The ScratchPad: Warts and All

Welcome to the ScratchPad, your top source around the nation about comics and animation.It's occured to me recently that Disney's new film, the Princess and the Frog, is a gutsy move. For one, it's had quite a bit of controversy, and for two, it's a 2D animated musical.



Notice how I haven't mentioned anything about the film's lead princess being black. We'll get to that later.



Let's tackle the 2D thing first. This is the first hand-drawn animated movie to come out of the Mouse House in five years. Yep. You heard me. Five years. After coming out with the moderately profitable Lilo and Stitch in 2002, and the also less-moderately profitable Brother Bear in 2003, Disney decided to take another go with Home on the Range in 2004. I wouldn't use the word bombed per se, but let's just say that people tended to steer clear of this movie because, in my humble opinion, it was a bunch of bull. This caused Disney execs to think that audiences were no longer interested in 2D animation, which is, quite frankly, stupid. Y'see, folks, 2D animation is a medium by which stories are told. Therefore, the success or failure of the story portrayed in that medium depends entirely and wholly on the quality of the story, NOT on the medium it's told in. In other words, saying people don't like 2D animation because Home on the Range bombed is like saying that people don't like movies anymore because Shorts bombed.

John Lassater, creative director over at Pixar and Walt Disney Animation, seems to agree with my sentiments. From the way he phrases it, it seems like he and I may be in a small minority.

It's very easy, now that I'm thinking about it, for the Mouse House to be sitting pretty on top of a mountain of Pixarian prosperity. I don't blame them at all. This isn't a jab at Pixar in any way. I, as you'll be able to tell, no doubt, in future columns, think their stuff is excellent, heart-warming, and years ahead of what anyone in the medium within the past half-decade or so has produced. I'm just saying that I can see completely why some at the Mouse House would consider it an unneeded risk, all things considered. Pixar has proven to be a grade-A animation cash cow, and assuming they can keep being brilliant, the money will roll in 'till the cows come home. There's so much more potential in Disney, though. They have places to go. Frog, more than anything, is a chance to prove "we've still got it" and "we don't need a crutch". It's a mouse-eared This Is It, a chance to remind people of what makes Disney, even sans Pixar, the finest kingdom in animation-land.


But, alas, as with everything remotely gutsy, there shall be controversy.

The original plot was about a 1920's New Orleanian (?) maid named Maddie who, with the help a crazed fairy godmother/witch doctor and an amphibian frog prince named Prince Naveen.

The critics of the movie seem to have any or all of the following qualms:

1. Her name is Maddie, which sounds too close to Mammy.
2. She's a maid.
3. Prince Naveen is white.

All of which are totally stupid. Let's address them, shall we?

The first qualm is just ASKING for trouble. C'mon. To make that big of a leap, from Mammy to Maddie, you have to be looking for something to raise a stink about.

Secondly, of COURSE she's a maid. This is a period piece, and like it or not, that's what the most common profession was for African-Americans then. And plus, all of the princesses were in crappy situations before they became princesses. Cinderella cleaned the castle, and there was nothing wrong with it then. We all knew it was wrong, but it didn't matter as long as she came out on top.

Thirdly, Prince Naveen is white. Whoopdedoo. Seriously, this almost sounds racist in and of itself. What message are we sending here? Black people aren't good enough for white people? You should consider your race in a marriage? How about this: People are allowed to marry whatever race they want to, because it's only a difference in pigment.

All of this hurts the notion of even considering putting a black person in a lead role, because you've got a bevy of controversy along with it. It's a PC minefield. If you put a black person in a lead role and they marry a black person, suddenly blacks aren't good enough for other blacks. If you put a black person in the prince role, suddenly blacks can't marry whites. It's a lose-lose situation for the writers of the film and Disney to have a black princess if they're staring down the barrel of a gun every time she sneeezes. How are we, as a society, supposed to be inclusive if it means opening Pandora's Box every time we are?

Disney, as a result, has downplayed Prince Naveen's role, change Princess Tiana's (note the name change...) occupation, and downplayed the role of Ray the Firefly because they deemed his diction sterotypical.

