Volume 1, Entry 9: Baby Seals
Reanimating an old, fictional friend
In September of 2011, I created a review activity for my Year-Long Algebra 2 class.
That group was populated by many students I knew well outside of class between baseball and talent shows alike, so my goal was to review the math but also to thoroughly entertain them. The result was a tongue-in-cheek PowerPoint story filled with eight loosely connected problems about a fashion-forward baby seal mathematician named Cuddles.
Using PowerPoint’s limited animation abilities to embed movement into the story—Cuddles drove Tyler’s Mustang during one motion problem, for instance—I powered the narrative with in-jokes, word play, and sight gags. I got enough good work on systems and related applications from it that I eventually made a second one in December. Cuddles 2: There Will Be Cudd...les focused on probability and combinatorics, but that work accompanied a more developed story centered about Cuddles’ baby brothers being kidnapped by Ash Ketchum that culminated in a period-accurate Gameboy-style Pokémon battle against (spoilers!) his father, Dewgong. The first Cuddles “movie” was the product of a few hours of work; the second was born from a devoted dozen. At least. I was cautiously amused by the first; I loved the second1.
Across the eight years that followed the first Cuddles movie, I expanded the activity into other units and courses. At different points, Cuddles played point guard for the Sacramento Kings to review exponential growth, matched wits with Flappy Bird at the Super Bowl while analyzing integral expressions, and fought alongside Rey, Finn, and BB-8 in a reimagining of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Most often, though, Cuddles battled against iterations of the Jigsaw killer in Cuddles’ Calculus Adventure. The latter stood as my most-used entry, reviewing related rates and implicit differentiation. Made fresh each fall for Calculus AB classes by rotating in a cast of current students to the secondary roles, Cuddles’ Calculus Adventure saw changes across the intervening years but was otherwise mostly the same story with the same twists—only the students’ faces changed.
Last fall, when back surgery took me out of school for three weeks, I vowed to go all out creating a new Calculus adventure for Cuddles. In the spirit of my desired source material, Avengers: Endgame, I had Cuddles revisit my older movies via time travel. This gifted me several reusable assets and scenes, but mostly it delighted me to build a time travel story retroactively that adhered to the brilliant conventions of two of my favorite books2.
In addition to the main story, I indulged in other goofy additions to expand the scope from pure review activity into something more theatric. I asked Dat to reprise his segment from the Morning Bulletin and introduce the thing, Nate and Bria filmed a commercial with me that introduced important cultural vocabulary, and I recreated Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” music video with Susan, Michelle, Ethan, and—my favorite part—Dat as the bartender gradually inspired to dance, too. It was goofy, it was packed full of homages to Endgame, and for the first time, it offered an emotional ending that paid tribute to a public figure. When paired with the moving score from the actual film, the final scene moved several students to tears.
Within that recovery time frame, I had 80+ hours to invest in a multimedia project, but, this term promised no such luxury. I anticipated that I would reuse Cuddles Awakens, my Star Wars spin-off, for this term’s AB cinematic review; it’s effective enough and conveniently complete.
But something felt wrong about that idea. Partly because the source material was almost four years old and partly owing to an itch to create again, I bristled at that convenience. Making those stories thrills me; layering portals and animating large battles is fun. Why not try to do it again?
Despite having multiple other pulls on my time, I thus decided to write and animate a new film from scratch two weeks ago. As with Cuddles Endgame, I wanted it to include pop culture callouts, a few original commercials, and of course, some challenging review problems at its core, but I also decided I wanted something more meaningful, personal, and real than even Cuddles: Endgame.
The few ideas I had—Rick and Morty, a few familiar songs—gave me a bizarre base for the adventure, and the foundation of Cuddles chasing down kidnapped baby seal brothers unified every problem. But transitioning from fighting aliens with Rick Sanchez and unmasking villains with Scooby Doo to something emotionally resonant wasn’t going to be easy. That was my ultimate goal, though. I wanted to emulate BoJack Horseman and weave something real into something absurd.
Eventually, I found the idea that I wanted and wrote an actual script for it. Recruiting Ryan to lend his voice paid dividends, as did enlisting Simi and Viên for puppetry and camera work. Together, we brought my story to rich life, particularly once I added one of my favorite songs behind our scenes.
At this point, talking about it any more defeats the purpose; if you’d like to watch what resulted, here is a link to the entirety of Cuddles Cartoon Wars; the actual scene I described can be found between 1:33:30 and 1:40:00 in the file (although there’s an original parody musical montage video with Matthew McConaughey if you keep watching from there). As I had hoped, the scene inspired a lot of conversation and, yes, also a few tears that felt earned this time.
I’m not sure whether my schedule will ever allow me to again create movies from scratch like I did this year, but for once, I feel truly proud of my artistic work. I’ve learned a ton in the process of creating and executing my creative vision twice, leaving me excited that someday, a future project might grow even bigger.
This is infinitely beyond what I expected when I first borrowed Humon’s clubbing baby seal image almost one decade ago, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m glad I stuck with Cuddles and found a way to weave story-telling, creativity, and film-making into both his world and my job.
Cuddles the Seal isn’t real, but the joy his stories deliver sure is.
