Cool Find: July 3

I've wanted one of the "Rat Fink" type label makers for a long time,
but in the box? Me so happy! It's totally like a Hot Wheels "Farb".

Disney's, A Christmas Carol: Train Tour

The Summer is an odd time to be thinking about Christmas, but if you're Disney Marketing and you only have five months to run a promotional train tour cross country, it's the perfect time. The Christmas Carol Train Tour stopped here in Portland yesterday (one day only) and my wife and I took the tour and checked out a sneak peek of the film...cool stuff.

Disney, like always, runs a class act. They had period costumed carolers singing while you waited in line, provided cold water, and overall keep things running smoothly. As you approached the train, the platform was decked out with old style gates and lamps, plus vintage style itinerary kiosks which billowed fake snow out of the top...kinda comical in the heat of July, but still pretty neat. The train itself was completely "wrapped" in the art of A Christmas Carol, one big moving billboard. Disney doesn't really mess around.

Inside? Well one word applies...wow. As you made your way through all the train cars, you saw production art, costumes, maquettes, models, technical explanation (this film is done with Motion Capture) and there were even personal items on loan from the Charles Dickens' museum...actual letters, pens, writings, and books. I really liked seeing them. A nice touch near the end of the tour was the "morphing stations". You could turn your face into one of four characters from the movie, they send it to you later in an E-mail. This was slightly better in theory than it was in reality, but cool nonetheless. I made a weird Benjamin Button'esque Tiny Tim. Lastly, you get off the train and then head to a large inflated tent (that looks like a brick building) where they show you roughly 10 minutes of footage. I was pretty impressed with what I saw.

So far rendering people and facial movement in CG has been less than convincing in the movies. I think that's why Pixar stylizes humans so much, they understand the creepiness factor. We know what a close-up of a human speaking looks like, how the face moves and contorts...and CG hasn't really captured that convincingly yet. Maybe it isn't a matter of the quality of the animator, maybe the problem is in us...the viewer. We know it isn't real, so our brains don't accept it. It appears to me (from just the small bit I saw) that Disney is trying to walk the line with facial features in this movie, somewhat stylized, somewhat real...a balance. Jim Carrey's Ebenezer is real...yet exaggerated. His face is pointy and wrinkled, but he looks like a real old man. If you were to see somebody like that in person, you'd freak out. The distraction of the acceptance (or not) is most likely the hardest thing to overcome in these CG movies. That remains to be seen in the case of this film.

I was satisfied with the overall design look, the interiors, the cityscape of 1840s England...all as wonderfully done as you'd expect it to be with carte blanche computer graphics at their disposal. I liked how Big Ben was not quite finished being built, accurate for the period when Dickens wrote it.

If it seems I'm taking a "wait and see" attitude, it's because I am. Disney is usually a safe bet to produce reasonable quality, but now they're taking one of the best stories ever written, and feeding it through their merchandising machine. A Christmas Carol is one of my all time favorites (my wife certainly knows this) and if you're going to do it...you'd better do it well. I realize there have been lots of crappy versions over the years, great stories get told literally 100s of different ways, that's just a testament to their greatness. But when Disney takes a story and elevates it (Disney'fies it), it's no longer just some stupid Lifetime Network re-make with Meredith Baxter Birney and that guy from Animal House...it gets pushed up to the front of Pop Culture's line of honor. That's why it'd better be good.

Surprisingly, one of the best versions of Mr. Dickens' beloved story is the 1962 Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol. I'll wait while you stop laughing........ (whistles, looks at fingernails). The 1962 airing is not only the first animated Holiday Special ever aired (Rudolph came out in 1964), it's in my opinion, one of the best of all time, AND one of the best re-tellings of the Dicken's classic. It has sadness, heart, wonderfully surreal animation, the voice talents of the great Jim Backus, and the all original music is fantastic. The music was written by the Broadway team of Jule Styne and Bob Merrill (Funny Girl). The actual story is framed in the typical Mister Magoo cartoon shtick, like he's blindly rushing to perform in a play, but when the curtain opens and the actual story starts, it's like Magoo is truly a thespian master! It's a friggin cartoon, yet wonderful in its simplicity.

Sadly, it gets lost every year in the hype of all the other specials. I recommend taking the time and searching it out.

As far as the Disney's, A Christmas Carol goes? I'm excited to see it, but it'll have to work real hard to be "Magoo Good".

Check this out: So much sadness captured in one song. He's singing a duet with his young self, my goodness...pure genius!

International Frisbee Association

You gotta love the slackers, they come up with all kinds of cool sports. Dudes out on the "quad" flinging frisbees at each other, hacky sackin, and skate boarding. If it rolls, flies, or bounces...a slacker will turn it into a sport. That's why this IFA packet from the late '60s gave me a chuckle. It's pretty serious business.

