederwatch begins this weekend!!! Oh frabjous day! Instructions here! Please join this year; they need your data!
And joining Team Fun in the Backyard is totally easy: on Feederwatch Friday, just post a comment listing what you saw on your Count Days.

These three books were how I got into the world of amateur ornithology (I am not a Birdwatcher; I don't gotta catch 'em all). Truthfully, the battered copy of How to Know the Birds (you can't even believe how out of print this one is) was the real gateway drug. I found it in a pile of very old, hilariously outdated science books that were just going to be thrown away from a school library. I found it, read it, stuffed it in my purse and carried it around with me (most of my field guides shared that fate; I was twelve), colored the pictures in, wrote notes in the margin, and basically loved the book to death - though it's still holding together and still readable.
As far as other amusing bird feeding things I saw over the past year...

I spotted this on the back of an older bag of bird seed. Let's face it, a lot of people think bird feeding is the most square hobby ever (in other news, normal people think that placating flight-capable mutated Velociraptors is square.) This isn't helping.

I saw this in a Big Box store and I *almost* saw myself buying it. Then I remembered that I had long ago dedicated myself to standing up for unpopular animals (I had helped launch this trope for crying out loud) and above all else did not want to give people who advocate only feeding the pretty birds my ten dollars. Even for the sake of an experiment. (How would this even work anyway? Blackbirds eat anything!)

After doing some research and comparing prices online, I came to realize that you can't beat Ocean State Job Lot. I stocked up last week and scored all you see above (100 pounds in total) for about fifty dollars. (The aforementioned eight pound "I Only Want to Feed the Pretty Birds" mix retails for $14.00.) I keep my seed in two big storage tubs. Right now, I've got that big bag of sunflower seeds mixed with the canary feed in my feeder.
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"Fantastic Mr. Fox" opens soon and it'll be interesting to see how this does against "A Christmas Carol". Speaking of, I've a special treat for those of you who dislike the idea of a 3D film based upon a Charles Dickens book.*
This 1971 animated short film adaptation was produced by Chuck Jones and directed by Richard Williams. It is the only film version of the story thus far to ever win an Oscar, and deservedly so as it is not only accurate to the letter of Dickens' book but also perfectly captures the eerie mood. (Tellingly, this is the one version of A Christmas Carol that is barely ever shown on television.) Hit the Fullscreen option to get the most out of this:

* - And aside from the linked CHUD review, I also like FARK poster Steve Zodiac's comment:
"I don't think I want Zemeckis anywhere near anything animated, especially Roger Rabbit. Hollywood has decided that:
1) Only 3D (I think he means CGI here) is worthwhile.
2) Capture Motion or whatever they are calling roto-scoping these days is good because it's cheaper.
3) We don't consider animated movies to be real movies anyway.
4) Only well-known actors should be used as voices. Has-beens are ok.
5) Is RIGHT OUT. (It took me a minute to get this one too; think Monty Python)
6) People who have never directed a successful animation feature are not only ok for the project, they are almost required.
7) Plot? Continuity? A good reason to make the Film beyond the fact that even a crummy sequel makes money? This is Hollywood! We don't have those things for real movies either!"
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Have I got any readers in the Pittsburgh, PA area? If so, the oddly-named IlluXCon is starting today and a large number of awesome artists are attending.
A little closer to home, the New England Fan Experience is also this weekend. Saturday looks like it has the most overall stuff going on, with all-ages-friendly entertainment during the day and a bunch of crazy sh*t going down around seven in the evening. The evening's entertainment provides visitors with the choice between chucking down cocktails and singing bad karaoke with John de Lancie (you know who he is; don't kid yourself) or the *slim* chance of getting wasted off high-quality Saki with Leonard Nimoy. (On Leonard Nimoy Day. Did you know this Saturday was Leonard Nimoy Day?) Here's the NEFE Website, but I'll warn you: they miss the overall aesthetic of GeoCities...
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And I hope it isn't too late to share my "Sesame Street" tribute. Click for large.

Open Thread: based on old MYSpace posts about the hazards of drawing in public.

Click to see this large, as always.

(Originally posted at MySpace on 5/1/07)
One of the little irksome things in my life is when I am out drawing in a public arena, and I am totally intent on whatever my subject is, and then... I gradually become aware that some stranger is - get this - watching me as I draw! WTF???
The wonderful thing that I learned today: I am not the only person that this happens to.
If you're at the Museum or the Zoo or - God love you - the *Farm* and you break out your Sketchbook, you are officially on display. I have to say, it isn't so bad when it's little kids staring over your shoulder. Yes, it makes me anxious in a way that's hard to verbalize, but they don't know better.
Older kids are more of a problem, especially if they look old enough to know that this isn't polite. And adults! Adults! What the hell do you think you're doing watching me draw! You're in the Harvard Museum of Natural History! Go stare at the Liopleurodon, Charlie!
I highly doubt that some chick with a Sketchbook is more interesting than the Liopleurodon.
I'd like to do an experiment sometime with my photographer sister (happy Birthday, Kath!) She will bring her camera, I will bring my Sketchbook (like there's any question we'd bring them). We'll go to a zoo or a farm or someplace with animals that is almost guaranteed to be *teeming* with children and their pet adults and we'll see which of us gets inexplicably gawked at the most.
ADDENDUM - As the watercolor up top suggests, Kath and I did go to Drumlin Farm shortly after I posted this. Of all the farms we've gone to together that allow visitors to come and go "Awwwww!" at their baby animals, I think this is the best. It wasn't very big, it wasn't very crowded, it wasn't blatantly designed for little children only (though the little kids we saw liked it a lot), and it felt like an honest-to-goodness farm. It was a very welcoming and peaceful place to visit.
Davis Farm and Smiling Hill are okay (and the latter has home-made ice cream, which is a huge plus), but they feel more like amusement parks with cows rather than a place where you can learn about farm life. Any place where my sister and I can spend a good twenty minutes taking and drawing adorable pictures of baby sheep looking adorable is very nice.
There weren't a lot of other people there, which turned out to be nice but it also meant that we couldn't do our experiment.

