Far Out, Man!

Today's natsukashii*memory is A Cosmic Christmas produced by Canada's Nelvana Animation studio. A Toronto based animation group, Nelvana was named after Nelvana of the Northern Lights, Canada's first national Superhero (Take That, Wolverine!)

(Added bonus, there's a commercial for "The Clapper" embed within this embedding.)

A nice little movie, maybe not their best but it's pretty good. (I prefer Take Me Up to the Ballgame.)

Also evoking a memory is this guy who straddles a reindeer-pulled sleigh and has been a Clis Road mainstay as long as I've been here.

While downtown, I tried unsuccessfully to win this oversized Godzilla. 

Finally, today's post is brought to you by KitKat which has a display at Sendai Station (unfortunately closed when I walked by.)

*Natsukashii is a Japanese word used when something evokes a fond memory from your past. It’s a word you exclaim as a smile creeps across your face. (scammed from the first link above.)

I'd better get to bed. I have two different friends who are both hung up with the flu and I have a few extra lessons this week.

Take Me Up To The Ballgame!

The real world entered into my Halloween fantasy world so I'm unable to produce a "normal" Halloween post. Luck would have it though that I managed to link some wacky alternative spin on Baseball to fit a Halloweeny theme.

So for the first time this season (and maybe the last time since the season ends on Monday), I made it to a Rakuten Eagles game. A co-worker who happens to be the mother of a former student of mine, procured the tickets and we had some nice seats out in Right Field.

Alas, our team lost 7-4 after blowing their 4-1 lead but thanks to the beer girls, we still had a good time.

The first of those three gals drew a little picture on each of the cups that she sold!

We were also close enough to the field that we got a fairly good view of the cheerleaders, the blurriness of the photos is my fault, not theirs.

Oops, I forgot to tilt my phone when filming the 7th inning balloon send off!



Best of all, I managed to snag a shirt at 50% regular price for the right fielder, Okashima.

Now to make this a little more Halloweenish, here is a box of cookies that I bought on the way home from the game.

More importantly than this is the discovery of a video that has long eluded me. Back in 1980, Nelvana studio created a Baseball video that puts an Alien spin on your typical Kevin Costner flick. Take Me Up To The Ballgame was one of my favourite specials back in the day and I've been looking for a copy of it for ages. Here it is in three parts for your perusal, Enjoy!








Back to a regular Halloween post tomorrow...

Number 2000!

According to the Stats, this is my 2000th post!! But actually it's #1999 because I have one started from a few weeks/months ago that I never published. I'll get around to it someday. If my computer weren't so incredibly sluggish today, I'd display something awesome. So instead...

Inspired by DJ Mokugohan's amazing Podcast*, here is A Cosmic Christmas. I haven't seen this since it first came out (and neither has virtually anyone else unless they can find the VHS copy) but as soon as I heard the opening few lines of the aforementioned Podcast, I had to hunt it down on YouTube. But watching it'll have to wait until another day, because of the aforementioned pc sluggishness. If it takes ages to download for you too, you can always check out this site.

I hope your Christmas is Cosmic and I do encourage you to check out this *Podcast...

A Cosmic Event.

While everyone over in North America is enjoying the Eclipse, we here in Sendai have a lovely full moon unencumbered by any other celestial objects. But I want to see a cosmic event, so here is a Cosmic Christmas. Alex and I were talking about this just last week and how much it freaked us out when we were younger. Thanks to follower Erick (whose Fun Songs download is unsurprisingly fun) for reminding me about it.

Here are parts 1,2&3:

While I'm scamming stuff from his blog, here is a clip featuring the recently departed Steve Landesberg on my favourite sitcom, Barney Miller. I've spent a few hours watching these, now it's your turn...

Another recent dead guy is the great director Blake Edwards. A master of directing slapstick and at slapping his stick at Julie Andrews (that was a bit rude, sorry), he brought us more than just the Pink Panther, particularly a long collaboration with Henry Mancini.