The Life Experience ~ Autumn '13

[bloodyrosemccoy]

We're a little heavy on the animation this quarter. For reasons!

What I Learned Since The Autumn Equinox

• Groucho Marx had some excellent writing, but his delivery needed work. You could say they were "rapid-fire" jokes, but I say he didn't give you time to get them.


• Looking up where to buy a simple pepper sprayer in case the stupid asshole pit bull next door breaks through the neighbors' poorly-maintained fence will lead you into an internet rabbit hole of super-paranoid home security products.


• Amtrak bunks are fun to use, but don't really help one sleep too well.


• You are required to sit with others on train dining cars.


• Sea Salt Caramel Cocoa is the New Thing.


• Birds are a very good indicator of the exact instant your fruit should be harvested. And you are on your own if you miss that instant.


• Sherlock is a pretty awesome show.


• Wine presses are fun to operate!


• Lauren MacMullan was the first woman to direct a Disney animated theatrical film. Good thing it was the unbelievably awesome "Get a Horse"!


• I was missing the concept of sisterly love as true love in Disney movies. And I didn't even know it.


• Twitter is a site capable of both great beauty and great horror. Social justice and mob rule both abound.


• Before being a full silent cinematic movie, Gertie the Dinosaur was meant as a Vaudeville act in which its creator, Winsor McKay, would play the part of her trainer.


• Some cats do play fetch.


• Studio Ghibli, in its previous incarnations, was responsible for the animation on those godawfully animated Rankin/Bass specials, including The Hobbit. Ghibli has come a long way.


• People with spinal cord injuries have to be careful not to scoot when transferring, since they can't feel if they catch on something or tear their skin.


• Pumpkins will ripen on your counter if it gets too cold to leave them outside.


• Columbus Day can be celebrated as the much less annoying Indigenous Peoples Day.


• And not all 15th- and 16th-Century Spaniards were mass-murdering fuckheads. That's nice to know.


• Selfies could be as old as art itself.


• When trying to create Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, one of the big concerns in selling it was whether audiences could actually become emotionally invested in cartoon characters. Oh, if only they knew.


• Another concern was that they had never actually made realistic cartoon characters--until this point they were all rubber-hose stretch-and-squash little funny animals. One of the reasons The Prince doesn't make much of an appearance was that they were still not entirely sure how to animate men without making them look stupid. (The Dwarfs don't count; they were squashy cartoon characters.)*


• Last thing about Snow White: the artists (or, as they're referred to in this interesting old-timey How A Cartoon Is Made short, "pretty girls") responsible for cel coloration decided that Snow White needed makeup--and so they simply applied their own blush to the cels. Disney reportedly worried that they might not know how to apply it correctly, which got him the Are You Fucking Kidding Me stare it deserved.

*I can see why Tolkien resented Disney. Here he's trying to make unVictorian, respectable Dwarves, and just a year later out come these goddamn doofuses. Singing about the washing-up, no less!** IT'S NOT LIKE THE DWARVES IN THE HOBBIT EVER SANG ABOUT THE WASHING-UP, RIGHT?! ... Oh, right.

**By the way, according to my DVD chapter menu, that song is entitled "Bluddle-Uddle-Um-Dum." You're welcome.