IS MY PALM READ (1933)

A friend at work, as a reaction to my declaration that I might be attending the Animation Archive's Columbia Krazy Kat exhibition of films this very afternoon, asked me a very honest and telling question: "Aren't cartoons from the 1930's boring?"

By this, I took his meaning to convey that he believed all films from that period would just have to be a snoozefest, and I first said "Ah! I see that you have not been reading my blog!" or else he would already know my answer to that one. I answered in the negative, of course, and then he followed up with, "But aren't those films in black and white?" I told him that like films of all decades and types, that many were and many weren't, that color had been used in varying degrees and permutations nearly since the beginning of film, and that I enjoy (or don't) films from all decades, including silent movies. This answer stunned him.

Of course, since I can't shut up about these things when asked, I launched into a lengthy exposition of exactly what I love about older animation and why I am fascinated with them, and all on the company clock. Naturally, my boss wandered past while I was flailing my arms and jumping about excitedly and pointing my finger to prove my point numerous times. The problem, though, is that my points will never be proven, mainly because the people to whom I profess my love of older movies, animation, comics, books, and just swell stuff in general will rarely if ever take the opportunity to discover for themselves the sublime pleasures awaiting them with just a simple Netflix queueing or trip to the library. And just why do some people assume that if something isn't made in the last 20 years, then it has to be boring or unworthy of attention?

Part of this can be discovered when casting a glance at some people who obsess on Betty Boop. The girl has maintained a fairly high profile over the last 75 years or so, even though she has relatively few onscreen appearances since her heyday in the 1930's. Her merchandising is constant and omnipresent in pop-cultural gift and comic shops throughout the world, and I have met many a person (not all girls) who have Betty Boop items in their homes. The common factor in all this Boop idolatry? The bulk of them have barely ever seen a classic Boop cartoon, if at all. I don't find this odd; perhaps they simply saw her gear in the store, thought she was cute or embodied characteristics of their own personalities (her "hottie on a motorcycle" stuff seems to be uniquely popular, for all the times I have run into it), and purchased her mousepads, refrigerator magnets or dolls as a result.

But, would these modern consumers watch one of her cartoons and find it boring? Until I can form a case study, I can only answer for myself: I find her films, even the later ones that even I find somewhat rote and formulaic, fascinating. Case in point: Is My Palm Read from 1933. On a dark and eerie night, we find ourselves outside a building with a huge neon sign. It reads "Prof. Bimbo Reveals Past - Present - Future" and just below this glowing script, two flashing images catch our eye: a phrenologist's map of the human head and a palmist's guide to the lines of the hand. The images keep flashing faster and faster until the hand's thumb moves over to touch the nose of the head, and gives one could possibly the filmmakers' true feelings to all of this pseudoscientific hooey. Inside the shop, we find Bimbo and Koko the Clown bowing in obeisance to the shadow of a witch on a background curtain. The shop is outfitted with Oriental rugs and jars, with incense burning out of the holes in the tops of the jars.

A cat sits by the window with its tail poking through a hole in the wall. Through the window, we see a smartly dressed Betty Boop, who strides up and yanks on the cat's tail twice, causing the cat to act as a yowling doorbell (though there is no apparent door). Koko peers through the peephole (always an appropriate term where Betty is concerned) but he can't see anything. He moves the hole a few times about the wall until he gets it at the right spot to view their beauteous visitor. As she awaits entrance into the parlor, Betty pulls out a lipstick. When she turns it, the lip gloss inside turns out to be the beret of a small buggy painter, who produces a pallet of paints and applies a fresh coat to Betty's lips. Koko closes the peephole, ducks his head through his legs backwards, and tells Bimbo, who is dressing in a swami outfit for the occasion, that "It's Betty Boop!" Koko pulls on a bellcord, and outside the shop, a scroll unwinds which shows the inside of an elevator. Betty, who is dressed more like a high-class lady than she ever did in her long career, daintily steps into the magical box of the scroll, and the doors close and give the impression that it is moving upward. But inside the parlor, the cat merely opens a door in the wall which is cut perfectly to the shape of Betty Boop, wide-brimmed hat and all, and the boys both speak-sing "Hi-dee-hi-dee-hi!" when she enters. The cat turns out the light, and the backlit Betty's shapely torso and legs are revealed though she is wearing a long dress. The boys conclude their admiration by saying in tandem, "Ho-dee-ho!" and then the lights go back on.

Bimbo crosses his arms and bids Betty to "Walk this way!" She crosses her arms just like him, puts on a stern scowl, and follows him to a crystal ball, where she parks herself on a comfortable floor cushion. Bimbo utters some hocus-pocus mumbo-jumbo, and concentrating on the ball, declares "We will reveal the naked truth of your baby days!" The picture in the crystal ball goes hazy and then opens on the image of, quite literally, a naked little baby Betty cavorting in a washbasin. She tries to wash herself, but the soap slips from her grasp, and she tips the basin over. She is left bawling in the nude on the floor, but a kindly coatrack tips a towel over her naked bottom, and then tips its regards with a hat in her direction, and then Betty closes the sequence with a toddler version of "Boop-boop-bee-doo!" The ball goes hazy again, and Bimbo says, "I see you now on a steamer bound for a foreign land!" The image of an ocean liner bounced about by massive tropical waves comes into view, and the lead smokestack holds up an umbrella to fight against the pouring rain. Fists of water rise up and punch the ship fore and aft, and then finally grab the craft and shake all of the passengers out into the open sea. The smokestack kindly blows a pair of smokerings and then tosses them over the survivors like life preservers. The survivors, save one, float away as the ship is pulled under the waves, leaving poor Betty Boop soaking wet and floating all alone in the middle of the ocean. Luckily, she is on a real life preserver, and there is a desert island not far away.

The tide crashes the shore, and its clawing hands try desperately to gain purchase on the island's sands, but are inevitably pulled back to sea, though doomed to repeat the sad action throughout infinity. That is, until Betty Boop washes ashore, and the left hand of the tide is compelled to pat her soothingly on her upended bottom. "Hey!", she cries. "Keep your hands to you!" Betty, clad in her traditional extra-mini flapper dress and high garter, rises from the beach and sets off to search the island. At her cries of "Hello!" and "Boop-boop-bee-doo" she receives only faint echoes of her squeaky voice, but when she asks "Is anybody here?", she receives a loud and bellowing "NO!" She steps behind what she believes to be a large boulder to change out of her wet things, laying them across the rock to dry; but the rock turns out to be a large tortoise, and it wanders off, leaving Betty standing in her rather revealing undergarments. She runs away and hides behind a bush for cover from our eyes. She reaches up for a flowering plant, realizes she is being watched, blushes, and excuses herself. She pulls the plant down, affixes the flower to her hair and fashions a hula skirt from some of the leaves, and steps out. (She apparently has no problem wearing her bra as a bikini. Neither do we.) Betty starts to sing a modified version of Irving Berlin's All by Myself as a large smiling caterpillar approaches:

"All by myself in the morning
All by myself all the night
I'm all alone, not a single soul is near
No one else is here
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!"

While she sings, a large frog hops in to check her out, and in a nearby grass shack, three leering and lascivious ghosts eye her greedily. The shack itself comes to life as she starts to sing another verse, and with palm tree hands, it grabs poor Betty and stuffs her hungrily into the shack's mouth/door. Betty stands in the center of the shack, scared and shivering, fearing for the worst. First, a ghost pops out of the walls to frighten her even more; then, as she opens the door to escape, another ghosts blocks her way; and when she eyes the window, a spider rudely weaves a grid of silk bars across its expanse. Betty is trapped, but she finds a piece of driftwood and scrawls the word "Help" on it. She holds it to the window, but another ghost grabs the makeshift sign and throws it in the fire. Luckily for the girl, the fire is more than happy to oblige in aiding her, and when the sign burns, her message comes out written in the smoke that emits from the shack. Riding along the beach on a preposterously thin steed is Bimbo, decked out as a sailor and searching, of course, for Betty. He spies the call for help, and rides to the shack, whereupon he enters it and starts brawling with the ghosts. We cannot see the melee, but it is fierce enough for the palm trees to act as fists and pound the outside of the cabin in savage defense.

Soon, Bimbo pulls Betty out of the shack, and they run to the beach with a plethora of ghosts in tow. He has a boat parked on the sands, and it is powered by a squirrel with a paddlewheel. He feeds it a nut to get it started, and then holds another nut in front of it to get the squirrel running at top speed. The scene shifts back to the fortune parlor, and Betty swoons dreamily at the adventure, declaring "My hero!" Bimbo stands up, removes his beard and swami outfit, and Betty cries "Bimbo!" He replies, "Betty!", but then a ghost crawls out of the table, knocking the crystal ball aside, and yells "Bunko!" Then the ghost and a dozen more pour out of the hole in the table and chase after the loving couple. Suddenly, and without transfering device, they are all back on the island. First, Bimbo fires a palm tree's fulfillment of coconuts at the spectres; then he waylays them briefly by snapping another palm tree's top at them after he and Betty climb up it to the top of a cliff. Finally, Bimbo and Betty crawl through a log but hang off a cliff-set tree on the other end. As each ghost crawls out, Bimbo kicks them down and out of the chase as the film irises out in the middle of the action.

