Today is November 11^th.  11/11.  Lots of 1s right there.  In honor of all those ones, here is a simple one-question questionnaire.

How many gods do you worship?

Simple question, obviously—and we all know what the appropriate answer should be.  “Well, I worship one perfectly triune God: He is Father, He is Son, He is Spirit, and He loves me.”  And indeed He does and His love is enough to retrieve us from the most cumbersome baggage or rescue us from the eeriest alleyway.  The first few verses of Psalm 103 put it well: “Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise His holy name.  Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits—who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s” (Psalm 103:1-5).

Yet I recall that one line in “Come Thou Fount,” where the singer laments that he or she is “prone to wander / Lord, I feel it / Prone to leave the God I love.”  It’s just a relatable lyric—and the question is, “Why?”  Why would we choose to embrace spiritual wanderlust and drift away from a loving God who continues to pursue us no matter how much we resist?  Why wouldn’t we embrace the God of the universe in all circumstances as naturally as an autumn leaf flutters toward the ground?

An obvious answer is, “Well, because of sin.”  And that’s correct.  We are sinful creatures.  Our old hearts are liable to buy a one-way ticket to havoc and anarchy, to embrace our own disgusting snares because we figure that God can’t see through walls or open a locked door.  But there’s another important dimension to that.  We might leave the God we love unintentionally—because we really think that we never leave Him in the first place.

That last sentence might be a little perplexing.  “But—of course we’d know when we’d leave God.  We’d feel so empty inside.  We’d be wrought by the conviction of the Spirit that we’d come running back.”  Maybe so.  But in light of that, here is a list of twenty-five things I have worshiped, and still continue to worship, in my lifetime.  Note that God isn’t on the list, which says something about where I’m at.  And it’s wrong to worship anything else.

1. Crossword puzzles

2. The Denver Broncos

3. Getting an “A” on my English paper

4. Wheel of Fortune

5. My iPod

6. Chocolate milk

7. Writing poetry

8. Sunshine

9. Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz

10. Unplanned bike rides

11. Putting Bible verses on my Facebook profile

12. Untarnished silence

13. Encouragement from friends

14. A neatly trimmed Christmas tree

15. The book of Romans

16. Church

17. Giving to charity

18. Water on Wednesday

19. Time

20. The one-year Bible plan

21. Singing “Marvelous Light”

22. Fellowship with other believers

23. Other believers

24. Myself

25. Numbered lists

Now you might say, “Hold on a second, Mike—all those are relatively good things.  You didn’t put lust, envy, illegal drugs, sloth, revenge, robbing a bank, or tormenting others out of sheer malice on the list.  In fact, some of those things seem pretty spiritual.”

I know.  That’s the point.  Sometimes it isn’t always the bad that trips us up; it’s the good.

The Bible’s pretty clear: “You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind or an image of anything in the heavens or on the earth or in the sea” (Exodus 20:4, emphasis mine).  No idols whatsoever.  And what happens when we begin to replace the necessity of God in our lives with something else—anything else—even if God seems to be involved?  We become idolaters.  I know from experience.

Now here’s what this doesn’t mean—this doesn’t mean I’m saying you should stop reading your Bible, going to church, experiencing fellowship, building your friends up and vice-versa, living the life of a servant, and becoming awed at how God has blessed your universe.  But if something doesn’t point us back to the Giver of life, then there’s a major disconnect there.  I don’t have time to go through the whole list, but here’s some quick commentary on a few.

3. I may have gotten that “A”—but how much credit can I truly take?  God helped get me through every seemingly insurmountable paragraph.

8. Creation should be translucent.  A sunny day should point me to God and His illuminating beauty—but I should not begin to sing praises to that yellow orb in the sky.

16. Sometimes, it’s easy to go through the motions here and put on a front.  If I say the Apostle’s Creed every Sunday morning, I’d better not just ramble through the words like it’s another empty ritual but say it like it’s the core of my identity.  And I’d better say it like I am standing before God right there in the room.  Because I am.

18. If I’m writing this newsletter and God’s not a part of it, then what’s the point?  More generally, what becomes of Christianity once we remove Christ?  It dissipates into an absolute joke.  If we don’t cling to the sacrifice of that beautiful cross, what are we going to cling to?  What could we possibly cling to?  Nothing.

20. If I fall a week behind and end up trying to read twenty chapters of Deuteronomy in one night to catch up and the entire time I am thinking about homework or how good that bag of M&Ms in my freezer is going to taste, then God is not glorified.

22/23. If I fellowship with someone and—because of it—I feel more united in the body of Christ, more closely linked to the Lord, then that’s wonderful.  That’s how fellowship should be.  But if I eat lunch with someone just so she can pay for my ham sandwich or call up someone so I can worship how awesome his faith is compared to mine, then we’ve got a problem on our hands.

24. There is no excuse whatsoever for me to be on a pedestal.  As a pastor from a past church service this summer said, “There is nothing good in you that God has not already deposited there.”  May the Lord get all the credit for everything I do for Him and for catching and redeeming me when I fall.

Now am I being picky here?  Not necessarily.  I wouldn’t be surprised if I could pinpoint a week from my life where all twenty-five things on that above list were in full-bloom, but I didn’t truly experience God once.  And our walks with God truly have to be walks with God.  Otherwise, it all falls apart.

So here’s what all this does mean.  You need to know and experience God.  And I can’t tell you how to do that.  I can’t tell you how to praise the Almighty or how to further your personal relationship with Him.  But I can tell you to go to God and seek Him in all that you do.  Make sure that He is central.  Make sure He is the reason you do the things you do.

John 4:24: “For God is Spirit, so those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.”

Idols are false.  Idols haven’t redeemed us.  God is truth.  He has.  So let’s worship Him as such.  Whatever you do, do it all for God.  He’s the only One we’ll ever need.

–Mike

Last time on Saturday Morning Hangover, I vowed to take a look at 18 cartoons that have had parts cut on television (and some that have had parts cut courtesy of the Hayes Office), but only got up to number ten, since the cuts to the cartoons listed weren’t that egregious (some were, but only if you’re an eagle-eyed purist for all things uncensored).

This time, we go through the cartoons that have suffered major cuts and turned your favorite shorts into incoherent short-shorts (and not the kind women have to starve themselves to fit into either…but like seeing a morbidly obese woman in skintight short-shorts, these cuts will turn your stomach and make you wanna puke):

9.

Studio: MGM

Director(s): William Hanna and Joseph Barbera

Writer: (not credited)

Release Date: July 7, 1951

Summary: Tom is stranded at sea, and washes up on the shore of a (seemingly) deserted island. He goes after Jerry (also stranded), but gets scared when he confronts a tribe of savage black cat cannibals (one of which is a disguised Jerry).

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: Much like the Tom and Jerry cartoons featuring that sassy black housekeeper, Mammy Two Shoes, this cartoon has not been (and probably never will be) shown uncut on television due to its racial stereotypes (this time, centered on blacks being savages who feast on human flesh, though Tom is a cat and Jerry is a mouse). It has been shown on the cable channel, Turner Classic Movies, albeit in brief clips (possibly for that anthology show, Cartoon Alley).

Now, the good news is, this cartoon is available for viewing on home video (Tom and Jerry on Parade) and DVD (Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection vol. 3).

The bad news is both the video and DVD are edited.

“What exactly is edited?” you may ask, as you wipe your weepy eyes from your ten-second sobbing.

Well, if you watch the version on the Tom and Jerry on Parade VHS, you’ll notice that no scenes are cut, but you’re scratching your head and wondering why all the savages (including poseur Jerry) moving their lips and not saying anything. That’s because the VHS version has muted out all the black savage dialogue (including what Jerry says).

If you watch the version on the third volume of the Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection DVD, you’ll notice that, huzzah, the black savage dialogue has been reinstated.

BUT…in exchange for letting the savage dialogue go, a shot of the pygmy savage that corners Jerry just before Jerry runs away has been cropped out (in the same way that the black girl centaur from Fantasia was cut or how Cartoon Network edited that infamous sequence from the Cowboy Bebop episode “Jupiter Jazz, part one,” where Faye Valentine corners a man named Gren in the shower and discovers that he has breasts).

So much for home video being the respite for cartoons that have been banned and censored by mainstream media.

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part: For the VHS cut, it plays like a silent cartoon…which isn’t really much of a stretch, considering that the Tom and Jerry cartoons are famous for having little to no dialogue (except for the occasional lines from Mammy Two Shoes [or whoever is Tom's master/mistress in the short] and, of course, Tom’s screaming in pain). In this case, however, that dialogue was sorely needed, stereotypical or not. I mean, you don’t see rap videos censoring out dialogue that’s vile and degrading to the African-American communi–oh, wait. Bad example.

As for the DVD version, not too bad, but I am taking points off because post-production pan and zoom looks awkward as hell. As someone who does video editing as a hobby, I can vouch for this.

Egregious or Not: For the DVD version, no (barring the awkward crop job). For the VHS version, it’s borderline. On the one hand, it’s still watchable, but on the other (as I mentioned earlier), the dialogue was sorely needed.

Where Can I See It Uncut: Your best bet is to scour Internet video sites and tape trading sites for an uncut bootleg, but beware! Some sites and tape traders may have the edited version. Do NOT, repeat, DO NOT settle for an edited print.

8.

Studio: Warner Bros.

Director: Chuck Jones (credited as “Charles M. Jones”)

Writer(s): Michael Maltese

Release Date: November 12, 1949

Summary: After two previous failed attempts (not counting Arthur Davis’ Odor of the Day) at romantically pairing a horny French skunk with another animal who makes the mistake of disguising himself/herself as a skunk, Chuck and Mike finally get it right by having a common, female black-and-white cat get a white skunk’s stripe down her back (courtesy of an angry French parfumerie shopkeep and an upset bottle of hair dye) and proved to a skeptical studio producer that mangled French puns, good, old-fashioned sexual harassment, and twist endings where the protagonist gets his comeuppance make for an award-winning combination.

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: Gather ’round, kiddies, because this is a sad story about what was cut:

Once upon a time, ABC was the only American television channel known for removing the entire sequence where Pepe tries to coax the nameless painted cat out of a glass display case. Why? Two reasons:

1)      ABC didn’t like scenes where characters locked themselves in closed spaces that can only be opened from the outside due to semi-substantiated fears that kids might want to try it, only to pass out from suffocation or realize that they’re claustrophobic, and,

2)      Near the end of the sequence in question, Pepe puts a gun to his head and pretends to commit suicide when the cat mimes that she doesn’t like him because of his stench (only to be had when she runs out the case and finds that Pepe “meesed”).

Another part that ABC removed was when Pepe attempts to rescue the cat from jumping out the window, but she slips through his libidinous fingers. Before Pepe drops as well, he turns to the camera, salutes, and announces, “Viva l’amour! We die together!” While the rescue attempt and Pepe’s drop were left intact, the line was shortened to “Viva l’amour!” Judging by these cuts, ABC has direct references to suicide (like the gun to the head and the declaration of dying together) on its list of what can and can’t air on children’s TV, though the censors didn’t seem to notice or care that they let Pepe’s line about the cat committing suicide to prove her love for him slip through the cracks like a scrawny starlet replicating Marilyn Monroe’s subway grate flash from The Seven Year Itch.

Over in the Cable TV Kingdom, Cartoon Network left “For Scent-imental Reasons” uncut for many years, despite that the short in question had references to suicide (which Cartoon Network is not a fan of in any way [particularly when said suicide involves guns to the head or nooses around necks], evidenced by edits done in other animated shorts that made light of “ending it all”), making many a cartoon fan (at least one that didn’t have access to home video, laserdisc, or DVD cuts of the short) very happy.

That changed (for the worse) on a cold December Saturday morning in 2003 (if memory serves, it was on the unlucky 13^th day of the month) when Cartoon Network aired “For Scentimental Reasons” as part of their weekend installment of The Looney Tunes Show. The once untouchable-on-cable-TV short was, once again, violated. Not only was the glass case suicide sequence sequestered from sight, but the line ABC let slip (about the cat committing suicide to prove her love for Pepe) was also removed, leaving the other line ABC cut (“Viva l’amour! We die together!”) to be spared from censorship.

The bitter irony of it all is that a similar line about committing suicide for love was used in the penultimate Pepe cartoon “A Scent of the Matterhorn” (1961, story and direction by Chuck Jones), and was it ever removed on Cartoon Network or, for that matter, ABC? NO! (at least on Cartoon Network. I don’t think ABC ever aired this cartoon because their Warner Bros. library only had shorts from late 1948 to 1957, or what the really anal animation buffs call, “The Golden Age of Animation.” Everything before that was an experiment, and everything after was a mistake, as far as they’re concerned).

