The 2020 Paleo Rewind

Before we completely leave 2020 behind, it might be nice to do a year in review type thing.  And while there are a lot of options out there, I don't believe there's one that's more on brand for me than a Paleontology Year in Review.  Since 2020 was a Lot, even in the realm of prehistoric creatures and the people who love them, this Paleo Rewind gives each month to a different YouTuber and the result is a roller coaster.  Here's the whole shebang, edited together by E.D.G.E.: 

-----

Art of the Day: Another older painting but another one whose joy and energy I want to bring into the New Year.  Corgi owners seem to like this one.  And yes, Fairies riding Corgis is a Folklore Thing.

The 25 Weird Days of Christmas Day 3: The Old Magic of Christmas

Christmas has always been weird.  That's the unspoken message of The Old Magic of Christmas: Yuletide Traditions for the Darkest Days of the Year by Linda Raedisch, a book that I snagged during Amazon's Cyber-Monday sale and promptly read virtual-cover-to-virtual-cover.  It's still relatively inexpensive, so if you've ever wondered about the "There'll be scary ghost stories" line in "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year", this book has answers and then some.

But as for specific Christmas folklore, that brings us to the...

-----

Art of the Day!

So, snow fairies, ice queens, winter witches, and other female Anthropomorphic Personifications of cold weather are sometimes said to take flight in the form of geese, swans, and other large aquatic arctic birds. There's another bit of folklore that says if you see geese "skating" on the morning of St. Martin's Day (that is, if the water is already icy on November 11), the winter will be nice and calm.  If the ice hasn't formed yet and the birds are swimming, expect a rough winter.

Combine the two ideas while watching an old ice skating special (stay tuned) and voila:

The Bookshelf Tour Part Three!

Art books, reference books, and picture books this time, as well as some books I already mentioned in previous posts.



Jan Brett's Christmas Treasury - I love Jan Brett's art and this is a very nice omnibus of her charming Christmas-themed picture books.

Enchanted Drawings: The History of Animation, Charles Solomon - Outstanding, must-own art book and condensed history of (mostly American) animated shorts and features, with a few stops along the way to briefly discuss animated commercials, music videos, and special effects.  Starts with "Gertie the Dinosaur", ends with "Jurassic Park", and has a wealth of animation art throughout.

Your Favorite Seuss -Basic, but good, collection of art from Dr. Suess' classic picture books.

After Man and The New Dinosaurs, Dougal Dixon -The first of many speculative biology books!  I've reviewed both books before and while they are dated, they are essential for the science-fiction illustrator's collection.

The Alien Life of Wayne Barlowe - Criminy, I need to show more love to Barlowe on this here blog.  We'll run into his better known books later, but this is a very nice overview of his art and career.  It makes me long for a book showcasing all his creature designs for films, though.

Gnomes, Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet - Essential, gorgeous book.  I love the world-building so much.

Faeries by Brian Froud and Alan Lee and Good Faeries, Bad Faeries by Brian Froud - Faeries is yet another must-have for your illustrator's library.  It's gorgeous and inspiring.  Good Faeries, Bad Faeries is a fine companion.

Arthur Rackham, James Hamilton - Haven't had a chance to properly read this one yet, but it's a very nice collection of Rackham's illustrations.

Mythopoeikon, Patrick Woodroffe - A former library book I discovered at my college's book sale and it blew me away.  Great psychedelic art.

Since the World Began: Walt Disney World - The First 25 Years, Jeff Kurtti - An essential part of any Disney theme park nerd's library.

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Birds: The Definitive Reference to Birds of the World,  Dr. Christopher M. (ed.) Perrins - Found this giant, beautifully illustrated book in Buck-A-Book and it's been in my library ever since.

The Encyclopedia of Animals: A Complete Visual Guide, Fred Cooke and Hugh Dingle - An illustrated animal encyclopedia is a must-have and this one's pretty good.



And here's a pile of picture books, any one of which I'd recommend heartily.  We're almost finished with the tour!

-----

Sketch of the Day

The first "Final Fantasy" continues to be strange.

In Which the Bookshelf Tour Continues!

More books!  Here comes shelf #2:



That's All Folks: The Art of Warner Bros. Animation, Steve Schneider - Once upon a time, there was a Warner Bros. Studio Store in my local mall, right across from the Disney Store.  And it was actually far more awesome than the Disney Store, because it sold original animation art.  It also sold this very nice art book, which can be found for dirt cheap now and is a must-have.

