Two of my oldest songs finally complete. The fact that they both have spy themes is a coincidence- they were written a year or two apart, and I just put them together this year because of the similarity.
"Hick Spy" is the very first riff I ever wrote on guitar, when I was just starting out at about age 13. There was just something about it that's stuck with me all these years. The title was suggested by my mom, who said "It sounds like a spy hick" (the title was originally "Spy Hick") when she first heard me playing it.
The song is also important for another reason: It's why I play with my pick upside down. I believe I had just learned the James Bond theme, but somehow the guitar's tone wasn't sounding "fat" enough, so I flipped my pick the other way around and that seemed to do the trick. I haven't switched back since, and it's probably an integral part of my sound- at least, I've been playing that way for so long I probably couldn't play it any other way.
At some point I tuned the guitar to drop D.
So last year I finally recorded it and gave it the arrangement it needed- something that blended bluegrass and spy music.
"Undercover Love", meanwhile, is one of my oldest lyrics, written when I was about 11-12 (before I ever starting taking guitar lessons), albeit with some changes to be less awkward.
My handwritten notes from back then have the bizarre combination of a "speedy jazz piano intro" and a "grunge solo" (I doubt I knew very much about grunge outside of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" at the time), so I felt like a blend of spy music and alt rock was the only genre that made any sense. I also was inspired by the Jack White penned Bond theme "Another Way to Die", even I always thought the melody was boring, since it seemed like the only real Venn diagram of spy and rock that existed before.
The lead guitar is also inspired by "You Only Live Twice", while the grunge elements are supposed to be a cross between Nirvana and Pearl Jam, chorus effects and all.
(Full disclosure: the piano intro was originally recorded at third speed. I can't play keyboards that fast.)
Two of my oldest songs finally complete. The fact that they both have spy themes is a coincidence- they were written a year or two apart, and I just put them together this year because of the similarity.
"Hick Spy" is the very first riff I ever wrote on guitar, when I was just starting out at about age 13. There was just something about it that's stuck with me all these years. The title was suggested by my mom, who said "It sounds like a spy hick" (the title was originally "Spy Hick") when she first heard me playing it.
The song is also important for another reason: It's why I play with my pick upside down. I believe I had just learned the James Bond theme, but somehow the guitar's tone wasn't sounding "fat" enough, so I flipped my pick the other way around and that seemed to do the trick. I haven't switched back since, and it's probably an integral part of my sound- at least, I've been playing that way for so long I probably couldn't play it any other way.
At some point I tuned the guitar to drop D.
So last year I finally recorded it and gave it the arrangement it needed- something that blended bluegrass and spy music.
"Undercover Love", meanwhile, is one of my oldest lyrics, written when I was about 11-12 (before I ever starting taking guitar lessons), albeit with some changes to be less awkward.
My handwritten notes from back then have the bizarre combination of a "speedy jazz piano intro" and a "grunge solo" (I doubt I knew very much about grunge outside of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" at the time), so I felt like a blend of spy music and alt rock was the only genre that made any sense. I also was inspired by the Jack White penned Bond theme "Another Way to Die", even I always thought the melody was boring, since it seemed like the only real Venn diagram of spy and rock that existed before.
The lead guitar is also inspired by "You Only Live Twice", while the grunge elements are supposed to be a cross between Nirvana and Pearl Jam, chorus effects and all.
(Full disclosure: the piano intro was originally recorded at third speed. I can't play keyboards that fast.)
Two of my oldest songs finally complete. The fact that they both have spy themes is a coincidence- they were written a year or two apart, and I just put them together this year because of the similarity.
"Hick Spy" is the very first riff I ever wrote on guitar, when I was just starting out at about age 13. There was just something about it that's stuck with me all these years. The title was suggested by my mom, who said "It sounds like a spy hick" (the title was originally "Spy Hick") when she first heard me playing it.