To top it all off (and prove that fairy tales don’t always end with “happily ever after”), this cartoon has been shown edited across the pond (in the UK, to be exact). American censorship may be arbitrary and taxing on one’s sanity, but censorship in UK is even worse. It’s pretty much the same as American censorship, only theirs is bound by law (while America’s is bound by studios, corporations, and media watchdog groups who only tone down so as not to offend sponsors and bitchy soccer moms [the hockey moms are okay with it]) and have harder rules on what is and isn’t allowed in children’s programming. They don’t just edit out violence or dangerous stunts that stupid kids will try at home; UK censoring also goes after scenes that glorify weapons (especially Japanese weapons, like nunchucks and those metal throwing stars), glorify tobacco smoking, and scenes that may traumatize the emotionally frail (such as vivid, grotesque scenes of transformation, vivid, grotesque scenes of death, and any scene where a child is in danger and chances of rescue are slim to nil). The BBFC doesn’t fuck around, which is why every allusion to suicide (the glass case and the two lines implying that killing oneself for love is the only way) was removed from “For Scent-imental Reasons.”

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): Not well, I don’t care which edited version you watch. The whole thing about “suicide for love” (even if it’s unrequited) in this cartoon is probably the only venture into dark comedy that Chuck Jones got right (Jones tried with the Censored 11 short “Angel Puss,” about a black boy paid to drown a cat, only to be tricked into thinking the cat’s ghost is haunting him, and it met with the same contempt that Troy Steele had for the Goosebumps book “Chicken Chicken”)–besides the underlying references to sexual exploitation (and the dog getting his gravy-pumped comeuppance) seen on the 1951 one-shot short, ”Chow Hound”. Without it, the cartoon is just an empty, amorous shell of its former self.

Egregious or Not: Egregious. Plain and simple.

Where Can I See It Uncut: If you’re done weeping or loudly cursing the name of all humanity, I have some good news: “For Scent-imental Reasons” is available uncut on the Golden Jubilee videos “Pepe Le Pew’s Skunk Tales” and “A Salute to Chuck Jones” and the first volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set.

7.

Studio: Disney

Director: Jack Hannah

Writer(s): Roy Williams and Nick George

Release Date: January 15, 1954

Summary: Donald’s nephews (Huey, Dewey, and Louie) keep abandoning their chores to LARP (live-action roleplay) in the backyard. Donald is torn between losing his temper or using child psychology by playing along with them, which goes to hell when a real band of pygmy cannibals escape from the circus and Donald thinks they’re his nephews (who dressed up as African cannibals after skipping out of their chores).

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: Everything after the title card, “But the Worse Was Yet to Come,” has been put through the censorial shredder because of the three pygmy cannibals (including the part near the end where Donald takes all three cannibals into his shed and whales on them for trying to roast him in a black cauldron).

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): Since I haven’t seen this one edited, I’ll let someone with experience (reviewer Jerry Edward from www.disneyshorts.org) explain:

“Disney completely botches the censored version of this short – deleting all scenes of the cannibals and making the short impossible to follow [...] reducing a 6 minute short (not counting credits) to a 2.5 minute disaster…”

So, it’s just as bad as the cut version of “For Scent-imental Reasons,” or even “Bacall to Arms” (which, not only had the ending cut when it aired on TNT, but also had scenes missing because Bob Clampett left Warner Bros. Studios before he could complete the cartoon and no one bothered to step in and finish what Clampett started).

Egregious or Not: Totally egregious, not because of how badly it’s edited, but because it never occurred to Disney Studios to just not air the short if they felt the presence of African cannibals would be offensive. Other studios have done it, and, in most cases, made up for it by having the banned cartoon(s) appear uncensored on a home video/laserdisc/DVD collection.

Where Can I See It Uncut: Like “For Scent-imental Reasons,” this victim of extreme censorship is available uncut on the Disney Treasures DVD set (“The Chronological Donald Duck” volume, showing Donald Duck cartoons from 1951 to 1961). If you’re strapped for cash for luxuries (and who isn’t these days?), there’s always YouTube or friendly tape/DVD traders.

6.

Studio: MGM

Director(s): William Hannah and Joseph Barbera

Writer(s): (not credited)

Release Date: January 14, 1950

Summary: While Mammy Two Shoes goes out to play bridge, Tom invites his alley cat buddies to play raucous jazz music in the house. Naturally, there is a neighbor complaint lodged — by Jerry the mouse.

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: 

The short version: since this is a Tom and Jerry cartoon with Mammy Two Shoes in it, Mammy Two Shoes’s appearance has been altered on American TV.

The long version: This cartoon exists in several altered forms:

• There’s the common redubbed version where Lillian Randolph’s voice is redubbed with a less stereotypically black female voice (provided by either Thea Vidale or June Foray). This was the version that aired on Cartoon Network and on the second volume of the Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection DVD set.
• There’s a version (done by Gene Deitch during his brief stint at MGM) where Mammy Two Shoes has been reanimated as a white, teenaged girl stepping out to dance with her boyfriend at his house (instead of playing bridge with the Lucky Seven Bridge Club) with June Foray voicing her.
• There’s a third version (which resulted from a highly amusing dubbing error) combining the reanimated version with the white teenaged girl with the original audio (meaning that whenever the white teenage girl speaks, she sounds like a stereotypically black housemaid).

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): I can take or leave the versions where Mammy Two Shoes’s voice is redubbed or even the version with the white teenage girl with June Foray’s voice, but the version with the white girl speaking like Mammy Two Shoes is a joke (or some vague satirical statement about race in the media).

Egregious or Not: The versions where Mammy Two Shoes is replaced by a white teenaged girl (with and without the vocal mistake) is plenty egregious (if you’re an animation buff) because the Tom and Jerry cartoons didn’t have white people as heads of the house until after “Push-Button Kitty” (which was made the year Hattie McDaniel, the real-world incarnation and inspiration for Mammy Two Shoes, died). If you’re a casual viewer and you watched the original and edited versions, it’d be like watching the original version of a movie vs. a cheap remake.

Actually, it would be like that, regardless.

Where Can I See It Uncut: Since the DVD version doesn’t have Mammy’s original voice, Internet video sites, bootlegs, and scouring eBay for an old home video compilation are your friends.

5.

Studio: Warner Bros.

Director: Robert McKimson

Writer(s): Tedd Pierce

Release Date: June 28, 1952

Summary: The Big Bad Wolf’s nephew comes home from school, angry that his uncle is the same Big Bad Wolf who attacked the Three Little Pigs in the fairy tale of the same name. To cover his ass, the Big Bad Wolf pulls a one-sided Rashomon and tells his side of the story (with no one else to counter it with corrections), where the Big Bad Wolf is a naive schoolboy and the Three Little Pigs were a bunch of porcine pricks who cut the Wolf’s tail as part of a game warden-commissioned bounty.

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: On the FOX Network’s “Merrie Melodies Show,” the brief shot of the Wolf pouring bootlegged alcohol into a jug just before his nephew comes in the house was cut. On the WB version, the bootlegged alcohol part is left in, but not one of the Pigs dissing the Wolf with, “Ah, go blow your brains out!” after the Wolf gets slingshot in the butt and the Wolf effeminately asks, “Why must you torment me when I pas your houses? Why?”

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): Since it’s a jump cut from one inoffensive scene to the next, it plays like there’s something obviously missing (for both the FOX and WB versions).

Egregious or Not: I can tolerate a network like the WB (or even ABC) cutting out a suicide reference (the “Ah, go blow your brains out!” line). I may not like that they did it, but I can live with it and I least know why the edit was done. What I can’t tolerate (or live with) is a network like FOX (notorious for thumbing its nose at censorship in with such raunchy, groundbreaking comedies as Married…With Children, Titus [the short-lived sitcom based on comedian Christopher Titus's darkly humorous life with Ken; his hardassed father, Juanita; his schizophrenic mother, Dave; his idiot half-brother, Erin; his loving girlfriend, and Tommy; his effeminate best male friend], The Simpsons [at least up until season 9], In Living Color, and the trinity of Seth MacFarlane-created sitcoms: Family Guy, American Dad, and upcoming spinoff, The Cleveland Show) editing bootlegging from a cartoon they’re airing to kids. Why? Because I find it hypocritical. Sure, FOX can have Martin Lawrence feeling rather “randy” and making some lewd remark about a butt (and I’m pretty sure they did), but showing a wolf making beer at his house — unacceptable! And they still do it to this day, with editing Family Guy for a fart joke, but letting MADtv and post-Golden Age Simpsons make unsubtle (and unfunny) references to sex.

So to answer the question: The cut on FOX is not egregious, but the network that cut it is.

Where Can I See It Uncut: This cartoon is available (with all the bootlegging and suicidal chiding intact) on the fifth volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set (on the second disk, which features fairy tale parodies done WB style).

4.

Studio: Warner Bros.

Director: Robert McKimson

Writer(s): Warren Foster

Release Date: October 9, 1948

Summary: After his father gets booted out of a henhouse by the always bombastic Foghorn Leghorn, Henery Hawk takes it upon himself to go after chickens. Foghorn Leghorn offers himself to Henery, but the chickenhawk thinks Foghorn is a “loud-mouthed schnook,” according to his father.

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: I could talk about ABC shortening the part where Barnyard Dawg climbs out of the trunk and gets whacked on the head and face as Foghorn is wildly gesticulating while telling Henery Hawk that he got a trunk instead of a chicken or how ABC also shortened the part where Barnyard Dawg slams Foghorn to the ground several times and calls him a “good-for-nothin’ chicken,” but that’s not egregious; it’s standard.

What I will talk about is how CBS took it a step further for editing the end…by cutting the entire part after Henery doesn’t believe Foghorn Leghorn is a chicken (even after seeing Foghorn put himself in a roasting pan), then resuming the cartoon on the scene where Henery is dragging Foghorn and asiding to the audience, “He talked me into it.” For a clear, detailed version of what was missing, here’s the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Foghorn_Leghorn#Censorship (I wouldn’t trust the Censored Cartoons Page entry since their explanations of how the Warner Bros. shorts were cut are needlessly formal to the point that they’re as incoherent as the edited short itself).

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): Like Henery easily got what he wanted without any struggle or comic misunderstanding leading to it. Are the censors not familiar with screenwriting (Don’t answer that!)?

Egregious or Not: Very egregious, because the part where Henery says, “Still tryin’ to prove you’re a chicken, eh? Schnook!” was left in while the part where Henery finally realizes that Foghorn is a chicken is cut. How could Henery simply be “talked into it” if he came off as totally skeptical? That ending was the beat that led to the plot point where Henery sees the light (and Foghorn sees stars after getting hit with a shovel), and without it, there’s a continuity error as large as the freshly-made hole in the wall you punched your fist through when you saw this cartoon and realized it was cut.

Where Can I See It Uncut: This cartoon can be found uncut on volume one of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set (fourth disc) — with the original title cards and credits. No “Blue Ribbon Merrie Melodie” crap, like on TV (or that Golden Jubilee video dedicated to Foghorn Leghorn).

3.

Studio: Warner Bros.

Director: Bob Clampett (uncredited)

Writer(s): (not credited)

Release Date: August 3, 1946

Summary: A zoot-suited wolf goes crazy for sultry femme fatale Laurie BeCool during a screening of “To Have…To Have…To Have…To Have…” (that’s the title of the movie; I haven’t gone into Porky Pig mode), but does he lust for her or…something else?

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: Which do you want to talk about first: the ending cut by TNT where the Wolf happily puffs Laurie BeCool’s cigarette, only to get shot by Bogey GoCart, who takes the cigarette for himself, smokes it, and becomes blackfaced, or how choppy and incomplete some of the wolf’s reactions to Red Laurie BeCool are (according to Jerry Beck on his audio commentary for this cartoon)?

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): Much like “Red Hot Riding Hood” and its deleted scenes of the Wolf reacting to a sexy female performer, I can’t say much about “Bacall to Arms”’s similar predicament because, unlike Red Hot Riding Hood, the original scenes were lost to time, due to Bob Clampett leaving WB Studios in 1946. Arthur Davis (who was hired to complete the cartoon) could have drawn the scenes himself (or have someone do it for him), but the studio was probably running on borrowed time and couldn’t do it, though I’d like to think that, in a true case of “Take this job and shove it”-itis, Clampett probably made off with the scenes that were supposed to be in the cartoon when he left. Why? Who knows? Maybe the scenes were so spicy that there was no way in Hell the Hayes Office would approve of them. Maybe Clampett needed them as portfolio samples for his next animation job. Maybe they only exist in Clampett’s now maggot-filled skull since he’s been six feet under since 1984 and were never put to paper or celluloid.