(5/11/07)

I went to the Harvard Museum of Natural History, which has lately become one of my favorite places to just go and draw all day and probably will continue to be as long as I get my student discount. This was my Moleskein's last hurrah. I spent the better part of midday sitting in Romer Hall and drawing like crazy. Certainly I drew the large and popular and impressive animals and I also drew the smaller, stranger, more oddly endearing animals.
Now, there were at least four or five field trip groups at the HMNH this day (somehow I always end up going there on a field trip day). There were two definite elementary school groups, one group of really little kids, and a high school group. I spent a good hour in Romer Hall alone so I got to meet them all.
And to my surprise and delight, they were all very, very polite. Not many of the kids noticed me at first, but those that did were really cool. They asked if they could look and I let them and they all agreed that my loving portrait of the Kronosaur was really awesome. And the one person who wanted to watch me draw actually asked me if she could! I was absolutely flabbergasted! I said, "thanks for asking! It does make me a little uncomfortable if someone watches but you'd be amazed how many people don't bother to ask." Kudos to these schools!
On the other hand, here is a list of Things I Learned While Sitting in Romer Hall and Drawing the Kronosaur:
* - There are Sea Turtles and "Regular Turtles".
* - Chicks dig Triceratops.
* - It is okay to shout very loudly, if you want to, in a prestigious 100 year old museum that is a part of an Ivy League University. (OK, so not all of the visitors were impressively polite.)
* - I'll grant that the HMNH maybe isn't designed with people who never majored in Biology in mind, but the few labels their exhibits do have at least will give you an idea of what you're looking at. At least they work better than shouting, "What's THAT?!" to nobody in particular. (I can understand if this was a little kid - but I mostly overheard teenagers and adults doing this. Seriously, what the hell? You're expecting an answer from the Museum Fairy?)
* - Many of those same adults finish this sentence: "A Kronosaur is a kind of...
...Whale."
...Shark."
...Dinosaur."
...Dolphin."
...Wolf."
...Penguin." (This guy just HAD to have been f-ing with everyone.)

(8/22/07)
On today's episode of "Ridiculous Comments Received by Me When I Break Out the Sketchbook in Front of Normal People"...
Yesterday, we all went to Freeport. We had fun and my sister and I spent most of our time in the craft store, which was awesome. Then we went to... a store that rhymes with "Roach".
I found myself a chair and sat among the teeny tiny little coin purses that can't hold more than three dollars worth of quarters and which they wanted thirty dollars for, and brought out my Summer Sketchbook for it's last hurrah. Yes, she had two pages left to be filled with wonderful ideas. I did a lovely study of the nice Coneflowers I could see through the store's window.
Now, up until this point, the crazy greeter lady (her job was to stand there at the door and greet people) hadn't noticed me. Honest and no kidding the minute I brought out my Sketchbook, she starts giving me these Looks.
But her comment would be considered one of the most ridiculous comments received by me when I break out the Sketchbook in front of normal people even if it had not been preceded by several minutes worth of these Looks. Because finally, she looks at me drawing and asks me the following:
"Are you okay?"

For certainly, anyone bored enough by her horrible little store to start *drawing* in *public* has to have *problems*. Whatever.

(1/30/08 - may be a little chocolate-martini-fueled, just so you know.)

I went to the Harvard Museum of Natural History again today and drew and drew. As I explored and drew, I kept running into this one group of people, and they prompted me to ask myself the following question:
What compels a person to bring a child under the age of five to a place like the Harvard Museum of Natural History?
I ask this because I was sitting there drawing and suddenly I hear the kind of squeals one usually associates with mid-day at Disney World. And then this knee-high child who could not have been more than two (and was probably younger) comes barrel-a**ing into the Hall of 100-Year-Old Really Delicate Displays, charges into the glass cases, climbs all over the furniture, smears his sticky little paws all over the signs - and then, minutes later, his mom comes in to check on him. And then two more moms come in with their two-year-olds.
And, let me be perfectly clear on this, these were not moms who had to go to Harvard on some important assignment or other and couldn't get anyone to watch their kids. No. I could hear every word of there conversations (trust me, I wasn't trying to). These mothers wanted to entertain their young children and somehow decided that Harvard was the best and most appropriate place to go for this purpose.