If we want this film to succeed, we have to accept it with open arms, and not jump to conclusions with cynical eyes, especially considering the film hasn't opened yet. Only when film-makers are free to make films without PR being involved will we be able to be truly acceptant as a public conscience a fim as grounbreaking and risky as this one. In other words, we must accept the Princess and the Frog, warts and all.

Tomato

EDIT: I was just informed by TZ member TheVileOne that Ray retains a sizable role. These posts, aside from breif skimmings of newspaper articles and official sources, are done from memory, and I don't intend to purposefully mislead you guys.

Sorry for the mix-up.

Tomato

100 Things I'm Thankful For

THESE ARE NOT IN ANY ORDER!

GO!

1. My mom and dad
2. My brother
3. My dog, who is unquestionably the cutest one EVAR!!!!
4. My aunt, who teaches special education.
5. All the other people who teach special education.
6. My grandparents
7. This blog.
8. The gift of being able to think.
9. Having morals.
10. Being able to communicate.
11. Being able to reason.
12. Redemption.
13. Christ.
14. Nerds (the people).
15. Nerds (the candy!)
16. NERDFIGHTERS!
17. Having a straight spine.
18. Having bowel/bladder function.
19. Humor
20.Music
21. Books!
22. Animation!
23. My awesome providers, Laura and Olivia.
24. EXCLAMATIONS!
25. The ability to think of things bigger than myself.
26. Imagination
27. Martial Arts
28. Peggle
29. The Game Boy Advance
30. Sci-Fi
31. LOST, which Mrs. Nelli has until Feb. 2nd to watch!
32. Tactical strategy games.
33. Candy
34. Chocolate
35. Big, cushy armchairs
36. Random acts of absurdity
37. Barbershop Quartets
38. Automatic door openers
39. Comics
40. Poetry
41. Fried food!
42. Dance
43. Choir
44. Rain
45. Fog
46. Moonlight
47. Free Will
48. A stable government.
49. My bed
50. Photographs.
51. Sidewalks
52. Not listening to a neonateoligist who told my mom not to expect anything out of "these children".
53. Everyone in my sidebar >>>>
54. Reproduction
55. Rhyming
56. Language
57. Puns
58. Moments when I realize how small everything is.
59. Language Arts teachers.
60. Gifted teachers
61. Cancer survivors
62. Board Games
63. Hangman
64. People who can understand someone with a disability.
65. Harry Potter
66. Tim Burton
67. 42
68. Dogs in general.
69. Superheroes
70. Everyday heroes.
71. Scat singing.
72. The fact that Dark Knight still holds it's spot as the #2 best selling movie ever.
73. Movies
74. Actors
75. Exotic food
76. The Space Needle
77. Street performers
78. Indoor plumbing
79. Friends
80. Astrology
81. The Wii, and all the incredibly wrong puns that result.
82. Immigration.
83. Clean water
84. Plentiful food
85. Did I mention teachers?
86. Flash Games
87. Futurama
88. MST3K
89. Randy Pausch
90. Plastic utensils
91. Telivision
92. Medicine
93. Parody
94. Quotes
95. Ellen DeGeneres
96. Optimism
97. The ideal of peace.
98. Heaven
99. Things I'm bound to be missing on here.
100. My heart is beating for another second, at least.

Respond with at least 5 things you're thankful for!

Happy Thanksgiving!
Tomato

The ScratchPad: Top Ten Looney Tunes Shorts

Welcome to the ScratchPad, your top source around the nation about comics and animation.

Ahh, the good old Looney Tunes. Originally created by Warner Brothers in the 30's to showcase their vast musical library (hence why it's spelled T-U-N-E-S, not T-O-O-N-S.), the Looney Tunes grew into a large, ever crafty cast of hooligans that've become a staple of animation ever since.

The 'Tunes have been trudging through tough times lately, though. Because of a liscensing scuffle between Cartoon Network and its parent company, Time-Warner, the Looney Tunes shorts have not been seen on TV since, if memory serves, 2003.