Disney's Art of Animation: From Mickey Mouse, To Beauty and the Beast, Bob Thomas - I got this beautiful book at the Animation Gallery, the proverbial gift shop you'd exit through after experiencing the original Magic of Disney Animation at Disney MGM Studios (curiously, the gift shop is still there in essentially it's original form).  Note that there are two editions; this is the older and far better edition which chronicles the making of "Beauty and the Beast".  That section of the book alone is worth hunting it down; getting a nice concise history of the Disney studio with it is icing on the cake.

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Cartoon Animals and The Encyclopedia of Monsters, by Jeff Rovin - I got these two at good old Buck-A-Book and, as with the aforementioned Macmillan Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Animals, I'll be keeping them until newer and more accurate options ever appear.  These two books are crazy extensive, and I've never quite found anything like them.

The Encyclopedia of Cartoon Superstars, John Cawley and Jim Korkis - Similar, though smaller in scope, to the above Jeff Rovin encyclopedia.   These were among the first books to try and catalog every animated character, so I can cut them some slack.  There's a nice selection of art and information about failed projects involving the characters, but it'd be very nice to have an updated book.  This one only goes as recent as "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and it's a little jarring not seeing "The Simpsons" or "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". The complete text is online at Cawley's personal site.

Spirits, Fairies, Leprechauns, and Goblins: An Encyclopedia and Giants, Monsters, and Dragons: An Encyclopedia, Carol Rose - Never realized how many Encyclopedias of Weird Stuff I had.  These two are very good and I highly recommend them.

The Last Dinosaur Book: The Life and Times of a Cultural Icon, W. J. T. Mitchell - A very, very unusual book I (luckily, it turns out, since this is very hard to find) picked up at an antique store just based off that intriguing title.  It's an analysis of dinosaurs in human culture and I might have to re-read it and give it a full review someday.

Traditional Tales From Long, Long Ago Hardcover, Philip Wilson - Very nice collection of Celtic folktales with charming illustrations.  Plus my copy came with that radical bookmark.

Our first run of picture books!  We've got some Chris Van Allsburg, Janell Cannon, and a stray Berke Breathed.  More on the latter in a bit.

Fairy Art: Artists & Inspirations, Iain Zaczek - Another art book I've yet to read, but this is a very nice collection of classic fantasy art.

Voyage of the Basset, James C. Christensen and Alan Dean Foster - The illustrations in this book are outstanding, almost on the same level as Dinotopia.  The story... ehhh...

The Katurran Odyssey and Animals Real and Imagined, Terryl Whitlatch - I love Terryl's creature designs like crazy and I dearly wish she had a proper omnibus of art.  These are pretty good and we'll see The Wildlife of Star Wars later on.

Dinotopia, James Gurney - The complete collection.  Need more be said?  These are essential.







The Complete Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson, The Complete Far Side by Gary Larson, and The Bloom County Library by Berke Breathed, and others - My three all-time favorite newspaper comics.  The omnibuses are essential if you are a fellow fan.  You'll notice I also have Breathed's picture books and the three Outland collections, Larson's There's a Hair in my Dirt! (on it's side), as well as the Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book and (on it's side) the Prehistory of the Far Side.  Both are easy to find and essential companions to the complete collections.

Next week:  We take a break for Kill, Refurb Marry.  Then, NEXT next week, more books!  Nonfiction books for the Nonfiction God!  Reference books for the Reference Throne!

-----

Sketch of the Day!

"Skies of Arcadia" reminds me of "Treasure Planet" except weirder.

Let's Play Pokedex or Medieval Bestiary!

Yeah, It's going to take me a very long time to sort through all the Comicon stuff. Especially since the Evil Norway Maple in front of my house has been making up for time lost during the terrible winter we've had by spewing it's pollen everywhere. It feels like my entire respiratory system is coated with yellow and I've been coughing up a storm. Just took some famous name-brand medicine advertised with one of the most irritating ad campaigns ever devised and now I feel like I could never cough again ever. Or make typey fingers make sense of words in brain-thingy

So today, to save me some stress, we're going to play a game based off something I'd been wanting to write about for a while: the striking similarities between some of the crazier Pokedex entries and the descriptions of real animals in Medieval Bestiaries.

Consider: According to the in-game story, the Pokedex is the first collection of information about the Pokemon species in a new area. Bestiaries were apparently the first attempts at natural history field guides. And they both have some... *interesting* theories about the local animals' behavior and abilities.

