The most well-known nephews in the Disney canon are Donald Duck’s: Huey, Dewey, and Louie. The trio first made their debut in comic form on October 17, 1937. The following year, in 1938, the trio made their animated debut in the aptly titled Donald’s Nephews. Pretty cut and dry for some of Disney’s most iconic and long-lasting characters. Yet, the characters they were created to counterpart — Mickey’s two nephews — have a more intricate debut history. Morty and Ferdie are not defined by a single debut, but by a prolonged process of instability across media, where character is constructed, obfuscated, and re-established.

The duo first appeared on the September 18, 1932 Mickey Mouse Sunday strip. In their initial comic appearance, they are presented as children of a Mrs. Fieldmouse—then not explicitly identified as Mickey’s sister. Their initial appearance does not explicitly identify them as relatives of Mickey, yet this quickly becomes implied the following week on September 25 when they refer to Mickey as “Unca Mickey”. What this first Sunday page provides is a critical foundation exemplifying their core characteristics: mischief and havoc.

(above) The first strip featuring Mickey’s nephews, and (below) a panel from the September 25 panel with the first “Unca Mickey” reference.

Their havoc manifests metatextually as their antics overwhelm finer details of characterization, resulting in neither child being named until the October 30, 1932 Sunday page. This month-long interregnum sans naming reflects the instability of the duo’s early characterization. This is further emphasized within the comic panels as only one nephew is given a name—Mortimer Fieldmouse—leaving the other nephew unnamed.

Within the finer details of Disney lore, this name—Mortimer—is often associated with an earlier naming suggestion for Mickey himself. The suggestion came from Walt Disney’s wife, Lillian, at the same time that Walt was navigating the loss of his rights to Oswald and uncertainty over his own future. Metatextually, the presence of a Mickey relative named Mortimer reinforces the instability of character, and reminds readers that these stories exist within the early days of Mickey’s own rapidly defining world.

However, this page also gives some definition as it is the first instance of Mickey definitively referring to the duo as his nephews.

(above) October 30, 1932 strip featuring the first instance of a nephew being named.

Despite the comic strip clearing away initial ambiguity, more would implant itself into the Disney ecosphere with the 1933 cartoon short Giantland. The comics’ examples of a nephew duo are quite clear, but Mickey’s role as an uncle to mouse children would become more ambiguous.

This short opens with a large Mouse nibling group listening to Mickey read a bedtime story. The niblings call Mickey “Uncle Mickey,” but the short adds in further ambiguity by not identifying any of the children explicitly, thus making it unclear which are the two nephews present in the comics—or whether none of them are, and if Mickey might only be the niblings’ honorary uncle.

Interestingly, the Giantland cartoon would be adapted into a Sunday storyline that ran from March 11, 1934 until April 29, 1934. As a result of deriving elements from the pre-existing short, this comic strip storyline too has the ambiguous nature of which child is whom. Each Sunday would begin with Mickey telling his niblings about another part of the adventure against Rumplewatt the Giant. However these children—like in the cartoon—are never distinctively identified. Through background actions the audience can see more mischief being wrecked upon Mickey’s home, thus indicating that this quality befalls the numerous Mickey niblings.

Concurrent with Giantland’s release, the publisher David McKay introduced even more ambiguity when it published the “Mickey Mouse Story Book,” a repackaging of material from the 1931 book “Mickey Mouse Movie Stories,” consisting of images from 1930 and 1931 cartoons with alternative prose describing the plots. The cover exhibits Mickey—alongside a sleepy Pluto—reading a book to two unidentified mouse children.

The cover draws a connection to Giantland as it implies that the contents of the actual book—the aforementioned cartoon reuse—is what is being read to the children: a storytelling session similar to that in the Giantland cartoon. Since the interior of the physical book is repeated from 1931, however, it contains no framing devices, mentions, or references to the 1933 cover’s children audience. Thus this cover leads audiences to identify the duo as either Mickey’s nephews or two of the Giantland niblings, or both, making their relationship to Mickey somewhat vague once again.

(It must be noted that the “Mickey Mouse Story Book” bears only a 1931 copyright date, leading many in the past to presume the book was actually released in 1931—with its cover illustration thus representing the first appearance of mouse nephews anywhere. But as period newspapers and bookstore advertisements show, the “Story Book” was not actually released until late 1933; its 1931 copyright date refers only to the book’s interior contents, reprinted as they were from 1931.)

