desertDJ’s Halo Halo

Growing up, my parents didn’t take me and my brother to see too many movies. In fact, I could count on one hand how many movies we watched. But the ones we did watch were real winners. I still have the ticket stub of when I watched Toy Story at the AMC 6 theaters near Baseline & Rural. Yes, they used to have movie houses with only 6 theaters in it, by the way. Today the theater is a sign of a past time since it now houses a large gym.

A lot has changed since 1995 when Toy Story was originally released. For one, I’m not 10 years old anymore. Movies have to compete with Facebook, iPods, ADD themed TV programming. How can a kids themed movie entertain us twenty-somethings when we get blown away by movies like Avitar? Another question is can Pixar even remain relevant to its original viewers, while capturing a whole new generation of kids?

In 1995, computer animation was novel. Toy Story was the first full length computer animated feature film. Today you can hardly find a movie without animation in it. Although as strong as Pixar’s strength in computer animation was, Pixar always knew it was about the story. A weak story line can’t make up for great graphics.

15 years after the initial Toy Story, another level of depth is brought to the story. Woody, Buzz Light Year, Rex, Slinky, Mr. Potato Head and the rest of the familiar cast have been though a whole lot together. Toy Story 3 expands the depth even further where they face their greatest challenge yet, their owner Andy moving to college.

Right from the opening scene, you can see the new challenges the toys face. Cell phones, laptops. Everyone around these main characters are aging, moving on. Everyone, but the toys.

Now don’t let the same looking Woody and Buzz fool you. They are determined to be relevant and be some owner’s toy. In that quest, their friendships are tested, their morale is broken, and their survival is at stake. What comes out of this challenge is one of the most emotional, heart wrenching scenes in an animated film I have ever seen.

I believe they are able to pull this off because, over 15 years, we have become attached to these toys. We’ve seen them when we visited Disneyland. We played with them in our Happy Meal toys. Our friends wore Buzz Lightyear shirts, or Woody hats. If some of those memories faded away, Disney subtly put them back in our mind. That nostalgia, in part was planted by Disney. Here are two examples below of great Disney advertising:

As far as I know, there is no such thing as Lots o Huggin bear, one of the main characters in this film. But we do all remember those old commercials for kids toys growing up. Some of us have even revisited those old ads on YouTube. Disney caught on to this and created this ad that looks as if it was ripped straight from ABC’s 1985 Saturday Morning time slot.

Another trick Disney used around college campuses was to place Now Hiring signs on kiosks for Pizza Planet, which you have to remember from the first film with the aliens and the claw. It included a tear off website to apply. That website led you to Toy Story’s Facebook page. (Via http://www.pixartalk.com/2010/04/pp-hiring/)

There are numerous other examples of great Disney advertising, and all of it, whether you seen the film or not, built up to one great movie.

Now with the success in the box office, there will certainly be talk of another sequel. I’m sure Pixar can pull off a Toy Story 4, but I don’t know if they would even want to. Toy Story 3 is a great finale to a generation of Toy Story movies. I felt a lot of closure to the ending of the film, and a lot of satisfaction afterward. So go see it and relive your childhood memories of Toy Story.

I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want.
If you’re looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money.
But what I DO have are a very particular set of skills,
skills that i have acquired over a very short career,
skills that make me a nightmare for people like you.
If you let my bike go now, that’ll be the end of it
but if you don’t…

My missing bike

A year ago people were worried about a recession.  Now its painfully clear we are in the middle of one of those, but lately, people are starting to think depression? I didn’t think I was the only one pondering this thought, so I went over to Google Trends, where you can look up how popular any search is (like Chris Brown was googled a lot recently, or All Star Game for example).

So I looked up Depression, and also compared it to the stock market. Although I was too lazy to get the charts to line up perfectly, you can see that every time the economy drops (which happens a lot lately), people google depression a lot more.

Google uses this same technology to see how bad the flu is getting, (Flu Trends) where you can even break it down by state.

Anyway, right now neither we, or our President Obama have any control over the economy. Nobody knows what’s going to happen next, when it’s going to get better or when we will see the bottom. So just let go and trust God which is all any of us can do at this point!

It felt like I was flashed back to the 60’s, watching Obama’s inauguration. We were all crowded around a small black and white TV. I had stuck my metal scissors into the antenna to get a better signal.  Working in a call center while the entire country shuts down for an hour allowed us all to not get calls so I had several people surrounding me in my cubicle.

“We are witnessing history”, one coworker stated.  Seeing the mass of people on the small screen, people braving sub freezing temps and packing trains at 4:00 AM that was very apparent.

I’m not one of those people that hate our former President Bush with a passion. There were many, many things he did that I didn’t agree with but I look with much anticipation to what Obama can do with the country.

I can tell you what I’ve seen so far, I like. A focus on renewable energy. Encouraging people and to go out and serve. And the kind of serving where you get nothing in return. Bringing our country back to its founding principals. Making the government more transparent. 

Another thing is bringing a family that our generation can relate to into the White House.  I think we’ve all gotten used to old white people that it almost seems Hollywood to support someone who seems normal to us. 2 young kids. A president who shows us he can get down during his several Inaugural Ball’s. It brings the President down to a human level that not only me or my friends can relate to, but people all around the world.

I think right now Obama is just what this country needs.

View more pics like this one above at www.boston.com/bigpicutre