The Triumphant Return of Walter Fozbek!

Few things make me happier than getting to finally tie up a long-dangling loose end. 

You may recall that way WAY back in the summer of 2011, I wrote two long, weird posts about The Double Disappearance of Walter Fozbek by Steve Senn, a short, weird book that I mostly remembered for it's very short, very weird animated adaptation that aired as part of the anthology series "CBS Storybreak".  I strongly recommend reading those posts because there's a lot of information in them.  Like I said, this is a very weird book.  (You'll also get to enjoy some early-installment weirdness.  Who the hell is this person who actually enjoyed the taste of an IPA?  Certainly not I?)

As happy as I was to finally find the book, I still longed to watch the cartoon again.  I figured by now that it was lost to the ages, Lost Media if you will.  But it turns out that there's a small but dedicated contingent of YouTubers finding and uploading as many "CBS Storybreak" episodes as they can find.

And, miraculously, "The Double Disappearance of Walter Fozbek" is among them!  What a great way to kick off the new decade!  Here it is:



Goodness.

I remember practically every minute of this strange little cartoon. It's really close to the book, aside from a somewhat streamlined ending, "Flintstones"-ish prehistoric gags and all.  There's also a touch more existential angst.  Like, certainly "The Last Unicorn" this ain't.  But that scene where Walter (remember he's the only human in a world of anthropomorphic animals) is face-to-face with the fossil remains of another human (remember humans are extinct in this world); that kind of thing messes you up as a kid. 

Between the New Kids on the Block Christmas Special and "Walter Fozbek", this has been a very good time for “Yay I KNEW it was real!  And, now that I can finally watch it after 20-30 years, I completely understand why everyone looked so confused and slightly concerned when I tried to describe it to them.”

-----

Art! A cute pudgy Unicorn and her tiny Fairy friends to bless our 2020's.

In Which We Kick Off The New Year by Playing Kill/Refurb/Marry!

A new Year has dawned and with it is the desire to blog more.  And to that end, I've decided to -why not- join the Kill/Refurb/Marry Blog Hop created by Mouse on the Mind and This Happy Place.  This party has been going on for a few months but this month's topic was so oddly specific that I could not resist joining in.

The idea is that the K/F/M founders pick a topic and participants decide which relevant things at Walt Disney World they would get rid of, give an overhaul, or live inside if they could.  And the topic of discussion this time out is that most wondrous and unique of Walt Disney World Experiences, the Aerial Spinner Ride.  Or, "You know, Dumbo and the various less popular Dumbo substitutes".  Nothing says "I am having fun in a theme park" then riding around in a circle inside a thing that is shaped like another thing.  Let's get right into this shall we?  The first choice, at least, is wikkid easy.

Kill: TriceraTop Spin

Right.  So, I will admit that my vote to demolish Dumbo-But-They-Are-Triceratops-For-Reasons-That-Are-Unclear-Until-You-Notice-The-Pun-And-Thereafter-Wish-To-Punch-The-Person-Who-Came-Up-With-That-Because-Honestly is due to my larger issues with Dinoland USA as a whole in general and with Chester and Hester's Dinorama specifically.  (But also because of the pun thing, because, I reiterate, honestly?!?)

New readers, I have to level with you.  'Round here at the Obligatory Art Blog, we love dinosaurs.  A lot.  (About as much as Disney, theme parks, and animation.)  And I think they deserve a much, much better themed land in the Disney parks than... whatever the hell this is.

And, yeah, I "get" it.  I "get" the theme of Dinoland/Dinorama.  I "get" it, and I really, really hate it.  I maintain that there is something very wrong with your theme/concept when it is decades later and most visitors still need to have it explained to them.  Doubly so if the explanation boils down to, "But it's SUPPOSED to look just like your town's cheesy local county fair except it's in Disney World and taking up space that could be better occupied by something totally amazing and unique!  Listen..."  You know what the only non-terrible thing in Dinoland is to me?  That walk-through exhibit of modern species of Mesozoic plants.  The best part of this Dinosaur themed land in a Disney theme park built by Disney Imagineers is a *garden*.  I'm not even angry (I like gardens), I'm just very disappointed.

