We had a nice little celebration at a park here in the city. He loved running around on the grass, climbing up on the slide and then sliding down. But what he loved most was the swing. When I took him off he immediately wanted to go back on again. He is so very active and playful.
Afterwards, we all had a nice picnic lunch full of sandwiches and various fruits. Rather than one birthday cake, we bought two packages of mini cupcakes instead. But, rather than eat a whole cupcake, my son preferred to pick the sprinkles off and only eat them. In his defence, they were very colourful. I don't blame him.
He got a few presents from his mom, his grandma, and his ate. My present to him was three Tshirts with this printed on it.
I think it would great if he wore this shirt whenever we go to some public place or event. He's not talking yet, so if, God forbid, he ever gets lost it'll be easier for security to help identify him and thus get him found by us quicker.
I think the shirt came out great. Anyway, happy birthday, my son. I can't wait to get you something special next year.
Hey, remember that Angry Man drawing I posted a short while ago? Well, the above video is him all animated. Tell me what you think. Does he at the very least come across as angry?
Well, he enjoys seeing other kids in general. But, what I'm talking about here is based on what happened a few weekends ago. It was a lovely Saturday afternoon and it just so happened that neither I nor my wife worked that day. And of course, our daughter didn't have any school that day either. So, we decided to go "out and about" as a family.
We first went to the Natural History Museum in town. Then after that we strolled through a nearby park. In our wonderings, we found a water park full of kids playing. We were very certain that li'l Avery would easily have fun here. We were correct in our assessment. He love love LOVED all the little sprinklers that shot up water. He could've played with those all day. He also enjoyed all the slides and other fun jungle jims all over that park as well.
But, his favourite attraction at this park a little girl he saw. The girl looked about maybe 3 years old. My son is 1 almost 2. When he saw her he couldn't stop smiling. You can tell when Avery likes something alot by his arms. He gets what I call "hummingbird arms". He flaps them back and forth as hard as he can. When he saw that girl, those arms were flapping like crazy, practically a blur. All he wanted to do was walk over to that girl and give her a hug. The girl was NOT into this though. She kept hiding behind her dad. This is fine. She has every right to refuse a hug she doesn't want. But, I can say with utmost certainty that Avery meant her no harm. And, thankfully, Avery was not disappointed by her reluctance for contact. He was just happy to see her at all.
Anyway, me being an artist dad, I have depicted this moment with a drawing. Here it is:
I gave it a "Pepe Le Pew" twist because that's pretty much what this encounter was like. I'm sure that little girl is doing fine wherever she is.
Here's a drawing I recently did of a very angry man. "Why is he angry?", you ask. Well, he's in my little film that I'm still working on and should hopefully be done in the near future. Having a full time job AND a toddler son to chase around does make the work that much more difficult. But, with perseverance I know I can make it happen.
Election season is upon us once again here in Canada. It was announced just today. Although, the circumstances for this election are a bit different than the ones I posted about in the past because this time around the sitting Prime Minister felt the need to resign.
*Justin Trudeau in the act of resigning*
He clung to power as long he could but, as of last February, could not hold on any longer. So he will NOT be in this leadership race this time around. There are a whole new batch of candidates to choose from, some new and some all too familiar. Here they are:
Mark Carney
Pierre Poilievre
Jagmeet Singh
Yves Francois Blanchet
Elizabeth May
...and bringing up the rear:
Maxime Bernier
The election day happens on April 28. May the lesser evil candidate win.
Just a bit of airplane animation I did for my upcoming video. I still have tons of work to do on it. I can't wait until it's done and I can finally show everybody.
Recently, some lovely person found an old recording of Tex Avery giving an interview about his life and career. Apparently, at Chapman College back in 1974, somebody was doing a retrospective showing of animated films and Tex was an invited guest who spoke at it. That's the year I was born so if I had been there I wouldn't have gotten so much out of that interview. It would've been great if I was there at the age I am now or even 25 years ago. Oh well, the best I can do for myself is embed this interview clip on my own blog for what would've been Tex's 117 birthday had modern science managed to avert death in any way.
What perked my ear the most about Tex's speech is what he thought of "modern" cartoons, those being made at about that time. He's right about how the tight television deadlines as well as the sponsor's imposing opinions put a huge damper on the animation industry as a whole. There was not nearly as much room for creativity as there was for Tex at WB and MGM in the 1930's and 40's. Things weren't 100% perfect of course, but they were marginally better than the Saturday morning era of the 70's and 80's.
