"Positive Attitude Reflects Todays Youth" - Let's Watch "The Party In Concert"

Goodness, I can't wait to experience (vicariously, through Disney Blog People who can actually afford this thing) the Galactic Starcruiser Interactive Experience can you?  In the meantime, let's travel back to the early days of Disney Hollywood Studios, especially for those of you who were longing for a weird vintage Disney special the past few weeks.

The audio quality on this one is kind of bad but it's pretty fascinating.  This is "The Party In Concert" from 1990, and early-90's Disney Channel doesn't get much more pure than this.  (Like, look at the schedule for the rest of the evening right at the beginning of the video.  Late-night Disney Channel was basically uncharted space back then, and you could tune in and see anything.  Classic movies, a documentary, a concert, maybe even an actual vintage Disney thing, or a combination of two or more of these!)

I'm not even sure if the special itself is as interesting as The Party itself as an entity.  The Party (and yes, it does stand for "Positive Attitude Reflects Today's Youth, and that's maybe the funniest aspect of the whole thing) was composed of five particularly popular and talented teenagers with Disney sanctioned attitude plucked from the ranks of the 90's Mickey Mouse Club: Albert Fields, Tiffini Hale, Chase Hampton, Damon Pampolina, and future Pearl voice actress Deedee Magno.  They were pitched to us kids as our new favorite band ever and promoted as such, starring in specials and on a regular segment on the Mickey Mouse Club and recording a cover of a Rubinoos song (one which would be the center of a small controversy later) which was the style at the time.

Now even at the time, I thought, "Clearly Disney saw how popular New Kids On The Block were so they made their own pop group.  I am sorry for The Party, but I am already too much of a fan of NKOTB!  And by 'a fan' I mean, given my as-yet-undiagnosed Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, 'I start vibrating through several formes and dimensions with an intensity that could shatter glass when I see that one Magic Can commercial.'  Anyway.  I am not falling for this."

Now as an adult, I wondered if that really was The Party's origin story.  Surely there's more to it?  Well, not really.  Disney really did see how insanely lucrative NKOTB were, so they reverse-engineered their own even more wholesome group (and later created an even squeakier clean, no reckless use of the word "Hell" version of them with the MMC group).  They lasted into 1993, releasing a final album ominously, wonderfully titled "The Party Is Over", and reunited a few years ago.  Last I checked, they're scheduled to perform for Walt Disney World's 50'th Anniversary at Disney Springs.

So that's The Party.  A weird Disney moment from the weird 90's.  More dinosaurs and/or animation next week, I promise.

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Art!  A beautiful fellow who visits the Cornell Panama Fruit Feeder sometimes.  Lizards really are the best live models:

In Which I Post the Most 90's Thing I Have Found (so far)

As we exit the smoldering Chicxulub-sized crater that is 2016, I honestly just want to move right on and go right ahead and post my regularly scheduled posts as a cute, funny light in the dark.  To that end, here's something ridiculous I found in an old magazine:



There's a lot going on here.

"Forrest Gump" was a genuine phenomenon in the mid 1990's.  A lot of that had to do with the song score.  The soundtrack was one of the first CDs my mother owned and listened to on a regular basis (Side note: Soundtracks everyone's mom seemed to have a copy of in their car back in the day include "Forrest Gump", "The Bodyguard", and "Beaches".)  It was basically one-stop shopping for the greatest hits of the Baby Boomer era.

So here is an ad for a CD-ROM companion to that soundtrack.  You know how modern blu-ray discs have loads of special features?  This was like a blu-ray without the movie.  Also, you could only play it on your computer.  Also also, it looks like much of the content is now on the "Forrest Gump" 20'th anniversary blu-ray, which is nice.

So there we are.  A nice little post to kick the dust off the tires and get rolling again.  Next up, either drawings of dogs, drawings of frogs, or a review of Darren Naish's Dinosaur book.

