620: Futility Bee
You know, Charlie Brown exaggerates the pain of being an underdog more than I'd initially recognized. Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown was one of the most emotional movies for me growing up, and reflecting upon it from an adult perspective emphasizes that more than ever. Second-graders being pushed into a days- or even weeks-long river race, totally unsupervised? I'd imagine what he and the gang goes through to be a tough challenge even for teenagers to handle :/ Furthermore, almost every Peanuts show has some advance level of difficulty--making Charlie Brown write a book report for War and Peace?
Seems like an unfairly high bar, from that perspective. No wonder he kept failing at everything =p I don't imagine I would have done much better in his place. Granted, he's a bit lacking in good ol' common sense as well--in A Boy Named Charlie Brown, not only does his best friend Linus give Charlie his most prized possession as a good luck charm, which he knows Linus can't do without, but he doesn't even think of the blanket and proclaims to have lost it when Linus comes to reclaim it... then goes and shines his shoes with it.
Way to treat your best friend, eh?
I haven't captured any of the Peanuts movies I have on tape, particularly when most of them have or are making their way to DVD [though more slowly than I'd like]. Similarly, I finally thought to look for ones like Matt the Gooseboy [Russian cartoon dubbed into English] and realized that not only could I get a copy for $4 including shipping, it would be a complete copy, instead of the missing intro, tape-went-bad one I have. Granted, it's still VHS, but it's one that doesn't totally turn to snow in the middle and has the entire thing instead of being cut off at the beginning and end.
The Kissyfur tape [starts with an episode of Kissyfur but goes off to other things... I still distinguish them by their initial shows] is pissing me off, though, because the tape is so corroded that it jumps every few seconds. I have to take the uncompressed frames into After Effects and tweak each frame by hand to smooth out the feed, with the result that there are black bars flickering at the top but at least it's not seizurific.
--which reminds me that A Boy Named Charlie Brown has the most bizarre "song" I know in a cartoon, the long spelling rule song. Furthermore, I'm confused at some of their spellings, like leizure instead of leisure [was that a mistake?], and one I can't remember offhand but sounded like it was spelled right but the kid got eliminated for it.
...not that I think spelling bees are fair in the first place. How often do people have to spell correctly the first time, and verbally? I mean, even I end up having to write out any word that gives me trouble. [Marilyn proposed that a more fair spelling bee would have each contestant given a chalkboard/whiteboard and be allowed to write out the word, erasing and starting over if they have to, before holding up their boards in unison and then being eliminated as necessary.]
Seems like an unfairly high bar, from that perspective. No wonder he kept failing at everything =p I don't imagine I would have done much better in his place. Granted, he's a bit lacking in good ol' common sense as well--in A Boy Named Charlie Brown, not only does his best friend Linus give Charlie his most prized possession as a good luck charm, which he knows Linus can't do without, but he doesn't even think of the blanket and proclaims to have lost it when Linus comes to reclaim it... then goes and shines his shoes with it.
Way to treat your best friend, eh?
I haven't captured any of the Peanuts movies I have on tape, particularly when most of them have or are making their way to DVD [though more slowly than I'd like]. Similarly, I finally thought to look for ones like Matt the Gooseboy [Russian cartoon dubbed into English] and realized that not only could I get a copy for $4 including shipping, it would be a complete copy, instead of the missing intro, tape-went-bad one I have. Granted, it's still VHS, but it's one that doesn't totally turn to snow in the middle and has the entire thing instead of being cut off at the beginning and end.
The Kissyfur tape [starts with an episode of Kissyfur but goes off to other things... I still distinguish them by their initial shows] is pissing me off, though, because the tape is so corroded that it jumps every few seconds. I have to take the uncompressed frames into After Effects and tweak each frame by hand to smooth out the feed, with the result that there are black bars flickering at the top but at least it's not seizurific.
--which reminds me that A Boy Named Charlie Brown has the most bizarre "song" I know in a cartoon, the long spelling rule song. Furthermore, I'm confused at some of their spellings, like leizure instead of leisure [was that a mistake?], and one I can't remember offhand but sounded like it was spelled right but the kid got eliminated for it.
...not that I think spelling bees are fair in the first place. How often do people have to spell correctly the first time, and verbally? I mean, even I end up having to write out any word that gives me trouble. [Marilyn proposed that a more fair spelling bee would have each contestant given a chalkboard/whiteboard and be allowed to write out the word, erasing and starting over if they have to, before holding up their boards in unison and then being eliminated as necessary.]