Best products from r/ObscureMedia

My hubby is a lover of obscure art, film, games, and more. His birthday is around the corner, and although we do not have a shared interest in these things, I have in the past been able to buy him some wonderful gifts by finding people like him on reddit and other online sites and hearing from people who share his passions about prized possessions and great finds. I'm hoping this community might be able to help me in that way.

To give an idea of his tastes, I will list some of the gifts I have been able to give him in the past which are now well-loved:

• Melies Box Set
  
  
• Norman McLaren Boxed Set
  
  
• The Man Who Planted Trees - Frédéric Back
  
  
• Winsor McCay - The Master Edition
  
  
• La Linea - Osvaldo Cavandoli
  
  
• Lynd Ward - Six Novels in Woodcuts
  
  
• Ulrich Merkl's republication of Dream of the Rarebit Fiend by Winsor McKay <-- Prized possession.
  
  He also lives the silent comedy era, and has boxed sets of Chaplin, Lloyd, Keaton, Arbuckle, Bowers, and probably some others I'm not thinking of.
  
  So, chime in if you think you have similar tastes. What are your personal prized possessions? What might fit into his collection that is missing?

While I don't consider this obscure as it ran two seasons on Adult Swim during a very popular time for the network, it is one of the less widely loved [as] shows. It's also fucking amazing. Like, one of the best things to ever be on [as]. You can pick up the entire series for $13 on Amazon If you enjoy weirdness, this show is definitely worth a watch.

No problem! There was a reprint of After Man in 2018, and it's affordable under $40. Man After Man has indeed been out of print since 1990 and is fairly pricey between $100-300. Dougal Dixon has many other books too such has The New Dinosaurs, If Dinosaurs Were Alive Today, and many other dinosaur related books (many for children.) Most of these are out of print as well and are expensive, but worth it if you're really interested. Maybe you could luck out at your local library and just rent them.

There is however a rare book he made that was only released in Japan for some reason (and of course it's the most badass one) called Greenworld (グリーン・ワールド) about humanity colonizing an alien world and taming certain inhabitants. Although I've never seen Greenworld for sale on English sites, if you know how to order from Amazon Japan you can find the two books in the series for less than $20 a piece.

I linked to some PDF's in my original comment if buying isn't an option.

Thanks for posting this! I think the play was based on a charming book of poetry written in the early 1900s by Don Marquis called Archy & Mehitabel. Loved the book when I found it in college, but had no idea it was turned into a play or a cartoon!

Archy was a cockroach who was the reincarnated soul of a free verse poet. He would write poetry by jumping on the keys of a typewriter so all the poems were kind of e.e. cummings style, no capital letters or punctuation.

His best friend was an alley cat named Mehitabel who was also a reincarnated soul - she'd been Cleopatra in a former life.

Here's a link to some of Archy's poetry

I strongly STRONGLY recommend the DVD set of this series. Just on its own merit it's a thoroughly entertaining show, but the surreal assemblage of talent you see in a single series, it's awe-inspiring. Once upon a time, there was a show written by and co-starring Chevy Chase, Andy Rooney, Albert Brooks, Penny Marshall, Henry Winkler, Marshall Efron, Kurt Vonnegut, Elaine Stritch, Stan Freberg, and Martin Mull. And it's as clever and engaging as you'd imagine.

https://www.amazon.com/Great-American-Dream-Machine/dp/B00WAZHRZ4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522737564&sr=8-1&keywords=great+american+dream+machine&dpID=513ZEqnvOkL&preST=_SY300_QL70_&dpSrc=srch

I hope you guys can help me out here. I'm looking for an ANIMATED version of The Hugga Bunch. I came across this thread but I am not looking for the live action version. There was in fact an animated version produced by Children's Treasures Videos as seen on AllMovie. I've combed the webs but I'm only finding the live action version. Apparently there is a VHS copy on Amazon but my friend is looking for either a DVD copy or at least a streaming version that can be burned to a DVD. He is looking for a nostalgic Christmas gift for his sister. Any thoughts or suggestions?

This show was awesome, I loved it then and I love it now.

There's a book of interviews about it on Kindle. It's an interesting read, even beyond the fannish stuff, for the behind-the-scenes details on 80s TV production.

Here's the obligatory fansite.

All 146 Episodes in a box set. It's well worth it, it includes the original ancient aliens hosted by Rod Serling as well as a follow up episode. Plus it has the original intros. My favorite is the one on the Bermuda Triangle, but really their all pretty good.

The Highlander Folk School later became heavily involved in the Civil Rights era. Among those that took classes there were folks like Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. (Which lead to billboards that accused King of attending a "Communist Training School".)

Highlander's founder, Myles Horton, is a personal hero of mine. If you'd like to learn more about his work, I'd recommend this interview. His autobiography, The Long Haul is also excellent.

Also, note that future director of On The Waterfront and East of Eden Elia Kazan had one of his first credits as a production assistant on this film.

From 1981 to 1984, comic book greats Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson turned out a popular series of Star Wars newspaper strips. Featuring the adventures of Luke, Leia, and Han in the time between the first and second movies, these strips were science fiction adventure at its best.

These strips were collected and reprinted in comic book form by Dark Horse Comics under the title Classic Star Wars in the 1990s and later were in bound collections. These comics and collections had repetitive and bonus panels removed for the sake of brevity and clarity.

NOW for the first time ever, every strip including both daily and sunday strips will be available!
Star Wars: The Classic Newspaper Comics Vol. 1 Hardcover – April 25, 2017

The first of three volumes that present for the first time ever the classic Star Wars newspaper strip from 1979-1984 in its complete format--including each Sunday title header and "bonus" panels in their meticulously restored original color. Initially the color Sundays and B&W dailies told separate stories, but within six months the incomparable Russ Manning merged the adventures to tell brand new epic seven-days-a-week sagas that rivaled the best science fiction comics of all time.

Volume One contains 575 sequential comic strips from the strip’s premiere on March 11, 1979 to October 5, 1980.

i use the older version of this and its pretty great. You can use VLC, or the program it comes with to rip them on your computer.

EDIT: if you live in the north texas area, I'll rip them and put them on a hard drive you supply for free. Can't beat that!

Love this show!

The opening song is pure fire and is what got me interested in it.

All the encodes I've seen online are absolutely ancient and atrocious though. All really old TV rips. I actually got myself the DVD set for my birthday a couple years ago cause I really wanted to watch it in decent quality.

Comparison:

TV-rip: https://i.imgur.com/N31wyt5.jpg

DVD-rip; https://i.imgur.com/HW1nJaK.jpg

The difference really is quite startling, very happy with the DVD release. Nearly HD quality.

It's still being sold, new and with Prime shipping on Amazon!

https://www.amazon.com/Cybersix-Complete-TV-Series/dp/B00L1WJGPG/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=cybersix&qid=1571966072&sr=8-1

I actually made my own rip based off of it, if the DVDs weren't still being sold I'd share it all.

I will link the first episode at least though, since I do really want others to check the series out. (And I wanna show off how much better it is.)

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1BEZxevQO95LBZwvD7486fCZEF2rMM5XM

Note: Don't watch with the embedded player!

Ruins the quality, make sure to download.

Edit: Also the the TV rip has less in the frame? How odd.

Edit 2: Comparison with dual audio DVD-rip from The Pirate Bay: https://i.imgur.com/KYkpIci.png

Has less in the frame too, but also has details missing in the TV rip that don't seem to be just compression? If anyone knows a possible explanation for this, I'd love to hear! My only guess is something like they redid part of the capture process after touching up the cels, but I can't recall hearing anything about that.

He was - Jerry G. Bishop, the original Svengoolie, directly name-checked Ernie Anderson and Ghoulardi when we interviewed him for American Scary as one of his primary influences when creating the character...

There is a better option!