Volume 1, Entry 9: Baby Seals
In September of 2011, I decided to create a very different style review activity for my Year-Long Algebra 2 class. That group was populated by many students I knew well outside of class, so my goal was to review but also thoroughly entertain, so I created a tongue-in-cheek PowerPoint story filled with eight loosely inter-connected problems about a clubbing baby seal named Cuddles.
Using PowerPoint’s limited animations to embed movement into the story—Cuddles drove Tyler’s car in one motion problem, for instance—and filling the narrative with small in-jokes and word play 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 featured problems involving probability and combinatorics but also a far more developed story centered around Cuddles’ baby brothers being kidnapped by Ash Ketchum and eventually holding a Gameboy-style Pokémon battle against (spoilers!) his own father, Dewgong. The first Cuddles “movie” was the product of a few goofy hours of work; the second was the product of about a dozen hours of work. I was cautiously amused by the first; I loved the second far more than my class did.
In the eight years that followed the first Cuddles movie, I slowly expanded the activity into other units and even courses. At different points, Cuddles purchased the Sacramento Kings and installed himself at point guard to review exponential growth, he matched wits with Flappy Bird while analyzing integral expressions in a Super Bowl episode, and he fought alongside Rey, Finn, and BB-8 in a reimagining of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Most often, though, Cuddles battled against new 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—just different faces.
In the fall, when back surgery took me out of school for three weeks, I vowed to go all out on finally creating a new Calculus adventure for Cuddles. But, in the spirit of my desired source material to reimagine—Avengers: Endgame—I decided to have Cuddles revisit some of those old movies via time travel. This was helpful for the purpose of reusing assets, but it also delighted me to build a time travel story of my own that adhered to the brilliant conventions of two of my favorite books: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and The Time Traveler’s Wife.
In addition to the main story, I indulged in other goofy things to expand the scope from pure review activity into something bigger. I asked Dat to introduce it and reprise his segment from the Morning Bulletin, Nate and Bria filmed a commercial with me that introduced important vocabulary, and then I recreated Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” music video with Formaker, Michelle, Ethan, and—my favorite part—Dat as the bartender slowly inspired to dance too. It was goofy, it was full of clips and homages to Endgame, and, for the first time, it offered an emotionally powerful ending with a tribute to a public figure that, when combined with the impossibly moving score from the actual film, brought many people to tears.
Within that recovery time frame, I had 80+ hours to invest in a multimedia project, but, with no such time this term, I anticipated that I would use Cuddles Awakens, my Star Wars spin-off, for this term’s AB movie. But something felt wrong about that idea, partly because the source material was almost four years old and partly owing to a desire to create again. I always enjoyed making those stories and layering portals and animating large scale battles; why not try to do it again?
Thus, despite having multiple other pulls on my time, I decided to build a new film from scratch to air two weeks ago. As with Cuddles Endgame, I wanted it to include some pop culture characters, I hoped to slide in a few commercials, and, of course, I wanted it to feature slightly more challenging review problems throughout, but I also decided I wanted something more meaningful and personal and real than even Cuddles Endgame.
The few ideas I had—Rick and Morty, a few songs—gave me a goofy base for the adventure, and the foundation of his baby seal brothers being kidnapped and Cuddles chasing them down grounded every angle in a problem to solve. But transitioning from fighting aliens with Rick and Morty ir chasing down a masked villain with Scooby Doo into something meaningful wasn’t going to be easy, but that felt like my ultimate goal. I wanted to do something like BoJack Horseman and weave something emotionally resonant into an absurd story and world.
Eventually, I found the idea that I wanted and wrote an actual script for it. Finding support from Ryan (who lends his voice), Simi, and Viên, it came to life beautifully, particularly once I added one of my favorite songs behind it.
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, although the context for and actual scene I’ve described can be found between 1:33:30 and 1:40:00 in the file (although if you want an original parody musical montage video with Matthew McConaughey, you might keep watching). As I had hoped, the scene inspired a lot of conversation and, yes, a few tears that I felt I had earned this time.
I’m not sure whether my schedule will ever allow me to again create two movies like I did this year from almost literally scratch, but, for once, I feel truly proud of my artistic work. I’ve learned so much in the process of creating and executing a creative vision successfully multiple times leaves me excited for future projects that are even bigger.
This is infinitely beyond what I was expecting when I first cut out Humon’s clubbing baby seal image almost one decade ago. I might not have predicted this in my wildest dreams, but I sure feel glad that I stuck with Cuddles and found a way to weave story-telling and creativity and film-making and so much more into his goofy world.
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