So yeah, plow over Dinoland USA and start the whole dang thing over.  (Hint: There's already an awesome attraction elsewhere in Animal Kingdom that just so happens to involve dinosaurs of the modern flight-capable persuasion, so let's start by bringing Flights of Wonder over from Asia and take it from there.)  This will, naturally, take TriceraTop Spin down with it.  Oh well.

Refurbish: The Magic Carpets of Aladdin... I guess?

I have to be honest, I have little to no emotional investment in the non-Dumbo Dumbo-type spinning rides in Disney World.  I'm giving this one a refurb because it's kind of awkwardly placed, probably the least interesting idea for an "Aladdin" themed ride (Where the heck is our Cave of Wonders thrill ride?), and Astro-Orbiter is much prettier and has a better view.

Marry: Dumbo the Flying Elephant

Because it's freakin' Dumbo, duh.

Okay, seriously.  One crazy trip around Thanksgiving, my whole grown adult family rode Dumbo, the Mad Tea Party, and Cinderella's Golden Carousel Super-Manly Testosterone-Fueled Spinning Horse Ride For Boys Prince Charming's Regal Carousel and we were about a million times giddier than we were before, for reasons that had nothing to do with Dole Whips.  From Dumbo, we got a few decent seconds-at-a-time tantalizing looks at the New Fantasyland, which was under construction at the time.  That and the new "Dueling Dumbos" version is gorgeous.

-----

And for extra credit, why not catch up on the other Kill/Refurb/Marry topics?

Resort Hotels

Kill... well, no.  Kill is a little strong.  But Seriously Reconsider: The All-Star Resorts.  The theming over there was decided by a crazy person.  For example, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I learned that the Mighty Ducks building, covered in hockey stuff and with a hockey rink shaped pool, was part of All Star Movies rather then Sports.  (And yes, I know the answer, as it so often is for weird Disney things of that era, is "Because Michael Eisner..."  Look, he doesn't work there anymore.  Move the Ducks/Hockey to Sports and retheme their Movie building to something more timeless, like "Mary Poppins" or "Victory Through Air Power".)

Refurb: The Pop Century Resorts.  Again, the theming is crazy and they look really sad next to their sisters over at Art of Animation.

Marry: Can I be a Polyandrist here?  Because between childhood favorite Beach Club, gorgeous Wilderness Lodge, Animal Kingdom Lodge, and Polynesian, and our DVC home resort Contemporary/Bay Lake Towers, I just can't choose. 

Crescent Lake Restaurants

Kill: ESPN Club.  I get the need for a sports bar in Disney World, it's the fact that this dad oasis wants so desperately to be a restaurant as well that... just, no.

Refurb: Toss-up between Big River Brewery, which either needs to commit fully to being a brewpub where you go in for beer tastings and to drink beer and eat pretzels, or have more room inside to be a full-on restaurant, and Kouzzina which I desperately want to retcon back into Spoodles.

Marry: Il Mulino.  New York.  Trattoria.  Oh goodness, yes.  Most underrated restaurant in the whole World and my family's little secret.  I can't wait for that Risotto Con Funghi and homemade Limoncello.

Thrill Rides

Kill: Dinosaur.  We're plowing over Dinoland anyway, but really the most entertainment I get out of this obnoxiously loud, dark, and buggy mess is hearing Bill Nye trying to tell us with a strait face that Carnotaurus -adorable little gonk-faced Carnotaurus- was "the fiercest and most terrifying predatory dinosaur of all time".  Um...

Refurb:  Splash Mountain.  This is one of my favorite rides ever and by Walt's mustache it needs an awful lot of love.  And I don't mean the seemingly yearly upkeep, I mean updating the animatronics, soundtrack, and the landscaping.  I'm sure they can take a full year or two off from adding new stuff to Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean to give poor Splash Mountain an overhaul.

Marry:  Star Tours.  All versions.  I'll be riding this awesomeness until my thirty-something year old back can't take it anymore.

For more opinions on this blog hop, head on over to the list at Mouse on the Mind.  The next topic is Live In-Park Musicals!  It's the dream we all dream of: Nemo vs. Ariel in the World Series of Blacklight Sensitive Puppetry!

-----

Sketch of the Day!

