Cruisin' with Cartoons

I thought about a dozen cartoons that have aired on "Toon In With Me" in the last few years. They are entertaining for having themes from even before WWII. Viewing them across generations provides different perspectives of childhood, parent-agehood, and oldsterhood. Despite mostly 2D looks, these animations are amazing in indicating movement, character looks consistency, and great imaginations for improbable realities.

What kind of improbable realities? How about characters that get totally destroyed in scenes, yet recover to perfect health and wholiness within seconds? Violations of laws of physics with backgrounds that snap out of rigidity and back to immovable state? How about constant uses of dynamite, TNT, office safes, anvils, and the like for attempted destruction between adversaries? Such cartoons and items include the following characters: Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote, Bugs Bunny and adversaries (Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Tasmanian Devil, ...), Tom and Jerry, and Tweety and Sylvester.

Thinking of various gadgets WRT to Wile E, the devices from Acme always fail him. Ordering delivery of a chicken meal would be more effective, filling, and less harmful to his health. Expanding thoughts wider about cartoons, some specific ones come to mind, with or without the usual weapons of personal destruction that I've mentioned.

Note: Links for cartoons are for full versions. Most are from YouTube. Ones from Daily Motion have slightly different play and audio controls; be sure to click "unmute".

Spider and Fly Interaction, Fly Saved By WWII Regulation

For "Meatless Flyday", the spider has four arms, four legs. Gloved hands show three-fingers and thumb most of the times. Feet are shod. In one instance, his shoe is cut open, exposing five toes. He counts his now five-digit hands to confirm full counts. The fly has two arms (gloved fingers) and two legs (three toes per foot). Comically improbable--a horseshoe magnet strong enough to attract the fly with ingested buck shot AND kitchen knives.

Note that the spider's cut-open-toe shoe and hand digits around the 4:00 mark. Also noteworthy is WWII-type references to meatless day—"Meatless Monday Then and Now", and nighttime blackouts ("Blackout (wartime)").

Another cartoon with nod to WWII, "LOONEY TUNES (Looney Toons): A Tale of Two Kitties (1942) (Remastered) (HD 1080p)" shows a Victory Garden and lights-out policing. The cartoon includes destructive devices that only temporarily disable Catstello while annoying Babbit in their mission to capture a proto-Tweety. Violations of laws of physics are rampant, especially during the last few minutes.

The two cartoons I've described show loads of violence and little music. Several of the following cartoons engage in both music AND violence, but not sax and violins.

Hungarian Musical Presences in Cartoons

"Cartoons using Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" shows compiled snippets. "The Concerto Controversy | Plagiarism Accusations Between Tom & Jerry and Looney Tunes" provides background to two very similar cartoons that feature Hungarian Rhapsody #2. Star piano players are Bugs Bunny and Tom Cat, respectively. The video also includes additional content about cartoons' cultural impacts.

"Brahms – Pigs in a Polka – Hungarian Dances 5, 7, 6, 17" provides details about Hungarian Dances music and order. The embedded cartoon link points to a YouTube video, but "LOONEY TUNES (Looney Toons): Pigs in a Polka (1943) (Remastered) (HD 1080p)" is more complete.

Three Pigs Segue to Jazz

"Three Little Bops (starring Joe Bezek)", from 1950s has loads of jazz from the three pigs and wolf. The story bears some resemblance to the familiar pigs and wolf story. No house constructions, but wolf blowing anyway.

Another Three Pigs Twist, Mashed Up with Little Red Riding Hood

"Bugs Bunny E078 The Windblown Hare" stars Bugs Bunny in a mashup of the three pigs with wolf and Little Red Riding Hood. The lesson is that defrauding Bugs results in consequences.

Little Red Riding Hood Variations

"Little Red Riding Rabbit" shows twist of Little Red Riding Hood ending up as the least sympathetic character. Both Bugs Bunny and the wolf ultimately leave her in dire straits. Apparently, several cartoons vary in their approaches to Little Red Riding Hood. Warner Brothers and Walter Lantz (Woody Woodpecker) have additional variations Of LRRH and wolf, fineable on the web.

Violations of Laws of Physics In Popeye Adventures

Oddly enough, Popeye cartoons, despite loads of violence, don't seem to resort to dynamite. Surroundings (roads, trains, ...) seem to become elastic in many stories. BTW, Olive has elasticity in spades. In instances, she twists like a corkscrew, spans chasms with skinny legs that rival Mr. Fantastic, and frequently moves her limbs spaghetti-ishly. An example of laws-of-physics violations is "Popeye 147 I'll be skiing you 1947". It starts out with ice skating, but transitions to skiing, with amazing Olive Oyl improbable flexibilities not seen in other cartoons. A St. Bernard rescues Popeye with spinach so he can rescue Olive from the ever-growing and downhill rolling snowball. Bluto gets kissed by a she-wolf on the slopes and Florida.

A Valentine Story for Multiple Generations

"Don't Look Now (1936) (HD)" is a Valentine Day theme of Cupid and youngsterish devil with opposing goals upon arising. The story has something for youngsters and grownups. The cartoon sprinkles a few adult themes, such as planted "evidence" of infidelity among courting couples and false accusations of paternity.. Lots of music throughout.