See, I could maybe understand if it was obvious they had to bring their kids here and there was absolutely no way to work around this. But it was clear they could have taken them to the Children's Museum or something. (And, really, for the love of Pete, take the kids to the Children's Museum next time. You'll all enjoy yourselves much more. It's right there in the frikkin' name of the place.)
What in the world did you think the kids would find entertaining in Harvard? It's a building that exists for biology students (and artists) to study specimens of animals. It isn't a playground. Can you imagine if these kids were let loose in the Glass Flowers?
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Which brings me to the Open Thread part. Sound off in the comments, fellow artists who like to draw in public:
What crazy experiences have you had while sketching in the field? (It could be bad public behavior/an awkward situation/an unforeseen occupational hazard/ect.)

Time has not been kind to "Ranger Rick". Also, book reviews and other stuff!

Incredibly brief reviews of the eight graphic novels I read this week!
Matrix Comics (various writers and illustrators) - Interesting set of short stories set in the "Matrix" universe. If you enjoy the trilogy (and I mean the whole trilogy) like I do, you'll enjoy this.
Saga of the Swamp Thing (Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, and John Totleben) - "The Anatomy Lesson" is the story I read this collection for, and it's the story you'll want to read it for as well. THIS is how you retcon a character. That said, the other stories are very good as well; refined nightmare fuel of the best kind.
Batman: Year One (Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli) - Frank Miller would be sad to hear me say this, but a lot of this material is presented in a more interesting way in "Batman Begins". That said, this is a decent recounting of Batman's early days and the characterization of Commissioner Gordon is excellent.
We3 (Grant Morrison and Frank Quietly) - I was expecting to be a wreck at the end of this novel, fearing it would be an emotional gut-punch on the level of Richard Adams' The Plague Dogs. We3 is very emotional and thought-provoking, but it's also a great deal shorter than I'd expected. The artwork is amazing, however, as is the characterization of the three animals.
Plastic Man on the Lam (Kyle Baker) - I figured I'd need something light after We3, though this was a touch darker than I'd expected. Nevertheless, Baker's art looks like Bob Clampett or John Krickfalusi at their most deranged and gives this classic character a much-deserved adrenaline shot.
Fables (first three collections, Bill Willingham and various illustrators) - This could have turned out SO bad (the idea is that dark, adult versions of beloved storybook characters enter our world and try to adapt). The series has been fascinating so far and I'm glad to see that my library has future volumes as well.
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If you read the last two posts about Comicon, you may have noticed a copy of Ranger Rick mixed in with that big pile of graphic novels I've just reviewed. It's the October 2009 issue, better known as "The One With James Gurney Paintings In It". I have had the damndest time trying to find this issue in stores and started to doubt that the magazine is available at the magazine rack at all. Fortunately, I was able to check it out of the library, and now I'm curious to see if they have an archive of Rick back-issues. I was lucky enough to find this August 1997 issue in my closet (left):

Now, the Gurney illustrations are, of course, fantastic. He's an artist to treasure and I hope the children reading this issue have had their minds blown by his six glorious pages of paintings. But the thing is, these paintings are all available on his blog. And as it turns out, they're the highlight of the magazine when it comes to art.
Because on the very next page is this issue's "The Adventures of Ranger Rick".
Let me show you what I expected to see here, based on my childhood memories. Which, thanks to the old issue I found, can be conveniently backed up so you know I'm not just running on my nostalgia filter here:

I was very upset to learn that a Google search yields almost no information at all about long-time Ranger Rick illustrator Alton Langford (there are several broken links to an out-of-print book about whales and this brief PDF with a few more samples of his work). This saddens me, as I owe the man part of my childhood - and a heavy influence on my style of drawing animal characters, as you can see.
I want to find more old issues so I can study his style more carefully than I did when I was seven. Deep Green Wood looks inviting in the above early morning scene, and I love the textures and the contrast of the warm foreground and the cool background.
I was VERY upset to learn that this is what "The Adventures of Ranger Rick" looks like now:


I wish I could tell you that this is just a bad scan and the actual image isn't this muddy. I wish I could tell you that the characters don't fade right into the background, that the character designs aren't this bland or creepy looking, and that you can actually see what's going on in the original image. But I can't. The credited illustrator is identified as "The Character Shop" (as in, not a person, but a shop), which I think tells you all you need to know.
Remember in the "Happy Feet" review, where I was surprised to be hit with the Uncanny Valley stick by a cartoon penguin? Yeah, same thing here.
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I will post more about this next week, but for now, I went ahead and did this:

It was funny to see the sparrows react once they noticed it about an hour after I went inside. You would think that they would know by now that "weird green thing on a pole" = "FOOD!!!" Instead, they sort of anxiously fluttered around it and settled on foraging for the seeds on the ground. There was one big pigeon who got it right away.
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New York City residents in general and Brooklyn residents specifically, the delightfully named KingCon is this weekend!
And I just got my copy of the final season of "Fraggle Rock" in the mail yesterday! How about you?