Lock it up Mharti - Toxic Gatorade

Ok, so I heard today that Gatorade was finally persuaded yesterday, by a petition on the infamous change.org, not to use brominated vegetable oil (BVO) in their drinks anymore.

Brominated as in Bromine - You know, the halogen flame retardant chemical right under chlorine on the periodic table. Surprise! It's bad for you. Also vegetable oil as in vegetable oil- ew it's a drink.

Anyway, in large quantities, this magical flame retardant substance tat is used to preserve the fruity flavors in our electrolytes, is linked to impaired neurological development, thyroid hormone issues and fertility problems.

Here's a full article if you feel like reading it from someone authorized to convey news:

Gatorade Story

And after that grossness, the first thing I thought of was this cartoon:
Justin Roiland's Channel 101 : The New Adventures of Doc and Mharti Gatorade Commercial

This is the grossest, most outlandish anything you will ever see, but if you have ever been forced to sit through all three Back to the Future's in a row, you will explode with laughter.

And now the part where Mharti says something to the tune of "Oh wow Doc, that almost makes up for all the awful chemicals they put in the drinks, it's really bad for you." can be immortalized forever in historical relevance.

Here's the video:
Also don't watch this  if there are things in the world that offend you.
Especially swears - this video is swear-city

Hard Candy Christmas - Henchmen 21 and 24

Christmas is drawing nigh and therefore time for me to unleash some holiday themed wisdom upon those who stumble into my blog.

One of my favourite things about animation is when the writers leave little breadcrumbs of their personality in the script. Are they reaching out to their audience looking for likeminded souls? Or exhaustedly regurgitating every last fleck of their imagination onto the page. Either way, it makes lonely losers like me believe that on some level, I connect with these artists.

A classic example is musical preference- almost all voice actors love the sound of their own voice- therefore love singing- and therefore love music. Why else would they choose a career where they can  put headphones on and slip into a voice tracked-coma-reel of madness inside their own heads?

We all remember this exhaustingly long musical number (P.S- I still loved it)

Venture Bros is one of those awesome shows with an open appreciation for music. One example is how David Bowie, voiced by James Urbaniak, is a reoccurring as the sovereign of the Guild of Calamitous Intent. (Iggy Pop is also a member of the guild, albeit slightly less awesome). (Also there was one episode themed around Space Oddity)

Another example is this!

BAM

Possibly the single greatest cartoon musical holiday moment of all time. (I'm talking to you Schroeder, you stripe-shirted hack). (But seriously, no hard feelings.)

I thought I had seen every known episode of Venture Bros. (Save the finale of the last season).

That includes the Christmas special as well as the pilot. But for some reason, I don't remember watching this at all, and stumbled into this recording on the internet. And it's way too awesome to be fake.

Apparently at some vanished point on the timeline, Henchmen 21 and 24 went to visit The Monarch in jail. It was Christmas, there was a guitar on hand, and they all sang Dolly Parton's Hard Candy Christmas.

Nothing can explain why Dolly Parton's Hard Candy Christmas has always been one of my favourite carols, despite its lack of festiveness, its country flair and its lack of popularity in the general Christmas cannon. But every year early December, I sure as hell lock myself in my car for three or four loops of this sucker.

So let's take some time this holiday season, to remember that this happened.

Oh yeah, I guess you can enjoy the actual recording too.

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas does a rendition too 

Communication in Animation

For everyone who doesn't know, my education is in Rhetoric and Communications. I'm a Creative Communications grad, with a major in Media Production, and my diploma is joined with a four year Communications degree from the University of Winnipeg.

Since my University courses foolishly pertain nothing to animation, I have to find sneaky ways to inject animation into the way I procure my degree.

For two of my final courses, I had such "opportunities" to cram a square animation peg into a very round rhetorical hole- or a sphere if you will (rhetoricians like spheres)- so if we put them both of the same plane of dimension, one could say that I crammed a cube, or perhaps a rectangular prism, into a sphere of equal volume...

This series of spacial mathematical fails is why I studied Rhetoric and not Geometry.

Anyway, the sneakiness breaks down as follows:

Rhetoric in the Public Sphere Class

Assignment: Write a 10 page essay of sorts about something in the public sphere.

Conflict in Communication Class

Assignment: Do a creative project/presentation about how communication occurs in basically anything.

For the former, I wrote a lengthly essay on Disney as Epideictic Performance in the Public sphere- a long winded analysis featuring mostly Hauser (a rhetorical theorist) and Hiroux (a guy who writes numerous books and papers about how Disney is evil.)

