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Sparky

I’m a very big admirer of the late cartoonist Charles Schulz.  Someday I’ll visit The Charles M. Schulz Museum.  The museum has released a DVD of the long-neglected 1963 TV show, A Boy Named Charlie Brown.  How neglected?  It was never shown!

I’m providing 2 minutes of footage from the show as an enticement for you to buy it.  His ideas were very similar to those of Fred Rogers, don’t you think?
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/sparky/Sparky.flv 400 300]

Order the DVD here.  Unfortunately, the museum doesn’t take orders online, and you’ll have to click the “Videos” link to see the ordering information for the DVD.

The show also includes the first Peanuts animation, done a full two years before the ground-breaking special, A Charlie Brown Christimas.  For a measly $15, anybody who is interested in the work and life of Schulz must have this unique DVD!

Rocketbust

If you don’t already know what the videoblog called Rocketboom is, or was, click here.  Let me sneak in a test of a Flash audio player.  Here’s a picture of Amanda Congdon, the original host, and an old children’s record with the theme song for Rocketboom.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Sounds/Wordpress/OCT06/zoom.mp3]

I don’t know what Rocketboom’s hit rate has been since Amanda split, but I haven’t been watching it.  This is Amanda’s replacement, Joanne Colan.

Joanne is fine!  Nothing against Joanne.  She has a great British accent, and the same name as one of my favorite comic book artists, Gene Colan.  But maybe she’s better suited for, I don’t know, HGTV.  She’s not Amanda, and Amanda was what made Rocketboom.

Embed Back From the Dead

How’s this? My first Flash-style embedded video, with a preview frame, without the jumpiness seen with the Media Player box when scrolling. And without resorting to YouTube™.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/Oct06/PeepingTom4.flv 400 240]

The results have their own technical drawbacks and advantages. This wasn’t easy to do!

This clip shows, as promised previously, Moira Shearer about 10 years after she was in The Tales of Hoffmann.  Here she is in 1960’s Peeping Tom, also directed by Michael Powell.

PD is not PC

The model for this blog is Mark Evanier’s News from ME. Ain’t no secret or shame in that. Swipe from your superiors, I say. Evanier is a successful writer of books, cartoons, comic-books and TV shows and, as Randy Newman sang, he loves L.A.

By clicking here you will see that Mark has mixed feelings about this TV ad being broadcast in Missouri, featuring Parkinson’s Disease sufferer Michael J. Fox.


If the area above is blank, blame YouTube™!

MJ Fox isn’t asking for money here, he’s asking for votes. And he’s right — sometimes the late Tip O’Neill’s maxim that "all politics is local" is only partly true.

Feed Me My Strips

A blogger named Ian “iSnoop” Anthony has come up with a nifty and free service that lets you pick comic strips for delivery via e-mail.  He calls it the Comic Strip Snagger.  It was offline for a while, but it’s working again, so give it a try.  Not every syndicate makes its comics available for this sort of access (RSS feed), but there’s still a nice collection to choose from.