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.

WTF "Mickey's 60'th Birthday" Special?

But first, an important announcement: Now, we are Thirty-Two. Once again, I refuse to act mature.

A long, long time ago, I posted a YouTube video of a Disney special from my childhood that I had only the vaguest of vague memories of. This special was meant to commemorate Mickey Mouse's 60'th birthday (I wonder exactly what they counted as his birthday; probably -and inaccurately- the "Steamboat Willy" premier.) I posted the link, but I didn't ever find the time to watch the whole thing. Well, some time before I headed to Disney World, I decided to watch a few old Disney specials to get myself primed for the Disney Magic (TM, patents on Childhood Wonder and Whimsical Nostalgia pending). "Mickey's 60'th" was among them.

Ho-lee Swiss Cheese.

Here's the special, for those who missed it the first time:



OK. Some thoughts:

1) Have you ever seen such cheap, off-model animation used on Mickey and his pals? You'd think, for his birthday and everything, that Disney wouldn't have skimped on the budget.

2) Poor Roger Rabbit. Once the breakout star and worthy of co-starring in Mickey's birthday special, now they act like he never existed. (His niche has basically been overtaken by Stitch.)

3) Who in the world is that dude in the mirror and what has he done with Yen-Sid?

4) I had completely forgotten that "Family Ties" had a Cousin Oliver/Scrappy-Doo equivalent.

5) Nice little tribute to the very cool "Mouse Mania" short.

6) The "Cheers" scene is surreal.

7) Part Nine has no audio. Then again, it's a great opportunity to mentally dub in "The Happy Workers" from the "Toys" soundtrack.

8) I love how nobody believes that the anthropomorphic cartoon mouse who introduces himself as Mickey Mouse IS Mickey Mouse. I know that's part of the spell, but how many anthropomorphic cartoon mice can there be running around?

9) DONALD SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE FIRST TO SEE MICKEY!!! WHOEVER DECIDED OTHERWISE MUST PAY!

10) Another kind soul has uploaded "Totally Minnie". My afternoon is now booked.
(Not much to say about that special except that it is probably the 80's-est thing you will ever see and that Minne singing with Elton John is adorable.)

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This is a nifty website that was brought to my attention recently by the "On Animation" blog. "WIP" is a gallery of short Flash slideshows that show the progress of various illustrators' artwork. It's very cool to watch.

Also of note is this well-written Fanboy.com post about the recent Nick Simmons cluster... um... fudge.

Also also of note is this wonderful "test drive' of several different brands of pencils (sort of in the same style as my old Moleskine review).

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Feederwatch Thursday
Rock Pigeon 2
Downy Woodpecker 2
Black-capped Chickadee 2
Tufted Titmouse 2
White-breasted Nuthatch 1
Northern Cardinal 2
House Sparrow 15

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Sketch Finished Piece of the Day!

With all the speculation over the fifth generation of "Pokemon", allow me to share a few predictions:

The Chronological Animated Disney Canon - The Golden Age part one

The reason why I'm not gushing about my trip last week yet is because I had the Disney Animated Films posts all set to go and it would be a total pain to shuffle their dates at this point. But the other reason is because I am sick as a dog. There were more sneezing, coughing people in the little room we waited in to leave the boat than there were during the entire trip, and I think I caught some horrible rare disease from one of them. Been coughing up a lung since Sunday night.
Speaking of, here is how I felt Sunday night, in all it's crappy MS Paint glory:
Yeah, this sucks. On to the Disney Movies!

The Very First Animated Disney Feature Film: "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves"
I have to admit, I never particularly counted "Snow White" among my favorite Disney movies. And that is damn weird for me to say because, honestly, I have only sat down and watched the thing twice.
Some background is in order for readers still in their teens. Believe it or not, there was a time, not very long ago, when Disney was awful about releasing their animated films on home video. The long, weird story of Disney movies on home video/DVD release can be read on this Wikipedia page, but the short story is that throughout the early to mid-80's, you either watched the movies in the theater during their rare re-releases or not at all.
Gradually, Disney movies did make their way onto video but it was a long and rather nonsensical process. ("Pinocchio", which may be the greatest Disney animated film ever, was one of the first ones on video but the craptacular "The Sword In The Stone" was kept off shelves because it was one of the "untouchable seminal films upon which our legacy was based". Seriously.) In a situation rather similar to that of "E.T.", Disney originally teased that they would never release "Snow White" on home video. We Disney Channel brats had to settle for teasing tidbits dispersed throughout clip shows and such. The Dwarves' marching songs here, the Queen's transformation sequence there, "Whistle While You Work" over there and so on. That, more than anything, built the movie's reputation up in our minds.
Disney held out on their vow not to release "Snow White" onto video until 1994, and with my love of a good ironic ending to a story, I'm actually kind of glad the movie wasn't available on Netflix. I watched "Snow White" on one of the original videos published in '94.
On the whole, the movie is much, much better than I recall. There are a lot of things Disney would do better in future films, however. Snow White herself is one of the blandest heroines Disney ever devised. Her big scene comes when she stumbles into the Dwarves' bachelor pad and immediately starts playing Suzy Homemaker. Later, she addresses the dwarves like a teacher shepherding a rowdy Kindergarten class. She spends the last act of the movie asleep and I really didn't notice much.
But while Snowy is almost too ditzy to live, she's at least more interesting than the Prince. He doesn't even get a proper name! You can't call yourself a Disney fan if you don't transpose the lyrics of his one big number to: "One line! / I have but one line! / One line in this whole movie!!!"
Ah, but the Dwarves are wonderful. It's really quite impressive when you think about it; we have here seven fairly identical people but each one of them has a unique personality. There is a point about a half hour into the movie where they first arrive at their newly cleaned home and the pacing threatens to grind to a halt (one thing I noticed on this viewing is that, save for this one scene, the movie is almost an opera). But then, during this sequence, each of the Dwarves gets his own great, funny little character moment. It's wonderful.
Rounding out the cast, I have to admit the Wicked Queen owns the whole show. She's all resentment and intimidation. The first in a long line of great Disney movie villains, she sets the standard very high.
The special effects are amazing, especially when you realize that they must have taken months and months to do at the time. Overall, I'm glad that I gave this another look.

Film #2: "Pinocchio"
Sincere and scary, this is the best of the Golden Age. It could easily be the best Disney movie ever.
Doing the research for this project, and specifically the home video release history of these films, I was struck by a couple of revelatory things:
1) The first wave of animated Disney movies released on Home Video did not include any previews. In fact, they had no advertisements on them in any way, shape or form.
Repeat: Disney movies. Released for home viewing. With NO commercials. None.
Ten minutes of commercials of all imaginable kinds in front of "Pinocchio" later, that kind of trivia breaks my brain.
2) Pinocchio is only the second full-length feature Disney made, but it's never been treated as well as "Snow White". As a matter of fact, while Disney threatened to never release "Snow White" on video, "Pinocchio" was one of the first five or so features released!
This is especially weird to me because, let's face it, "Pinocchio" tops it's big sister in every way. The special effects are jaw-dropping. It's the most dramatic of the features (indeed, it's more tense than many live-action thrillers I have watched) and it pointedly does not avoid scaring the hell out of the audience. It's greatest achievement, from a storytelling standpoint, is understanding how kids really see the world.
And it is also very, very funny. People tend to forget that. Jiminy Cricket is just about the best character ever and everything he says is hilarious (his exchange with the Blue Fairy is wonderful and easily overlooked; you wonder how much of it was scripted).
This is early Disney at its peak.

Film # 3: "Fantasia"
Well, first things first. This movie is taken way too damn seriously, especially in the animation fandom. There. I said it. The thing centers largely around dancing animals for cryin' out loud!
"Fantasia" is the first really wildly inconsistent Golden Age Disney movie (it's long-delayed sequel is often panned as being inconsistent, which is just about the dumbest argument ever; inconsistency runs in the "Fantasia" family). Fortunately, it's also an anthology movie. As you'll see, Disney made several of these. Most of them centered around music in some way. It seems more fair to approach such features as several short films rather than one long and confusing movie. Therefore:
"Toccata and Fugue" - Trippy, man. Trippy.
"Nutcracker" - Very nice with excellent effects.
"Sorcerer's Apprentice" - Everyone's favorite. I like it too but it struck me, this time, how odd it looks in context as it's the only segment with a real plot!
"Rite of Spring" - Cool. You can tell the animators were testing their skills on realistic animals, probably as preparation for "Bambi". And it's very strange how influential this one sequence is (early Dinosaur artists copied Charles Knight; early Dinosaur film-makers copied this. Heck, what am I saying "early"? You can see echoes of this as recent as "Land Before Time"!)
"Pastoral" - I always hated this bit. Really, without the Beethoven, this has as much artistic merit as a particularly good episode of "My Little Pony".
"Dance of the Hours" - It's fun. There's some wonderful character animation here.
"Bald Mountain"/"Ave Maria" - Now here's an amazing sequence. It's also our second encounter with a show-stealing villain. As a matter of fact, I'm sure many people completely forget the "Ave Maria" finale (it is a nice sequence with one wonderful effect, but it's amazingly anticlimactic).
It's funny how "Fantasia" was never supposed to be released on video either. Once again, us Disney Channel brats only got to see disconnected bits and pieces here and there. Often, we had no clue that these were all from the same movie. I remember finally getting to see what all the fuss was about and being just a little disillusioned ("Wait, that whole bit with the dancing hippos is "Fantasia"?!) Topping this off, when "Fantasia" was finally released on video, it had no previews (which had become a trademark of Disney videos by then) and it's clamshell box was black. Serious. Business.
I like the movie better now.
Oh, and for the record, the "Fantasia"/Smashing Pumpkins trick really does work. Mostly because there isn't really a wrong way to do it.

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Next Post: "Dumbo" and "Bambi". For more posts in this series, go here, or click the Chronological Disney Animated Canon tag below.

Now, we are 31.

That so? Well, I refuse to stop drawing stuff like this:

Wee.

Onion Horrorscope: You're a natural born skeptic, always questioning the world in your search for empirical truth, rejecting along the way pseudoscience, psychobabble, and any other nonsense—like all Pisces.

Wee?

Normal Boringscope (care of Astrology.com, whom you can trust because they think it's last October): Try to help a friend in need today -- even if you don't really know what they need. Your intuitions are probably just as good as their explicit requests and it's really the gesture that counts.

Emphasis mine. And to it I say, wha?

Feederwatch Thursday!Incidentally, it turns out that Project Feederwatch ends the first weekend in April. I stocked up on more feed this week and tried to get a disproportionately high ratio of sunflower seed in there. So far the House Sparrows have not reacted well -- but everyone else has. Also, the Cardinals, Chickadees, Mourning Doves, and Nuthatches are starting to pair off. Awww. I think there's a Goldfinch pair as well; I saw them doing something I thought was kind of unusual, picking the buds off high in the canopy of the elm. It's a little hard to tell this kind of year.