Youtube's Thumbnail

 

The thumbnail for "The Hunt for Red October" on youtube is blue. Who are the ad wizards who came up with that one?

Football on Film

 

Lately I've been watching old football highlights on youtube. There's this whole genre where they'll take a particular game from the 80s or 90s or what-have-you and condense it into 15-20 minutes of the deciding moments. It's great nostalgia as well as an interesting barometer to see how much has changed. A word to regular football viewers: football in the 1980s doesn't even appear to be the same sport as football now - and that's not a complement to the current iteration.

So anyways, posting football highlights here would be futile but here is an extremely well made "Football on Film" edit. That clips with no context can still affect the viewer emotionally is a very strange phenomenon.

Will Vinton's Claymation Christmas Celebration

 

I saw "Claymation Christmas Celebration" once, when it aired for the first time in 1987, and not a single time since then until today. Now I can't figure out why this isn't a Christmas classic that gets aired year after year throughout the generations.

It's colorful, it's whimsical, it's got great music. It's smart without the whiff of being "educational" - it doesn't talk down to its audience. It's playful without being disrespectful - either to the holiday or the traditions. It's the kind of entertainment that kids and adults can enjoy, pretty much, equally. And they were even able to get the California Raisins on to add some celebrity shine (yes, the California Raisins were already stars at this point and came on for a guest spot.)

Special shout-out to the recurring "What is wassail?" segments which were my favorite part, as a kid; and also to the "Carol of the Bells" segment, which is just perfectly executed goofiness.

The special isn't available in its entirety on youtube; you can get see it on archive.org.

And I didn't know how much of a legend Will Vinton was. You can see his work in the music video for "Moonwalker," "Return to Oz," "Captain EO" and invented The Noid and The California Raisins. That's amazing. He died in 2018.

The Late Show Traditions

The official David Letterman channel has released a compilation of the various Late Show Christmas traditions in one handy video. Watch it and pretend it's a new episode, I guess. Darlene Love is omitted but there's a separate compilation just for that.

Today's Mood in Gif Form

 

Remembering Time Life Music Collections

 

Remember Time Life compilations? These were collections of music (120 unforgettable hits!), around some theme or genre, which came on (about) 10 CDs - or cassettes - or records. A long playlist of music isn't so special but specifically, here, I'm looking at the infomercials for the collections.

I've watched a few and the one above is my favorite. It overlaps the Yacht Rock genre pretty well and I love those laid back 70's vibes (70's and 80's).

My favorite aspect about them revolves around the live "presenters" they always have to have. All the clips of each song are like 5 seconds long but some of them get introduced by the hosts as if it's a radio DJ scenario. When you intro a specific song and then the clip of the song is over after 5 seconds it's like... that was so pointless.

A few other highlights:

The "Best of Soft Rock" (above) apparently comes from that specific time when music existed on the internet but not streaming. Part of their pitch is: buy the collection because, what are you going to do, download all these songs and burn them to CD yourself? Don't be crazy!

In "Summer Breeze" they seem to be taking advantage of the Yacht Rock resurgence. Apparently these are still going as of 2022 when music streaming is extremely available.

The one for "80's Music Explosion" features Belinda Carlisle as one of the "presenters" and her acting is a wonder of alien roboticness.

A few stray thoughts:

Do you think these could be a hit with the tiktok generation? If the song changes every 10 seconds, are you in that sweet-spot where they don't get bored? Is this the future of music?

These are great background entertainment for doing work, I find.