Tex did express a small bit of hope that the industry could improve in the future. Whether it has improved at all since 1974 is certainly a matter of opinion. However, I think one thing that Tex might've overlooked in lamenting about the future of animation is the technology. One big reason animation studios couldn't afford full animation at the time was because they were using the same method of animating on paper followed by inking and painting onto cels. The late 80's and all of the 90's had the rise of computers being used which caused animation projects to be completed that much quicker. That's why at Disney they could finish one fully animated every year instead of every 12 years or so. And, of course, we saw the rise of a small fledgling studio called Pixar which would soon be purchased by Disney and become huge.
People at Pixar are just as nostalgic for short cartoons in theatres as Tex was. To that end, whenever they released a feature film in theatres they would make room to attach a short animated film before it. Below, I've embedded one such Pixar short. It won an Oscar as I recall. It's also highly comedic and full of gags that Tex Avery may have enjoyed. Maybe some future Pixar employees were at that Chapman film festival back in 1974 and were inspired by Tex's words when they heard them? Mmmmmmmm.......... could be. At any rate, for your viewing pleasure, here is For the Birds. Maybe Tex is looking down on this and smiling? Here's hoping.
A birthday present I bought for myself last June was the All in the Family box set. It's got all nine glorious and hilarious seasons. At this point I'm just about finished season 7. I'll be moving on to season 8 and 9 very soon.
However, of course, I have much more to do that just watch some old TV show. I have a full time job AND a baby son to look after. He alone requires so much attention. He's got to be fed and entertained on a very regular basis. Anyone who has kids or has raised kids in the past knows all of this and more I'm sure.
Anyway, like I said, I'm often called upon to keep my son Avery entertained whilst mom is busy with work and other things. While entertaining him, he has come to glance at the antics of the Bunker household now and again. He of course understands absolutely nothing of what he sees, but it does turn his head at times. He definitely notices when Archie starts yelling. He certainly can't understand what Archie says when he yells and he most certainly can't understand to context of what Archie is yelling and who he's yelling at. All he sees is a crazed and angry old man.
You'd think that my son would be saddened or even somewhat traumatized by seeing such vitriol being spouted like that. But no, that's not how he reacts at all. He has instead taken one of the small mallets used on his toy xylophone, walk over to the TV and hit Archie right on the head with it. It wasn't a hard hit that could wreck the TV thankfully. It was just a tap big enough to express how he felt about Mr Bunker's bellowing. I have made a quick drawing commemorating that very action:
He's only done that once, but for me it was quite memorable.
Anyway, I do plan to keep working my way through the seasons any time I can. I'll end this post with a song that I've been hearing so many times in the past few months as you can imagine. It's stuck in my head so now I'm getting it stuck in yours. Enjoy!
The animation for my video is coming along nicely, I'd say. Remember the kitten animation from my previous blog post? Well, this is a further cleaned up version of it. What do you think?
I'd also like to point out that having a kid is quite a time consuming thing. When my son was still a tiny baby, he could just in his crib or wherever he was comfortable and either just sleep or play. This gave me some time to dedicate to this video of mine. However, now he can walk around and get into things. So, he needs so much more attention now, especially since my wife's maternity leave has ended. This, as you can imagine, has pretty much reduced the production process to a small trickle. I'm not sure when this will be done, possibly when my son starts kindergarten.
But, at any rate, I look forward to the finished product and the reaction it will get.
Up top is some animation of a kitten I just roughed out. I'll clean it up nice and as polished as the time on my hands can allow me. As you can imagine, having a full time job AND an infant son can eat up sooooo much of that time.
Hey, speaking of my infant son:
sx z
My son was on my lap for a brief time while I was making this blog post. That " sx z " text is the first thing he ever typed. I enlarged it and changed the colour for emphasis like the proud father I am. Could this be the start of him typing many profound and thought-provoking things? Only time will tell.
At any rate, please give enjoy and/or give critiques of the above animation. Thank you.
I managed to get some more commentary onto Anthony's Animation Talk channel. This time it was for a cartoon called Catty Cornered. As I mentioned in the video, this is one of my Top 5 Sylvester & Tweety shorts and if you have ever seen this cartoon in its entirety you could probably see why. My dialogue starts at about the 16:30 mark but I'd still recommend watching the whole video. It's loaded with info and insights that you wouldn't want to miss.
Oh hey, I did another commentary on Anthony's channel more than a year ago but I never got around to posting it here for some bizarre reason. I participated in a massive pastiche of commenters for the cartoon Rabbit Fire. For those who don't know, that's the first of three "duck season / rabbit season" cartoons. There are many guest commentators plus a guest appearance from the original director's daughter. I forget exactly where exactly my bit starts. I guess you'll have to watch the whole thing to find out. Whatever! Enjoy!