Seriously, Carnotaurus was adorable and a sweetie. WTF, Disney?



Bonus much more recent art of a weird-looking prehistoric hoofed mammal! This handsome, hopeful holiday Unitatherium was the result of some Twitter shenanigans and the very last drawing I made in 2013.  I... am okay with this.

Far-Out Sci-Fi, Tricerafail, and Furries (of a sort) - _The Double Disappearance of Walter Fozbek_

Previously on "Tricia's Obligatory Art Blog"...



And far more importantly, I finally, after twenty-five years of searching, have my very own copy of The Double Disappearance of Walter Fozbek, written and illustrated by Steve Senn in 1980. Published by Avon/Camelot books. And henceforth to be referred to simply as Walter Fozbek or just Walter, because... that title. Imagine the fun of being a little girl circa 1985 and looking that one up in a card catalog or, God help you, asking for it in a bookstore. Anyway, I now have a copy in my giant skinny hands. And I have just read it.

(Trish gets a case of Pamola Xtra Pale Ale...)

Right. This book is weird.



(And not just because of the above illustration, which is very wrong on multiple levels.)

A long, long time ago in a Galaxy far, far away, I did a post about obscure Dougal Dixon works that had been dug up by the authors and readers of the website io9. Now unfortunately, most of the io9 discussion threads are unreadable now, but I do recall one reader's comment, prompted by the "human of the future" article, who missed the "far out, man" kind of sci-fi from the 70's. Sci-fi that really lived in the demilitarized zone between serious Science Fiction and Fantasy. Sci-fi that really didn't give a hoot about science at all (or maybe just a little) and was more concerned with blowing the reader's mind. Think "the Force is all around us; it connects every living thing" vs. "you can test positive for Jedi". (As you can see, this kind of sci-fi isn't all bad.)

So here we have a sci-fi book for seventh graders where a kid falls through a black hole and ends up in a world where, like, humans are extinct and the dinosaurs are the ones living in houses and wearing clothes and using money and driving cars and stuff!



Or, perhaps more appropriately...



As you might imagine, this is a story with vast, galloping herds of Furry Confusion. Before we get into that, here's what Dinosaur World looks like:



Weird, huh? The whole book, actually, is creepy in sort of the same way that -- I'm gonna go there! I'm gonna go there and you can't stop me! -- the "Cars" movies are creepy. Everything is clearly the same as it is in Human World, with maybe the barest differences, but the humans have been wholly replaced with something else.

And in Walter Fozbek, come to mention it, Human World ought to be Mammal World shouldn't it? Except during the course of the book, we come to find out that Dinosaur World is full of the exact same animals we have in Human World -- but the humans have been replaced by anthropomorphic dinosaur-people. Because the humans are prehistoric and the dinosaurs are modern here. Just go with it. At least the human replacements *are* anthropomorphized in Walter, so it isn't quite as bad as "Cars" (where the cars are just normal four-wheeled cars with faces who have desks and live in human houses and... just breathe).

There's a lot of things like this in the book I could talk about. But instead of giving myself a giant headache, let's enjoy the very 70's dinosaurs. The pterosaur-ladies and stegosaur-ladies seen in the previous post were very minor characters. Here comes a major one. Meet Dr. Krebnickle.



Dr. Krebnickle is the kindly scientist who helps solve the mystery of how Walter got trapped in Dinosaur World. But even better, he is an anthropomorphic Trachodon, which is awesome. Not to get too off-topic, but Trachodon's an interesting case; he was a staple of dinosaur books from my childhood and then suddenly wasn't in any newer books. The Dinosaur Mailing List explains what happened in this article. They don't mention it, but I think there's a very simple reason why Trachodon was so popular for so long:



Our old friend / frequent rip-off victim Charles R. Knight of course. He painted a pair of "Trachodon" once and because he was the all-knowing guru of dinosaur art, everyone had to copy him without question.