The part TNT cut (and Cartoon Network left uncut when they ran their short-lived anthology The Bob Clampett Show, featuring Clampett’s best work with no edits whatsoever) is another story. Personally, I’ve never seen the edited version of the cartoon (nor did I know it existed until I was in my mid-teens and spending much of high school looking up classic cartoon trivia), but I can imagine that the cartoon ended with the Wolf bolting to the ceiling of the (now empty) theater and about to come down, but the cartoon blacks out like a drunk and when it comes to, it’s over.

Egregious or Not: On a scale from 1 to 10, its egregiousness ranks at a 7. You know there should be more to the cartoon, and it’s very easy to chalk it up to the fact that Clampett never completed the short and Davis couldn’t come up with a funny ending if you’re a casual viewer, but once you discover the true reason why the ending was never shown on TV, you’ll kick yourself for not seeing it sooner and wonder why TNT couldn’t just shelve the cartoon rather than hack the ending.

Where Can I See It Uncut: The fifth volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set (disc three).

2.

A.K.A: “The Hunting Trilogy” (or “The Hunter’s Trilogy”)

Studio: Warner Bros.

Director: Chuck Jones (credited as “Charles M. Jones” for all three shorts)

Writer(s): Michael Maltese (for all three cartoons)

Release Dates: May 19, 1951 (for “Rabbit Fire”); September 20, 1952 (for “Rabbit Seasoning”); and October 3, 1953 (for “Duck! Rabbit! Duck!”)

Summary: Elmer goes hunting, Daffy tricks Elmer into going after Bugs, Bugs and Daffy get into a verbal war, and Daffy ends up getting shot several times (applies to all three cartoons).

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: Daffy ends up getting shot several times. With the exception of the Ted Turner-owned channels that aired WB cartoons in the past (TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, and Turner Classic Movies [probably]) and local network affiliates in other countries, the Hunting Trilogy was itself, the hunted. Its predator, however, wasn’t a bald, moronic man with a rifle; it was tribes of rabid censors whose only weapons were college-aged interns having second thoughts about majoring in videography. Several tribes had their own ways of cutting these cartoons to remove the many times Daffy gets shot.

• ABC and “The Merrie Melodies Show” (the syndicated version) would cut to a freeze-framed shot of Bugs looking off-camera while the audio of Daffy getting shot was still heard.
• CBS and the WB, however, chose not to give young viewers the satisfaction of using their imaginations and edited audio and visual of Daffy getting blasted.
• Nickelodeon actually left “Rabbit Seasoning” and “Duck! Rabbit! Duck!” alone in the editing department, but “Rabbit Fire” wasn’t so lucky. The famous “no more bullets” part (where Daffy looks down the barrel of Elmer’s rifle and gets shot through his scalp) was cut. Okay, so maybe “Rabbit Fire” was lucky (in that the “no more bullets” scene was the only part cut), but still…

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): The ABC, “Merrie Melodies Show,” and Nickelodeon cuts you can tolerate. The CBS and WB versions aren’t recommended for theatrical cartoon lovers with short tempers. Either way, the point of these three cartoons is to introduce Daffy Duck as Bugs Bunny’s greedy, bloodthirsty foil and how said greedy, bloodthirsty foil ends up getting his in the end (though “Rabbit Fire” ended with Elmer getting his) through violence. Without it, they just lie there, like an unsatisfied wife waiting for her husband to finish penetrating her when really he’s just humping a blanket fold.

Egregious or Not: Only the CBS and the WB cuts will drive you up the wall. The ABC and “Merrie Melodies Show” versions aren’t too bad (as they keep in the audio and the results of Daffy getting shot). Ditto with the Nickelodeon version.

Where Can I See It Uncut: These three cartoons are available uncut almost anywhere. The Turner cable channels aired them uncut. The Golden Jubilee VHS set featured them uncut on the following videos: “Bugs Bunny’s Wacky Adventures,” (“Duck! Rabbit! Duck!”) “Daffy Duck: The Nuttiness Continues…,” (“Rabbit Fire”) “Elmer Fudd’s Comedy Capers,” (“Rabbit Seasoning”) and “A Salute to Chuck Jones” (“Rabbit Seasoning”). Most important of all, all three of them made it to the first six volumes of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set (“Rabbit Fire” and “Rabbit Seasoning” are on volume one, while “Duck! Rabbit! Duck!” is on volume three).

1.

Studio: Warner Bros.

Director: Isadore “Friz” Freleng (credited as I. Freleng)

Writer(s): Warren Foster

Release Date: June 20, 1953

Summary: It’s Yosemite Sam vs. Bugs Bunny in a wooing match over Granny’s heart  (yes, the same Granny who is often seen as Tweety’s master in the Sylvester/Tweety shorts) and her $50 million inheritance.

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: For anyone who grew up watching ABC’s The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show (1986-2000), seeing egregious cuts to cartoons was a common occurrence, like living in a war-torn country or in a country with an oppressive government (PLEASE, no jokes/comments about the U.S.A over the latter comparison. This is not a political blog; it’s an entertainment blog). There were a lot of WB shorts that were slashed to bits, haphazardly pieced together, and tossed aside for innocent bystanders to see (like victims of a serial murderer who liked puzzles and uses that as his signature to screw over the police force), such as “Hare-Less Wolf,” “Hillbilly Hare,” almost every Wile E. Coyote/Road Runner cartoon, “Apes of Wrath,” and “A Mouse Divided.” “Hare Trimmed” was no exception.

Everything after the part where Bugs (dressed as Granny) pushes a piano down the stairs and Yosemite Sam gets flattened by was cut on ABC: Granny thinking Sam is “looped,” “Granny” Bugs reprising his “one lump or two” gag from 1952’s “Rabbit’s Kin” twice (once with coffee and again when Sam begs for it upstairs), Sam’s playful “I can see you through the keyhol-l-le!” – and getting shot for that, and Sam getting shot again after climbing a ladder to the top window of Granny’s bedroom door and begging, “Aw, come on, Emmie!”.

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): If you’re like me and saw this short ad nauseum for the time that ABC aired The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show on Saturday mornings, then you already know how it plays without the offensive parts. For those who don’t know or don’t remember, here’s a re-enactment of how ABC cut said sequence that I personally created. You can download and see for yourself (http://www.filehosting.org/file/details/40796/Hare_Trimmed_Sequence_(ABC_Cut).mpg)

Egregious or Not: After reading the “Scene(s) Cut/Altered” and seeing the video evidence in the “How Does It Play Without the ‘Offensive’ Part(s)”, do I really need to spell it out?

Where Can I See It Uncut: Since this is one of many Warner Bros. cartoons that has yet to be released on a DVD set (and not just on a DVD release of an old Warner Bros. movie, complete with the pre-feature film entertainment, such as coming attractions, a short live-action film [the B-movie, if you will], and an animated short), your best bet is to search the Internet for it and pray that Warner Home Video revives its project to release all the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies on DVD in the near future (since WHV stopped the Golden Collection at volume six and there’s a lot of uncertainty about whether or not the DVD releases will continue).

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Well, that’s it. Eighteen cartoons that have been cut eighteen ways from Sunday on and off TV. I think the moral of this story is that whether it’s a theatrical cartoon cut or an edit to a live-action TV show, all cuts (be they for time or content) are egregious. In this age where almost anything can be found online or released on DVD, the only solution to bucking the system is to go underground and dig for your uncensored treasure.

That’s it for this installment of Saturday Morning Hangover. Tune in next time when I take an Auteur Detour and look at the running themes, gags, and quirks of different animation directors.

Just some little bits and pieces of thoughts of late:

• The other night when I was coming home from work, I had one of those absolutely glorious and magical rides that just makes you happy to be alive and pedalling.  It has been surprisingly cool and rainy lately and there’s quite a lot of marshy land along the river and in the bottoms.  Because the habitats are so ideal right now, there are a correspondent quantity of frogs gettin’ froggy wid’ it down along the river.  Pretty much from the Woodswether bridge until you hit the foot of Strawberry hill, there was a constant serenade of frog calls.  Besides the joyful noise of horny amphibians, it was just a really nice night.  Cool but not chilly, and since it’s been raining so much lately, the air just smelled clean and pleasantly grassy/earthy.
• Apropos of nothing, the other day a story popped into my head about one of my dad’s buddies in his young, single days.  Dad’s friend Doug was, at the time, a young man who had recently gotten his first place and was learning the ropes of householding.  He’d gotten himself a hell of a deal on a whole chicken at the grocery, but realized when he got home that he had no idea of how to prepare it.  So what did Doug do, who owned no cookbooks and who was batching it in the days before Google?  He called Information!  In those heady days of the late 1970s, not only did he get a live operator, he got one who was both bored and kindhearted enough to verbally walk him through the process of preparing his chicken!
• Joel’s getting the fever!  Trashboat Fever! He borrowed James’s kayak the other day and floated from Kaw Point to the Berkeley boat ramp and said that the water’s fine and fast. Ruby and I waited for him down at Berkeley with the truck and Miss Roo had a fine and mighty time digging in the riverside sand, sniffing new sniffable things, and randomly pee-ing on this and that. In short it was an ideal outing for a nosy young dog.
• Ruby’s “little” buddy Bagheera sprained his left-front paw and so right now neither of them can play together and it’s making both of them nuts. I hear him over there barking and grizzling because he’s got loads of puppy-energy and can’t run it off, and Ruby hears him whining and gets whipped up into her own ridiculous puppy-energy frenzy and is starting to drive me a little bit nuts. I had her fetching tonight which seems to have taken the edge off of her crazies, but only an edge
• Today was the ACME Saturday Ride, and it was a darn nice cruise. We got to roll past a very cool custom car show down in the West Bottoms. Wish I’d had a little more time to truly check out and appreciate the results of a lot of creativity, hard work, and investment, but I did get a few photos of some of the rides, so I’ll post those tomorrow
• I bought a highly offensive pair of “shoes” today for $2.98. Joel and I were checking out the thrift shops because he wanted to get a couple of more pair of dress pants to turn into shorts, and I’m trying to find another pair of barely-used Dr. Martens to replace the pair that Ruby ate (that was a serious bummer, and one of the few really obnoxious things that she’s ever done). I’d also been thinking about getting a pair of Crocs for wearing around the house, and now, for the lordly sum of just slightly less than three dollars, I have a pair of yellow-and-pink swirled Airwalk brand “crocs” for kickin’ around home. I have just treated them with a generous misting of bleach and expect that they will be fine lounging-around shoes. Slippers that can go into the garden. Good enough for me. I just have to keep ‘em out of Ruby’s reach, ’cause she really seems to relish the texture of Croc.

So yeah. That’s about it over here. Got another sewing project brewing, a couple of brewing projects in the planning stages, and an all-girls alleycat that I really need to get to crackin’ on. It’s a good gig, this kind of life.

Welcome back to another episode of Saturday Morning Hangover, your source for crushed Saturday morning memories à l’Internet.

Today, we take a page from Cracked.com (now living forever as a generic funny list website, now that their magazine went other. Meanwhile, Mad Magazine has been reduced to a quarterly and their sketch show [which had its moments, but was nowhere near as good as SNL...or even SCTV] has been canceled) and do a Top [Insert Number Here] List. The difference here is that my list is less SpikeTV, more Cartoon Network-meets-VH1. If you’re looking for bikini-clad bimbos, you’re out of luck.

I can spend all day telling you what cartoons you remember seeing as a kid were cut and what parts were missing and what channel cut it, but there’s already a website for that. It’s called The Censored Cartoons Page, which will be one of my sources in this list (the other is a Disney website that lists all the shorts ever made and their background history, including what The Disney Channel cut and, in some cases, what was cut when a particular short was released on video or DVD).

What I’m going after are the cuts that I (and maybe some of you) have frequently seen on TV or heard from the Censored Cartoons website, some of which have ruined what would have been a great experience in watching the cartoon short in question. And for what? To placate some soccer mom (who is too busy to actually be a mom) who fears that her children crotch spawn will be brainwashed into being bad (through imitating violent acts or being made to believe that thee ethnic and racial jokes in the short are fact) just because TV said so? And what if they did? You know, not every child out there will grow up to be a doctor or a lawyer (I know I didn’t). Some just seem to be destined to be the running herpes sore on the diseased cock of modern society, and no rehab center or stretch of jailtime will ever get through to them to make them see what they’re doing is wrong.

