When culture gets overinflated, yet refuses to pop, I want to be there with the needle. Enlightened cynics of the world unite! Express your love or hatred of things from the sacred to the mundane.
Only the NFB could allow me to travel for millions of miles, hypnotically transfixed, from a rowboat to the galaxies to the atom to the rowboat... gently down the stream.
What a trip? Now if I just had a Chipwich to tide me over.
When Canadian broadcasters had to try to explain hockey to American audiences in the mid-70s, Brain McFarlane, former CBC sportscaster, conceptualized Peter Puck to introduce the basics of the game.
Iconic - yes.
Cool for kids - yes.
Insulting to Canadians who already knew the game - probably.
As insulting as the glowing FOX puck in the 90s - not even close.
Go retro and dig Peter Puck - a great part of my childhood.
In an effort to promote some of the incredible work by the National Film Board of Canada over the past century, I offer the following parable of Frank the Wrabbit. A touch subversive and wholly satirical, the short examines several themes and does include... yes, you heard it here, rabbit zombies... well, maybe wrabbit zombies. Give yourself a ten minute surreal break and enjoy Frank the Wrabbit.
I'm guessing most people remember their first "run" in with homestarrunner, and though I found the stuff infectious for a long time, I really haven't checked back for a while. I guess I can't call web animation nostalgic, but a relatively new episode of Teen Girl Squad reminded me of the absurdity and hilarity of the shorts.
If you haven't been back there in a while, take a look and remember the glory of Trogdor, Fluffy Puff Marshmallows, and Strong Bad Email. If you've never gone there, Trogdor will burn your thatched-roof cottage.
Apologies for the less-than-stellar quality of the embed, but HSR.com has yet to provide an easy embed option.
The first episode of this PSA, between-Saturday-morning-cartoon, episodic from 1972. I still remember the theme song from this years later. There's no way I remember the original air date as it must have run for several years, but I was just happy when I didn't have to watch "In the News" sponsored by Kellog's.
I think this was on sometime after Speed Buggy and before the The Krofft Supershow... ah, it brings me back to a happy place.
Some groovin' 1949 bebop to hand-painted film animation - must be Norman McLaren. This vid just felt right for a Sunday afternoon that seemed a bit lazy. Also, the music is played by Oscar Peterson. What more could you ask for? Make sure you snap your fingers at the end of this one.
I can't believe I'd never seen this before. If you're a fan of rotoscope animation (the style that was used most recently in Waking Life, but right back to the 1930s) you'll really dig this clip. Rotoscoping mimics live movement without making someone wear a blue suit with little white balls stuck all over it for a computer to read. And hell, it's Tom Waits, so it's infinitely cooler than anything out now even thirty years later.
Many Canadians are all too familiar with this classic cartoon from the National Film Board, but for the benefit of the unitiated, I submit for your perusal, The Cat Came Back. If you just can't quite appreciate the storyline, you'll probably find the music quite infectious. It's sometimes years between seeing this short for me and I usually smile a nostalgic smile every time. Hope you enjoy it.
Remember the cartoons you used to watch just because they were the only ones on. Sometimes running over a lunch hour as you were scarfing down a bowl of Hamburger Helper or at 6:30am before any real programming came on, these cheap ass cartoons were the saving grace of 70's kids who couldn't stand watching test patterns... where I grew up anyway.
The Mighty Hercules... "Iron in his thighs."
Rocket Robin Hood... "Band of Brothers marching together."
Kum Kum... this made for some bad acid trip lunches.
Hammy Hamster... wow! I just wanna chill to late night Hammy, Maddy and GP.
