Month: August 2008 (Page 2 of 2)

Episode 49 of Radio Free Charleston, “The Concept Shirt” is online now. This episode features eclectic music from Asheville, North Carolina’s The Hellblinki Sextet, and Charleston/Huntington’s The Button-Flies, plus more relaxing animation, and a preview of upcoming shows by The Ghosts Of Now, The Concept, and Under The Radar.

We recorded both our musical guests July 25 at The Blue Parrot, and we want to thank Annie Lane from Doctor Senator for alerting us to the cool evening of music, where we were able to record three bands for the show. You’ll see RFC faves Doctor Senator in a few weeks on RFC.

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As promised, here’s the late version of Monday Morning Art.  Be sure to follow the jump for a preview of today’s Radio Free Charleston.  Today’s art is a digitally-assaulted photograph of the sky.  It was shot through the Bob Evans sign in South Charleston, and you can see a tiny airplane in the middle of the picture.  I played with the aspect ratio and colorized parts of the photo to lessen the boringness of the original picture.  Hope I succeeded.  It’s a study in color composition and looking up.

I have been slacking off big-time this summer when it comes to my Cafepress stores. However, you are now able to cruise over to the Monday Morning Art Cafepress store and purchase this image on a variety of garments and fine trinketry.   I’m also offering the images from the last several weeks of Monday Morning Art in the store, as well.  All of the artwork that I created for Emily haynes last Spring will be available from the PopCult Cafepress store at least through the end of summer. All proceeds will go to Emily, as will proceeds from the Monday Morning Art store. And as always, click the image for a larger version.   Continue reading

..will be posted Wednesday morning.  I’m busy working on Radio Free Charleston 49, with music from The Buttonflies and The Hellblinki Sextet, plus more cool stuff.  Until then, watch the Funny Face videos that I posted Sunday night while you wait by the computer.

Most folks over the age of 40 remember Funny Face Drink Mix.  It was a competitor to Kool Aid that came pre-sweetened with “Sweet 10” an artificial sugar-free sweetener, which was pulled from the market after it was found to cause cancer, and/or giant sentient tumors.  Kids didn’t care about the sugar or the semi-intelligent tumors. They loved the animated characters from the commercials: Goofy Grape, Root’n Toot’n Raspberry, Jolly Olly Orange, Freckle-Face Strawberry, Loud-Mouth Lime and Choo Choo Cherry.   Since the cancer scare (never a good thing for a children’s food product) several attempts to revive the drink mix failed to catch on. First Pillsbury, who owned the brand, switched to saccharine, which was also eventually found to be less than healthy.  The line limped along until 1983, when Pillsbury sold the intellectual property rights to Brady Enterprises, who never quite managed to get the drink mix back off the ground, despite years of trying.

However, after that long explanation, we get to our main video this evening.  Renegade Animation, the folks who do “Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi” and “Mr. Men” for Cartoon Network, have acquired the rights to produce a cartoon starring the characters, who were far more memorable than the drink. Here’s the three-minute pilot for the show.

 [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/B4obvHe-7D0" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

After the jump, we have some of the classic commercials, and explain some of the controversy surrounding the original character names. Continue reading