The song is also important for another reason: It's why I play with my pick upside down. I believe I had just learned the James Bond theme, but somehow the guitar's tone wasn't sounding "fat" enough, so I flipped my pick the other way around and that seemed to do the trick. I haven't switched back since, and it's probably an integral part of my sound- at least, I've been playing that way for so long I probably couldn't play it any other way.
At some point I tuned the guitar to drop D.
So last year I finally recorded it and gave it the arrangement it needed- something that blended bluegrass and spy music.
"Undercover Love", meanwhile, is one of my oldest lyrics, written when I was about 11-12 (before I ever starting taking guitar lessons), albeit with some changes to be less awkward.
My handwritten notes from back then have the bizarre combination of a "speedy jazz piano intro" and a "grunge solo" (I doubt I knew very much about grunge outside of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" at the time), so I felt like a blend of spy music and alt rock was the only genre that made any sense. I also was inspired by the Jack White penned Bond theme "Another Way to Die", even I always thought the melody was boring, since it seemed like the only real Venn diagram of spy and rock that existed before.
The lead guitar is also inspired by "You Only Live Twice", while the grunge elements are supposed to be a cross between Nirvana and Pearl Jam, chorus effects and all.
(Full disclosure: the piano intro was originally recorded at third speed. I can't play keyboards that fast.)
This probably way too niche and obscure, but I remember attending a meeting for group called GHOULA (Ghost Hunters of Urban Los Angeles), who were enthusiasts and investigators of hauntings in LA.
I don't remember what year it was (sometime in the mid 2010s), but there a goth band there that evening called… Clown Fetus.
Normally I wouldn't listen to a band with that name, but I remember enjoying their music well enough. What I remember most is a song they did called "Poison Candy", which was inspired by that Halloween urban legend. My brother and my mom can back me up on this.
(I might even be able to reconstruct and record how I remember the song's refrain went...)
Thing is, I can't find anything about the band, at all. I've contacted the members of GHOULA, but they haven't posted anything online in years. I know this sounds like creepypasta territory, and saying "I swear it was real" probably won't help, but...
Anybody out there have ANY info on their music? Did they ever record anything? This might a lost cause.
I'm not usually one to speculate about upcoming movies, but this one's kind of a big deal to me.
So you probably know that I'm a huge Who Framed Roger Rabbit? fan, and I spend a lot of time thinking about how other Western animation works relate to it, so most of my thoughts concern that.
Right off the bat the trailer throws a wrench in my headcanon (not that I was especially married to it). I had always assumed that, in-universe, Warner Bros. bought out Acme sometime in the '80s, around the same time WB trademarked the Acme Corporation as a cartoon prop company in real life. (Yes, they did that. Doesn't stop some people outside of WB from using the name, though.)
But apparently in Coyote vs. Acme, it's the other way around. Which kinda makes my brain hurt. Like, what does this imply about Acme products appearing in Looney Tunes, going back to the '40s? Did Acme somehow get BIGGER than Warner Bros. during a decades long partnership? When did the buyout occur?
I'm assuming WB and Acme were separate entities at some point. (Of course, it almost doesn't matter now that Paramount is going to own WB, which is probably gonna happen in this movie's universe as well.)
Another concern is what they might do to potentially contradict the existence of Marvin Acme. I'm imagining some big oil painting with the words "Our Founder" under it somewhere in the movie.
Now admittedly it doesn't seem as though WFRR ever actually explicitly stated Marvin Acme started the company. Just that he owns it. I guess I always just assumed he was the founder- but maybe he's second generation?
Now I totally don't blame the writers of Coyote vs. Acme for missing this, but the basic premise of suing Acme for faulty products has actually been done before.
There's a scene in the Tiny Toons episode "K-ACME TV" where Calamity Coyote sues Acme for "negligence and faulty workmanship". Sounds pretty similar, doesn't it?
I also wonder who this "Bobbo Acme" is. I assume he's supposed to be the president of Acme in 1991. Obviously there's no relation to Marvin, so maybe he changed his name when he took over the company. It seems fitting to have a toon running the company, though.
