Here’s another song that I’m groovin’ on at the moment. Once again, I heard the song first and really liked it. Then a couple of weeks later, I saw the video for it and of course the artist’s actual video didn’t match the visuals in my head at all. The song makes me remember the 1975 animated musical special Really Rosie (look it up). My video is much lighter and innocent in tone than the artist’s, but it’s still a really cool song. Perhaps one day, I’ll get to animate my version. Anyway, enjoy Lana Del Rey’s “Summertime Sadness”:
Category Nerdvana
Nerdvana: Postopia
Today Nerdvana pays tribute to a little something called…Postopia.
For the uninformed, Postopia was a website full of mini-games and other goodies launched by Post cereals in the early 00’s. It focused on a quartet of school-aged kids (an African American girl named Chelsea, a studly blond Caucasian boy named Nick, a tiny Asian American girl named Kiki and a brunette boy named Zander) who lived in (or were magically transported to; to be honest, they were never clear on the back story) a high-flying, fun-filled, futuristic planet/dimension/future world/something-or-other known as Postopia. Here’s an ad for it, circa 2001:
As the ad implied, Postopia was divided into 4 specific regions, each one specializing in a specific category of activities and tailor made for each kid:
Space Nation was a floating city which hovered above the surface of whichever planet Postopia was on (or maybe Postopia was the planet–again, not too clear on the back story). Its’ inhabitants were known as the Gravity Breakers, who loved to explore the cosmos, dodging and blasting meteorites and racing comets with their amazing reflexes (and their moms thought they’d never get anywhere playing those darn video games) and encountering extraterrestrial life. Space Nation was Chelsea’s realm of choice.
“Greetings, Earthlings. Welcome to outer space. No littering or flash photography or I’ll vaporize you and your entire planet, ‘kay?”
Nick’s personal hangout spot was Wet World (wow, they must’ve spent a whole minute and a half thinking of that name).
“It’s a play on WESTWORLD, ya illiterate millenials!” I’m a freaking haywire android and I got that!”
As its’ name implied, Wet World was an undersea realm (thankfully its’ natives could breathe water as easily as you and I do air) full of sunken pirate ships and undersea grottoes to explore. You could also surf and ride jet-skis across the waves. The Wet Worlders were known as the Water Loggers, and Nick was the captain of Wet World’s Reef Ball team, according to his bio.
I’m hangin’ 18, dude! Ya haven’t lived ’til you’ve ripped some curl with roller skates on! TOTALLY TUBULAR!”
The Ice Burbs (yeesh, where are they getting these names??) was an Arctic style frozen region with northern lights, igloos, snow caps and penguins. It’s where Kiki hung out.
“The Ice Burbs were cool…as ICE!”
You’d think that the inhabitants of the Ice Burbs, the Ice Breakers, would spend their days freezing their wrists off, however, the Ice Breakers had adapted to the climate and as a result were immune to feeling cold, so they could dress any way they wanted. Because of this, the Ice Burbs were the Party Central of Postopia; Kiki and the other Ice Breakers could even go barefoot in the snow.
-Okay, I know you’re gonna say it, so let’s do this….
“Feet. Yeah. Heh-heh. Yeah. Feet. Yeah. Yeah. Heh-heh. Heh-heh. Feet.”
Like you didn’t see that coming. Moving on…
Finally, we had Futuria, a City of Tomorrow (TM) inhabited by a tribe of super-genius inventors known as the Gadgetrons. Zander made his stomping grounds here, zooming along on turbo powered skates of his own design, building robots and occasionally traveling through time for research and kicks, hopefully not causing too many paradoxes. Futuria was like that old Sci-Fi Channel show Eureeka, only people were watching.
Brain: An entire city of scientific and engineering geniuses with advanced technology and time-travel devices? Pinky, are you pondering what I’m pondering?
Pinky: I think so, Brain, but it it’s called The Learning Channel, why do people feel stupider by watching its’ shows?
Yes, for a while there times were good. Postopia thrived. Chelsea traversed the stars racking up points, Nick swam, splashed and explored the deep blue, Kiki styled and profiled while not freezing her ankles off, Zander designed and built a better robot to clean his room and serve him root beer, and the skies were ripe with love.
But alas, the good times were not to last. After only a few years, Post decided to shut down this wonderful space-age Utopia and handed the keys to Postopia over to the Flintstones. Gone were those amazing realms and in their place went a bunch of not-really-the-Stone-Age themed mini games.
“Hey, why shouldn’t I have gotten Postopia? My picture’s on the cereal box and my franchise has been goin’ for over 2 million years! I swing that kind of lumber! Literally!”
“C.R.E.A.M.: Clams Rule Everything Around Me, right, Fred? Eh-hyuk, hyuk, hyuk, hyuk!”
