Of the numerous Doug Pratt’s out there, the best known is the Doug Pratt who edits and publishes The DVD Newsletter, which he started as The LaserDisc Newsletter. When I first got on the Net from home, almost fifteen years ago, I was on Usenet a lot, and I posted comments to LaserDisc newsgroups. Because I was very knowledgeable about the format, everybody assumed I was Doug, so I added a disclaimer insisting I wasn’t him.
Doug can be heard in a recent 90-minute conversation on Blog Talk Radio, at this link. Maybe later the host can figure out how to level-match the loudness of the phone calls.
With the second anniversary of my blog having just passed, I’m thinking back to 2002, when I started the Web site. Composing and publishing with FrontPage was slow and laborious, and I lost interest after only a dozen pages. One of them, at this link, is about the Merry Marvel Marching Society, the 60’s fan club created by Stan Lee.
On that page was one of my earliest video transfers, now lost to a defunct Web hosting account, of an old Mighty Thor cartoon from the 60’s. I’ve made a fresh transfer from VHS. This one file is over 100 MB — more space than my entire Web site was allocated six years ago.
This cartoon, a mere 17 minutes long, has more going on, and is more fun, than any number of full-length animated features. What it lacks in animation quality it more than makes up in story, music, and voice acting. The scene in Don Blake’s office with the Enchantress is very funny.
Mark Evanier tipped his readers to Boomerang, the cable channel, showing the 1964 feature cartoon ‘Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear.’ It’s recording on the FiOS DVR right now.
I never saw ‘Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear’ when I was a kid, but I sure do remember listening to the record promoting it that was offered on Kellogg’s cereal boxes. The song was written by David Gates, who I assume is the same David Gates that later wrote the Monkees song ‘Saturday’s Child,’ then formed the group Bread, but I can’t say for certain.
It’s been over forty years since I’ve heard this record. Side two is badly banged up, but it plays all the way through.
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