Arlo and Janis creator Jimmy Johnson confused me and my friend Sam when he said nothing in his blog about last week’s series, which seemed to indicate that he had cut his finger rather badly.
He’s posted a partial explanation. Click here to read. Jimmy doesn’t use permalinks, so if he suddenly posts something new, you’ll have to scroll down to find this item.
Caricature isn’t the strongest suit of political cartoonist Jeff Danziger, but I think he has a great drawing style. I appreciate the fact he seems to have been more influenced by Pat Oliphant than the late, overly-emulated Jeff MacNelly. Sometimes Danziger’s ideas and imagery are Old School, but every so often he hits the spot. Here’s a good one.
The Dobbster, the Western Massachusetts blogger, once again features Bill Pratt (Boris Karloff) in a movie still from his collection. Vincent Price was the young man in that group! But Peter Lorre wasn’t all that much older. Mike’s scans are big, so be sure to click the preview images to see them full-size.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/sparky/CBXmas.flv 400 300]
The comment was made for my previous post about “A Charlie Brown Christmas” that there are some pink walls. Well, yes, that does indeed appear to be the case. The video clip has the entire show run in 30 seconds, but it’s backwards, with a corporate logo superimposed over the image.
It’s backwards because the Laserdisc scanning was smoother that way, and I didn’t feel like spending the money to enable the reverse playback feature in Pinnacle Studio. Even if I had paid, the logo would still be there because I didn’t want to pay to license the audio dub feature!
His name was Ross Bagdasarian, but he called himself David Seville. When I was a kid I wished my voice could sound like his.
But at the time I didn’t realize that the other voices I heard on his records and his TV show — with the singing chipmunks Alvin, Simon and Theodore — were also his.
On the audio player is a fun and familiar Christmas song. Let it play through, then listen to it again when it starts playing automatically a second time. A simple, cheap and appealing effect.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Sounds/Wordpress/NOV06/Alvin.mp3,http://www.dograt.com/Sounds/Wordpress/NOV06/Chipmunks.mp3]
Tonight is the annual showing of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” on network TV. The show was quite a breakthrough when it first aired in 1965, which is something I couldn’t fully appreciate until I became an adult.
Schulz makes an unabashed plug for his Christian faith and The New Testament, and I would be disingenuous if I claimed it never had an influence on me. He also offers another message, which is IT’S OK TO BE DEPRESSED DURING THE HOLIDAY SEASON.
Click here here to go to the gallery to see an adaptation of “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” published by Family Circle magazine in 1977. Be sure to click “full” to enlarge the images.
Vince Guaraldi’s music for “A Charlie Brown Christmas” is the subject of a feature on NPR that can be heard by clicking here.
Just what is “graphic blandishment,” anyway?
