Watch Gumbasia the Jazzy Stop Motion Film That Gave Birth to Gumby (1955)

in Animation, K-12, Television | May 7th, 2014

Like many in the Hon­ey­comb Kids gen­er­a­tion, I did­n’t prop­er­ly appre­ci­ate chil­dren’s tele­vi­sion icon Gum­by until Eddie Mur­phy par­o­died him on Sat­ur­day Night Live. This sparked a revival. Watch­ing Gum­by episodes in the com­pa­ny of oth­er mer­ry young adults reframed my pre­vi­ous­ly held view of him as a rel­ic from a time when TV was bor­ing. Turns out that Gum­by and his equine side­kick Pokey were actu­al­ly pret­ty fun­ny, weird-in-a-good-way, and far more soul­ful than the wit­less flat ani­ma­tion jam­ming the air­waves of my 70s child­hood.

Then, in 2006, the Muse­um of the Mov­ing Image had an exhib­it devot­ed to the work of Art Clokey, father of Gum­by.

I decid­ed to take the kids, gam­bling that they might respond to Gum­by as I did now, not the way I did when I was their age. Their screen time was pret­ty lim­it­ed back then, and as a result, they’d avid­ly watch just about any­thing.

The first video we encoun­tered was Gum­ba­sia, the exper­i­men­tal, char­ac­ter-free, stop motion riff above that Clokey made as a stu­dent at USC. It was pro­duced in 1953 and released in 1955.

Not exact­ly what I’d been prim­ing the chil­dren to expect on the sub­way ride over.

“That’s Gum­by?” they cried in dis­may. “That cube?”

No. But those mor­ph­ing cubes and squig­gles did give birth to an empire, after pro­duc­er and pres­i­dent of the Motion Pic­ture Pro­duc­ers Asso­ci­a­tion, Sam Engel, offered to bankroll a pilot, declar­ing Gum­ba­sia the most excit­ing film he’d ever seen in his life. Clokey was teach­ing Eng­lish at the Har­vard Mil­i­tary Acad­e­my. Engel’s sole wish was to improve the qual­i­ty of chil­dren’s tele­vi­sion pro­gram­ming. He asked Clokey if he could “make lit­tle clay fig­ures out of that clay and ani­mate them.”

Clokey did just that, with Engel bankrolling the pilot, “Gum­by on the Moon.” The pro­duc­er was so pleased with the result, he refused to take a cut when Gum­by was giv­en a sev­en year con­tract at NBC.

Imag­ine a Cin­derel­la sto­ry like that hap­pen­ing today!

If this small morsel of Gum­by his­to­ry leaves you crav­ing more, book your flight for the inau­gur­al Gum­by Fest in Glen­do­ra, Cal­i­for­nia, where Gum­by grew to matu­ri­ty in “an unas­sum­ing indus­tri­al build­ing.”

You can find Gum­ba­sia in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 675 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Big Bang Big Boom: Graf­fi­ti Stop-Motion Ani­ma­tion Cre­ative­ly Depicts the Evo­lu­tion of Life

Watch “Bot­tle,” an Award-Win­ning Stop Motion Ani­mat­ed Tale of Transocean­ic Cor­re­spon­dence

Hard­er Than It Looks: How to Make a Great Stop Motion Ani­ma­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of sev­en books, and cre­ator of the award win­ning East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Mr. Rogers Introduces Kids to Experimental Electronic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nelson (1968)

in Education, K-12, Music, Television | May 2nd, 2014


Exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ic musi­cian and inven­tor Bruce Haack’s com­po­si­tions expand­ed many a young con­scious­ness, and taught kids to dance, move, med­i­tate, and to be end­less­ly curi­ous about the tech­nol­o­gy of sound. All of this makes him the per­fect guest for Fred Rogers, who despite his total­ly square demeanor loved bring­ing his audi­ence unusu­al artists of all kinds. In the clips above and below from the first, 1968 sea­son of Mr. Roger’s Neigh­bor­hood, Haack intro­duces Rogers and a group of young­sters to the “musi­cal com­put­er,” a home­made ana­log syn­the­siz­er of his own invention—one of many he cre­at­ed from house­hold items, most of which inte­grat­ed human touch and move­ment into their con­trols, as you’ll see above. In both clips, Haack and long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor Esther Nel­son sing and play charm­ing songs as Nel­son leads them in var­i­ous move­ment exer­cis­es. (The remain­der of the sec­ond video most­ly fea­tures Mr. Roger’s cat.)

