Wanna buy a duck?

I'm heading back to grad school tomorrow. I have fewer classes than last semester, but one class involves me doing so consulting work, so that might have a heavier workload. Who knows how my reading is going to be affected by this.

Also, if I don't post anything by MLK day, you can assume I have suffered a seizure from next episode.

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Little change from the past. I used to only give the name of the cartoon and its year of release. I'm now also going to include what studio released and who the director was. I think that will make things a little more informative and help one make their own decision about the cartoons and the people who made them.

Little Red Riding Rabbit – 1944 – Schlesinger/Warners – Isadore “Friz” Freleng

Fairy tales have always been great either as adaptations or targets of humor, and the Looney Tunes were no exception at using them. Featuring everyone’s favorite rabbit as he deals with a wolf using his usual bag of tricks. Red is annoying, but it’s clear she’s meant to be, and she doesn’t harm the cartoon. And then there’s the ending, which is just how I like it, rather cynical, rather dark, and of course, hilarious.

Football then and now – 1953 – Disney – Jack Kinney

As this cartoon makes clear, debates between which generation had the best team is nothing new. And that’s what it’s basically about, a comedic game between the “old timers” (from when “men were men, iron men.”) versus the modern “Present State”. Directed by Jack Kinney (who directed most of the Goofy sport cartoons, so some gags are rather similar to type), the gags mainly arise from the humorous contrast between the two teams from their tactics, their coaches, how they take care of themselves to even the most minuscule (the old timers have distinct looks, while the Present State players are interchangeable in appearance). There is a near running gag involving a creepy looking salesman (it’s those darn eyelashes) that’s here that I don’t like because it interrupts the flow, but others may take better to it.

Wholly Smoke – 1938 – Schlesinger/Warners – Frank Tashlin

I want to give a bit of warn about this one. It’s a preacher. Not the religious kind (although there is a church shown), but the message kind. The whole cartoon is about how Porky takes up smoking, and well it turns out to be bad for him (this is before the1964 surgeon general report on the negative health effects from smoking tobacco). So, unlike a lot of Looney Tunes (even for the time), it’s not really humorous (although there are gags) nor is it cynical.

Normally this would turn me off, but I enjoy it anyway. One, I’m pretty anti-smoking anyway (health hazards aside, I hate the smell of it), and two I really like the song; although it’s hard to give credit when the melody is from the pop song “Mysterious Mose”. There is are scenes were four matches and a pipe cleaner darken themselves to become the Mills Brothers and Cab Calloway, respectively, and some Amerindian smoking sticks respectively, but I think there inoffensive.

Again, you might not like this cartoon; it works for me even though it really shouldn’t.

Mother Goose Goes Hollywood – 1938 – Disney – Wilfred Jackson – Warning

Like the last cartoon, this one isn’t going to work for everyone. It isn’t preachy; it’s the fact that the cartoon is really nothing more than a mixture of famous performers of the time in nursery rhyme settings. There are gags (including a running one), but there is no real plot or characters, and you probably won’t get who everyone is or why it’s funny when they do or say something.

Having said that, I love this cartoon. I find most T. Hee’s caricatures to be very well done for the most part, and because I’m familiar with the people shown, I get the jokes behind the gags and the mimicry of their acting and voice. And not all gags require you to be too familiar with 1930’s culture (I’m sure everyone will get the first gag involving the goose). There is one bit that will probably leave a bad taste in people; Stepin Fetchit, a black actor of the time, known for his coon stereotype (his screen persona was called “the laziest man in the world”) might leave a bad taste in peoples mouth (if you don’t like how African-Americans were designed at the time, this might not be for you). Personally, this probably the only cartoon were he made me laugh (I’m not kidding), but that’s just me.

For a bit of help, I’ll identify the performers in order of appearance: Katherine Hepburn, Hugh Hebert, the Marx Bros. (Grouchy, Harpo, and Chico), Ned Sparks, Joe Penner (“Wanna buy a duck?”), and Donald Duck, Charles Laughton (here as his best known role, Captain Bligh), Spencer Tracy, and Fred Bartholomew (both appeared in Captains Courageous, but only Tracy is in costume and role from that film, I think Bartholomew is shown here in his Little Lord Fauntleroy role), W. C. Fields and Charlie McCarthy (a dummy preformed by ventriloquist Edgar Bergen; both Fields and McCarthy would go at each other on radio), Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Greta Garbo (quoting her most famous line) and Edward G. Robinson (known for his gangster roles), Eddie Cantor, Cab Calloway, Fats Waller, Stepin Fetchit, and Wallace Beery, Edna May Oliver, Mae West, Zasu Pitts, Clark Gable, George Arliss, Fred Astaire, Martha Raye, and Joe E. Brown.

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I feel a little short in reviews. That's because a few of the fics I read left me uninterested to talk about them or I want to talk to them under a specific topic for a later date. But I do have short reviews on two fanficts.

Bing Bang Zam! by Pesgasus Rescue Brigade

I’ll be honest, I only read this because Chris gave it some praise and because it was written by a writer who has written something I hated (Shipping and Handling). Thankfully, I enjoyed Bing Bang Zam! overall.

That’s not to say it’s without problems. I think the biggest issue was that I really had no one to cheer for in the court case. Okay, “Steve” is someone I was sympathetic towards but between the prosecution Flim and Flam and the defendant Chef Emerald and her lawyer Reasonable Doubt, I would have happily given a good word for the common cold. That’s not fatal (after all, this is a pretty silly fanfict), but it did make it harder to read. In terms of characterization, there’s nothing really to say; Flim and Flam are in character (I honestly thought at one point they were about to burst into song), but everyone is at best one-dimensional so that they play their chief role of getting laughs.

Thankfully, it does have those laughs from Emerald’s barely controlled seething anger to the judge’s obvious mental headaches of the whole thing. However, Derpy’s humor was a bit of a mixed bag. Part of the issue was that her idiot characterization was being used here; I chuckled when she annoyed the judge with questions about his gavel, but when she started dropping comments about board games, I just rolled my eyes. At other parts, she was starting to annoy me.

Overall, it was a fun read.

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Short Cakes by Cloud Wander

Writing from different character’s perspective in the same story can be tricky. You don’t want to lose your audience in what’s going on, but at the same time you cannot present your character in a way that seems false. In terms of clarity, Short Cakes gets that right. Every thought, every action is understandable from every perspective, even when a different term is used for a character we might know by name.

When it comes to the characters, overall, Short Cakes does a good job. Most of the characters whose point of view is presented are written in such a way that makes sense, and is often very amusing. The latter part is the real highlight because there really isn’t a plot anywhere here. Instead, the joy comes from the strange ways that the residents of Sugar Cube Corner think and see certain things in their life. I might have a few doubts about the presentation of the Cake babies, mainly in the vocabulary use, but I still think they’re a decent representation about what a toddler is like.

Zecora does make an appearance, and let me just say that her dialogue could have used work given that were too many near rhymes used (hen and friend, dears and here). In addition, there were a few parts were a different character’s thoughts are presented in the middle of another. Because each section (as opposed to chapter) is mainly divided by who the speaker is, this was rather disappointing and jarring. Also the last chapter is a little heavier in terms of drama, while it might have been appropriate considering what happened, it felt a little jarring and sentimental.

Again, Short Cakes is enjoyable for anyone looking for amusing prose and cute, light fun.