Top Hat Sasquatch

Ah Ernest, I knew thee well. It was nice growing up watching your antics. I could relate to you. Wait, were you based on my dad?

I’m ashamed that I forgot about Ernest for as long as I did, but not anymore. I’m coming to appreciate why I liked Ernest movies. It was good, stupid fun. Think about it, the majority of his movies were him making funny faces and doing crazy characters. Since it’s Halloween, I had to break out Ernest Scared Stupid, Ernest’s fourth theatrical adventure. I doubt anyone thinks this is his finest work, or that any of his work is fine by that matter, but I don’t care. If you didn’t grow up with it you probably won’t understand it.

Ernest is scared of trolls, in case you were wondering.

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Ah, 1985. The year of my birth, the year Nintendo brought the Famicom to us as the NES, and last but not least, the year Sesame Street released their first full length motion picture: Follow that Bird. Follow me to rediscover the lost delights of this musical adventure or to discover them for the first time. Or, read on if you just really like hyperbole!! And cameos!!

DISCLAIMER: I love the Muppets. In fact, I’d say I probably appreciate them on a much deeper level than you. The Muppet Movie is one of my favorite films of all time. I’m counting down the days until the Power of the Dark Crystal and the Fraggle Rock movies come out. So forgive me if this review is a little biased, what can I say? Jim Henson is one of my heroes. Anyway, on with the movie.

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Ok I’m definitely coming close to obsession with this summer’s Monster House. I went to see it (on my birthday) back in July expecting just another Not-Pixar-So-Therefore-Crap computer animated movie. Boy was I surprised. The humor, sense of childlike adventure, and even the music all seem like they were ripped right out of the great 80s movies of the same genre. It reminded me a lot of films like The Goonies and even the terrible Goosebumps books (but in a good way, I promise). The writing is witty and does what a lot of Hollywood movies about kids never do, it makes them sound like real kids. It’s filled with great characters supplied with great voices, from Fred Williard to Jason Lee to John Heder. Anyway, if you haven’t seen it, I suggest buying it right away, no regrets.

The absolute biggest disappointment of the summer for me was the fact there was no toy line to accompany Monster House. I was thinking about it the other day, and these toys could have been amazingly fun. I’m hoping that MH attains cult status in the next few years and garners a toy line sometime in the future, and to aid in this effort, I’m laying out the whole line. Listen up toy companies!

We’ll start with the figures.

1. DJ – The hero of the film, DJ could come with a Super Soaker, his stuffed bunny, and his telescope.

2. Chowder – Chowder’s the self-proclaimed screw-up of the film. His accessories would have to be his new basketball and his Halloween mask.

3. Jenny – Introduced selling emergency Halloween candy door-to-door, she would have to come with a wagon full of treats.

4. Nebbercracker – The crotchety old man from across the street could come with dynamtie, a picture of his dead wife, and various toys he stole from the children.

5. Mom and Dad 2 Pack – The awkward dentist parents are only in the film for about two minutes, but would make a great addition to the toy line. They could come with the giant toothbrush and incisor they were taking to the convention.

6. Elizabeth (or Z) – The babysitter, she could come with a Skull and Bonez deme cassette tape.

7. Bones – Z’s loser boyfriend, he would include a beer bottle and his awesome kite. Awesome kite.

8. Skull – The geek prophet delivery boy from the Game Zone, he would come with a pizza box, mustache, zits, and delivery hat.

9. Officers Landers and Lister 2 Pack – Two more minor characters that made the most of their limited screen time, they could come with their guns, a megaphone and bottles of cold medicine.

You couldn’t have a Monster House toy line without the granddaddy of all playsets, the Monster House. It would preferably be huge and expensive, around $50, and could morph from regular looking house to pissed off possessed house. To make it worth the money, you could throw in some exclusive figures too, let’s say the cute little girl on the tricycle and Constance before she bit the dust.

Well, if these came out I know I would have them all, but that’s not saying much. I just put up a Monster House poster today.

Seriously though, if you haven’t seen this movie get it.

Vintage SMC: The sweet, sweet sounds of Mickey Unrapped

Some memories are best left alone. If I wasn’t so addicted to reliving the memories I have buried deep in my subconscious, Disney’s Mickey Unrapped could still be a great album. Heck, Animaniacs could still be hilarious. Unfortunately, my inner child can’t let that happen. I have to know if something’s still good. I usually call this rewatchablilty, seeing as how most of these feelings involve television shows or movies. In this case, you could call it…relistenability…er…well you know.

