Crazy Christmas Cavalcade: Holiday Spirit 2011

Hey everybody it's the eve of Christmas Eve, and it's time for my last holiday animation of 2011.

Please gather the entire family around the computer (or smart phone or tablet) to enjoy the short animated musical Christmas adventure of Jingles the bell ringing elf, and the holiday spirit that possesses him...



If this animation seems familiar it's because it is.  It's a "special edition" of  animation I made back in 2007.  Hey if George Lucas can do it so can I.

Anyway I think I've made some improvements.  The little red elf was originally intended to be in the animation, but was cut due to time constraints. I have a better grasp of particle systems so I think the avalanche looks more dynamic.  At the very least the picture quality is certainly much better.  Yes the Internets have improved over the last 5 years.  Here's how it looked back in 2007 for those of you who didn't click the link...



Merry Christmas everybody!

Crazy Christmas Cavalcade: Santa's Shaver Sleigh

Time for another festive holiday animation.  This time I take a child-like look at a classic Christmas commercial...



Norelco has been doing these Santa riding a razor spots for decades. Here's the earliest looking one I could find on the ol' YouTube...




... and here's the most recent with Santa now riding a newfangled flying razor!

Crazy Christmas Cavalcade: Christmas on Easter Island

Here's another new animation for the holidays.

It's a new animation based on an old Christmas card I made years ago...



If you're an avid reader of this blog maybe you remember this card from a post way back on December 7, 2007.

Hmm, I think I like the way I originally drew that Santa hat better than what I've drawn in the new animation.

Crazy Christmas Cavalcade: Ice Skating Wonderland

Seasons greetings all ye merry gentlemen, and gentleladies! I bring you tidings of great joy.  I'm creating a series of short heartwarming Christmas specials that are destined to become holiday classics, or quick cheap jokes that are sure to be forgotten immediately after viewing.

Either way please enjoy my video creation that's the virtual embodiment of the yuletide spirit...



I don't know how many of these things I'll make.  I have a few more ideas that I'd like to try to get to before the "fat man" slides down the chimney.

Bronner's CHRISTmas Wonderland Brochure

Well it's that time of year again, so to get in a festive mood here's a 1990's brochure for Bronner's CHRISTmas Wonderland in Frankenmuth, MI.

Established in 1945 I think Bronner's was probably the first store of its kind to sell Christmas decorations year around.  One thing for sure is the place is huge, and you can buy any sort of Christmas decoration imaginable. For example, maybe you where searching for those upscale mechanical animated figures, like the kind you might find in your local malls' holiday display - well you can buy them at Bronner's. 

Bronner's also wins my admiration for the most information packed into a single brochure.  I now know how to write "welcome" in 57 different languages, the miles to Bronner's from 40 North American cities, what the Bronner family looks like, and a short history Frankenmuth.

Happy Wacky Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everybody.

To celebrate the day of the big feast here's my salute to the greatest food related comedy of all time...

Acknowledgments to Norman Saunders the master artist of the Wacky Packages. 

You're a Lousy Cook Charlie Brown

After the success of A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966) the next big Peanuts holiday special was A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973).  Well two out of three isn't bad.  Seriously, do they even still air this one?


Nevertheless it was popular enough for Scholastic to publish a cute little picture book in 1975...

The text in the book follows the television script almost verbatim. The art looks like it came directly from the TV special as well, but it has some slight differences. For example check out the side-by-side comparisons below...

... on the left side is the book and it shows Peppermint Patty's phone as white and Charlie Brown's phone as red, but in frames on the right taken from the TV special the color of the phones are reversed.

Oh wait folks, I've just received an email...  It's from the Guinness World Record people, and because of that bit about the phone colors it seems I've won "Blog with the Most Pathetic Piece of Trivial Information." Wow, I didn't even know that was a category.

Anyways in A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Charlie Brown has a predicament of course, and when he's advised that he prepare a special Thanksgiving meal for his friends he says...

You're damn right Chuck.  You can't cook a Thanksgiving dinner, and you can't make a kid-friendly cookbook either...

Let's get real, the recipes in the Peanuts Lunch Bag Cook Book obviously weren't written by Charlie Brown, but they were written by someone completely out of touch with what most children want to eat.  Just take take look at this "Linus Loves Liverwurst Sandwiches"...

Who even eats liverwurst much less a kid?  Hey, I'm not just cherry picking a recipe for maximum child objectionability (well, maybe a little),  the recipe before this one is "A School of Tuna Sandwiches"  (OK it's possible a kid might eat a tuna fish sandwich, but it's that weird kid who carried his lunch in the brown-paper bag that had a giant grease stain on it), and immediately following are "Some Salmon Sandwiches" and "Lucy's Crabby Sandwiches." So here we have tuna, liverwurst, salmon and crab sandwiches - how many kids are going to go for this?  If you don't understand what I'm getting at maybe watching this recent Domino's Pizza commercial will help...


As a kid, I practically lived on peanut butter sandwiches, and so one may think when I got to "Stick-To-The-Roof-Of-Your-Mouth Peanut Butter Sandwiches" I'd finally find something I'd like to try, but no, not really...

There's nothing here that improves on a simple plain peanut butter sandwich, or a PB&J. The very fist recipe calls for finely chopped celery and catsup on a PB sandwich.  I know of the famous "Ants on a Log" kids snack so I guess that's were the chopped up celery comes from, but catsup?  Did Shaggy and Scooby come up with that?  Another Shaggy and Scooby-like PB variation was the suggestion of pickle relish.  Hmmm, peanut butter and pickle relish - these don't at all seem like two great tastes that taste great together...


Now who the hell walks down the street eating straight out of a jar of peanut butter...