Although he’s seen a revival among elec­tron­ic musi­cians and DJs, Haack became best known in his career as a com­pos­er of children’s music, and for good rea­son. His 1962 debut kid’s record Dance, Sing & Lis­ten is an absolute clas­sic of the genre, com­bin­ing a dizzy­ing range of musi­cal styles—country, clas­si­cal, pop, medieval, and exper­i­men­tal electronic—with far-out spo­ken word from Haack and Nel­son. They fol­lowed this up with two more iter­a­tions of Dance, Sing & Lis­ten, then The Way Out Record for Chil­dren, The Elec­tron­ic Record for Chil­dren, the amaz­ing Dance to the Music, and sev­er­al more, all them weird­er and more won­der­ful than maybe any­thing you’ve ever heard. (Don’t believe me? Take a lis­ten to “Soul Trans­porta­tion,” “EIO (New Mac­Don­ald),” or the absolute­ly enchant­i­ng “Saint Basil,” with its Doors‑y organ out­ro.) A psy­che­del­ic genius, Haack also made grown-up acid rock in the form of 1970’s The Elec­tric Lucifer, which is a bit like if Andrew Lloyd Web­ber and Tim Rice had writ­ten Jesus Christ Super­star on heavy dos­es of LSD and banks of ana­log syn­the­siz­ers.

While Haack­’s Mr. Rogers appear­ance may not have seemed like much at the time, in hind­sight this is a fas­ci­nat­ing doc­u­ment of an artist who’s been called “The King of Tech­no” for his for­ward-look­ing sounds meet­ing the cut­ting edge in children’s pro­gram­ming. It’s a tes­ta­ment to how much the coun­ter­cul­ture influ­enced ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion. Many of the pro­gres­sive edu­ca­tion­al exper­i­ments of the six­ties have since become his­tor­i­cal curiosi­ties, replaced by insipid cor­po­rate mer­chan­dis­ing. What Haack and Nel­son’s musi­cal approach tells me is that we’d do well to revis­it the edu­ca­tion­al cli­mate of that day and take a few lessons from its freeform exper­i­men­ta­tion and open­ness. I’ll cer­tain­ly be play­ing these records for my daugh­ter.

via Net­work Awe­some

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mr. Rogers Takes Break­danc­ing Lessons from a 12-Year-Old (1985)

Mr. Rogers Goes to Wash­ing­ton

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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Watch “Bottle,” an Award-Winning Stop Motion Animated Tale of Transoceanic Correspondence

in Animation, K-12, Life | April 29th, 2014

When I was in high school, my boyfriend showed me a film he had shot with his dad’s Super 8. It fea­tured a pair of golf clubs escap­ing from the garage and hus­tling down the dri­ve­way. I was bedaz­zled by his tech­nique, and amazed that that’s how he spent his week­ends before he met me.

I thought of those films the oth­er day on a tour of Cal Arts with a prospec­tive stu­dent. As part of ori­en­ta­tion, our group was shown “Bot­tle,” an award-win­ning stop motion short cre­at­ed when writer-direc­tor Kirsten Lep­ore was a grad stu­dent in the exper­i­men­tal ani­ma­tion pro­gram. 

In the minute or so it took our guide to remem­ber how to turn the sound on, I was actu­al­ly dread­ing it. I like nar­ra­tive. Fun­ny. Made­line Sharafi­an’s flat ani­ma­tion “Omelette,” which we were shown before “Bot­tle” as rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the sort of work going on in the famed Char­ac­ter Ani­ma­tion depart­ment, deliv­ered on both counts.

Exper­i­men­tal, though? I pic­tured a Dali-esque com­put­er gen­er­at­ed land­scaped star­ring an anony­mous ball, and longed for Scot­t’s dad’s golf clubs. They had so much per­son­al­i­ty.

I am delight­ed to report that those clubs could­n’t hold a can­dle to the cast you will meet above. I don’t want to spoil any sur­pris­es. Suf­fice it to say that the fin­ished prod­uct involves sand, snow, the ocean, flot­sam, jet­sam, a bot­tle, many miles, and many, many hours of labor. If that, com­bined with an utter­ly charm­ing sto­ry­line, adds up to exper­i­men­tal, then I am all for exper­i­men­ta­tion. My kid was ready to change her major after see­ing it, but maybe I am the one who needs to attend.