If you find that boring, then you are a lost cause. I find it tremendous fun, and love the rampant though innocent naughtiness at large in the film (Bimbo, though he is her boyfriend, can't help himself but ogle her when she enters the room, and is more than willing to share her shadowed gorgeousness with his pal Koko). Boop's fully-dressed self at the beginning contrasts nicely with the barely clothed ingenue pursued by dog and ghoul alike throughout the latter half of the film. The Fleischers' swipes at the occult business are also timely and fun, there is a gentle mocking of melodramatic stereotypes, and like most of the early Fleischer Boops, true surrealism figured heavily in the scene and tone jumps in each film. I wish there were more of the song before the ghosts take over, but this is a minor quibble. But I would never consider this film, a film from the 1930's, to be "boring". Rest assured, there are many films from that decade, as in any, that are worthy of your turning over on the couch and finding a better time in taking a nap, but this, and the other Boops are not those type of films. Again, I am beside myself how anyone could look at this film and not be captured by its spirit and breathless imagination and style.

But, most Americans don't want style and imagination: they seemingly just want to watch what every other American wants to watch. Several times in the last few weeks, I have noticed numerous talking heads on various news programs discussing the "America's" obsession with American Idol. They bring on guests to explain the latest controversies, and while I do not watch the show at all, I somehow know the names and faces of these idiots from my originally self-educating but seemingly worthless effort to follow the happenings in the world, but instead of hard news and facts, I only get Idol product placements and breathless name-dropping from the would-be "journalists" who populate these moronic pundit-fests. Even on a show I like, such as Countdown with Keith Olbermann, whose host claims to despise and not "get" Idol at all, still follows the corporate carrot-on-a-stick and teases with an upcoming Idol update, though sneeringly, throughout his show until the last six minutes of his program. People, you can have your Idol; just leave me the crap out of it. You see, the problem I am having with the "media experts" that are consulted by the heads on these shows, are their claims that you are missing out on a connection with the rest of America if you don't watch American Idol.

Connect with America? Me? America has been wrong about nearly everything about which it is purportedly united: our idiot President and his trumped-up war; the Super Bowl obsession; gangsta rap; Tom Cruise and Arnold Schwarzenegger movies; SUV's and Hummers; karaoke; giant-ass weddings and large families; ridiculous corporate-derived holidays; Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals; and the bulk of items on any Top 20 sales chart in any publication. And America is dead wrong about American Idol, and I will have none of it. I have spent eons trying to seek out commonality with my fellow Americans, itching to meet new and interesting people and share knowledge and stories. I have midwesterner's blood running through my veins, and like my dad, who can start a conversation with anyone at the drop of a hat, I do enjoy talking to people when I meet them... until they get stupid.

So, when is America going to make an attempt to connect to me? Why should I do all the heavy lifting in the relationship? When is America going to drop by my place and share a bowl of popcorn with me over a handful of Betty Boops and Bugs Bunnys, follow it up with a Val Lewton or Kurosawa flick, and then down some non-cardboard pizza while listening to some Zappa, Nick Cave or Robyn Hitchcock and/or reading some old Spirit or Pogo comics? A note to those who have spent years assuming that I am a weird guy: I am weird by dint of personality, but my personal interests are not that out there. You see, there are plenty of people who like what I do, and I am not the devil. [Editor's note: There is no devil.] Once in a while, America's interests do cross with mine, and then we all like The White Stripes for about fifteen minutes, albeit, for different reasons. But, this happens very rarely. The crap shows stay on television, and the Fireflys of the world get cancelled to be replaced by a show about car obsession. Overall, there is nothing special or unique about my likes, obsessions and interests... it's just that America doesn't like them.

On second thought, I wouldn't want America dropping by my place. They wouldn't wipe their feet at the door (or even take their shoes off, and half of them, you wouldn't want them to); they would complain about the lack of piss-thin beer in the fridge; and they would take up most of the couch (and that would be just one of them doing that; where would I fit the rest?) The main problem is that we wouldn't be able to hear any of the movies or music because most of them would be talking and gossiping over the action, and those that weren't would be obsessing over their self-deluded beliefs that they could be the next American Idol. A good portion of them would not hesitate to prove their shrill "talents" right in my living room, and after I Van-Goghed both of my ears off, I would have to show America the door.

America, go home. You are not wanted here. I declare your interests to be far worse than boring. They are idiotic. You have gotten the society you deserve. Enjoy your American idolatry, and call me when the show has run its course. Hopefully, it will be many, many years before I hear from you, and your collective brain will have rotted from the pap and pop you have been viewing and hearing.

I'm going to watch another cartoon from the '30's...

Is My Palm Read (Max Fleischer Studios, 1933) Director: Dave Fleischer
Animators: William Henning and David Tendlar
Cel Bloc Rating: 8

A BOUT WITH A TROUT (1947)

I am always suspicious of films where a character, generally in an attempt on the part of the filmmakers to prove the extent of their character's "special" charms or "unique" intellect to the audience, is introduced via a series of contraptions and devices that are all timed and lined up to show how together this person has their life. Most often employed in conjunction with their arousal from bed in the morning, everything is perfectly engaged to get this person on their way out the door and off to greet the day. For example, in Pee Wee's Big Adventure, the title character uses some slightly modified household devices and a large cache of toys and robots to cook his breakfast, dress him, feed his pets, and generally prep him for a day loose in civilization. In Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the widower inventor portrayed by Dick Van Dyke has an elaborate set-up to prepare breakfast for his motherless children.

Little Lulu is not the man-boy trickster that Pee Wee Herman is, mainly by virtue of being a little girl, nor is she the inventor that Caractacus Potts was, but she can prep her morning like nobody's business. She's got every detail worked outIn fact, she has her Goldberg-inflected world set up to work all through the night as well: she has a lollipop hanging from a string by her pillow so that she can suck it to her face when she snores in, and then lick it several times before she snores it away again. In A Bout With A Trout, after her mother warns her she will be late for school, Lulu bounces off her mattress and straight through her clothes, which are stretched from her ceiling to the floor, and hanging in the order that they are worn on the body. In the bathroom, while make a toothbrushing run, she simply smears the toothpaste of the reflection of her mouth, skipping the actual brushing altogether, and then washes her face with water, shaking a little in the process of being woken up for good by its frigidity. She slides down the bannister and onto a stool set smartly at the bottom of the stairs, the momentum of which carries her over to the dining room table where her breakfast is laid out. Confronted with an egg, and a glass each of milk and juice, she calmly reaches to the side and grabs three straws, sucking down the contents of each in a single simultaneous sip. Zooming to the easy chair and bouncing high into the air, she grabs a fresh lollipop from the just-exiting cuckoo in the clock. She runs to the front door, where she has previously placed her schoolbooks on top of the ledge above, with the ruler sticking down over the edge of the door. Thus, when she opens the door, her books fall straight down into her waiting arms, and she is off to school. The house of schooling? It looms in the distance, and as the last kids enter its welcoming portal beneath its tolling bell, Lulu is clearly late. But, she is not worried about this in the least, owing to the fact that she has no intention whatsoever to actually attend school. She only arrives in time to prop open the bottom step of its stairs, slide her books and ruler inside, and swap them out for her fishing pole instead.

Thus, Little Lulu sets off to play hookey with a hooky. She skips somewhat merrily to her favorite spot, all the while sucking on her cuckoo-approved lollipop. However, Lulu is more than aware that she is doing something bad, and she peeks back at the school in consideration of her action. She shrugs off her concern and resumes her skipping ways, but her conscience is clearly troubled, and as often occurs in films when a character has a moral dilemma, Lulu is visited (atop the stick of the lollipop in her mouth, no less) by tiny angelic and demonic versions of herself. Why Lulu," the Angel-Lulu says, "you're playing hookey! That's a very bad sign!" After Devil-Lulu tells her rival to "Take a powder, sister!", Angel-Lulu reminds her charge that "A line in a book is worth two on a hook!" Devil-Lulu tries to tempt Lulu with a large fish skewered on her pitchfork, but Angel-Lulu warns her not to be tempted. She feeds Lulu a ridiculous line, stating "If you don't go back to school, you may grow up to be a mule!" Maybe if she grew up in Columbia, she might, but more likely she would simply be another teenage mother. "Aw, your mudder's mustache!", Devil-Lulu yells, and pulls the halo down tight over Angel-Lulu's arms. "Amscray, Angel-Puss!" The angelic Lulu is lifted and tossed via pitchfork out of the picture, and Lulu goes off to her fishing vacation from learning.

At Lulu's favorite spot, she baits her hook with a lure that resembles a beautiful lady-fish and casts it into the water. A big blue fish swims up almost immediately, and Lulu causes the lure to dance in a seductive manner, causing the blue fish to whistle and chase after it. The fish grabs the lure, and a terrific tug-of-war takes place, with the line eventually snapping and sending Lulu sailing into the tree behind her, where she slams her head against the trunk and is sent into Dreamland. Stars grow larger and larger as they circle her head and soon, Lulu is quite literally swinging from a star as if the galaxy were her playground, and as she comes to, the famous song detailing said activity plays in its entirety:

"Would you like to swing on a star
carry moonbeams home in a jar
and be better off than you are
or would you rather be a mule?