Besides, by cutting out the violence and racism in classic cartoons, TV censors are pissing off those who know this was made back when this kind of stuff was considered good, old-fashioned family entertainment (or at least know it’s all fantasy) and making them lament that modern cartoons get away with far worse than their classic counterparts (with none of the wit and subtlety). If these celluloid butchers want to stop this vicious cycle, then they should off themselves, disgraced samurai style (then again, classic cartoons haven’t been shown on network television or basic cable since 2004. And with new media [Internet and DVD] showing the classics uncut and people flocking to new media and abandoning TV, maybe it is all for the best).

The list will be split into two blog posts. I thought I could do it in all one post, but it’s taken me days to finish it and I just can’t take it.

Now, on with the first half of the main list:

The 18 Most Egregious Cuts and Edits to Classic Cartoons (part one)

18.

Studio: Warner Bros.

Director: Chuck Jones (credited as Charles M. Jones)

Writer: Michael Maltese

Release Date: December 31, 1955

Summary (as if this cartoon needs it): A construction worker finds a frog that sings and tries to exploit it for fame, only to discover that the frog won’t sing for anyone else but him.

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: During the sequence where the construction worker buys a theater and tries to garner an audience to watch the singing frog, he creates two signs. One is a “Free Admission” sign (which doesn’t get anyone to come in). The other is a sign that reads, “Free Beer” (which gets in a crowd of rough-looking men). On ABC and the former WB channel, the part where the construction worker creates the “Free Beer” sign is cut.

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part: Pretty well, believe it or not, though if you’ve seen this cartoon several times before without the edit, you probably won’t believe that the rough-looking men were coming in just because the show was free.

Egregious or Not: No, but the worse is yet to come. I just put this in here to soften the blow. 

Where Can I See It Uncut: This cartoon is available on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set (volume 2, disc 4)

17.

Studio: MGM

Director: Tex Avery

Writer(s): (not credited)

Release Date: May 8, 1943

Summary: A cutesy, animated adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood gets an urban update where the Wolf is a skirt-chasing playboy, the Grandma is man-crazy and living in a penthouse, and Red Riding Hood is a sexy nightclub singer.

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: Before this short was released in theaters, the Hays Office (the movie industry’s censorship board before the MPAA ratings system came along) objected to two things: some of the Wolf’s lustful reactions to seeing Red sing (one of which showed steam erupting from the Wolf’s collar) and the original ending where the man-crazy Grandma captures the Wolf and drags him down to a courthouse where a Justice of the Peace (modeled after director Tex Avery) marries the two of them. Years later, the Wolf takes his half-human/half-lupine children to the nightclub where they see Red perform.

The popular version that aired in theaters to a general audience was edited on the Turner-owned cable channel TNT (back when TNT aired cartoon shorts, mostly pre-1948 Warner Bros. and MGM from the 1930s to the late 1950s). After the Wolf falls out the window of Grandma’s penthouse, he returns to the nightclub, grumbling about how women are nothing but trouble and if he sees another pretty girl, he’ll kill himself. Sure enough, Red the nightclub singer comes out to perform, the Wolf gets out two pistols, and shoots himself in the head. Rather than end on that macabre note, the Wolf’s ghost rises from the corpse and continues to whistle and howl at Red just like he did when he was living. TNT’s version cut the part where the Wolf actually shoots himself, but leaves in his vow to commit suicide and the part where he actually dies.

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): Since the “director’s cut” of Red Hot Riding Hood isn’t that widely known (or seen), I can’t really say whether or not the director’s cut plays better (or worse) than the general release version. I know the director’s cut exists, but it’s probably not property of MGM (or rather Warner Bros., since they now have the rights to MGM’s cartoon library) anymore.

As for the edited TNT version vs. the uncut version, since the Wolf’s vow to commit suicide and the part where he drops dead are left uncut while the actual suicide is cut, the edited version plays as if the Wolf just dropped dead from shock of seeing Red again. Maybe some of the gun sound effects wasn’t entirely deleted from the soundtrack, but I don’t really remember seeing it cut on television.

Egregious or Not: Predictable, yes. Egregious…only if you’re a purist who won’t subject him/herself to scratchy, edited theatrical cartoon prints on TV. 

Where Can I See It Uncut: Sadly, it’s not available on DVD (though Warner Home Video did release Tom and Jerry and Droopy cartoons on DVD). However, Red Hot Riding Hood is available on the second video of the short-lived VHS collection, Tex Avery’s Screwball Classics and the public domain video, Cartoons for Big Kids, as well as many bootleg cartoon compilations that aren’t in stores (some of which are cuts taped off Cartoon Network or Boomerang). If you can’t find it on eBay or Amazon.com (or don’t want to), then it is available on such video websites as YouTube and Dailymotion.

16. 

Studio: Warner Bros.

Director: Tom Palmer

Writer(s): (not credited)

Release Date: September 23, 1933

Summary: Just your typical early ‘30s cartoon where the plot is thin, the music is plenty, and there are more celebrity caricatures than an average episode of Family Guy. What sets it apart from the rest is that it’s centered on a morning radio show and how everyone in the world tunes in to hear it (and it’s not a Harman/Ising Merrie Melodie, which were notorious for being animated music videos back before the days of MTV).

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: According to all incarnations of Jon Cooke’s “Censored Cartoons Page,” Nickelodeon (yes, the same Nickelodeon that aired made editorial mincemeat out of “Ren and Stimpy,” “Rocko’s Modern Life,” and “Invader Zim”) cut two scenes featuring ethnic stereotypes: one showed a rickshaw full of Chinese policemen sleeping while listening to the radio (and tying the horn-like speaker of the radio when the chief puts out an APB); the other showed a black jungle savage listening to a cooking program on a radio made of a human skull, a couple of light bulbs, and two batteries (how cool is that?) and stirring in salt and mustard into a pot holding two white explorers (caricatures of semi-obscure 1930s comedy duo Wheeler and Woolsey). Thanks to a tape trade I made six years ago and a Christmas gift I received two years ago, I’ve looked at both the original version and the Nickelodeon version and noticed that there was more missing than just the two requisite cuts for ethnic stereotypes.

For starters, on the part with Cros Bingsby singing “Why Can’t This Night Go On Forever?” (don’t know if this is the actual song title), there are two brief shots of female listeners tuning in to hear him sing: one is a shot of college coeds in pajamas and underwear; the other is an old crone hugging and kissing the radio. Guess which one Nickelodeon deleted?

(I still don’t know why this cut was necessary. There wasn’t that much skin showing.)

The other edit (which is more aural than visual) occurs during the scene where a hookah-smoking sheik grows tired of watching his harem girl dance (and isn’t bothered by the fact that she has badly-drawn hands) and turns his radio to a station playing “Amos and Andy.” On the Nickelodeon version, the “Amos and Andy” program is redubbed with the music that was playing before the sheik changed stations.

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): Since this is one of those plotless early ‘30s WB shorts, the parts gone/altered don’t really wreck the short in any way, though the part where the sheik smiling and slapping his knee plays better with the “Amos and Andy” sound clip rather than the music, and that skull radio on the cannibal part was actually cool (much more creative than turning it into a bong or a pencil holder).

Egregious or Not: To the casual viewer, no. To the eagle-eyed viewer, somewhat egregious, only because the Nickelodeon version made it look like the parts gone never existed in the first place. It’s like Nickelodeon’s censors are professional killers who know how to kill a man and make it look like he was never born. 

Where Can I See It Uncut: This obscure short (with an even more obscure director and animation style) can be found on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set (volume 5, disc 4).

 15. 

Studio: Disney

Director: Walt Disney

Writer(s): (not credited)

Release Date: December 30, 1928

Summary: In one of Mickey Mouse’s early roles (where he’s more of a prick than his current wholesome image might have you believe), Mickey is a gaucho who flirts who a tango-ing Minnie Mouse and rescues her from Peg-Leg Pete.

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: Not only did The Disney Channel find Mickey smoking a cigarette offensive (but not him drinking a frosty beer straight from the mug) and had it cut on such installment shows as The Ink and Paint Club, Mickey’s Mouse Tracks, and Donald’s Quack Attack, but they also did away with Minnie’s suggestive dancing.

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): It plays all right, but the so-called “offensive” scenes are there for a reason…and that reason is to break the preconceived notion that Disney’s oeuvre is innocent and family-friendly.

Egregious or Not: Slightly. The cuts aren’t egregious; just the fact that this is the kind of “bury it in the backyard and let us never speak of it again” behavior you’d expect from a big, faceless corporation. 

Where Can I See It Uncut: This cartoon is available on the “Mickey Mouse in Black and White” Disney Treasures DVD set.

14.

Studio: MGM

Director: William Hanna and Joseph Barbera

Writer(s): (not credited)

Release Date: December 11, 1948

Summary: After tracking mud into the house in his latest attempt at capturing Jerry, Mammy Two-Shoes (the black housemaid who’s only shown from the neck down) threatens Tom to keep the house clean while she’s out…prompting Jerry to stage several messes so Tom will get the blame.

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: This cartoon isn’t seen much due to two (count ‘em two) stereotypically black aspects that would definitely get the censors’ collective panties in a knot. For starters, we have Mammy Two Shoes, voiced by Lillian Randolph (1898-1980), whose voice (purportedly) makes all black women look bad (when really, it reminds me of my maternal grandmother, in a good way, and isn’t any worse than any rap video or former all-female UPN sitcom you can name). Secondly, there’s the end gag where Jerry reroutes a delivery chute of coal into Mammy’s house, and the entire pile buries Tom and Mammy in a wave of sootiness. Tom (now in blackface and inexplicably speaking like Stepin Fetchit) tries to slink away, but Mammy quickly recognizes him and tries to wing a fleeing Tom in the head with some lumps of coal.

Believe it or not, Cartoon Network has aired this cartoon, with one ongoing alteration (redubbing Mammy Two Shoes’s voice with one that sounds less “ethnic”) and one scene cut (after the coal cavalcade plows down Mammy Two Shoes and Tom, the Cartoon Network version removes the part where Tom appears in blackface and speaks like Stepin Fetchit after Mammy initially doesn’t recognize Tom and asks him if he’s seen a no-good cat).

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): The less ethnic voice of M.T.S. would have been more tolerable if said less ethnic voice could act. As for the near-end cut…well, you’d have to be deaf and blind not to see and hear what was missing.

Egregious or Not: The redubbing of Mammy’s voice is a major pain in the ass, but it’s a little too weak to be considered “egregious” (even if the replacement voice is a hack, at least you’re watching a Mammy Two Shoes cartoon on TV. Otherwise, it’d be locked away in MGM’s vaults). The painfully obvious jump cut near the end of the cartoon, however, does add for some unintentional hilarity (at least that’s what my sister tells me). 

Where Can I See It Uncut: Even though the MGM Tom and Jerry ‘toons are available on DVD, “Mouse Cleaning” and 1951’s “Casanova Cat” have been barred from being released. Your best bet in seeing it uncut (since Cartoon Network airs edited prints of “Mouse Cleaning” and “Casanova Cat”) is through video websites and sleepless nights of torrent searching and downloading.

13.

Studio: Warner Bros.

Director: Chuck Jones

Writer(s): Michael Maltese

Release Date: March 20, 1954

Summary: In this, his eighth cartoon (ninth if you count that cameo in the Sylvester/Tweety cartoon “Dog Pounded” [which came out the same year as this one]), Pepe Le Pew (in a smoking jacket reminiscent of The Continental [the original 1950s one and the Saturday Night Live version]) recounts when he first met Penelope painted cat at the fabled Casbah.

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: To quote an archived version of The Censored Cartoons Page, “The entire pre-flashback introduction, in which the camera takes the point of view of a reporter interviewing Pepe in his digs in cut by ABC, no doubt because the skunk offers the unseen reporter champagne.” It then concludes with, and I’m quoting from the same source, “The taboo on drinking in the tradition of ONE FROGGY EVENING continues!” While I do believe that ABC would cut that part for that particular reason, I can’t help but think that the underlying sexual tone of it may have been another reason why ABC thought it was unsuitable for kids.

Don’t believe me. Check this shit out (start at 0:35 and don’t stop until you hit the two minute mark): http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3dbt3_pepe-le-pew-the-cats-bah

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): Much like “One Froggy Evening,” it plays well, but you’ll probably be haunted by the thought that there might be a scene missing.

Egregious or Not: Yes, but what I find more egregious is the fact that the end (with Penelope chained to Pepe’s ankle in what can only be described as the 1950s way Chuck Jones and co. could get away with showing bondage) wasn’t edited by ABC (or any other channel that aired this cartoon). Not that I’m advocating censorship, mind you, but it’s like my mama says: “If you can’t do something right [even if it's wrong], don’t do it at all.”