A Couple of Single Working Women and Their Abodes

Betty Boop and Olive Oyl cartoons have shown them having their own careers, businesses, and residences. Some cartoons show them living in apartments or houses—no roommates, siblings, or parents. Betty does own Pudgy, her dog, which occasionally exhibits human mannerisms.

Couple of business examples:

• Olive and Popeye open a diner together as partners in "Popeye The Sailor Man - We aim to please".
• Betty Boop shows her auto repair business in "Betty Boop - So Does An Automobile 1939 // Colorized HD". Numerous autos are animated to display human movements and behaviors.

Rec'ed for Multiple Viewings

The following cartoons are great entertainment that invite multiple viewings, for absorbing details and also re-viewing fun stuff. They have great plot development, loads of music, and lots of innovations with devices and gadgets. Action-packed nearly throughout the adventures.

• "Betty Boop - Grampy's Indoor Outing (1936)"
• "Popeye the Sailor - Cartoons Ain't Human"
• "Rabbit Of Seville (1950)"

Generational Reaches

Whether you watch classic cartoons as first timer or old timer, favorites will form memories of happy entertainment. Oddly enough, some cartoons almost seem new if not viewed in many years.

Thanksgiving Day Menu, From a Language Perspective

Being someone who thinks about the English language a lot, I often think of associative terminology. In my topic about Thanksgiving Day food, I'm putting a twist on it and injecting some flavor into the discussion, language-wise. Turkey is at the top of the food list. For vegetarians and vegans, skip reading "turkey", or discontinue reading this article. Other items are (from the top of my head) potatoes, sweet potatoes (sometimes interchangeably called yams), cranberry sauce, dressing (aka stuffing), gravy, and pumpkin pie. What about veggies? They'll roll onto the scene. I'll bypass food discussion pertaining to all-day football, as that could be an entire subject by itself.

Turkey: Legend has it that Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national symbol rather than the eagle. Google results indicate Franklin was displeased with the choice of the eagle, but not entirely clear that he lobbied for the turkey. More recently, in the previous century anyway, turkey has become an unflattering term. "Jive turkey!" was a derisive insult often uttered by George Jefferson of The Jeffersons TV show. Turkey has been a term used to label a bad movie; even better, Golden Turkey Awards go to both movies and directors. Cold turkey as a term does not refer to the temperature of the bird. One other Turkey is the country, which always makes me go "hmmm" when I think of it in conjunction with another country that makes me think of food—Greece.

Potatoes: We have Mr. Potato Head, couch potato, hot potato, .... Regarding edible potatoes, there seem to be lots of ways to prepare them, serve them, and buy them already prepared—baked, mashed, twice-cooked, scalloped, fried, liquified or nearly liquified into soups, chunked into salads, etc.

Sweet Potatoes and Yams: This subtopic required googling for "sweet potatoes vs yams". And wow, what a load of results! Here's one link that has descriptions for each—http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/sweetpotato.html. Sounds like yams are not as common as sweet potatoes in my neck of the woods. Oh, well, as Popeye might say, "I yam what I yam and I yam what I yam that I yam!" Maybe Popeye doesn't handle hot potatoes, sweet or not. Anyway, let's move to a sweeter topic—Swee'Pea, his adopted baby. That brings us to ...

Sweet Pea(s): Peas—those Crayola-green spheroids. Oh, if they're canned peas, they have that odd olive-green color about them. Sweet Pea does seem an odd name for a baby. Nevertheless, Tommy Roe made a hit song in the mid-60s named "Sweet Pea" about a girl. (Well, this looked like a good area as any to shoehorn "sweet peas" as a candidate vegetable for the Thanksgiving Day meal.)

Cranberry Sauce: The first time I saw cranberry sauce, it came out of can. It resembled jelly that you dish out with a knife or spoon. It retained the shape of the can and the utensil characteristic used to serve it up. It didn't pour like a sauce. Even odder, I didn't consider it tasty for such a pretty color. Still don't. Even its liquid relative—cranberry cocktail—isn't that appealing to me.

Dressing and Stuffing: I think these terms are strange names for the same food—flavored and moistened diced bread that contains other items—celery, onions, sage (predominant flavor!), .... Stuffing, as a term, makes sense, particularly when it's actually placed inside the turkey. Dressing, as a term, makes no sense to me. Related, the term "salad dressing" makes sense, as you're dressing a salad. Turkey dressing? I don't see turkey dressing dressing a turkey like I see salad dressing dressing a salad.

Gravy: Good gravy, gravy train, Gravy Train. Good gravy—this expression has nothing to do with good or gravy. It's a polite and not-that-common expression of surprise. The two kinds of gravy trains pertain to implicitness of advantage, the proper-noun expression (dog food) having been named from the lower-case gravy train. Eh, let's leave the Gravy Train at the station and move on to pumpkin pie. (I rethought my initial intent to hyperlink to Gravy Train. Readers are on their own for this googling.)

Pumpkin Pie: These two words can evoke lots of language imagery separately. Pumps have kin? What kin they look like? Lotion pumps? Miniature oil-drilling pumps? OK. There are some etymological roots for pumpkin, but they all sound like slacked pronunciation devolution to me, since the word pump has no kinship with the word pumpkin. As for pie, besides the edible ones, I also think of pi and pie charts.

What's after dessert? How about antacids? Anyway, I hope this article has provided some food for thought. May your Thanksgiving Day be a good one, with plenty to be thankful for.