SoTD 10/19/2026: Betrayal Takes Two - Richard Hell & The Voidoids

 

Perhaps a very materialistic thing to celebrate, but I feel as though I've been approaching a place where I'm quite satisfied with my record collection. There is certainly much more that I'd like to get (an embarrassing amount to admit), but at this point I have the majority of what I would consider my "essentials". 

I fully recognize, like I said beforehand, that this is a very materialistic aspect of my life. But I don't think it's necessarily a bad form of materialism. I spend much of my free time in pursuit of records, books and DVDs that contain material that means something to me. I have no love in my heart for consumerism, but when you're trying to keep a collection of the art that has impacted you (especially a physical collection in this era where conglomerates like to limit the availability of certain things via the streaming platforms they push) I think that is ultimately an enriching experience. Especially as I would like to think that I have a rather varied collection of art and am always trying to broaden my horizons to at least some extent. Maybe I'm just making excuses, I don't know. Lately I've come more and more to the conclusion that enjoying art is one of the better things you can do for yourself while being alive. Who knows when you might be hearing your favorite song for the last time? This is probably silly, but I do hope whatever kind of afterlife we get comes with a personal library. Would it really be Heaven if I can never sit in a comfy bed with my cats and read my favorite books again? 

For my birthday recently, my beautiful partner Zo got me a copy of Richard Hell and The Voidoids' "Blank Generation" on vinyl. It's the 40th anniversary "deluxe" edition, which comes with a bonus disc of alternate takes and a beautiful booklet where Hell himself walks us through all the songs and what they mean to him. This has been one of my favorite albums since I was a teenager. I was actually fortunate enough to briefly meet Hell a couple of months ago, as he did a talk and book signing at a library downtown. There's a lot of personal meaning and pleasure in this music for me by this point.

As I was sitting there today, flipping through said booklet and hearing "Betrayal Takes Two" blare though my speaker, sounding better than it ever had before (up until now, I had to hear the album through my teenage laptop, then my college-era iPod, then streaming), I thought, "Hey, this is pretty sweet".

SoTD 10/16/2026: Brickfield Nights - The Boys

 

This one's been stuck in my head for the last few days. That chorus is just about perfect. If it isn't perfect, then I don't want to know what perfect is.

The Hollywood Brats are one of my favorite bands, I need to make a point of listening to the Boys more often...

Da Woodster

As per usual, click on the image for a better-resolution look at it!

I was doodling some Woody Woodpeckers in my sketchbook, which eventually led to me trying to come up with my own take on his design as though I were directing one of his shorts back in the day. I liked how this one looked, so I brought it into Photoshop and inked it/colored it/tweaked it slightly there. 

It's largely modelled off of his appearance in 1943's "The Screwball", my personal favorite look for the man/bird, but with some little modifications added that incorporate elements from his later designs plus my own stylistic sensibilities. I might play around with this design a bit more just for the fun of it.

SoTD 10/10/2026: Barracuda - John Cale

A fun, bouncy track from John Cale's Fear album. I should give that one a re-listen sometime soon...

Some news! I've created a Spotify playlist compiling the tracks I choose for this Song o' The Day feature in chronological order. You can find it below. There are only four songs at present, but hey, after a little while it should be somethin'!

SoTD 10/9/2026: Tell Me What I've Done - Howlin' Wolf

Check out that guitar tone!

This, and more contemplative insight into art and culture, can be found daily* here on the official Noah Pasternak web page.

*Not daily.

SoTD 9/29/2026: I Get So Excited - The Equals

Released in 1968, and rock 'n roll or power-pop or whatever you'd like to call it doesn't get much better than this. Two-and-a-half minutes of pure euphoria in the form of hooks and "baby-baby"s.

Animation Appreciation: The Plowboy (1929)

One of the greatest animated character designs of all time, in my opinion anyway, is Horace Horsecollar's. If the name doesn't ring a bell, a refresher: he was Mickey Mouse's second-banana in the late 1920s-early 1930s, before Goofy and Donald et al. usurped that role. Maybe he didn't want it badly enough. I wasn't there.

Horace's official debut was a 1929 short called The Plowboy. It entered the public domain in 2025, so you may watch it in its entirety without fear of legal repercussions/death right here:

This short was directed by the big bossman himself, Walt Disney, with animation done by Ub Iwerks, Ben Sharpsteen, Jack King, Wilfred Jackson, Burt Gillett and Les Clark. These are all names that will be familiar to the average animation buff. The music was scored by Carl Stalling, as many early Disney cartoons were, which is always funny for me to remember as Stalling would go on to do his best-known work with the Looney Tunes series. The general "sound" you most likely picture in your mind when someone mentions that franchise to you is largely his creation. The Rabbit of Seville, Baby Bottleneck, most of the Roadrunner series... 

I've always been very drawn to Disney's rubberhose era. It's an art style that appeals immensely to me, and the early Mickey shorts and the Floyd Gottfredson comic strips are prime examples of that design sensibility in execution. This particular entry is by no means one of the best, but it contains some nice drawings to look at. Let's look at them, shall we?

(As always, you can click on any given image for a closer look at it.)

This is Minnie Mouse flirting. The next singles' night at your local bar, I urge you to walk around making that face at people. 

This probably wasn't the first cartoon to use this particular visual gag, and it certainly wouldn't be the last, but hell, I like it. It's a little creepy I suppose, but the silliness overshadows that.

Mickey gets licked and makes these faces. This is one of the things I like about this early era of Disney (and this applies to the early era at just about any studio), they're still figuring stuff out. Squash-and-stretch would become one of their trademarks within a few years, but here they're just starting to parse how they'd like to animate that sort of thing. Their process gives us in the audience some great drawings to enjoy. (Reading this over, that last sentence strikes me as potentially sounding sarcastic-- rest assured it is not. I truly love these drawings.)

Horace enters the picture and establishes himself as a presence straight away, getting on Mickey's nerves and not taking the proceedings seriously. His suppressed-laughing animation is a lot of fun.

This title card isn't exclusive to this particular film, but I think it might be my all-time favorite rendering of Mickey Mouse. This was a wonderful design for him. Like I said, I'm just a sucker for the whole rubberhose look, and it fit that franchise perfectly like a four-fingered glove.

That's about it for today! Not a very insightful or in-depth post, but this "Animation Appreciation" series is really just an excuse for me to go through some frames I like in a given work and maybe add some stray useless thoughts. I'd like to spotlight some of the aforementioned Floyd Gottfredson's rubberhose art here someday, I personally feel he was the best artist to work in that style. He was able to give it a sense of volume and form that was rarely matched.

SoTD 9/27/2026: I'd Do It Again - Gordon Lightfoot

As you may or may not have noticed, I haven't created a new monthly playlist for some time now, and it's largely due to being pretty busy as of late. In lieu of those, here is a new, low-effort feature for the website that I will add new instalments of whenever I feel like it: Song o' The Day. As the title suggests, I shall post a song that is on my mind for one reason or another on a given day. Maybe I will explain why from time to time. Maybe I won't. Fun!

Anyways, the inaugural pick is I'd Do It Again by Gordon Lightfoot, released in 1976. 

Why this particular tune? Well, I'm just listening to the album it comes from (Summertime Dream) on vinyl right now. I got a free copy of the recent-ish Rhino Reserve pressing, because it was technically "defective"-- there is a skip towards the end of the first track. That's it. Otherwise it sounds great. Hell, I've dealt with much worse and for more than zero dollars. Consider me grateful!

I chose this track because it's my personal favorite off of the record. And I'm saying that on the record. Wocka wocka.

You may come up with a more intricate reason as to why I chose this song yourself if this is unsatisfactory to you.

Anyways, like I mentioned before-- I've been sort of busy lately! I've been more productive, both at my paying job and in my creative pursuits. I recently organized a decades' worth of rough notes/bits 'n pieces of scripts (mostly for cartoons) that I'd like to make, and I've been re-igniting my passions for animation and writing in general,after depression put a big damper on all that the prior few years. So... hopefully, watch this space!