Well, it has been a long road, but my time at ISU has finally come to an end! Last month I finished the final assignments for the internship, this month I finished the final projects due to my advisors to close out my internship, and today I finished the "paperwork" and filled out my graduation forms, so as far as I know, I am now officially done with school!
The internship took a little longer than I expected, I figured I'd be done by the end of last year, but it turns out that 400 hours is a LOT to finish if you're not working at it full time! But I kept working, slowly and steadily through the year, and I am now finished!
One of the final projects I was working on this month was a portfolio, to give my advisor an idea of the kind of work I did over the course of my internship. I asked if I could do a video instead of a regular boring portfolio, and he agreed! In fact, he loved the idea!
My advisor has been super on board with my non-traditional internship from the beginning. If you'll recall from my post last year when I started the internship, there was nothing normal about my particular situation, and he's totally helped make this happen for me.
To submit this final portfolio video, I uploaded it to YouTube, on my non-movie-reviews channel, and sent my advisor a link. And then I thought, why not just share it on my blog too. Maybe someone else might be interested in seeing the kinds of things I was working on all year.
So if you're interested, here is the video portfolio of some of my work during my internship for Rachel Wagner and the Hallmarkies Podcast Network.
I had a great time working with Rachel, and thankfully I still am! I started doing freelance work for her in 2018, and now that the internship is over, I've already gone back to doing some of that! I really like what I've been doing with Rachel, and I'm really glad that we can keep going.
It's been way too long since I posted one of these, and I don't have nearly as many articles to share as I normally do. I was so busy with my job and my internship last year, that I probably didn't even get half as much written for the Rotoscopers as I usually do.
Since I didn't have as many articles as normal, I elected not to do first half/second half of the year posts like I have been doing, and just do one update for 2019. And I actually meant to share this at the end of last year, but I guess I was so busy I forgot. I just found it in my drafts and figured I'd better get it up.
So anyway, these are all the articles I did last year for the Rotoscopers! I am closing in on the end of my internship though, so hopefully I'll have more to share next time.
Interview with Leslie Iwerks, director of The Imagineering Story
(Includes a link to the interview as a bonus episode of my podcast!)
Frozember - 'Let it Go' 10 Different Ways
In honor of the release of Frozen 2, the Rotowriters contributed to a series of articles celebrating Frozen. This was my contribution.
Obligatory disclaimer, none of this is supposed to make sense. These are all real quotes, from real conversations I had, heard, or overheard. These all made sense in context, but I thought they were funnier without.
Full disclosure: The majority of these are from me and my cousins. We say weird things sometimes. Okay, lots of times.
Also, I decided to change up the way I title these posts. Since they obviously do not happen every month, instead of putting the month in the title, I'm going to use one of my favorite phrases from the post to differentiate between entries.
"Oh man! That's a good puff!"
"I had a caramel once, made by cloistered nuns. It was very soft."
"Murder the rainbow donkey!"
"Father Time will snack on the bluebirds."
"I wonder what would happen if you put a kidney stone in a rock tumbler."
"It smells so good! Like Scotch tape!"
"I need to make you some felt sardines."
"I wanted to experience every textile with my mouth."
"I know of your lust for bagels."
"Do you have meat breath?"
"Do you have linty loins?"
"I'm going to dress you up in little clothes, and make you really mad."
"Now he gets a weird lump beverage."
"I was a baby of substance."
"It sounds like it's raining Beanie Baby guts."
"Look at my haunted pickle slice!"
"She's currently attacking the tablecloth."
"I made a cloudy bat thing!"
"Someday I may rub chickpea flour into my hair, but I don't know if I want to commit to that right now."
Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse. Last week I did That Post about the "Stunt" that Planters pulled, killing Mr. Peanut for social media clout. Well, it got dumber. After suspending the rest of the campaign, they finished(?) off the saga(?) of Mr. Peanut's death, by having him reincarnated by the magical tears of the Kool-Aid Man. I WISH I were making this insanity up. Here's the original commercial in it's full inanity.
And just like with the whole death thing, it is PAINFULLY obvious that the only reason they are doing this new dumb thing is to get people tweeting about it. They are even cringily making their own memes about it, they had baby nut merch ready to go the second the ad launched, and they're sharing everything that anyone posts about the brand new baby nut. Everything positive that is. There's a lot more negative feedback with this one than the death one for some reason. A lot of tweets with gifs of peanuts being smashed.
So, anyway, now that they've brought Mr. Peanut back to life in the weirdest way possible, why don't I do the same thing? I'm going to walk back all the deaths of all the brand mascot I killed off in my last post, (or at least most of them) in the dumbest, and weirdest ways possible.