I loved Mickey Unrapped when I was nine. Nineteen ninety-four was a good year for kids. A prequel, if you will, to the treasure chest that was 1995. I loved everything Disney and I didn’t care if I was succumbing to their corporate branding schemes. In my mind, Mickey Mouse must have felt the need to record a rap cd with all his friends and, by golly, I would be there to support him.

I fondly remember going to Wal-Mart and buying the cassette. This was back in the day when Disney cassettes came packaged in those big thick plastic things that you had to get hedge trimmers to get past the first half inch, and then the rest would just fall apart. Over time I lost the tape, but I was lucky enough to snag a copy (a compact disc!) on ebay for ten cents, sealed and all. Wow, I would get to open Mickey Unrapped again!

Is a Mickey rap cd necessary? Who’s idea was it? In the real world, this idea would originate in some boardroom with a bunch of boring businessmen in suits, but in my nine-year old mind, Walt Disney was still alive somewhere and it had to have been his idea. Or Mickey’s. So was ‘ol Walt a hip-hopper? Here’s one of my adolescent interpretations of how this cd was born.

California: 1958

There you have it. Now, let’s get on with the album itself. How does it stand the test of time?

TRACK ONE: “ICE ICE MICKEY”

Right off the bat this album is confusing. I expected, even after twelve years, to hear the familiar bass line from “Ice Ice Baby” (or rather from “Under Pressure”), but alas, it’s nowhere to be found. Most likely, Disney couldn’t get the rights to the original song, and knowing how dumb kids are, went ahead with the song. Not that it matters too much though, the song would still just be one big pun. Apparetnly Disney thinks the word “cool” was invented by rappers and hasn’t been around since the fifties. Somewhere The Fonze is rolling in his grave. (I know) I don’t even want to count the number of times Mickey jokingly raps that he’s “so cool he’s co-co-cold!”

Once, twice, thrice, nice like ice/The beat is the best when you sing it with the mice

TRACK TWO: “MINNIE MOUSE IN THE HOUSE”

I have to admit, this one is kinda catchy. The concept of a whole song about how cool Minnie Mouse is kind of creeps me out though. Was it designed to appeal to boys? If so it shouldn’t have been. Do the girls care how cool Minnie is? Oh well. Once again, this track was written by either a calculator or a really weird kid, like the one in your English class who was always drawing pictures of Lola Bunny.

Now Minnie’s here and it’s a mouse house party/ Go tell it to Michael and Mona and Marty/ Gonna twirl, gonna swire, and ride the groove/ And when you see her you got to… MOVE!

TRACK THREE: “WHOOMP! (THERE IT WENT) (FEATURING TAG TEAM)

I hate using the term sell out, but wow. Tag Team not only agreed to let Disney spoof their song, but they perform on it too? You never saw Michael Jackson performing with Weird Al.

TRACK FOUR: “WHATTA MOUSE”

Take track two, make it about Mickey instead of Minnie, add a dash of Salt ‘n Pepa, and bam! Instant classic! Minnie Mouse “raps” about how faithful Mickey is to her and how he’s completely perfect in every way and how we should all feel like terrible people because we are not Mickey Mouse.

And yes he’s got what I want from A to Z/ He says I drive him crazy/ And he knows that my name is not Daisy.

Hmm.

TRACK FIVE: “BOWWOW TO THE BEAT (FEATURING WHOOPI GOLDBERG)

Apparently Whoopi goldberg knows rap, and she doesn’t even have to rap to prove it! Instead, she’s gonna talk reaaaal smooooth. About Pluto. And bark. This cd is getting old fast.

Dogs are cool. Dogs are good/ Would ya like to be a dog? I thought you would.

I wanna be a dog soooo bad…I could just shoot someone! Right Walt?

TRACK SIX: “DJ GOOF”

I don’t ever remember Goofy graduating from R.A.P. University, but I guess I could’ve missed that one. I wonder what R.A.P. University stands for anyway. Really Annoying Production? (I could’ve sworn obnoxious started with an A, sorry) Anyway, if PUN is the word in Mickey Unrapped, this song takes the cake. This track could have been called “Goofy misspells various forms of DJ, hilarity ensues.”

TRACK SEVEN: “DUCKS IN THE HOOD”

Heuy, Dewie, and Leuy are “on the run” and are apparently very dangerous. This track makes me mad because I still love Ductales furiously and I don’t want anything crapping on those memories, especially not the voice actors themselves. You hear that VOICE ACTOR?

TRACK EIGHT: “M.C. MICKEY”

M.C. M-I-C-K-E-Y. on the M-I-C

That about sums it up.

TRACK NINE: “U CAN’T BOTCH THIS”

Disney assumes not only do kids know what the word botch means, but use it/hear it enough to warrant making it the title of the most recognizable song on the album. But then again, nothing really rhymes with touch. All in all this is actually a semi-entertaining song. The things Goofy does (botches) are silly enough that you forget you’re listening to a Mickey rap cd.

TRACK TEN: “LITTLE RED RAPPINGHOOD”

he talks a lot, we get it. They were scraping the barrell with this one.

TRACK ELEVEN: “MICKEY MOUSE CLUB MIX”

A for effort. Does it really matter anymore?

TRACK TWELVE: “THE COLOR OF MUSIC (FEATURING COLOR ME BAD)

Finally, something pleasing to the ears. Just sit back, close your eyes, don’t listen to the words, and it kind of seems like real music. That’s a start!

Well, I wish I could just give you all the mp3s of these songs so you could hear for yourself, but Disney probably wouldn’t like that too much. Not that Disney would like seeing a gun in Walt’s hand, but oh well.

Just think, if they could have waited a year we could have had Goofy’s Paradise (Featuring Coolio).

-Tommy

Nothing says nostalgia like school supplies, especially awesome, totally unnecessary school supplies. Everyone remembers that time in late summer when Wal-Mart would start putting up the Back to School signs and you would just pretend like you didn’t see them. You could avoid them for a while, but come late August you had to take the trip. I remember walking the aisles with my Mom and gawking at all the awesome folders. You could get your favorite sports star, cartoon character, animal, or (insert trend of the month) on folders. My mom would only let me get one cool folder though, the rest had to be boring plain colored ones.

Oh well, I had a Trapper Keeper. Any folder would look like it was made of solid gold when it was nestled snugly inside a genuine Mead Trapper Keeper. That’s not an image of the actual TP I had (like many other things, it met its fate via a price tag at a garage sale) but I think it’s pretty close. I know I had a designer series clad with epic geometric shapes (Geomepic©?). The graphic designer in me really hopes that someday the state of design de-evolves back to about 1994, because frankly, I loved folders depicting animals playing extreme sports.

For some reason I had a Harley Davidson folder too, as well as one of those save-the-whales type paintings showing a bunch of animals looking all beautiful and perfect. As far as what the girls were repping, I think Lisa Frank says it all.

Somehow I remember this Trapper Keeper. Once again, 90’s graphic design at it’s finest. It’s really amazing that there’s such a lack of TP content on the web. If you Google them, you get a lot of references, but hardly any photos. There’s usually a good 5-7 TP’s on ebay at any given time, and they actually go pretty high. Nothing prepared me for what came up on the first page of results, however. Mead is releasing brand new old-school-style Trapper Keepers in the Fall of 2007?? Pinch me!

Seriously, if they were taking pre-orders, I would sign up. I’ll think of something to use a new Trapper Keeper for. I might even be a huge dork and start taking one to my college classes next year. Or! I start using one to hold my mailing list sign-up papers at my music gigs. Hmm, the possibilities are endless! There will be six new designs. Three retro designs and three more conservative (but still old-school) solid color designs. Personally, I think the solid color TP’s are the most old-school. Remember the simple red ones with the white line? Try finding one of those now. We can only hope that they also resurrect the designer series and let some cracked-out designers go wild.

It’s funny that the official site offers schools a chance to win $500 by sticking Trapper Keeper’s on their official school supply list. When you Google them, about half of the results are school’s websites listing supplies, and about all of them say NO TRAPPER KEEPERS. My guess is that too many kids were getting their heads bashed in by jealous people who didn’t own sweet Trapper Keepers.

I think collecting vintage TP’s would be very cool, but without an official list of what was made, I’d feel like I was just wondering around aimlessly. How many designs did they come out with? Was there officially licensed Trapper Keepers? I guess we’ll never know. Unless you work for Mead and would like to tell me.