Gerstein Blogs!

Posted at 6:10 pm on April 24, 2009 by Harry | Filed under Disney, Good News, David Gestein, Blogs

The Best Vietnamese Restaurant in America

Remember the Betty Boop Diner I blogged about almost four years ago? It was apparently supposed to be the flagship location of a chain of ‘em. But expansion stalled after two locations that I know of–the one in Union Square which I wrote about, and one in the Serramonte Mall in Daly City, a couple of exits down 280 from my house.

They’re both gone now. (Actually, they’ve been gone for awhile–in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m behind on my blogging here, since Technologizer keeps me pretty darn busy.) I don’t remember what became of the Union Square brand, but the Serramonte one is now a Vietnamese soup joint:

But the cool thing is, they haven’t completely redecorated. One wall is still dominated by an amazing 3D diorama by T. Peterson of a theater full of Betty’s friends–Grampy, Bimbo, Koko, Pudgy, and others. They used to watch Boop cartoons on the TV embedded in the display; I’m not sure what it shows now.

These pictures are fuzzy because my iPhone was the only camera I had with me when I poked my head into the restaurant. I need to remember to take some better shots. But if there’s any justice in this world, the whole thing will be declared some sort of national cartoon landmark so it can’t be removed, no matter what might end up in the space.

Posted at 10:26 pm on March 28, 2009 by Harry | Filed under Betty Boop, Soup

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My Forry Story

I’m not a science-fiction fan. My relationship with Famous Monsters of Filmland consisted of flipping through it at the newsstand maybe twice as a kid and deciding not to buy it. But I’m still saddened by the death of Forrest J. Ackerman, one of the first people on the planet ever to think of himself as a fan (starting circa 1926, when he was ten years old)…and a fan until the end.

I knew Ackerman from his San Diego Comic-Con panels, which I made a point of attending and found consistently delightful. Forry repeating himself and not always hearing the question was a better representative of what Comic-Con should be than an infinite number of Kevin Smith panels or fawning previews of movies that deserve nothing but pity. I mean it when I say that the fact he won’t be at the con next year–probably, although I’m not assuming anything, since you never know–is a fairly major argument against making the trip and fighting my way through the crowds.

And here’s my Forry story. It takes place about five years ago at the breakfast buffet in the basement of the Marriott next to the San Diego Convention Center. I’m there with a bunch of Apatoons friends. We notice that Forry has arrived–looking distressingly feeble, in a wheelchair pushed by some sort of caretaker. He looks so incapacitated, in fact, that it’s a surprise he’s out and about.

I begin to say something thoughtful and compassionate about the sad fate of this once vibrant man…

…and then Forry bounds out of his wheelchair, joins the buffet line, and begins serving himself a hearty breakfast.

I never exchanged so much as a few words with the man, but here are two I regret never saying to him in person: “Thank you.”

Posted at 2:32 pm on December 5, 2008 by Harry | Filed under Forrest J. Ackerman, San Diego Comic-Con

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Emru Townsend

I don’t have any records on this, but I first encountered Emru Townsend about twenty years ago. Twenty years ago almost exactly–the fall of 1988, I believe. We met each other on the online service BIX, and while we didn’t meet in person until many years later, I count our friendship as beginning when we first met online.

Emru and I lived in different cities in different countries (he was from Montreal) and came from different backgrounds, but we had a heck of a lot in common. We both loved animation and comics. We both loved gadgets (especially Amiga computers, which we both owned back then). We both loved words and pictures–both the consumption and the creation thereof. When BIX launched a section to animation, it was therefore no surprise that we both helped to run it. And we continued to happily collaborate, in one way or another, from then on–he wrote for my fanzine, I wrote for his fanzine, and he ended up doing lots of wonderful work for PC World, the magazine and Web site where I worked.

In those good old BIX days, I was in touch with Emru on more or less a continuous basis, and he was such a vivid personality that I felt like I knew him extremely well even though we’d never laid eyes on each other. He was smart, funny, talented, and, above all, a remarkably calm, sensible person. When we finally did meet, when I visited Montreal on business, it felt sort of like a small family reunion with someone I’d never encountered in person and who wasn’t a relative, along with his wife, Vicky. Emru cooked me steak and walked me around town (including a stop at the comic shop where his sister, Tamu, worked), and we sat around and talked, and talked. He was precisely the same person I loved knowing online.

