And you guys played Hampton Court - can’t believe we haven’t had a “Comes alive” gag yet - consider it made.
Damn that arse crack is huge!
That last fella had a dozen too many Jammy Dodgers.
that guy literally split open and melted right there in the summer sun
Took some pix at the NJ Winegrowers Festival at Allaire State Park in central NJ. For the most part, NJ wines are, meh, but we were able to find one or two that had some things we liked. Bought about a half dozen bottles, so there little festival must pay off for them.
The weather since Friday has been super fantastic in NJ. We’ve been lucky to have picked it for vacation, although tomorrow we leave for Evanston IL until Sunday to attend a wedding and hang with a bunch of college friends.
But Saturday was idyllic at the wine festival. There was a light jazz band playing Brubeck and Evans, and the sausage and pepper subs always hits the spot at these fairs. And this is especially true after 20 or more sips of different wines.
I collaged these pix together so as conserve memory and screen space. That’s a wine checklist that Marie’s pondering, and that’s a 2003 Winter Tour hat on ma head. My favorite.
I didn’t notice this at first, but someone tell me in that last pic of Ian’s that the guy sitting to the left of the guy with the buttcrack showing doesn’t look exactly like Leslie Nielson!!
FUCK! So he does!!!
Maelzoid, we have just been fortunate enough to meet a local promoter that has helped us out big time when it comes to larger gigs like Festivals and paid events. She works at a local instrument repair shop and has lots of contacts, what also helps is that she genuinely digs our music.
I’d say try and find someone local to you that has some sort of involvement in events or promotion and just really impress them when you play!
The Hampton Court thing was good, we played really well but we’re on first at around midday so it hadn’t really got busy enough yet. There were people watching though, it was just nice to play on a bigger stage outside in the sun. I will put up a couple of videos on YouTube and post them in a bit!
Now THAT is what I joined up for, that right there!
some quality photos there by the way 
You joined for a Leslie Nielson sighting too?!
All right!
Welcome aboard.
and of course good ol’ Leslie chilling at Hampton Court in what I may say is a fine salmon flavoured shirt.
thanks 
Had lunch today with the guy who was the head animator at the studio where Rocky and Bullwinkle were produced in the sixties. Harvey was also responsible for a bunch of other characters that I will get into in a follow up post. Have to make dinner right now, but I’m real proud to have met the guy and honored that he autographed a print of his work for me.
kick ass, is that print from the 60’s?
I should post some pics of new apartment.
Once I get everything in order I will.
Maybe.
No. It’s a print of some sort that Uncle Harvey brings along for admirers. Don’t think it’s anything special, outside of being autographed by the guy who actually coordinated the cartooning of all of those Rocky and Bullwinkle shows.
Besides working on the Bullwinkle show and all of the associate characters like Fractured Fairytales and Peabody’s Improbable History, Harvey Siegel Williams was also head animator for Underdog, Dudley Doright, Hoppity Hooper, the Trix rabbit, King Leonardo, and was instrumental on the design for Tony the Tiger.
Jay Ward and Bill Scott, the creators and producers of the shows subcontracted the animation to Siegel’s operation which was set up as Gamma Productions in Mexico City, as an attempt to save the high cost of animating a regular cartoon series. The production quality of these shows was noticeably substandard, as numerous errors were easily identified by anyone who watched the show with a critical eye. But it became the signature charm of the series that they were so obvioulsy flawed visually because the humor and stories became more attractive to adults than to kids at that time period in the sixties. It was a time when cartoons moved from Saturday morning kids shows into prime time for both kids and adults. R&B was one of those cutting edge attempts at bridging the generation gap, a term that was coined in that period as well.
That is pretty damn cool man. How did you end up meeting this guy? Rocky and Bullwinkle was one of my favorites as a kid. Right up there with the Flintstones and all that other Hannah Barbara stuff. Do they show this in syndication anymore? I can’t remember the last time I saw an episode and those movies totally killed it, but I would definately tune in if that was still on tv.