Where Can I See It Uncut: Since it hasn’t been released on DVD as of this writing (it might some day, but not now), your best bet is to either look on eBay for the “Pepe Le Pew Skunk Tales” Golden Jubilee video (or the “Longitude And Looneytude: 14 Globetrotting Looney Tunes Favorites” laserdisc for those who cling to laserdiscs the same way lice cling to a human scalp) or watch it on the video website Dailymotion (it was on YouTube, but it was taken down for copyright reasons).

12.

Studio: MGM

Director: Tex Avery

Writer(s): (not credited)

Release Date: May 5, 1951

Summary: Droopy is a Boy Scout who must do a string of good deeds in order to win a trip to meet the President of the United States. The only problem is that a train-riding hobo named Spike (also a dog and now posing as a Boy Scout) wants that trip more than Droopy and attempts to bump him off so he can win the prize.

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: Three parts gone:

1)    Droopy tells him that lightning never strikes the same place, Spike stands on the charred remains of a tree and gets struck by lightning, leaving him charred, skinny, and in blackface. Cartoon Network cut the part after the lightning strikes by blacking out to the next scene.

2)    Spike tricks Droopy into thinking there’s a woman trapped in a burning cabin (that Spike set ablaze himself). Droopy comes out with a blond pin-up girl in purple lingerie. Spike goes in, foolishly thinking there’s another woman in there for him and ends up burnt (along with the rest of the house). Droopy then opens the charred remains of the door and says to Spike, “Hey, Blackie. Any more babes in there?” Cartoon Network (surprisingly enough) left in Spike getting burnt, but Droopy’s “Blackie” line was cut just after he opens the door. On top of that, there is tell of an urban legend that the burning cabin sequence was originally supposed to end with Spike carrying out a fat, black woman who beats up the dog. Many toonheads have dismissed it as the urban legend it is, but there are those who believe it exists (and hey, if that “missing link” skeleton can be found, then surely there might be an alternate version of this cartoon somewhere in the world).

3)  Spike places a round cartoon bomb in a rich white man’s top hat after it flies away in the wind. Droopy retrieves it to the rich white man and he offers a cash reward. Spike moves Droopy out of the way to take the money for himself. The bomb in the hat goes off, turning Spike and the rich white man into po’ black stereotypes. This is almost ALWAYS cut when aired on television, regardless of channel, and I was unaware of the scene’s existence until I got into studying the classics for something other than nostalgia.

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): It doesn’t play too bad, but with the way Cartoon Network cut it (and given that each of the blackface jokes involve fire or some kind of explosive), you could tell something was missing.

Egregious or Not: A little, but not to much to make you want to chuck the remote at the TV.

Where Can I See It Uncut: Your best bet is to see it uncut on YouTube or any video site for that matter. Though it has been released on video and DVD, there may be a 50-60% chance that the video release version may have the lightning and the burning cabin parts uncut, but not the rich white man part, and I don’t want to be held responsible for providing misinformation.

UPDATE: A blog commenter named David Germain recently told me that yes, “Droopy’s Good Deed” is available on the Complete Droopy DVD set, with all the parts that were cut on television intact.

11.

Studio: Famous/Paramount Studios

Director: Seymour Kneitel

Writer(s): Isadore Klein and Jack Ward

Release Date: September 12, 1947

Summary: Popeye is taking Olive on a boat ride when she spots a pirate ship. They are soon captured, and Popeye has to rescue Olive from the (initially charming) pirate captain.

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: Popeye dresses up as a woman to the attraction of a pirate. When he thinks he’s rid of the pirate, Popeye starts to take off his dress; then, suddenly, the scene cuts to Popeye in his white sailor suit, running from the pirate. That’s not the part that was cut; that’s how the scene has been played ever since it aired on TV.

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): It plays like there’s something obviously missing, because how did Popeye go from being in drag to being in his sailor suit, and why does the pirate have his mouth full of cannonballs?

Egregious or Not: Oooh, this is a tough one. On the one hand, it’s plenty egregious, due in part that something is gone and it messes with the continuity of the film. On the other hand, you can’t really blame the TV censors for cutting it, since it was (more than likely) cut before it was theatrically released (much like the fabled deleted scenes from Bob Clampett’s “Baby Bottleneck” and Tex Avery’s “The Heckling Hare”).

Where Can I See It Uncut: If time travel were possible, you could go back to 1947 and see how the cartoon was supposed to look before the Hayes Office asked Seymour Kneitel to edit whatever was cut. Otherwise, no one has seen hide nor celluloid of the deleted scene.

10.

Studio: Warner Bros.

Director(s): Ben Hardaway and Cal Dalton

Writer(s): Melvin “Tubby” Millar

Release Date: August 12, 1939

Summary: An unnamed male hunter goes hunting for rabbit to get back at the government for raising meat prices, but runs into a crazy rabbit known as “the prototypical Bugs” (not in the cartoon proper, but by cartoon fans in general).

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: On the popular TV print, the cartoon abruptly ends after the unnamed hunter declares that he can whip proto-Bugs and his entire family, followed by proto-Bugs and his entire family appearing to put the hurt on the hunter. Prior to April 2009, there has been wild speculation about what the ending could be, though it doesn’t take a Wile E. Coyote super-genius to figure out that the cartoon was supposed to end with the gang of proto-Bugs Bunnies beating the shit out of the hunter. The real question is, “Is that all there is?”

The answer: No, that’s not all (folks)! Here are the two theories (read: long-standing rumors) connected to this cartoon’s final moments:

On April 27, 2009, David Gerstein’s blog revealed the true ending to “Hare-Um Scare-Um.” So, which ending is the true ending? Neither. While there was a fight that got cut, the end results were thus, according to Wikipedia and the Gerstein blog:

The rabbits attack the hunter in a cartoon smoke and then run away. The smoke clears up to show the hunter disheveled (with his head intact). The rabbit returns to give the hunter his busted rifle, saying, ”You oughtta get that fixed. Somebody’s liable to get hurt.” He then returns to his looney self, bouncing on his head like a pogo stick down the road. The hunter then goes insane, bouncing on his head like a pogo stick.

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): The cartoon plays okay, but the cut makes it look like it was done by TV censors for violence, when really it was cut by WB Studios for unknown reasons (possibly time).

Egregious or Not: “Egregious” is too strong a word to use in this case. “Disappointing” might be more appropriate, since we see the set-up, but no punchline and aftermath to said punchline.

Where Can I See It Uncut: Unlike the cut for “Popeye and the Pirates,” a full, uncut print does exist in the world and has been shown at a revival screening (which is where David Gerstein found his). However, since the popular print has been in circulation on both TV and the Internet, there’s really no way to see it uncut (unless you attend a revival screening or wait for the day that it comes out uncut and uncensored on DVD).

TO BE CONTINUED…

Yep, it’s gonna be one of those days and one of these entries.

1. They’ve been playing some butt-ass-awful music at work lately. Like worse than usual, and usual appears to be Adult-Contemporary Hits of the 1980s and ’90s. The recent streak of aural atrocities however, really has me scratching my head. Are they trying to break the spirit of the workers? Are they trying to drive away the customers? Does whoever runs the Satellite Radio channel just have no goddamn taste at all?

What they’re playing these days, is this channel that runs lounge-lizard covers of old swing music. Now swing music is something I like. Love me some Gershwin & Porter. I actually deliberately own a CD of Glenn Miller with the Army/Air-Force Band, and their rendition of String of Pearls is one of my top-notch favorite instrumentals of all time.

But I have to say that shitty covers are among my least favorite musical things. Whimsical covers, like the various takes on Baby Got Back but these…good god, it’s worse than the 1980s mania for Hair Metal covers of 1950s pop hits. For example, there was one particularly awful version of Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby,” on yesterday, and I swear to you that I didn’t even realize what song it was until the refrain came around. They sucked every bit of zip out of the song. It had none of that infectious, bouncy rhythm that ordinarily makes me adore this song. There was another fucking awful version of It Don’t Mean A Thing (If You Ain’t Got That Swing) that didn’t have no swing at all. It was a sorry, sorry thing, I’ve gotta say.

2. It’s a truth that I don’t like music as “background noise,” anyway. I don’t. I like music, but I really only like it when I actually want to hear it. And then it kind of needs to be what I am in the mood for, not what some focus group determined was sufficiently inoffensive and could be played for hours on end in a grocery store.

3. The only good thing that has come out of this drag-tail, lounge-lizard, smooth-ass ersatz “swing” station is that the other day, this station played Paul Anka’s cover of Wonderwall, which was just weird enough that I actually lost track of what I was doing.

Wouldn’t you lose your general state of composure if this came across the Muzak at your workplace? I may have sporfled.

4. Man, I sleep like I was sedated after a really long, hard ride. If I could figure out how to fit in a century every week, I’d be the best sleeper in Kansas Cityl

I don’t know if this happens to anybody else, but after a really long, hard ride, when I sleep like I was drugged, I also sleep hard, and I can’t come up with a better way to describe it. As I wake up, I feel like I’m weighted down, and I am just plain drenched with sweat. I feel kind of zonked-out for a good 45 minutes after I actually get up. It’s awesome, but also kind of weird. I feel great, but also freakin’ drained.

5.
I watched this the other day, and I laughed so hard I think I hurt myself. Oh. My. God. The “persimmon diet,” is just raunch! Hilarious and so very gross.

I know not everybody appreciates Margaret Cho’s delivery, but seriously, this is so worth it, hollering and all. I mean, if you dig grossout humor, puerile stories, and really physical comedy.

6. I’m cranking up my brains around the idea of some new brews. I’m pondering the feasibility of doing some half or quarter batch brews so I can experiment a little, ’cause I have way more ideas than budget. I also want to get going on that experimental mead, which at this point is liable to be more financially-friendly than beer. I want to try the base recipe, then I have some modifications I want to play around with. It’s been a while since I got my booze (making) on…since before the wedding, in fact.

7. Joel and I are pondering out the specifics of our particular trashboats. It’s getting closer and closer to that time. I’m frankly nervous, but I reckon we’ll be okay. I just hope everybody else is taking their preparations reasonably seriously. Actually, I have a feeling that it’s only going to be Joel and me doing this idiotic thing. Just so long as plenty of people show to the after-party, it should be good, good times.

The Toronto Maple Leafs helped the Carolina Hurricanes avoid a six-game slump tonight, by throwing themselves under the Hurricanes bus. Five young super-fans seated behind me provided the following commentary about the Leafs’ performance:

• “I want Carolina to score again so we can get the f*** outta here.”
• “I hope the Leafs come in last. Dead f***ing last.”
• “We shoulda taken the fifty bucks for these tickets. We coulda been at the Biggie Smalls movie! All of us, for free! We’d be laughin!”

I will do a short list of “things about me that you might not know.”

1. I think insects are fascinating. Bumblebees are probably my favorite because they’re so cute and fuzzy and noisy. They also fit perfectly into the funnel-shaped middle of a morning glory blossom, and it’s amusing to watch a fat bee back its way out of the flower. It is like a delivery truck coming away from a very narrow loading dock. The only insects I can think of right now that I really detest are biting gnats and mosquitos for the obvious reasons, cockroaches because they’re so nasty, and tomato worms which I find uncanny and creepy (I guess those words are synonyms but carry different connotations…I don’t care…I think they work). I even think slugs are kind of neat, though I certainly don’t appreciate their effect on some of my plants.

2. The scent and flavor of Lapsang Souchong tea are very calming for me. I feel like I have been writing about tea way too much lately, but I recently ordered some more Lapsang and it came yesterday, so I am drinking some today.

3. I really like Etsy. I found some great presents for my sister’s birthday through etsy. Etsy is pretty awesome…even the people who post incompetently-assembled, horrifying, jibblie-inducing tshotshkes are at least good for amusement, and most Etsy sellers actually sell very nice things. Three of the four sellers from whom I bought will probably get repeat business.

4. I find people who clog up an escalator to be incredibly annoying. Why can nobody in Kansas City get the memo that you stand to the right and walk to the left? It is particularly common for two people to board the escalator and one person take a step up, so that they are side-by-side but one step apart so they can still look at one another and chat. It drives me NUTS as I prefer to walk up the escalator and most people get snippy with me if I say “excuse me” and ask to get by. And I’m quite polite and pleasant about it because what I would really like to do is punt them in the butt and holler, “move it or lose it bucko!” but I have a bit of self-restraint.

1. Pirate’s Booty: higher cheez-to-poof ratio, plz. KTHXBAI.

2. Ruby has unevenly-sized ears. The right ear is bigger than the left ear, so that when she folds her ears back (which she does when she yawns or is sniffing something very intently) the right ear comes down almost ½” lower on her neck. I kind of hope she retains her cockeyed ears into adulthood. I’ll take and post pictures soon.