A mule is an animal with long funny ears
he kicks up at anything he hears
His back is brawny but his brain is weak
he's just plain stupid with a stubborn streak
and by the way if you hate to go to school
You may grow up to be a mule

Oh would you like to swing on a star
carry moonbeams home in a jar
and be better off than you are
or would you rather be a pig?

A pig is an animal with dirt on his face
his shoes are a terrible disgrace
He's got no manners when he eats his food
He's fat and lazy and extremely rude
But if you don't care a feather or a fig
you may grow up to be a pig

Oh would you like to swing on a star
carry moonbeams home in a jar
and be better off than you are
or would you rather be a fish?

A fish won't do anything but swim in a brook
he can't write his name or read a book
to fool the people is his only thought
and though he's slippery he still gets caught
but then if that sort of life is what you wish
you may grow up to be a fish

And all the monkeys aren't in the zoo
everyday you see quite a few
so you see it's all up to you,
you could be better than you are
you could be swinging on a star!"

Lulu jumps from the swing and slides down a moonbeam, and when she lands, she is surrounded by alphabet blocks and books, with sheets of paper leading up to a singing schoolhouse, which asks her whether she would like to be the animals detailed in the song and then sings each verse. One of the books is open to a picture of a mule, and when its verse occurs, the mule rides and bucks Lulu about, finally sitting on her rudely. Luckily for Lulu, the next page reads "F is for Firecracker" (if the book is written by one of the "learned" of our society, he has something to learn still about alphabetizing), and she lights it underneath the mule, whereupon it explodes, and then Lulu and the mule float to heaven on separate clouds, the mule strumming a harp, and Lulu standing on all fours with mule-ears and a tail.

With the next chorus, Lulu swings from star to star, and each one features an animated photograph of three celebrities: Bing Crosby (who made the song really famous), Bob Hope, and an outrageous Jerry Colonna. Each one sings a different line of the chorus, and then the schoolhouse presents Lulu with a chalkboard drawing of the pig. The drawing comes to life and greedily downs a bowl of slop, and after the silly "feather or a fig" rhyme, the chalkboard falls, the slate turns into black mud, and Lulu finds herself crawling out of the mess in the form of a swine, but one still wearing Lulu's garb.

The next chorus finds Lulu swining in front of a star, at the top of which rests a sign pointing out the three "R's". That one of these is not really an "R" but really an "A", and that it is ridiculous to whine about getting an education while supporting a lack of decent spelling, are never mentioned in the film. Next, Lulu finds herself in the ocean with a large fish, which, like Little Lulu, is wearing a dunce cap as it taunts and plays with the girl. Both are finally captured by a large net and thrown unceremoniously in a goldfish bowl. (I guess turning Lulu into fish sticks would have been a little too-too...) A simian version of Lulu is then seen standing in front of a three-angle mirror as a toy monkey hangs by its tail from a pencil and sings its verse. Lulu apparently has learned her lesson not to, uh, be four different types of animals, and marches into the schoolhouse's mouth/door. Inside, anthropomorphic letters cheer her arrival, and a conga line is formed with Lulu at the lead, and the lot of them parade across the room, and then Lulu ascends up a stair of alphabet blocks. She leaps from the Z at the top onto a pair of paintbrushes, which she uses as skis to slide down another row of letters, at the end of which is a ski jump. She lands on a staircase of books rising out of the dreamland, and she pogos on a pencil to the top, where she ends up standing on the crescent moon. The moon sprinkles her with stardust, and she comes out wearing a glowing cap and gown, and then the moon hands her a diploma. The earth floats in on cloud (and supported by a globe base) and shakes her hand in congratulations.

Lulu wakes up on the riverbank and pulls the still tugging fish ashore. She releases and throws the fish back in the water, snaps her pole, and zooms like a comet to the schoolhouse. The kids are leaving for the day, but she retrieves her books from inside the steps, and runs into the classroom. The teacher admonishes her for such behavior, and tells her to write 1000 times that she will not play hookey again. Lulu does this, and soon fills several chalkboards full of her punishment, but of course, she does it her way: she has constructed a combination of a yardstick and several pieces of chalk in such a way that she can write an entire column of lines all at once. She may be in school, but she isn't stupid.

I've already slightly detailed some of my problems with the film, and the dream sequence has some memorable imagery, but I find it much weaker than some of the ones that will come later when Famous turns the disappeared Lulu into a new version called Audrey. Lulu, as always, is an engaging heroine/brat, but I find this particular entry in the series to be a little lacking overall in wit, though the angel-devil gimmick has some fun lines.

And that opening where everything is perfect in the morning? The problem with these scenarios is that much care has to be made the previous night to get all of this to work properly the next morn. What good is it to shave twenty minutes off your morning ritual if you have to spend an hour setting everything up before you go to bed?

I suppose that most people are not enraptured with waking up each morning. I, myself, am a morning person -- actually, I'm an all-day person, but I practically, and sometimes do quite literally, hop out of bed each and every day at 6:00 am. So, maybe I am looking askance at these tactics merely out of personal skewing, and for a non-waker-upper, such preparation might come in handy.

But, really, the only way to swing on a star is either to stay up late or wake up when they are still out. You could stay up setting up your morning-Rub-Goldberg-wakey-uppy device, but you might miss your opportunity to swing because it will take you hours and all of your attention to get it set just right. Or you could do it my way: just freakin' get up...

Or would you rather be a pig?

A Bout With A Trout (Paramount/Famous Studios, 1947) Director: Isadore Sparber
Animators: Myron Waldman, Gordon Whittier, Nick Tafuri, Irving Dressler and William B. Pattingill
Story: I. Klein and Jack Ward
Music: Winston Sharples
Scenics: Anton Loeb
Cel Bloc Rating: 6

THE VALIANT TAILOR (1934)

Boy, do I need to find a tailor. Not to fit a suit for me or anything major, but just to sew a button back on to my shirt. Apparently, I purchased what I thought to be a pretty nice shirt at the outlet malls, and it appears that the reason it was in the outlet malls was that they seemingly sewed its buttons on with candyfloss. Actually, what happened was the result of a desperation to keep from getting soaked one morning in a bright and early deluge of rain. When the water starting pouring from the sky as I wended my way to the bus stop, I made a move towards zipping my light jacket up to keep my nice new shirt fit and dry for the workday. Unfortunately for the shirt, in my haste, the button got caught and was snapped clean off the shirt, whereupon it went flying into the grass. With little time to look for the button, and the rain's pace picking up drastically, I simply abandoned the button to a new life in the wilds of the short grass, and went to work.

It would be easy enough to learn how to handsew, at least enough to affix a button back onto my shirt (which is pretty swell-looking, so I'd hate to turn it into just a house shirt). At one point in my life, I knew how to sew with a machine, but I have none at my disposal, and really, we are talking a simple button here. I should learn how to do it myself. I have an emergency sewing kit in our tool drawer with black thread and all that I need to complete the job, and I figure that a few instructions off ask.com would probably get me far enough. But, I am too busy learning other things like, well, everything, and sewing is not high on my priority list. Besides, there are plenty of businesses out there who would gladly take my minute little job on: it would only cost a pittance, and a far more secure finish would be virtually guaranteed. Plus, I can barely tie a knot in my shoelaces. How am I supposed to get a button to stay?

I was thinking about hiring the Valiant Tailor. He seemed like a pretty decent sort, and so I checked out his resume, all of which can be found in a ComiColor cartoon released by Ub Iwerks in 1934 called, appropriately enough, The Valiant Tailor. Two problems that I noticed immediately with engaging his services:

1) To get to his shop, you have to travel to a fairy tale kingdom in which a rampaging red-haired giant plays havoc with the citizenry. He likes to chase the townsfolk and castle guards all about the place, and even goes so far as to slide across the ground on his stomach for a healthy distance, and then tear the bottom off the pants of the fleeing king. I'm having enough problems just keeping buttons on my shirt; why should I have to worry about a depantsing giant? This will weigh heavily in my decision.

2) There will most likely be a line at his shop, for apparently the king often has great need of the Valiant Tailor's craftsmanship. The tailor already has plenty to do before the king arrives, and I don't know if I want to wait in the queue that long.

3) When the king changes out of his pants behind a screen, he throws them over the top, and the tailor is more than happy to let the pants drop over his head so that he may try them on as a shirt. This bothers me simply because I am afraid that he will do the opposite in my case, and try my shirt on as a pair of pants. Ew...

4) While the tailor seems quite diligent in his tailoring duties, about half of his attention seems to be held by a large pot of honey sitting next to him on his worktable. Every few passes of his dexterous needle, and he is then dipping his finger or hand inside the honey pot. How he manages to not get his every client's clothes sticky and yellow I cannot imagine. After sucking the dripping honey off his finger, he never seems to wipe it off before continuing his work, so I can only believe that the citizens of the town have gotten used to having very sticky clothing.

