Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Totally Talking Turtle, Dude!


My mom keeps saying 'you should blog about Crush the Turtle!'

Now - to clarify, I've told my mother a very detailed insanely long story about my experience at 'Turtle Talk with Crush' from Finding Nemo at Disneyland recently. It's a voice-activated real-time animation system. Which -- thanks to this CG Crush character's real-time lip sync (Not to mention the 30 frames-per-second that his image is rendered in) -- makes it seem as if a living Crush were actually on the other side of the aquarium 'glass'. He says stuff like "You. Little Dude in the second row. The one with the bright red shell. Are those your parental units seated directly to your left? Your mom's a total babe."

It's then that you see a hundred jaws drop all at the same time. Mostly parents, since the kids knew Crush was real all along. The parents suddenly realize that this isn't some lame singing animatronic parrot that clicks and whirrs. Animatronics blew your mind in 1963, but recently they're tired to anyone but a die-hard fan like me who knows all the Tiki Room lines to sing along. (Ah ha, I see, Schmitt has no hair! Mi Amigos, stop your clucking, it's time to start the show!)

Yes, it was amazing, but not blog-worthy, as I've been failing at attempting to come up with a really super-cool way of re-telling you the story. So since I've given up, I'm just going to cut to the end of the previously written blog, that has the one joke I came up with :

It's possibly not as amazing-sounding on this blog as it is in person, but live animation that talks real-time, directly to you using your name, answering anything you want to ask, is pretty impresive and Disney Magical. Walt would be proud.

And since I'm sure people are mildly predictable, I doubt Crush the turtle gets questions like 'What is the nature of Space-Time?'

But if he did, I feel confident he could answer it better than me.

: Now wasn't that better? You didn't need to know the whole story anyway, and it was just as funny. Really, I'm just looking out for you.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, the long version *was* pretty long but I enjoyed them both (the long version and the short one, as it were).... Oh, and you didn't mention "Bodacious Betty" (oh my!) but that can be left to the imagination....
Thank you for the 'Crush' blog
(N LV U 2 :-)

Schrodinger's Kitten said...

Good reminder - Crush totally rhymes the names of the people on the spot. "What's your name?"
"Betty"
"Bodacious Betty!"
or
"Awesome Anna!"

I shudder to think I might have been "Surfin' Sara"...but I had performance anxiety and hunkered down when Crush looked my way.

Tracy Lynn said...

Yeah, well just let your imagination roam along the limited set of choices available to the turtle who wants to rhyme with "Tracy".

Your mom rocks. Mine doesn't even know how to find my blog, and I've told her like a bazillion times. She keeps saying she thinks it's private.

No wonder I do the things I do to get attention. Like ruining my kidneys.

Schrodinger's Kitten said...

Totally Tubular Tracy!
Trancendental Tracy!
Tawesome? Trad?

Mom does rock - she's a computer programmer for 20+ years, but can't program a VCR to stop flashing 12:00. (sorry mom!)

Anonymous said...

HEY!

(Sigh)
She's right, of course...and I'm
woefully inept with DVD players as well...

Schrodinger's Kitten said...

I have one word for you mom - TIVO.

Anonymous said...

I have one word for you, Sara -- Thanks.

Tracy Lynn said...

My biological father not only uses a VCR he still insists on using phones with cords.

Schrodinger's Kitten said...

Ladies and gentlemen - my parents!
thank you, thank you...they'll be here all week. Enjoy your veal.