Obviously nobody expects the screenwriters of Coyote vs. Acme to have watched every single episode of Tiny Toon Adventures. It's kind of a blink-and-you'll-miss-it segment, and I forgot about it until I rewatched it not too long ago. But I'm not the only one to notice the similarity.
And it does make you wonder how Wile E. somehow never heard of the lawsuit.
On a related note, there's a very obscure book called Coyote Capers released a year earlier in 1990 that references another president of the Acme Corporation, a fellow named "I.M. Ritch"- and with a name like that, I assume he's also a toon.
I guess Bobbo replaced him soon afterwards. (Obviously the writers of Tiny Toons didn't know this book existed.)
...And maybe Acme Pictures specifically bought out WB, I dunno.
And on another related note, I don't think Steve Martin's character "Mr. Chairman" in Back in Action is strictly canon, since the ending of that movie revealed that it's... well, a movie, even in-universe.
I'm also hoping that Coyote vs. Acme doesn't mess with my headcanon that Acme products aren't designed to work for antagonists/villains/predators, because it's funnier that way.
And hey, the Apex company from an episode of Nickelodeon's Oh Yeah! Cartoons series ("Apex Cartoon Props & Novelties") will now be owned by Acme/WB (in-universe and irl). And this is despite them referring to Acme as "inferior products from that other company", which makes me think they've been competitors this whole time. I'll bet the owner Cletus Apex (pictured) isn't too keen on it.
Of course, Apex has appeared in all sorts of other cartoons and comics, including Looney Tunes and Disney, so it sort of doesn't matter anyway.
Am I overthinking all of this? Am I taking what's most likely just a simple gag in a trailer that may not even reflect the content of the movie itself too seriously? Of course I am. Nobody but me cares about this stuff. But it's a still a fun thought exercise.
So there's a new lore drop regarding Coyote vs. Acme. The official Twitter account has been posting these "Acme Files" that look like court papers.
This one in particular mentions Calamity Coyote and Little Beeper. It's a different product than the episode depicts (it mentions rocket roller skates instead of a catapult), but it convinces me that the writers (or at least the prop makers and/or social media gurus) absolutely know that the Tiny Toons episode exists.
Very curious to see how much this reflects what we see in the movie.
We're brothers who can provide retro cartooning, character design, original music, storyboarding, voice acting, etc.
I've started yet another art gallery on this new website. Hopefully it'll garner some attention and get me some commission work, who knows. Their basic service is free, at least. Help a fella out, will ya?
In the Who Framed Roger Rabbit universe, it's easy to assume that toons encompass all forms of animation: cel animation, stop-motion, CG, cut-outs, what have you.
But something I've been having difficulty with is how animation-adjacent characters fit into it.
Puppets (especially Muppets)
The Muppets are especially problematic. The nature of their reality is uncertain and all over the place- they frequently make live appearances, with or without visible puppeteers. The movies imply that they can move independently of a puppeteer. Kermit is famous for describing Jim Henson as "always having his hands in a lot of things", a joke common enough to have it's own wiki entry (https://muppet.fandom.com/wiki/%22hand_inside%22_joke). Do they gain independence from the puppeteers over time? Do they switch back and forth freely?
They even appear in traditional animation, which just adds to the confusion.
The TV special The Muppets at Walt Disney World does seem to confirm that they coexist, though that special also has people dressed in mascot costumes (which I address later).
Sometimes traditionally animated toons become puppets.
We've seen toons make the jump from cel animation to CG thousands of times, however, so perhaps this is just something toons can do- switch from one medium to another.
But what about marionettes? The whole premise of Pinocchio is that marionettes aren't normally alive, and yet the Muppets ocassionally use them to expand their mobility.
And don't get me started on how Disney's Pinocchio is a cel animated representation of a marionette.
2. Mascot costumes
I think most can agree that in the Roger Rabbit universe, the actual toon characters appear in the theme parks. After all, Disneyland is a part of the Mickey's Toontown origin story. The video game Disneyland Adventures seems to confirm this. Why have someone dress up as a toon when you've got the real thing? Toons can even be in more than one place at the same time, so surely Mickey can appear in multiple theme parks.