5) He has an entire hive of bees living in the roof of his shoppe. I don't have a problem with bees, but Jen is allergic, and since she will most likely have to accompany me on this trip, I don't want to risk her health any more than it already has been due to her fractured toe. The toe itself is already enough for us to cancel any lengthy trip to a fairytale kingdom; the bees are only the door closer on the decision. Plus, they are rambunctious bees, who can't even attack a huge pot of honey without spilling it into the pants owned by the king. Don't want to deal with rambunctious bees.

6) His tailor shoppe is apparently open to smokers, which is another strike against for a visit. The king sits around smoking cigars while he waits for his now honey-and-bee-filled pants, and even goes so far to blow smoke rings over a lady mannequin big enough so they appear to be individual billowing sections of an underskirt. I am not one to yell about smokers, but I don't want to be waiting in a small tailor shoppe with poor circulation while a poncy monarch sits about sucking on stogies. Sometimes a cigar is just a... bad decision.

7) There is a good chance that the valiant tailor will not be in if we take the long trip to his shoppe. In this film, for example, after he hands the pants back to the king, the bees attack the king's rear so savagely that he drags his ass about the floorboards of the shoppe, and then busts through the front door. He orders the guards to arrest the tailor, but after the lot of them pounce on the scrawny little bespectacled goof, he slips out and runs away from his shoppe. I need to know that this guy is going to be in should I call with employment for him. My time is money.

8) This red-haired giant bothers me immensely. (Pun fully intended; why lie about it?) He is a bedevilment to all who reside in this town, and I don't know if I want to expose either myself or Jen to his assholery. When the king shoots across the town square with the bees both at and in his tail, he dives into a nearby lake to soothe his aching rear. The bees still in his pants float out in bubbles, and pop out individually until they are surrounding the king's head. But then the giant crawls over the mountainside and takes great delight in tormenting the king. I might be more forgiving of the giant's behavior if they had just shown why the giant dislikes the king so much. Like all in power, the king is 90 percent assured to be evil to a large degree, so I am sure he and his men have done something to the big lug. Instead, I can only attest to that which I have borne witness: the giant throws a huge boulder at the king to try and sink him, and then blows across the water, creating huge waves that literally take the form of hands and toss the king back and forth between them. After this, it is no surprise that the monarch sinks to the bottom of the lake.

9) The military is largely inefficent and the king is a poor strategist. These two items are actually plusses in most times, but if I am visiting this kingdom, I want at least a slim assurance that, as a tourist, I will be a little safe while staying there. When they are trying to arrest a Phil Silvers-looking schmendrick like the tailor, the guards are full on with their attack (even if they fail at even that task), but have the giant come running in, and they are running in the opposite direction. As for the king, he tries to employ a broken mirror embedded in the lake bottom as a catapult with which to launch a rock up at the giant. This rock, it should be mentioned, only succeeds in conking the king square on the noggin.

10) This giant has a pants fetish. It's bad enough we a rampaging glandular problem mucking about in the kingdom, he is also obsessed with tearing open the pants of all who cross his path, or, at the very least, only the pants of the king. I can tear my pants on my own (as I have done twice at work in the past month), I don't need a flame-headed drooling goliath doing it for me. In the latter part of the film, the giant breaks a branch from a tree where the valiant tailor is hiding (and therefore proving he has been less than valiant thus far), and then takes the stick and turns the lake into a huge whirlpool, stirring it faster and faster until the king is swept in circles by the current. The giant then pokes the king in the bottom with the branch and tears off a huge section of the monarch's rear guard.

11) This tailor is fairly unhygienic in his behavior. Earlier on, when he left the shop, he stuck his pot of honey underneath his shirt, and has been carrying it with him through the near-arrest, his fleeing to the tree, and his avoidance of the giant's grasp when the clod pulled the branch off the tree. Now, the tailor pulls it back out to dump it on the giant's head. I am fairly certain that the tailor meant to devour this honey, and this is disgusting. Not as sick as a guy pulling a potato chip crumb out of his belly button and eating it (an act which I have personally witnessed), but it is nasty, nonetheless. Imagine the germs floating about in his clothing from the honey he has been eating. I doubt the guy changes his clothes an awful lot (he is a poor tailor after all); so shoving one's comestibles underneath your clothes for a spell is not OK. Regardless of his intent, though, he does become valiant after all, and once he pours the honey onto the giant's head, the stuff rolls down until it is covering his whole head, neck and shoulders, and looks for all the world like a great golden beard. The rambunctious bees return to charge at the giant and drive him from the kingdom for good.

12) The tailor is greedy and hell on a tipper. When the king invites the tailor to his kingdom for a reward, the tailor imagines vast piles of gold coins, and then, taking his ego a little far, imagines the king moving his own crown onto the tailor's skull. Instead, he is disappointed when the king gives him a large golden needle. Well, screw you, Mr. Valiant Tailor! That needle is huge, and indeed, is made of gold, and the prestige alone of acquiring it from the king should be enough to bring great success to your little shoppe. Boy, I can't imagine the look I would get when I give him a by-all-standards more than decent tip for his tiny little service in sewing a single button on a shirt. Some people have no class...

And 13) The tailor is a crappy tailor, after all. Upon bestowing the needle on the tailor, the king motions for the tailor to sew up his pants. The tailor sits on the throne, and the king lies across his lap, and on every other stitch or so, the tailor give the king a royal pain in the ass by jabbing him full thrust in the rear. Adding this lack of delicacy to his previous honey-handed sewing crimes, I am just going to have to count the Valiant Tailor out for the job of sewing the button back on my shirt. He might be a very fine tailor overall, but the odds are weighed heavily against gaining my business.

As in most of the ComiColor shorts, the adventures are so bright and engaging colorwise, that you can almost forgive the storytelling shortcomings (and shortcuts). The principal appeal here lies in the breadth of the characterizations: the king, the tailor and the giant all leave indelible marks on the memory, and even though I might mock their actions within the film, the animation of these characters seems simply done but is marvelously accomplished. I especially enjoy the facial contortions of the giant as he stomps through the kingdom, and once he gets that head full of honey, his emotions go into overdrive underneath that bee-nectary mask. I also like the depth of vision in the backgrounds, and each set is sumptuously decorated with a great variety of "props", especially in the shoppe, where every shot reveals more and more the lived-in feeling of the tailor's abode.

An abode I quite clearly won't be visiting anytime soon. I am now thinking more and more about firing up the search function on Google and learning how to sew a button onto my shirt myself. Giants, bees, kings with pants-holes, honey-smeared tailors; fun to visit in a movie, but you wouldn't want to travel there.

The Valiant Tailor (An Ub Iwerks ComiColor Cartoon, 1934) Directors: Ub Iwerks & Shamus Culhane
Animators: Grim Natwick & Berny Wolf
Cel Bloc Rating: 7

THE PANELESS WINDOW WASHER (1937)

Here's what I definitely do not understand about window washing: every freaking window-cleaning product on the market goes to great lengths to describe themselves as leaving "no streaks" or having a "streak-free shine". So, how come when I wash windows of any sort, using these very products, that I always see streaks after I am done? Even if I duplicate the exact manner or equipment that a professional window cleaner uses, I can still see streaks. Is there a definition for the word "streak" that I am missing here? (And I am definitely not talking about the Ray Stevens sort...)

Now, that big creep Bluto has the right way to get window washing done. First, after making sure no one is looking, he splashes mud all over the windows on an office building, and then offers his services as a pro to make some not-so-honest coin. Sure, it's crooked and it's underhanded, but you've got to give it to him: he's ingenious. In the Max and Dave Fleischer short from 1937, The Paneless Window Washer, Bluto runs an eponymously named window cleaning company, and on the windows to his shop, he proclaims himself as "The Only Dirty Window Washer in Town". (The title for the film also derives from his other pun-laden window.) And sure enough, Bluto does indeed do exactly what I described at the start, living up to his "dirty" reputation as advertised. On his way up the side of a building marred by self-soiled windows (accomplished through the inventive use of a hose sprayed into a mud puddle), Bluto eventually reaches the window of Ms. Olive Oyl, whose window declares her occupation as "Public Stenographer". Wearing glasses and squinting at her rapidly shifting typewriter, as she types each line the platen flies off far to her left, and she stretches her spindly arm across the room to grab the return lever and begin the next line. As she wrestles with the question of "who the party of the third part" might be, Bluto announces his presence by pulling down her window. "Ah, no thank you!", she responds, and then Bluto sees the reason why, though he asks why anyway in a derisive voice, to his left. There, prepping his own window cleaning equipment, is his nemesis Popeye.

"Cause I'm gonna wash 'em! That's why not today, thank you!", replies the squinty-eyed sailor, and as he crawls out through another window, Popeye mutters under his breath, "Look at these dirty windows! I wonder how that mud got all the way up here on the twentieth floor?" Bluto, sensing his self-proclaimed "racket" is in trouble, decides to start things up with the sailor to prove who is the better man. "Hey! Let me show ya the real way ta washa winda!", he shouts at Popeye, and then Bluto makes swift work of the window in front of him, finishing the job by sloshing his squeegee across the ledge at Popeye's face. The sailor almost falls, but grabs the building and decides to show Bluto his way of doing the job. Popeye soaps up a window, slams it down so it bounces back and forth, and simply holds his squeegee still and lets the window wash itself. Bluto hangs from his strap hooked at one point, and rocks back and forth, washing two windows set several feet apart. Popeye tells Bluto, "Ya look like a monkey on a swing ta me!", and then Bluto knocks Popeye off the ledge.