Watch the mak­ing of video below to get a feel for the sort of wringer Lep­ore put her­self and her crew through. Obvi­ous­ly not a week­end project.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hard­er Than It Looks: How to Make a Great Stop Motion Ani­ma­tion

Big Bang Big Boom: Graf­fi­ti Stop-Motion Ani­ma­tion Cre­ative­ly Depicts the Evo­lu­tion of Life

Watch The New Amer­i­ca, a Stop Motion Ani­ma­tion Star­ring 800+ Laser Engraved Wood Blocks

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s golf clubs nev­er stopped run­ning. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Meet Carol Kaye, the Unsung Bassist Behind Your Favorite 60s Hits

in K-12, Music | April 28th, 2014

Car­ol Kaye: you may not rec­og­nize her name but chances are you’re famil­iar with her work.

Now 81, the lady has laid down some deeply icon­ic bass tracks in a career span­ning 55 years and some­thing in the neigh­bor­hood of 10,000 record­ing ses­sions.

Joe Cock­er’s “Feel­in’ Alright”?

The Beach Boys hits “Help Me, Rhon­da,” “Sloop John B,” and “Cal­i­for­nia Girls.” 

The theme song to The Brady Bunch?

Nan­cy Sina­tra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ ”?!?

Holy cow, talk about some­thing to tell the grand­kids.

Her inter­view for a nev­er com­plet­ed doc­u­men­tary above left me with none of the melan­choly I felt on behalf of the under-rec­og­nized back up singers pop­u­lat­ing the recent film Twen­ty Feet from Star­dom. This may be due to some rock and roll gen­der inequal­i­ty. The girls far out­num­ber the boys in the ranks of back­ing vocals, where looks play an unde­ni­able part, at least when the band’s out on the road. Kaye’s con­tri­bu­tions occurred in the record­ing stu­dio. She appears plen­ty con­tent to have num­bered among an elite team of hard work­ing, clean liv­ing Los Ange­les ses­sion musi­cians.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, she was one of a very few women in the field, though girls, take note: her web­site has 115 play­ing tips for fledg­ling bass play­ers. Boys are free to take note too…

Now that you’ve “dis­cov­ered” this leg­end, may we sug­gest set­ting an hour aside to get to know her bet­ter in the longer inter­view below? Also make sure you see our relat­ed post: 7 Female Bass Play­ers Who Helped Shape Mod­ern Music: Kim Gor­don, Tina Wey­mouth, Kim Deal & More

Relat­ed Con­tent:

7 Female Bass Play­ers Who Helped Shape Mod­ern Music: Kim Gor­don, Tina Wey­mouth, Kim Deal & More

The Neu­ro­science of Bass: New Study Explains Why Bass Instru­ments Are Fun­da­men­tal to Music

The Sto­ry of the Bass: New Video Gives Us 500 Years of Music His­to­ry in 8 Min­utes

Paul McCart­ney Offers a Short Tuto­r­i­al on How to Play the Bass Gui­tar

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of sev­en books, and cre­ator of the award win­ning East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Kurt Vonnegut Urges Young People to Make Art and “Make Your Soul Grow”

in Creativity, K-12, Letters, Literature | April 19th, 2014

Art not only saves lives, it casts rip­ples, as Kurt Von­negut sure­ly knew when he replied—at length—to five New York City high school stu­dents who’d con­tact­ed him as part of a 2006 Eng­lish assign­ment.  (The iden­ti­ties of the oth­er authors select­ed for this hon­or are lost to time, but not one had the cour­tesy to respond except Von­negut.)

Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lock­wood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Bat­ten, Mau­r­er and Con­gius­ta:

I thank you for your friend­ly let­ters. You sure know how to cheer up a real­ly old geezer (84) in his sun­set years. I don’t make pub­lic appear­ances any more because I now resem­ble noth­ing so much as an igua­na.

What I had to say to you, more­over, would not take long, to wit: Prac­tice any art, music, singing, danc­ing, act­ing, draw­ing, paint­ing, sculpt­ing, poet­ry, fic­tion, essays, reportage, no mat­ter how well or bad­ly, not to get mon­ey and fame, but to expe­ri­ence becom­ing, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seri­ous­ly! I mean start­ing right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a fun­ny or nice pic­ture of Ms. Lock­wood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the show­er and on and on. Make a face in your mashed pota­toes. Pre­tend you’re Count Drac­u­la.