And yet cartoons frequently reference mascot costumes. It's almost like toons are dressing up as toons.
My best explanation is that humans in the Roger Rabbit universe use these sort of costumes as an excuse to not pay a toon's wages, and humans are cheaper somehow- and their appearance in animation is some sort of satire of this practice.
I'm not sure what to make of The Banana Splits, however. They're primarily costumes, but then they make the jump to traditional animation in the Hocus Pocus Park special. (They also had a Flash cartoon back in 1999.)
And no, I don't consider the horror movie canon. I do, however, think this 1995 UK mockumentary is canon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfuoHox2i2k
Maybe they're like those full-body puppets, like Thog from The Muppets? The stitching in Drooper's face and body seems to be implying he's like a rag doll or something.
It does make me think of that episode of R.L. Stine's The Haunting Hour "Mascot" though. Like… what's inside a puppet like that? (Not that I necessarily consider that episode canon, though.)
3. Animatronics
Unlike the others on this list, there seems to be less ambiguity about the nature of animatronics- Epic Mickey goes out of its way to distinguish them from toons, especially since the Mad Doctor turns out to be a hybrid of the two.
(Note: For reasons that are kinda complicated, I consider Epic Mickey to be a work of fiction within the Roger Rabbit universe, mainly because it doesn't reflect real life animation history, and contradicts House of Mouse. Because of that, I think it depicts an alternate timeline, a "what if", if you will.)
The My Life as a Teenage Robot episode "The Wonderful World of Wizzly" (an obvious parody of Disneyland) treats animatronics as though they're sapient robots. They're programmed to repeat the same actions over and over, which explains why they would be content to stand in the same spot 24/7.
Even Disney has poked fun at it's a small world a couple times. So it's definitely not like animatronics don't exist in the toon world.
Things get weirder when animatronic characters have animated counterparts, however.
Or when animation has animatronic characters that don't exist in real life.
Actually, this kinda puts a whole new wrinkle in how this all works. These animated representations of animatronics can't move on their own. In Five Nights at Freddy's, animatronics being able to move on their own is the whole reason it's supposed to be scary. Therefore, outside of FNAF 2 and Security Breach, animatronics are assumed to not be capable of walking around.
This is supported by other cartoons with animatronics that are supposed to be scary when they "come to life".
(Note: It's because of this expectation that the vast majority of mascot horror games, such as Bendy and the Ink Machine and Indigo Park, are unfortunately not canon to WFRR. Cartoon characters being alive and real is the cornerstone of that universe, but most mascot horror plays with the idea that they're being brought to life for the first time one way or another, and that it's unnatural.)
Even more inexplicable is this Bonkers comic that's all about a theme park replacing their characters with robots:
This might also be some sort of cost-saving scheme, but I'm not sure how maintaining a robot is cheaper than hiring a "real" toon.
But which is it? Mindless robots or self-aware robots?
Then there are times when classic animated characters are turned into animatronics...
...I don't know how these are supposed to work. Maybe they shouldn't be considered canon, I dunno.
4. Video game characters
I think it's safe to assume that video game characters like Mario and Sonic are toons, with their own cartoons on TV and in movies, though Wreck-It Ralph certainly adds its own layer of weirdness with the implication that every copy of a ROM or disc image has a distinct duplicate of a character.
And if we're going to get technical, the characters from Five Nights at Freddy's may very well just be video game characters, and not "real" animatronics, with their own in-universe animated counterparts:
You see how this can get really confusing when you factor everything in together?
Then there's THIS guy, the so-called "Frankenfox" from early '90s Fox Kids bumpers, who's a 2D animated/puppet hybrid. God knows how anyone can interpret that.
Not that it matters much, but there are some minor continuity issues in The Muppets Mayhem- or possibly major, depending on your point of view. The Muppets were never much for continuity, but these are some interesting bits of lore nonetheless.
