Care Power Team Movies Available-ish

As I've posted before, the Care Power Team update of AiCaL slinks around, showing up here and there, without much fanfare and usually inaccessible to most viewers.  Well, you can now catch both of the post-Share Bear Shines movies streaming on Netflix, which is a better chance for them to actually be seen than any of the previous outings (though it's still not good for viewers outside the US).  I'll be posting about both of these movies fully, but in the meantime, here are few of my overall thoughts.
Similarly to the 2003 SSC DVDs past Get Well Adventure, both of these movies are glorified episodes with framing devices, although the TV Show that the episodes would have been pulled from has yet to, and may never, materialize.  To The Rescue has a better framing device than Giving Festival, as it's set at an awards show, with the episodes shown being the award-winning rescue, whereas Giving Festival is just the bears getting ready for the festival and occasionally "remembering" an episode to illustrate a point.  Seriously, I kept waiting for one of the bears to say, "Now that's what I call a sticky situation" at the end.
What separates CPT from AiCaL is the titular team itself, which consists of Funshine, Cheer, Share, Grumpy, and Bedtime, though no explanation is given in these movies or in Share Bear Shines for why exactly these five were given powered-up belly badges (save that they're the core five of AiCaL, with Bedtime replacing Oopsy).  Considering that non-core bears are nominated for rescue awards in To The Rescue, I had the thought that all the bears could access this extra power, but one episode in Giving Festival makes it explicit that those five are the team and the only ones with the power.
From what I've heard (and I've only heard it from one source, so I'm not entirely sure of how true it is), AGP is rebooting the Care Bears once again, so these two movies and Share Bear Shines are probably all we'll ever see of the Care Power Team incarnation, and the last we'll see of the AiCaL designs.  Which is too bad, really.  I enjoyed both these movies and Share Bear Shines (and I need them on DVD, please, not just streaming on a website), and I would have liked to see more episodes, especially one that explained where the Care Power came from.

Old School SSC Record

Somebody awesome posted a couple of songs from the 1980's Strawberry Shortcake picture record that I remember having as a kid (and it's probably still in my parent's house somewhere).  It's been years since I last listened to this record, so hearing these songs brought back a lot of nostalgia for me.  From what I recall, the story of the record followed Strawberry and her friends as they set off for a picnic, only to find that the picnic basket was lost somewhere on the trip.  So they retrace their steps while singing public domain songs that fit whatever setting they're in, eventually spotting the basket on Strawberry's front porch.

The opening song, "Strawberryland":


The first side two song, "You're One in a Million":

This song was also reprised by Strawberry at the end of the record.

AMV - CWaCoM meets LSoH

Here's my latest AMV, using footage from Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and the song "Ya Never Know" from Little Shop of Horrors:

Listening to the song, I was struck by just how perfectly it matched up with Flint's situation, and it was only inevitable that I would make this AMV.  I also made a "prequel" AMV using the very beginning of "Ya Never Know," substituting the Mayor for Mushnik:

But I didn't put as much work into this one as the other, since it was so short (and there's not that much footage of the Mayor before he beefs out).  But again, it fit so well that I just had to do it.

Crochet - Small Things, mostly

Another thing that kept me away from blogging these past couple of months was the various crochet projects I've been working on.  I can't show you the big one that took up most of the month of May (since it's a gift that hasn't been given yet), but I can show off a few of the smaller things I've done lately:

The Lion Brand weekly e-mail has been including a washcloth pattern each week for the summer, since they're small, portable, and a good way to practice new stitches.  The top set (South Beach Washcloths) I made for my younger sister, but the bottom two I kept for myself.  You can't really tell from the picture, but the South Beach ones have a kind of slanted ribbing effect going on that's achieved by alternating half-double crochet stitches and slip stitches.

This dishcloth is a contemporary take on a classic design that was in an issue of Crochet World.  It looks cool, but with all the color changes, there were a million loose ends to weave in on both sides, so I don't think I'll be making any more of these.

Another Crochet World pattern, done more on a whim than anything else.  Still, it's an awfully cute little bag, and I finally found a use for that button.

Video: Star Tok?

This is some kind of Awesome.

Strawberry Shortcake - Upcoming DVDs

Good news on the SSC front: Amazon now lists the Glimmerberry Ball movie, complete with cover image, but no synopsis (as usual).  And fans of the 2003 version, if you were despairing that the unreleased episodes, shown in other countries but not in the states, would never come out over here, fear not, for after over a year with no new DVDs, the next (technically last) in the series, Berrywood Here We Come, is coming out.  Both DVDs are set to come out on August 31st.  However, Kidtoon Films will be showing Glimmerberry Ball during the month of August (despite it being a winter movie, apparently), so you can catch it early, if you're so inclined.
In related news, AGKidzone finally updated its SSC video page, removing the clips from the old series and adding a couple from Berryfest Princess and the new song from Glimmerberry Ball.

Mixtapes

I've taken to listening to audiobooks while crocheting (and doing other things), and I've found myself checking out books that I might not have otherwise, simply because the audiobook selection at most libraries is so much smaller than the print collection.  That's how I ended up listening to  Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time.  The author, Rob Sheffield, shares various mix tapes he's made over the years and the time in his life they represent, with the bittersweet edge of losing his wife along the way.  Listening, my mind kept wandering to the mixtapes I myself had made, though they weren't really the kind of tape he was talking about.
From 1998 to 2006-ish, I filled 10 and half tapes with my favorite songs from musicals (and the occasional movie or TV song).  I didn't really have the intention of making that many when I started, mind you.  In the summer of 1998 I fell in love with the OCR of Sunset Boulevard, which I had taken out from the library, and listened to it nonstop.  When its due date arrived, I couldn't bear to return it, and I didn't have the funds to buy my own, since a. it was a two-disc set and b. Amazon.com wasn't on the radar yet.  But then I remembered that my father had once told me that you could copy CDs from the library because they pay a special fee, or something, and I just happened to have a boombox with a line-in connection (a surprise fulfillment of a Christmas request for a tape player a couple of years earlier), so I hooked up my CD player and recorded my favorite tracks from that, and a few other CDs I had out at the time.  I actually lost that first tape fairly early on, but I still remember most of the shows that I pull songs from (including Pippin, The Muppet Movie, and Shenandoah).
Even with the arrival of mp3s and cd-ripping into my life, I continued to make my Broadway mixtapes.  I didn't even think of switching to CDs, which means that I occasionally run into songs that I no longer like as much as I used to (if at all) when listening to the cassettes, and have to suffer through them.  Which is probably why the nail in my mixtape-making coffin was when I got an mp3 player.  To be fair, I was losing interest by then, partially due to the difficulty of finding CDs of musicals that I hadn't heard yet that also had songs that I wanted to keep listening to, and the fact that I no longer had my own CD/cassette player (the line-in boombox died earlier).  But the mp3 player basically did what my mixtapes had: let me pick and choose from the best of my collection, with the added bonus of being able to remove songs I was tired of and skip ones I wasn't in the mood for.  I still have my tapes and I still like to listen to them and go back to the time when they were made, though I haven't actually listened to them that much since I got my new car that doesn't have a tape deck.