Now don't get me wrong- I very much enjoy Disney-, pretty much all of their animations are musicals, voiced by celebrities, and super gorgeous- there's a lot to like. I do however, believe that its massive influence allows it to shape the identities and desires of children,  allows it to build consumerism into the list of ideals they teach to children, and even allows it to sell the concept of childhood innocence as a product in the form of the children reared by other Disney products. (Hopefully this makes more sense in my essay than it does here, or I'm looking at a pretty steep fail)

How much of this was intentional and how much was an accident- we'll never know.

Maybe I'll do another blog post about the topic and include my lengthly and boring essay.

The latter class project however, resulted in a fun little video. I admit it's not my best work, since most of the clips are artifacty rippings from YouTube, boomed over by my too-close-to-the-mic dronings, but  I had very limited time, I still got an A, and it was fun to make. Another awesome thing about the animation, was that after I wrote a ten page Disney-diss, I still wasn't above using Disney's Fantasia, as the backbone for this video project.

So although I'm not putting it in my demo reel, I will leave it here for a little blog exclusive.
By the way- I forgot to mention this to my class, but some parts might be considered graphic.

This video also features a stolen clip from one of my all time favourite animations:
Who I am and What I Want- an awesome film by Chris Shepherd and David Shrigley.
I first encountered it taking Fine Art at the University of Manitoba.

Now keep in mind, this video is actually pretty graphic- for how super minimalist the style is, and it gets quite a bit of negative feedback from people that don't understand it. But damn is it awesome.

Passable Cartoons on Family Channel Again? Gravity Falls is Surprisingly Awesome

Wow. Is Family Channel starting to air relatively acceptable programming again?  I thought quirky kid shows like The Weekenders were gone for good in favour of the self-perpetuating-sanitized-child-celebrity-machine telling us that tank top over long sleeved shirt wearing Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato were "so right now" before we even knew who they were.

(Not that I wouldn't have loved the opportunity to don a conspicuously conservative spaghetti strap dress over long sleeved shirt and tights in the name of childhood fame.)

Anyway, it seems like now that Disney has their XD channel to dump their lame boy-themed programs like Wingin' It, a carbon copy of the world's awesomest Family Channel Sitcom Teen Angel except not remotely funny, they now have room for fun cartoons like Gravity Falls!

Ever-loveable Teen Angel features Marty (right) a deceased teen who died from eating a year-old burger under a bed, trying to help his socially awkward friend Steve (left). 

This is Wingin' It. I'm assuming they're going to photoshop the lockers in later .

Anyway back to Gravity Falls. This surprisingly great, very cleanly animated sitcom follows a pair of 12 year old twins Dipper and Mabel, accompanied by their fez-wearing Grunkle (Great Uncle) Stan as they encounter the paranormal. It watches like a PG South Park in terms of content with a more conventional flow.

Centre is Grunkle Stan in the aforementioned fez.

What's awesome about this show?

1. Paranormal Activity- in the non-mysetrious-sheets-moving way. 

2. Kristen Schaal (Louise from Bob's Burgers) as the voice of Mabel.

A sweater after my own heart- even more so if the circuits are shoddy and give off a lot of heat. ( I get really cold)

Louise from Bob's Burgers- I'm a little more of a sweater girl than a hat girl.

3. This is both a pro and a con: The show at first glance seemed so adorably Canadian without the in-your-face grossness that Yvon of the Yukon, or the desperate Canadian-ness that animated Bob and Doug seemed to have.

Look how painfully Canadian we are eh. -Aw, but still loveable :)

The characters were plaid-clad living in a coniferous forest. It seemed relatively cold- they were often wearing hats and sweaters, and there was even a herd of bison in one of the two episodes I saw.

However, later I discover that the show is only unassumingly Canadian because it's set in Oregon :( 

How the hell is this not Canada?

Now I'm going to pause for a minute to mention how much I hate it when people go far out of their way to try and make something look Canadian. For example, last year I went to see the Nutcracker and it was set on Wellington Crescent. The first five minutes of the ballet was a choreographed street hockey game. BAHH. When I see a Russian ballet, I want it to be Russian. A bit of street hockey isn't going to make this relatable for me. 

Next year this is how Russian I want it to be: Last night at a party, a friend of mine added vodka to pink lemonade and named it Lenin-ade. I want Lenin-ade to be the drink of choice at next year's ballet.

Back to business.

4. The series is by Alex Hirsch, the gravelly voiced maniac responsible for writing and voicing every good animated children's show in the past five years. On his list: The Marvellous Misadventures of Flapjack, a show that is kind of a mashup between Adventure Time, but with the exaggerated animation of Spongebob Squarepants, and Fish Hooks, a mildly funny show about fish that is made leagues funnier by Justin Roiland, Channel 101 superstar, voicing the main character.

Justin Roiland as Oscar. A paranoid fish in love with his best friend.
"Hahaha, yeah! Hahahaha, yeah!"

In conclusion, give it a watch. It's surprisingly adult. (As all good children's shows are).

Here's the theme. Pretty Cute