In the season 2 episode with Cleo Laine, while they’re performing “It Don’t Mean a Thing”, Dr. Teeth mentions that he melts down their gold records to make his gold tooth.
https://youtu.be/RpyiGcWznOc?t=59
The whole conceit of The Muppets Mayhem is that The Electric Mayhem have never recorded an album before. They couldn’t get gold records if they never released an album.
There’s also the whole bit about his tooth actually being a golden box of dental floss jammed into his mouth (one of the weirder details in the show).
Of course, it’s entirely possible that Dr. Teeth was kidding about melting their gold records, retroactively.
While researching for this post, I also discovered several Tweets from the official Electric Mayhem Twitter that talk as if they’ve released several albums over the years. Probably Disney is hoping no one will notice, or they’ve forgotten about them.
https://twitter.com/ElectricMayhem/status/1631383878056157214
https://twitter.com/ElectricMayhem/status/889190878002253825
https://twitter.com/ElectricMayhem/status/1033821385758580737
https://twitter.com/ElectricMayhem/status/787742410625454080
https://twitter.com/ElectricMayhem/status/1147565624132100097
https://twitter.com/ElectricMayhem/status/1024710097874964480
https://twitter.com/ElectricMayhem/status/860917076042682368
https://twitter.com/ElectricMayhem/status/1058410911252340736
The introduction to their 2016 concert in San Francisco tells us that this is their first ever live concert. This is true in real life, of course (not counting The Muppet Show Live or their appearance on Jimmy Kimmel), so you can hardly blame them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFZLY3EpCUM
Meanwhile, Muppets Mayhem tells us that they’ve been pretty much touring nonstop.
Later on, they say that they first met in San Francisco, not New Orleans. Admittedly, they’re all confused about the exact location, so maybe they just can’t remember.
Again, none of this particularly matters, but it does make me wonder why the writers didn’t try a little harder to research this stuff, especially since it’s all easily available to see on YouTube.
Well, this interview with Floyd Pepper and Janice where Floyd says that Muppets Mayhem is "just a TV show" really throws a wrench in the whole thing.
I mean, just how many levels of reality are The Muppets supposed to be on, anyway?
So I'm a big fan of gnomes. Y'know, those little guys that are usually depicted in garden statue form.
Mostly because of this book I got when I was around 11-12. And maybe the All Things Must Pass cover.
But a few years ago I was curious where gnomes came from. Up until recently, I had assumed that gnomes came from folklore. That's... not entirely true.
The word "gnome" comes from A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders, and on the Other Spirits, by some theologist named Paracelsus in the 1500s. But other than some inspiration from German folklore about creatures who lived in mines and tapped on rocks to warn of dangers or show where veins of gold could be find- which is basically the same as kobolds and knockers- the book is mainly this guy's wackadoodle theories about elemental beings and how they... breathe rock instead of air and nonsense like that.
I'm uncertain how the word became so widespread. "Gnome" is used to translate more obscure terms for little people in some versions of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. There's a smattering of 19th century paintings and illustrations that use the word.
As far as I can tell, the word became associated with dwarf-like beings wearing pointed hats when the ceramic figurines we know so well started being sold outside of Germany and the word was used in English (i.e. UK) catalogs in the late 19th century.
Those figurines most closely resemble the tomte, nisse, and kabouters from Scandinavian and Dutch folklore, although I imagine they're sometimes called dwarfs, depending on the country. I'm not entirely sure- I haven't found much about the history of garden gnomes.
Tomte, nisse, and kabouters, for all intents and purposes, are basically the same thing as gnomes. The words are frequently translated into "gnome", and all the artwork depicting them look like gnomes. So that's as close as we get to a truly folkloric gnome.
At one point I assumed that gnomes started appearing in 19th century English literary fairy tales, and this was the ultimate origin of the classic gnome. But much to my frustration, I'm finding very little that resemble garden gnomes.
