At midnight, Andrew and I toasted and had the New Year kiss. Then he went to bed and I stayed up until 3 packing up the Christmas decorations (you're supposed to keep them up until New Year's for good luck) because I couldn't sleep!
SNOWPOCALYPSE occurred. We'd had snow on Christmas day, but this was serious snow. Roads rendered inaccessible snow. And my first time ever shoveling a driveway!
Went to In-Service with Ashley and Jenna and had a totally rockin' time, except when my batteries ran too low and I nearly passed out at the performances.
February 2011
Took my very first All-Stater to All-State. She sang in the Middle Treble choir under the direction of Dr. Sharon Paul. One of the pieces they sang was the Donald Patriquin arrangement of "J'entends le Moulin," which I've sung at All-State before, and I got to play finger cymbals!
March 2011
I turned 25 years old!
The yoga thing sorta dropped off...no shame, though. One thing I learned this year (thanks, Kate Harding!) is that exercise should be about enjoying movement, not about punishing yourself for not looking a certain way or for "not being healthy enough." So I've stuck to dancing because it does all the heart-rate-raising and sweat-inducing and it's way super fun!
April 2011
I launched my YouTube channel with a video that's now private (it's me singing and playing and I'm a little too self-conscious to be plastering that all over teh intarwebz)
I participated in my second and final Creative Night at Heritage. My three little singers sang "Stars I Shall Find" (which is actually TTB and I raised it a 5th...shhh...) and "The Mouse Madrigal" and I was so proud I could pop!
May 2011
I interviewed for two jobs. I got turned down for the first, so I waited anxiously to get word back from the second...
June 2011
Had a great family vacation at Murrell's Inlet!
Found out that I got the second job I had interviewed for!
July 2011
Finally figured out biscuits like I like them. Andrew likes his style better. We all have our tastes.
Began Noob Training with my new job.
August 2011
Started teaching! Which, as you'll notice in my archive, is why there are no blog posts for August 2011!
September 2011
Continued to teach, and as I described it to a student teacher, got to the point where "...I'm no longer living in a state of muted panic wondering what is going to go wrong."
October 2011
Had my first concert at my new school, in which I got to conduct one of my favorite pieces, Andre Thomas's arrangement of "Rockin' Jerusalem."
Dressed as Ursula for Halloween!
November 2011
I accompanied Honor Chorus for the second time in my career, working with the Intermediate Mixed group under the direction of Tee Smith. It was a blast!
December 2011
Actually finished all my shopping and wrapping for Christmas early!
Had our first Christmas Eve service in our Mt. Vernon location for the North Hall Campus!
Overall, it's been a great year...here's hoping 2012 is even better!
Yes, it's true. I have several habits and trains of thought that range from the amusingly odd to straight-up bananas. So I decided to spend some of my me time on this, our Christmas Eve Day of 2011, illustrating some of these quirks in hopes that you will find them amusing. Because that's the ultimate way to evade the laughing-with-or-at-you quandary: make yourself the joke before anyone else has a chance to!
1. My beloved space heater
I have written of my unnatural and abiding love for our space heater before. But I don't think I made it quite clear how obsessively attached I am. Like all my quirks, I try to suppress it at first. When Space Heater time comes, at first, I try to be calm about the space heater.
I do whatever I'm doing and try to maintain a respectable distance from the heater. "Leaving room for Jesus," so to speak. But then the warmth starts to speak to me...
And before I know it, I'm practically smothering the space heater, soaking up all that coil-heated air for myself.
2. Sleep aid - soothing television
A lot of people use television to help lull themselves to sleep. If it's a typical night and I just need to watch some TV to quiet my mind and relax, I'll just flip on a good show and enjoy. But on nights when the slumber is evasive, I can't use just any old TV show because it will only give my brain something to focus on while keeping me awake (rather than what it does when I can't sleep and don't have the TV on: go to dark and scary places like "What if a tractor-trailer full of Karo syrup is driving in front of me and goes out of control and flips over on top of me?") So for those nights, I find the only effective sedative is Jewelry Television.
The commentary is usually grating, so I'll turn the volume way down and just watch the pretty gems and jewelry items spin around on that turntable and sparkle under all the lights. Sometimes something vaguely exciting happens, like when one of the presenters is trying to get a loose gem to lay right and can't seem to pick it up with the special gemstone tweezers. But mostly, it's just a parade of glittery avarice and before I know it, I'm to the point of sleepiness where the TV being on is annoying and I'm ready to sleep.
There is one other channel that works too, but it's one of those special channels that you have to have the more expensive TV package to get on your TV or a paid subscription to get online (that may have changed, but I don't feel like going and looking right now.) But our TV company gives free previews of channels that are normally unavailable on a monthly basis and every now and then, this one comes up for a free preview: BabyFirst TV. The nighttime programming is intended to help infants go to sleep, so it's a constant run of soothing music and slowly moving imagery. About once an hour, they may show something that tempts the little babies to think:
...but mostly, it's just public-domain classical pieces and round computer-animated animals floating around on the screen. Thank goodness we had a free preview of this while I was student teaching, or I might never have slept for that entire semester.
3. Dancing in the dark (not to be confused with various songs to that effect)
I have always enjoyed music and have also always had a vivid and active imagination. So I write things, I draw things, I play things on the piano, and suchlike, but sometimes that is simply not enough. Sometimes, I need to go and dance around and pace and actually see things in my mind's eye, or act things out. As a child, I would just grab whichever portable music device I had at the time and do this anywhere, anytime. The backyard dog pen that we didn't use, a random bedroom, a hallway...as long as I had some space, I was cool. I did notice that darkness made it easier to visualize what I was thinking about, but I didn't need it, per se. Then I got to my early teens and my Self-Consciousness lobe sprouted, somewhat hurried along by an instance of my mother opening my door to see what I was doing and my not noticing her until after 3 minutes of wild gesticulating and mouthing random words, only to turn around and find her doubled over in laughter. And as I got even older, it became harder and harder to take myself out of the real world and into my pretend one. College was really hard, because I would start to try to put myself in a time and place and couldn't get anywhere because there was all this yellow light shining through the window from all the streetlights, as if to say, "You're not really there. You're here. Being weird." But I couldn't just up and stop - it's part of my brain's creative process. It's how my brain metabolizes ideas. So now, when I need some idea-moving creative time, I have to make sure my space is really and truly dark at all times. First of all, so I can really take myself out of reality and let my mind wander freely. And also so I know immediately when someone is trying to crash my party.
It's nearly Pavlovian, the way I freeze when that shaft of light comes through the room when the door is opened...Andrew, ever the problem solver, has taken to blinking a light at the door rather than opening it, so that I'm less startled. We are nothing if not compatible.
4. My battle with the grocery store conveyor belt
You know that little food treadmill that you load your groceries onto so the cashier can ring them up? If I take too much time in between loading groceries onto it, I end up with a blank space. Which is inefficient and also super annoying.
5. The power struggle of fitted sheets
Whenever it's time to put sheets on the bed, I want to either do it myself or not do it at all. Because I hate the Fitted Sheet exchange that seems to happen whenever I put bedsheets on with someone:
In which I lose friends and alienate people and also exercise my recently-learned gender neutral pronouns.
This is obviously a time to reflect on how things like globalization, corporatization and technology have changed The American Dream, what with economy drama, unemployment, and Occupy Everywhere happening. One thing I hear pretty often these days is a blanket condemnation of the Occupy protesters..."If those hippies/losers/what-have-you would get out of the streets and get a real job, blah blah etc."
Now, I am not an economist, or politician, or sociologist, or financier, or even pundit. But the job-hunting experience of a close friend of mine has caused me to look at the issues of employment and livelihood very differently than I would have years ago.
This friend and I, like most American kids, were raised being constantly reminded of the value of hard work and education. If you finish school and don't do anything to make yourself look like a "bad person" as your particular subculture defines it, if you try hard enough and search hard enough, you'll get a job and be able to sustain yourself as an adult. To be fair, maybe the adults and media in our lives weren't trying to so clearly connect the dots between school and job, but you can't sit there and deny that there is a cultural trope which takes for granted that being "good" and "working hard" under certain never-spoken-aloud conditions somehow magically guarantees a livelihood, or at the very least improves your chances of achieving one. On the flip side, if somebody doesn't have a livelihood, that person must have done something bad. That person must not have finished school, or must have gotten into drugs, or performed poorly at a job, or just not tried hard enough. It's tempting to impose this good/bad binary on society because it (1) generally casts those imposing the binary in the "good" column and (2) erases the existence of any wider social problems by foisting all the blame solely on the "bad" people. I do it too. We all do it. It is the nature of humans to want to control by declaring neat categories over what are actually very complicated and messy situations.
My friend's path to hir current job really clarified for me how much the search for employment boils down to luck-of-the-draw. Because I have promised not to reveal hir identity, I can't give you the details, but suffice to say that if zie had not said the right thing at the right time (which was MONTHS prior to the opening and the interview), the current job wouldn't have happened. Zie had the necessary what-you-know, but hadn't come into the right who-you-know until then, and now zie is in a fulfilling, promising career in the field zie is trained in. And the minute we start believing that zie somehow deserved this job by virtue of hir work during hir bachelor's degree or hir previous jobs is the minute we lose sight of reality. Yes, zie worked hard to earn hir bachelor's. So did the 100 (not exaggerating) other applicants for that job. Yes, zie searched like crazy for a job and took one zie was way overqualified for just to get by. So did most of the 100 other applicants for that job. In fact, I know five other applicants personally off the top of my head whose credentials are actually *better* than hirs and who worked multiple jobs in multiple fields to make do. This is not me downplaying my friend's abilities; zie is really good at what zie does. But in discussing this good fortune, zie has made a conscious effort to remain grateful and humble, and not to slip into the "I EARNED this job by working hard and being good!" narrative.
I am inclined to agree. There was a time when I had worked hard, earned a bachelor's degree, job-hunted until I was blue in the face and still got goose-egg. If a certain politician had declared, "If you don't have a job and you're not rich, it's your fault!" at that time, he would have been speaking to me. Had I not been married to an employed man or, lacking that, had a family with the willingness and means to support me, I would have been in serious trouble. Even though I had fulfilled all the culturally-accepted prerequisites for obtaining a job, even though I had applied to many, many places and interviewed cleanly and articulately, that statement would have suggested to me that the fact that I was unemployed was entirely my fault; I obviously did something wrong.
I can hear the defense from here: "He wasn't talking about people who are actually TRYING, he's talking about people who just don't want to work and are looking for a handout!"
There is a phrase for that: straw man. Now, obviously I do not know every single unemployed American personally. But just off the top of my head, let me take my previously mentioned cultural narratives regarding lack of employment in adulthood and see if I can't come up with some explanatory circumstances:
1. "This person didn't finish school." Some people perform poorly at school for a variety of reasons - their strengths don't fall into the two ways you're able to be successful in school (that is a soap box for another post), or they may be dealing with external stressors like poverty, abuse, dysfunctional family relationships, bullying, learning disabilities, lack of district resources (heeey, my stack of future soap boxes is starting to get really big), inadequately educated or uninvolved parents, migrant family, disruption of family, inadequate health care...the list goes on and on and on. I don't care how "driven" you are, if you're not getting enough food in your stomach, or if you're petrified that some jerk is going to bash your face in for looking at his girlfriend, or if you're weighing the pros and cons of hiding versus confessing that a family member hit you, or it takes you longer than your classmates to read through the assignment and you're afraid of being chastised for being stupid if you ask for help, or if your school district can't afford current-enough textbooks for you to get the right information to pass your EOCT, or if your mom can't help you with your homework because she can barely read herself, or if you're always playing catch-up because your family has to move constantly because of legal or employment issues, or if you're dealing with a bad virus without the benefit of medication because your family can't afford it...your brain simply will not function right, no matter how bad you want it to.
And all of those situations? ARE NOT THE KIDS' FAULT. And do not magically become their fault when they become job-seeking adults.
2. "This person got mixed up in drugs/illegal behavior." Drug use can be a frightening thing. But what sort of things cause people to seek out drugs? Let us consult the internets...
What causes drug abuse and addiction?
Like the majority of other mental-health problems, drug abuse and addiction have no single cause. However, there are a number of biological, psychological, and social factors, called risk factors, that can increase a person's likelihood of developing a chemical-abuse or chemical-dependency disorder. The frequency to which substance-abuse disorders occur within some families seems to be higher than could be explained by an addictive environment of the family. Therefore, most substance-abuse professionals recognize a genetic aspect to the risk of drug addiction.
Psychological associations with substance abuse or addiction include mood disorders like depression, anxiety, or bipolar disorder, as well as personality disorders like antisocial personality disorder. Social risk factors for drug abuse and addiction include male gender, being between 18 and 44 years of age, Native-American heritage, unmarried marital status, and lower socioeconomic status. According to statistics by state, people residing in the West tend to be at higher risk for chemical abuse or dependency. While men are more at risk for developing a chemical dependency like alcoholism, women seem to be more vulnerable to becoming addicted to alcohol at much lower amounts of alcohol consumption.
Biological, psychological and social factors, and possibly a genetic basis as well, eh? There are probably some drug users out there who, despite the proliferation of anti-drug media in our culture and the demonization of drug users, think about the possibility of using this or that and go, "Well, it looks fun, so to heck with any consequences!" But considering that against the possibility of "mood disorders, depression, anxiety..." and other such problems driving people to seek relief, especially considering that for some people, an illicit drug might be a more feasible, faster and cheaper route to relief than a legal one gained by prescription (for almost 50 million Americans in 2010, doctor visits and prescriptions were not an option at all), which explanation do you reckon occurs more often? And in a society that still doesn't have enough jobs to go around, drug trafficking and criminal behavior start to look less and less outlandish when you and your loved ones are in danger of homelessness or starvation.
3. (Assuming previous employment) "This person must have performed poorly at hir job." Some people perform poorly at jobs because their skills/education simply aren't suited to it. And if you're inclined to wonder why a person would apply for such a job to begin with, I'll point you again to the lack of employment opportunities in our country and the fact that people have to eat. While I'm trying to anticipate counterpoints to my points and address them, I'm having a really hard time believing that someone would perform poorly at a job just because they didn't want to do it. Either something else is going on, like the aforementioned not-good-at-it-but-must-eat scenario, or any number of the scenarios that accelerate poor school performance, or they don't actually need the job and therefore don't have to do well at it...and since that would only happen in households wealthy enough to do without one family member's income, that scenario is less relevant to our discussion right now.
4. "This person just didn't try hard enough." This criticism might make me see the reddest of all. It's an egotistical statement if ever there was one. I don't know every specific detail of another person's brain chemistry, cognitive processes, metabolism, emotional fortitude and/or trauma...how dare I presume to know at what point that person is truly exhausting hir efforts?
Lest I be accused of constructing a straw man myself, I welcome rebuttals and discussion in the comments. And I'm not aiming for a fight over or a solution to the unemployment and economic crises. What I am aiming for is acknowledgment of the fact that when we try to impose simple labels, when we decide that people who are unemployed must somehow deserve it, we erase and demonize millions. There are plenty of people out there who got their educations and lived within their means and behaved like "good" people and *still* got in a bad spot because they were laid off or because there simply were no jobs to be had, causing the means within which they were living to dry up.
We want it to be as simple as "good" and "bad." It is never that simple. And we will not fix these problems until we acknowledge that.
This is one of my favorite little memes and it feels like it's the right time to resurrect it. With YouTube links!
IF YOUR LIFE WAS A MOVIE, WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK BE?
So, here's how it works:
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don`t lie and try to pretend your cool... and a lot of the songs fit with the setting
Opening Credits:
"Shattered Glass" by Britney Spears
Waking Up:
"Adagio for Strings" by Samuel Barber. Must have been waking up from a very sad dream.
First Day At School:
"About Schroeder" by No More Kings. Aww...
Falling In Love:
"Be My Lover" by La Bouche. Heh, I fall in love boisterously.
Fight Song:
"Somewhere With You" by Kenny Chesney. That's one boring fight.
Breaking Up:
"Walk Away" by Kelly Clarkson. That's right, man!
Prom:
“Conga" by Miami Sound Machine. Old school prom, yo.
Life:
“Telephone" by Lady GaGa.
(I chose not to use the music video because it makes no freaking sense. No really.)
Mental Breakdown:
“There You Were" by Jessica Simpson and Marc Anthony. Some of my readers would probably consider this appropriate music to have a mental breakdown to...
Driving:
“Wrong Baby Wrong Baby Wrong" by Martina McBride. That is a pretty good song to drive to...
Flashback:
“You Belong With Me" as performed by Nonsequitur (Columbia University).
Getting back together:
“Best for Last" by Adele.
Wedding:
“We Be Burnin" by Sean Paul. Quite a party, this wedding. And I hate this video, so we're going to omit it. Hooray!
Birth of Child:
“Everytime" by Britney Spears. Oddly poignant.
Final Battle:
“Waterfalls" by TLC. Man, my fights are really low-key.
Death Scene:
“Help Save the Youth of America from Exploding" by Less Than Jake. Dying is apparently much more exciting than fighting.
Funeral Song:
“Secret" by Maroon 5. That's one inappropriate funeral.
End Credits:
“Addicted" by Kelly Clarkson.
So hey, kind of a dark movie overall...sometimes the shuffle gives me really funny answers and sometimes not. Oh well!
Last Saturday, I served as an Honor Chorus accompanist for the second time (first time was 2008), with two gap years in between. During the 2009 event, I had started my first teaching job with a brand-new choral department altogether and chose not to participate in any of the GMEA events, and in 2010 I sent my kids and just did the typical monitor-rehearsal-turn-pages duty.
In the 2008 Honor Chorus, the teacher with whom I student taught was directing the Senior Women's group and invited me to accompany for her. To be honest, it was a tough experience. I was seriously depressed over not having found a teaching position and was really struggling with the transition between college and married life. Also, our shoebox apartment would not accomodate my piano, so I had to leave it at my mom's house and cram in practice sessions whenever I could. Here's how pitiful I was: I would sometimes go back to my old college and practice in one of the practice rooms there just to be back because I missed the place and the people so much. I came to the event less prepared than I should have been; the conductor was exceedingly patient with me on this front and it all came out in the wash on the recording. But the hardest part was working with the kids and seeing what could have been if only I had interviewed more, had a better resume, worked harder, cast a wider net, blah blah blah blah... I went home and cried both nights, certain that I was a complete failure for not having a school job.
What a contrast from that year to this one. This time, I had a house with a piano in it and could practice until I fell over. This time, I played for a choir that contained kids from my previous school and my current one, all of whom I glanced at frequently with a combination of mother-hen protectiveness and pride. This time, I eagerly circled pieces in my program and listened to warm up routines that I might take back to my kids. This time, when I watched the other groups perform, I saw familiar faces in each one. Despite being sickly and coughing and such, it was still a wonderful experience.
Editor's note: NOT A MOVIE ENTRY, although it will mention a media conglomerate most heavily associated with films.
Yep, it's true. I am in league with those people who believe that Dark Side of the Moon lines up with The Wizard of Oz if you start the record at the third MGM lion roar or whatever. (I've never tried it, but I'm sure it would be fascinating if I could stand to listen to Pink Floyd for longer than 20 seconds.)
Which I'm pretty sure is not news to you guys, but it has come to my attention recently because I was listening to the song "Tragic Kingdom" by No Doubt the other morning and had a ZOMGEPIPHANY about it. The CD it comes from, also called Tragic Kingdom, was one of the first CDs I ever owned. When I was 12, it rotated through my CD player in between SpiceWorld and the soundtrack to Hercules. And I always used to think that the song "Tragic Kingdom" was just a fancy theatrical venture on an album that is otherwise Gwen Stefani's various post-breakup hate letters to her ex. And I suppose, if you were coming into it from a heavily metaphorical perspective, "Tragic Kingdom" could be read as a metaphor for the end of their relationship. I didn't ever think this, though; I just thought it was a big fanciful story about a ruined medieval kingdom.
Before I delve into my epiphany, allow me to post the song and the lyrics for your consideration:
Once was a magical place
Over time it was lost
Price increased the cost
Now the fortune of the kingdom
Is locked up in its dungeon vaults
The castle floor lies in traps
With coiled wires set back
Decoyed by old cheese
Now the drawbridge has been lifted
As the millions
They drop to their knees
They pay homage to a king
Whose dreams are buried
In their minds
His tears are frozen stiff
Icicles drip from his eyes
The cold wind blows as it snows
On those who fight to get in
On heads that are small
Disillusioned as they enter
They're unaware what's
Behind castle walls
But now it's written in stone
The king has been overthrown
By jesterly fools
And the power of the people
Shall come to believe they do rule
They pay homage to a king
Whose dreams are buried
In their minds
His tears are frozen stiff
Icicles drip from his eyes
Welcome to the tragic kingdom
Cornfields of popcorn
Have yet to spring open
Have they lost their heads
Or are they just all blind mice
We've heard all their stories
One too many times
Hypnotized by fireflies
They glow in the dark
Midgets that disguise themselves
As tiny little dwarfs
The parade that's electrical
It serves no real purpose
Just takes up a lot of juice
Just to impress us
They pay homage to a king
Whose dreams are buried
In their minds
His tears are frozen stiff
Icicles drip from his eyes
Oh, they drip from his eyes
Into the night
They drip from his eyes
Welcome to the tragic kingdom
Cornfields of popcorn
Have yet to spring open
So that's the song. (Bugs me that Gwen doesn't know how to pronounce "homage.") And I have to confess - I had my little epiphany about it, then went online and realized that the epiphany wasn't entirely mine and wasn't entirely secret, although Professor Wikipedia does not dig as deeply into it as I did because, as I may have mentioned, I am the fringe.
Yep, finally realized after, oh, 13 years of listening to the song, that "Tragic Kingdom" rhymes with "Magic Kingdom." As in Disney. And Disneyland is in Anaheim, where No Doubt was born and bred. As the Wikipedia link I provided shows, that observation is not my crazy imagination reaching - that was an intentional pun by the band. The rest of my observations, however....
Y'all, I want you to realize that I feel appropriately ashamed that I initiated several mental synapses listening to the lyrics and realizing all the different ways that they could be taken as Disney references. But of course, my shame over being a lunatic will not prevent me from re-copying the lyrics and pointing out all those places to you! Because it's my blog and I do what I want! So you'll see the lyrics in italics, and my super profound and not-at-all-awkwardly-crazy thoughts will appear in bold.