3. In the attempt to take full advantage of my insurance while I still have this job, I have a butt-ton of medical-ish appointments coming up. It is a bit nerve wracking have a dentist appointment and an eye appointment in the same week, but I must be responsible about my own health, no matter how much it terrifies and bums me out. I hate going to the doctor because I have kind of a phobia about being weighed (stupid but true) and I hate going to the dentist because I have a phobia (a real one, not a kind-of one) about the dentist’s office. The next two weeks are full of anxiety-laden un-fun for me. At least I’m not afraid of the optometrist, too. Good grief.

4. I realized that both Old Navy and Banana Republic upsize their clothing, but GAP seems to be semi-sane, inasmuch as women’s clothing sizes are sane. Put it this way. I am comfortable with the the size GAP says that I wear. To me this is reasonable and perfectly acceptable and it is what size I wear, full stop. A size smaller, however, seems like a petty prevarication, like knocking 10lb off your weight when registering for a driver’s license and for me to wear something claiming to be two sizes smaller than “my” size is flat out mendacious.. I have this one super-cute bias-cut, striped, four-panel skirt that originally came from Banana Republic and that skirt claims to be two sizes smaller than my “real” size, to which I think every time I wear it, “I see through your feeble ruse, you lying liars.” Flatly unreasonable and full of hooey are their vanity-sizing ways.

5. I’m going to be updating my blogroll soon and then I will begin a new project where I feature each of these recommended blogs and write up a little “why I read this and why you should, too” essay.

6. Have been essentially “triple-dipping” on the exercise-and-activity front lately due to riding home to give the dog a break from the kennel and a potty-jaunt, plus the 45-minute-ish morning and evening walk/run/frolics. Am voracious.

7. Best “weird news” story I’ve read in ages. 26 highschool cheerleaders crammed themselves into an elevator and broke it. Luckily nobody was hurt, so it’s just a “ha-ha, dumb kids” story. Silly, giddy kids at cheer camp.

8. Kago Ai, one of my favorite ex-MoMusu members, has begun to make a showbiz career comeback after she was fired from Hello!Project for a string of scandals. She has re-made her image and reverted to the sweet, amiable, cheerful Kago of yore, but with more maturity and thoughtfulness. My theory is that when she was suspended for a year, then fired, it “scared her straight.” Now she is more focused on how her actions affect not only herself, but her family, friends, and business associates who trust and believe in her. Anyhow, Kago now has a blog (Biscuit Club – what a cute name!) that she uses to update fans on her upcoming projects and share little bits of her daily life, as bloggers do. Of course, I can’t read Japanese, but the wonderful folks over at Hello!Online have started translating her blog in weekly digests for English-speaking readers who want to keep up-to-date with a popular ex-Musume. The Hello!Online news feed is so much fun that I have added it to my sidebar. The Pocket Morning interviews are great; it’s a mini-questionnaire where each week all of the girls are asked the same question, like “what is your family’s nickname for you,” or “what is your favorite ice-cream” and they all post their answers. It’s totally inconsequential, but fun.

1. Dried mulberries are delicious!

2. Regarding wedding planning: “You know, it’s going to be a pretty darn casual affair, but probably not so casual that we should have an officiate who might get drunk and put his head through the screen door.”

3. Good lord I have been riding my bike a lot lately. It about seems like I don’t do anything but. Between getting up to snuff for Dirty Kanza, running errands, going to offsite meetings for work, and just getting from home to work and back, it seems like I spend most of what time I’m not at the office or asleep pedaling. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I would like a little more balance in my work/bike/life situation.

4. Because I’ve been on-the-run all week and haven’t had much downtime or time to work on my various gardening or sewing projects, I’ve become kind of cranky and have less patience than usual for foolishness.

5. People who know me casually probably wouldn’t peg me as an introvert. That is because I put a lot of work into talking to people and being amiable. When I haven’t had the chance to re-charge my batteries, so to speak, I catch myself becoming less patient with others and less willing to engage in socially expected banter. I have to fight to retain my brain-to-mouth filter. I find myself lapsing into some wonderfully reliable stock phrases which mean absolutely nothing but which add a nearly-appropriate response to any conversation that might require acknowledgments. To wit:
· Ain’t that somethin’?
· Who’d have thought?
· I’ve never heard of such a thing!
· Really?
· That’s (shocking/crazy/amazing/unbelievable/somethin’ else)
Apparently I’m a little old lady when I don’t feel like talking. These conversation fillers are great when I just don’t have the brainpower to uphold a real verbal exchange because they sound pleasant and engaged enough, and they allow conversation to keep on flowing. Most of the time talk doesn’t really require much input from more than one or two people, so it’s not like my $0.02 is going to add to or detract much from the situation.

6. This weekend should be a blast (though no opportunity for actual down-time). On Saturday is the famous Tour De Cowtown, and on Sunday there’s a mountain bike race up in St. Joseph. I figure since I will be up there in St. Jo with Joel anyhow, I might as well sign up in the Beginner Women’s class and ride. I’ve been told the trails up there are nice – flowy and not super-technical. Pictures & write-up to follow, of course.

The Internet Phenomenon of “rickrolling” has just come to my attention, which means the meme has probably been building for months and months now, and I’m the last person to know that “rickrolling” is misleading somebody to click a link which takes them to the music video of 1980s 1-hit-wonder Rick Astley “Never gonna give you up.” Apparently this is frequently done by inserting a tinyurled You-Tube link to Ghastly Astley’s video with the insinuation that this link contains something germane to a discussion at hand, or that the link contains something especially interesting or salacious. It’s a bizarre and fairly harmless prank, even to somebody like me who takes a fairly jaundiced view toward a pretty broad swath of overplayed 1980s pop hits.

Anyway, tonight after work I had to run some errands. It ended up being a 20-something mile round-trip ride, and I have to admit I do a lot of my thinking while I’m riding (or in the bath). Can’t say I always think about anything terribly deep; in fact I rarely do. On this particular occasion, I was trying to determine why I don’t like a lot of the 1980s pop music, while I don’t have a problem with pop of the 1950s, 60s, 70s, late 90s, and even some of the stuff that’s up right now. I narrowed down a few reasons, none of which really overwhelm the others as THE MAIN REASON you won’t find me at an 80s-night dance club, but anyhow, here’s the results of my ruminations:

1. Overplayed within my memory: Pop songs basically die of their own popularity. They get played to death on the radio, in live performances, at dances, and in other performances, until you think, “If I hear La Vida Loca one fucking more time, I’m going to have to punch somebody.” A lot of songs I started out kind of liking got played to the point where I later started thinking about calling the radio station and complaining the next damn time I heard whatever was the #1 Hot Summer Jam.

2. Ties in with #1: I was overexposed to said song/music. When you’re a kid, you’re kind of at the mercy of whatever is going on around you. Moreover, I was a kid who grew up out in the sticks, where it was a 35 mile drive one way to get to a town with a decent grocery store & other errand-running amenities. This was the era of 55mph speed limits, so the ol’ trip in to Alliance took around 40 minutes and the scenery is such that you definitely need something extra going on to keep you awake. Hence, LOTS of FM radio.

3. Ties in with #2: We often had the radio on while doing otherwise not-particularly-favored activities, like going in to town for errand-running or doing housecleaning or school-cleaning (Mom was the school janitor and recruited my sis and me for the big weekend scrubdowns) . There’s also that thing of mine about not liking “background noise” music. That goes back pretty much as far as I can remember.

4. Some of the music may actually have sucked. Like the now-infamous Astley song. Or like “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go“. Or they were songs that served no damn purpose but to become earworms for all time like Karma Chameleon & Take On Me.

5. Though I am technically part of the “MTV Generation,” my family lived so far out in the boonies (and probably would not have gotten cable even if we had lived in town) that the whole culture of music videos was pretty much foreign to me. Sometimes I’d catch one at a friend’s house or as part of a presentation on an awards or variety show on regular TV, but overall, the iconic videos of the time were unknown to me. It wasn’t until the advent of You Tube that I began to see some of the videos that were a Big Damn Deal back in the day. I think a lot of the music of the time was pretty mediocre, but got pushed into the realms of note because of particularly well-crafted videos (A-Ha, I’m lookin’ at YOU!).

6. My music preferences were more slanted toward rock than pop, though it could be fairly argued that Poison, Warrant, and Mötley Crüe straddled the pop line pretty widely.

Granted, I don’t hate ALL 1980s music. In fact, I dearly love most early Madonna, Cyndi Lauper was a major idol of my sister’s and mine when we were little girls, and some songs will always remind me of something awesome. The Ghostbusters theme song, of course, takes me back to roller-skating parties. When they played that song, they’d also dim the lights, switch on the disco ball, and all of us kids would be skating around the ring all swinging our arms and butts in rhythm with the music and screaming out “Ghostbusters” when appropriate. Walk Like An Egyptian was a big fave among us kids, for whatever reason.

1. I got the new camera I’d been saving up for. I’m now the owner of a Canon Powershot G9. I’ve gone out and done some test shots to get used to it, but since my computer is in the shop right now, I can’t post ‘em yet. Joel’s computer doesn’t recognize my camera, and I certainly can’t post them from work. Anyway, I’m firmly pleased with it, and hope to have a good handle on its particular quirks and peculiarities by the time we go down to Ouachita, so I can maybe out-do my shots from last year. Very photogenic countryside in the Arkansas Ozarks.

2. I’m very excited about our upcoming Ouachita trip. Like last year, Joel will be racing in the singlespeed class at the Ouachita Challenge and I will be riding around the countryside at my own leisure, taking pictures of whatever strikes my fancy. I hope the weather is as nice as it was last year, for both riding and camping purposes.

3. Not a lot happening around here. The weather is steadily sucking less, though it rained like all hell this past weekend, scuppering a local mountain bike race and killing my will to go to the St. Patrick’s Day parade. Normally, one of the local bike-shop owners takes out a permit for a group of cyclists to ride in the parade in costumes on decorated bikes, but this year he was out of town, so I wasn’t going to be participating anyhow. The weather on Monday was decidedly sodden, so I mostly stayed home and did more spring-cleaning/laundry/organizing. Joel and I went out and ran a few errands together since Monday is one of his normal days off anyway.

4. I’ve identified a bunch of clothes slated for remodeling. Stuff that has never quite fit right, or could use just a little sprucing up. I’m always glad for the change of seasons because by this time of the year, I’m sick to death of sweaters and heavy tweed suits. By the end of September, however, I just can’t face another stinkin’ tee-shirt or lightweight skirt, and can’t wait to resume the dignity of my cold-weather wardrobe. I’m ready for my much-pocketed knickers and cropped jackets now, thanks. I might even finish that mint-green suit with the floral ribbon trim this year. I’ve only been working on it for about 3 years now! All it needs is a lining and the buttons. Yes, I am THAT slack. Also, yes, my dummy is all cockeyed and leaning to the left. It’s kind of broken, which is why I have posted so few pictures of sewing projects in the past year or so. It’s now stuck at about 4′ tall and so anything knee-length or longer drags on the floor. I think I can re-rig it up to work with a new, longer dowel to replace its old metal post. One of the clamps inside of the dummy broke, so once I get its height set on a new post, I’ll just zip-tie the heck out of it, and it will be set at 5′5″ permanently. Since it is used principally for my own sewing work (I don’t do commission anymore) it makes sense to just set it at my own size and leave it there.

5. If I were willing to do one of those 100 Things About Me That Nobody Sane Will Read, I’d include the factoid that I hate making linings, but I equally hate wearing most unlined garments, especially skirts. This is because I wear tights and it’s completely detestable when my skirt clings to my tights and rides up. Pantyhose are not as bad as tights for the cling factor, but I hate pantyhose like the devil because they make my feet feel clammy and also seem pointless. Why wear something to make one’s legs look bare? That is foolish.

6. I am unnecessarily opinionated about legwear.

7. Another cat-bath is in the cards, this time for both felines. Shedding season is fast upon us, and that amps up the dander, as well as the drifting fuzz-piles around the house. I have some “conditioning shampoo” that I hope will help make Griswald easier to groom. His undercoat is long, wispy, and cottony, and doesn’t shed out cleanly but spins itself into little, yarny cat-dreds, especially in his armpits (I guess you call the crook between a cat’s leg and his body an armpit). Griz doesn’t appreciate being groomed under the best of circumstances, and working lengthy knots of shed-out fur from his kitty-pits is probably the worst of circumstances. Smallcat is due a bath, also because she is extremely lazy about bathing herself and her fur gets all greasy and grey. Right now she also has a nasty butt-problem I am not going to detail, but suffice it to say that I will NOT let the cat sit on my lap until after I can immerse her in pet-shampoo and water. Cats are supposed to be all self-cleaning and all, but Smallcat is defective in many ways; this is just one among many of her quirks. My mom suggests that maybe Smallcat thinks her own fur tastes bad, which is fair enough I guess.

