I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: MY BUBBA-Tiny Desk Concert #485 (November 6, 2015).

My Bubba are a duo that consists of Sweden’s My Larsdotter and Iceland’s Guðbjörg Tómasdóttir (Bubba).  They sing quiet, delicate songs about Scandinavian things (including knitting).

The set begins with a clapping rhythm as both My and Bubba execute a complex rhythmic clapping (in cool synchronicity) using all parts of their bodies.  They both sing delicately with occasional harmonies.  And the sweet title of the song: “Dogs Laying Around Playing.”

For the second song, “Charm” Bubba plays guitar and My plays an old table harp.  This song is just as delicate as the first.  Somehow that table harp seems to make the song even lighter than the first.

There’s a pause after the second song where My drinks some tea and Bubba asks if there are any questions?  Bob asks them to tell a scary train story, because My is a locomotive engineer when they are not singing.  She laughs and says “My train hit a wild boar and it made a big bam and then she kept going.”  She hopes her boss isn’t listening.   Then My says she writes a lot of songs while she is driving the train to relieve boredom.  Bubba confirms that on one song on the new album you can hear the train because My recorded herself singing in the train.

“Knitting” is a capella and may have more going on than knitting, but  don’t think so.  The final song, “Ghost Sweat” is a new one. Bubba plays guitar and loops it.  My sings lead and when Bubba comes in with the harmonies, it sounds fantastic.

The music is delicate but not so precious that it will float away.

[READ: July 5, 2016] Adventures in Cartooning Activity Book

The guys from Adventures in Cartooning are back.  This time with a book that encourages the reader to fill in the blanks.  The full title of this release is The Center for Cartoon Studies Presents Adventures in Cartooning: Activity Book.

But unlike most do it yourself books, this one has two functions.  It tells a story that you get to impact and it teaches some of the basics of cartooning as well.

The story focuses on the same gang from the main book–the knight, Edward the horse and the Elf, but there’s much more going on.  As the book opens, we see the moon and sun talking.  The moon is ready to go to bed and he is content because of the bedtime story he heard.  Bu the sun never gets told a bedtime story and she begins to cry.  Poor sun.

Cut to the knight’s castle.  It has been raining so much that he is bored out of his mind.  Out of his mind!  He has played all of his games and watched all of his DVDs.  And it is raining.  It’s the worst day of his life.  But the magical elf tells him all he needs is pencil and paper to make doodles. [Then you can draw some too].  When the knight goes to show Edward the drawings, we find Edward thin and underfed, so the knight brings him to the fridge to scarf down whatever we want to draw in there for him.

[Incidentally, I bought my copy used and several of the pages are drawn in already and the kid who had the book before me did a really good job].

The adventure continues when the food comes to life–an actual cookie monster (not Cookie Monster).

The book has us draw this monster and then escape from it (teaching us about lines of action and clouds of smoke as well as word balloons and how their shapes mean different things.

But things aren’t over.  There’s a giant to be dealt with, not to mention a whole world of perspective to be addressed.  With giant spiders and other insects.  The giant also has library (you can draw covers of his books).  But one of the books cartoons are all out of sequence–so that’s fun to redraw in the right order.

The giant is thankful for their help and gives them a ride to the castle where there are robots who might be able to stop the rain (this is all about stopping the rain, don’t forget).  After we help to design a robot head, we learn that the robots aren’t really very useful for stopping the rain.

But there is one thing that should work–a wonderful surprise call back.

The last 12 or so pages are blank (with panels already there–for you to draw your own story.  I like that the panels are different sizes on each page to make you have to think of new ideas per page.  My “artist” only dd three panels, but at least he tried, right?

For ease of searching, I include: Gudbjorg Tomasdottir