On June 16, 1934, Mickey’s nephews—presumed to be Morty and Ferdie, although never referred to by name—make a decisive return in the animated cartoon Mickey’s Steam Roller. This would be the duo’s first distinctive animated appearance as a duo sans any other unnamed mice children. Carrying over the common traits from the comics, the duo play and cause mischief throughout the short. The year 1934 also saw the instance of the original Orphan’s Benefit—remade in color in 1941—wherein Mickey and friends perform for many mice children. Though, based on the title, it can’t be assumed that these children are all Mickey’s relatives. However, it does continue to lean into the grey area of Mickey Mouse caring for or entertaining quantities of identical children.

The nephew duo would return to the Sunday strip again on March 31, 1935. Here, Mickey refers to them as “my nephews, Morty and Ferdie Fieldmouse!”, thus—for the first time—giving both boys distinctive names. In this newest appearance, they continue to delight in mischief, but they also foreshadow their more famous counterparts when interacting with Donald Duck.

Donald, not yet an uncle, is upset about being called one. Little does he know… (March 31, 1935).

The duo would serve as the prototypes for what would eventually become Donald’s nephews—both in messing with him and in how they caused disruption. On the Sunday page from April 7, 1935, the duo bait Donald into impressing them. Donald ends up overexerting himself, thus losing control and crashing a croquet ball into Mickey’s house. This encounter feels reminiscent of The Hockey Champ, wherein Donald’s hubris becomes his downfall as he attempts to one-up his nephews with his skills.

Before the year was up, the duo would return again on December 15, 1935. Within these appearances, the duo reinforce the role that they came to inhabit within the strip. As Disney historian David Gerstein puts it:

“By 1935 a satisfying middle ground was achieved, with Mickey portrayed less as a parent, more as a big brother.”

From this point on, the duo would appear at various intervals within the comics. However, when the duo appeared outside of the newspaper realm, these appearances continued to be more ambiguous, less defined, and lean into the larger nibling groups.

In one 1937 book entitled “Mickey Mouse and His Friends” a trio of mice niblings appear in a single image before a text adaptation of Mickey’s Elephant. Entire crowds of niblings—often, as before, identified as orphans—make further animated appearances in Gulliver Mickey (1934), Orphans’ Picnic, Mickey’s Circus (1936) and Pluto’s Party (1952). Morty and Ferdie themseves make another animated appearance in a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo in 1938’s Boat Builders; when a crowd assembles to watch the launch of Mickey’s, Donald’s, and Goofy’s boat, the duo can be seen climbing up a dock piling at the left of the shot..

Mickey’s nephews might not have stuck around as prominently as other recurring characters, but their early appearances were hugely influential. Their exact roles and status took time to become explicit, and the two would often fade out into ambiguous crowds of many mice children. Yet they helped to establish Mickey as an authority figure and companion to kids within his universe. Morty and Ferdie also acted as the prototype testing ground in small ways for their more popular counterparts: Huey, Dewey, and Louie.

Since the 1980s, the duo have made newer appearances in animation including as role players in 1983’s Mickey’s Christmas Carol, with Morty as Tiny Tim, and in 2017’s The Scariest Story Ever: A Mickey Mouse Halloween Spooktacular. The nephews have also remained recurring characters in comics from the 1930s up to the present day, logging hundreds of appearances annually around the world. Now as Mickey’s earliest stories come into the public domain each year , fans and readers alike have the opportunity to better understand Morty and Ferdie’s origin: not to see them as only static figures lost in the Disney vault, but for the influential voice that they are. The public domain also allows the creators to give the duo new creative expressions that were overlooked at their original inception. Plus, some enterprising person might even feign to name each and every nibling.

NOTES: As of 2026, all published Mickey Mouse cartoons and printed material from 1930 and before are in the public domain. In the course of researching this piece, I discovered that the Mickey Comics from 1931 through October 1935 were not renewed. The earliest renewal for the strip that I could locate was for the week dated November 18, 1935. These weekly renewals continued on from this date. The mentioned cartoons from 1932-1941 as well as the 1937 Donald Duck comic are still copyrighted until the end of the 95th year following their publication.

SOURCES:
Mickey Sundays; Original copyright and its renewal for 1937 Mickey Mouse and His Friends © 1 May 1937, code AA231977; renewal is © 28 May 1964, code R338799.