I get that the ‘Stones carry a lot of star power, but did you really have to take Postopia away from us? And if you really had to give the website to the Bedrock bunch, you could have at least given it a different name, ’cause whatever this is…
…It’s not Postopia. Not my Postopia.
But hang on, what did the Flintstones do when they needed to get back in the public eye and appeal to today’s kids? They crossed over with the WWE! Hey, there’s a thought: why not make a DTV where the WWE holds WrestleMania in Postopia? Let’s get on that, Warner Brothers Animation. Just be sure to toss in the Bella Twins.
SOLD!
Nerdvana: “Drive” by R.E.M. (2 versions)
Today’s Nerdvana spotlights the song “Drive” by R.E.M., from the Automatic for the People album. This is a very cool song, and it’s also worth mentioning that “Drive” is one of my twin brother Goldstar’s favorite songs of all time.
Awesome sauce. But did you know that there’s another version of “Drive” performed by the same band?
‘Tis true. In 1994 the band performed a live version of “Drive for the MTV Music Video Awards; here they sped the song up made it sound more edgy. Now the original album version of “Drive” is very cool, but I must admit to being partial to this one; the fast version of “Drive” conjures up images of hot rods and diners in my mind, viz:
…and I love to rock out to it. Give it a listen. No video was made for this, sorry:
So there you have it, 2 cool versions of R.E.M.’s “Drive”. Which is your favorite?
“Why would ya chose?”
“They BOTH rock!”
Nerdvana: “Driven” by Rush
I first heard this number as a music video which aired on Speed Tracks, a music video show from the now defunct Speed Channel, back when it was still called Speedvision; it’s been one of my all-time favorite songs ever since.
The accompanying video is…OK, just not the visuals that I pictured for this song. My vision for this involves cyberpunks, a super-powered mutant child, a robot bounty hunter and an evil high-tech corporation in a futuristic setting. Hopefully I’ll get to animate it one day. In the meantime, enjoy “Driven” by Canadian band Rush.
2 Funny/Nerdvana: Funky Fresh Production Logos
Today’s Nerdvana is a follow-up to an article we did back in October 2013, Monster Killer Logo Theater. You know, the one with all those scary-as-heck production logos.
These aren’t more creepy unsettling logos; today’s batch is the flip side of MKLT, where we show you some of our favorite production logos and variants. You can all breathe a collective sigh of relief.
First up, an old fave: the Rankin-Bass Productions logo, as seen at the end of perennial stop-motion holiday specials.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_65xX86jYA
Some people have said that they were creeped out by this logo, but personally we have nothing but good memories attached to it. For one thing, it tells us that a wonderfully corny R-B special with talking snowmen and silly songs is on the way, and also because the logo is similar to that of the old Banks convenience stores in Salisbury, MD, where we spent fun summers at our grandparents’ house eating Twinkies and Fruit Pies, noshing on Hardee’s Big Deluxes and sipping on Nehis while watching SuperStation Funtime on TBS. Good times, man, good times.
Second, the old familiar CBS Special Presentation intro:
Again, don’t see how anybody could be put off by this. For us, it was something good: it meant that a Charlie Brown special was about to come on. Of course, we’re not really big Peanuts fans nowadays, but when we were kids, the night of a Peanuts special was bigger than Oscar night.
Next up, the Starry Night Productions logo, as seen at the end of NBC’s Night Court, one of our favorite sitcoms.
About that laugh at the end: the laughter heard at the end of that animation was that of Chuck Weegee, the father of series creator Reinhold Weegee, who was always present in the studio audience during the first seasons of the show. Again, Folks have told us that they found this logo creepy, but again, not us, probably because were such big fans of the show.
Next, the 2 Hanna-Barbera/Turner Entertainment production logos during the 1990’s.
Comedy
And Action
Now, we’re going to switch gears a little and go to the movies!
It’s Movie Logo Joke Time! First up, the variant on 20th Century Fox’s logo for The Cannonball Run:
Now let’s have some fun with Columbia Pictures’ Torch Lady. First, the variant for the movie Zotz!, a 1962 fantasy/comedy film produced and directed by William Castle, about a man obtaining magical powers from a god of an ancient civilization. The film is based on the 1947 novel of the same name by Walter Karig.
The man who exclaims “Zotz!” is none other than the director, Willam Castle himself.
Next, the disco “classic” film from 1978, Thank God It’s Friday.
Next, from Cat Ballou starring Jane Fonda
The Mouse That Roared
And finally, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.
Next, a favorite variant from one of our favorite recent films, Disney’s Wreck-It-Ralph.
Simple, but brilliant.
Finally, a variant on the NBC peacock.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pit20Gotp-g
Trivia Time: that gag was made by the folks at Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.
-And those are some of our favorite logos and variants. Well, there’s nothing left to say, but:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WxY7VEIbQg
Twin Images 
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