In fact, outside of the Wil Huygen books (which used the word "kabouter" in the original Dutch), there are almost no straight examples of "traditional" gnomes, which I find baffling. I tried searching for them in early 20th century comic books as well, and those aren't particularly helpful either.
There's even a trope called Our Gnomes Are Weirder.
It's like almost all the tropes we associate with gnomes are 90% in the medium of garden statuary and lawn ornaments, and everyone else is trying to subvert them in some way.
(On a related note, I very much dislike those modern gnomes where you can only see their noses, which are sold as "gonks" in the UK for some reason. It robs them of their expressiveness, and it's annoying that almost EVERY gnome has to look that way now.)
So yeah. The kind of gnome I prefer is weirdly rare. Wish I knew why.
This is way, WAY out of date. The game is now called After The Fall, with new artwork (long story) by us and a few others, and development is admittedly pretty much at a standstill.
https://bsky.app/profile/afterthefalldev.bsky.social
Found a ukulele at the thrift store today for only $7.
The nut is missing but it sounds nice and plays surprisingly in tune, considering. (The way it is now, the first fret is acting like the nut, so I have to play everything a half step up.) And replacement nuts are cheap, so I think I got a pretty darn good deal. It's got a pretty emerald green color, too.
I've taken chances on broken instruments before, and it's always been rewarding, so...
I couldn't take a good picture of the label inside with my phone, so it's hard to read, but it's just some generic quality assurance about the craftsmanship and the wood. It says it's made in China, and I couldn't find much info about the brand, although apparently "nene" means "goose" in Hawaiian, which explains the logo.
I've never actually owned a ukulele that stays in tune before. The only one I've ever had before was given to me for my birthday (pretty sure anyway)- when I fourteen or something, possibly earlier, but definitely after I got my first guitar- but it didn't have good intonation, especially when the neck started warping.
So basically I haven't had a functioning ukulele for twenty years, despite how much I like ukulele. That's what happens when you're poor.
I've always wanted to stumble on a quirky instrument at a thrift store or antique shop. So while I had picked out a pineapple shaped ukulele to eventually get online (and I do still want it), this is right down my alley. It's like... a "me" instrument, if that makes sense- it "fits in" with all the other misfits in my collection.
The new nut is here and it's ready to go! It's still adjusting a bit, and the bottom two strings are a little hard to finger on the first two frets, but it works fine. There was no glue residue to remove, so I wonder if it didn't have a nut in the first place, and came out of the factory that way accidentally. That would explain why it was in the thrift store, but not how it's worn around the edges, so I dunno.
It has a surprisingly warm tone for a soprano. I haven't heard what my old one sounds like in a long time (I'm not even sure where it is right now, somewhere in my bedroom), but if I recall correctly, it was a little thin sounding.
It's an ox bone nut that was on sale. Probably fancier than anything the brand ever used, I imagine. I was actually a little anxious about the nut somehow ruining it, even though that doesn't make much sense.
I can't help but wonder what would have happened if I had gone to that thrift store any other day. Would I have missed the chance to get this ukulele? We had been putting off donating these piles of books, DVDs, and clothes for months, and recently added a bunch of teacups and plates to the "stockpile". If we had dropped off those books in, say, January, would the ukulele not have been there?
A slight update- tuning and intonation issues became apparent after more extensive testing, as well as high action, which made me feel frustrated and depressed, but I'm figuring it out.
I was a little too eager to put the nut on, I think. I probably should've sanded the bottom a bit before making it permanent, but I used a really strong glue, and I don't think I can remove it without damaging the wood.
So I'm incrementally deepening the string slots to lower the action and improve the intonation, first with a fine grain sandpaper, then with an old butter knife to speed up the process. It's not ideal, but it's steadily improving.
Found a ukulele at the thrift store today for only $7.
The nut is missing but it sounds nice and plays surprisingly in tune, considering. (The way it is now, the first fret is acting like the nut, so I have to play everything a half step up.) And replacement nuts are cheap, so I think I got a pretty darn good deal. It's got a pretty emerald green color, too.