SPECIAL THANKS to David Gerstein and his input to this piece.

At 35, Daniel Pontón is what is known as a Disney adult. His fans crowd outside his home in Parla in Madrid where he lives with his fiancé. His passion for Disney is such that he is considering removing the bed from the guest room/museum to make way for the invasion of stuffed Disney toys. On the fluffy pillows, there are Mickey, Stitch, Jack Skellington, Olaf, Chip and Chop. The shelves and walls are also plastered with Disney images. All this memorabilia, and other collector’s items, such as park keys, are mementos from his time browsing Disney stores and enjoying theme parks.

Seguir leyendo

And so we come down to the Moment of Truth – a final look at the animated world of bullfighting. Disney, Warner, Film Roman, and Dreamworks all contribute short chapters from recent decades – plus, extended coverage of a notable feature film with a heavy emphasis on the bullfighting angle.

The Pain In Spain (Disney, Timon and Pumbaa, 11/3/95) – In their worldly travels that set the theme for their television series, our heroes wind up in España. A billboard in the countryside advertises an upcoming bullfight in the big city featuring El Toro – a bull so mean, the sign includes a scoreboard to keep track of the number of matadors he has gored. Timon gets into a bragging mode, boasting of what he could do if he were to face Toro himself. To demonstrate, Timon dives into their traveling suitcase and comes up dressed in a matador suit. He asks Pumbaa to use those useless tusks and charge at him. Pumbaa does one better, having just happened to pack in the suitcase for just such an occasion a bull costume to wear. Timon asks Pumbaa to go way back before starting his charge – so far back, that Pumbaa disappears beyond the horizon, and has to call Timon from a pay phone to ask if this is far enough. Pumbaa takes a few paces backwards to rev up his feet motors – and repeats the mistake of Ferdinand, backing into the sharp needles of a cactus. As with his Disney bull predecessor, Pumbaa charges with such force as to mow Timon down, and repeatedly trample him about six or seven times on repeated passes. (Timon sees miniature bull horns circling around his head, like so many tweeting bords.) Also as with Ferdinand, Pumbaa’s moves are observed by two bullfighting scouts, who capture and cart Pumbaa away as the new attraction for the bull ring – news that is not taken well by El Toro, who is given the heave-ho from his employment as nothing but a has-been, and swears revenge.

Timon learns where Pumbaa has been taken, by the heavens giving him “a sign” – in the form of a new billboard poster plastered right over him, announcing Pumbaa’s debut. “A brave bull?”, remarks Timon, making a bad joke despite his lack of an audience, that Pumbaa is really nothing but a “cow-ward”. Timon trails Pumbaa to the bull ring, and sneaks past the guards of the bull’s dressing room by being launched by the blades of a ceiling fan through an open transom window. Reunited with Pumbaa, Timon asks why he didn’t just take off the costume and explain he’s a warthog? Pumbaa cries, “The zipper’s stuck!” The only unguarded door of the room leads straight into the arena, posing a definite problem. A sign inside the door reads, “Wash hands before goring”, and a bowl of water and red cloth towels are provided in the room for such purpose. Timon picks up a towel, and states he’s got an idea. Pumbaa asks if his idea is to use the towel as a cape, perform an act for the crowd as bull and matador, then make their escape while the crowd is cheering. Timon sarcastically responds to Pumbaa’s stealing of his thunder, “No”, and that his idea was to locate a fairy to sprinkle pixie dust on the towel so that they could fly away upon it into the heavens. Pumbaa states he thinks that idea is a little far-fetched, and that his own idea of what Timon was thinking sounds better. Timon can only give a look of “Why me?” disgust to the camera.