~~~~
Cap'n Crunch returns as a hot mer-man.
The Kool-Aid Man becomes a sentient puddle of delicious redness.
The Flintstones evolve into the Jetsons.
Chester Cheetah's widow has kittens, one of whom takes up his cheese-dusted mantle.
The Burger King's head was salvaged and he was turned into a cyborg, just like that guy in Alita: Battle Angel. Now he's the Cyborg-er King. Wow, I hate myself for that one. The pun police will be coming for me any moment now, and I deserve whatever heinous punishment they have in store for me.
Tony the Tiger was saved by a medically induced coma, and now he works as the spokes-tiger for a steroid abuse awareness charity.
Chuck-E-Cheese was actually put into witness protection, after he learned about his now ex-wife's nefarious plans.
Ronald McDonald is now a ghost, and he shills cheeseburgers while haunting random McDonalds locations.
The Vlasic Stork uses Lysol in a genius bit of cross-promotional brand marketing, and does not actually succumb to the coronavirus.
Wendy does actually die a hero, but her memory will live on and inspire future generations of fast-food workers to sacrifice themselves for their co-workers.
Toucan Sam still gets diabetes, but now the leg amputation was successful, and goes on to live a mostly normal life. His nephews take over the family Loop business.
Aunt Jemima is now an angel, coming down to earth to help humanity. So is the Quaker Oats guy, but he's actually the Angel of Death now.
The Pillsbury Doughboy just kneads himself back together. Gunshot wounds won't hurt him, he's a sentient blob of dough.
Count Chocula, Frankenberry, and The Fruit Brute are all just resuscitated by whoever made Frankenberry in the first place. They're monsters, death was obviously no big deal.
The Boo-Berry Ghost is still already dead. As is the Yummy Mummy. No need for any further course correction on their campaigns.
Grimace is tried for murder, and executed via electric chair. But they didn't have the voltage set high enough, and then at the last second the judge bursts into the room saying that they have new evidence in the case, and his sentence is suspended until further notice.
The Honey Nut Cheerios Bee, the bee from Bumblebee Tuna, Sue Bee, and the Jollibee Bee, still all die together in another case of colony collapse disorder, but their DNA is harvested and used to make new clones to help sell their products! The new clones are given all the memories of the original bees, up to the week before their deaths. They have no idea that they are clones, and are functionally identical to the originals.
Mr. Clean is only hospitalized for a sudden, unexpected brain aneurysm. He is expected to make a full recovery.
The Nesquik Bunny, the Trix Rabbit, and the Cadbury Bunny all invested in bullet proof vests, before infiltrating my brother's yard. After witnessing first hand how serious he is about keeping rabbits out of his yard, they decide to respect his wishes and instead decide to buy their produce at Whole Foods from now on.
The Coco Puffs Cuckoo still OD's but his death was actually a hallucination brought on by the Puffs. When he comes to, he vows to give up the chocolatey cereal, and instead takes a job as the mascot for Grape Nuts. His new slogan is "I'm just nuts, for Grape Nuts!"
The Honeycomb Crazy Craving is only tranquilized by animal control after being mistaken for a rabid opossum. They relocate him to an animal sanctuary, where he is adopted by the Philadelphia Flyers and grows up to become Gritty.
The Kellogg's Corn Flakes rooster didn't die. He just faked his own death so he could retire to Oahu.
Colonel Sanders is actually recruited by the Yakuza. His assassination was part of his initiation. To the rest of the world, he is dead, but to those of us in the know, he is very much alive, and very much to be feared.
Captain Morgan still dies of liver failure. Sorry, but that alcoholic pirate doesn't deserve a happy ending.
The Duracell Bunny really is found unresponsive in an alley after a legal dispute with the Energizer Bunny, but it turns out he was just napping! The timing with the legal dispute was just a weird coincidence.
The Energizer Bunny keeps going and going, until one day, he just keeps going some more!
Geoffrey the giraffe uses his dinner plate sized hooves to grape stomp those lions, just like a real giraffe.
The Hardee's Star and his twin brother from Carl's Jr. survive Trump's missiles, and once the misunderstanding is cleared up, they are hired as the new faces of the Space Force! They decide to take the high road, and forgive everyone involved. For now...
The Pringles man's identical twin dies in his sleep, not the Pringles Man!
Snap, Crackle, and Pop, the Keebler Elves, and Lucky the Leprechaun are all saved by a time traveling sprite named Elvina Twinkle Wings! She teaches all the tiny elven races that they have more in common with each other than they realize, and they all join hands and sing John Lenon's Imagine, instead of fighting each other to the death.
The Green Giant chokes on a carrot and is too big for anyone to successfully perform the Heimlich Maneuver. So someone drove a semi into his gut instead. It totally worked.
The Skinny Cow and the Laughing Cow help each other realize how for downhill they've gone, and they both mutually agree to enter therapy before it's too late.
The Charmin Bears are in a plane crash... >Groan< I really want this one to stick, because I am so sick of these annoying toilet paper bears, but it would go against the point of the post, so I will try to think of something. Check back after I kill Joe the Camel.
That frog and the monkey from those cereals that no one ever buys, are indeed involved in a freak accident at Worlds of Fun, but their roller coaster derails and crashes into a nearby pool instead. They survive and Worlds of Fun is forced to update all their rides, adding much needed safety features. But no one still buys those cereals, and I think the monkey retired.
The Pine-Sol lady passes out from a carbon monoxide leak, but is saved at the last second by her dog, who had been trained to call 911!
All the M&Ms are reincarnated as mini M&Ms, and they now have a kids' show on Nick Jr.
The Geico tragedies were all actually just predictions from when the Geico Gecko visited a very real and not at all fake fortune teller. The gecko alerts his bosses who decide that it's finally time to cancel all their terribly dumb ad campaigns, so the Gecko, the cavemen, and Pinocchio, all move to Florida, where they now live in a retirement community.
The California Raisins fall into a geyser in Yellowstone National Park. But they emerge good as new and are now touring the world once more as the California Grapes!
Miss Chiquita, the Clabber Girl, the Swiss Miss, and the Sun Maid go on a girls retreat and their boat disappears in the Bermuda Triangle. Turns out, the were abducted by aliens! But the good kind! They all go on a cross-galaxy girls retreat instead!
Joe Camel dies. He was a heavy smoker his entire life, of course he's dead.
Okay, here's the obnoxious toilet bears. If I HAVE to save them... Yes they were in a plane crash, but instead of dying, they wash ashore on a deserted island. But they're stuck there, and no one has to hear their annoying toilet tissue tripe ever again.
The Starbucks Mermaid is caught by Japanese seafood poachers. But she fights back, takes out all her captors, and escapes. She amasses an army of her people who now patrol Japan's waters, taking care of any and all poachers who dare come back.
The Monopoly Man is seemingly murdered by the proletariat, but it turns out it was just an effigy they were burning. He's still alive and well in his mansion.
Twinkie the Kid befriends a cougar while camping in Oregon. No mauling happens whatsoever.
Little Debbie is arrested for money laundering but does her time, and is released three years early for good behavior.
So is the Hamburgler.
Smokey Bear is just fine.
Little Caesar is not assassinated.
The Coke Bears only consume the beverage Coke.
I did not eat The Aflac Duck.
Betty Crocker just went on a hike.
~~~
Okay, at this point I'm phoning this in. I actually can't believe I got this far. It was a lot more fun to kill these characters off instead of saving them. I still want to finish though, so I'm going to try to do the rest of these in one go.
The Sprint Guy, The Serta Sheep, McGruff the Crime Dog, The Godfather, The Travelocity Gnome, The Old Spice Guy, the Michelin Man, Flo from Progressive, and The Most Interesting Man in the World all wake up and discover that they were in the Matrix. Their programs may have ended, but they are now in the "Real" world. Whatever that is. They must now join forces to discover who is behind-
So last week a really, REALLY stupid thing happened online. For some unknown reason, Planters Peanuts decided to kill off their beloved(?) mascot, Mr. Peanut. Here is the incredibly, bafflingly stupid commercial they made.
No one knows the real reason why they decided to pull off the dumbest marketing stunt in history, but I can make a guess. Likes. Retweets. Memes. Words of mouth.
Likes and shares are the currency of the internet. Clicks = money, and they're raking it in.
Their social media person is working overtime responding to all the "Mourners" online. I say mourners, but I know it's just memelords. No one is really upset about this stupid "death" because it's not real. The only people loving this are the people making fun of it.
So I decided to join in. If Planters can straight up murder their mascot, what's stopping other brands from following suit? Why can't McDonalds toss Ronald off a skyscraper? Why can't Fruit Loops gun down Toucan Sam in Wild West style shoot-out? Well they can, and they should.
Originally I started tweeting out all my morbid mascot murder suggestions, but after I'd done like 30, I was like, "I could make a post out of this! I don't blog enough, why not make this into a blog post?" So I saved all my tweets, and then deleted the originals so I could write this instead.
Now, in case you couldn't tell, this post is going to be chock full of dark humor, so if you're not okay with that, then now's your chance to back out safely. I'll have something more wholesome next time. Probably. It's just once in awhile I need to laugh at a death joke. I blame my childhood growing up with Gary Larson's Far Side comics. Now that man could write a hilarious death.
Anyway, these are all really dumb, and I am in no way actually suggesting that brands should start violently killing off their mascots, but I had fun writing this terrible post, so I wanted to share it with the world for some reason.
~~~
My suggestions for Brand Twitter, in case this new "Death Trend" takes off.
How to kill off your beloved mascots.
Cap'n Crunch dies at sea.
The Kool-Aid Man falls off a table and shatters.
The Flintstones are killed in a car crash.
Chester Cheetah is killed by poachers.
The Burger King tries to violently overthrow the Dairy Queen, and is beheaded in battle.
Tony the Tiger dies from steroid abuse.
Chuck-E-Cheese is murdered by his soon-to-be-ex-wife for the insurance money.
Ronald McDonald dies in a random drive-by.
The Vlasic Stork contracts the coronavirus while delivering pickles abroad, and quickly succumbs to the disease.
Wendy dies in Iraq, jumping onto a land mine to save her platoon.
Toucan Sam gets diabetes. He loses a leg first, but they don't catch it in time, and he dies anyway.
Aunt Jemima passes away of old age. Her funeral is lovely. The Quaker Oats guy does a beautiful baritone solo of Amazing Grace.
The Quaker Oats guy disappears under mysterious circumstances. The rumors surrounding his death(?) bloom into a full blown conspiracy theory.
The Pillsbury Doughboy dies in a gang shootout.
Count Chocula gets staked through the heart.
Frankenberry is hunted down by an angry mob, who use their stereotypical torches and pitchforks in ways that the farm supply store would not approve.
The Fruit Brute was caught by a local dog catcher and humanely euthanized.
The Boo-Berry Ghost is already dead. Obviously. So is the Yummy Mummy.
Grimace is tried for murder, and executed via electric chair.
The Honey Nut Cheerios Bee, the bee from Bumblebee Tuna, Sue Bee, and the Jollibee Bee, all die together in yet another case of colony collapse disorder.
Mr. Clean passes away in his sleep from a sudden, unexpected brain aneurysm.
The Nesquik Bunny is killed by my brother with a bow and arrow after getting into his garden.
The Trix Rabbit is killed by my brother with a 22 after getting into his garden.
The Cadbury Bunny is killed by my brother with... You know what? All you rabbit mascots just need to stay out of my brother's garden! It's for your own good!
The Coco Puffs Cuckoo dies of an overdose.
The Honeycomb Crazy Craving is killed by animal control after being mistaken for a rabid opossum.
The Kellogg's Corn Flakes rooster dies from lung cancer after 57 years of being a heavy smoker.
Colonel Sanders is taken out by the Yakuza.
Captain Morgan dies of liver failure.
The Duracell Bunny is found unresponsive in an alley after a legal dispute with the Energizer Bunny.
The Energizer Bunny keeps going and going, until one day, he doesn't.
Geoffry the giraffe is eaten by lions at the watering hole.
The Hardee's Star and his twin brother from Carl's Jr. are both shot down by Donald Trump's new Space Force. They are unfortunately mistaken for spy satellites sent by Malta, who Donald has been suspicious of for quite some time.
The Pringles man dies in his sleep, and the autopsy is inconclusive.
Snap, Crackle, and Pop are all killed in an apparent hate crime, allegedly committed by several of the Keebler Elves. Some of those Keeblers are notoriously racist.
Most of the Keebler elves die after their tree catches fire from a malfunctioning cookie oven. Or arson. Possibly by Lucky the Leprechaun, avenging his cereal brethren.
Lucky the Leprechaun dies at the hands of Ernest J. Keebler himself. Was it a hate crime? Was it revenge? The world may never know, because Ernie dies from injuries sustained in the fight, and that's just the way the cookie crumbles.
The Green Giant chokes on a carrot and is too big for anyone to successfully perform the Heimlich Maneuver.
The Skinny Cow is just another casualty of the Opioid Epidemic.
The Laughing Cow goes insane and dies in solitary confinement in an understaffed mental hospital.
The Charmin Bears are killed in a plane crash.
That frog and the monkey from those cereals that no one ever buys, die together in a freak accident at Worlds of Fun, when their roller coaster derails and crashes into a nearby food court.
The Pine-Sol lady dies from a carbon monoxide leak.
The Yellow and Red M&Ms contract malaria while vacationing in South Africa.
The Geico Gecko is stepped on by one of the Geico Cavemen.
The Geico Cavemen are hit by an asteroid.
The Geico Pinocchio gets termites.
The California Raisins fall into a geyser in Yellowstone National Park.
Miss Chiquita, the Clabber Girl, the Swiss Miss, and the Sun Maid go on a girls retreat and their boat disappears in the Bermuda Triangle.
Ironically Joe Camel lives a long, mostly healthy life, and only suffers from mild asthma.
The Starbucks Mermaid is caught by Japanese seafood poachers.
The Monopoly Man is murdered by the proletariat.
Twinkie the Kid is mauled by a cougar while camping in Oregon.
The Green M&M melts in a housefire.
Little Debbie is arrested for money laundering and dies in a botched attempt to break out of prison.
Smokey Bear drowns in a lake.
Little Caesar is assassinated.
The Coke Bears decide to try the wrong kind of Coke. Their addiction spirals out of control and in the end, they're just another statistic.
The Aflac Duck... Was delicious...
The Hamburglar is finally caught and tried for his many, many crimes, but is eventually shanked in the prison yard.
Betty Crocker falls off a cliff while hiking in the Rocky Mountains.
The Sprint Guy was taken out in a hit ordered by Verizon, after he betrayed the "family" and switched phone providers.
The Serta Sheep die of exposure after getting caught in a freak blizzard while skiing in Austria.
McGruff the Crime Dog takes a bite out of the wrong criminal. The Godfather is arrested in the back one of his own pizza kitchens, but McGruff's body is found at the bottom of the lake a week later. The police have no real leads at this time.
The Godfather brews up some prison hooch in his toilet. After a wild night in, the guards think he's faking his stomach pains, and he eventually dies of regular old E. Coli.
The brown M&M is carried off by a seagull.
The Travelocity Gnome falls off a skyscraper and shatters on the concrete below. He may have been pushed...
The Old Spice Guy dies of radiation poisoning. The random mutations may have been good for commercial purposes, but they eventually took their toll on his body.
The Michelin Man is visiting relatives in San Francisco, when a magnitude 7.2 earthquake demolishes their neighborhood. His body is never recovered.
Flo from Progressive goes skydiving and her parachute doesn't open.
The Most Interesting Man in the World catches the flu and passes away in a small hospital in western Nebraska.
~~~
So, after I finished writing this, but before I was ready to publish, apparently Planters pulled the plug on the whole campaign. (At least for now) Maybe they realized how dumb it was? Maybe they realized that making inane content for likes and retweets was a stupid marketing tactic? Nope. A real celebrity died and they were afraid people might think they were insensitive.
I don't... I just...
Whatever.
I'm not wasting all the time I spent writing this! It is still going up!
So yes, I'm still around. My blog posts seem to have been few and far between last year, but with work, and my internship, and my own podcast, I didn't have much time for doing a whole lot of much else.
However, I have sort of gotten back into photography, a little bit, by way of a whole new project that I've been working on since August, and I'm having a lot of fun with it. I haven't shared anything about that project on my blog yet though, so I figured now was as good a time as any.
It all started at my cousin Shaina's wedding. Or more accurately, her rehearsal dinner. I was joking with Rachel and Alex about terrible food photography on Instagram, and said it would be hilarious if someone made an account dedicated just to that.
And then for some reason I decided that that someone should be me.
So I created an alter-ego, Jonathan Q Randall, and did this.
Once in awhile I like doing random video posts. Like when I waited outside in the middle of the night for a screech owl to go off, so I could pretend to be terrified.
I also have some weird story-lines(?) that I come back to every once in awhile. Like that my character plays Pokémon Go, but calls them Poket Mans, and takes weird pictures with them from time to time.
And I have a thing with the mascot of Iowa State University, in which I have reimagined him as a wrathful deity, beloved and feared by the residents of Ames.
I also started a twitter account for the character, which doesn't get updated quite as often as the instagram, but I do try to check in there once or twice a week. https://twitter.com/JonQRandall
I also started a byte account, which is a new platform, which is also basically the reincarnation of vine. I'm not sure what I'll do there, but I'm experimenting with it for now. That is just an app though, so I don't think I can even link you here. But if on the off chance you actually use byte, you can find me @jonqrandall, like everywhere else.
Anyway, that's what I've been up to recently. That's not ALL I've been up to, but I have to save something for future posts... :p