Content Consumption
FILM
Gemini Man (2019)
Rather than embracing the heart-pounding, thrill-a-minute action blockbuster in its bones, Gemini Man looks to be more contemplative and ask big questions. I’m not sure it succeeds in that mission—although its slow pacing certainly reflects it—but it doesn’t fail either. Telling the story of a retired elite sniper and super soldier who ends up on the run from a younger cloned version of himself, Gemini Man featured stock dialogue and an unoriginal plot that feel predictable and standard. Henry (Will Smith) is a character we’ve seen before—he’s a less interesting take on Denzel Washington’s Equalizer—whose character has bits of back story but not enough to be memorable, while Dani (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is cool and snarky but inconsistently written, sometimes a badass kicking butt and other times easily overtaken or relegated to background noise. The big bad, Clay Verris (Clive Owen), never embraces cartoonish evil but at least I can read some internal conflict into him, even though he’s somewhat one note. The de-aged Smith is at times fantastically designed, but often fails to look fully human, particularly during acrobatic fight sequences when the computer effects team just can’t keep up. There were some truly inventive sequences (the bike race in Cartagena spoiled in the trailer) but this just wasn’t as deep as the filmmakers wanted or novel enough to fully win me over. I enjoyed it—that’s a fair assessment.
Onward (2020)
(SPOILERS!) I left Onward certain that Pixar must have bugged my phone. Earlier in the day, I had bemoaned them for the ending of Finding Dory—not the truck-driving octopus but for Dory’s parents. In my mind, Pixar had chickened out of the powerful ending they had set up: Dory should have found the shells and seen that her parents had waited for her, but she didn’t have to find them to have family because she had Marlin and Nemo who needed her. By giving Dory her parents, there was no mature discovery about the family we have, only an unlikely reuniting. Onward, though, ends in a different way, seemingly following the path Dory was shielded from, and that left me feeling far more fond of it than I should have. I can’t call Onward lackluster but it felt far less intelligent than many others from the studio. Building a thoroughly modern world that cast magic aside for technology but still retained staples of fantasy (scavenging Pegasuses, mystical creatures running kids theme restaurants, pet dragons) necessitated a more cartoonish feeling than Wall-E or Up would, but something rang hollow and convenient about it; the world was ours but any problem could be resolved with a touch of something not-at-all ours. Naturally, the epic quest plays out as such—not without entertaining, mind you, just too simply—but there are touching moments along the way to redeem things. Pixar does a great job of never villainizing any character; step-parents, slackers, and pissy pixie bikers all get moments of redemption. The principal thread involving the torso-less legs of their father has clever elements (although it’s governing rules fluctuate a bit too often and multiple small children were initially freaked out by those legs)but is merely a device until the ending when the movie pulls no punches and finally lets Dory’s scrapped message come through: family is the people who love you and they are worth sacrificing for. Like many movies, I will watch this many more times in my life to reach that ending. It’s not peak Pixar but it’s got its cleverness along with that strong voice cast, and that ending along pulls it up a notch for me.
The Kitchen (2019)
A movie that looks great in every shot and features a strong ensemble cast, The Kitchen underwhelms begins its dry script that lacks the explosiveness that burns in each of the three leads’ characters. When Kathy, Ruby, and Claire (Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, Elisabeth Moss) find themselves in dire financial straights with their monster husbands in prisoner, they pick up the slack of the sloppy local crime family and slowly assume command of the business. Secondary story lines are plentiful—Claire’s ex (Domhall Gleason with a flat American accent) returns and teaches her to kill, Ruby’s racist mother-in-law interferes, FBI agents (Common and EJ Bonilla) threaten operations—and that detracts from the powerful central refrain of these women rising above their former subjugated roles to run Hell’s Kitchen and run it well. Frequently using grisly violence and headshots, The Kitchen struggles to choose commit to any one angle or direction and, with the leads struggling to elevate a dull script, it lacks the slickness of something like Widows that wasn’t perfect either but maintained an inertia that culminated in a wild ending (The Kitchen also lacks Viola Davis power and delivery). The Kitchen is middling and sadly forgettable despite its cast, its excellent production design, and its story that seemingly deserves better.
THEATRE
A Bronx Tale (2017)
For a story that felt very predictable, I actually found myself shocked multiple times, whether by moments in the plot or by how much emotion I felt. With fun if unspectacular music by Alan Menken, A Bronx Tale tells the story of Calogero who grows up in a neighborhood run by the mob. After doing a favor for the mob boss, Sonny, Calogero finds himself pulled into the criminal world and away from his blue collar father’s vision for the future. Eventually the story expands to include race relations when Calogero begins dating Jane, an African-American girl from another neighborhood, leading to the fulcrum of the film’s final act. There are some good themes underneath—explicitly stated themes, I might add—and the lively melodic music is easy listening, but I found the first half dragged as more threads were introduced. The second half was far stronger and better-paced and featured the most powerful scenes. This isn’t a universal story at all—it’s a Bronx one—but it’s enjoyable and probably has a little something for everyone.
Stay safe everyone. Thanks as always for reading.
Steele
Almost certainly more than my class did.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and The Time Traveler’s Wife, for the record.