December Days 14 - Early Morning Animation

[It's December Days time! There's no overarching theme this year, so if you have ideas of things to write about, I'm more than happy to hear them.]

Gee, Silver, what are we going to write about tonight?

The same thing we do every night, Pinky - trying to influence the world!

I am probably a bit blessed in the realms of animation, as my childhood is sufficiently situated that I get to experience classic Merrie Melodies, the revival of the animated show (sort of - they never really went away, I'm sure), and the mass popularity of anime. So a lot of everything came through at the impressionable age.

Which means when bethany_lauren asks me what my favorite Saturday morning cartoon is, I'm half tempted to say Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, just to make everyone go "huh?" (And so I can express my annoyance at how my father pointedly pointed out the truth of the PSAs at the end of episodes about the difference between fantasy violence and real violence, as if he were concerned that I might mistake the two, being a child who liked fantastic stories on television and in books.)

Because I cycled through Saturday morning lineups with time and age. X-Men, Carmen Sandiego, getting up earlier to watch Armor Legend Samurai Troopers, or rather, Ronin Warriors, Sonic the Hedgehog (with Urkel as the voice of Sonic, before the expansion of the character rosters), Animaniacs, Batman: The Animated Series, Tiny Toon Adventures, Dexter's Lab, the Powerpuff Girls, and so on. Much of the time spent on the television was in watching what are now clearly the heralds of the return of animation to a spot at the table of being smart ways to do things for adults, with entities like My Little Pony and Steven Universe now at the forefront of the early afternoon and Saturday morning animation blocks. With the boom (and then bust) of anime imported, that meant getting to see Trigun, Evangelion, Escaflowne, R.O.D., a Gundam or two, and so forth, as well as the very lush .hack series and the equally well-animated Last Exile. And to laugh my butt off hysterically at Excel Saga.

So asking what my favorite is is among me to choose one of an entire two decades worth of quality (and eccentric) material that I experienced and absorbed. I don't really have a favorite in that sense, I've that I would return to over and over again.

What one I would recommended to someone new to the animation world and looking for something good to start with? Probably Pinky and the Brain, if for no other reason than Maurice Lamarche doing Orson Welles.

December Days 15 - The Exchange

[It's December Days time! There's no overarching theme this year, so if you have ideas of things to write about, I'm more than happy to hear them.]

So, yesterday at work, we played the gift exchange.

1. Everyone draws a number.
2. One opens a gift, then Two gets to choose whether they want to open a new gift or take what One got and send them back to get another gift. Each successive number can pick from the opened gifts in front of them or collect a new gift that's wrapped and open it.
3. Usually after a certain number of times a gift has been taken, it stops moving and stays with the person that took it the last time.
4. Optionally, One gets one last look at everything, once it's opened, and can exchange what they have for someone else's thing.

This game is a staple of many parties, and some of the fun is in determining what you can get for the dollar limit imposed on the gifts. The other fun tends to be in the good-natured thieving that goes on, assuming that you have a crowd that can handle good-natured thieving. If that's not the case, then perhaps avoid this game.

I mention this for two reasons - it's a staple of the family holiday gatherings, with a lot of ribbing that goes along with the stealing, and because this year, I ended up with a cracker / popper, which is a thing that looks kind of like a long wrapped candy with small cardboard tabs on the left and right sides of the central container.

To open a popper, it's much like a wishbone grab - one person on each end, and at the signal, both people pull on their tab. What's supposed to happen is that the central compartment pops open with a loud sound, and then the contents inside are to be played with. There's often a paper crown, a sheet of horrible puns and jokes, and a small toy of some sort inside.

Poppers are also part of the holiday tradition in the family.

The problem with living as far away from family as I do is that returning for gatherings is not as easy as hopping the train or driving up. It requires planes or multi-day driving or travel. Unlike other places with developed high speed rail, is not cheap to go home for the holidays. Which can make you feel rather lonely and out of the loop when the only person you've been celebrating with for the last few years is the other person in your house and their friends, because your circumstances and their reasons have tied you to them, rather than letting you go to your own parties and to theirs.

But, every year, you get a new number and there are new things in the pile, so here's to new traditions and those that survive the changes.