And then, in 2009, Porky flew. For one day only, January 1st of 2009, the two parties agreed to open the floodgates and show the shorts in an all day marathon. I was a couch potato that day, eating, sleeping, and breathing Looniness. A lot of others were, too, because CN's ratings went through the roof. You'd think this would be enough to persuade Time-Warner and CN to give Tunes a recurring slot on the schedule. You'd be wrong.

....until November 15th, ten months later, when Looney Tunes reclaimed its rightful place on the 'tube with another big marathon, even netting its own afternoon slot on CN. We'll see how long that lasts.

What's that? I was supposed to do a top five list? I put it in the title? Well, then, be vewy vewy quiet, I'm hunting cartoons. That is to say, here's a list of the top five Looney Tunes shorts!

(NOTE 1: I have not seen every Looney Tunes short ever. If I'm missing any notable ones, especially among you toonzone fanatics, it's probably because I haven't seen it. However, feel free to email me a list of any shorts I omitted that should be on here, and maybe I'll make a part 2!)

(NOTE 2: Say you've never seen one of these shorts, but you want to really badly. Well, if you click on the word "here" next to them, it'll take you to a video of the short.)

5. Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century (here)
As a sci-fi fan, I LOVE this short. It takes the concept of pulp-magazine-space-heroes like Buck Rodgers and Adam Strange, and completely takes a humor machete to it. It has no reservations with showing how over-the-top the whole genre can be sometimes, putting Daffy Duck in the title role of crass and cynical space captain Duck Dodgers, Porky Pig in tow as an Eager Young Space Cadet, as they search for the lost shaving cream atom on Planet X. Also, they may or may not run into a certain martian. Overall, an excellent parody of a genre I hold dear is enough to secure a spot at #5.

4. Rhapsody Rabbit (here)

Is this the real life, is this just fantasy?

Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality.

I've never been a fan of classical music. It's just never done it for me. Bugs Bunny taking out a revolver and shooting a guy for coughing in the middle of his piano piece, however, is hilarious. As covered before, Loony Tunes' roots lie in its music. The magic comes when you blend the music with the slapstick to make something fantastic. And that's why Rhapsody Rabbit crescendos all the way to number four.

3. Bugs and Thugs (here)

This is probably the dark horse of the bunch. I actually didn't remember this one until watching it on the marathon the other day, the way I did with all the other shorts on this list. But, that doesn't make Bugs and Thugs, a swaggering and smooth cartoon about Bugs two-timing a group of grungy gangsters. What's great about it is the sheer volume of great gags in this cartoon. It's not an ingenious concept, like, say, Duck Dodgers or the last two on the list, but the gags never miss a beat, and they're short and snappy. That's enough for Bugs and Thugs to whack its competition and trudge to #3.

2. One Froggy Evening (here)

This short is great, only because of a musical frog. The short doesn't star any of the well-known Looney Tunes characters, instead apting for a singing frog fit for Broadway. If I recall correctly, this is the only short that Mr. Michigan J. Frog appears in, and yet he completely steals the show, conning an out of luck theather owner with a baratone barrage. This frog doesn't need a kiss to turn into the prince of the #2 spot.

1. Duck Amuck (here)

Ahh, Duck Amuck. I fondly remember getting an old VHS tape, The Best of Daffy Duck, as a kid, and being just amazed with this short. It doesn't really have a plot, as an unknown adversary messes with Daffy in the middle of his cartoon. The results are hilarious and memorable beyond belief. Every joke in this short is spot on and leaves me breathless with laughter. It's still one of my grand barometers of writing, if I can only be half as good as this, I'll be happy. I encourage you to click the link and feast your eyes on this comedic masterpiece.
_________________________________________________
And that concludes our look at the top five Looney Tunes shorts, and also our first installment of ScratchPad. Please leave any feedback or questions/suggestions about this column in the comments. Let's take a glance at the next Scratchpad page...

Next week, we'll be sailing overseas to Japan to look at the origins and advancement of Japanese animation in All About Anime!

See you then!

Tomato

By the way, I'll be doing a column on animated Christmas specials soon, and I'd like to supplement that column with memories involving Christmas specials from readers of this blog. Send any memories to silvertomatoproductions@gmail.com!

A Year of Reading

Hey, guys!

So, as part of ...And Those Who Read (A Wrinkle In Time is 3/4 finished and due this weekend) and breathing new life into it, I'm going to be doing an ATWR review every two weeks for the entire year. I think it'll go better than Batmonth, because an extra post every two weeks is managable. The problem? I have no idea how to start it off! I'd like to keep a general theme for each month, such as October being Halloween themed, March being quirky sci-fi themed, and May being graphic novel themed. With that in mind, suggest away for a January theme! Here are some ideas I've had:

*Historical Fiction Month
*Autobiography Month
*Best Children's Literature of 2009 Month
*Short Story Anthology Month
*Something much more amazing I haven't thought of yet.

And, are there any books you think I NEED TO READ RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!111 or suggestions for books that fall into the categories?

Thanks,
Tomato

Hershey's Viva Concept Art

I did this concept art about ten minutes ago, just a quick computer doodle. It's a wrapper for one of the "healthy" candy bars that I talked about a few posts ago, Hershey's Viva (the Spanish word for life). Notice how I tried to make the I look like a dandelion, but utterly failed because of my poor motor skills. Sorry about that ;)!

Check the post below this one for an elaboration on Fort Hood and what is and is not terrorism.

Tomato

A Matter Of We

This article was brought to my attention by a reader of this blog, and I feel that I need to address it properly. TO THE DICTIONARY!

Main Entry: ter·ror·ism
Pronunciation: \ˈter-ər-ˌi-zəm\
Function: noun
Date: 1795
: the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion

See that word up there? Systematic? It means carefully planned, usually by a group of people. 9/11 was terrorism. It was an organized act by a group of extremist terrorist, many of whom were Islamic, meant to cause fear, panic and paranoia.

The tragedy at Fort Hood, while a terrible, horrid act, does NOT constitute terrorism. It was an unorganized shooting rampage perpetrated by a lone person. What Ralph Peters and his supporters need to understand is that, despite any connotations you bring to the word, calling this act terrorism does not make it any better or worse than it previously was, and is erroneous to boot. Maybe, just maybe, if we stopped pecking over semantics, we could get to the heart of the issue and actually, for once, remember the victims of this tragedy.

The second thing that Ralph Peters needs to realize is that evil is three-dimensional, and cannot be attributed to any one thing, such as one's religion. Hitler, for example, had a bad parental upbringing, low self esteem, and was rejected from art school. It's as ludicrous as saying somebody's hair color makes them evil. To do something like this, somebody needs to have been very messed up all throughout their life. To say that an evil act, such as terrorism, a school shooting, or the Fort Hood tragedy, can be caused by a single factor is a simple, comfortable, and easy solution. I don't blame Mr. Peters or his supporters for acting like generally curious humans and choosing an easily-digestible solution, because that's how we keep our sanity. It's okay to have that idea as a kind of mental life jacket, as long as you're able to realize that it's not that simple.

The third thing Ralph Peters must realize is that Islam is not an inherently an evil religion. In fact, it is from the same Abrahamic roots as Christianity and Judaism. Although the three religions have a few differences, mainly on the identification of Christ as the Messiah (meaning that all three believe that Christ existed, but Judaism and Islam question His status as the Messiah, although He is seen as an important prophet in all three.) and the existence of djinns. The three also share much of the same stories of the Old Testament, such as The Great Flood and Joshua and the Wall. Contrary to some propaganda that has been circulated by various media, verse 9:11 of the Quran (or Koran, if you want to use the Romanized pronunciation) contains nothing remotely similar to events that occured on 9/11/2001. For the curious, the verse reads as follows:

Yet if they repent, and take to prayer, and render the purifying dues, they become your brethren in faith:
Asad(9,17)
[17] and clearly do We spell out these messages unto people of [innate] knowledge!

which basically is talking about evening prayer and pilgrimage to the Mecca, a holy place to Muslims, very similar to how some Christian churches have taken pilgrimmages to Babylon.

The propaganda I've seen most commonly distributed says that verse 9:11 reads as follows:

For it is written that a son of Arabia would awaken a fearsome Eagle. The wrath of the Eagle would be felt throughout the lands of Allah and lo, while some of the people trembled in despair still more rejoiced; for the wrath of the Eagle cleansed the lands of Allah; and there was peace.

As you can see, not true at all. In not translation of any major Islamic holy text does anything remotely resembling this pop up.

It becomes incredibly disturbing when you realize how much the small percentage of extremist Islamics have grown to represent the face of an entire religion that, 9 times out of 10, is generally peaceful. I've seen no religion, including Islam, that advocates harming or killing a person, and the small percentage of Muslim that use religion to justify heinous acts aren't following any religion, or at least I would argue that. The general population of Islamics are not like the ones you usually see in the media. Imagine if somebody looked at Melissa Huckaby, the Sunday School teacher who raped and murdered a four-year-old, or James Kopp, the Christian who murdered a doctor who performed abortions*, or the Ku Klux Klan, or the Soweto Bombings, and thought those people where what Christians like Ralph and I and my uncle Larry were like all the time. Ask yourself: are those people really Christians, or are they just using it as an excuse to justufy their actions? When somebody who's never heard the Gospel before sees a Christian on the news for the first time, do you want it to be these people? Because that's what's happening with Islam right now.

I read a comment on the article that said this:

coswriter:When are we going to go to total war against these islamist animals? Will we continue to be picked off one at a time like sheep? Profile, profile, profile. Shut down mosque's whose imam or worshipers aid, abet, or carry our terrorism against the United States. Shut down this animal's mosque, others there knew he was a terrorist in the making. Obama the Coward in Chief won't do anything.
--------------------------
Now, I'm fine with the poster's political views on Obama, it's their opinion, but it's the "shut down this animal's mosque" part I've got a problem with. How would you feel if someone barged in and shut down your church?

By the way, if you think I made th comment up, it's the very first comment on the second page in the article link, and it was written a day or two before I knew of the article. I really WISH I'd made it up, but alas.

What really bugs me is the fact that this is becoming a matter of Us v. Them, instead of We helping each other. And you know what happend the last time it was Us v. Them. Two nations got the power to destroy all life on Earth three times over. One of them was the USA.

Tomato

*Not taking a stance on abortion here, either way. I'm just saying it's wrong to murder a doctor who had a family because of a political disagreement. Please keep the comments away from an abortion argument, because that not what this post was about.

Bullet Point Round Up!

Good morning!

Tomato here. I've been getting over a terrible, awful chest cold, As a result, many of the blog posts I'd planned for this week would've been scrapped. WE CAN'T HAVE THAT! So, instead of letting them all die, I'm combining them into one big Frankenpost, via some bullet points! Let's begin!

1. Fort Hood

Photo from the New York Times

When I heard about the shootings at Fort Hood, I was horrified. Now, I was horrified for all the dead victims and their families, who I hope are in a better place, but two things horrified me even more.

1. Our military's psychological condition

2. Coke fanatics are going to have a field day.

Let's start with the first one. The gunman at Fort Hood, Nadal Malik Hasan, was an Army psychiatrist. He was about to be deployed to Afghanistan.

Can you imagine the mental stresses somebody with his job, or any other person in the army, must go through? Just to explore the depths of minds as traumatized as some in our Armed Forces must go through must be extremely disturbing. This doesn't excuse his actions, but it's something to consider, Who's the psychiatrist's psychitrist?

Now, let's tackle the second part.

This was not a act of terrorism. This was a single person going on an unorganized shooting rampage. It was a terrible, unthinkable thing to do, but it was NOT terrorism. Terrorism is organized, terrorism is meticulous and planned. And, despite how much Glenn Beck and Fox News will preach this, this does not mean all Muslims are terrorists. My heart goes out to all who died and all who were injured at Fort Hood. Rest in peace.

2. Let's Talk About My Wii

My Wii is gonna be busy in upcoming years.

First off, Nintendo just announced the long-coveted Kirby Wii for a 2009 Japanese release. We'll see if it even gets out of development there, let alone stateside. 2009 seems a little soon for a just-announced Japan release. We've only got another month. I'm predicting a delay pushing the Japanese release back to Spring 2010, which means it would be stateside byFall/Winter 2010.

Next game!

Back in the days of Steamboat Willy, Mickey Mouse was not the sugary pre-school icon we know today. He was nore like a scheming, crass, cheeky Bugs Bunny, with antics aplenty. From developer Warren Spector comes Epic Mickey, a Wii game taking the character back to his toony roots. You know what hooked me on this game? These:

Wow. This is on the Wii, people. The Wii, graphically, is the weakest console of this batch. That's on the Wii.

3. Health Care Bill

RANT WANING!

I'm so happy it passed. What gets me is people saying this is a "victory for the Democrats". It's not ABOUT a "victory" for any one party. If anything, it's a victory for people with ulcerative colitis who have to pay for their expensive pills or poo blood, or for people with pre-existing conditions who can't afford to pay for their open-heart surgeries. Oppenants of the bill say it's too expensive. You can't put a price on a life.

This isn't a partisan issue. It's an issue of people dying or not dying. I thought we were ALL against the latter.

With that, I bid you, and this extremely rushed post, adeau.

Tomato

Building A Better Bar

Hey guys!

It's November 1st. Now, other than being the first day of what's probably, in my opinion, the most inconsequential month ever, there's some significance to that date. It's the day after Halloween.

Now, two things generally happen to me on the day after Halloween. In order:

1. Sugar coma

2. Guilt

I mean, seriously, as I write this, I'm staring down a plastic pumpkin that I KNOW most likely contains two of every candy known to man. It's like the child of Pandora's Box and a candy-coated Noah's Ark! I know each bar probably contains the chemical content of twelve periodic tables, but how am I supposed to resist all of these? So, being a nerd and all, I thought about it, and thought about it, and eventually I came to a few conclusions.

1. We, as a society, are surrounded by unhealthy food.

2. Because of this, it is harder, if not impossible, for one who is currently unhealthy and or overweight and or obese to become healthy.

3. So, if we want to become healthy, these unhealthy choices need to be reduced or eliminated.

At this point, I came to another conclusion.

4. If these choices are reduced or eliminated, people will be unhappy.

In order to avoid that, I came to my last conclusion.

5. We need to build better candy bars.

Now, here's the basic mission statement I would make if I were the head honcho at Candy's Candy Crevice or whatnot: we need to refine our candy recipes to not only include healthier, more natural ingredients while excluding unhealthy ones, but to retain a taste that's either better, the same, or close to the same as the unhealthy candy counterpart.

Seems like quite an undertaking at first, but take a second to think. We've got so many natural ingrediants we could use in these equivalents. Sugar cane, maple, honey, mint, lemon, orange, lime, coconut, the list goes on. We could also benefit from putting less sugar and corn syrup in our chocolate, trading it for a higher percentage of cocoa bean. Sure, by removing preservatives, these bars won't last as long, but I'd take it in stride as a chocoholic.

Another barrier against turning our bars natural are the people who grew up on the candy. Some say it could be a bad buisiness move to "alienate" the people like you and I who've grown up on these confections (see: New Coke). But, I'm inclined to think differently. People like jumping on bandwagons (see: Thighmasters, reality TV, the success of Paranormal Activity, the entire career of Rob Liefeld) and I believe they'd be just as eager to do this, for a short time. I'd still keep the unhealthy versions around for 3-5 years after the swap, albiet at a price $0.25 to $1.00 higher. This way, by the time Generation Z (sidenote: What do we call the generation after Z? Alpha?) rolls around, they'll be accostumed to the new flavors.

That way, when I'm Tomato-the-professional-writer-blogger-guy-thing, I won't feel guilty stealing candy out of my kid(s)'s big plastic Jack O' Lanterns.

Thoughts?

Tomato

--------------------------------------------------------------------

And now for something completely different.

1. Anyone seen This is It? How is it?

2. I just won a $15 Best Buy gift card for Most Original Costume! What can you buy at Best Buy for $15?

3. I've just been challenged by a family member to write a story in a month. Whowhatwherewhenwhy?

And now I'll answer a question for you.

4. Should you check out the post below this one if you haven't already?

A. Yes

Tomato