Both cats still smell kind of weird from a flea treatment I gave them shortly after Smallcat’s bath back in January. It was Frontline instead of Advantage (which is whay I’ve traditionally used) and it had this HORRIBLE stench of artificial watermelon flavor. It was like my cats were made of “watermelon” Bubblicious. It is disgusting. The stink has faded considerably, but it is still there, especially on long-haired Griswald. Next time I get flea-treatment from the vet, I am going to specify Advantage. I like for my cats not to reek of artificial flavorings.

8. My bank-card got fouled up – apparently the database my grocery chain uses got hacked and every transaction run on a particular date ran the risk of being compromised, so they canceled everybody’s bank card who used it in that system. It was done very suddenly, and on a Friday, so I didn’t get any correspondence regarding this, so when I went to run errands on Saturday and tried to pay with my bank card – bzzzzt – it didn’t work. I thought it might be the clerk at the store I was at because she and one of her co-workers were horsing around, talking-smack, smacking bubblegum, and acting like complete dingbats. I had the clerk stow my purchases for a moment while I went to an ATM around the corner. I tried my card in the ATM, and the darn thing sucked my card in, gave an error message, and freaked me the hell out. I thought for sure someone HAD actually gotten into my account and drained it. I rushed home in a damn panic, called my bank and logged into my online banking account simultaneously, only to discover that my account was NOT compromised, and that everything was as it should be, aside from the functionality of my card. I went in to the bank on Monday (since I had Monday off anyhow) and got out cash for my grocery and assorted purposes, and can patiently await the arrival of my new card sometime within the next week-and-a-half or so.

Because I skipped a few too many days of posting and now I have all sorts of random everything to get down.

So.

1. I stayed home sick from work on Friday. I got this weird cold from Joel that seemed to go in reverse, starting with a nasty cough and winding up with stifling head congestion. I felt like somebody had switched my head with a cinder block overnight. Luckily it was a pretty swiftly moving bug, so I started feeling shitty on Thursday, but was basically functional by Saturday.

2. Which is good, because on Saturday, we had the first spell of nice weather in a good two or three weeks, and I really hoped to get outside and take a few pictures. After the Truman Rd. photoshoot and a neighborhood side-street ride that Joel and I had done together, I had scouted out some potentially cool places I wanted to take pictures of, and had been just chafing at not being able to get out and do that. I’ve uploaded most of Saturday’s pictures in the set called 12th-14th, Euclid to Spruce 1-28-08 which is part of the Urban Photo Highlight Rides project. Saturday’s weather was perfect for that, and perfect for the ACME afternoon ride, so I spent most of the day outside. Consequently, the fresh, cool air helped clear my head, and I felt pretty damn good come evening.

3. Which is good, because we’d been planning to have friends over to dinner over at Joel’s house for some while, and I meant to get over there early and do a bunch of prep so that when folks showed up, we could get dinner together quick and have a nice, hot, fresh meal together. We did an Indian themed meal, and I made Paneer for Saag-Paneer, and three different chutneys: a cucumber-yogurt one, a cilantro-mint-and-onion one, and an onion and paprika one. I also prepped the vegetables for a Madras curry that Joel cooked and got my stuff together for actually cooking the Saag Paneer. Joel fried up a mess of papadoms, and we all sat down to quite a feast. Justin & Steph had brought vanilla icecream and frozen mango, but by the time we got through with the chutney, papadoms, and curry, nobody was up for dessert. We learned that three-year-olds really dig papadoms. And are not so interested in saag-paneer.

4. By the way, the chutneys were freakin’ awesome and I will have to share the recipes. The recipes are bookmarked on Joel’s computer, so I’ll have to link them the next time I’m at his house.

5. I cut my hair this weekend, and it’s pretty dreadful. I’ll share pictures soon. It’s shocking! I did this to myself about three years ago once, and should have learned my lesson, but no. I’m not going to be even vaguely presentable for a good two to three months. I hope I will never do something like this to my head again. It sucks to have to go around with a head that looks like a woodchuck’s ass.

6. Today was one of those days that had me cursing everything that Adobe had ever created, and most specifically Illustrator and Acrobat. Illustrator’s a goddamn pain in the ass and having to copy-and-paste stuff from a Word document into an Illustrator document is kind of like trying to build a retaining wall out of live rodents. It’s inhumane, doesn’t work well, and ends up looking pretty dreadful.

7. I’m pretty proud of my new profile over at Flickr:

I am a complete hack and utter barbarian.

My camera is way smarter than I am.

Any pictures that I’ve taken that came out looking pretty good are not indicative of any skill on my part.

I don’t have any pretensions of being a fine artist, or even a capable photographer.

I take pictures for my own amusement and share them just in case anyone else might enjoy them.

With that in mind, I hope you find something to enjoy about one or another of my pictures.

8. One of my friends recently wrote about her son’s creative endeavors at pre-school. He’s an imaginative and mischievous child who definitely does things his own way, and he interpreted the class project of making styro-snowmen in a totally different way from his schoolmates. His snowman’s body was entirely covered in buttons instead of having a few down its middle for “coat-buttons.” His snowman’s face was on the top of its head. The explanation for these unusual features were sensible. The kid liked the look of buttons, so he used as many as he could. The snowman’s face was on top of his head because he was looking straight up at the sky, warily noting the sun coming along to melt him.

I wish I’d had such good backstories to the gruesome artwork I produced as a child, but as the fact of the matter is, most of what I produced as a schoolkid was the product of caprice, boredom, and just being a little shit. I also had strange aesthetic ideals involving color.

This last is in high evidence in a Christmas ornament I made in Kindergarten. We fashioned bead-strung snowflakes by first making an asterisk out of three pipecleaners twisted together, then stringing plastic beads on the arms of this star-shaped armature. Children who had any aesthetic sensibility chose white pipecleaners and clear, silver, or blue beads, or some combination thereof. I, however, had chosen red pipecleaners and every color of beads that was in the bead-box. Pink, orange, yellow, lime-green, even coffee-brown were in evidence. If I wanted to make something “pretty,” it had to involve every color available.

Well, I take that back. I didn’t generally use brown, black, or that uninspiring grey-blue that Crayola called “cadet blue.” But whenever I drew a picture or broke out with the paintbox, just about every color I had was represented.

I didn’t think I liked art classes much. I didn’t take direction very gracefully, and we were usually given explicit, step-by-step instructions for what we were supposed to do, without a lot of wiggle room for interpretation. I didn’t take art very seriously – I considered it akin to indoors recess time – a sort of playtime with supplies. I tended to get very silly with my creations and amused myself, if nobody else. Therefore I manufactured a six-legged clothespin lamb with eyes on either end and a Valentines box in yellow, purple, and green, decorated with oragami spiders and pipecleaner willyworms.

9. Find below my favorite photos from Saturday:

1. Confession time! (oh, this is going to be fun!) I sometimes confuse or conflate various celebrities or famous people, because I don’t follow their doings closely and maybe they look kind of alike, or have similar names. For example, I can’t ever keep David Duchovny & George Clooney straight in my mind.

Back in July, Joel and I went on RAGBRAI. As Iowa is all politically significant & suchlike, there were campaigners for many of the major presidential hopefuls in most of the bigger towns. It was during this trip that I first heard of Ron Paul, having seen a sign advocating him as a presidential candidate. HOWEVER, I misread/misinterpreted the sign, and took it to mean that Ron Jeremy was running for president and got all joyful, thinking, “hot damn! This is gonna be one hell of an interesting election year.” Also, “at least that guy won’t have any sexual scandals hidden away.” I find it quite disappointing that instead of a chubby, genial, moustachioed porno star, the Ron in question is a wizened and cranky old coot who has a disturbing past involving chumming up with conspiracy theorists and anonymous racist assholes.

2. Griswald recently developed a nasty tapeworm infestation (though I don’t think a non-nasty intestinal parasite infestation exists). Therefore both cats got to go to the vet for de-worming. We’ve got a new vet, since the veterinarian I used to take the cats to retired, and his clinic was a one-doctor shop. When he went, it went. The new doc voiced concern about the cats’ weight, which was kind of news to me. I mean, I’d recently noticed that both of the critters seemed a little broad in the beam, but not OMG INTERVENTION caliber or anything. Anyway, now I have put both cats on a diet, and they’re working diligently to drive me smack out of my mind. Griswald has taken to flouncing around the house yowling and trying to eat the adhesive off the plastic insulation on the windows. Sugar has stepped up her natural surliness, reverted to her beloved “gravity games,” and is picking exponentially more fights with Griz. They’re both being a complete pain in the ass, and I am having to remind myself that they are important enough to me to make all of our lives miserable for the short term to ensure better health in the long term.

3. When Joel and I were discussing the diet of the cats, he commented that they’d be prefectly happy to be “earth-bloaching pigs,” a phrase which immediately reduced me to a helpless fit of cackling and whooping. For the next week, any time I even thought of the word “bloach,” (which isn’t even a real word) I’d start to giggle, and if I was in a giddy enough mood, would end up all cackling again. It was kinda rough. Even still, typing the word “bloach” makes me kinda snerk a bit. Bloach!

4. The whole “bloach” experience basically took me back to 8th grade, when I learned the word “choad” (or is it chode?). Anyway, one of the boys was being kind of a pest and a doofus, and another guy told him to stop being such a choad. At the time I had no idea it meant penis. I just thought it was a HILARIOUS alternative to doofus, dweeb, knucklehead, or lamebrain. And by hilarious, I mean that the first time I heard it, I was falling all over the place cackling my fool head off at this delightfully silly new word.

5. That whole “Velma” get-up:

Video discussing the outfit.

Video discussing the video of the “Velma” outfit.

And because the outfit can’t be seen very well on the video, here are three fairly shitty self-portraits. I am not very photogenic and my camera doesn’t co-operate well with the whole self-timer/auto focus combo, so taking my own picture usually sucks. And I left my tripod over at Joel’s house so I had to balance the camera on a couple of small boxes stacked on one of the dining chairs, and so it was hard to get a very good angle for the shots anyway. But at least you can tell what the outfit looked like. NOT especially Velma-ish, but whatever.

1. Do not put on red lipstick, don a balaclava, and ride your bicycle to work. You will end up with lipstick from mid-nose to mid-neck. This has been a public service announcement.

2. The Federal Courthouse is two blocks away from my workplace, and there is a park between the two buildings. Yesterday morning it was so foggy that I couldn’t see the courthouse, which is a large and futuristic building. I use the courthouse as a weather marker. If it has been raining and the courthouse has dry patches, it must have stopped. If the courthouse is showing wet patches, it must be sprinkling. If I can barely see the courthouse across the two-block park, precipitation of some sort is very heavy. When it is snowing, it looked like The World’s Most Forbidding and Imposing Snowglobe.

Seen above, left to right Federal Courthouse, view across park from 17th floor, city hall lost in a fog.

3. Angostura Bitters in tonic water is really pretty good. So much so that you don’t really even need to put any gin in it. I discovered this kind of accidentally, but have since drank several glasses of just tonic water with a few drops of Angostura Bitters in it. That stuff smells so good…kind of spicy and kind of citrusy. Yay, bitters!

4. I’ve been addicted to the Free Rice vocabulary-test game lately. I have tabled at 50, and I am kind of driving myself nuts to see if I can get beyond that. Whenever you make a mistake, it drops you back a level, and I’ll get dropped back to 46 or 47 and have to build back up. I tell you, it can drive a recovering English Major crazy. It’s also re-awakened my horrible, pretentious vocabulary skillz. When I was a teenager I was addicted to Dickens, and by god, I had the most obnoxious vocabulary you could ever lay hands on. I thought it was quite clever to wax prolix and mellifluously orate with bumptious gusto. In short, I was like a goddamn walking thesaurus, and it’s amazing nobody punched me in the yap just for being a loquacious and unconstrained twit. I am also pleased to learn that “ecdysiast = stripteaser.”

5. How to weird-out your co-workers (a must-see for joEL). Also, totally NOT SAFE FOR WORK.

6. I meant to write up my memories of performing as an extra in a production of the Nutcracker when I was a kid, work up my “blogroll,” and add categories to some more posts in my archives, but instead today I decided to finish that silk blouse and make a pair of bluejeans, as well as do laundry, so all that’s getting posted is this lousy list.