Popeye pulls himself back up, tells Bluto, "Ah, that's kindergarten stuff!", and then hooks his suspenders on the edges of a window. He bounces far down the side of the building, and then rockets to and fro, washing several windows in a flurry of sharp bounces. "Ah, I do it in swing time, see?", is Popeye's smart finish, and Bluto is enraged. Stepping inside the building, he pretends to wash the inside of the window facing Popeye. "Oh, yeah? Watch this," he tells Popeye, and as Popeye watches, Bluto slides open the window and pops the sailor in the face three times over, and each time he is hit, Popeye bounces back into the next punch due to his still hooked suspenders. Popeye comes back to slug Bluto, but then the big lug locks Popeye's head in the window. Popeye struggles, and then punches his way through the bricks of the building to reach the lock and free himself. And suddenly, like the way of all things Popeye-and-Bluto, the fight is on!

Popeye punches Bluto clear to the ledge of the neighboring building, and then the two punch and kick each other back and forth between the buildings for a few turns. They start to exchange rapid blows at each other as they walk up the inside of the two buildings, Popeye standing on one and Bluto on the other, until they miraculously reach the top. Only they keep punching and walking, and finally, a few feet above the rooftops, they realize they have run out of real estate, yell in surprise, and start to fall. They each grab the ledge of one of the buildings, and after pulling themselves to safety, Bluto finds a tall ladder and runs it into Popeye. The sailorman is knocked off the building, but as he and the ladder fall to certain doom, Popeye climbs up the ladder and grabs the ledge again.

On the rooftop, Bluto wastes no time in knocking Popeye for a loop, sending him flying over the edge of a building and catching his feet on the bar of an awning. "What am I doin' hangin' 'round here?," he asks, but when he tries to climb back up, Bluto stomps on each of Popeye's hands in a gleefully mad dance. As Olive screams below in her office, Bluto starts pounding his fists on the hanging Popeye's fingers, but then Popeye somersault kicks the big lug out of the way. His perch is shortly gained, however, as Bluto wallops him again, and Popeye drops down onto the wildly waving and screaming Olive. Popeye continues to fall, and with his hands around Olive's neck, she is pulled down the outside of the building, clinging on for dear life with her enormous boots. (The dizzying perspective used in this scene truly gives one a sense of the heighth of this adventure; unfortunately it also gives us a near peek up, or rather, down Olive's skirt.) Popeye climbs up her body and pulls Olive inside to safety, but Bluto grabs Popeye and runs him out on the flag pole. Tied up in ropes and seemingly helpless, Popeye watches as Bluto lights a match and sets fire to the only thing holding Popeye above the street far below. Bluto then turns on Olive and bellows, "Now do you want me to wash the windas, huh?" He then starts to choke her maniacally.

Oh, if only Popeye had some secret stash of spinach hidden on his person! Oh, that's right... he does! Somehow, the energy surge plows right up Popeye's body, out of his feet, and straight through the burning rope, which puts out the fire and ties the rope together tightly. Popeye then crawls back to the building to rescue Olive. Popeye throws what could well be a hundred rapid fire punches into the body of Bluto, and then one solid blow sends the creep flying high up the side of the building. Popeye slams a window down onto his own feet, giving him a solid footing, and when gravity calls Bluto back down, Popeye starts pounding on him again. Halfway through the flurry, he switches to his feet, and then back to his fists. "Here comes the hangover!," he warns, and then knocks Bluto up to the top of the building so that he hangs from his own belt from a hook.

As Yankee Doodle plays on the soundtrack, Popeye punches handholds into the bricks of the wall and climbs up them to finish off Bluto for good. "Hold onto your hat!" he tells the brute, and punches him over the side of the building. But this is still not enough. As Bluto falls, Popeye zooms down the twenty-plus floors to the sidewalk, and which the exclamation of "You're all washed up!", Popeye knocks Bluto through the windows of his own shop and into the cash register inside. Of course, when his head hits the keys, it rings up "No Sale". Popeye then flips his way over and over up the building ledge by ledge and into the arms of his love Olive. He tells the world that he is indeed a sailorman named Popeye, toots his pipe doubly, and the film irises out.

A couple of months ago, I reviewed a later Famous Popeye called A Haul in One, in which there is a similar scene where Popeye zooms down several flights of stairs, only that time, is was to catch furniture that he himself had dropped out of the window. The timing of that sequence is way off, and as a result, the scene lands with a thud, in much the same manner that the furniture normally would were it thrown out in that manner. It is a fun concept, though, and has been done correctly in numerous cartoons, and in The Paneless Window Washer, we see the perfect example. The speed, while outrageous, is believable in the context of the film, but only because the rest of the cartoon is so quick; the Popeye-Bluto battles, as they are in most of the Fleischer Popeyes, are lightning fast and pump the level of action to breathless heights. The major problem with so many of the Famous Popeyes is the leveling of the speed factor, perhaps due to lower budgets (and weaker imaginations, I like to theorize). The characters act out a scene practically as if diagramming the action for the viewer, and then painstakingly performing it for them, pointing out the "jokes" all the way. But when a character in the Fleischer Popeyes wants to do something, even if they preface the action with a gag, that character seems to perform that action as they think of it. These films move fast, and their rapidity only points up all the more the stolidness and dull setups of the latter day 'Eyes.

It is also nice to have a Popeye short where Olive Oyl's love is not the focus of the boys' competitive natures. Sure, there are plenty of them, but it's just nice to run into one after seeing a streak of about twenty Popeyes in a row of the romantic triangle variety. Speaking of streaks, what is would be really nice to run into is a window-cleaning product that really doesn't streak. But, look... if just plain water on a window is enough to cause a streak, what the hell good is a blue freakin' liquid gonna do? I can get every speck of dirt and dust off of the window, but no matter what I do, no matter how I squeegee or towel that window, little streaks appear immediately upon drying.

All of this "no-streak" jive is just that -- jive! I might as well just hose the contents of a mud puddle onto my window and just leave it for a professional.

Maybe Bluto was onto something here, after all...

The Paneless Window Washer (Max Fleischer Studios, 1937) Director: Dave Fleischer
Animators: Willard Bowsky & Orestes Caprini
Cel Bloc Rating: 7

HEIR BEAR (1953)

In all the times that I played pirate as a child, I'm not sure if I ever found any of our pretend lost treasures. No Terrance or Phillip, I was obsessed with sword-fighting in my youth, a process which we neighbor kids fulfilled by having a neverending supply of fireweed at our service. Pull a stalk out of the ground, snap off the end with the roots, slide your roughly hand up the stalk to remove the leaves and flowers, and you had a pretty good sword that would last for at least a battle or so. If it broke, you just grabbed another one. They weren't as dangerous as actual sticks, though they wouldn't last as long, either. But the main thing here was that we had a plentiful and limitless sword supply at our disposal, and if you needed a new cutlass or rapier, you just reached behind you, and in a few deft moves, you were back in the fray.

Only we never really got to the finding treasure part of the buccaneer adventure story. It was pretty much ship-boarding, fighting, plank walking, keelhauling, and raping and pillaging (not that we understood the raping part; we just knew the phrase). A variety of Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power and Burt Lancaster flicks had us bloodthirsty and savage to the core; and yet, we never seemed to get past the battles and to the part that should have had us battling in the first place: the booty. And, somewhere in Eagle River, Alaska, there are a thousand imaginary treasure chests still waiting to be found in that old neighborhood of ours, all forgotten by a passel of cutthroats who could never stop the imagined throat-cutting long enough to actually enjoy the spoils of war on the high-seas.

What calls this lost hoard to mind is a latter-day Barney Bear short, Heir Bear, from MGM in 1953. Our story opens with a close-up of the front page of a news rag called the Daily Grief, on which we spy a headline declaring that “Local Lout Gets Loot – Barney Bear Inherits Treasure Map Disclosing Fabulous Pirate Hoard In Own Backyard”. It would be just like the media to ruin a guy’s good time. In the real world, such a declaration would have said inheritor being bombarded with bandits and ne’er-do-wells trying to find the treasure under his nose. Anytime that anyone wins a large amount of money in a lottery, the media makes sure to point the poor sap out so that he can be run down by every opportunist and half-assed charity shill around. I know that if and when I win a large amount of cash, I’m going to take my time being rich, and will eye even the most benevolent institutions as so many mustache-twirling villains with capes held over the bottom half of their faces braying “Nyah-hah-hah” at my bank account. This is not to say that I wouldn’t give to the needy; I would just do some major investigative research first.

As we will soon discover, Barney Bear doesn’t have to worry about bandits, ne’er-do-wells or mustache-twirling charities. He has a smaller problem, at least in physical stature. For once the picture in the paper of Barney holding the map dissolves into the real Barney standing in his backyard in the same pose, the bear draws a large “X” on the ground with a pencil (which is a very near impossible thing to do on a grass surface, so “Kudos” to him), and then proceeds to begin digging a large hole in search for the treasure. As it turns out, the treasure is indeed located just below where he is digging, inside a large cavernous hideout with stairways and a giant chest full of gold coins.

The problem is that his excavating wakes up the solitary resident of this hideout: a gopher, who is extremely perturbed about the rude awakening that the rocks and dirt shaken loose from the top of the cavern have just given him. He jumps off the treasure chest where he has been bedding, and furiously climbs the winding stairwell that leads him up and out of a hole in a stump in Barney’s backyard. The gopher marches right up to the bear and taps on his foot. Barney lifts the gopher up in the air with that same foot, and the gopher first looks up the bear’s pants leg, and then scurries up through his pants and onto Barney’s chest. He scolds him quickly and squeakily, ending his tirade with “Gimme that pickaxe!” He grabs the tool from Barney’s paws and gnaws his way swiftly through the handle. He then takes the pick itself and smacks Barney right on top of his head with the flattened edge!

Barney shakes off the assault, and once the rodent has left, the bear takes to digging again. The gopher marches back and pulls the shovel from Barney’s hand, fills the hole back up with dirt, and puts the shovel back. Barney digs out dirt again, but the gopher wanders back with a small pine tree, which he plants in the hole, and then pats dirt around to secure it. Barney tries to pull the tiny pine out of the hole, but it refuses to give, and then the gopher returns with a bottle of Quick Grow formula. Pouring it on the tree causes it to rise hundreds of feet in the air, a change which goes completely unnoticed by the still-tugging Barney Bear. At last, the tree gives way for the bear, even if it is only now the top of the pine, and after Barney tosses it away, he turns to walk off in triumph. Only, his foot finds no solid ground, and he soon realizes he is high in the air. He starts to fall, but down below on the ground, the gopher spies the bear’s descent, and runs offscreen to bring back a large supply of bricks and equipment. He prepares and mixes the mortar, builds an entire brick fireplace, and lights a warm and cozy fire, all before Barney Bear hits the ground flat and turns into a bearskin rug. The gopher then slides a comfy chair in on top of the downed brute, and then sits down in the chair, smoking a pipe and enjoying the fire. Barney, as he so often does, can only tap his fingers on the ground in frustration.

Later, Barney is at it again, digging out large rocks and tossing them over his shoulder. The gopher takes a board and sets it up on top of a rock to turn it into a catapult. Each time Barney throws a rock, another flies back at his head and knocks him silly. On the third time, the gopher has set an anvil on the far end of the board, and when it flies and hits Barney, the bear shatters not once, not twice, but three times into smaller versions of Barney Bear. Finally, the 1/8^th size bear can only watch helplessly when the gopher marches up to him, as an equal-sized mammal, and punches the bear full in the face.

Barney pulls himself together, and later, starts digging again, but the gopher builds a machine out of an erector set that grabs the dirt Barney is throwing over his shoulder and, through a series of gears and scoops, leaves the dirt on a platform over Barney’s head, which ultimately dumps the entire load on the bear, leaving him buried deep in the yard. The gopher digs his way to Barney’s head, lights a stick of TNT, and places it inside the poor bear’s mouth, covering him back up with dirt. The resulting explosion sends Barney shooting up through the ground like a volcano, and when his head breaches, he spits a flume of black smoke out of his maw. The gopher pops up, though not via explosion, and mocks the bear with a boisterous laugh. Barney copies the laugh in derision, but the gopher beeps Barney’s nose twice. Barney reaches out an arm and honks the gopher’s button nose back a few times, making the rodent’s ear stretch out wildly. The gopher’s response is swift and strange: he blows his hand up to gargantuan proportions and smacks the still-buried Barney silly.

The gopher burrows to escape, but Barney follows him underground. When the gopher reaches a pipeline laying across the ground, he hops out and starts burrowing again on the other side of the pipe. Barney runs headlong into the structure, and his body ends in several pieces, each one encased inside a section of the red pipe. Finally, Barney has had enough. He lights a stick of TNT with a tremendously long fuse, and drops it down the hole in the stump, eager to blow the gopher to kingdom come and gain easy access to the treasure at the same time. But the gopher, sitting at ease atop the pile of gold, paints the stick of dynamite so it looks like a large Havana cigar. He carries the TNT back to Barney and offers it to the bear in a show of peace and friendship. Naturally, the bear takes it, but as he waits for a light, it slowly dawns on him that the long fuse inching its way towards his face is not a sign of a good cigar. He covers his head with his arms, and the resulting blast causes the viewer to see nothing underneath those arms but the background behind him. He has been left headless.

But, once he has collected his wits (and, presumably, the tiny little pieces of his noggin), Barney pulls together one last plan. In full view of the gopher, Barney dons a giant gopher suit, and as anyone who has ever worn a giant gopher suit knows, it immediately allows you to dig with remarkable precision. No sooner has he disappeared into the earth, than he returns with the chest full of lost pirate gold. The real gopher takes great exception with Barney's pilfering, but the bear is not to be trifled with by this point. He winds the gopher's tail up like the key of a wind-up toy, and the gopher walks off like a wobbly toy soldier. Barney takes the treasure inside his home, and delightfully counts each and every coin, stacking them up in tall piles on his table. But then there is a knock at his door, and it turns out to be the taxman. He asks Barney why he hasn't given Uncle Sam his share, and picks up a single golden coin. He then wipes the rest of the gold into his collection bag, and flips the solitary coin to Barney. There is no sadder image known on which to iris out.

Honestly, I fully expected the taxman to turn out to be the gopher in disguise, but maybe I am used to too many Bugs Bunny or Droopy cartoons. This cartoon feels so much like an MGM Avery, and certainly director Lundy was well-versed in Tex's style. I like this version of Barney; he is not so dipped and rolled in honey and sugar as the early Barney; short-tempered though he was, he was still a fairly goody-two-shoes character, and his films could veer towards the merely pedestrian. I like the greedier, later Bear, and his nemesis is fun, too, though I wish the gopher had a stronger vocal gimmick than just talking like a tape recorder on the wrong speed. And I love the time-bending brick fireplace-Barney rug bit.

And that treasure? Well, it's nice, but I am far more interested in that hideout underneath his property. It looks pretty intricate, too. Nice place to hide your entire crew in a time of crisis. Oh, yeah... you could fit a lot of treasure down there, too, and while Barney seems to think that he got his fill out in the 1.4 seconds he was down in that cavern, it seemed to me that there was a lot more going on down in that place. Once that IRS jerk split, I hope Barney went back down to check out every nook and cranny of the place.

Of course, if Barney had only found someone's lost imaginary treasure instead, he never would have lost his fortune. As an adult, especially now that I live where lotteries are an everyday reality (Alaska is a silly place and has no such thing), and even though I have only bought into one lottery ticket in my 13 months in residence here (and that was because my company was doing it as a group), I dream constantly of the day that I have the winning ticket in my lucky little hand. I think about how we could maintain ourselves easily for the rest of my and Jen's existence by being thrifty and smart (and not necessarily cheap, but simply wise about it). And then I think about how my name and face will be blasted all over the news in every conceivable form of media, and then the beggars, the bandits, the ne'er-do-wells, the charity cases, the long-lost relatives, and the IRS will all keep at my door and phone and windows and computer day in and day out like the persistent biting gnats that they are...

...and ...and forget being rich! I am going back to Eagle River to dig up all of my lost imaginary treasure chests. At least I already know how to battle those that would rob me of my invisible spoils..

Heir Bear (MGM, 1953) Director: Dick Lundy
Writers: Heck Allen & Jack Cosgriff
Animators: Michael Lah, Robert Bentley, Walter Clinton & Grant Simmons
Cel Bloc Rating: 7

THE FISHING BEAR (1940)

As I have mentioned before, I am not big on the whole fishing thing. I'm not so much anti-fishing, as I am anti-ME-fishing. Can't stand it, don't want to do it, don't even really want to be there. The problem is, in many key moments of my life, I have had to be there. Being raised in Alaska, fishing seems to occur around nearly every corner, at every point of the year, and many is the time I have been trapped on a riverbank, pacing about and finding other things to do while the rest of the fam took to matters of the mind-bendingly dull and gruesomely directed. I have no desire to gut still breathing entities, nor do I wish to watch them as they slowly drown to near-death in the shallow water by the shore, gasping for each and every dying breath. Sure, I love halibut and tuna, and you can't have either without fishing – I just don't want to be the one in control of the wetworks.

Barney Bear has no such reservations. After all, he is a grizzly bear, and what is more natural to a grizzly than trying to catch a fish? In The Fishing Bear from 1940, in his second appearance as MGM's first truly home-spun character (Bosko was created at Warners, and other series characters, like The Captain and the Kids, were licensed properties from other hands), Barney not only takes to the lakes for a little fishing madness, he does so in a more recognizably human vein than in an ursine one. No swatting salmon out of a mountain stream here, but rather, in the tradition of just about any fisherman worth his sea salt, Barney has more tackle and gear than he really needs to do the job, and all to catch a single fish for dinner. What he gets is certainly the opposite of his hungry winding up with nothing but pain and the unexpected and unwarranted faithfulness of a misguided duck.

The film opens with the camera's leisurely panning across the dew-moistened early-morning haze over a charming lakeside vista. In the midst of several lilypads, a trout surfaces slightly, yawns wide, stretches his fins like arms, and gargles with his face through the top of the water. Numerous trout pop up and leap about in glee with the promise of the new day. But, this serenity is due to be shattered with the arrival of the fishermen, and this particular fisherman, laden down with a ton of gear and equipment, is none other than Barney Bear. He crashes through the brush awkwardly, but soon realizes that he has found the right place when he spies the vast array of leaping fish. He locates a rocky outcropping that will serve as his "spot", and sets to fishing.

From his bag he pulls a box of bait, but this is no ordinary worm product. This is a box of "Trouties", which declares itself proudly as "A Tempting Treat for Timid Trout". (A picture of a cereal bowl is shown on the cover, with a variety of flakes and hooks set inside it, and a large hook in place of the customary spoon.) Any doubt in Barney's mind as to the veracity of such a statement must surely be allayed by the endorsement on the box cover's bottom edge: "Approved by the Boy Trouts of America". Barney throws a handful of flakes into the water, and the fish go crazy fighting over them. Grabbing a small sample of "Trouties", he places the box on the ground and turns to his gear to bait his hook. A fish leaps through the water towards the shore, and spies the advertisement on the back of the box. Portraying a tough-looking fish with a tommy gun, the advert reads "Do You Want To Be A Junior G-Trout?" (Additional humorous text continues: "Send This Coupon and 18,0000 Box Tops To: J. Edgar Poorfish, Washington, D.C.")

The fish gets excited over the ad, swims a 360 around a rock formation in the water, imitates a tommy gun by spitting in the air, and swims back to shore. It leaps up and down out of the water, making light honking noises to get Barney's attention. Bemused, Barney dangles his Troutie-baited hook out over the water, and not only does the fish leap at it, but so do several other fish, as well. Barney devilishly imagines all of them roasting slowly in a frying pan over a hot fire, and gulps with intense hunger. He teases the fish by preparing to throw the hook into the water, and saying "One for the money, two for the show, three to make ready--", and as he makes each pass, more and more fish join the crowd. As he hits "And, four to--", he is interrupted by some loud quacking, and the fish are disappointed, though saved, by the arrival of a duck who plops down right where the fish were gathered.

The duck plays about in the water, spitting water high into the air, and then swims to the shore to quack right in Barney's face. The bear is not amused, and just sits on some rocks, rubbing his whole face in a frustrated fashion. The duck keeps quacking, annoying Barney even more. But, the fish return to beg for more "Trouties", and Barney wastes no time in casting his pole at the water. The problem with that action is that the duck zips across the water and catches the bobber in its mouth over the heads of the fish, and then swims the bobber back to shore. He climbs out of the lake, sets the bobber at Barney's feet like a trained dog, and quacks for Barney to play with him. He wiggles his tail like a retriever and readies himself for the next cast. Barney is not so happy with this turn of events, though, and he swipes roughly at the duck to drive it away. The fish start to chime in again, and Barney casts his hook once more towards them; the duck is too quick, however, rocketing through Barney's legs, knocking the bear down, and then returning the bobber again, this time on his chest.

Barney reaches slowly for the box of "Trouties" and throws it at the mallard, but the box misses the duck and skips out across the water, where it is set upon immediately by the mass of hungry fish. Well, all except one, the literate fish, who only wants to be a G-Trout. He steals the empty box and swims off with it. Barney sails across the water to stop him, but only ends up smashing his head painfully into a rock formation set just below the water's surface. Barney shakes himself into coherence, and bolts after the fish again, running across the water, but when he stops, he plunges straight down. The duck, still ashore, is shocked by this, and can only watch sadly as he fears that the bear has drowned. But, plopping his hand onto the bank, Barney comes back ashore with the cereal box in his other hand. He pours the water out, but the fish is inside of it, and when he comes out, he spits in Barney's eye and speedboats back around the rock formation, doing another 360. The duck, who is apparently faithful to Barney, sets out to defend his new friend and chases after the fish.

When the duck reaches the wannabe G-Trout, the fish pretends to shoot him with a tommy gun and then splashes water in the bird's face. A chase then ensues through and under the water, around rocks, and the fish finally arrives back at the shore, where Barney traps him in a net. But, the duck comes up under it, and the fish is knocked free, and when Barney tries to grab it, the fish crashes into the pile of fishing gear. The ducks zooms under Barney again, knocking him down, and searches for the fish in the mess. A boot comes clomping out towards the water, and at the edge, the fish climbs out and heads for safety. The duck goes after him, zooming under Barney and knocking him down a third time, and then locating the point in the water where the fish is hiding. He frantically tries to tell Barney where the fish is at, and flies to the spot, pointing with his whole body like a hunting dog at the fish. Barney excitedly casts his pole into the water, and the Troutie-laden hook floats down to the bottom.

The fish is intrigued by the tasty morsel, but an electric eel, bigger and tougher, pushes his way to the hook. When he bites it, an massive electrical charge is sent up the line and through the pole to Barney's unknowing hands, and the Bear is fried to a crisp by the shock! Bolts fly at the duck, who evades them all, but one of them hits and instantly destroys a large tree, leaving only a charred and smoldering stump. There is a large explosion, and when the duck returns to the shore, there is hole through the rocks where Barney was standing. Another bolt rockets through the pole, and fries the feathers off of Barney's faithful duck, and the bird drops through the hole and down onto the chest of Barney, who is laying in a frustrated heap, tapping his fingers on the floor of the lake. The duck emits an underwater quack that sounds more like a burp, and the film irises out.

Typical of MGM cartoons of this period, the settings and design are lush, and I like the way that the center of the action, the rocky shelf on the shoreline and the tiny lagoon with the rocky outcropping, has a truly intricate connection to the film. Every square inch of this "set", both on top of the water and underneath, is explored in the conflict between the characters. Of course, I naturally identify most with the little fish that can obsess over the backs of cereal boxes and imagine himself as a crimefightin' G-Trout. Barney's character is roughly the same as in his first film, The Bear That Couldn't Sleep, only here we have to recognize him, if not just slightly, as the villain of the piece. He moves from the much put-upon protagonist who cannot find rest due to the world's noise conspiring against him, to that of the antagonist (though unthinkingly): the would-be captor and devourer of innocent, playful fishies. It doesn't quite work on Barney here (it would much later in the series, though); I keep thinking "Barney, no!" throughout the film as he attempts to murder fish and throttle a duck trying its hardest to be his pet. He still seems too sweet to try and carry off such mean-spirited plans, and thus, it somewhat hardens his actions here to the viewer. Thus, it doesn't quite work.

I recall many a camping/fishing trip with various combinations of my parental units, and most of my time was spent finding a nice spot under a tree or on the edge of a riverbank, and scribbling in a notebook, either drawing or journaling. Not so strangely, many of the things that I wrote about were feverish daydreams of fishing trips gone insane, with fish rising up in rebellion and devouring or murdering the human idiocy who dress in ridiculous costumes and wade out to their waists in the river with either the belief that all of this preparation and driving and traffic and elbowing and tedium and pollution is somehow relaxing and meditative, or with the belief that they are becoming "one with nature" through their actions. (I prefer the people who are honest and say they just want to get a meal out of it, but I still suggest that these people simply devour each other instead.)

Not that I am wishing for harm to come to Barney Bear, but the featured fish in this film had it right on the money. Pursing up his face like a Piscean Edward G. Robinson, spitting repeatedly as he imitates that tommy gun, this little fish clearly had plans quite similar to those that I imagined in those ennui-wrought tales written on the riverbanks and lakeshores. What could these fish do were they to turn on their oppressors, who view stock lakes as moveable feasts, as liquid refrigerators to be raided at their own whims? Perhaps it is time for the fish to rise up against mankind, become Junior G-Trouts in spirit, and teach men the pain that can derive from their own arrogance.

Of course, the last time the fish rose up, we ended up with humans in the first place...

Let's not have that mistake again...

The Fishing Bear (MGM, 1940) Director: Rudolf Ising
Cel Bloc Rating: 6

THE BEAR THAT COULDN'T SLEEP (1939)

As anyone can tell you, and Jen will back this up with a very strong affirmation, I don't sleep very much. Or rather, I can't. Quite the opposite of my significant other, the slightest jostle or noise has me bolting upright from slumber, even at my most relaxed. Once I am awakened, if my brain connects with anything -- the TV, a pet, or the printing on any package, book or magazine -- outside of my dream realm, the night is sunk, and I am awake for the duration of the darkness. Occasionally, after an hour or two, I might drift back into Dozeland, but this is very rare. Not counting nocturnal trips to the restroom, where I have trained myself to get back to sleep, for the most part, once I am up, I am up.

I often go to work with less than five hours of sleep because of this problem, even though I try to hit the hay at a relatively decent hour each night, in an attempt to allow myself the rarely accepted luxury of getting a comfy seven hours of sleep. Regardless of how much sleep I get in an evening, during the work-week, I get up at 6 am at the latest every day, in order to get my fingers awake and into their typing stance for both personal and work writing; on the weekends, when you think that I could catch up, I still find myself getting up at six. (Saturday morning was a rare exception: I slept until 8 am, which would be great, if I hadn't gone to bed at two in the morning!)

