Sorry I haven’t been posting much recently but the truth is that the Cartoon Network has been showing reruns of old classic Warner Brother’s cartoons, so I’ve been preoccupied with…uhmmm… cultural research.
Okay, I haven’t. Truth is that I’m trying to boot strap a little software company and that means coding 12 hours a day. So, no blogging or much of anything else save a little family time. I haven’t even been listening to the news or reading Instapundit. When I really have to concentrate, I shutout the news and blog reading because if I hear something that piques my interest I have a terrible urge to write about it and I don’t want the internal distraction of the urge.
However, the Cartoon Network has been showing old Loony Toon cartoons and I have been watching those during my regrettable “brain off” periods.
I really enjoy those old cartoons far more I think than a person of my theoretical maturity should. They evoke for me not childhood but an almost tangible cultural history. They are redolent with the rich undertones of the era’s popular culture. By their very nature as mere schematics, their creators perforce had to anchor the stories, gags and iconography on concepts widely understood by the audiences of the time. As such, they capture the feel of their times in way that other art forms just can’t quite convey.
Ah, who am I kidding? I’m just a sucker for pre-political correctness cartoons. Give me the old stuff with firearms, explosives, falling anvils, cross-dressing and moonshine!
Those old cartoons were made for adults, not children. That’s a good bit of their charm.
Shannon, good luck with the software company.
12 hour coding days seem to be epidemic. I’m in much the same boat.
You can’t just reach into your pocket and pull out the Acme Master Distro to solve your business problems? Tell Tex Avery I want my youth back!
I sometimes get similar feelings from looking at old machines.
Good fortune with your new venture.
check out The Venture Brothers series
Foxmark,
You can’t just reach into your pocket and pull out the Acme Master Distro to solve your business problems?
I tried the Acme distro but I could never get roadrunner.anvil.drop to work properly.
I wish I’d known about that cartoon extravaganza.
I suppose you all know that Bugs Bunny was based on the Clark Gable scene in “It Happened One Night.” The scene where he is talking about hitchhiking techniques and eating a carrot.
“when a cold mama heats up, look out brother”
I know how you feel about the cartoons. I woke up early one morning and flipping through the channels came across an old Tom and Jerry… Tom tripping and falling down the stairs into a big barrel of “XXX” and coming up out of it drunk made me laugh and laugh. What was the old lady doing with the big barrel of hooch in the basement? I must have watched it as a kid and never thought much about it. Those were the good old days.
I raised my 2 kids on Warner Bros cartoons… not just the TV as babysitter, we would sit together and watch them and as the kids got got old enough, discuss them. Good times, and far better for the kids than (ugh) Curious George.
I remember when my daughter put it all together and in a great feat of inductive reasoning for someone just turned 3, looked me in the eye and told me, “The Coyote NEVER catches the Roadrunner.”
We’ve been showing our kids the best of the Warner Brothers cartoons for many of the same reasons you mention, Shannon.
In addition to being fun and politically incorrect, they are a cultural goldmine, including, in a few instances, “high” culture, like the references to Wagner and other operas. I might not know who Leopold Stokowski was if I hadn’t seen Long-Haired Hair as a child.
i have a copy of “Song of The South”
That’s “Long-Haired Hare” to you.
Actually, some of us out here have been hoping that your absence indicated the development of a Chicagoboyz spring.