I've taken chances on broken instruments before, and it's always been rewarding, so...
I couldn't take a good picture of the label inside with my phone, so it's hard to read, but it's just some generic quality assurance about the craftsmanship and the wood. It says it's made in China, and I couldn't find much info about the brand, although apparently "nene" means "goose" in Hawaiian, which explains the logo.
I've never actually owned a ukulele that stays in tune before. The only one I've ever had before was given to me for my birthday (pretty sure anyway)- when I fourteen or something, possibly earlier, but definitely after I got my first guitar- but it didn't have good intonation, especially when the neck started warping.
So basically I haven't had a functioning ukulele for twenty years, despite how much I like ukulele. That's what happens when you're poor.
I've always wanted to stumble on a quirky instrument at a thrift store or antique shop. So while I had picked out a pineapple shaped ukulele to eventually get online (and I do still want it), this is right down my alley. It's like... a "me" instrument, if that makes sense- it "fits in" with all the other misfits in my collection.
The new nut is here and it's ready to go! It's still adjusting a bit, and the bottom two strings are a little hard to finger on the first two frets, but it works fine. There was no glue residue to remove, so I wonder if it didn't have a nut in the first place, and came out of the factory that way accidentally. That would explain why it was in the thrift store, but not how it's worn around the edges, so I dunno.
It has a surprisingly warm tone for a soprano. I haven't heard what my old one sounds like in a long time (I'm not even sure where it is right now, somewhere in my bedroom), but if I recall correctly, it was a little thin sounding.
It's an ox bone nut that was on sale. Probably fancier than anything the brand ever used, I imagine. I was actually a little anxious about the nut somehow ruining it, even though that doesn't make much sense.
I can't help but wonder what would have happened if I had gone to that thrift store any other day. Would I have missed the chance to get this ukulele? We had been putting off donating these piles of books, DVDs, and clothes for months, and recently added a bunch of teacups and plates to the "stockpile". If we had dropped off those books in, say, January, would the ukulele not have been there?
The three main things that are preventing me from wanting to watch Hoppers:
1. It looks like a low-budget third tier movie, and NOT like a Pixar movie
2. That stupid beaver creeps me out, and only ever seems to make that vacant, dead-eyed stare with that dumb smile- like, I'm sure that the character makes different faces, but all the clips and promo art look basically the same
3. The whole body switching thing has kinda been done to death. And besides that, if I wanted to see a fish out of water story taking place in a forest involving advanced technology, I'd watch The Wild Robot.
Found a ukulele at the thrift store today for only $7.
The nut is missing but it sounds nice and plays surprisingly in tune, considering. (The way it is now, the first fret is acting like the nut, so I have to play everything a half step up.) And replacement nuts are cheap, so I think I got a pretty darn good deal. It's got a pretty emerald green color, too.
I've taken chances on broken instruments before, and it's always been rewarding, so...
I couldn't take a good picture of the label inside with my phone, so it's hard to read, but it's just some generic quality assurance about the craftsmanship and the wood. It says it's made in China, and I couldn't find much info about the brand, although apparently "nene" means "goose" in Hawaiian, which explains the logo.
I've never actually owned a ukulele that stays in tune before. The only one I've ever had before was given to me for my birthday (pretty sure anyway)- when I fourteen or something, possibly earlier, but definitely after I got my first guitar- but it didn't have good intonation, especially when the neck started warping.
So basically I haven't had a functioning ukulele for twenty years, despite how much I like ukulele. That's what happens when you're poor.
I've always wanted to stumble on a quirky instrument at a thrift store or antique shop. So while I had picked out a pineapple shaped ukulele to eventually get online (and I do still want it), this is right down my alley. It's like... a "me" instrument, if that makes sense- it "fits in" with all the other misfits in my collection.
We've learned just the other day that German folklore has what's essentially a winged jackalope, called a "wolpertinger".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolpertinger
