Odor of the Day and mini-controversies

 

Back in May, I did some commentary on two cartoons with Anthony Kotorac. Sadly, the videos links in that post of mine no longer work because Anthony had some trouble with the Warner Bros legal team over copyright issues and so had to take that particular video down. He's also had to reformat every one of his videos in order to keep his channel going. Thankfully, he's managed to do that and so he's back up and running.  Here's hoping his channel and his dedication gives him all the admiration he deserves.

That video embedded at the top is the most recent commentary I did on that channel.  As you can see, it's for a cartoon called Odor of the Day.  I put forth the notion that the skunk in that cartoon is NOT Pepe Le Pew even though it quite often is listed as such.  Ever since this cartoon was put onto a Le Pew VHS set back in the 1980's it always puzzled me as to why it was included.  The skunk didn't seem to be Pepe Le Pew at all to me.  However, on that same cassette is a cartoon about a squirrel and a coconut called Much Ado About Nutting which had nothing to do with Pepe even remotely.  But, of course, that one was just added to break up what to some might seem like a monotony of just Pepe's cartoons.  So that's what I chalked up the inclusion of Odor of the Day to be as well, just a one off added for variety.

However, as time went on, I noticed that this cartoon was being put within Le Pew's filmography quite often.  Whether it was a casual mention on an internet message board or some dvd release or TV broadcast, it was always categorized as a Pepe cartoon.  That raised my eyebrow every time.  But, of course, I always kept it floating at the back of my mind because I always had more immediate situations in my life to worry about, still do.  Then, the aforementioned Mr. Kotorac came along with his commentary channel, so I decided to use this opportunity to air that minor grievance and see what happens. I'll also use this blog post to further elaborate on my position because that video could only be so long. Here we go:

As mentioned in the video, one big BIG difference between this skunk and Pepe Le Pew is that...

...this skunk knows full well that he stinks and even wields that stinky tail of his like a weapon.

Not only that, when the dog catches a cold with a stuffy nose, he can no longer smell that odorous tail. The skunk's reaction to that development is devastation.  That's not like Pepe Le Pew at all.

A big part of Pepe's schtick is for his odor to linger over people and be completely oblivious to its effects.  That, plus the lack of any love interest, is too big a departure to simply be "director Art Davis' own take on the Pepe character".

This leads me to another point that I didn't find a chance to make in that commentary: I don't think Chuck Jones would've allowed such a deviation from one of his characters.  He was very adamantly protective of everything he created. He kept tabs on how they looked, how they acted, and how they felt.  One big example I can give is in the 1990's when the WB Network used Michigan J Frog in all of their commercials for it.  Chuck hated that with a passion. He said that Michigan's character is to only sing for whoever discovers him, just like that construction worker in One Froggy Evening did.  For that worker, Michigan never stops singing but for everyone else, he just flops down and acts like a regular frog.  So, for the WB to make Mr J Frog sing for all of America was violation of his character that Chuck couldn't stand.  With that in mind, I doubt that if Art Davis had approached Chuck and said, "Hey, I'd like to use your skunk character in a cartoon of mine. However, he won't be French and he won't fall in love with

any girls that look like skunks. Instead he will compete for shelter with a dog and even deliberately attack him with the stink from his tail" that Chuck would be fine with that.  I think Chuck would've, at the very least, exploded onto Art for even suggesting such a change.  Chuck Jones wrote not one but two autobiographies. You'd think at least in either one of those there'd be some rant about Mr. Davis sullying his Pepe character.  So, since there is no such rant in those books and I haven't heard of any such rant anywhere else, this leads me to fully conclude that the skunk in Odor of the Day is not Pepe Le Pew at all.  Really, if Art Davis had wanted to change Pepe so drastically for this cartoon, why wouldn't he just use a whole other character?  That seems to make the most sense to me.

There has been some reaction to the video so far. The responses on both Youtube and Facebook have been mixed for, against, or 'starting to lean towards but not quite all the way towards' my argument.  Such as:

This guy on Facebook agrees that this is not Pepe. So, point for me I guess.

This Facebook person says "100% Pepe" and makes a point thusly.  I can see the point he makes but I think he might've glossed over some stuff, but that's for a whole other post at a whole other time.

I grabbed both of these Facebook comments at the same time because they were exact opposites right next to each other.  One says "no" while the other says "yes".  Who knew this cartoon could be so divisive.

Over on Youtube, things are a little more nuanced.  This guy gives a rather lengthy paragraph basically saying "maybe".  But, he does raise the point that there are more questions than answers when it comes to this cartoon's origin.

This Youtuber says "yes" to this being Pepe and sites animation historian Jerry Beck as a source.  Yes, Mr. Beck is indeed a tremendous source of animation information as well as being a lovely approachable person.  I met him in person once in Ottawa about 11 years ago.  He's a tiny little leprechaun of a man but inside the mind of this pseudo-gaelic gnome is a guy who's as nice and as knowledgable as I mentioned before.

However, he is still a mortal human and thus subject to err and/or make a too quick leap to judgement.  He has certainly declared Odor of the Day as a bonefide Pepe Le Pew cartoon, but I'd like to know on what grounds he bases that opinion.  Is it just in his own opinion or is there an unpublished or unreleased interview with the now late Art Davis that would fill in this puzzle piece?  What does he know?  Either way, this would certainly be a topic for discussion that I'd like to have with him someday.

Actually, speaking of Jerry, on the topic of this very cartoon I've noticed that some opinions from historians are also mixed. For instance, in this book...

...A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons, in the listing for Odor of the Day it does have Pepe Le Pew as one of the characters.

However, the same can't be said for Steve Schneider's book That's All Folks! The Art of Warner Bros. Animation.

There's a complete filmography in the very back of this book.  In there, Odor of the Day is simply listed as what's called a "one shot".

So, who's correct, Jerry or Steve?  This may be a trivial question to some, but such questions are always worth discussing to any historian.  Just as other scholarly historians may speculate and postulate on what started the fire at the Library of Alexandria, so too do animation historians stop to ponder the origin and the storyboard pitch as well as any other back room happenings that may have lead to the creation of this cartoon.  Keep searching for the truth, my friends.

More Daddy/Daughter Pumpkin Carving

 It's almost Halloween again. So, for the 3rd year in a row, my daughter Raianne and I have carved pumpkins of our own design. This year I thought I'd spice things up with a little theme or motif if you will.  What I decided on was to have one pumpkin murdering the other. So that's what you are seeing above. I designed the victim pumpkin while Raianne designed the killer pumpkin. I think they both came out fairly well.

I'm very impressed with how quickly my daughter has learned the entire process of carving a pumpkin. I guess she's always been a fast learner. Either way, I can't wait to see what kind of pumpkin she will design next year. In these uncertain covid times, her pumpkin is at least one great thing to look forward to.

Here's what they look like with the lights off by the way:

Whoa! spooooOOOOOOOOOOOooooooky! Happy Halloween, everyone!

Demi Lovato is a Dumbass Censor Monkey Twat

It's been a few days since one singer/song writer Demi Lovato has spilled Demi's latest kilojoules of word vomit all down Demiself's chest.  Yes, I know, Demi's been letting flow bile-ridden chunks of sloshy word food over the past few years.  However, this latest batch from Demi's mouth peaked my notice for a rather, shall I say, serendipitous reason.  For the few lucky souls who haven't heard about Demi's most recent utterance of idiocy, your luck has run out because I'm posting that very thing below.

Yup! You read that correctly. This Lovato person says we should use a more "delicate" term for creatures we haven't met and may or may not exist.  

Uh huh!  

If I were to gather every bucket of paint that exists in the world, load them all into a room with me that has absolutely no windows, opened every can of that paint and inhaled as many of the fumes as I could huff, I could never EVER in 1000 lifetimes say ANYTHING as mind-numbingly stupid as that.

However, my showcasing of this latest Demi debacle on this blog is not merely for calling an idiot an idiot.  What I AM saying is that this here co-writer of the 2012 hit song "Give Your Heart a Break" has reached an entire new level of vapid stupidity.  I'll gladly explain.

I'm sure everyone reading this blog post right now remembers a comic book I published called Jesus Needs Help. (It's still very much for sale at Amazon by the way). If you've already purchased a copy either recently or when it first came out: 1) Thank you so much. 2) You can probably see where I'm going with this already.

In this book of mine, all 10 of the Censor Monkeys descend upon one Jesus Christ as he attempts to deliver his now famous "Sermon on the Mount". They each take turns trying to "cancel" Jesus over anything in his speech they deem "problematic" from their own highly warped perspective.  I will post below a few panels from that book to show what just one of those monkeys had to say this "son of a carpenter".

The first few panels I posted to show the full context but the last panel I posted I made larger just for emphasis because that is the one that relates to Demi Demi Bo Bemi Bananafana Fo Femi Me My Mo Memi.  When I wrote that book way back in 2010, I was wracking my brain for some way that the Black Panther Monkey could object to the Sermon on the Mount.  What I came up with (that you can plainly see in that panel there) was something that I thought at the time was such a ridiculous exaggeration that no rational human person would ever espouse it, not even ironically.  Nobody with a functioning cerebral cortex could ever EVER conceive of such a stupefied notion, and if they did they'd never speak it out loud for fear of being seen as a crazed lunatic in need of heavy medication and/or round the clock psychiatric care.  They'd certainly never speak such a notion with any level of confidence like that of Sir Isaac Newton revealing his scientific findings.

But, here in the year 2021, one Demi Lovato did just that.  The very same singer who went ape shit over how a frozen yogurt shop arranged their dietary items has now just uttered the very same drivelous rhetoric of a cartoon character meant to represent the stupidest people in the known universe.  Is there a more feeble brain out there that can go beyond this level of idiocy? For the sake of our culture and the world, I hope not.

I think I've quite succinctly presented my point about how the offspring of Patrick and Dianna Lovato is dumber than a sack of rancid quesadillas and twice as fragrant.  I don't need to belabour that any further. I'll just end this post by saying I hope the former Barney the Dinosaur child actor gets the help that needed for such a mental condition as Demi's, perhaps the kind of help sung about in the video embedded below:

Canada Election 2021

 

Well, it's election time again in Canada.  Our incumbent PM dropped the writ just this morning.  On the fast approaching date of September 20, all eligible Canadians will make the decision to either go out to the polls and vote for any 1 of the 6 candidates competing for our affection.................... or not.  In a true and full democracy, abstaining from voting is a perfectly fine option. No candidate is automatically owed your vote just because they exist. That candidate still has to work hard enough to earn your vote.  That being said, below are the list of candidates hoping to be (or continue to be) the leader of a country adjacent to the "free world":

Incumbent: Justin Trudeau

Jagmeet Singh 

Erin O'Toole

Yves-Francois Blanchet

Anomie Paul

Maxime Bernier

These are your choices, Canada. Choose wisely. We'll have to put up with one of these people for the next two years or so (or whenever the rest of parliament can organize a non-confidence vote).

Angry Bear

 An angry bear with a crazy looking nose

Some more commentary from me

 I've managed to have yet another opportunity to do some commentary on Youtube talking about cartoons and whatnot.  In recent years I've done some with Trevor Thompson (you can revisit some of my commentaries with him right here).  But this time around I've done with another fellow Looney Tunes enthusiast named Anthony Kotorac.  I'm in Canada and he's in Australia, but ultra modern technology allowed us to do this commentary in real time at the same time (within vastly different time zones of course).  For the recording, we both relaxed.  

I.... like... fired up the Coleman and put on some back bacon, eh.  

He put his "shrimp on the barbie".

....and we were underway.

To hear our scintillating commentary, you'll have to of course go right to Anthony's channel, which you can do at this link here.  I highly recommend subscribing to his channel while you're there.  The task he's set for himself is to do commentary for every Looney Tunes cartoon ever made and doing so in the chronological order in which they were released.  Here's the first video he did talking about the "one that started it all":

As you can hear, he did a fine job there.  That was a cartoon made in 1929.  The cartoons that he and I just recorded were released in 1944.  So,  you can well imagine, he's done many commentary videos so far and he has many many more to do for the next big while.  Like I said, subscribe to his channel now and get his numbers way up there.

I do know that commentary on a video can seem tedious for anything you haven't seen before. So, with that in mind, I'll provide full video files of the two cartoons that we did.  The first one we did was The Weakly Reporter:

The next one we did was Duck Soup to Nuts:

There we go. So now that you've watched both of those cartoons, you can ready for when our commentary videos are available on his channel.  Have fun!

An episode of Dudley Do-Right with some wonderful and familiar animation

 

I was revisiting some of my Rocky & Bullwinkle DVDs recently when I happened to come across this particular episode of Dudley Do-Right.  It's called Flicker Rock. I've embedded it above for your viewing pleasure.  Storywise, it's about the same as any other episode. However, something about it caught my eye.  The animation throughout the entire episode really stands out for me.  It's rather fluid nature (fluid especially for a show with the most limited animation) and somewhat angular posing reminds me of the work of Rod Scribner.

My most popular post on this rickety old blog of mine is the one I did about Rod Scribner way back in 2006. I did briefly mention that he worked on George of the Jungle, but he did lots of work at the Jay Ward studio really.  Every once in a while you can see something that looks "Scribner-esque" in any of Jay Ward's projects.  It is an absolute treat to be watching a cartoon wether from WB from the units of Hardaway-Dalton, Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, or Bob McKimson as well as anything from Jay Ward, JC Melendez, or any animated commercials from the 50's & 60's and to discover some of Scribner's work just standing out like a sparkly diamond.

In tribute to this wonderful discovery of Scribner's work in Dudley Do-Right, I have attempted a "Scribner inspired" rendering of Rocky & Bullwinkle.

"But that trick never works!!"

Does it measure up? Feel free to leave a comment.  Either way, thank you, Rod, for sharing your immense artistic gift with the world.

Tex Avery is and should be celebrated

 It's that time of year again. This is when I use this humble blog of mine to acknowledge the brith date of the biggest animation genius the world has ever seen......... Tex Avery.  If medical science had advanced far enough that we were able to preserve the life and prevent the death of anyone at any age, Tex would've turned 113 today.  I'd like to think he'd be celebrating by sharing many beers with his friends and fans alike.

Since I've started this blog I've talked about many aspects of Tex's life, films, and career. Whenever this time of year comes, I can always find something about him to blog about.  Well, this year, of course there's something of his that's extra special and is definitely a huge part in building and securing his legacy.  I'm referring to, of course, Tex's washing machine that he bought in 1931.

Ha HA! Fooled ya............... and yes, McGee, it was funny.

What I AM referring to are the bluray disks that were released in 2020.

Tex Avery's MGM "Screwball Classics" Vol 1 aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand 2.  I've got them both and they are excellent.  There's a great selection of cartoons to watch on both volumes and they all look crisp and clean on my TV.  Observe:

There are 19 cartoons on Vol 1 and there are 21 cartoons on Vol 2. By my count, there are 23 of Tex's MGM cartoons not on Bluray.  So that means Vol 3 could be the final release and would thus make Tex's entire MGM filmography available to the public, and that would be a great thing.

However, there are two cartoons that the Warner Archives would have to tiptoe around.  If you've heard of the Censored 11, these would be Tex's "Censored 2".  They are the cartoons Uncle Tom's Cabana and Half Pint Pygmy.  If you haven't seen those cartoons at all, I'm sure you can tell by the titles alone as to why they'd be a problem.  They shouldn't be left off entirely of course. Fans want a complete collection and film preservation is very important for respecting ones culture.

What Disney has done with cartoons they consider "problematic" is to put them in a "From The Vault" section.  A similar treatment could be done for the cartoons mentioned above.

Hey, speaking about preserving ones culture, I'd like to use this blogpost to pitch something that I think would be equally as good as a bluray release of his filmography.  It's something I've talked about online for many years and I think it's high time it happened.  I think a Tex Avery biographical movie should be made.  It would be much like that one about Walt Disney called Walt Before Mickey:

Although, I hope the Tex biopic won't be so full of glaring errors. (One of those many errors is the portrayal of Friz Freleng. The actor was fine but the writers got his persona all wrong. But that's a whole other blogpost for a whole other day).

The online discussions I had with people about a Tex biopic were simply about who would play which person. Could Jack Black play Tex Avery? Could Matt Damon play Chuck Jones? Maybe Jim Belushi could portray Leon Schlesinger or Fred Quimby?  But that's all moot. We don't need big stars to play these parts. We just need young capable actors who can be given the correct overview of Tex's and others' personality and portray it well.  However, I can think of one celebrity that might be persuaded into producing it:

Jack Nicholson. Yes, THAT Jack Nicholson.  I say this because he has a nostalgic affection for that era of Hollywood animation. He started his career as a young lad working as an assistant in the MGM animation department.  

A caricature of young Jack can be seen on the far right.

He would do lots of menial tasks for Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera while they kept cranking out their Tom & Jerrys.  I'm not sure if he did anything for Tex Avery at all, but I have read that Tex did pull young Jack into his office just to pitch a gag idea and see if it was funny enough.  I think that might entice Mr. Nicholson onboard.  He could easily have a say in who would portray a young him (probably not Christian Slater though).

Anyway, happy 113th birthday, Tex.  Whether this biopic idea of mine comes to fruition or not, I will definitely continue to enjoy all of the blurays and I hope everyone reading this will do the same.