Carl Stalling showed me how crucial music (underscore) was to the texture of the scene.  He was a freaky genius!  The shit he wrote broke the rules, tested tonality, painted music with the same kind of reverence as the art being animated.  A full orchestra -- a full, freakin' 48-piece orchestra! -- recorded his scoring LIVE!  It must have been breath-taking to be a part, or just to listen!

One of the best concert experiences of my life was BUGS BUNNY ON BROADWAY -- a "tribute" to Carl Stalling.  (The concert was based on the recording "THE CARL STALLING PROJECT" which is worth its weight in gold!)  Anyway, this Bugs Bunny concert at WOLFTRAP was amazing, PACKED with Stalling fans, we started chanting "Leopold!  Leopold!" as the conductor approached the podium.

And they played the music of Stalling, sometimes showing the cartoon on the big screen behind the orchestra, while they played live (to a click track), sometimes the orchestra alone.  Sometimes we'd sing along -- the "What's Opera, Doc?" stuff.  Man, it was GREAT!  Easily, the geekiest thing I've ever done, with an audience full of the same kind of music freaks.

I still highly reccommend the CD. 

Seriously, Al, it was the weirdest experience of my life -- including comic cons! -- to be with all these hard-core Stalling fans (Who's kidding who?  Mostly Bugs fans, but that's okay, too -- the respect was there), who were all as old or a bit older than me, but having a good time geeking out on some amazing music! 

I have the framed poster in my work room still!

edited to add: the poster says, "The 90's way to watch animation!" tee-hee

This is one of those 'You know you're a geek when..." moments for me.

You know you're a geek when you're jealous somebody else got to see Bugs Bunny cartoons played with a real live orchestra.

I need to get my geek on one of these days.

Joakhim, the story I was reading featured a protagonist that was a big bad ass biker and it was told in 1st person so rather than distract from the story I felt it enhanced it, and it did reduce my nervousness a bit.

Though the biker costume, while cool, could never be my favorite costume since it didn't require me to comb my hair real fast and speak like Elvis.

One year for halloween I put on a black t-shirt, blue jeans, rolled the sleeves up on the shirt and then met my brother at the door. He asked if I was going to wear a costume, I smiled, put on a pair of shades and said sure. He pointed out that it wasn't a costume; it was what I normally wore. I nodded and smiled. Meanwhile he's dressed to the nines in a zoot suit complete with a fedora and is going as a kid from the movie Swing. I thought his was cool, but I had a dozen people yell out Johnny Bravo when we got to the bar and give me a high five and nobody knew who he was supposed to be. A whole lot of fun and a suprisingly small amount of effort. The only sacrifice I had to make actually (getting back to the category of beards momentarily) was shaving off my goatee.

Yeah, it is useful energy when there's room to convert it. Choking on it... not so good.

And yay! We are now on page 68, heading towards the 70s fast. Tom, you're getting "old" fast... that a gay thing?  ;)

Hey, if I tell people I'm 70, and I'm really 44, then all they're gonna say is, "You look GREAT for your age!  So young!"

I say honestly, that this thread is still alive after all this time is amazing to me -- thanks to all you regular friends and contributors.  I stopped regularly posting on the politics thread because it's getting kind of ugly over there (as I suspect our election soon will), and even put a couple of guys on "ignore," because I was so done with them.  I love that we're all friends over here.