Uncle Harvey is the real uncle of that friend here at work who I’ve spoken about before on the OKP. Steve Lance has appeared in a couple of bit parts in the first Star Trek movie and in Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories. But he is also the author of that book “Written Out of Televison”.
When Harvey was coming north from his home in San Antonio to visit his family, Steve arranged for myself and one other person from work whose father is also a comic strip cartoonist (most notably for a strip called “Twins” that was sindicated successfully in many newspapers more than 25 years ago), to be invited over to lunch at his parents house to meet Harvey. I’ve often talked to Steve about Rocky and Bullwinkle, because it too was one of my favorite cartoons, and he always spoke about his uncle being the chief animator for Jay Ward productions.
While we visited for the short time we were with him, I was hoping that he would just do a couple of simple orignal sketches for us, just to see his technique. But Steve’s parents, much to his chagrin, invited several aunts and uncles over to the same lunch, so Harvey was put upon and I didn’t want to impose.
Steve also made copies of some original model sketches that his uncle had given to him when he was a kid, and Steve made copies for Dan and I. They are amazing practice sketches of the main characters from the show in different attitudes that were used as examples for the crew of animators who created the cells, the bulk of whom were native Mexicans. Some of the model sheets have directions in Spanish.
Harvey also autographed one of these copies of Peabody and Sherman for me, and captioned the dialog with words “Mr. Marconi you have to invent the radio”, which was pretty close to the actual dialog from an episode about Gugliermo Marconi. I’ll try to scan that one and post it here this weekend.
It was definitely cool to meet this guy. Pieces of my youth for sure.
Oh shit Fone! That is awesome! I actually collect animation art and I am really jealous of your new print. R&B is also one of my favorites and easily one of the best cartoons of all time. Give your buddy my regards! His work is fuckin awesome.
Yeah, I wish I had gotten to spend more time with him because the process of animation was quite an amazing merger of several different groups of people all doing their own creative effort to make the show this cohesive finished product.
Rocky and Bullwinkle was actually put together from multiple locations, New York, Hollywood, and Mexico City. Ward ran the operation, coordinated the efforts and designed and storyboarded the characters and episodes with Bill Scott. The actors recorded their parts and the pieces were spliced together into the finished audio episode back with Ward and Scott.
The audio episode and storyboard drawings were shipped to Uncle Harvey in Mexico City, where they would work out the precision of animating the movements of the characters to the timing of the dialog on tape. They would time each piece of dialog, such as, “Yes, Boris Badinov, at your service” might take five seconds. They would break that down to 24 frames per second or 120 frames of animation to have the character’s coordinated movement speak that sentence.
That didn’t necessarily mean that they would have to paint 120 individual drawings to get that done since only slight mouth movements might be required to make the scene work, but the cell would have to be individually shot 120 times with various changes in the cell from time to time for the character to appear as if it were speaking those words.
This process could get pretty complex at times especially when background and other characters are supposed to be moving all at the same time. That’s why those early cartoons are to be admired as much for their complexity of effort as much for anything else.
Besides being pieces of our youth, the basis of so much our humor today, the artwork has to be appreciated for its individual quality and character as well. I can’t call myself a collector of animation art but we do have a few Disney serigraphs, and one particular limited print of a model sheet from the Grinch That Stole Christmas signed by Chuck Jones, that really brings us a lot of happiness everytime we walk past them. And that’s the important thing.
As far as we’re concerned, we don’t really care what ‘artwork’ is worth as much as how much joy we get from it. I guess that’s kind of obvious, especially to a group like this whose members have tons of literally worthless Phish bootlegs that provide us with immeasurable hours of listening pleasure. That’s far more the key aspect of ‘artwork’ to me. I would love to fill my house with animation art of my favorite cartoons as well, because for the most part, they always bring a smile to my face.
I’ll get some of those other scans up here this weekend.
I remember watching Rocky and Bullwinkle reruns when I was younger before school.
Probably circa '86-'89.
Timeless.
why where they in mexico city? kind of odd