Save Our Old Cartoon Animals!

This is the first video I've ever embedded, anywhere, so I hope it works. It's a wonderful choral song, a plaintive plea for sanity in the animation business.

Michelle, Martin and I have always been vocal about how lousy the CGI animated movies have been and continue to be. Well, we were vocal while doing our podcasts, which I hope we'll be able to revive soon. No matter how badly the features turned out - did anyone really go to see Yogi Bear? - the mutant messes continue to roll off the assembly lines. We three have been protesting it forever. But none of us has been able to make our protests sound as beautiful as this.

It's composed and performed by Chris Mezzolesta, lead man of the band Power Salad. It will be appearing on his forthcoming new album. Chris is a voice artist whose main living is recording instructional audio and occasional radio commercials for major firms. But being a creative guy, he does a whole lot of other things..And I'd be amiss if I didn't plug some of his other stuff and maybe make him a few bucks..

* Every Tuesday night at 9 PM - 11 PM  Eastern, or 6 PM - 8 PM Pacific,  he has a two-hour radio show on Dementia Radio  called The Cream Cheese Library. Of all the live DJ shows on Dementia Radio, his is the most scholarly. After all, he has a degree in music, and he has an immense library of wacky, weird and unusual songs. And in the breaks between the song sets, he'll tell you about the artists and their history.

To listen, plug this address into your Winamp, iTunes, VLC or other streaming audio source: http://dementiaradio.org:8027  Check the above link to Dementia Radio for other hints about listening. And during the live show, you can chat with Chris with your IRC client on the EFnet servers, at channel #dementia. If you don't have an IRC client, there's a web chat client on the Dementia Radio web site.

* Chris is a member of Cirque du So What? It's a sketch comedy troupe including other Dementia artists, The Great Luke Ski, Devo Spice and ShoEboX. They've revived the idea of audio sketch comedy. While Firesign Theater, Burns and Schreiber and The Credibility Gap have retired or died, these guys are still making current and funny comedy. After their first album, Procrastinators of the Apocalypse, they've just released Stupid Cowboy Thing - Volume 1: Grandmother! On this album is a recorded cut called "Elevator" that is probably the funniest and most bizarre thing said about American racism and its source - and that source is Otis.

* I'd be amiss if I didn't plug a couple of Chris's other songs with Power Salad. These are his homemade, non-animated, low-tech YouTube videos for his songs: My Cat is Afraid of the Vacuum Cleaner,  Charlie Sheen and a live performance of The Table Near The Band.  (The lyric he forgot in this last song is: "Yes, you are sitting at the table near the band / We'd have you sit inside the speaker, if we can!"

Thank you, Mr. Mezzolesta! I've never met you at a con, but I'm certain we will, and I owe you a meal. And not from the chickens you're raising in your back yard! (Yes, he does that too!)