The Frisbee has several origins, but the most likely history starts with New England college students tossing pie plates from the "Frisbie Pie Company" back and forth for fun. Later we had the Pluto Platter, then the Wham-O Frisbee we all know and love.

Now, I'm a slacker, but in the late '60s I was still kinda young, so the only thing I was tossing was my cookies (yes, I mean exactly what you think). I'd never heard of the International Frisbee Association until I found this. It went pretty deep with a card for your wallet, some proficiency books, a proficiency card, and various sales sheets with "approved" discs. Even a newsletter "IFA News", about things going on in the world of Frisbee...it kinda takes the slack right out of it. It's pretty cool in retrospect though, I dig the pictures of all the Greg Brady guys playing Frisbee, and also the color ad for the "Moonlighter" glow Frisbee.

I have an old packaged Frisbee, so I'll stick this packet next to it in my collection. I think I'll give the ol "Fris" more respect from now on.

Check out Vincent Price getting in on the act. I guess we all have a little slacker in us.

The Circle

"Goodbye Old Me!" It was time for a make-over to my whole thing I do (which I'm not even sure what that is sometimes). So I came up with the concept of an all inclusive "umbrella" to cover everything, the collectibles, the antique mall spot, the auctions...me, Retrodrome. I secured the .com, the Facebook name, have worked on this blog for several months, and soon my Ebay auction template will match too. I'm sure the look will change over time, and I'll add a real website at some point making this blog a branch off of that, but change keeps things fresh. I know building a singular presence will take some time, but that's ok (I've got nothing but time...). I'll have other side blogs (like my pee-chee-art one now) , and business cards made up...the whole thing. The circle will close, and it'll all be Retrodrome. Nothing earth shattering, just that.

Cool Find: June 12-13

"It's Whee-Lo, it's Whee-Lo...for fun it's a wonderful toy!!" Wait, that's the Slinky song. Nevertheless, the Whee-Lo falls into that same category of frivolous time waste toys. Like Silly Putty, Slinky, Etch-a-Sketch...the Whee-Lo was meant to occupy while you watched TV, rode in the car, or were busy not doing your homework. I used to get it whippin, the sound is unmistakable. I didn't have a boxed one in my collection until this weekend. Hey, what am I doing writing!? I gots me a Whee-Lo!

Cool Find: June 5-6

I pulled this from under a table at an estate sale on Saturday. There were actually two of them, I'm keeping one and selling one (in my current auctions). It's a mail-away Ralston Chex Cereal premium from the '50s "Space Patrol". There was a specific episode which had these Martian Totem Heads in it. The art and wording on the envelope are pretty cool, it has a Freaky-Tiki Mars thing going on...spiffy.

Check out the inside... ...and this:
Thanks to Captain Bijou

Keen on Pee-Chee

The teacher is going on and on about some boring subject, you shuffle in your desk chair, curse the clock, look down and there it is, the answer to your boredom. A trusted orange/yellow friend full of characters that you've gotten to know school year after school year, the humble, predictable, Pee-Chee folder. Those basketball players, that tennis girl...I think I'll doodle!

The Pee-Chee has gone away, it's actually been gone since the '90s, but most people don't even realize it. You mean I can't go down and buy a classic Pee-Chee? No, you can't. That's surprising, considering how much an icon of upper grade school days it was. It started in 1943, changed very little over the years (the art changed some), and is instantly recognizable to most Americans over a certain age. It was a simple idea, a card stock folder, side pockets (to keep papers from falling out), and an art design that didn't really change, it didn't need to. It was a Pee-Chee and the look was what made it that. The All-Season Portfolio depicted all the stuff I wasn't doing back in school, sports on the outside, learning on the inside. That's not to say it didn't help my with my education...quite the contrary.

It wasn't that I was bored in school...but I was bored stiff in school. The Pee-Chee offered me an outlet, doodles...but structured doodles. Every new Pee-Chee was a fresh canvas, but partially done. The challenge was to finish what the Pee-Chee design artist had started. Those aren't football players, they're two superheroes struggling on the ground for a Playboy magazine...at least they were when I was done with them.

I'm making another blog to celebrate Pee-Chee art. I'll show some of my classics, I did some themes over and over. I'll also have the non-doodled Pee-Chee designs that you can print and doodle yourself. In this age of photoshop and computer art...Pee-Chee art is literally old-school. It's all about the "Chee" and how it helped me get through school. Check out Pee-Chee-Art.blogspot.com.

On a side-note: I never knew the Pee-Chee "girl on ski lift" was actually taken from a real photo, and not only that, it's Timberline Lodge's (Mt Hood OR) Magic Mile lift...Pee-Chee Keen.