One of the small highlights of my career to date involved a story idea I came up with for PC World called “The Ten Worst Games of All Time.” Several people on staff politely told me that it was it was a marginal idea for an article. I kind of liked it, and assigned it to Emru. He did a bang-up job, and it was very popular. And then I was listening to one of my favorite radio shows, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, and heard it do a segment on the show. I pinged Emru to see if he knew, and he said that he did, and that Wait Wait was a favorite of his, too. Sheer joy.

In recent years, Emru blogged for PC World, and helped us cover the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas each January, so that show turned into another mini-reunion each year. (He often talked about his son, Max.) He was going to attend CES 2008 for us, but shortly before the show, he was feeling poorly and saw a doctor. He soon learned he had leukemia–and that his best chance at beating it would require finding a match for a bone marrow transplant.

He reacted in typical Emru fashion: He and Tamu founded a site called Heal Emru which was in part a platform for trying to find a donor–but it ended up spreading the word about bone marrow donations in general. I know that it will save lives.

Emru got his bone marrow transplant, and blogged about it at Heal Emru, with typical grace and good humor. But it wasn’t enough. He passed away tonight, with his family at his bedside. I’m still trying to process this information, but I feel extremely fortunate to have known him.

More to come…

Posted at 11:35 pm on November 11, 2008 by Harry | Filed under Harry-Go-Round

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The Main Difference Between Germany and the U.S.

I’m not sure where I last saw the Beagle Boys in public in the states, other than in a comic-book store. But I was just in Berlin for the giant IFA consumer electronics show, which had a “Kids’ Playground” pavilion. Which was decorated with a large picture of the guys:

I suspect nobody reading this would disagree with what I’m about to say: Early and frequent exposure to the Beagle Boys should be an essential part of every healthy childhood.

Posted at 10:30 pm on August 30, 2008 by Harry | Filed under Beagle Boys, Germany

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Stinkerbell?

No comment, just a picture, a link, and a silent tear.

Posted at 7:06 pm on August 18, 2008 by Harry | Filed under Disney, Tinkerbell

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Great Artifacts of Hanna-Barbera Merchandising

While strolling through an antique collective in Sebastopol, California this weekend, I came across an unopened vintage package of Huckleberry Hound birthday party plates (pardon the fuzzy iPhone photo):

The characters represented include a poor tracing of a stock post of Huck, even worse renditions of Yogi, Boo Boo, Yakky Doodle, Snuffes, and Mr. Jinks, a barely recognizable Pixie and Dixie, a couple of crows, a wasp…and a giant cowboy mouse wearing a hat identifying himself as “Tex.”

I don’t remember a Tex Rodent in early Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Am I forgetting him?

Posted at 10:32 pm on August 5, 2008 by Harry | Filed under Huckleberry Hound, Tex Rodent, Hanna-Barbera

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Bolt and Up

I almost didn’t go to the Disney animation preview at the San Diego Comic-Con. It was in Hall H, and anything in Hall H is there because thousands of people are going to show up. I didn’t wanted to wait in line for eons; I didn’t want to get trampled; I didn’t want to be let into the room when the event was halfway over.

But I decided to try my chances, and while thousands of folks did indeed show up, getting in wasn’t too hard. And the wait to see glimpses of Disney’s Bolt and Pixar’s Up was worth it.

Until now, I didn’t know much about Bolt other than that it had originally been Chris Sanders’ American Dog, until Disney Animation management (ie, John Lassiter and Ed Catmull) replaced Sanders with Chris Williams and Byron Howard. Nobody likes to see an artist’s baby taken away from him, and Sanders’ Lilo and Stitch was easily the best cartoon that Disney released during its pre-Lassiter decline and fall. I also saw the trailer tacked onto the front of Wall-E, which showed that Sanders’ quirky vision left the film when he did. So my instinct was to be wary.

Williams and Howard showed about twenty minutes of Bolt in rough form–a surprisingly substantial percentage of the movie. And it looked…potentially okay. Disney is in such a period of rebuilding that I sometimes almost forget it makes animated features other than the Pixar ones. (Chicken Little was hyperactive and disposable; Meet the Robinsons couldn’t overcome the liability of being based on a book without a plot.) Bolt looks like it may at the very least be a step forward, even if it’s clearly a decidedly Disneyesque mass-market film rather than an oddball departure.

