Happy New Year, one and all!

I know it'll be a few hours until we ring in the New Year, but it's been a l-o-n-g day at work, and I'd like to see my annual tradition through before I do anything else. (If I don't do it now, I'll forget.)

First, the banner. I don't know who did that panorama of Times Square or where I got it from, so whoever made it, I thank you for an absolutely beautiful image! Let's give a big hand to whoever made that picture!

Second, the first official New Year's custom logo.



Third, I'd like to turn back the hands of time before the clock chimes midnight, and ring in a new tradition that I like to call "The Millennium Museum's Personal Best."

Ready? Buckle up, 'cause here we go!

DECEMBER 22^nd, 2012: The Millennium Museum opens. The first Item displayed is a Year 2000 face-towel. The original

DECEMBER 31^st, 2012: The Museum’s first New Year’s Eve; the next Items are Doctor Who: The Movie and a Danbury Mint Millennium Baby.

JANUARY 1, 2013: The Museum unveils its logo!

FEBRUARY 4: The “On This Day” feature debuts. I admit with some shame that it has fallen by the wayside because it got too hard to do without a handy articles database. (I'm taking a class at Moraine Valley in the new year, so with that I should get access to the news databases.)

MARCH 17: St. Patrick’s Day inspires the creation of a prototype “custom logo.” In this case, the banner’s usual silver gradient changed to the colors of the Irish flag. Little else changed, but the seed of an idea was born.

MARCH 31: The Millennium Museum declares its first season finale and month-long break.

APRIL 3: In the real world, the Museum’s curator gets a job!

MAY 5: Series 2 begins! The first item seen is a collection of state quarters, which were part of America’s Millennium celebration.

MAY 19: The Museum hosts its first-ever video review. It’s pretty embarrassing, but you’ll see a few more of these in the years to come.

JULY 4: The first Fourth of July sees FOUR items posted in honor of the holiday!

SEPTEMBER 11: This issue, a Special Edition, is the game-changer. Here, we learn what all of my previous postings had been leading up to.

SEPTEMBER 29: This issue marked the first time I drew something special for the Museum since the logo. It was a background of fall leaves blowing in the wind.

OCTOBER 13: The “Jack-O-Lantern” variant makes its debut. Also, we look back at The Blair Witch Project.

NOVEMBER 23/24: Doctor Who celebrates its 50^th anniversary, and the Museum responds by commemorating the first-ever Chicago TARDIS convention.

DECEMBER 22, 2013: The Museum celebrates its first anniversary! The week before sees the Museum’s first-ever Christmas celebration—I didn’t mark the occasion the year before because I just didn’t think of it.

DECEMBER 31, 2013:

 

And now, ladies and gentlemen, the moment you've been waiting for...the last two Millennium Items before we leave 2013 behind.

 

 

I found this in a St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store out in Midlothian, IL. (My work sometimes takes me out there.) This cassette tape came out in 1999, and the publisher is listed as K-Tel International.  

K-Tel is well-known for producing compilation and “greatest-hits” albums that are mostly sold on late-night TV infomercials. Most of the time, their records are the original recordings, but sometimes they use original recordings: this tape’s songs are performed by the Tony Burgos Orchestra. 

There are at least two Louis Prima standards (“Jump, Jive, an’ Wail” and “That Old Black Magic”); Hoagy Carmichael’s “In the Mood” (later appropriated by Benny Goodman); as well as many other songs from the big-band era. 

The collection of old, mostly public-domain songs more than fulfills the “preserving history” credit, but the new recordings add a new wrinkle to that: It breathes new life into the tunes of yesterday. I can’t think of a better way to ring in a new year than this.

 

 

A quick browse through Microsoft Word’s clip-art gallery for some New Year’s fireworks, for something else I had in mind, yielded these four examples from the Year 2000. It’s amazing that they still have all that old clip art in their archives. There's honestly not much to summarize here; I'm just surprised to have found it! Still, it's one for the books.

 

 

 

When I first opened the Museum, my first rule was “don’t just use pictures from the Internet.” The rationale at the time was, simply using pictures found on the Internet would defeat the purpose of hunting for items. As time has rolled on, I’ve since discarded the rule, mostly because time and money are never on my side. Also, Millennium Items are getting harder and harder to find in the real world; the one-month “season hiatus” is also not enough time to go looking. I may expand this to two months in the new year…something to think about. 