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Sketch of the Day!

What Were We Listening To and Playing in 1993?

TV Guide's Summer 1993 Parent's Guide to Children's Entertainment Issue had some... interesting recommendations as far as what kids would be jamming out to in the summer of 1993.  Speaking for myself, I'm pretty sure I was still wearing out "Rhythm Nation" and my New Kids on the Block tapes back then.  I didn't really start geeking out on music until a year or two later, then became disillusioned with current popular music shortly after graduating college. 

That's when I really started liking the mentioned bands I grew up with like Van Halen and Duran Duran but they just weren't on my preteen girl radar back in '93 (even though this article is weirdly insistent that we dug those bands because they were cute, to which I can only say "Euw, they're so old!")  Of course now, I really want to track down that Coverdale/Page record.  I also wonder what happened to all these kid-led bands...





You know what entertainment writers really had a hard time writing about back in the day was video games.  This article emphasizes the potential educational value of games, which is fine; parents really did need to be assured that this new media that they did not understand and that their children were obsessed with wouldn't rot their brains.  It also suggests that the big hit games of the summer would be "Bubsy" and "Mario Is Missing".  Um...



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Draw of the Day



This was from the day we all learned about Tyco's short-lived (and I cannot for the life of me imagine why) Little Miss Dinosaur toys...

Then there was that time Oprah spent a whole episode interviewing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Here's a breather post because the next couple of posts, especially the one prompted by a recent comment, are taking a while to write.  So until then, as probably the weirdest possible placeholder, have yet another helpful reminder of something I hope we never ever lose sight of:

Mother of God, the 1990's were so f**king strange...



You can't even believe how happy I am to have found this. I saw this episode when it aired and now I finally have irrefutable proof that this actually happened, that the "Coming Out of Our Shells" "live" tour actually happened, and that the whole thing was not a fever dream I had as a preteen.  Above all, I am glad to have proof that -and I reiterate this so as not to ignore the largest issue here- this is an actual event that actually happened on the actual "Oprah Winfrey Show" for the actual full hour of the show.

Now all I need is for someone to upload more than this tiny portion of the New Kids on the Block Christmas Special...

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Sketch of the Day!

Happy Year of the Snake!

PAX East and shameless filler... I mean, Links of Interest!

It's the weekend of my birthday holy cow! March 11-13 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center (right across the street from where Comicon was last year.) More information at the official website. The events that most directly tie into illustration are on Sunday morning (and, of course, I have a prior commitment that day. Wah.)

And now, since this would be a very short post otherwise, here are random interesting links for you.

First off, there is a review of a very weird Canadian children's film over at the Realm of Mad-Ness.

This weekend is the Great Backyard Bird Count! I'm not going to be able to do my usual live-blog of the event, but there is an excellent reason for that. Hopefully I'll have some great stories afterward.

I am a sucker for interesting (but still recognizable) variations on fantastic creatures, and Art Evolved guest artist Midhat Kapetanovic delivered with his unusual unicorns. If you love different takes on mythical beasts, check out the Alphabeastiary blog.

Everything is Terrible is a wonderful website that shares clips from the world of bizarre direct-to-video productions. (They were the ones who dug up that wondrous "Kids Inc." clip I shared during the Superbowl live-blog.) This week, they found something very special. At first I thought this was a straight random weird kids movie that decided, just because, to spend several lines of dialogue in the beginning explaining why their aliens happen to speak English. And then...

So how does one actor play a pair of twins? The answer is a heady combination of trick photography, animation, and lots of cooperation. I feel a little bad for Josh Pence here, but this clip is still fascinating.

Tipping Forties just finished their play through of "Super Mario Bros. Wii" and... it's something to see. (NSFW language.)

Over at Gurney Journey, a fan wrote in to ask why illustrators are so often ignored in art history courses, and prompted a much-needed list of good books on the history of illustration.

TetZoo has a brief but interesting article about avian display structures. Go forth and be inspired.

