August 27th
Today is my last Kablam day and it's a big one, The Girl with Her Head Coming Off. This cartoon features a girl dealing with everyday issues like having a crush and having an annoying younger sibling. The short is in a scribbly hand drawn style that feels very personal to watch. I should also note this short is in a series with four segments, with only one airing on KaBlam. The other three shorts aired between ads on Nickelodeon.
Emily Hubley is an animator known for her simple yet colorful and surreal art style. I don't usually bring up the artist's personal life, but Emily Hubley is worth an exception as her parents were the Oscar winning animation duo John and Faith Hubley. All of the Hubley couple's children, including Emily, had unique experiences with making cartoons as children, as they helped their parents with voice acting and coloring on a number of their animations.
Hubley is still animating to this day, putting out well over a dozen shorts and segments since the early 2000's. In a recent interview, Hubley mentioned working on animation with her son Max Rosenthal, seemingly keeping the animation family thing going by getting him into the business.
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August 28th
Today is "Race Your Mouse Around the Icons Day". My first comment is that this one is about your computer cursor and not my dear friend Ms. Maxwell at DragonCon this weekend. This one is another wellcat holiday and it's dedicated to the idle task of running your computer cursor around your desktop icons. It's not very exciting but it's something you can always do when the internet goes out or you are waiting for a program to load.
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August 29th
Today was my open day this week so I'm going to dump my meta notes here. I'm going to take an off month from daily articles because I'm hitting burnout bad. I'll still be working on things and talking with everyone and checking the comments, but I cant keep doing daily articles like I have. I'm going to try a month of just medium to big articles at least once a week, and ill have one more month of weekly articles in October for Halloween, but otherwise I'm kinda pooped and I need to "rotate my crops" or else I'll never get out of this writers block. So stay tuned for more updates.
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August 30th
Today is Frankenstein Day, as it's the birthday of the book’s author Mary Shelley. Frankenstein is considered the first science fiction novel, and with this it established the first real science fiction archetype, the mad scientist.
There's a big thing with this book that the monster in the book is technically unnamed but everyone calls him Frankenstein. On one hand, Frankenstein in the book's title refers to the book's protagonist who was a scientist making a guy from dead people. The monster at one point says he likes the name "Adam" but that doesn't really go anywhere. Also, yeah, in the book the reanimated monster speaks clear English. Ok before I make this anymore complicated, as a rule of thumb, horror characters rarely conform to their source material in pop culture. So whatever you know about Frankenstein is probably under a few layers of retelling decay unless you are familiar with the actual book.
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August 31s
Today is Trail Mix Day. Trail mix is a Snack mix you are supposed to take on hikes for nutrients but to be honest my personal experience with hiking and trail mix have never crossed.
Trail mixes usually consist of some combination of Nuts, Legumes, Dried Fruit, cereal, chocolate, or whatever little snack food you can find smaller than a quarter. Honestly the important part of the ingredients in trail mix is that they are small enough to hold between your fingers and you can leave it in a bag for a month without anything going bad.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: You ever meet someone who calls it Gorp? What’s wrong with those people?]
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September 1st
Today is the anniversary of "Today's Special" first hitting the air. I've talked about it a little before, but it's a children's program from TVOntario about what goes on in a department store overnight when you live in the puppet world. The main cast consists of:
Jeff, a mannequin brought to life by a wizard who is fully aware of the limitations of his existence, as the magic that gives him life has its rules and limitations. He's a good example of a character who is worrisome without being whiney, because all of his complaints with life are fairly realistic to the concerns you'd have if you were spontaneously born as an adult man trapped in a department store who doesn't know anything except how to dance. Thankfully for him, he has befriended the store's overnight employees who help him work out his issues.
The two chapters that are the actual overnight employees are the human woman Jodie and the friendly old puppet Sam. Jodie is the store's overnight display designer and the most composed of the cast. She's objectively the "mom friend" in the group and frequently is left as the straight-women to the other cast. That being said, it's clear she loves her friends and they help her love her job.
Sam, in contrast, is a silly old man puppet who acts as the store's security guard. He's a jolly old man who's laid back and often a bit absent minded. Despite this he's very serious about his job. He also has a computer named TXL Series 4 who tells the audience stories, and a cat named Penelope who's just an actual cat.
Last but not least there's Muffy. Muffy is a mouse puppet who always speaks in rhyme and has an apartment in the store. Likewise, she hangs out with everyone else hanging out in the store at night. She's a bit mischievous, and the most likely of the cast to get into trouble. Despite this, she does mean well and she never gets into any trouble she can't apologize her way out of.
And with this I'm going to tell everyone to go watch this old preschool show because it's unusual and surprisingly well produced. The full series isn't available outside of private collections, but about a ⅓ of the episodes are on YouTube and the rest are available to read as transcripts on an old fan website that's still up. Also please let me know if you have access to any of the episodes that aren't on YouTube right now. I still have too many episodes I haven't seen yet.
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September 2nd
Today is Bacon Day. It's not for everyone but it is greasy. Bacon is traditionally made from Pork belly, but you can find bacon made from turkey, sheep, chicken or even soy. The important part is that the bacon is cut thin and cooked crispy. While I like pork, I honestly do prefer turkey bacon because the texture is less greasy.