Bolt is about a dog who stars in a TV show in which he has superpowers, and the first chunk of the film we saw was a long scene from his show, rife with stunts, explosions, and cars driving off of things. It was nicely staged, but lacking in soul, but I’m hoping that’s kind of the point, since the story’s springboard involves Bolt thinking he really is a superhero, and having trouble adjusting to life in the real world. It also felt overly long. We’ll see.

The second chunk we saw involved Bolt’s real-world adventures. They involved some Disney/modern animation cliches–a cute-but-manic sidekick, a crisis of confidence on the part of the hero, etc.–but I liked the surprisingly low-key feel. (John Travolta as a dog sounds like stunt casting, but it works.) And I laughed more than once. So I’m hopeful.

Williams and Howard talked about the film using new technology to provide a look that’s painterly rather than photorealistic. I love the idea–I’ve brooded about computer animation’s fixation on photorealism for years–but the clips we saw didn’t look dramatically different from other recent CGI films. (In one scene, you can see every one of Bolt’s hairs, all beautifully rendered; I don’t know if I’ve ever seen one of Pluto’s hairs.) I’m hoping the finished product will show more of the painterly look.

After the Bolt preview, Pete Docter talked about Up and shared a clip–the first time one’s been shown in public. We learned that the movie stars a 78-year-old man (voiced by Ed Asner!) who attaches balloons to his little house and takes flight to a spectacularly exotic part of Venezuela, with a stowaway boy scout in tow. They have adventures there, although Docter didn’t talk much about the nature of those adventures.

Everyone’s comparing Up to a Miyazaki film–granted, without knowing all that much about it–and Docter seemed pleased by the comparison. I like the fact that the movie stars a cranky human senior citizen; I like the look of what we saw; I think that if nothing else, people who thought that Wall-E’s robots represented a backwards step for the ambition of Pixar’s character animation may be relieved. (The image above is from the film’s online teaser, not from the movie itself.) I can’t imagine any major studio other than Pixar deciding to do Up–including the rest of Disney.

(Over at Cartoon Brew, Amid linked to an Entertainment Weekly report on the Con preview that spoke of fanboys liking Bolt but fleeing from Up. I confess that I left a bit early myself and therefore can’t judge how the exodus from the hall went, but I had a good excuse: I was racing off to see Ray Bradbury. In any event, I like the fact that Pixar is willing to make a film that might cause animation fanboys to flee, and which stars a character who’d clearly not designed to look good as a plush doll or an action figure.)

I liked the look of what we saw of Up; it wasn’t the least bit photorealistic. On the other hand, it may not have been fully rendered, either, and the opportunities for hyper-realism probably lie in the Venezuelan scenes, not the brief snippet we saw.

These days, I don’t get out to new animated features unless my heart is in it–for instance, I haven’t seen Kung Fu Panda yet. It’s no surprise that I was already assuming that Up would be worth the effort, but I now know that I’ll see Bolt, too. That’s something.

And hey, does anyone know what Chris Sanders is working on at the moment?

Posted at 12:02 pm on July 27, 2008 by Harry | Filed under Disney, Pixar, Bolt, Up

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Barack and Me

I’ve been following all the controversy over the New Yorker Obama cover in a state of bemused disappointment. The kerfuffle would seem to indicate that an awful lot of people in this country have no sense of humor, or at least don’t understand the notion of satire. I’m a huge admirer of Barry Blitt, the artist who did the cover–and I’d count this cover among his best pieces of work ever.

I’m glad, at least, that New Yorker editor David Remnick isn’t backing down or apologizing to anyone.

Oh, and did I mention that Barry Blitt has drawn me? Granted, it was as a weirdo marrying a laptop, not a terrorist–but I was thrilled, not offended…

Posted at 9:16 pm on July 14, 2008 by Harry | Filed under Barack Obama, Barry Blitt, David Remnick, The New Yorker

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A Scrappy Sendoff

Monday was my last day at PC World, after an amazing thirteen-and-a-half year ride. My colleagues threw a wonderful party to say goodbye. And among the things they gave me is this amazing drawing by John Cuneo, one of my favorite illustrators. That’s me (with my phone around my neck–I really wear it like that), Scrappy (with GPS handheld), and my Mazda3 with the license plates I have no intention of giving up…