It is also the 150'th anniversary of the naming of Archaeopteryx. Those commemorative coins are amazing..

CHUD did a double-feature of "The Secret of N.I.M.H." and "The Plague Dogs", and expresses the confusion we all feel over a certain less-loved Pixar film.

Apparently there was a musical award show or something this weekend. Cee Lo Green did an awesome tribute to the well-loved Elton John episode of "The Muppet Show" (although, dear mainstream press, those were not Muppets. Stop being wrong.) Also, Lady Gaga finally turned into a giant bird. (Incidentally, her song doesn't sound like "Express Yourself" any more than "California Girls" [the Katy Perry one] sounds like "Tik Tok" sounds like "Just Dance" sounds like "Love at First Sight"...)

Toontown in Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom has been shut down to make room for the great Fantasyland expansion, and Progress City has a fun look back at the strange little mini-park's history. I remember seeing that exact play once. It didn't get any less weird.

This is too cool not to share and it tells me that I need to get reacquainted with my friends who live in California. One of them works at Stargate Studios, which recently released a demonstration / promotional video that got some attention at The Best Week Ever. It's kind of mind-blowing.

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Feederwatch / Sketch of the Day Supercombo!

I looked out my window and saw this:

"You can stand under my um-ba-rella-ella-ella-eh-eh-eh!" - Thoughts on _Winter World_

Right now, beavers are headed into their dens for a perceived night that will last for weeks and weeks. Snapping turtles are settling down in the bottom of the lake, and there they will sleep without taking a breath of fresh air for up to five months. All the Monarch butterflies from the entire east coast of the United States are dormant in a single mountain forest that is *just* the right temperature for their liking. Some animals have slowed their bodies down to a point where they are barely alive, while others are preparing to brisk about in life, day and night, at temperatures that would make a human cry.

Among these animals is the tiny Golden-Crowned Kinglet, a hummingbird-sized snow-fairy of the Arctic woods. Your Field Guide probably spends a grand total of one paragraph on Kinglets. I'd only seen them in the wild once or twice, and thought they were cute. I did not know that they were also incredibly bad-ass.

That is the way of all winter creatures, and their stories are told in Bernd Heinrich's Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survival. It's a terrific book and I am struggling to finish it on this, it's date due back to the library. I don't want to get too off-topic, but I don't know what happened to me. I feel like I devoured long nonfiction books in high school and now it's like I lost the patience for them. I haven't got the slightest idea why this is so; I love learning and Heinrich's books always leave me astonished at the biological wonders I did not know.

Bernd even throws his hat into the long-running argument over how birds evolved flight feathers. Body feathers are a remarkable insulation -- when they are dry. Getting them wet would be lethal. Wing feathers, therefore, may have initially appeared as built-in umbrellas.

As for the Kinglet, this theory is pretty sound. Bernd illustrates the book with his own sensitive pencil illustrations, and one such illustration (page 112) is of a Kinglet underneath all the feathers. Turns out body feathers add even more perceived bulk than I ever suspected. That the plucked songbird looks astonishingly like an old drawing of a small theropod does not go unnoticed by the author.

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Oh, hey, the Golden Globe Award nominations are out and... huh.

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Festive Thing of the Day!

Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime" is this year's Jolly Christmas Song That Won't Leave Me Alone. And I will admit that I was among those who thought it was stupid and annoying... until I saw the video for it.

The video is trippy as hell and at least ten kinds of distinctively late 1970's music video awesome:



Best parts include the giant constellation-God-thing that sprinkles Dust all over Paul's piano, the choir in space, giant flying disco balls, a giant irradiated horse in the sky, Paul and friends watching... themselves on TV, two glowing figures in space who seem just about to make out but don't, and that huge exploding gift at the end. Holy Christmas.

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Sketch of the Day!

I am not even going to make an attempt to top that:

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. You can listen to it here.