More Cowbell!

This morning there was a presentation at the library that we thought would be fun to drop Madison by, one that was filled with all kinds of cowbell.  Here, Madison is playing an African cowbell, which - guess what?  I've got a fever.  And the only prescription is more cowbell!

She played this instrument and others this morning, enjoying an interesting presentation that featured steel drums, gongs, washboards, and even a didgeridoo.  Nana and Ye-Ye actually have one of those, so we may ask to play around with that some time soon too.

After the performances, we got some more books for the summer reading program - Madison is about halfway through.  We naturally got some books about music from different lands, but we also picked up a DVD of a movie that Daddy has never seen before:  "Make Mine Music."  This is one of the first Disney motion pictures, a collection of animated shorts that features "Peter and the Wolf."  It's that story that she was learning about in ballet camp, so Daddy wanted to find the Disney version.  It was great to see it at the library!  We got a bunch more books, and came home quickly - Daddy had to get to work for a bit this afternoon.  We wrote out another script for the big-bearded duck hunters to return tomorrow morning with an unusual script that parallels the story of Samson a tiny bit:  whatever you do, don't let anyone cut your beard.  It was a bit of fun to write, and should be a lot of fun to watch tomorrow.

Getting home a little early, we considered things that start with "M."  For example, we "made ours music" and made a theme of the day by watching the DVD short, "Make Mine Music."  This was a Disney movie from 1946 - we actually paused the opening credits in order to calculate the year based on the Roman numerals!  Yes, we actually did that:  MCMXLVI is 1946.  Which also starts with "M."

Anyway, it's a short movie.  It was interesting watching a Disney movie we'd never seen before, none of us.  It was enjoyable, a collection of musical segments put together, some strong and some a bit more on the experimental side.  It was very fascinating watching the discovery process of animation, as artists were trying new things and learning their craft, making it better and better.  You can see those attempts early in the "Blue Bayou" portion, where animated birds and water effects are created.  I can just picture the 1946 audience blown away by something visually new and amazing on the screen there.  From that historical perspective, this movie is even more fascinating.  Also, it cemented Daddy's love of Jerry Colonna, who narrated the baseball part of the movie.  I believe this may have been pre-Fantasia, where animators put forms to musical segments. Spoiler alert!  "Peter and the Wolf" was good, and a surprise in that the duck Sonya does not get eaten.  Seriously though, when does a flying bird not fly when fleeing from something?  It's fight or flight, so therefore it makes no sense that a flying creature would waddle around, trying to escape getting eaten.  Yes, we're pro-Sonya folks here in the house, so we were all-cheers when we discovered that Sonya survived the ordeal.

We were not all-cheers at the end of the opera-singing whale story though.  Who on earth would harpoon an opera-singing whale?  I had no idea this was how the cartoon ended.  This was actually how the entire movie ends, with a tragedy.  Our jaws dropped here, and Madison was asking if the whale was in heaven.  We were like, "Uh... yeah?"  And inside our heads, we were like, "What the heck?  They just harpooned Willie the Whale!"

Which brings us to an update in our most reprehensible Disney villain ever category.  I now think Professor Tomoaso Tetti-Tatti is up there.  I mean, how can you harpoon an opera-singing whale?  Sure, he's operating on the misunderstanding that the whale ate three opera singers.  But this "shoot first" mentality kills off Willie the Whale!

To help alleviate Daddy feeling sad, we hit the internet for some monsterific fun.  That's where Daddy had discovered earlier a "Make Your Own Monster" feature which is being used to promote the new Monsters movie that is out in theaters this week.  Madison designed a few monsters, one for herself, one for Mommy and one for Daddy.  We'll close today's update with the student cards for each of these monsters - Daddy scanned them tonight.  Incidentally, the site picked the last name "Cage," for some reason.  Madison liked the sound of it.

Maybe we can use these to get student discounts!