National Pancake Day!

(from the Maple Syrup For All! department)

Hi everyone,

Last night was National Pancake Day. IHOP was giving away a free stack of buttermilk pancakes to every customer to encourage everyone to donate to the Children's Miracle Network.

So - Rose & I went down to our local IHOP and got pancakes last night. She seemed to really like them - but was somewhat concerned about the size of the stack:



Cute, huh?

It was a crazy madhouse, but it was also fun. Let's hope they had some success last night and raised some much needed funds.

You can read more about it here:
IHOP National Pancake Day - February 23, 2010

Cheers,
Paul

Finally!!!! Ruby Gloom On DVD!!!!

(from the I Was Beginning To Wonder If It Would Ever Happen department)

Hi everyone,

As longtime readers of my blog might remember, way back in 2007, I wrote about an imminent release of Ruby Gloom on DVD in February 2008.

Well - I was only off by a year or so.

Two DVDs of Ruby Gloom are currently available from Amazon.ca: Grounded In Gloomsville and Misery Loves Company. These were released in March 2009.

There was a third title announced - Pet Population - but it appears to have been pulled at the last moment. Its original release date was June 2009.

I do have the two released discs, and they are great. 16:9 anamorphic widescreen, and Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes.

Each disc contains four episodes. The first disc - Grounded In Gloomsville - has the first four episodes in order. The second disc has a more random selection of 4 episodes.

If you liked Beetlejuice (animated), Powerpuff Girls, Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi, Pinky And The Brain, and/or Tim Burton movies, you'll dig these. The animated Beetlejuice is probably the closest match - Nelvana animated both Ruby Gloom and Beetlejuice.

Until this show gets released in the United States - whispers hint hint Nickelodeon - this is the best way to see them.

UPDATE 29-Feb-2012: Netflix has added all three seasons of Ruby Gloom to their streaming service. This is great news! However - you may still want to pick up the DVDs, since the Netflix versions are the 4x3 "square" format, and not the widescreen 16x9 of the DVDs. Also - the DVDs have 5.1 Dolby Digital audio, instead of the Netflix stereo.

UPDATE 04-Aug-2013: It looks like we're finally going to get a US DVD release of Ruby Gloom.  Right now, Amazon.com has 6 titles available for pre-order with a release date of September 10th.  There's not much details about the titles, but I'll link to them here:  Gloommates, Grounded in Gloomsville, Tooth Or Dare, I Heart Rock & Roll, Welcome to Gloomsville, Happiest Girl in the World.  Amazon is also listing Spanish editions of these six titles.

There aren't too many details on Amazon yet - just cover art and titles.  There may be more details at the distributor's website: Phase 4 Films

Cheers,
Paul

"Look on the bright side of the dark side"