Anyway, case in point: I found this picture of a Times Square puzzle on eBay. It’s a stunningly realistic painting of a Times Square panorama. Besides all the true-to-life billboards and advertisements, there are messages beckoning you to “Welcome A New Century!”

It perfectly captures the exuberant, triumphant mood of the New Millennium celebrations—Times Square has been the mecca for New Year’s celebrations for as long as I can remember, definitely even longer! 

I do remember that there was a Show Boat revival (“Ooooool’ maaaaaan riveeeeeeer…”) at the time, so the big billboard is accurate. Can’t remember if the Broadway revival and the tour revival went along at the same time, or if there was a gap in between, but I do remember the TV advertisements for the “Broadway in Chicago” version.

 

The “…money America is saving with MCI” billboard dates it a little bit, because MCI/Worldcom suffered some kind of a scandal back in 2002 or so, which led to MCI’s bankruptcy.  

Somewhat inexplicably, the Tin Soldier balloons are being pulled by a teddy bear and a white rabbit (blow up the image and take a look at the lower right part of the image).

There’s also a very big ad for “Bloomberg Information Radio.” That’s kind of funny, because Michael Bloomberg has been the mayor of New York City from 2001 until this year, when he will be replaced by Bill de Blasio.

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



I've decided to take the day off!

I admit, this is very belated, but I wanted to take today off because I just can't think of anything to post!

It's more that I want to save my energies for the New Year's Eve post, in which you'll see a couple of specially-themed items and a new custom logo!

See you on Tuesday night!

Are you enjoying your Christmas?

Hello, and Merry Christmas, all of you out there in the real world!

How's your celebrations going so far? Everything's a bit dull around here, so I thought I might do a special post as a nice present!

I'm just waiting for "The Time of the Doctor," this year's Doctor Who Christmas special, on BBC America. It starts at 9:00 Eastern/8:00 Central.

 

 

 

This charming red robot is the first in Hallmark’s “Robots on Parade” series. I believe that I have the second one from 2001; unfortunately, I don’t have the third one from 2002.

Hallmark ornament artist Nello Williams designed it in the style of one of those old “tin toy” robots from the 1950s that ran on D-cell batteries. While it isn’t strictly Millennium-themed, it is in keeping with the theme of “what people in the 1950s thought the year 2000 might look like,” as we saw on the silver-suited Madame Alexander doll.

I’ve had this ornament for a long time, but I never thought anything of it until I noticed the very small “2000” inside the power gauge on its chest.

It's a little blurry, but if you look at it from the right angle you can see the "2000" marking.

It's interesting to look at this robot as an artifact from a past vision of the future because household robots are commercially available today, but they don't look anything like this guy. The most well-known "real robot" to date is the Roomba, a small, streamlined affair about the size of a dinner plate.

The central problem here is how to get a robot to walk like a humanoid with humanoid legs. The easiest way to get around this is to give it something like a dog's hind legs (the proper term is "digitigrade legs"), which are engineered for near-perfect balance and require much less movement than human legs. Find a video on YouTube of a running dog and you'll see what I mean: the "thigh" part is the only part that actually moves.

We humans, by contrast, have to use the thigh joint, the knee joint, the ankle joint, and the toe joints. For us, that's practical and elegant, but the smooth movement they deliver is extremely difficult to reproduce in a machine, which means that any attempt to get that "human walk" will result in the "clank-clank-clank" walk we associate with old-fashioned robots. (Even then, those robots have the additional "cheat" of wheels hidden in the foot mechanism!)

 As far as I know, this difficulty has not stopped some engineers from trying: I did read about a "pendulum"-based mechanism in Popular Science,  but it was still in the experimental stages. The robot itself looked like an oversized "bullet" with a pair of Erector-set legs sticking out of it, which means that it can't do anything but walk at the moment. So, at the moment, non-humanoid robots it is!

 



Çe n’est pas un gateau.

I'm very, very proud to announce that the Millennium Museum has been online for exactly one year to this day. It's amazing that I've kept at it for this long--I thought for sure it was something I'd mess around with for a while, get bored with, close down, and move on to something else. (Well, I do close down for breaks between seasons, but I always come back to it.)

The occasion is so special that I had planned to decorate a cake with the Museum's logo, but...well, let's just say that the old saying about "the best-laid plans of mice and men" still applies.