1.  Lore Sjöberg’s how-to article on having a Livejournal blog.  You may remember Sjöberg from The Brunching Shuttlecocks, or from his current site, Bad Gods and/or  Slumbering Lungfish.

2.   As you may know, I went and got a degree in Medieval Studies almost 8 years ago, and I’ve finally recovered enough from my MA to have a sense of humor about it all.  That is why Geoffrey Chaucer’s Blog has been tickling me mightily.  For instance, the feature on Paris Hilton should not be missed.  “She’s yonge, she’s sexie, she’s riche: Interviewe wyth Parys“

3.  Cyclecide – They make weird bikes out of other weird bikes, paint things festively, and get drunk.  These are the kind of folks I like to know.  More big fun from the gang.  Check out their Press Kit while you are at it.

1.

A junior-high orchestra’s preformance of the theme song from the Jeeves & Wooster series (a jazzy little number I thoroughly enjoy)

2. A terrible story about high-powered laxatives which was linked in some comments on the Bad News Hughes site.

3. I HAS A SWEET POTATO

4. Dogs In Elk (tangential to the link above)

I think this white stripes song sounds a lot like this Bad Company song (the only version I could find was a cover by Bon Jovi) and a bit like the Black Crowes’ song “Nebakenezer.” My opinion is also that Jack White’s voice is not unlike Ozzy Osbourne’s.

Prepped to go to my sister and her fiance’s wedding.

Her dress  – completed

My dress – completed.

Lace tights, petticoat – procured.

Shoes – polished

Hair – hennaed

I just need to get clothes together for Sunday and find my curlers and I’ll be ready to bridesmaid like there’s no tomorrow.

So in lieu of any kind of coherent, sensible, serious, and meaty writng, I’m going to give you a brain-dump of snipppets.

1. My hair remains challenging and defiant. I have a tendency to shower or bathe in the evening, before I go to bed, because I have a vast aversion to going to bed all sweaty and nasty, so the result is that I wake up looking like a Polish Crested bantam chicken. My usual solution to dealing with the morning hair conundrum is to nail down the most offensive sections with barrettes and call it good enough, though on days when the straight-fro is especially impressive, I might just put some hair-goop in it and embrace the sproinginess. By the time I get to work and pry my bike helmet off, it may be a whole new hairdo anyhow. Sometimes it rebels further, and sproings higher and wider than ever, and sometimes it lays flat in a fit of sweat and defeat. Any which way, there is no winning against my hair. Detente is all the more I can hope for. My hair will kick my ass, then go get me in trouble for fightin’.  It’s devious.

2. I need old, broken computer keyboards for a project. I don’t actually need the whole keyboards, just the letter, number, and symbol keys. I need quite a lot of these.

3. I found most of a metal tape measure on the street on the way to work today, so I picked it up and took it to the office with me, where I snipped it up with a pair of shears. I cut off all the bits that were broken and sharp. I’m not sure what I am going to do with it, but I am very into found art.

4. Assuming it doesn’t rain overnight, and it is hot and dry tomorrow, and the trails out at Landahl are dry by around 3:30-4:00 p.m. tomorrow, Christi and I are going riding. I’ve never ridden out there before, so I’m pretty excited to get to do some exploring. There may be some other women joining us…I don’t know, but I sent a notice out to the Cycling Sisters mailing list.

5. I had some videos I wanted to link, but I have too short of an attention span to dig ‘em up tonight, so I’ll share the joy another time.

1. My favorite Beavis & Butthead episode ever! Buttniks. Crrrrappuchino, a rrrrap-pa-pa-pa-pa-pah!

2. My freshman year of college, me and two of my dorm neighbors used to eat a bunch of Pixie Stix and drink Mountain Dew, then run around the dorm halls with our shirts pulled up over our heads, acting like Cornholio.

3. Beavis & Butthead get porn “Porn is good for you; did you know that?”

4. The Internet is For Porn.

5. Randy agrees that the internet is for porn and a Dell is the gateway to porno.

Can y’all believe I’m almost 29. So much for growing in dignity as well as in years.

Oh yeah, and one more thing:

click on the image for details on the upcoming bikey festivities.

I’m going alleycatting tomorrow night! Wish me a lack of rain and thunderstorms. I’m riding out on the ever-portly the Schwinn of DOOOOOOM!

1. I don’t own any decent belts, and today I strongly considered leaving my chain-and-lock around my waist in order to keep my pants from shifting around. I bring my bike into the office and put it in the supply room across from where I sit, so I wouldn’t need the lock anyway until my lunch break, and I could stand having baggy, saggy pants for the 10 minutes it would take at the post office anyhow.

2. When I went away to college, I got myself a tiny little coffee maker which will make just enough coffee to fill up one of those medium-sized travel mugs. My routine, on days when I had 8:00 a.m. classes was to get up at 7:00 a.m. dress, turn on the TV to watch Animaniacs, heat some milk in the nuker, pitch a handful of granola into the milk, while that was cooling, fire up the little coffeepot, then eat my cereal and watch cartoons while my coffee brewed. At about 7:45, I’d pour my coffee into a travel mug, load up my books, turn off the telly, and head for class. After Todd and I moved in together, his aunt and uncle gave us a really kickass Krups coffeemaker for Christmas (which is still going strong, whoot!), so I packed up the little 4-cup coffeemaker. It’s been sitting in a box in a closet wherever we’ve lived for these 8 years, but I got fed up with the “coffee club” at work, so I got all independent and shit and packed the little coffeemaker into my backpack and brought it to work, where I keep it secreted under my desk and make myself a travel-mug of coffee every afternoon around 1:00. It really helps me get through the dark hours of the afternoon when I am tempted to crawl behind the photocopier and help myself to a siesta.

3. I miss the Animaniacs. And Beavis & Butthead. And the Gargoyles. I stopped watching cartoons when I was about 11, then started watching cartoons again in college, with great enthusiasm. I’d have watched Beavis and Butthead in highschool, but we didn’t have cable, thus no MTV, thus no regular doses of B&B. I totally like Beavis and Butthead better than South Park. Except for that one South Park where Martha Stewart stuck a turkey up her butt. And Mecha-Striesand. And the UncleFucker song. Good grief. That song. Now it’s stuck in my head.

4. When I heard that “Preston” was part of Brittny Spears’s baby’s name, the first thing that came to my head was. “‘I’m Bill S. Preston, esquire’ ‘And I’m Ted “Theodore” Logan’”

5. Is it Brittney, or Britney? Or something totally else? Why can’t she just be Brittany, so people can spell her name right? Also, why do I care?

6. I’m a total pizza-hound and I say “dude” way more than is fitting and proper. Unfortunately, I lack Ninja skills, a protective green carapace, or a primary-colored bandana, not to mention I’m too old to be a Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtle. I’m just a dorky woman who likes pizza and says “dude” at inopportune moments.

7. Dude, I shouldn’t have worn a sports-bra today—I look totally flat-chested. Speaking of which, I pretty much am flat-chested. This, however, is not a source of distress, as it suits my purposes marvelously. A lack of significant boobage means that there’s much less to get in the way of my backpack strap.

8.
A very frank brassiere advert from the 1950s. Cut to the chase—you can order small, medium, or large!

The ads are much funnier individually. And unfortunately, I was unable to find one for the medium-size figure. Imagine what life would be like if Victoria’s Secret were that frank and effusive about their products.

9. Speaking of lingerie, there are two local underpants companies worth your perusal because…local underpants. Which, incidentally, would be a marvelous name for a rock band. “Coming to Judy’s Bar and Lounge, Local Underpants featuring Tillie and Little Jim Long, cover $5 at the door.” Anyway, underpants. Check out Birdie’s and Scientific Panties and Ideal Garment. Peregrine at Birdie’s and Susan at Scientific are pretty damn awesome women, so check out their work, okay?

10. I love when I luck out in the timing and scheduling departments. For example, Acme Bicycle Company will be running a swapmeet and AlleyKat race at the end of October. My friends Rob & Joel will be moving house at the end of October, too. Originally, the AlleyKat was meant to be on the last Saturday of the month and the swapmeet was going to be on Sunday, but Sarah and Christy decided that it would work better to have both on the same day. Rob & Joel are moving on Saturday. Therefore, I will be able to both help the lads move on Saturday, then go rampage around downtown with a bunch of other bike nuts on Sunday. Likely as not both occasions will involve pizza, too.

11. anyone lived in a pretty how town/(with up so many floating bells down)

12. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may/Old Time is still a flying

13. Had we but world enough and time/This coyness lady, were no crime

14. Call the roller of big cigars/The muscular one, and bid him whip/In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

1. I’ve got four zinnias and a marigold blooming now, so the inundation of psychedellic floral color riots is drawing nigh. I can’t wait for my lot-wide hedge of orange, yellow, pink, and purple flowers to take off and start rioting.

2. The morning rain broke around 11:00 and at around 12:00 I decided the streets were dry enough for me to take the new bike out, so I did the Cliff Drive run, and it was every bit as much fun as I thought it would be. Hills really don’t scare me now. Those taller, skinnier wheels roll so much more easily and having less weight to schlep around makes a pretty big difference.

3. Don’t have to go to work tomorrow. Yay! I don’t think we’re doing anything in particular, so I may do like I did last year and take fireworks photos from the backyard, unless we get down to the River Market, in which case I will take fireworks photos from wherever we’re sitting and watching. I know my camera so much better now, and I think I can get some really good ones in.

4. I’ve got some actual inquiries into real sewing stuff, not just alterations, including a possible commission to make some stuff to sell out of a local shop. The shop owner likes my trademark sewing styles, and asked me if I’d be interested in doing a line of pants for this fall.

1. Steam Boy
Rocked. I’m not going to spoiler this movie for anyone, I will just say that it was everything a family movie ought to be. Lots of adventure, excellent animation, cool fantastical inventions, lots of “wow-factor.” I actually felt myself burst into a big grin, and had to forceably restrain myself from applauding senselessly two different times. I caught myself leaning toward the screen trying to look up at something or beyond an obstacle several times. The animation really draws the eye in. The voice-acting made me very happy, indeed. They didn’t follow the stereotype of forceably dorky dub voice. In fact, they did a creditable Northern English accent. That in and of itself made me squeal silently with great glee. The Manchester train station looked suspiciously like York’s train station, but really, most large, Victorian train stations have a similar look. It may well be that Manchester’s train station (or looked, I don’t even know if it is still as original as York’s) had really looked like that.

Anyone who’s been through Manchester station care to enlighten me?

There were a few things I didn’t like. Scarlett was a fairly unnecessary character, I felt, and hideously annoying. Bulma/Bluma/Bloomers-caliber annoying (All you DBZ freaks out there will know what I mean) I really hate the convention of an irritating, tagalong sidekick. At times I felt the grandfather’s rants were unnecessarily preachy, but that might have been intentional, or it might have been the result of poor translation wording choices. So really, just those two things didn’t sit perfectly with me, but on the whole, I enjoyed the hell out of this movie.

Anyone who gets the chance to see Steam Boy in the theatre, go, go forth ASAP and see it. Verily it kicked ass.

2. Crowbar
It has a pleasing heft, and engenders in me a terribly destructive, cocky attitude. With crowbar in hand, I’m all like “I’ve got a motherfuckin’ crowbar; I can tear some shit up!” In fact, now that I have a crowbar, I know I am going to be wanting for opportunities to use it. I mean, the garage is a pretty finite project, and I don’t have anything else around here which needs demolishing, therefore, I may have to hire myself out upon occasion. , Are you still needing help with your back staircase? ‘Cause I’ve got me a motherfuckin’ crowbar and I can tear some shit up!

3. Speaking of tearing some shit up…

In my workroom, there were three layers of wallpaper, plus varying strata of paint. Here you see one wall (south side) stripped mostly down to bare plaster, plus the east side wall down to the bottom layer of wallpaper (probably dating back to the 1930s)

The wallpaper/paint melange above the door does not want to come along easily. And it is turning out to be incredibly awkward and difficult to scrape on the lowered soffit above the windows.

Wallpaper, moistened and not. Once upon a time it was a hash-marked baby blue sprigged with white flowers that had silver metallic embossing around the edges.

The plaster came quite clean, except for bizarre dark stains in places.

Very old-fashioned electrical outlet. Still live. This one usually runs my 1958 Singer 401A.

I wasn’t so lazy and actually took the faceplate off the light switch.

Because I still work in my workroom, I will be painting two walls at a time, therefore tomorrow I am going to prime the two walls I have clean (south and east) and paint them probably on Tuesday, then when the paint is dry, move all my stuff across to the other side of the room and scrape and clean the north and west walls. That should actually go easier, I hope, since the west wall is mostly windows, and the north wall has the other doorway in it.