As of last Monday, I have reached a milestone I knew I'd reach but never imagined myself reaching. Yep! I turned the big 5 - 0!!! I still don't quite feel "old" yet, but I can easily see I'm part of an older generation. It would be great to be young again, but at the same time I'm glad I was born when I was. Gen X is having a good run I'd say. I certainly do NOT want to sit around grousing about my age and my life lamenting "OMG I'M 50" all over the place. For one, it would be a waste of time and energy. But also for a bigger reason, obsessing over age is exactly what the baby boomers did.
Many of you younger millenials and all of Gen Z have only known boomers as these creaky old curmudgeons. But, those of us in Gen X witnessed the boomers when they started aging and, believe me, it was pathetic. Practically the moment the first boomer turned 30, age is all they would talk about. "Oh my God! I'm 30 now! What am I going to do??", is something we heard from them all of the time. There was even a prime time drama dedicated to placating these people:
That is a real show. It was a drama series with a highly depressive tone that was just 54 minutes of people trying their darndest to cope with the despondency of...................... being more than 30. I'm so proud of my generation for not getting like this. Millenials are in their 30's and 40's and they haven't said much about their aging either. We're watching Gen Z though. They could create shows on Netflix/Hulu?TikTok all about being "triggered over becoming old and cringe". Here's hoping that can be avoided.
OK! That's all about aging I'm going to talk about in this post and anywhere else. I'd like to spend the rest of this time talking about someone who everyone should be talking about more.
A man named Jose Rizal! He is a great man who made the ultimate sacrifice and started his home country of the Philippines on a path to freedom. It all started by him simply writing a book.
It all really started in 1521 when the explorer Ferdinand Magellan landed on the shores on the Philippines and conquered it for Spain. He and his conquistadors immediately and brutally imposed so much of Spanish culture on to the island inhabitants. Heck, the place was named Maharlika when before they showed up. Magellan then renamed it the Philippines after Prince Phillip, One of the biggest aspects of Spanish culture foisted upon the Filipine people was its catholicism, which still very much exists to this day.
This was all very much a way of life for the Philippines when Jose Rizal was born in 1861. He went to school just like every other kid at the time. However, his grades were so exceptionally high that he was granted the opportunity to attend university in Madrid, Spain. Living outside of his island country of origin gave Rizal a much broader perspective. He recollected all of the Catholic missions in the Phillipines run by the Spanish. Upon reflection, he could see just how restrictive and even abusive they were. This inspired him to write a book about his experiences with these missions: Noli Me Tángere (Touch Me Not)
You can pretty much guess how both the Spanish Government and the Vatican felt about Rizal's work. They weren't just mad because of the words he published, they were absolutely seething moreso because his book had sparked a revolt among the Phillipine populous. The United States then intervened on the Philippines' behalf and they were soon liberated from the iron fist rule of Spain.
Sadly, before that liberation could happen, by order of both the Spanish government and the Vatican, Rizal was executed by a firing squad on December 30, 1896. Still to this day in the Philippines, December 30th is a national holiday.
Someone being killed by two authoritarian institutions for the "crime" of expressing oneself is definitely someone who belongs among the pantheon of free speech heroes, much like other people we know:
FREE AT LAST! FREE AT LAST! GOD ALMIGHTY, HE'S FREE AT LAST!
So, in that spirit, attempted drawing a picture of Mr. Rizal.
It's always a daunting task to get baby to calm down and mellow out so that the parents can perform to necessary duties of even just feeding that baby or changing the diaper. It can be a long and arduous battle under less ideal conditions. Thankfully, there is usually some little thing that helps soothe that baby's demeanor to a workable level. Sometimes it's a toy, sometimes a certain blanket, or it could be a certain song or a video.
One of those things that makes our son Avery happy and quiet is the Disney movie Moana. That movie is literally on the TV in our house every morning. One of the first things mom does when it's time to feed Avery is to put on Moana to keep him happy. He's practically mesmerized by the entire movie. But, as you may have guessed, his absolute favourite parts are at the beginning when Moana is still a baby. He relates to that in rather obvious ways.
I think pretty much everybody in our household has the entire movie memorized by now. My wife could recite the grandmother's entire speech almost verbatim while were riding in the truck to keep Avery happy. So, I could say that I'm in a position to gave a rather indepth analysis of Moana the movie, in how in relates to my baby son, myself, and possibly the world in general. I can't speak for my entire family, but my own personal assessment is........................... it's a good one. I like it.