First, the cakes got stuck to their pans and broke in half when I tried to get them out. Then, the tubes of glitter-gel I bought had turned to liquid, further scuppering my plans. Finally, I decided to just draw the cake.



...As you can see, the concept needs a little work, but I'm sure it tastes delicious!

Let's keep celebrating with this week's Millennium Items!

 After a long absence, we delve headlong into the pop-culture side of the Millennium celebrations with these Hallmark ornaments. We’ve had the African-American one since 2000; I bought the “regular” one at that Tinley Park doll show.
(You can sense a pattern forming, right? The show took place a month before the blog opened, and I was specifically looking for Millennium-themed items to report on.)
These are miniature replicas of the full-scale Millennium-issue dolls sold through Mattel’s “Collector Club.” Considerably more upscale than regular, store-bought dolls, the actual dolls wear more elaborate dresses and boast a higher level of detail. That being said, however, these dolls are fairly common on the toy show circuit. Depending on the seller, you can usually find them for anywhere from $25 to greater than $40.
 

This is much more firmly a return to the “pop culture” motif we’ve seen a lot of over the past year (Monopoly 2000 Edition; Millennium Salute G.I. Joe; the M&M’s dispenser; etc.) The addition of the African-American one is interesting in light of the New Millennium celebrations—her inclusion pretty much says, “Good morning, 21st Century!”

Ooh, one more thing: At that toy show, I did see a Latina Millennium Princess Barbie. Unfortunately, at the time, I didn’t have the money to buy it. If I ever see it again, you know that I’ll be there to either pick it up or get a decent snapshot.

At last, we're kickin' off the Christmas season!

Tick…tock…tick…tock…

Dear readers and followers, we are coming toward the one-year milestone, and fast! It feels good to know that I’ve been doing it for this long…One full year. I can scarcely believe it myself!

I’m not quite sure what to say about it, except that the idea of the anniversary has given me pause to think about some New Year’s resolutions for the Museum.

First, I resolve to make the place a little more state-of-the-art in 2014. You’ll start to see a video-review or two alongside the text articles.

Second, I resolve to at least try to develop the “Mr. Millennium” character a little better. He’s supposed to be an over-the-top showman/museum curator, and when he first appeared in October or so with the M&Ms dispenser, I kind of threw the costume together from whatever bits I could find (the 2000 tie, a waistcoat, and a shirt).

The result…didn’t look very much like a showman, but I was trying to aim for something along the lines of Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor--that is to say, a “totally tasteless” costume with loud, clashing colors.

Third, I resolve to design a building for the Museum. I’ve got something a little bit Times Square-themed in mind (New Year’s Eve, get it?)… 

Ah, but you don’t want to sit around listening to me pontificating about the future of the site, huh?

No, you’re absolutely right! Let's open the Christmas season with a bang! I have here TWO items! (You'll see why in just a little bit. ;) )

I found this for $2 last year at a doll show in Tinley Park, IL. It’s made to look like an angel with wings and halo (though this honestly looks more like a headband). She wears a rather beautiful dress of burgundy velveteen and holds in her hand a plush star. The word “HOPE” is emblazoned on the dress; on the star, “2000.” Better still, it doubles as a tree ornament!

This little bear represents a very interesting start to the Museum’s first actual holiday season. Take her burgundy dress: it sits between red and purple. It’s like the Millennium Bear, with its magenta plush, but this time it sits a little more on the darker side of the cross between warmth and uncertainty. Perhaps it’s best not to read too much into the color, because burgundy, like forest green and the white fur of the bear, is a “winter” color. In any case, the word “HOPE,” embroidered in gold on the front of the dress, offsets the uncertainty.

The bear’s white fur represents light and purity…it is an angel, after all.

The star is the Christmas star that goes on top of the tree. It says “2000” because Christmas 1999 was the last real holiday of the old millennium, and the time has come to make new Christmas memories as the clock strikes midnight a week later.

I also found this at the same doll show as the bear above. This little periodical was published throughout the 90s up until the early 2000s. Interestingly enough, the publisher, Publications International, no longer does specialty magazines like this. Instead, it now handles book sales (e.g. children's activity books, etc.). The cover price is listed as $4.99; I swiped this off a table marked "Free--Take One." It was practically calling out to me!

Since the publisher is no longer active, and since this is more than ten years old, I'll make a Christmas present of this and reproduce half of it for this year's celebration. (The next half--the actual ornaments--will come later.)