I had to save something special for Christmas Eve, and oh, I think I found us a doozie. Last Christmas, I shared Progress City's upload of "Kraft Salutes the 10'th Anniversary of Walt Disney World", and dubbed it the "Star Wars Holiday Special" of Disney.
Young people, this is why us kids who were born in the end of the '70's are the way we are. Couple of things that stood out to me:
* - So, who would win in a fight? The Clinkers or Chewbacca's family?
* - That vulture is totally thinking, "I ought to be soaring majestically over the Balkans and here I am serving as window dressing for a bunch of soft-rock weenies."
* - Adult. Babies. 😱
* - The Gepetto scene is actually kind of touching. Then it gets weird. And finally they cut to, yep, more mimes.
* - You know, to be fair, at least this special actually takes place inside the Magic Kingdom for the most part.
* - Villains singing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen". Uh-huh.
* - The sing-along finale is nice but this is another one of those situations where I wonder what the real animals were thinking. (Aside from the obvious "Get me the eff out of here!")
* - OMG Shields can TALK!?!
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Festive Older Art of the Day! I can't speak for the people who made the special we just watched, but I promise I was high on nothing but Christmas spirit when I made this:
Merry Christmas to all! See you sometime in January when I'll post something about dinosaurs again maybe.
So help me God and Dr. Fad, I never thought I'd ever see this thing again:
I don't even know what I could add to this. If I ever had to explain to my youngest relatives what it was like being a child in the early 80's, I suppose I could show them that Wacky Wall-Walkers had a Christmas special -- and it's actually pretty good! The story is cute and heartwarming, the animators had fun with the amorphous characters, and the voice actors are top-tier! Hey, it's not "Charlie Brown" but it's better than it had any reason to be.
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Festive Older Art of the Day! Fanart of Fireball's reaction to Rudolph's nose, but I think it applies to this special too. Not to mention tomorrow's...
Who doesn't love weirdly-edited bits of Disney animated films and shorts centered around a loose theme? "A Disney Christmas Gift" dates back to 1983, and Disney Channel kids may remember the opening number from it's reuse in "A Disney Channel Christmas".
Is it just me or is the "Sword in the Stone" segment weird as hell? Also, Santa's laugh is oddly sinister in that last cartoon.
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Festive Older Art of the Day! Speaking of oddly sinister Santa Clauses...
There have been a number of animated adaptations of the Berenstain Bears, but "The Berenstain Bear's Christmas Tree" is still my favorite. It's the earliest animated adaptation of the long-running children's book series, if I'm not mistaken, and comes from a far funkier period in the Bears' history.
That's not to say it isn't heartwarming as heck. But I also love how they immediately cut through the treacle at the end by pointing out a rather troubling hypocrisy.
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Festive Older Art of the Day!
My youngest cousin when she was one year old, fixing Santa with a disapproving stare.
Welcome to my incredibly ill-advised Solstice Eve-Christmas Eve Christmas Special Marathon! For the next five nights, I'll be digging up strange Christmas specials from the past and hopefully finding funny things to say about them.
We start with something that's been sitting in my "watch later" YouTube queue for a while now, the innocuously titled "Santabear's High-Flying Adventure". It's cute, and has an entertainingly strange plot, but the highlight is this: John Malkovich Santa Claus. Holy mother of God. Best Santa.
(And it's funny how the sheer awesomeness of Santa Malkovich overshadows the fact that this upload contains all the awesome 1987 commercials AND that Bobby McFerrin voices the title character and his doppelganger villain.)
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Festive Older Art of the Day!
To make this a little easier/less insane for myself, I'll be posting older Christmas-themed drawings. Here's a Holly Jolly Jackalope:
Yeah... we need something adorable to look at right now. These are pencil sketches and studies I drew while watching "Falkens öga", a leisurely paced wildlife documentary that is available on Netflix Instant.
Be aware, there's no narration, no music, basically no "hand-holding" during the entire film. I only mention this because a few folks at IMDB evidently had problems with that. It is basically just the family of Kestrels raising their chicks.
There's a part of me that thinks I ought to be doing a trip report or something more substantial like that, but I've been busy with decorating and other Christmassy things. So here's a weird Christmas and Disney related video instead:
I discovered this barrel of insanity some time before we left for our spur-of-the-moment Christmastime in Disney World Round Two trip. It has been argued that the current age of the Disney theme parks is the strangest ever but looking back at 1996, I don't know. Among the stuff I noticed:
* - Is it me or is this actually a document of Jerry Van Dyke gradually losing his mind?
* - I forgot how obnoxious the hype for the live-action remake of "101 Dalmatians" was back then.
* - How would you like to be on the same stage as that terrifying Broadway Lumiere costume? How would you like to have to WEAR that terrifying Broadway Lumiere costume?
* - J.D. Roth's entire career seems to be floating from random hosting gig to random hosting gig.
* - "Remember the Magic!!!"
There are two major Weird Disney Things that are worth singling out here:
* - Okay, there was one interesting and different thing we did during this latest WDW trip, and that was staying in Saratoga Springs. It is a very very large and sprawling resort with many buildings spread out over a large area. I don't think we would have liked it nearly as much if we were in one of the more remote buildings (we were in Congress Park in a building overlooking the remains of Pleasure Island across the river and within about a twenty-minute walk to the main building.) But our room was huge as far as DVC studios go, the facilities in the resort were all very nice, and it was fun spotting the buildings like the old theater that betrayed the fact that this used to be the Disney Institute.
Generally speaking, if you are walking around in Walt Disney World and you see something very strange that has been there since the mid-80's through mid-90's, you can explain it with two words: Michael Eisner. The story with the Disney Institute is that supposedly Eisner went to a resort in upstate New York once that catered to older adults and during your whole stay there you took classes in various subjects. "I LOVED it," he said upon his return, "I LOVED spending the whole week in classrooms learning how to cook or arrange flowers or whatever! You know what, I WANT that! I WANT that in my park!"
And so the Disney Institute, a resort where you'd stay in and take classes all through your entire stay in Walt Disney World, was built. As you can see in the segment about it in the video, the concept didn't go over as well as Michael Eisner thought it would.
* - Castle. Cake.
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If you enjoyed this weird Christmas special from days gone by, I'm planning something big -and probably ill-advised- for next week. Until then, here's the Sketch of the Day with Santas galore!
If you were paying attention to my Twitter last week, you know that my family loved Christmastime in Walt Disney World so much that we went back again to catch all the interesting-sounding stuff we'd missed. We're back, we're exhausted,and we're in charge of the big Christmas party this year which takes place this weekend and we haven't even decorated yet. So you, dear readers, are getting a Links of Interest.
* - Ramping up for the release of "The Hobbit", Antagony and Ecstasy is reviewing every readily available adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's books, and along with the movies we're all familiar with, this includes some deeply strange films indeed.
* - And Feriowind did a series of illustrations where... you know what? Hulk is friends with Jigglypuff and Thor has a Joltik on his head. That's all you need to know.
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Sketch of the Day
I'd be more enthusiastic about the whole "OMG Dragons" viral Disney thing if there was some guarantee it'd pay off with this:
