Wabewalker

Tweets copied by twittinesis.com

Magic Journeys was a 3D film that opened at WDW and Disneyland (both at the their respective, then brand new Magic Eye theaters) in 1982 and 1984, respectively. They both closed down in 1986 to be replaced by Captain EO, and while the Disneyland version vanished without a trace, the WDW version got a new home at the Fantasyland Theater, where it played until 1993.

The film itself is supposed to be a "childs-eye-view" of a particularly fun day that can be described as "things turn into other shit" and "hey whoa this 3D thing is all in your face". The plot is basically nonexistant and it is more of an experiment in how to get that whole 3D thing working than anything coherent. Here, have a description from wikipedia:

"Magic Journeys looked at the world through the eyes of a child. The film started with children running through a meadow and looking at clouds. Someone blew on a dandelion and the seeds then flew away, turning into stars and then turned into the sun. Next the kids were seen flying a kite at the beach. The kite then turned into a bird, a fish, a school of fish, a flock of birds, bird wings, a Pegasus, a horse and then finally into a merry-go-round. While the children rode the carousel, they began reaching for a brass ring spinning next to the carousel; it became a moon, a bat, a witch, a mask and finally into the Sphinx."

Yeah. Exactly. The film was tied loosely with Figment, the dragon, but only in assorted signage and the similar theme of the power of a child's imagination (something that Disneyland took to the extreme when creating Fantasmic, which I still adore after all these years).

The real interesting thing about the film, however, is the music. It features a song in the preshow called "Making Miracles," which seems to have disappeared forever, and the appropriately titled "Magic Journeys". Both are written by the Sherman Brothers, who are a staple to Disney music (especially Disney Park music). They did "Miracles Through Molecules" (Adventures thru inner space), "Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" (Carousel of Progress), and "Small World" (...Small World), "Tiki Tiki Tiki Room" (The Enchanted Tiki Room) and a ton more for Disney's films. Walt was just enamored with them and they did everything from Mary Poppins to The Jungle Book.

Magic Journeys surprises me, however, by having lyrics that sound nothing at ALL like their previous work.

( Lyrics, more history, and rare mp3 downloads under the cut )

http://twolumps.net/d/20090715.html

Two Lumps comic for Wednesday, July 15, 2009

just putting this here as a reminder to myself

how am I supposed to remember when you put it on the bottom of the box?!?

Tweets copied by twittinesis.com

cover illustration by Stephen Shirak from ESP: Stories of Strange Happenings by Rita Golden Gelman, Scholastic Book Services, 1981.

I was really, really happy to have found this; I'm almost certain I read it as a kid—and if not, I know for a fact that I did read several books just like it: mass-market, kid-level examinations of the paranormal—and it scared the shit out of me. It got to a point where just seeing the letters "ESP" together would send a chill down my spine.

For example, check out the weird spacing between the letters of "ESP" in the header as compared to the body text. It's irregular and irregular things, to my young mind, were creepy to say the least:



I was a very credulous kid. To be fair, though, the concept of "reading critically" was years away—I had the naive notion that if something was published in a book, it was because at least one and sometimes more than one person who was very smart and very careful had made sure to include nothing but facts—and these books tended to be less skeptical than straight-faced:



Still, I can't put my finger quite on why the concept of ESP scared me as much as it did. I think perhaps the involuntary and unpredictable nature of it? Now, of course, I'm utterly fascinated with it—as well as with the cultural ephemera that surrounds it.

Tweets copied by twittinesis.com

Bamboo Village, a review by 8th Grader Joseph Lyall interpreted visually

http://twolumps.net/d/20090713.html

Two Lumps comic for Monday, July 13, 2009

I got very, very sick, and so the doctors transferred my consciousness into a robot body for "safe keeping" while my physical body underwent grueling and highly experimental surgeries. The transfer was a complete success, and I was told that I could go about my regular business while my physical body was unavailable (which could have been for weeks or even months).

Then I got kidnapped by Batman.

He took me to the Batcave and told me that he didn't have confidence in the technology with which my consciousness was transferred. He told me not to think about my parents, since he suspected that accessing memories with my electronic brain could cause them to become fragmented and damaged to the point that they would not able to be transferred back into "the real [me]".

"Or anything else you want to keep," he added.

Of course, telling someone not to think about something is as good as forcing them to think about it, so Batman had a plan. He decided to force me to stay awake in front of Local Television—you know the sort of station I mean, the one that's not an actual network affiliate, the one whose programming is entirely syndicated reruns or sub-CW original content, etc etc—which would be just stupid and dulling enough to keep my conscious mind in a perpetual state of active inactivity. So to speak.

The only thing I remember from watching Local Television was a commercial inviting me to enter a contest, the grand prize of which was an all-expenses paid trip to Wasilla, AK, and a VIP tour of the "Brainhammer Pussy Juice" malt liquor distillery.

Tweets copied by twittinesis.com

Tweets copied by twittinesis.com

I was originally gonna write this, but then I got caught up talkin' 'bout Earl, and I didn't wanna take nothin' away from him, so I just made it a big Earl post. And, seriously, Seattle folks, you should go. I don't think there's a cover. But maybe there is, I don't know.

AND BUT SO ANYWAY yes! Grandma found some new and exciting way to hurt herself, so my parents took her to the doctor this morning, but it turns out that it's one of those that looks way worse than it is, so the doctor just said that it'll go away on its own, so hooray! He said she probably tore a tendon in her arm -- she's got a blood pocket in her arm -- but it's going down, and so it looks like it'll just re-absorb and whatnot. And that suchlike is easy to do at her age, so, yeah. It appears nothing really bad, and grandma doesn't even remember how she did it, and it doesn't sound like it was really hurting too awfully much anyway? So, yeah.

---

While they were gone, I watched stuff on the Netflix Box. I like the Netflix box. Mostly going through Bullshit season 4, which it turns out I DID already see most of -- I thought Season 3 was the last one I really watched, but I was WRONG. But there are some episodes I don't remember at all except in retrospect ("Death Penalty" is one -- as I was watching it, it didn't ring any bells, but looking back, I kinda DO remember some of the stuff from it...), and others were pretty much "Oh yeah I totally saw this one", like "Cryptozoology" and "Prostitution". "Ground Zero" is next, which is one I know I watched, but I might see it again, I don't know. The others are:
Pet Love - Don't think I watched but maybe?
Reparations - I don't think I saw this one either?
Manners - I'm pretty sure I did see this one.
Numbers - Don't think so?
Abstinence - Pretty sure no?

And, I'm almost certain I did not watch ANY of Season 5 and up, so hooray!

I also enjoy watching these hour long Logo TV documentaries -- I put a bunch on the Netflix Box, and mom goes "Why did you put on all this gay shit?!" which was kinda funny. I just find culture, and in particular, sub-cultures, interesting. This one, "Gay Siblings", though was just OK. Mainly because, of the three stories (one of a Ultra Religious Mom with 5 kids, alla whom are gay; one of gay twins who are trying to figure out why their non-twin brother killed himself in Spain in 1991; one of a lesbian producer/songwriter who was adopted and found out her biological brother was also gay), only the Spain Suicide was WICKED interesting -- like, enough to spend the full 48 minutes on. The 5-gay-family was kinda interesting, and it was nice that the mother was beginning to come around that maybe it wasn't something she did, but whatever; still gets a little frustrating hearing folks be all "YOU DONE CHOSE TO SIN!!". The one about the producer/songwriter and her brother doing a duet was wicked lame, though -- mostly because the song they were working on was ass-awful, and most of it was ABOUT them working on said ass-awful song, and how the brother was kind of a flake and wasn't singing it correctly, and the sister being all "YOU AREN'T SINGING THIS CORRECTLY!" and etc. I came real close to fast-forwarding their bits. And I was sad, because there was a really interesting lead on the Suicide story that was never followed up on -- and I don't know if that's because of time, or because the twins themselves didn't follow up on it? But either way, you'd think that the directors of the show would have either made time or been all "No, you should follow up on this lead because it's wicked interesting."

Other ones were pretty good. I think my favorite so far was the one about Trans/Genderqueer folks coming out and one FTM going through top surgery/T/etc. -- even though his girlfriend was kind of annoying (she identified as a lesbian "who has no use for men" and was seemingly superficially supportive but spent a lot of time freaking out w/r/t it. Seems to me if you fall in love with someone, you fall in love with THEM and not the body so much, but that's just me, I guess. And, seriously "no use for men"? Way to write off half the population. It's dumb when macho-retard types do that with women, and it's dumb when you do it, too. I'm not sayin' you gotta go out with men, a'cause that's just crazy talk -- but she was all talkin' about how if men just disappeared she'd be just fine with that and etc. etc. etc. and... yeah. Not a good way to win points with me -- seems like just another strain of the "Men leave the toilet seat up and flip through the channels/Women want to talk about their FEEEEELIIIINGS and ask if this dress makes them look fat but don't want to hear the TRUTH man no matter how many times they ask" bullshit that keeps shitty hack comedians in business).

Um, that was a tangent.

Anyway -- you should check those Logo docs out on Netflix; they're all (most?) available for streaming/netflixboxing, so, yeah. "Out At The Job" was pretty good too. I still have "Beautiful Daughters" to watch, which I THINK is about Drag Queens (rather than Trans folks; like gay men who dress up for shows and such, not who live as women, I mean), but maybe it IS about Trans people, I don't know[1]. Either way, it'll hopefully be interesting! And if not, it's not even an hour long, so whatever.


[1] I am hoping that isn't offensive; if it is it's accidental. Being a boring-ass straight dude, I don't quite know all the ins-and-outs (SEE WHAT I DID THERE HUR HUR) of terminology and whatnot. DON' HIT ME

---

One thing I've been thinkin' about for Kittysneezes (other than if I do get the LLC to namin' the LLC "Kittysneezes Amalgamated MediaWerks, LLC" or maybe if I can figure out something ELSE to jam in there because I like long, ridiculous, vaguely germanic and old-school industrial sounding names) is to take up the mantle that WebSnark kinda vacated, of doin' lots of stuff about webcomics and treatin' them as a serious thing. The thing is, though, I -- as in me -- don't wanna do it. I want someone ELSE to do it for KS. So, if anyone's been wanting to do that, and for some reason isn't satisfied with just doin' it on their LJ, TOTALLY hit me up.

(Perhaps after a while, you can go AWOL for quite some time and then talk about nothin' but City of Heroes, too. Hey -- dude DID get a wife out of it, so maybe you can too!)

Likewise, if you gots stuff that's rejected everywhere else, you can post it at KS! I'm like how McSweeney's started that way. Only I don't got friends like DFW who're all wicked crazy famous and whatnot.

But seriously -- I DO like how there've been more writing peoples at Kittysneezes of late. That is awesome -- I really, really like having different voices/POVs there. And the idea of people writing things that are good that I don't necessarily agree with. Like, um, I actually LIKE Lady Gaga. But I also like that article. So THERE!

ALSO ALSO ALSO: I'm cool with anonymous posts, too -- and I figured out how to properly do them! Lee/boringpostcards let me know that it turns out in the RSS feeds for KS, it'll post the email address of the poster -- which kinda ends up shootin' the Anonymity thing in the foot, but I was able to fix this -- hopefully before too many people saw -- by changing the author completely to ANGRY JOE!!! (which gives him a use after all, after deciding his posts didn't really fit the KS aesthetic), and then changing (as was before) the author alias thingy to "Anonymous". So, yeah. If'n you think you're even POTENTIALLY interested in doing Anonymous posts like that one, just let me know, and I'll give you the ANGRY JOE!!! login/password. Or post it as yourself, and before I approve it, I'll change it to ANGRY JOE!!!/Anonymous and we'll all be OK and no one will know it was YOU who shanked that hobo. Hooray!

---

I gots a pile more comics to review, too. Luckily I have enough OTHER stuff in the can that it won't just be Kittysneezes As Out-Of-Date-Comics-Review-Site. Hooray! Quick spoilers: Flight 2, Be A Nose, After The Snooter are good.

---

Dad got a two-tiered Keyboard Stand yesterday at Guitar Center! He can now be in a New Wave band. Or, at least, once he gets another one or two and 4-6 more keyboards to go with it. (Though he does have the two electric organs as well... or, I guess I do. But they're in his studio, because I just got an apartment.)

---

I should check on my laundry. Then micturate. Maybe not in that order, but definitely not in the same room.