An outfit called Iconix Brand Group will own 80% of ‘Peanuts’, and the family Charles M. Schulz will have 20%, in a deal that acquires the licensing unit of United Features/Media that apparently includes the licensing of ‘Dilbert’.
Month: April 2010
Boilerplate: putting the kettle on
It’s sort of like Zelig meets Iron Man, by way of the Tin Woodsman. It’s Boilerplate: History’s Mechanical Marvel.
Is it a graphic novel? A faux Dorling Kindersley™ book? Watch this promo video of an ultra-nifty idea that’s very nicely done, combining classic illustration techniques and computer effects.
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Popeye… stoned sleeper agent?
My first favorite cartoon character was Popeye. I never cared for spinach as a kid, canned or otherwise, but that didn’t stop me from loving the Fleischer Popeye cartoons.
I was in an ice cream-candy shop with Carol and Eric this weekend, and I spotted boxes of Popeye ‘candy sticks’. They’re what used to be called candy cigarettes.
These ‘candy sticks’ look like reefer joints! What if those aren’t spinach leaves in that can, but marijuana? Maybe that explains why Popeye is senselessly punching his own shadow on the back of the box. He’s stoned!
But look closely on the side of the box, made by World Confections, Inc., of Brooklyn, NY, and you’ll see writing in Arabic!
Have Islamic extremists put Popeye under their influence? Is he in fact a drugged sleeper agent? Why hasn’t Glenn Beck said anything about this?
Netflix flub
As you can see, I’ve been using Netflix for over six years.
In all this time I’ve never had a problem with Netflix. Until now.
We rented ‘Blade Runner: The Final Cut’ on Blu-ray, and the disc was defective. It froze at a certain spot and wouldn’t recover. (Yeah, yeah… I cleaned it and tried again, etc.) So I returned it and asked for a replacement. They sent a high-def disc, but it was in the defunct HD-DVD format! I returned the disc, indicating it had been mislabeled. So what did they send? Another HD-DVD copy. Grrrr…
This time I called and actually got to speak with someone. “Destroy this disc!” I told him. I’m not going to bother asking for another copy from Netflix. I think Bismo owns ‘Blade Runner: The Final Cut’ on DVD. We’ll watch that.
BTW, Best Buy and the Sony outlet stores have stacks of the BDP-N460 Blu-ray player for only $140. If you can use Ethernet instead of Wifi for streaming video, that’s an incredible deal.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PRUE BURY!
Happy birthday to Prudence Bury, my all-time favorite Beatles girl. After many years of curiosity and sporatic searching, I got serious about using the Internet to find Prue, and with the help of Lia Pamina I finally did. Prue and I began corresponding last year, and an in-person introduction is tentatively scheduled for this coming September.
Having wondered about Prue since seeing a 10th anniversary screening of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, I had built up a rather idealized image of her in my mind. I wasn’t prepared for how easily she breezed past that ideal, totally knocking me out with her charm, humor, warmth, and sincerity.
Independent of her Beatles connection, Prue Bury is impressive and accomplished, and she is the very definition of a true Class Act. It is my great privilege to know her in a small way.
Great North Wood Barks
Last week’s installment of ‘Tim Rice’s American Pie‘ on BBC Radio 2, the second in the series, was about Oregon. I was surprised to hear Rice mention the cartoonist Carl Barks.
[audio:http://dogratcom.s3.amazonaws.com/Audio/2011/Jan/RiceBarks.mp3|titles=Tim Rice’s American Pie: Salute to Oregon]Here is a Barks story I posted over two years ago. It was the first one by him I ever read, which didn’t happen until I was fifteen.
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© Disney
Barks died in 2000, the same year that Charles Schulz passed away, but Barks was 99 — old enough to be Sparky’s father! Here’s a nice video about the late, beloved Old Duck Man.