Well, now I'm this much.

(I like to imagine that nothing was staged in this video. This is what the Pumpkins saw every day in their neighborhood; they just happened to remember a camera this time.

Addendum: Fun and kind of mind-blowing thing I just learned via Fark. Billy Corgan's birthday is March 17; this year he has turned... 44.


Also, I need to highlight more vintage music videos.)

If you'll excuse me, I'll be here in the corner having an existential crisis.

"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.

The Sketchbooks of summer/fall and the nadir of remakes.

Above, you'll see my last Sketchbook and my current Sketchbook. Summer '09 is a 6 x 12 '' Pentalic Nature Sketch. It was amazing for just pure drawing and for watercolors. However, it did not play well with scanners. It's weird how that factors into choosing a Sketchbook for me now. Here's a look inside:

Fall 2009 is an 8.5x11'' Cachet Earthbound I found in -of all places- Wall-Mart. I'd used one of these books before and while the unbleached paper takes a bit to get used to, it's fantastic to draw on. This is 100% recycled paper; this is paper with history. I like sketching on paper with some history.


Now as for the meat of this post, I may have to scream (or type angrily rather) and swear a lot, so sensitive readers may want to wait until Thursday, when I'll post about another Weird Disney Thing. OK? OK.
You'll notice a "Yellow Submarine" bumper sticker on Fall 2009. This is my silent protest. You see, recently, Disney announced that Robert Zemeckis is all set to helm a 3-D motion capture remake of "Yellow Submarine":
"'Yellow Submarine' is one of the greatest fantasy films of all time, and making this new 3D performance capture movie is a dream come true for me. With the latest advances in technology, we will be able to take moviegoers on a voyage unlike any other, and bring new excitement and dimension to Pepperland and the various sea worlds they encounter." - Zemeckis (from here)
.....
Robert Zemeckis. Is going to remake "Yellow Submarine". Using Mo-Cap. In 3-D.
.....
One more time. Let it a-a-a-a-a-a-l-l-l-l-l sink in:
.....
1) Robert "About to lose the Free Pass For Life I gave him for 'Roger Rabbit' and 'Contact'" Zemeckis.
2) Is going to remake as in "not bring something imaginative and new to the screen". "Yellow 'Essentially "Fantasia" with Beatles songs and one of the few full-length animated features that really doesn't look like anything else out there' Submarine".
3) Using Motion Capture technology...
4) ...In Three-Effin'-D.
5) And the reason given why he is doing this is, essentially, "Because we can."
Well, folks, we've finally reached the absolute, uncontroversial nadir of the (not as) recent (as everyone thinks) "Let's Remake/Adapt EVERYTHING!!!" trend in modern (mainstream) film-making. The word "soul-less" is coming to mind here.
Speaking of which, this exists.

Edit - Best counterpoint to this "Yellow Submarine" remake: the teaser trailer for "Beatles Rock Band". I agree, I'd love to see an entire feature done in this style:

"Love is Allllll!!! / Love is AAA-AA-AAALL!!! / At the Butterfly Ball!!!"

Speaking of "Rupert and the Frog Song" got me thinking about another psychedelic staple of my childhood. They used to show this music video as filler almost daily in those wonderful, crazy early days of Nickelodeon. Now I was of course wholly unaware that this was part of a concert film (!) based upon a concept album (!!) based upon a picture book (!!!). That is like a perfect storm of awesome. I am Netflixing the hell out of the concert DVD.

(pause...)

OK, I am "Saved Queue"-ing the hell out of the concert DVD because they do not yet have it. (I always wonder why they bother listing things when that happens.) Oh well.
Enjoy the very 70's mind-screwyness:



I watched this for the first time in a long time at like two in the morning and amazingly, I didn't start freaking out until around the 1:42 mark. O.o
I love, love, love how those three salamanders are totally nonchalant about the Dio-Frog transforming into a hydra-plant-thing.----

Comic and illustration loving residents of the Westford, MA area: this weekend you have the good fortune of being able to attend something called Larry's Pop Culture Extravaganza. And if you live in Westford and can somehow have no desire to attend something called Larry's Pop Culture Extravaganza, I do not understand you at all.

Note that for now, I'll be adopting a twice-weekly post schedule. I need to concentrate on saving things from Geocities. At least now, I have a deadline: the last weekend before Halloween (October 26, for those who need a real date). Anyway, check for "new" (meaning post-dated and thus hilariously a few days behind on the news) posts on Tuesday and Thursday for a while.

I can't wait to cry hysterically like a little sissy again during "Jessie's Song" --- but IN THREE-EFFIN'-D this time!!!