It's certainly a good thing that I am not a creature that relies on hibernation to get through the winter. I would be so cantankerous by the springtime, holed up in a cave, listening to every little noise, wide-awake, bleary-eyed, bored out of my friggin' skull. For me, there would be no attempt to get back to sleep; I would be up for the winter, and going stir crazy in the process. Not so with Barney Bear, the lovable ursine MGM character who slowburns his way through each frustrating (for him) adventure. Oh, to be sure, he goes crazy in The Bear That Couldn't Sleep from 1939, his first screen adventure, but it's actually from each and every little noise in his household (and those sounding off only in his imagination) that conspire to deprive him of a six-month slumber.

Meticulously and almost ridiculously detailed, and sumptuously designed with multiple furrowed brows and an almost too-plush coat, Barney prepares himself calmly and sleepily for his sojourn into "hibernation" (though bears do not truly "hibernate" as science allows) as the snow flurries down on and about his cozy little home (with its understated sign reading "Mr. Bear" -- I believe that, in the forest, there are only about thirty surnames of this sort, so I'm sure the Arboreal Postal Service would appreciate his putting a signifying "B" on the sign as well, if not his full first name.) Barney takes one last peak outside as he places another sign on the door to his cave. It reads, in finely wrought lettering, "Do Not Disturb", and below this warning are two final words, not so delicately scrawled, "TILL SPRING!" The wind kicks up and shoots a final blast of chilling snow into Barney's face, and he ducks back inside, and the rustling of metal chains is heard. Our vantage point now inside, we see that Barney has fastened a variety of bolts and locks on his door, and after wedging the final insurance measure of a large log against the door, Barney turns with a satisfied look to the task at hand: going to bed.

Shuffling his slipper-clad feet to the fireplace, he warms his paws and then his bottom against the heated glow of the coals. Covered in pajamas, he shakes his bottom a little before walking to his clock, whose hands not only tell the time by hour, but they have an inner clockface that allows one to set an alarm by the month. Set on August, he winds the alarm hand all the way several months ahead - to March, and the springtime glory to come. After fluffing his pillows, he pulls back the covers and starts to climb in for the season, but with a quick snort, he realizes he has forgotten one final detail: his hot-water bottle. He retrieves it, and then finally, with a great sigh, sets off to find sleep.

But, this will not be so easy to achieve. A steady dripping of water tap-taps on his nose, and when he looks up, he gets hit in the eye from the next drop, which is descending from his roof via a stray root. He climbs up and ties a knot in the root, and then settles back down. The savage wind kicks at this window from outside, and rattles it annoyingly. Just about to get up, Barney decides to ignore it and puts his head down once more. But then, the musical tinkling of many waterdrops can be heard dripping from the bottom of his bed onto the floor, and Barney starts to fear the worst; a quick glance under his covers allays one fear, but brings tears to his eyes anyway, as he realizes his hot-water bottle has emptied onto his mattress. Bemoaning his bad fortune, he starts to feel the drip from above his head again, and when he spies the knotted root, the water pressure has built it up into thirty times its original size, and the root finally bursts, drenching the saddened Barney from head to foot, along with his bed. Not giving him a moment's reflection, the window starts to rattle again, and this time, the wind kicks it fully open, and snow flies into the room. Once it has subsided, a slow pan over to Barney's bed reveals him to appear as no less than a bear-shaped snowperson. He shakes his head to uncover himself, and the shutters to the window start to rattle with the wind anew. The scene fades...

...and when it returns, the window is competely locked up tight with all manner of ephemera from about Barney's home: brooms, plungers, washboards, chairs, boards, tablelegs, what have you has been hammered into place and, hopefully, for good. Barney's bed and pajamas are once again warm and dry, and he climbs under his covers to try to sleep once more. But, other things than Mother Nature are threatening his hibernation: the clock's pendulum ticks dully and monotonously in his ears, and the coals from fire start to crackle and pop, and every sound starts to annoy him. Worse, the coals not only start to rebound off the bottom of the tea kettle that dangles over the fire, but the occasional stray coal shoots towards Barney's head. Finally, the kettle reaches a boil, and starts to whistle, first in bursts, and then in one long, ceaseless whine. Barney pulls it from the fire, and the whine dies down, but when he looks at the kettle, it whines again and shoots him in the face with a puff of steam.

He turns to set the kettle down, but a pair of coals pop and dance into his pajama bottoms. He returns to bed, and whenever the coals pop inside his pants, he looks back at the fire angrily to try and hush it. He climbs into bed, entirely unaware of the smoke pouring out of his bottom. But, soon enough, he starts to sniff and smell the smoke, and after a good doubletake, he finally understands it is coming from him. However, he is too late, and the coals pop loudly and sharply under his backside, and he is sent flying in a cloud of smoke towards the ceiling, and then back down roughly onto his bed. He runs to find some way to put out the fire as alarms blare on the soundtrack, and finally, he decides to unlock his front door, and then zips to the nearest snowhill and soothes his burnt rear in the calming snow.

All better now, with the fire put out for good, Barney can only watch helplessly as the wind not only shuts his front door with him on the outside of it, but fate smacks him, too, by allowing the locks to engage themselves on its closure. Barney remembers his window, but does not remember the barricade that he built inside of it, and when he tries to dive through it, his progress is painfully impeded by the wall of furniture and household goods. Barney takes two casual steps back, and after pausing briefly, turns into a whirlwind of fury and smashes clean through the barricade! As the camera strolls through his cave, the destruction is almost total: every piece of anything inside Barney domicile is smashed to bits, and as he stares in numb shock at the camera, a spring from his bed pops up and smacks him in the chin.

The hour on the clock chimes to serve as a transition to a later time, where Barney has constructed a makeshift bed from the ruins of his former comfort, and as he tries vainly to fall into slumber, he listens to lullaby music on his phonograph. "Sleep, baby, sleep", a tenor smoothly intones, "close your bright eyes!" But even this effort is interrupted when the next line, "Angels will watch...", starts to skip over and over, going "will-watch, will-watch" and driving Barney nuts! He flings a shoe at the record, and it flips completely over, and sets the arm back down on a loud, blaring Spike Jones-style swing record! Barney next picks up an entire log and hurls it into the machine, silencing it forever.

After tapping his foot and staring at the ticking clock, Barney lies back down and tries counting sheep. His rough, exhausted voice counts out each number as he keeps a deathgrip on his pillow, his reddened eyes droopy and filled with spidery cracks. As he counts, the ticking of the clock grows louder, and the eerie faces of baaing sheep and lambs are superimposed over closeups of clock gears, springs and alarm bells. Barney count reaches the 500's, and then he ends up at "one million, nine hundred and seventy-nine thousand, seven hundred and nine-nine", and when he is shown in his bed, he is half in and half out of his dream of vast crowds of cute, baaing lambs. He finally falls into snoring, but just as he does, Barney awakens to the clanging of his month alarm, and spies with horror that a little buzzer announcing the arrival of Spring has gone off, as well. He hears the happy chirping of a bluebird outside his home, and he sticks his head out of his window to see its beauty. Shocked, he says simply and wearily, "Spring..." but then is hit in the head with more drops of water. He looks up, and discovers it is the melting snow from his roof, as the bluebird chirps us through iris out.

Growing up watching a variety of MGM shorts, my least favorites were always the ones starring Barney Bear, merely by dint of his being not as unhinged as Tom and Jerry, nor as funny as the Tex Avery offerings. But, I was young and only interested in what was immediately hilarious or shocking; the best of the Barney Bear cartoons, and this is one of them, succeed by the richness of character alive in Barney (and based somewhat on the grumpy facial contortions of Oscar-winning actor Wallace Beery), and should be must viewing, if only for the depth of the animation of the lead character. These films are a little simpler, and a little more ponderous than the manic work of the other MGM's, but they are lightly humorous and enjoyable; and because they were fairly well-budgeted, sharp, colorful details abound in the backgrounds and props, and the richness shows in every frame. Not that a big budget ever means a better film -- hardly -- but everything comes together in this one to make it a fun, if light, romp. There are any number of films, such as Tick Tock Tuckered (a favorite of mine), that feature characters that go mad from lack of sleep, but not from lack of trying. But, this one goes its own direction, and also remains true to its character and setting.

And, by romp, in Barney's case, I mean, trying to get some sleep. This is something that I fail at time and again. Sometimes, it does seem as if everything conspires against you: the pets, the TV, the girlfriend, outside noises like neighboring dogs or drunkards, car backfires, thunder and lightning, and all of them timed to go off just as you are desperate for the arms of Morpheus. The less sleep that you get in a night, and the earlier the hour, the more prone you are to thought of paranoia and a persecution complex can settle itself into your brain. The only way that I can stop the process is to leave the bedroom, go to a secluded and dark part of the house, away from the jealously growling dogs and the glaring TV, and have a lie-down. Hopefully, I can use this isolation to fire down my mind, not think at all, breathe deep, and relax... just relax... and drift... off... to...

And then the cat loudly meows and demands either water or food or attention! You're awake again, sucker!

It's a good thing that I don't hibernate. I'd be up for months.

Is it spring yet?

The Bear That Couldn't Sleep (MGM, 1939) Director: Rudolf Ising
Cel Bloc Rating: 7