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The funniest Christmas song you will hear
Yes, this is a bit recorded for a yuck-yuck commercial radio morning show. It makes me laugh every single time I’ve heard it for however many years now. Porky Pig reprises “Blue Christmas.” Related posts: No related posts.
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Claymation Christmas, Part 4: Carol of the Bells
I conclude my series of posts about the 1987 Will Vinton’s Claymation Christmas Celebration special with my favorite segment in the program: “The Carol of the Bells.” The humor in “Carol of the Bells” is the Claymation Christmas special’s tightest and most sophisticated, to the extent that it almost seems designed to lead children in…
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Claymation Christmas, Part 3: Walruses and Penguins
Now we move on through Will Vinton’s 1987 “Claymation Christmas Celebration” to a significant moment in the Emmy Award-winning stop-motion animation special, the Walruses and the Penguins. This is the most blatant comic relief in the half-hour Claymation Christmas special, relying heavily on the physical comedy of amorous walruses attempting to figure skate to “Angels…
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Claymation Christmas, Part 2: We Three Kings (and three singing camels)
As I continue through Will Vinton’s Claymation Christmas Celebration special of 1987, we now go to the Claymation Christmas special’s first musical animation, the opening salvo in this barrage of holiday-themed stop motion videos. “We Three Kings” opens with the somber version of the song, sung by the actual kings, you might expect. But then…
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Claymation Christmas, Part 1: California Raisins
It’s sometimes odd the things from your childhood that endure in memory. I’ve lost the sound of my uncle’s voice, for instance, but I remember Will Vinton’s Emmy-winning Claymation Christmas Celebration special which first aired on CBS in December of 1987. A later VHS recording of this broadcast would become a precious family possession for…
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Finally, a snow shovel with old look, new pointlessness
They say it will snow this weekend in northern Minnesota. I saw this floating around social media as sort of a local joke, but it is a real product: Behold the “Snow Wolf” wheeled shovel in action. It’s an ergonomic dream, they say. A snowblower without the dirty engine attached, they say. I see a…
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Those Duluth prostitutes are so dressed up that they look like … not prostitutes? Wait, what?
A joke in Monday night’s “How I Met Your Mother” suggested that prostitutes in Duluth, Minnesota dress very conservatively. Because of the cold? Kind of a context thing, I think. Didn’t watch. Could have, but didn’t. Anyway, the Duluth News-Tribune ran this as a “namedrop” in the today’s culture page. I really don’t know how…
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Language, not lutefisk, might be Scandinavia’s greatest gift
One of my favorite blogs, TYWKIWDBI, posts the following question: “Is English a Scandinavian language?” Some professors in Norway apparently believe so, saying that viking domination of the early English nation had more lingual influence than “Old English” or later intermingling with the romance languages of central Europe. Specifically, sentence structure is one area of…
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DNR proposes moose as endangered species
Growing up in northern Minnesota in the ’80s and ’90s, we saw moose in the woods just outside the Iron Range. No, we didn’t see moose every day, the way we often see whitetail deer. But you saw a moose or two every year, more if you lived farther north than the Range. Those days…
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Nolan featured in NY Times story on political experience
Rep.-elect Rick Nolan (D-MN8) is in the lede of a story in the New York Times about the importance of experience in political leaders. Nolan ran as an experienced “down-home” small businessman, but had this little nugget in his resume: he served in Congress 30 years ago and left of his own choice because of…
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Remixing the Rainbow
This hit the spot this morning: Another PBS ‘remix’ of a popular children’s program, this one “Reading Rainbow.” Oh, boy, it occurs to me how much I dug Reading Rainbow as a kid. This video gave me flashbacks. When I realized that Levar Burton from “Reading Rainbow” was Jordy on “Star Trek: The Next Generation”…
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Swedish paper profiles complicated story of Bob Dylan in Hibbing
Reporter Kristin Lundell and photographer Karin Grip visited Hibbing in October to do a feature for the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, one of the nation’s largest dailies. Today, Lundell’s story and Grip’s photos ran in a huge three-page feature in the Culture section. You can read the story in Swedish here or the Google translation…
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Gov. Dayton pardons turkey, but bird ain’t got what it takes to make it on the outside
Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton pardons (live) turkey. (Photo: Hunger Solutions) Well, it’s the time of year for state and federal executives to make a show out of “pardoning” a turkey before Thanksgiving, the time of year when untold millions of turkeys are sold and consumed in the United States. As you can see here Gov.…
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Others to aid Range violence victims amid funding cuts
In the wake of news that Range Women’s Advocates is facing serious funding cuts, other groups are stepping up to ensure that families in crisis can still receive the help they need. If you know someone affected by this story, please pass along this information: Advocates for Family Peace (AFFP) has been serving families experiencing…
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Choo-choo choose to watch this train video
On the subject of trains, maybe Essar Steel can get a deal on this engine. Related posts: No related posts.