Creepy Halloween Animation: The Mascot (1933)

Presented today for your edification, Vladislav Starevich's creepy 1933 classic of stop-motion animation, The Mascot.

Back in the 1980s, cable channel USA used to use Friday + Saturday nights to air Night Flight, a catch-as-catch-can show that combined music videos with bizarre animation + even rock'n'roll feature films like Rude Boy, Breaking Glass, Ladies and Gentlemen... The Fabulous Stains, and more... And hidden in the midst of all of this chaos, The Mascot would pop up from time to time; and usually, since there was no listing of what'd show when, I'd tune in after it'd started + watch til it ended. Never did know what it was called or who was responsible... til I got to college + met ol' Zwolf, whose personal hoard/collection of vids was store-sized then (you don't even wanna know about his stash now, cuz it'll just give you spastic jealousy fits...), who heppt me to the details behind this little chunk of video insanity.

Anyway, this is some seriously old cinema, so the pacing is a little slow by modern standards; even with that, though, the short is an amazing example of stop-motion animation that must be seen to be believed. And, if this is your cup'o'tea, I also recommend the short films of Jan Swankmajer.

And here's more Svankmajer...

New Year's Post (...Don't Brag or Boast!)

OK, maybe that WAS originally New YORK Post, but the sentiment remains the same, + I, like Ice Cube, strive to remain down with the PE... and not solely so that ev'ry single bitch'll wanna see me.

And now 2010 has arrived + Arthur C. Clarke has once again let me down from beyond the grave... ahh, delicious disappointment. Hopefully, the Mayans won't let me down in 2012! While I wait for the End of Days, I can check the remaining time available to us with this swell new Venture Brothers Wallclock that my son hookt me up with for Xmess. A damnd snazzy piece of room decor, I must say! Buy your own!

Happy New Year!

pokey: feel the burn #4

Here, pokey gets a bit of sun poisoning, too much light can lead to unclear thinking.

A classic cartoon for you!

Back in the 90's, when I was managing the Penny Lane in Old Town Pasadena, CA, store owner Steve Bicksler - whose love of classic animation made my interest in the genre seem a joke - hepped me to this 1930s classic: Swing Wedding, which includes some overt drug use that I'd never noticed, even though I'd seen it many times as a kid.

A trumpet player smashes his horn, grabs one of the valves - which morphs into a needle, and then spikes right into his arm with it! Wowzers! The whole scene becomes a chaotic, drug-hazed trip before the end of the 'toon... There are caricatures of Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, and many other then-current popular black entertainers, which would be very cool, except that they are depicted in such seemingly-racist style... Consider this an artifact of the long-bygone Golden Age of Animation...

Please enjoy!!