Once was a magical place
Over time it was lost
Price increased the cost Commentary on the growing commercialism/merchandising hype that took hold not only of Disney, but of all the big movie machines? I think so! Now the fortune of the kingdom
Is locked up in its dungeon vaults Disney vault. Where they hide the really popular and well-made Disney films until they need to make more money or until a new format gets released. *coughLIONKINGIN3Dcough* The castle floor lies in traps
With coiled wires set back
Decoyed by old cheese I always thought this line was weird, and still do, unless cheese = mouse. Hmm. Now the drawbridge has been lifted
As the millions
They drop to their knees
They pay homage to a king
Whose dreams are buried
In their minds The great and powerful aspirations of WALT hang heavy over us all. His tears are frozen stiff
Icicles drip from his eyes. Possible reference to the urban legend that Walt was cryogenically frozen when he died. (In reality, quite the opposite - he was cremated.) The cold wind blows as it snows
On those who fight to get in
On heads that are small
Disillusioned as they enter
They're unaware what's
Behind castle walls Hm. Don Bluth saw what was behind castle walls and got disillusioned. Just saying. But now it's written in stone
The king has been overthrown
By jesterly fools Comment on the failure of post-Walt head honchos to ignite the same magic and innovation he did? Possibly. And the power of the people
Shall come to believe they do rule
[snipped because of repeated lyrics] Welcome to the tragic kingdom
Cornfields of popcorn Popcorn = theme parks and movies. HMMMM. Have yet to spring open
Have they lost their heads
Or are they just all blind mice MICE We've heard all the stories
One too many times Disney's standard formula, especially in the beginning: take existing stories, like novels and fairy tales (especially those in the public domain) and adapt for film. Hypnotized by fireflies
They glow in the darkHow much Disney magic is made to look like little fireflies? Think of Tinkerbell's magic, the Fantasia fairies, the Fairy Godmother's magic in Cinderella...
Midgets that disguise themselves
As tiny little dwarfs Dwarfs. Yeah. First feature-length animated film the House of Mouse ever made. The parade that's electrical
It serves no real purpose
Just takes up a lot of juice
Just to impress us Main Street Electrical Parade. Obvy.
[remainder snipped because of repeated lyrics]
So these were the very important and relevant thoughts my brain was producing when I was doing my dance-workout and trying not to be freaked out about my upcoming concert. Left with a dose of nervousness-adrenaline and nothing to focus it on, my mind goes to some pretty interesting places. Of course, as regular readers will note, my mind goes to interesting places whether I am guiding it or not. But it's entertaining, right?
Yes, I do remember that I have a blog. I'm one month into a new job and this is the first chance I've had to really write much of anything in a long time. And whadaya know, it's another movie post!
To the surprise of no one, I come from a family of avid film watchers. And of course, the big names can only sustain the film watcher's appetite for so long, especially the child film watcher. So I thought I'd take you on a little tour of some of the lesser-known (or completely unknown) film gems Amber and I enjoyed as kids. And before you are tempted to complain, please note the absence of such adjectives as "quality", "engaging", "good" and suchlike. As an aside: some of the samples from YouTube are going to be the first 10 minutes of the film. Most of them aren't popular enough for YouTubers to be all "Here's the big musical number!" or "Here's the scary part!" There's only "Movie Name: Part 1" or "Entire Dadgum Movie." Sorry about that.
1. The Jungle King
A teeny tiny straight-to-video little number that recycles an old chestnut about twins..."They look the same, but they are different! I wonder if they will learn something from each other?" It's hilarious to watch this snippet as an adult and to notice just how heavily the layouts, set designs and characterizations borrow pretty heavily from other popular releases of the time - the Sultan's palace from Aladdin, the interiors reminiscent of the pretty parts of the Beast's castle, and of course, some pretty blatant borrowing from Lion King, which, shocker of shockers, came out the same year. Kinda reminds you of the recent swarm of mediocre vampire entertainments that have cropped up in response to the popularity of Twilight.
2. Little Nemo - Adventures in Slumberland
A Japanese film that, for lots of kids my age who weren't counter-culture enough to be into comics and graphic novels and not old enough to watch the grown-up stuff being offered on MTV, was an introduction to anime. And if you have a look at the credits, you'll notice that Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451, which lots of us had to read in high school, and All Summer In A Day, which I'm beginning to think only I ever read) contributed to the film.
3. Happily Ever After Happily Ever After pioneered the use of big-name celebrities as voice actors to bring some buzz to a film. In want of the big funding and marketing that the bigger companies had, the fine folks at Filmation stacked their cast with stars from lots of different media - Ed Asner, Carol Channing, Irene Cara, Phyllis Diller (whose big musical number you may remember from my movie musicals essential soundtrack) et al. Didn't help much, seeing as how Filmation filed bankruptcy and folded shortly thereafter. Happily Ever After is an unofficial sequel to Snow White, featuring seven dwarfelles who are endowed with supernatural power over different elements. Little Thunderella (Tracey Ullman), though, is in a bind over hers...
4. The Magic Voyage
Another foreign film that got re-vamped and released stateside, this time from our friends in Germany. It uses a fictionalized version of Christopher Columbus's journey to "India" (until that whole other continent got in the way) as a frame story alongside which a little woodworm named Pico goes to save his lady love, a fairy named Marilyn. Hilariously enough, this one also cast a bunch of big names, including Irene Cara. I suppose she thought this was her film niche! In this clip, we find Columbus trying to stave off a mutiny by inciting accordion merriment. (If it works for Weird Al...) Have a listen to these words and tell me whether you think that the studio blew all their money on the voice cast and as a result got the cheapest lyricist available...
