Brother Theodore Wednesdays #6
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Category Archives: WONDERS AND NOVELTIES
Brother Theodore Wednesdays #5
Brother Theodore Wednesdays #4
Brother Theodore Wednesdays #3
Missed this yesterday…
Brother Theodore Wednesdays #2
Brother Theodore Wednesdays #1
“I’ve gazed into the abyss and the abyss gazed into me, and neither of us liked what we saw.” ~Brother Theodore
The Dancing Pig
Don’t miss the big finish. It’s kind of like Jan Svenkmajer crossed with Georges Méliès crossed with Sid and Marty Krofft.
Thanks much to Johnny Uma at the PCL LinkDump blog for horrifying me with this.
THE CARTOON CRYPT: Magic Highway USA
My friend Ken Avidor sent me this hilarious Disney transportation vision of the future from the 1958 Disneyland TV Show episode entitled “Magic Highway USA”. It looks like it was animated by Bruce McCall. Somehow they missed the brilliant modern innovations of talking on the phone and watching movies as you drive, which seem like such obvious good ideas!
THE CARTOON CRYPT: Metal Eating Bird (1930)
Here is an utterly bizarre short by the largely forgotten animator and actor Charley Bowers. You have to skip over the excessively obnoxious first 40 seconds to get to the film. The fantastic animation isn’t until the last half of the film.
Read more about this film on the Internet Movie Database.
There’s a Charley Bowers DVD that I gotta see one of these days. Here’s the product description for that:
Who is Charley Bowers? The inventor of the no-slipping banana skin, unbreakable eggs, and cat-pushing trees! At the end of the 1920s, this unknown genius created and directed a score of cinematic burlesques filled with surrealist imagination, crammed with fantastic sights and animated puppets, among which the most delicious include “Egged On,” “Fatal Footstep” and “Now You Tell One.” His body of work is unique, though the astonishing course his career took has been chronicled by few and left him as one of the more enigmatic figures of American cinema. After a childhood spent with the circus, he became interested in animated drawing, adapting comic strips for the cinema including the “Mutt and Jeff” series created by Bud Fisher. Advances in animation which developed during this period explain the astonishing illusions which emerged in these comedic shorts. In the 1930s he directed “It#s a Bird,” his first sound film. Bowers returned to animation for advertising films, in particular the first short film by Joseph Losey, the oil-commissioned “Pete Roleum and His Cousins,” while also continuing his puppet films. He died in 1946, completely forgotten. To this day, 11 of the 20 short comedies are still considered lost. At the end of the 1960s, vault discoveries provided more of his story and three of the exhumed films were shown in 1976 at the Annecy Animated Film Festival, where they were met with enthusiasm. After 1992, worldwide research retrieved surviving prints of the missing films with requests to the world#s notable cinema collectors, who allowed access to their original elements. For the first time this extraordinary collection assembles the complete films of Charley Bowers which survive today, magnificently restored from the original elements with the collaboration of ten cinema societies.
NOSLO Cartoons and Games
I recently built 3 new “Sack of Joy” features for the website NOSLO.com at the company I work for as a flash developer/animator (OLSON)… I built a number of them the previously which are also below. Send ’em to your friends and spread the joy, if you’re inclined:
Sack of Joy #12: The Dancing Peanut Apparition
An innocent sandwich was perhaps this nut’s tragedy, drown’d in tears and raspberry preserves. However, freed from the shell of this mortal coil, his addled spirit nevertheless finds ample cause for rejoicing. Behold his ectoplasmic dance of joy on the cobblestone pavement of yesteryear. Joyous NOSLO!
If only we could all kick the angry, spitting heads of our evil dopplegangers! Fortunately for you, we have constructed a surrogate; our flickering amusement aspires to serve you in this futile but somehow deeply satisfying exercise! Unleash your subconscious agressions upon the gentleman’s duplicate noggin, as if this head was the very one which lay neatly upon your own sinister double’s yawning neck stalk. Joyous NOSLO!
Sack of Joy #14: Abraham Liquid’s Haberdasher
So charming, you’ll surely wish to melt down your last pennies. This steam-powered Lanterna Magica will amaze and astound you, as you behold nothing less than the realistic sensation of a man donning a tall hat. So real you can almost smell the perspiration on the beaverskin brim. Let not the hat-spoiling fish befuddle your efforts! May Our Mr. Liquid’s wavy head forever flow!
Please do note that this is no mere amusement; indeed, play through and come to know nothing less than the truth of your own character.
Joyous NOSLO!
Here are the Sacks of Joy I made for the previous NOSLO season:
Sack of Joy #1: Joyous NOSLO Song
Come spread the spirit and sacks of Joyous NOSLO, the holiday of the future, with this rousing NOSLO carol.
No one can resist the charms of The Soul Seal. Joyous NOSLO!
The flying feline of the frozen frontier. Joyous NOSLO!
Sack of Joy #4: Come Take a Trip in My Airship
An animated plea for aerial romance from a more innocent era. Joyous NOSLO!
Sack of Joy #5: The Mustache Game
Are you man enough (or facial-hair-challenged woman enough) to triumph over the challenges of the mustache game? Only one way to find out. Joyous NOSLO!
An animated fuzzball expresses affection in a manner congruous to his deeply damaged fur-lined psyche. Joyous NOSLO!
Sack of Joy #7: In Space No One Can Hear You
An animated astronaut explores the aural possibilities of deep space exploration. Joyous NOSLO!
Sack of Joy #8: The Magical Unicorn
Magic! Sparkles! Fancy! The delirious joy that can only be expressed through a unicorn and a rainbow, or through inhaling fumes of magic glitter glue in a confined space. Joyous NOSLO!
Sack of Joy #9: The Fractal Weasel Tree
Traditions! No Joyous NOSLO holiday would be complete without summoning and chopping down a Fractal Weasel Tree. Joyous joy! Joyous NOSLO!
Sack of Joy #10: The Marshmallow-Loving Chihuahua Vs. The Teacup
Whether you lean towards oolong, jasmine or mint you’ll feel compelled beyond your own will to help this marshmallow-loving chihuahua defeat the sinister teacup. Joyous NOSLO!
Sack of Joy #11: The Little Blue Bird of Joy
Sometimes it takes a little blue bird to remind you that, in spite of life’s hardships, joy can be found regardless of circumstance. Joyous NOSLO!