The very basic elements that make an animated movie good are in place for sure. It's got a rather airtight story about "restoring the heart of their island" in order to make things great again and give us that happy ending. Visually it pleases the eye, both its CGI rendering and its movement. I'm not dazzled but I don't cringe either, so I'm good with that. The voice acting also works. Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson aptly portrays the character of Maui and Chloe Auliʻi Cravalhodoes a very impressive job of voicing Moana herself. Nobody else could have done this better than her. This brings me to what I want to talk about most pertaining to this movie.
There's been so much talk of having a "strong female lead" in movies over the past few years (decades really). So many productions in Hollywood have been pushing for the creation of that "perfect girl boss" with.................. some doing better than others.
This.............. didn't happen.
However, one of the biggest complaints about so many of these attempts is the "Mary Sue" aspect, in that the female lead is propped up as a perfect being that can do no wrong. They attempt to make her "badass" but she just comes across as boring. 95% of the time it's not the actress' fault. The fault lies with, as usual, unartistic producers trying to push something that shouldn't be pushed thus compromising the artists and the entire project.
Moana thankfully does NOT succumb to this trap. She's not a Mary Sue and not at all perfect. She's a hot-headed teenager who is in over her head. The ocean "chose" her to complete the endeavor of saving their universe by returning the heart stone to where it belongs (as reiterated by her quirky but wise grandmother). However, she is not entirely up to the task. As she tells the demi-god Maui, she's a "self taught" sailor and she has only a fair-to-middling idea how to navigate through the ocean by looking at the stars. She's practically an "anti-hero".
"Sailing is not so hard. I just unfurl the sail like this and... WHOA! GLAVIN!! HELLO, DEAN!!"
But, she does possess qualities that do help her succeed in the end. She is both fiercely determined and immensely resourceful. No setback can discourage her and she's able to use whatever is around her to do what she needs to do, most often to get herself out of the
trouble she got herself into. You can absolutely see that in her dealings with Maui even at his most obnoxious and arrogant. Just watch how Moana deals with the situation of Maui locking her in a cave. Most everyone else would just be doomed to a slow emaciating death. But, Moana quickly finds a way out and is back to her mission in no time.
I don't know about you, but that looks pretty badass in my book. Moana is consistently like this throughout the entire movie, even at the beginning when she's still a toddler. She keeps a baby turtle from getting eaten by covering him with a wide palm leaf. THIS is the reason the ocean chooses her soon afterwards. The ocean can see her potential at being the island's saviour despite her flaws.
I'm glad my son enjoys this movie. In my opinion, Moana is a good fine role model for girls and boys of all ages. Being fiercely determined against all obstacles is something everyone should aspire to. With that in mind, here is a drawing I did of my son Avery standing with baby Moana while enjoying the antics of the chicken Hei Hei.
I'm sure this scenario happens inside Avery's brain all of the time.
Yes, I am aware that there is a Moana 2 in the works. Yes, I'm also aware that it will be coming out in late November of this year. Will I take my son to the theatre to see it? Hmmmmmm, he might be too young for the theatre experience both now and at that time. But, he'll for sure be watching it when it's eventually put up on Disney+. That's a guarantee. For now, let's all watch the trailer together. Enjoy!
I'm slowly but surely making progress with this video I'm working on. As you can see by the clip's title, this is Scene 16. In this video there will be 52 scenes in total stitched together to make one full video. I can't wait to unleash it onto the world.
Yes, progress has slowed to a crawl because I have a full time job AND my baby son was born. Both of those take the utmost priority. Oh well, maybe when this video is done I can make animated videos my new big priority. It all depends on how this one is received. But until then..................
The guy in the photo above is Canadian parliamentarian Arif Virani. Not many people know who he is here in Canada and even less people in the rest of the world have even a wisp of an idea of who he is. Well, I think it would be a very good idea for more people to know that this man exists and for a rather relevant reason. He's the carbon(?) based lifeform that is responsible for presenting the following bill into parliament:
Yep, that one. If that becomes law, people all over Canada could face LIFE in prison for..................... posting "nasty" things on the internet.
WOOO-OO-OOO-OOO-OO! Isn't that scary, kids? Wow! Did you see that post on Facebook? Or that one on X? All those...... nasty dirty words! WOO-OOO-OOO! Maybe somebody might read those words........ and.... and.... feel sad about them maybe. And then....... LOOK OUT! Because......... WOOO-OO-OOO-OOO-OOO! So so scary and....... um........
Oh alright! It's not scary. Only a meglomaniacal idiot would put anyone in jail for that.
One of the worst parts is that the dude's proud of this bill. He's pinned a video of himself singing the bill's praises to the top of his Twitter/X profile and expects it pass into law with impunity.