5. Rumpelstilzkin as presented by Timeless Tales from Hallmark
This is what the Hallmark movie people were doing before they were making the Hallmark movies we know so well today...taking the gloriously public domain Grimm fairy tales and animating them with the help of Hanna-Barbera (the fine folks behind the Flintstones, Jetsons, Smurfs and other such television gems.) And heeey, Sandy from Grease is telling us all about what we'll be watching today! Enjoy the first few minutes, and also have a good laugh at the clothing on the live-action frame story actors...are you surprised to know that this was made in 1990?
6. Beauty and the Beast (1981 Bosustow Entertainment version)
Ladies and germs, I have stumped the internet. Aside from that IMDB link and a link to a site that looks less than reliable (some weird little cartoon database), I can't find a blessed thing about this movie anywhere. No stills, no cover art, no nothing. And I went through a whole bunch of digging, because you can imagine what I am inundated with when I Google anything close to that title... I looked through all of IMDB's listings for "Beauty and the Beast" (of which there were roughly eight zillion) and this is my best guess for the right one; I can't confirm at the moment because the videotape is at my mother's house. And y'all, I was REALLY wanting to share this one with you, because it is singularly freaky. On the upside, if I've got the right title, IMDB tells me that it's only 12 minutes long, a length of time easily recorded on small electronic devices. This may call for a trip to Mom's tomorrow for a Copyright Infringement Kooky Film Recovery Mission!
7. Daffy Duck's Quackbusters
This is probably the most well-known of my collection here, largely because it used an already-famous group of characters. It even got re-released on DVD. As a child, I noted with some confusion the fact that the backgrounds, animation style, and character voices changed so frequently in this film; it's because much of the film is pulled from different Looney Tunes cartoons, with the only newly animated sequences being those that feature Daffy as a paranormalist. Fun fact: Mel Blanc served as the voice of most of the Looney Tunes characters for decades. This film was his last one in the Tunes canon - he died a year later. Between Blanc voicing the characters for the new animation that served as the frame story and Blanc having voiced the 1950s and 1960s cartoons they pulled for filler, he comes close to being the exclusive voice actor for the entire movie. Very interesting to watch the parts where the newer animation segues into the old cartoons and hear his 80-year-old voice change into his 50-something voice, most noticeably on Porky. But I can't show you any of that, because the Powers That Be have kept a close eye on the YouTubes for stray copyrighted material. As far as Quackbusters goes, I can only offer you this:
8. A Variety Of Films That Were Basically Books-On-Tape
Because these examples come from popular franchises, you may question why I include them in a post on obscure movies. But one look at the "animation" style ("Let's just point the camera at the book, pan around and then mess with a few of the cels to make some stuff wiggle or disappear!") and you'll see why I don't really consider these proper movies. The first example in particular makes my mother all misty-eyed because I watched it and talked with her about it as a toddler.
This has been a fun ride...stay tuned to see if I'm ever able to dig up the missing one!
Insomnia, insomnia...
Oh what with me is wrong-nia?
For four nights now I nearly weep
and beg of thee to let me sleep!
I thought Wednesday was thy inception,
with migraine naps that day's direction,
but I barely doze four days and nights,
sleep meds and all - now that ain't right.
So now I sit and type away
and wait for night to turn to day.
You know it's bad when neither couch
nor space heater can knock me out.
I guess my mind has up and seized
some vague ignored anxieties,
since day by day I'm inching near
to bigger things in my career.
I try to write about my nerves,
but find they won't submit to words.
This last resort is truly worst -
who writes a blog post all in verse?!?
Reckon I'll stay here a while
and surf for things that make me smile,
then crawl in bed around, say, three
and hope tomorrow's good to me.
Yes it IS another movie post! No I do not have any film history credentials, but I can access Wikipedia and IMDB! Trivia fun for all!
Normally, I wouldn't make myself the spokesperson for a large group of people, but I've decided that animated films of the 80s and 90s can be considered my specialty because (a) my exhaustive and totally scientific research involving asking several friends and students whether they've seen this or that tends to produce affirmative responses and (b) when I consulted Professor Wikipedia for the major children's film releases from this era, I discovered that I own or have seen the vast majority of them. Yes. I am the Gen Y Cartoon Movie Whisperer. Children growing up in a certain period of time, which I'm going to assume ranges from a bit older than me to several years younger than me, have vivid memories of a set of popular animated features, some of which represented the pinnacle of the art for that period of time and some of which were, frankly, mediocre. For one studio in particular, the late 80s was an endless stream of stupid fluff films based on characters that originated in other media, i.e. Television Show: The Movie and Popular Toy: The Movie. But there were two others whose contributions tended to outweigh the other studios - one giant with decades of business behind it, and one maverick studio whose run was brief, but memorable. And if it weren't for a falling-out between the Big Corporation and the Man With A Dream, some of the best animated features from that era might never have happened.
Don Bluth is a native Texan with a certain flair for the creative. After high school, he took his artistic talent to That Giant Studio With The Rodent and got an on-again, off-again gig. He did other projects, including some live theatre, before choosing to commit to the animation game for good. He took up residence at the House of Mouse in 1971 and contributed to such works as Robin Hood and The Rescuers, but found that this work didn't completely satisfy his artistic leanings. So he started moonlighting with two other animators in El Raton's employ, working on this and that little project of their own.
The record gets a little fuzzy here...one source skips this next part entirely, but all the others agree that it occurred. Apparently, Bluth was becoming disenchanted with the Enchanters-In-Chief and thought that the quality of their work was not up to par with their past efforts. There were even rumors that the unit was going to be discontinued altogether. And a cursory glance at the animation division's output over the early 80s - chiefly the fact that there practically was none - seems to confirm that at very least, they had lost steam. So Bluth and his buddies cut ties and started doing their own movies, starting in 1982 with an adaptation of the novel Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of N.I.M.H. called The Secret of NIMH. It was produced on a tiny budget, but was also modestly successful and critically acclaimed. They then set their sights on video games for a few years, which I imagine set the Happiest Company on Earth at ease. After all, why should a huge production company with so many successes worry about one little rogue studio? But then, Bluth got himself a little collaboration which probably made them nervous, and with good reason...
Bluth had teamed up with Steven Spielberg.
Their first joint venture was a little piece called An American Tail (1986). And its box office numbers edged into Mr. Mouse's territory. And their second work, The Land Before Time (1988) did even better. Suddenly, the company that practically invented the feature-length animated piece had some competition. Although none of my sources say this overtly, I think it's a pretty telling that up until then, House of Mouse's 80s offerings had been lesser fare, such as The Fox and The Hound (1981) and The Great Mouse Detective (1986). By the time 1988 rolled around, you could tell they were starting to up their game with the release of Oliver and Company. Perhaps unfortunately, Bluth broke his collaboration with Spielberg and in 1989, it became pretty clear who was going to win this little Battle of the Cartoons. In this year, Bluth released All Dogs Go To Heaven. Not a bad film, certainly had a unique story and artistic merit of its own, but The Rodent's release from that year...
...was The Little Mermaid. Game over. Small aside regarding House of Mouse's 80s output - Check out The Brave Little Toaster (1987) and note the clever and unusual use of anthropomorphic objects, particularly where they situate faces on different appliances. Turns out that several of the folks who worked on this one later co-founded Pixar. So we likely have this little gem to thank for some of the later Mouse-Pixar anthropomorphic gems like Toy Story and Cars!
For the next 8 years, Bluth's film offerings were unsuccessful, although I personally liked some of them. Rock-a-Doodle (1991), Thumbelina (1994), A Troll in Central Park (1994) and The Pebble and The Penguin (1995) suffered from a 1990 downsizing of the studio and from lack of funding and marketing in general. Especially in the case of Penguin, it's obvious they had to cut corners. El Raton's Company, on the other hand, spent much of this decade producing major blockbusters such as Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, The Hunchback of Notre Dame... In 1997, Bluth had one more hit with Anastasia, but since then has pretty much been doing small animation work and video games.
Even though his run was short, I think Wikipedia is probably not lying to me when it says that we can all thank Don Bluth for lighting a fire under the Little Black Rat's hiney and inspiring them to make some of the best films in their collection. If nothing else, he helped produce a catalogue of films that broadened our aesthetic experience at the movies. There were two big elements of the Bluth films that really set them apart from the other studios: the specific style and look of the animation and the generally darker, more mature content.
First to The Look! The characters and other moving parts of the foreground are solidly outlined and solidly colored in, as though you were watching a moving coloring book. The backgrounds, on the other hand, are gorgeous - they are often highly detailed in the active parts of the scene, with rich colors and subtle gradations in the shading, but murky and ethereal around the edges. One downside to this method occurs when a background element becomes part of the action within a scene, meaning that this one element of the background sticks out like a sore thumb because it's drawn in the same outlines-and-solids style of the characters, yet it's nestled among all of these beautiful and subtly painted background objects. For example, have a look at the climactic fight from The Pebble and the Penguin (you'll need to jump to about 7:35 to see what I'm talking about):
When it cuts to the top of the staircase, can you tell which stair is going to be broken? Of COURSE you can.
This look, love it or hate it, is vintage Bluth. By the time Anastasia was born, he had learned some lessons, most especially the one that says it's generally good for your background paintings and your foreground characters and props to resemble each other, rather than looking as though the characters are borrowing the set from their rich friends. Fortunately, when you're a child, you don't care.
Quick aside for the saddest trivia of all time. There's a darling little actress who appeared as Ducky in The Land Before Time and as Anne-Marie in All Dogs. Go read her Wikipedia article and then have a look at the next paragraph and marvel at the possibility that life imitates art.
And Then There's Content. Don Bluth had a certain philosophy about animated films: kids can handle just about any sort of turmoil for the protagonist, as long as there's a happy ending. As a result, the Bluth films tend to be emotionally dark and gritty when compared to FairyTales-R-Us. And in looking back, it's astounding how much of the darkness either didn't really bug me or bypassed me entirely. For example, as a little child watching An American Tail, did you catch the parallels between the Mousekewitz family being beseiged and Russian Anti-Semitic pogroms of the same time period? Because I sure didn't. Did it bother you to watch Anne-Marie get exploited and Charlie have a nightmare about Hell in between dying twice in All Dogs Go To Heaven? Because I don't remember it bothering me. Did seeing Littlefoot's parents die in The Land Before Time traumatize you for life? I don't think it even traumatized me for the length of the good-bye scene. But within those three movies alone, there's a laundry list of events that a lot of parents would blanch at: Anti-Semitism, imminent physical danger from vicious predators, multiple deaths (one of which issues from murder), illicit gambling, exploitation of a child/orphan, vivid depictions of Heaven, Hell and the afterlife. Taking Rock-a-Doodle, Thumbelina, A Troll in Central Park and Anastasia into account adds natural disaster, binge drinking, suggestive apparel, kidnapping, imprisonment, massacre and occultic magic. Most children's films carry some form of the Great Moral Of Life: Sometimes Things Will Suck, But You Can Overcome Them. It just so happened that in the Bluth catalogue, things tended to suck a little worse.
One of my earliest memories of life altogether comes from when I was perhaps 3 or 4 years old, living in a tiny house with my mom and then-stepfather. I hadn't quite gotten the hang of reading yet, so Mom was reading aloud the opening credits of The Land Before Time for me. (I guess I got curious!) I distinctly remember her saying the name "Don Bluth" and seeing those particular letters on the screen and making the connection that these here funny shapes represent that funny name. I remember making the connection when watching An American Tail and All Dogs, seeing the commonality of animation style and recognizing the name "Don Bluth" in their credits. But I don't remember thinking his films were bummers in particular. They were just movies I loved and watched constantly alongside House of Mouse's more popular counterparts. As the length of this post demonstrates, I really enjoy going back as an adult and looking at the story behind the story. It's really cool to me that the movies I loved to watch between birth and age 12 or so had so much to do with spurring each other along. My memory contains a whole fun repertoire of songs, lines and stories, all because one animator became unhappy with his job.
After long and careful thought (almost 15 whole minutes' worth), I have decided that it's time to share my essential soundtrack as it relates to movie musicals. As you'll see, I'm pretty partial to animation, especially from That Mouse Company Whose Name I Daren't Speak and Don Bluth, and also to full-fledged film musicals, rather than film adaptations of stage musicals. Here are the tracks that I love, including YouTube links that will probably be inactive in a week (one movie studio in particular is pretty vigilant about its copyrights) and a brief explanation of why these are the finest songs-from-movies ever. At least as far as I am concerned.
1. "Somewhere Out There" from An American Tale
Besides just being a sweet song in general, the young actors' performance is so completely innocent and pure, botched notes and all. Much more genuine than the Auto-Tuned performances you tend to hear today.
2. "I'll Make A Man Out of You" from Mulan.
Energizing, fun, and dangit Donny Osmond can sing!
3. "Hellfire" from The Hunchback of Notre Dame
On the soundtrack, this appears as the second half of "Heaven's Light/Hellfire." This piece has all the trappings of top-notch film music: thick and brooding orchestral accompaniment, notes of judgment and condemnation with the choir's Latin lyrics (most especially the repetition of "mea culpa" in the middle), and restatements of the film's central motive in the middle and at the end. Do-mi-re, ti-re-do, do-mi-re-sol-mi-laaaaaaaa!
4. "Don't Make Me Laugh" from The Pebble and the Penguin
This poor little movie. It had great ideas, great music, great cast (the voice you're hearing here is Tim Curry!) but no money. And you can tell in the animation - they had to borrow from themselves, so that you see the same piece of animation happen in more than one place. Maybe the spent the entire budget on Manilow!
5. "Stand Out" from A Goofy Movie
Don't know about you, but I SO wanted to try this stunt as a kid!
6. "Be Our Guest" from Beauty and the Beast
I maintain that this is the best movie this company ever made. They had hit the perfect intersection of traditional and computer-generated animation, so that it looks beautiful without looking too digital. And you can't lose with Alan Menken and Howard Ashman. (Menken was also the composer for Hunchback and several other movies in House of Mouse's catalogue)
7. "The World's Greatest Criminal Mind" from The Great Mouse Detective
This one comes to you from Henry Mancini, composer of a certain little ditty called "The Pink Panther." No big deal. And Vincent Price as your villain! He could sing about dirty socks and I would be scared.
8. "It's Like a B Movie" from The Brave Little Toaster
This, aside from being a pretty fun song in its own right, is a great study in the convergence of pop and film music. I don't typically like for pieces to switch media, but this is one exception; I would LOVE to stage this song live for a Halloween show or something!
9. "Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Cat" from The Aristocats
Another example of the folding of vernacular styles into film. (Musician friends - it is REALLY bugging me that most of these songs have had their keys manipulated for posting on YouTube. I realize it's probably a way to evade detection from Teh Copyrightz Poleez, but still. Annoying!)
10. "Chim Chim Che-ree" from Mary Poppins
Dick van Dyke - insuring that generations of American children will never have a proper model for a Cockney accent!
11. "Baby Mine" from Dumbo
Full Disclosure: my mom used to sing this to me when I was an infant. It was my lullaby. For kicks, whenever she had some friends around, she'd say "Y'all watch this!" and start singing it to me. Thinking it was bedtime, I'd start to cry. 25 years later, still has that effect on me, although for much different reasons.
12. "Love" from Robin Hood That bassist is awfully busy for a ballad. I think one of the reasons I like this song so much is because it's one of the few I can actually sing in its original key. No one loves altos!
13. "Once Upon a December" from Anastasia
The piece that launched a thousand chorus concerts. The score to this film was written to mimic the great Russian composers and you can hear the homage in the lilt and longing of this particular song. It's almost sad that the source mythology for this film no longer applies.
14. "Mother Nature's Song" from Happily Ever After
Three words: Phyllis. Diller. Singing.
15. "Streets of Gold" from Oliver and Company
When I was a kid, this song was one of my favorite parts of the movie and I wanted so badly to find it on tape or CD, but by the time I had been exposed to this movie, the soundtrack had long been out of print. Thankfully, the internets came to the rescue and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that this song was longer than the one-verse-one-chorus version that appears in the film.
16. "Snowmiser/Heatmiser" from The Year Without A Santa Claus
God bless Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass for their excellent Christmas movies!
17. ...wait for it...
wait for it...
wait for it...
keep waiting for it...
ok here it comes...
"When You Wish Upon A Star" from Pinocchio
The House of Mouse made this their theme song for several reasons. Pinocchio is the second-oldest film in their feature-length animation canon (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was first) and is recognized by audiences and insiders alike as one of the most significant films of all time. It won Oscars and it has charted on more than one of the American Film Institute's best-of lists. It was released in 1940 - I imagine that this song felt particularly meaningful to an America that had just seen one nasty war go down and was getting pretty distressed at the realization that a second was getting under way overseas. This song captivated a collective psyche that wanted hope and has resonated down through the decades, echoing in the heart whenever you look at a clear night sky...
Like a bolt out of the blue, Fate steps in and sees you through. When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true.