So everybody get a sheet of paper and number it 1-10. Write down whether you think the following interesting facts about creatures (I will be replacing the terms "this animal" and "this Pokemon" with "this creature" to avoid dead giveaways) are from a Pokedex or a Bestiary. Then check the answers in Spoilertext (highlight to see it) and lie back with a strong drink and reflect on just how far the study of biology has come.

1) These creatures come from trees that grow over water. The young hang from their beaks from the trees. When they are mature, they fall from the trees and transform into birds.

2) This creature sleeps while cleverly balancing itself on one foot. As soon as it spots others of its kind, it congregates with them and then begins crying noisily in unison.

3) The mother nourishes her young with her own blood. After three days of mourning over her dead young, the mother pierces her side and lets her blood fall on their dead bodies to revive them.

4) This creature pines for the mother it will never see again. Seeing a likeness of its mother in the full moon, it cries. The stains on its face are from it's tears.

5) This creature arose from the spirits of people interred in graves in past ages. Each retains memories of its former life as a human.

6) To rejuvenate itself, it flies up to the sun, which burns off its old feathers and eyes. It tears off its old beak and claws with a stone. It then plunges three times into water, and its body is entirely restored.

7) The fierce nature of this creature makes it so hot that its blood can dissolve diamonds.

8) This creature senses coming disasters and appears before people only to warn them of impending danger. Mistaken as a bringer of doom, it fled high into the mountains. Its life span is over a hundred years.

9) This creature is always hermaphroditic, and must therefore never be eaten. They live near tombs and eat the dead bodies they find there. These creatures will circle a house at night, calling out words with the voice of a human. Anyone who goes out to investigate is eaten.

10) Its beautiful mane is made up of hair in every color and at the tip of its tail is a tuft of magical fur. If captured, the creature bites off the tuft so that nobody can get it. It cannot turn its neck, so if it wants to look behind itself it must spin its whole body around. It is said that if this creature looks at you before you see it, you won't be able to speak.

----

An Swears!

Before I give the answers, I'd like to thank the Medieval Bestiary website and the Psypokes Pokedex. They were both invaluable in jogging my pollen-addled memory.

1) Bestiary entry for the Barnacle Goose. I'm honestly surprised there isn't a Grass/Flying type based off this legend yet. This was so widely taken for granted that it was considered perfectly okay to eat goose during Lent. After all, its really a plant, right?

2) Pokedex entry for Baltoy. Funny how one of the weirdest Pokemon has a fairly mundane entry.

3) Bestiary entry for the African Pelican. This is surprisingly prevalent in folklore of the time and helps explain why you may see stained glass windows of pelicans feeding their own blood to their young in churches. And how did the pelican's babies die? Well, sometimes they are killed be a hunter or another animal, and sometimes the mother pelican herself accidentally kills them. Thankfully, they always come back to life at the end of the story, but even so, I think the mother pelican needs to go have a string drink with Cubone. Speaking of...

4) Pokedex entry for Cubone! And this was absolutely the saddest Pokedex entry ever until...

5) The Pokedex entry for Yamask! Because it would have been too much of a giveaway, I left out the part where Yamask carries around a mask to remind itself of what it looked like as a human. "Sometimes," says the Pokedex, "they look at the mask and cry." Ye gods. The sheer existential horror of Yamask's situation is ridiculous. It changes everything about Ghost-types. These past two entries are the main reasons why I am hoping for goodness sake that the Pokedex is based entirely on folklore.

6) Bestiary entry for the Golden Eagle. Now you know where that ridiculous Powerpoint thing your aunt sent you came from. (The entry for the "Eagle Rebirth" over at Snopes is priceless.)

7) Bestiary entry for the "He-Goat". Honestly, if an animal with a body temperature that is hot enough to melt diamonds isn't right out of the Pokedex, I don't know what is.

8) Pokedex entry for Absol. The disdain for an animal based upon serious misconceptions about it reminded me a great deal of the next bestiary entry.

9) Bestiary entry for the Hyena. For my money, this is the craziest entry in the whole book.

10) Bestiary entry for the Ethiopian Wolf. To which one can only say, "what?"

----

On a lighter note, a post over at SomethingAwful brought this very very very weird and undeniably awesome piece of animation to my attention. I can't even imagine how long it must have taken to do all this. I'm linking it because the animation style is freaky enough to scare the young 'uns. Also, it is in Russian, so you may want to activate subtitles... though you really won't need them.

As one comment says, "I feel like I was shown everything. Ever. All at once."
----

Art of the Day!

Not much to see here. Just a Swampert.