¡Rábanos Radiactivos! # 2134

Written by Fred Patten, and intended for Apa L, 2134^th Distribution, LASFS Meeting No. 3582, April 6, 2006.
Golden State Colonial Convalescent Hospital, 10830 Oxnard Street, North Hollywood, California 91606-5098.
Telephone: hospital(818) 763-8247; personal (818) 506-3159 * eMail:fredpatten@earthlink.net

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Michael Burlake took me to last Thursday's LASFS meeting, as usual. He also spent $40 getting us one of the reserved parking spaces for April. There was no program, so the meeting got caught up on reviews and the other stuff that is usually postponed when there is a program. Kay Shapero brought me some more s-f books from the public library, plus the Office Max bookcase that Lee Gold had brought me, plus a manicure kit to trim my fingernails which the hospital will not do for me. Burlake brought the bookcase back to the hospital still unassembled because there was not enough time to assemble it this evening.

On Saturday, Michael Burlake came to the hospital early and got my bookcase half-assembled before we had to leave for the Estrogen Zone meeting. April's theme was April Fool's/Poisson d'Avril (fools & fish): The Incredible Mr. Limpet, The Court Jester, Roxanne, and A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum. We had to race back to the hospital for my 10:00 p.m. curfew without staying for the closing credits of the latter, so I do not know what was shown after that but I think that A Fish Called Wanda was scheduled next.. I was unable to attend Charles Jackson's FWEMS the previous weekend, so I was delighted that The Incredible Mr. Limpet was repeated this weekend. This was the first time that I have seen this 1964 Warner Bros. production since I became an animation "expert", so I paid special attention to the animation sequences by WB's pseudonymous "piscatorial production department". The supervising animation director was Vladimir Tytla, probably best-known for the "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence in Disney's Fantasia; and a lot of other top WB animators' names are in the closing credits: Robert McKimson, Maurice Noble, Hawley Pratt. I was surprised & delighted years ago to find that the LASFS Library has the original Mr. Limpet novel by Theodore Pratt, and I still wonder why such a strong World War II propaganda fantasy was filmed as late as 1964. This was also the first time since its original release that I had seen The Court Jester. I had forgotten that Angela Lansbury once played Beautiful Young Girl roles.

I am still getting Indian press releases on animation. Has anone here heard of Hanuman 1?

Percept Picture Company, Animation India to co produce Hanuman 2

Friday March 31, 2006 (4:21 pm)

'Hanuman 2', sequel to the first Indian animated blockbuster Hanuman has been announced.

Budgeted in the range of Rs 9-12 Crore, with a release scheduled for Diwali 2007, the sequel is to be co produced by Percept Picture Company and Toonz Animation India on a 50:50 financial investment.

The feature will be directed by V G Samant the director of the original Hanuman.

Speaking to Animation 'xpress, Percept Picture Company COO Mahesh Ramanathan said,...

Most of the press release is about how popular a character Hanuman is throughout India with all ages, and how Toonz Animation India is the greatest animation studio in that country. The final paragraph, though, is:

Toonz has also closed a mega deal with Marvel Studios for doing 104 episodes of Marvel characters (X-Men Franchise) and also another 3 picture DVD deal with Paramount Pictures, USA. All of these latest projects are in 3D arena.

A different press release announces that the Rhythm & Hues India studio (a subsidiary of Rhythm & Hues in Los Angeles) is hiring 3D character animators for the Garfield 2 theatrical feature, scheduled for release in America in late June (but see below). This is additional evidence that Indian studios are getting their work into America, even if not their own original features; and a partial explanation of why the Indian animation industry considers it worth bombarding American animation industry personnel with its press releases.

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ˇZANAHORIAS ELECTRóNICAS!

-- Comments on Last Week's Distribution:

There have been comments in Apa L during the last couple of weeks about the earliest Product Placement in TV cartoons. This is not product placement, but last Tuesday, March 28, on his website, Mark Evanier posted a video link to the original 1960 first season TV commercial in The Flintstones which shows Fred and Barney Rubble smoking Winston cigarettes.

As long as we are talking about cartoons showing adult subjects, the Cartoon Brew website has links to & discusses the Disney educational animated cartoons The Story of Menstruation (March 26), VD Attack Plan (March 24), and a 1944 Disney-produced full-page cartoon advertisement from Look magazine for sulfa drugs showing Mickey Mouse fighting gonorrhea (March 24). The Cartoonbrew site also has a video link (March 31) titled "2006 CG Implosion" to the trailer for Garfield 2, which it predicts will be a bomb - although maybe not as bad as Disney's forthcoming animated The Wild or live-action Underdog features.

Vanamonde #672 - (Hertz) Technically, Reynard the fox was ruled by the Nazi censors to be very politically incorrect, which is the main reason why there was never a German edition of van Genechten's Van den vos Reynaerde; only the Dutch editions. The German Ministry of Propaganda gave it a very condescending rejection sometime after its original Dutch magazine publication in 1937, saying that while van Genechten undoubtedly meant well in writing it, the topics of the International Jewish Menace and Racial Purity were too important to be treated as satire; and Reynard the fox was too notorious as a chicken thief and disrespectful of authority to make a proper Nazi role model. Van Genechten, an activist in the Dutch equivalent of the Nazi Party, the NSB (National Socialist Movement), refused to accept this putdown. He was apparently determined to show that the NSB could be creative within the Nazi ideals without merely following the orders of the German Nazi leaders. After Germany conquered the Netherlands in 1941 and desperately needed Dutch collaborationists to run the country, van Genechten became a high Dutch government official. He got Van den vos Reynaerde published as a book (the edition that I had), and produced as an animated cartoon (called a feature, but apparently only 20 minutes). The Germans did not prevent this, but they controlled all film distribution and the animated film was never released. Probably an equally important reason for the non-release was that the film was not completed until 1943, by which time the Dutch public had started passive resistance to the Nazi occupation including boycotting propaganda films. The Germans may have felt that releasing such an obvious propaganda movie which the public would refuse to go to see would have been a waste of scarce film production materials. See "Reynard the Fox and the Jew Animal", by Egbert Barten and Gerard Groeneveld, in Animation World Magazine, October 1996 (online at http://mag.awn.com/ and go to "Back issues"), for more details. By the way, van Genechten's novel was specifically a sequel to the original Medieval fable, not a modernist revision of it. Van Genechten was sentenced to death for war crimes after the war, and committed suicide in December 1945.

Godzillla Verses #81 - (DeChancie) If odd flavors of ice cream like ginger can be popular at Loscons, then odd flavors of soft drinks like passion fruit should be popular at the Worldcon. ## Thanks very much for "Phil Castora International Aeroport". This is worthy of submission in some Hemingway writing contest.

De Jueves #1472 - (Moffatt) Dorothy did not find it good to be home for long. Or, it might be more accurate to say that she soon decided that the Emerald City was her true home. The Return to Oz movie may be dreadfully depressing (and it terrifies young children), but technically it is not a bad movie. ## Yes, Grahame's The Wind in the Willows was first published in October 1908. ## Well, then, look for the "Paris" sign - five letters -- in an obvious non-Latin alphabet. The address, according to Citysearch, is 4820 Laurel Canyon Boulevard, Valley Village 91607. It is pretty well hidden at the back of the mini-mall at that corner. I got some of the Russian Oz novels by Aleksandr Volkov there (for the illustrations), some Russian animation on DVD, and a few other things. I was going to get some of the Russian music CDs when/if I ever got a CD player. I was mostly interested in illustrated childrens' books, not non-illustrated adult books, so I did not check for any Russian adult s-f novels. It may be worth checking for the Russian editions of John DeChancie's novels. ## "Besides any real toad would be Much Smaller than a mole." According to various websites, "Adult Cane Toads (in Australia) are usually heavy-built and weigh an average of up to 1.8kg. (4 lbs.). Their size may vary from 15-23 cm. (4-9 in.)" "Toads Found in British Gardens" gives their average size as smaller; "Females up to 130mm, males up to 80mm." American moles: "The three major moles pest species include the Eastern mole, the Townsend's mole (coastal Washington and Oregon states) and Broad-Footed mole. Eastern moles range in size from 5 to 8 inches in length and have closely cropped hair that is gray to silver in appearance. The Townsend's mole is 8 to 9 inches in length and is blue-black to gray in color. Finally, the Broad-Footed mole is also 5 to 8 inches but is brownish gray in color." British moles are about the same size; websites give their measurements in metric as 14 cm. It seems that average moles and toads are about the same size, and cane toads are larger than moles. The British water or black rat is "Smaller than the brown rat. Body length: 12 - 24 cm; tail longer than body at 14 - 26 cm." ## While the condition of the hotel's golf course during Westercon XIX was a major part of that conference's con reports, it has nothing to do with the Bouncing Potatoes at that con's banquet. The banquet included croqueted(?) potatoes, which were so hard and rubbery that Astrid Anderson discovered that they bounced. She pointed this out to everyone, and Poul Anderson immediately improvised a song, "Bouncing Potatoes" to the tune of "Waltzing Matilda", which everybody sung. There was also the fried egg in the hotel's coffee shop, which was so hard that Bill Rotsler drew a cartoon on it, which was passed around throughout the con. The hotel manager took all this as Hostile Criticism (or more likely he had already decided to try to make the fans pay for badly-needed renovations) and accused the con of vandalism to the police, which he did not get away with since all the examples he pointed out of fan-caused damage were obvious examples of long-standing deterioration. He also accused the fans of planning to leave without paying their hotel bills. The police who came out said that they would have to arrest the fans if the manager insisted, but if they could prove their innocence they could then sue the hotel for false arrest. The manager promptly backed down.

I Lurk Around Betelgeuse - (Gold) You would have to take a close-up photograph of my wheelchair without me in it to get a good photograph of the wheelchair alone. Otherwise any photo would just be of me sitting in the wheelchair. The new brake lever is probably too small to show in photographs. ## After consideration, I felt that the errors in Locus' report of my donation to the Eaton collection were too minor to be worth demanding corrections. ## I hope that L.A.con IV's policy of giving a free membership to a full-time caretaker, plus the free hotel room that I am offering, will help me to find one. ## According to one Hollywood website about the Chinese Theatre, "The theater was known as Mann's Chinese from 1973 until 2001, when the original name of Grauman's was restored." ## I left all the puns such as the General named Les S. Moore in Xanthan Gumm out of my review of it. Be glad. Be very glad. Incidentally, Xanthan Gumm laughs at his (its?) own jokes.

Herewith, A Ticket For Travel On The Universal Cereal Bus - (Cantor) Schirm confirmed to me at the LASFS meeting last week that he does not have a computer yet. But he is considering getting one.