Monday, February 23, 2009

"Get Up, There's Further To Go"

Wow, today has been difficult for me. This past weekend was like a mini-break because we didn't have a paper, and today it was all over. Our plenary was 3 and a half hours long. It was insane! We were all sleepy and unfocused because of all the fun we had this past weekend. So it wasn't the best thing ever. On the bright side, you should've seen the beautiful sketches that my friends made! Tabitha and Steve, sitting on either side of me, drew fantastic pictures of their hands, apples, and Dr. Wardwell. I made a "thought list," which is basically when I write down something that pops into my head and then whenever I think about something else, I write that down too. It's basically a list of what I daydream about. Here's what I wrote in today's list, starting with a Road Runner cartoon title:

Zip Zip Hooray
Sausage
Syrup
Orange
Patrice Terrace
Ralph Phillips
Sunshine
Buffalo
Coldplay
Children's Hospital
Cemetary
Das Court
Grandma Hahn
Road Runner
Ginger Ale
Cheez-Its
K-Mart
Tops
Valentine's
Mother Was a Rooster
Cassie
Kitchen
Saturday
Ostrich
Water Tower
Hare-Breadth Hurry
Chair
Desert
Upstairs
Bugs
RRSRR
Canada
Hotel
Tinker Toys
Lightning Rod
Zipping Along
Crossroads
Darien Lake
Mousetraps
Incomplete

I swear, it makes complete sense to me. I could explain it to you, but it would take a while. After plenary, we went to the British Library to do part of our MAG. Then we came back to the FMC and started the reading. It was relatively boring and sorta long, and the chairs in the Blue Room are really comfy and sort of eat you. So that didn't go so well. Dinner only distracted us more, and when we went back to the Blue Room, Adam, Evan and I had like a 45 minute long conversation about Animorphs and how awesome that book series was. We're all going to reread them during the summer. Then we joked around with Eri and Mary for a bit, then I went to my room to finish my reading. And I'm done! Yay.

Oh, by the way, I'm on the computer in the library because my laptop is having hard drive issues. Not cool. Not cool at all. But I'll survive. There's nothing on that computer that I can't live without. In my devotion today, I read Psalm 23, and the first verse is "The Lord is my shepherd, I have everything I need." That made me feel better.

Hey, this week and last were big days in Looney Tunes history! Alright, time for a little Looney Tunes rant. I'm done with events in my life for this post, so if you want to stop reading now, it's all good. The entire remainder of this post is going to be about Looney Tunes.

This past Saturday was Frank Tashlin's birthday. He died in 1972, but if he were still alive, he'd be 96 years old. Tashlin was a director in the 30's and early 40's. He didn't create any of the main characters, but he made some of the best Porky Pig cartoons out there. He also made som fantastic WWII shorts featuring Daffy Duck going up against the Nazis. Some of his cartoons also influenced later cartoons done by Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng. 1944's "I've Got Plenty of Mutton" is sort of a precursor to Jones' Pepe le Pew cartoons, as well as the Ralph Wolf/Sam Sheepdog cartoons. I can't upload videos now that my laptop is out of comission, but I can post links to cartoons, and you can check them out if you want. But this is "Puss 'n' Booty" from 1943. The music is just fantastic in it. Tashlin made great use of Raymond Scott's work. The style is great too, with all sorts of interesting angles and "camera shots". A few years later, Friz Freleng remade this cartoon with Sylvester and Tweety, but I like this one better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr_IsVvLf74

Yesterday was the 7th anniversary of the death of Chuck Jones. Most of you have heard me gush over how awesome he was, so I won't get into that now. But he is one of my greatest heroes, and the creator of my two favorite cartoon characters: Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. Last night, I watched seven of his cartoons in his honor. Here's one of his later Pepe le Pew cartoons: "Who Scent You?" from 1960. It's not my favorite Pepe cartoon overall (That happens to be 1957's "Touché and Go"), but there are some great moments in this one. One of the best things about the Pepe series is the dialogue, and this one is no exception. Pepe has some great one-liners here, such as "you are my peanut...I am your brittle." Good stuff. And his rendition of "How Dry I Am", an old drinking song is priceless. Sugar and Jazz fans will notice a bit of Count Basie's "April in Paris" after the opening credits.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osZvwzr334Q

Finally, this Thursday marks the 101th birthday of Fred "Tex" Avery, who died in 1980. Tex Avery was an animation god. He broke away from the "cutesy" style of Walt Disney and pioneered a style of cartoons that had no limits or rules. He was the man who personally trained Chuck Jones and Bob Clampett. Basically, Chuck Jones is to me what Tex Avery is to Chuck Jones. In 1937, he created Daffy Duck. That's right. This is the man who invented Daffy freaking Duck. 3 years later, he created Bugs Bunny. Bugs Bunny. This man is Bugs Bunny's father. In 1942, he left Warner Bros. after a dispute with the producer, Leon Schlesinger, over the ending of one of his cartoons. Apparently it was too risque, but that was Tex. He worked at MGM from 1942 to 1957 making some truly great cartoons. It's so hard for me to pick one Tex Avery cartoon to show all of you (then again, my parents and Emily are probably the only ones still reading this! :P), so I think I'll just go for the gusto and post Bugs Bunny's debut cartoon: "A Wild Hare." This is the one that started it all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JMmyHWO424


Alright, that's it. I'm going to go mess around with my friends now. Hopefully, the next time I talk to you guys will be on my laptop. I love you guys.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Dan!
The "Mom" part of me wonders how you could learn anything in plenary when so of your brain's real estate was taken up with your "thought list". Another part of me is thoroughly fascinated by the scope of the list itself. And still another part of me wonders if I should take it personally that "Mother Was A Rooster". Hmmm. Ha.
Love you. Mom

Dan said...

lol, "mother was a rooster" is the name of a foghorn leghorn cartoon from 1962. it makes me think of cassie, a character from a book series i used to read, and i remember thinking of that in the kitchen on a saturday morning when i was in middle school. the cartoon also has an ostrich and a water tower in it. so that's where that little section of thoughts come from.

-evan said...

i do enjoy the animorphs. also:

"good gosh, man, this is the longest blog in the world."

you now have a link to my blog. which is mostly fiction, just to let you know.

Dan said...

They were a great series, that's for sure. And,

"I tend to get a little longwinded at times."

And I will check out your blog for sure.