I generally avoid writing up multiple wizards from the same source material, but Saruman the White is one worthy wizard. I’ve never actually read the Lord of the Rings books, so I only know Saruman as Christopher Lee with long, flowing rock hair. That’s a good way to be known, though.
According to Wikipedia, Saruman has some A+ aliases, including Curumo, White Messenger, Man of Skill, and Sharkey. I feel like I would be an enviable dude to have even just one of those nicknames. Note to readers and all people: please start calling me something cool like that.
I was disappointed when Saruman did not appear in the version of Return of the King that made it to theaters. Thankfully, he did make the cut for those huge extended edition DVDs that I watched a million times a decade ago and which I have not touched since. Perhaps it is time for a revisitation! I think and hope he is also in the upcoming Hobbit movie(s).
Saruman also appeared in Bakshi’s animated Lord of the Rings movie. I don’t think he looks as imposing as Christopher Lee, but I do love this particular cartoon wizard look: the face peering out of an explosion of white hair. It’s how I prefer to draw wizards myself. You can imagine his face sinking back into his hair as a defense mechanism against natural predators.
I was about to write that I don’t think wizards have natural predators, and then I remember I wrote a song about that very topic, and I started wondering how often I’ve traveled this same road of thought. Brains are mysterious!
Here are some songs from the great album Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus. The record does not disappoint, even with that amazing title.
“Nature’s Way”
Check out this live version too, with a great synth, which I can’t embed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjN8PdaoFaQ
“Mr. Skin”
“Animal Zoo”
Buy the whole album if you want to hear it. I assume it’s on all of the standard music-buying places online, and you might find it at your local record store if it’s cool.
The Where’s Waldo books are fun. They have been ripped off a billion times by various “search and find” books, but not usually with the level of style you’ll find in one of the Martin Hanford originals.
My favorite when I was a kid was The Great Waldo Search, which took place in different fantasy environments. By this book, Hanford’s skill had really solidified, and he was able to put that to good use by coming up with some crazy settings that allowed him to cut loose. The book also introduced Whitebeard, who is also hiding on every page. You can find him on this one, for instance.
Next time you come across a Waldo book, I recommend looking through the illustrations, not to find Waldo, but just to take in all the detail. I distinctly remember the spread with the warring blue and red monks as being pretty awesome. Also impressive is the famous drawing where every figure is Waldo, where you are supposed to find a particular one.
I couldn’t find an image of the monk illustration to put in this post, but I did find a screenshot from the Great Waldo Search for NES, a game which also features Whitebeard:
I’ll leave you with some great Wizard Whitebeard graphitti, which you’ll have to click here to see because someone disabled downloading on their Flickr account.
My band put out a 20 minute song once, on this album. I haven’t done anything truly lengthy lately, as I’ve been trying to keep my own work fairly concise, and Hex Map has yet to break the 10 minute barrier. I would like to make some very long music soon, though. I have an idea for a 20 minute epic rock Christmas song. I think that is fairly virgin territory.
Here are some classic longies. You can listen to these and burn through a good chunk of your day.
Pink Floyd – Shine On You Crazy Diamond
Ween – Poopship Destroyer (live)
Morrissey – The Teachers Are Afraid of the Pupils (this one is more “long for Morrissey”)
Iron Butterfly – Inna Gadda Da Vida
The Edgar Winter Group – Frankenstein (live) (Check out the intro to this video at the very least!)
Smashing Pumpkins – Gossamer (This is quite long)
I wanted to include Ween’s live version of “Vallejo” from Painting the Town Brown and Oingo Boingo’s studio version of “Change,” but neither are on Youtube. For those, you’ll have to track down the CDs!
Opening fun fact: “Sensble Software” is a great name for a company.
Wizball is a 1987 computer game by Jon Hare and Chris Yates, co-founders of Sensible Software, published by Ocean (who also put out the amazing Wetrix). It was released on the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Amiga, Atari ST, and PC. The music was composed by Martin Galway, and the box art was painted by Bob Wakelin.
The game, like almost every great game, is a weird one. It’s about a wizard who turns himself into a bouncing green ball to collect color droplets, sometimes with the help of his cat, who is also a ball. I suggest you listen to the game’s title music as you read about it:
I’m going to edit the Wikipedia page down to the good stuff:
Each level starts off as monochromatic, drawn in three shades of grey, and needs three colours to be collected to complete it. The player [is] a wizard who has taken the form of a green ball…
The wizard himself is not capable of collecting paint droplets, and is initially capable of very limited movement, bouncing up and down at a fixed rate, with the player only controlling a speed of rotation, and thus how fast it will move horizontally after next touching the ground. Collecting green pearls … gives the player tokens which can be used to “buy” enhancements, such as… a companion known as Catellite. Catellite (ostensibly the wizard’s cat) is also spherical in form… Only Catellite is capable of collecting paint droplets; the player has to use it to do so. … As well as droplets of primary colours, sometimes droplets of other colours also appear, having various effects. These include:
- Light blue – causes a “filth raid”, where a wave of fast-moving enemies appear, shooting bullets at the player.
- Grey – changes Catellite into an “Indestructacat”, making it invulnerable to enemies.
- White – gives an extra life.
- Purple – changes Catellite into a “mutant cat”, causing it to disobey the player’s controls.
- Black – causes “freaky bits”, turning most of the scenery black.
I love how much weirder video games used to be. They had to be, just to explain what was going on with the pixels on screen. The games makes more sense when you see it in action (skip to 5:15 if you want to see the wizard in his wizard form)(also, this video leaves a lot of room at the beginning for the intro song, which you’ve already heard above):
There’s a much better write up on Wizball here, including information on how to get it running on your fancy, modern computer.
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