Saturday, March 31, 2007

Thoughts & Opinions on the 1st Anniversary of RETURNING TO OZ

Today, I arranged all six files for Aaron Pacentine's 20th "Returning to Oz" radio show into an auto-playlist and listened to them all while browsing the Internet.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with "Returning to Oz," it began a year ago (in fact the 20th episode was to celebrate the 1-year anniversary) with Aaron Pacentine of www.videosforfamily.com and Celia Foster, who ran an extensive website dedicated to Disney's "Return to Oz." (Sadly, the website is no longer available, but another website has appeared that has taken it's place, more on that later.) The episodes were available to download from the Videos For Family website in .mp3 files. This gave downloaders the ease to use the files to either listen to on their computers, burn them to audio or MP3 CDs, or send them to their iPods or other MP3 Player.

The first thirteen episodes focused mainly on the production of Disney's "Return to Oz," before the announcement that the series would now contain conversations about Oz in general. (Although the next two episodes did have "Return to Oz" themes.) Aaron continued the show, and presently hosts it with Aaron Schultz of www.waltdisneysreturntooz.com, the afore mentioned "Return to Oz" website.

The twentieth episode is a delight. It features music, which does not detract from the conversations at all, and skits, the best of which is a phone call to Mr. Pacentine from none other than Judy Garland, the Dorothy of 1939. ("The reports of my death were greatly exaggerated." - Mark Twain) Of course, it is a highly skilled imitator, but when you just listen, you could be easily fooled by one of the greatest bits of "humbuggery" since Forgotten Silver or a man behind the curtain...

If you haven't yet heard this, go to http://www.videosforfamily.com/returntoozshow.htm, and start "Returning to Oz."

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