Mr Arif claims its primary purpose is for "protecting children, especially from seeing porn or being used for porn". Hey, that's all well and good. However, Canada already has a law in the books to perform that function:
That one. Bill 291 is already used to keep kids safe from sexual predators. C-63 is simply piggybacking on this already established bill as a means to target speech Arif doesn't like, such as.......
Yeah, that old chestnut. He's making a law against something that doesn't actually exist in the first place. "Hate Speech" is a bullshit concept created by bullshit people used to stifle speech and spread bullshit. The only words that could apply here are credible calls for violence. The rest is just spiced up Rabelaisian content that only the flakiest of flakes can't handle. This law is nothing but enforcement of mandatory pearl-clutching.
But wait, there's more.....
Um.... yeah. I've heard of "wrong-think", but this is "wrong-emote". So, having state-disapproved emotions will be punishable under this law. How does that work?
Ah ha! But, here's the absolute worst part of the entire law. This is the part that makes one question if Arif Virani is actually a demon from Hell, an acid-dripping warlord from outer space, or an evil robot built by Gargamel sent to destroy us all.
Wow! Arif wants to arrest people who haven't even committed an offence but IS FEARED that this person(s) will commit an offence at some point in the future. That's something right out of pretty much every dystopian scifi end of civilization novel you can name. Even screw-loose senator Joe McCarthy is looking down from his assessment room in purgatory and saying "WTF?".
Those are some of the "big highlights" of this ridiculous law. I could copy & paste the entire bill from the government's website and post it here, but that would be a long and dry read. Instead, I'll be a good Gen-Xer and sum it all up with a Simpsons reference. Such as this thusly:
"...There's alot of shitposters that have got too much freedom. I want to make it legal for policemen to beat 'em..."
And there you have it. A Mad Max style dystopian nation created at the mere stroke of a pen if this law is passed. Arif is, of course, under some delusion that this law will only shield "vulnerable" people from harshness. But, my prediction for this law is it will play out like Bill c118. For those who don't know, c118 is a law drawn up that was supposed to force social media companies to pay news organizations in Canada for uploading their content. You and I have to PAY the social media companies to advertise and promote our stuff, but Canada's news orgs would GET paid for uploading. However, what happened was social media companies instead just stopped hosting Canadian news altogether. It only makes business sense on the websites' part. They would save money by NOT hosting news content that the country's government is forcing them to pay for. I'm thinking that's all that would happen under c63. Social media companies, or perhaps even Google as a whole, will simply pull all of their business out of Canada. It would certainly be easier than combing through every post from the past 20 years looking for "questionable" content AND then tracking every individual down for an arrest. THEN watch the support of the Arif and his party, the Liberals, plummet to even further depths than anyone could imagine.
Hey, come to think of it, Arif is not the only perpetrator of trying to pass illiberal censorship and other dystopian nonsense into law. There's been a bunch over the past few years. There was C-11, a bill that gave the government control over the content in Canada's film industry. Trudeau also rammed through another stifling law with bill C-36.
And, of course, there's still a whole controversy over the Trudeau government's handling of the Emergencies Act against the truckers' big protest back in 2022. But, of course, I shouldn't leave out any of the equally dystopian things that former PM Stephen Harper did during his time. He tried to pass C-11 back when it was called C-10. He also tried to implement a hotline where people could report on any suspicious things Muslims might be doing. Why have politicians been so brazen to try and enact dubious laws that blatantly violate Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms? Is there a way to put a stop to it? I think I might have a solution. Here's a bill I'd love to introduce to parliament some day:
BILL C-8675309: the "READ THE CHARTER, DAMNIT" Act
1) any and all laws introduced to parliament must adhere to the provisions stated in Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Failure to do so would result in any of the following punishments:
a) immediate loss of political position and title
b) an automatic prison sentence of up to 35 years
c) 2000 hours of community service in the worst part of that MP's constituency
d) I get to spank that former MP's bare butt with an object of my choice every time I feel like it, and I will always feel like it
There we go. With that bill becoming law, we should never have to deal with any tyrannical politicians ever again.
There's a lot of vitriolic things I could say about this man that I haven't said already. I draw his with a "classic" Hitler moustache of course. I could put a Chairman Mao bald spot and mole on his face or a full Castro beard. A Darth Vader mask? Naw, that's been done to death. Depict him as the Eye of Sauron from Lord of the Rings? No, J.R.R. Tolkien's ghost might sue. Well, hey, my first thought when I saw this guy for the first time was "his nose looks like a penis". So, here's my depiction of him:
Arif the Dick-Nosed Censor Monkey
Uh oh! Would this drawing get me in trouble with the c63 law??? Well, if it does, my response is from a classic Was Not Was song. Enjoy, and see you on the other side.