Here’s an assign­ment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lock­wood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about any­thing, but rhymed. No fair ten­nis with­out a net. Make it as good as you pos­si­bly can. But don’t tell any­body what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to any­body, not even your girl­friend or par­ents or what­ev­er, or Ms. Lock­wood. OK?

Tear it up into tee­ny-wee­ny pieces, and dis­card them into wide­ly sep­a­rat­ed trash recep­ti­cals [sic]. You will find that you have already been glo­ri­ous­ly reward­ed for your poem. You have expe­ri­enced becom­ing, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!

Kurt Von­negut

Von­negut’s kind wish­es and Yoko Ono-esque prompt have been wide­ly dis­sem­i­nat­ed on the Inter­net, which is no doubt where stu­dents at Hove Park School in Brighton, East Sus­sex caught the scent. Work­ing with a pro­fes­sion­al pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny that spe­cial­izes in nar­ra­tive-dri­ven work, they lit­er­al­ized  the assign­ment in the video above, and while I might have pre­ferred a sneak peek at the poems and draw­ings such a task might yield, pre-shred­ding, I loved how they acknowl­edged that not every­one heeds the call. (The cast­ing of that one could have gone either way…wouldn’t be sur­prised if you told me that that boy has a punk band that would’ve ripped Von­negut’s ears off.)

via Kate Rix

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Dia­grams the Shape of All Sto­ries in a Master’s The­sis Reject­ed by U. Chica­go

“Wear Sun­screen”: The Sto­ry Behind the Com­mence­ment Speech That Kurt Von­negut Nev­er Gave

Kurt Vonnegut’s Eight Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

Kurt Von­negut: Where Do I Get My Ideas From? My Dis­gust with Civ­i­liza­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is spend­ing tonight’s Night of Von­negut in Los Ange­les rather than her home­town of Indi­anapo­lis. So it goes. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Your Body During Adolescence: A Nakedly Unashamed Sex Ed Film from 1955

in Biology, Education, Film, K-12, Life | April 11th, 2014

A straight shoot­ing sex ed film from 1955? That’s hard to imag­ine. In my expe­ri­ence, the films of that peri­od tend to beat around the bush. The ret­i­cence of those shar­ing its play­ing field makes Your Body Dur­ing Ado­les­cence (watch it online here) all the more remark­able. It does­n’t seem so at first. The first minute is devot­ed to observ­ing a group of coed, clean cut, and unsur­pris­ing­ly Cau­casian teens, pos­ing for a year­book pho­to.

The nar­ra­tor seems des­tined to soft ped­dle things, mild­ly tak­ing note of dif­fer­ences in height and weight. I freely admit that I under­es­ti­mat­ed him. The teens in whose class­rooms this work was screened may have audi­bly squirmed at the men­tion of cer­tain words, but our nar­ra­tor is undaunt­ed by penis­es, scro­ta and labia… Shout out to the edu­ca­tion­al con­sul­tants, Dr. Harold S. Diehl, Dean of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta’s Med­ical School and Ani­ta Laton, an author and pro­fes­sor of Health and Hygiene at San Jose State. Alfred Kin­sey would’ve approved. The dia­grams are less straight­for­ward, but I kind of liked that. They look like Mid Cen­tu­ry Din­ner­ware pat­terns, which is to say, a lot sex­i­er than most of the sex organs one can find on the Inter­net. For fun and com­par­i­son, have a look at Fuzzy Bun­ny’s Guide to You Know What, the Simp­sons’ infa­mous “sex educ­ta­tion” film.

I’d say they both get it right.

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Fam­i­ly Plan­ning, Walt Disney’s 1967 Sex Ed Pro­duc­tion, Star­ring Don­ald Duck

The Sto­ry Of Men­stru­a­tion: Walt Disney’s Sex Ed Film from 1946

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of sev­en books, and cre­ator of the award win­ning East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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10 Wonderful Illustrations from the Original Manuscript of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince

in Art, K-12 | April 3rd, 2014

little prince manuscripts

From Jan­u­ary 24 through April 27, 2014, The Mor­gan Library and Muse­um is stag­ing an exhi­bi­tion on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Lit­tle Prince, a sto­ry that speaks to the hearts and minds of chil­dren and adults alike. Though Saint-Exupéry was French, he wrote and pub­lished his great tale while liv­ing in New York City in 1943. Twen­ty five years lat­er, in 1968, the Mor­gan acquired the orig­i­nal man­u­script, which is now on dis­play.