So, back to the lecture at hand, how did Walter wind up in Dinosaur World, where his cousin Ralph is a triceratops-person and everyone drinks Carnivore Cola? Here's the incredibly simple and obvious explanation:





So the lesson here, twelve year olds, is Don't Look At Animals Through Special Glasses That Allow a Physicist Who Has Captured a Black Hole in a Jar to View Other Dimensions. That leaves Walter with the problem of getting back home before anyone notices that there is a rampaging prehistoric creature loose in town. (Have to admit, I like the "Futurama"-ish touch of a planet of dinosaurs that fear the extinct humans as some kind of fantastic violent monsters.) Fortunately, Krebnickle has a Do Anything Computer that answers that problem with a poem. Far out.



What this means is that Walter and company must capture the lizard he saw so he can look at it through the Xenon glasses. More importantly, in 1980, dinosaurs are lizards. (sigh...) By the way, the aforementioned pterosaur-ladies and a gang of dimetrodon-people who weren't illustrated are dinosaurs. (sigh...) I guess it could be worse. There could be mammoth-people in Dinosaur World...

Anyway, Walter is found out and he and the lizard are both kidnapped by the prehensile-tailed tyrannosaurus in the above "very wrong" illustration. Fortunately, after some complications too ridiculous to mention here, they escape. Which leads to this happening:



Needless to say, Walter returns to Human World safely. The author can't resist one more act of crazy before we're done though. Check out his author photograph (and the plot summary by somebody who wasn't paying attention):



----

Addendum: There is something dinosaur-people-y in the water this week. See also the AV Club and Vulture.

----

Sketch of the Day!

I should not have done this.

Fuzzy Memories, Captain Kangaroo, and Walter Fozbek - "CBS Storybreak!"

Hang on to your hats, gang. This is going to be a weird one. Gonna take both of this week's posts to cover it.

So... today we've got another post that's going to be largely based off incredibly fuzzy childhood memory. I have done such posts before, and I really hope this is another case where kind folks write in with more information and helpful links, like so.

Today's subject is something I believe everyone my age watched and yet nobody seems to discuss: "CBS Storybreak". About the only places online with any extensive information about it are The Retroist and IMDB, which provides an episode list.

"Storybreak", often confused with the similar and far longer-lived "ABC Weekend Special", was one of several anthology series for children from the early 1980's. Each thirty-minute episode was based upon a book or folktale and the show went out of it's way to showcase children's literature that was either obscure or downright strange. The animators often played pretty fast and loose with the source materials, making some of the stories even weirder than they were. For most of it's run, the show was hosted by Bob Keeshan, and it ran alongside other more famous Saturday Morning cartoons of the era.

If you don't remember this series at all, your memory might at least be jogged by one of the most distinctive aspects of the show: The bitchin' opening credits sequence:



Hell and yes. Did you see that radical dragon-robot and the shiny pegasus? Bonus: VERY old-school sauropod.

The best-remembered episodes from what little I could scrounge up from discussion boards are, perhaps not coincidentally, the ones you are most likely to find while searching YouTube: "How To Eat Fried Worms", "Yeh-Shen", the truly mad "Arnold of the Ducks", "Dragon's Blood", and "Ratha's Creature" (the last one is the most likely to survive by the time you read this; it's been uploaded by the book's author). A few other episodes that stuck with me through all these years are "Robbut: A Tale of Tails", "Zucchini" (which is about a boy and his pet ferret; kids love non-indicative titles), "The Pig Plantagenet" (mad props to casually sticking such an obscure vocabulary word in a Saturday morning cartoon), "Hugh Pine", "Hank the Cowdog", the truly mad "Max and Me and the Time Machine" (traveling through time may transform you into a horse with glasses, naturally), "Witch Cat", "Grinny" (this one's often cited online as a source of nicely refined nightmare fuel), "The Monster's Ring", a very poorly disguised pilot for a "Raggedy Anne and Andy" cartoon...

...And season one, episode seven: "The Double Disappearance of Walter Fozbek".



Now, remember this was 1985. A budding paleoartist had very few opportunities to get an animated dinosaur fix. ("Fantasia" was "never ever ever" going to be released on home video, and about the only other options were the occasional Ray Harryhausen phantasmagoria on the afternoon movie or seemingly endless reruns of "The Flintstones".) When I saw the teaser for "Walter" at the end of whatever episode preceded it, nothing -but nothing- mattered during the following week aside from me watching this show. Kids are horrible little things, aren't they? My tiny seven-year-old brain only registered three words: "HOLY SH*T, DINOSAURS!!!"

Now, I'm sure "Walter Fozbek" blew my mind back in the day because from what I remember of my very oldest drawings, they looked a lot like how I remember the characters in the show (and I really hope somebody out there comes up with screenshots or something so that I can confirm this). Can I remember anything at all concrete about it? I do remember the whole thing was basically a funny animal cartoon (think "Ducktales") with 80's dinosaurs. There was some kind of weird plot twist involving this one human character, probably the usual Furry Confusion. Mostly, I remember being incredibly frustrated that I could not find the book upon which this episodes was based. This was long before inter-library loan or Amazon.



Well, thank goodness for Amazon, eh?

Twenty-five years later, I finally have my very own copy of The Double Disappearance of Walter Fozbek, written and illustrated by Steve Senn in 1980. Published by Avon/Camelot books. So if you'll excuse me for a little bit, I am finally going to read it. See ya Thursday!

-----

~*~ Intermission Time! ~*~

(And do enjoy this because, my goodness, the ad that starts around the 2 minute, ten second mark...)



~*~ On to Part Two! ~*~

-----

Sketch of the Day!

Scientist does something cool, internet blows it way the f*** out of proportion. As usual.

First off, Astrology is a load of bologna. Let's just make that clear. Yeah, people born around the same time of year *maybe* have similar personality traits, and it's useful for extreme shortcuts in literary symbolism, but that's about as much credence I give this stuff. Also, if the PG-13 rated title didn't warn you enough, this post will have vitriol in it. Hide the kiddies until Wednesday, when I will either talk about Batman or Pokemon.

So last Thursday, your Facebook page probably exploded in an orgy of "OMG why am I a Gemini now?" or "What the hell is an Ophiuchus?" This is all thanks to the mainstream media catching wind of Parke Kunkle, board member of the Minnesota Planetarium Society. Earth's relation to the sun has changed slightly since the Babylonians created the first western zodiac, but according to Kunkle, the zodiac dates were never updated to reflect this. Since zodiac constellations are so helpful to astronomers in determining the position of the sun, he came up with a more accurate timeline for them. It includes thirteen constellations, simply because astronomers have counted Ophiuchus as a zodiac constellation for years, and anyway the Babylonians had entirely different zodiac signs. (You would think that the astrologers would have caught this earlier, but never mind that now.)

Got all that? Good. Because here is an example of how this has all been reported (and the comments, holy sh*t). Note that OK! hasn't changed it's horoscope page. How rebellious of them.

So basically, an astronomer did something cool to help his fellow astronomers, and unless you study space yourself, this really doesn't affect you at all. But the internet, in a fine demonstration of why I love and hate it, misunderstood what actually happened and lost it's sh*t over it. I find the ways people have been reacting to this story *fascinating*. It's a little more fun than Tricera-Fail because the subject matter is, as has already been stated, baloney. That said, I never knew, until this week, how many people I know took astrology this seriously. It's... unsettling.

No, your birthdate has not changed. Ophiuchus isn't something scientists just made up, it's just usually left out of the zodiac constellations probably because there's twelve months and so it's just easier to have twelve signs (trust me, I'm just learning about this constellation myself). The night sky has not changed either, and frankly it doesn't care what we humans think about it. And finally (this is the one that astonishes me), just because your new astrological sign doesn't match up to your old astronomical sign, doesn't mean that your personality has changed in any way.

Unless...

Unless you read up on your "new" sign and what it represents. And you vehemently disagreed with it. And yet, somewhere deep down inside, the personality traits of your astronomical sign... stuck.

BWAAAAAAAAAAAHHHM!!!
For the record, I... remain... myself... Dr. Mung-Mung... I mean, a Pisces. Woot. I rather like these proposed new signs suggested by Geek Mom, if only because I get to trade in my fishies for a dragon (wut up, Ness).

Other reassuring things for people affected by the mainstream media misunderstanding and losing their sh*t over a mildly interesting science story. In fact, please copy and paste this into your status if you know someone, or have yourself been affected by the mainstream media misunderstanding and losing their sh*t over a mildly interesting science story. The mainstream media misunderstanding and losing their sh*t over a mildly interesting science story affects the lives of many. There is still no known cure for mainstream media misunderstanding and losing their sh*t over a mildly interesting science story, except for the media getting off their collective fat asses and doing some damn fact-checking. 93% of people won't repost this... Why? Because they probably think reposting this will cause autism or something, which it won't, as determined by science.

1) Pluto is a Trans-Neptunian Object and there are a LOT of them. So rather than have a "My Very Excellent Mother..." mimetic that goes on for twenty minutes, it was time to reevaluate how to define the word "planet". If you're not talking to an astronomer, you can call Pluto whatever you want. Call it a gerbil for all the cold unfeeling objects in space care.

2) Paleontologist Jack Horner started kicking around the idea that maybe the dinosaur we call Torosaurus was really a very old and cranky Triceratops. I have never seen the mainstream press blow a science story so out of proportion as I did when this one got out. Almost no Very few other paleontologists take this theory seriously, and most are just like, "well, that's... interesting, but let's see if we can find more evidence of that first". Point is, Triceratops isn't going anywhere.

I need a hot drink.

Addendum: Oh, I love you, The Onion.

Further Addendum-ing: I love you too, Clever Girl.
----

Sketch of the Day!

I think you could make an excellent argument that the rise in scientific misunderstanding directly correlates to the lack of a good current "Star Trek" TV series...



Further, further Addendum-ing: I love you too, VG Cats!

Triceratops lives! -or- Why the mainstream press makes me cry.

WARNING: Uncharacteristic vitriol and some naughty language ahead.

Consider this another episode of Things I Need to Catch Up On Because They Happened During Don Bluth Month.



So around the middle of July, my wonderful regular reader/commenter Zach Miller posted this article on his blog: Toroceratops. I suggest you read it and his other two posts on the subject before we go on.

My reaction was, essentially, "Huh. So John "T. rex was an obligate scavenger" Horner proposed that Torosaurus is actually just a really, really old Triceratops and therefore all Torosaur fossils should be renamed Triceratops? That's... interesting, I guess. I, like most of the commenters, will buy it if we ever find an unmistakable transitional 'Toroceratops' skull."

And then I pretty much forgot about it.

Until I was well into the Don Bluth reviews and learned, via FARK.com, that the mainstream press had got a hold on this story. Ladies and gentlemen, the poor former (maybe) Torosaurus is unwittingly at the center of a fine demonstration of every single thing I cannot f***ing stand about the way the mainstream press reports on science, animals, nature, and... f*** it, everything.

Choice headlines:

"The Triceratops Never Existed!" - Yes it did. It's Torosaurus who would be getting the name change. Please learn how scientific nomenclature works. Also, changing an animal's name doesn't magically make it disappear. Seriously, WTF?

"Triceratops 'never really existed but was just a young version of another dinosaur'" - Same points as above, and just who the hell are they quoting? Honestly, this might be my favorite of the reports because you've got that headline and then, buried deep within the body text of the report itself: "All torosaurus specimens will now be reclassified as triceratops, the scientists said."

"Morph-osaurs: How shape-shifting dinosaurs deceived us" -
1) Christ in a hot rod, I didn't pass five MTELs to see an affix used as a verb in a newspaper.
2) I don't know if this offends me more as an armchair paleontologist or as a sci-fi fantasy fan (by those "physically changing as you age" standards, aren't we all shapeshifting?) But at least it prompted this stupid thing which is hopefully funny:



Rest assured, dear readers, that the "nonexistence" and "shapeshifting" (I seriously couldn't type that without cringing) of dear old Triceratops has been highly exaggerated. But you wouldn't know from these articles. They have utterly failed to understand how scientific nomenclature works, have happily reported this theory -which many have called into question- as a universally accepted fact, and seem to be of the opinion that Triceratops (who doesn't give a sh*t what name us puny humans call it by anyway) has somehow vanished from the fossil record altogether.

I need a cold drink. 

Edit: See also this.


-----

Art of the Day: On a much, much happier note, joy and rapture! The Art Evolved Pop Culture Gallery is up!

Other Person's Art of the Day: Also, Gregory S. Paul's Dinosaur Coffee Table Book on Blurb Want... so... much... (Cries at lack of money.)