Category: Things that inspire
Real Things vs. Screens
My favorite attraction at any Disney park is, and always will be, The Country Bear Jamboree. I understand there are those who find it hokey and even lame, but to me it really is a magical attraction and I would take it over many of today’s modern attractions.
You see, to me, real things are always more jaw dropping and awesome than watching computer generated things on a screen. The Escape from Gringotts ride at Universal in Orlando, probably one of the most state of the art attractions currently operating in the world? Didn’t do a thing for me. Why? Because you are looking at a screen the whole time. There’s a little piece of my brain that knows nothing I’m seeing is real, so why should I care?
Now, the Radiator Springs Racers attraction at Disney’s California Adventure is just amazing to me. They build real, life size, animatronic figures of the Cars characters and you can see them. Right there next to you. To me, that is just simply amazing.
And before you think that I’m some sort of Disney fanboy who is just hating on Universal, I’m not. The most recent update to Star Tours at Disneyland, the one that replaced the original movie with new movies where you have to wear 3D glasses and watch a completely computer generated film? Awful, in my opinion. Even with the ‘never the same ride twice’ technology. In the old version of the attraction, you watched a screen, but the stuff you are seeing on the screen is real. Miniature models shot with a camera. Sure there’s visual effects, but you’re seeing real things.
Anyway, back to the bears. I like them because they are real. People built these big, life sized bears. And they move and appear to play instruments. Sure, they aren’t really playing the instruments or singing, but they are real. Not 1’s and 0’s.
I also have a fondness for country music. Old time country music. Blame my Grandma Donny. She used to listen to country music, like the Oak Ridge Boys, and I used to love listening to it with her. So, the Country Bear Jamboree is my favorite and has been since I was a kid.
To that end, I have entered the somewhat crowded world of Disney podcasts by creating my own called the Country Bear Collector Show. A short video podcast where I show off a piece of my Country Bear Collection.
Yes, the show is extremely, oddly specific, but I think that’s what makes it work. Right now there is no website out there devoted specifically to Country Bear Merchandise and I think that might be what helps this show find some traction. Find a need, fill that need.
Below is the first episode. Give it a watch, even if you aren’t a CBJ fan and let me know what you think. New episodes each Friday.
You can subscribe to the Country Bear Collector Show via iTunes or by subscribing to the Saturday Morning Media YouTube Page. Also, if you want to see better pictures of the items featured in each episode, you can do so by visiting www.CBJCollector.com.
Puppet + Simple Idea = Hilarious
Happy Friday!
10 years of The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd
Ten years.
November, 7, 2014 marks the ten year anniversary of The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd as a podcast. True, the radio show started in April of 2004, streaming on Dementia Radio, an all comedy music internet radio station, but things exploded we put our first few episodes out on a podcast feed.
Podcasting was brand new. I don’t know where, but I read an article that mentioned it in September of 2004. I spent most of October researching exactly how to do it and then, on November 7, 2014, EPISODE #101 of The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd was pushed out into the podcast world.
In those days there were not that many podcasts and the joke among podcasters was, in order to tell someone about the podcast, you had to first explain what exactly podcasting was. In those early days, it seemed, there were a few types of Podcasts. There were the folks like Dawn & Drew who took the whole ‘no FCC rules thing’ and ran with it, producing shows that were blue, to put it lightly. On the other end of the spectrum were the God-casters, priests who would podcast their weekly sermons. And somewhere in the middle of all that was The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd. We were the first podcast that was geared towards kids and, because of that, our popularity really exploded.
I remember when we got our first email feedback. We were floored that people were actually listening to our show. Then we got an email saying that the writer’s kids loved the show. We immediately swore, right there, to take all double entendre out of future episodes (SEE: Wright Brothers’ Nuts) and make it as family friendly as possible.