petit prince cigarette

If you can’t trav­el to New York, you can vir­tu­al­ly pore over ten orig­i­nal illus­tra­tions from Le Petit Prince online. We’d rec­om­mend click­ing here, and then click­ing on the Full Screen icon in the bot­tom right-hand side of the first illus­tra­tion you see. Then start flip­ping through the pages and enjoy. As the Mor­gan notes, the pages are “replete with crossed-out words, cig­a­rette burns, and cof­fee stains.” You’ll find one such burn on the illus­tra­tion imme­di­ate­ly above.

via Metafil­ter/Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More

Watch Ani­ma­tions of Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Sto­ries “The Hap­py Prince” and “The Self­ish Giant”

The Inter­na­tion­al Children’s Dig­i­tal Library Offers Free eBooks for Kids in Over 40 Lan­guages

Mark Twain Cre­ates a List of His Favorite Books For Adults & Kids (1887)

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The Chorus Project Features Teenagers Performing Hits by the Kinks, David Byrne, the Jackson 5 & More

in K-12, Music | March 24th, 2014

The Cho­rus Project is the sort of oppor­tu­ni­ty par­ents dream about—talent-based, high pro­file, and helmed by vision­ary adults in tune with teenagers’ emo­tion­al and pre-pro­fes­sion­al needs. The select few—there are 39, lead­ing one to won­der what hap­pened to num­ber 40—range in age from 14–18. They hail from a vari­ety of back­grounds, com­ing togeth­er after school and over the sum­mer to sing, and ulti­mate­ly record, choral arrange­ments of rock and pop hits, orches­trat­ed by well known musi­cians. The 1970s Lan­g­ley Schools Music Project is a big influ­ence, as is the tele­vi­sion show Glee.

Their fresh-faced, ortho­don­tia-enhanced take on the David Byrne / St.Vincent col­lab­o­ra­tion “Who,” above, embod­ies the Cho­rus Project approach, gar­ner­ing St. Vin­cen­t’s stamp, or rather, Tweet, of approval.

Byrne recent­ly advised young musi­cans to expect that retain­ing free­dom and cre­ative con­trol means tak­ing a finan­cial hit. How com­fort­ing to find Cho­rus Project founder Lau­ren Brom­ley Hodge ennu­mer­at­ing that path’s alter­nate rewards:

 Music is a uni­ver­sal lan­guage, cross­ing cul­tur­al and income bar­ri­ers. Singing in a cho­rus cre­ates com­mu­ni­ty, friend­ship and trust. In a soci­ety where arts based edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties are dras­ti­cal­ly reduced and threat­ened, this music project gives young singers the chance to learn about singing, per­form­ing and record­ing from musi­cians and teach­ers.

Cul­tur­al and income bar­ri­ers aren’t the only bound­aries music tran­scends. As one Metafil­ter user remarked after view­ing the Cho­rus Pro­jec­t’s spin on The Kinks’ “Water­loo Sun­set,” arranged by the dBs’ Chris Stamey:

Can some­one let that ado­les­cent boy singing lead on “Water­loo Sun­set” know that my six­teen year-old self called and his heart is bro­ken from the crush he’ll nev­er be able to say hel­lo to?

Because sob.

See, kids? You don’t need leather pants or facial hair to be cool!

My favorite Cho­rus Project per­for­mance thus­far is their cov­er of the Jack­son 5’s  “I Want You Back.” The puri­ty of those open­ing bars remind­ed me of high school and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” in equal parts. I dug the cin­der blocks in the back­ground. I appre­ci­at­ed the deep look of con­cen­tra­tion upon soloist Presyce Baez’s face, as well as the cat­like, canary-stuffed expres­sion of his part­ner, Ally Copen­haver, bid­ing her time until the one-and-a-half minute mark when… leapin’ lizards! That kid’s got an impres­sive set of pipes, mak­ing it all the more grat­i­fy­ing to see her show­ing up in a sup­port­ing capac­i­ty else­where in her cho­rus’s oeu­vre.

You can enjoy more of the Cho­rus Pro­jec­t’s videos here, after which you can move to Raleigh-Durham, where project Sea­mus Ken­ney, leads a week­ly, drop-in Pop­up Cho­rus for adults.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Teens Pon­der Mean­ing of Con­tem­po­rary Art

Ele­men­tary School Kids Sing David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty” & Oth­er Rock Hits: A Cult Clas­sic Record­ed in 1976

Ayun Hal­l­i­day can’t sing, but she can crank out the zines like nobody’s busi­ness. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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