From the very beginning, the show featured guest stars, mostly friends who were comedians. Our first big celebrity get though, was Leslie Carrara-Rudolph, puppeteer for Sesame Street. Then Barbara Holiday, my manager at the time, suggested she could get Arrested Development’s Jeffery Tambor. We jumped on the chance and he was more than happy to do it. Chris Hardwick was also in that episode and I remember him standing in my living room saying, “What’s a podcast?” Just look at him now.
From then on, we were extremely lucky in the stars we had on the show. Don Novello became a friend, as did Chuck McCann. Joel Hodgson and Frank Conniff, both of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 did voices for us and Frank was the guest star who returned the most times and played the most characters. The highlight was getting to work with two heroes, both legends in the voiceover world, June Foray and Stan Freberg. I will remember those sessions for a very long time.
Our show went from twelve listeners to over 85,000 a month at it’s peak. The podcast helped us meet people from all over the world, some of whom I am still in contact to this day. It opened the door for me doing the podcast for The Jim Henson Company, which opened up the door for me to become a puppeteer with the company.
Even though there hasn’t been a new show since 2008, outside of Dr. Steve’s Thanksgiving songs, the show still gets tons of downloads every week and every once in awhile, I get an email, much like that first one, that makes me smile because I know that Doug and I created something pretty special that touched a lot of people.
So, happy ten years Dr. Floyd. Here’s hoping the time a space cube keeps going for another ten!
Creative Mondays #037 – If it’s not perfect, it’s not done.
Back in the early weeks of this blog I wrote about going to see Joel Hodgson’s show Riffing Myself gave me a lot of ideas for posts in this blog. Looking back over my notes I found one more that I think deserves mention here.
Joel spoke on how one of the things that really captivated him growing up were the album covers of Roger Dean. Roger Dean is an artist who designed album covers for a lot of different bands when Joel was growing up, and still does to this day. He is probably most widely known for his ‘far out’ designs for the band Yes. He also came up with the, sort of interweaving, logo the band has used for decades. When Joel was younger, Roger Dean collected a lot of his designs in a book called Views and it became a big inspiration to him. He mentioned that not only were Dean’s designs in the book, there were also pictures of the design in process. Starting with rough pencil sketches to the finished project. Joel said this really clued him in to the idea that really great art isn’t just made instantly. There’s a lot of trial and error to getting something right.
Looking at Dean’s work gave him the idea of, “If it’s not perfect, it’s not done.” Dean would labor over something until it is exactly the way he wanted it and this process is all laid out in Views. Joel adopted that in his work in creating. He realized in order for something to be done, it had to be perfect.
I agree with this. I whole heartedly agree that is there is more work to be done on a creative project, it should get done. But there’s also a very dangerous side to this philosophy. It’s one we will delve into again in the coming weeks but, if you’re constantly striving for perfection, you’ll never release your art. You’ll get mired down in getting the current piece so perfect, you’ll never release it.
I don’t think what Joel is talking about when he says if it’s not perfect, it’s not done is that you constantly work on something until it can’t be perfected anymore. I believe he’s saying until your piece of art is the way YOU want it and YOU are happy with it, it isn’t done. Now, I don’t know Roger Dean personally but I think if you asked him, and he was like most artists, he would tell you that there are little pieces of the Yes logo that he wishes were different. And maybe he even changed those things in later revisions. But he worked on the design until he felt it was perfect to show the band and then release.
If you are working on a piece of art and there’s something bugging you about it, change it. You need to be happy with what you release. Don’t release art that doesn’t please you. But don’t spend the rest of your life chasing that perfection. There’s got to be a point when the project is done and you move on to the next one.
I’ve heard it said that writers write books for just one person. I think that can be applied to all fields of art, not just writing. A painter paints to impress one person. A dancer creates a dance to please one person. And I think that person, should be, you, THE ARTIST. If you aren’t happy with what you’re making, do not release it.
If it isn’t perfect (meaning makes you happy), it’s not done.
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Do you wait until you are happy with a piece of art before you release it? Or do you fall into the trap of always wanting to tweak it and never let it go? Let me know in the comments below. Have a great week!