Timon makes a flamboyant entrance into the ring in matador suit, and entertains the crowd with bad stand-up comedy lines about bulls while Pumbaa prepares for his own entrance. But Pumbaa’s entrance will be delayed – by the return of El Toro, who has “beefed” himself up for the event with a crash body-building course to prove he is still the champion. He attempts to dispose of Pumbaa by flushing him down a toilet, then appears in the ring. Timon isn’t quite sure what hit him, and thinks his pal is overacting – until Pumbaa escapes the plumbing and charges in to try to save his friend. Timon goes through the usual delayed reaction at finding himself in the ring with two bulls, and then Timon’s question, “If you’re Pumbaa, then what Pumbaa is THAT Pumbaa?”. The answer is obvious. Our heroes find themselves cornered, and Toro charges from a long distance, allowing for him to engage in transportation changes every time the camera cuts away to view him – from drag racer to diesel truck to streamlined train to Nasa rocket. Pumbaa finally convinces Timon to fight, reminding him of his boasts and that “You’re the brave one.” Timon asks just how he should do it – perform a flamenco dance? This is precisely what he ultimately does, bamboozling the bull similarly to Bugs Bunny’s impromptu dancing in “Bully for Bugs”, while planting snapping mousetraps on his nostrils, smashing clanging cymbals upon his snout, and having Pumbaa blast him in the face with the sour notes of a tuba. Timon backs the bull away from him, using a plunger to prod him instead of a sword, while Pumbaa rolls a cannon up behind the bull, Timon using the plunger end to stuff the bull inside. The cannon is fired, and the toilet plumbing is pushed into the ring, allowing the bull to land in the same predicament in which he had placed Pumbaa. The film quickly comes to a close as our heroes bow before the crowd and are strewn with flowers, Pumbaa shouting, “Ole”.

Bull Running on Empty (Warner, The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries, 11/11/95) is sadly perhaps one of the weakest episodes of this series I have encountered. Made in an early season when one episode spanned the entire half-hour, it provides us with material that would have felt labored in running length even had it been cut to 10 to 12 minutes. Tweety and Hector seem to be given virtually nothing to do (although Tweety inexplicably comes up with a pair of thermal binoculars to give Granny to ultimately locate the stolen item), and Sylvester performs only two functions: mimic for one sequence his “scaredy cat” behavior from the classic cartoon of the same name in observing and keeping out of harms’ way the rest of the gang from the systematic destruction of Granny’s hotel room by saws appearing in the floorboards – and spending the entire remainder of the cartoon running from the bulls of Pamplona. (Sylvester complains, “I’ve heard of a running gag, but this is ridiculous.”) The “mystery”, when unraveled, makes no sense (and not in a funny cartoony way – just isn’t thought out in any manner). A museum artifact known as the Pamplona Periscope is missing, stolen from a hole cut or gnawed through the wooden base of its display case, leading to a crawl space in which only rats seem to reside. A caretaker of the bull ring seems to have had his apartment ransacked, and the ring is left locked, leaving the bulls running in the annual festival with no destination to run to (and free to endlessly pursue Sylvester). Attempts are made to keep Granny out of the way, by sawing her entire hotel room out of the building, then later locking her in the Pamplona public library. All of this boils down to the revealing of a supposedly old (and smelly) adversary of Granny’s – a crook living in the sewers called the Spanish Mole, who has used trained rats to commit theft of the Periscope and his other dirty work. A mere butt from Sylvester’s pack of bulls brings him to justice. It seems that he had disguised himself as the town’s bull ring caretaker for years, living under their noses (yet no one seems to have previously noticed his smell). And just when it seems Granny will reveal the Mole’s master plan to the populace, posing to them the questions why he waited until now to pull his crime, and why he locked the bull ring, Granny performs the ultimate cop-out to reveal how little the writers have thought this through, remarking, “Beats the heck out of me. I was hoping you’d fill me in.” For the quick half-smile this line delivers, it hardly justifies the existence of this episode.

Very few gags instill any life into this lame venture. One decent laugh is the museum curator’s telephone call from a restroom phone to “The World’s Greatest Detective”, a caricature of Sam Spade who is too busy playing tiddly winks with pennies to respond to the call for help. So instead, the curator takes note of graffiti on the restroom tile, one providing a telephone number and reading, “For a good detective, call Granny.” Granny somehow arrives in Spain via a second-hand rocket car, which jets them there in record time, but continues to sputter with knocks and pings after the ignition key is turned off, Granny remarking that it’ll stop – eventually. Of course, upon escaping from Granny’s runaway hotel room, Sylvester winds up with a red blanket, and an alarm clock ready to go off, waking the bulls from exhausted slumber for another day of chasing Sylvester. The bulls ultimately charge through the locked door of the bull ring in seeking out Sylvester, and Tweety and Hector provide Sylvester with a red jogging suit, ensuring that the running will continue round and round the arena ad infinitum.

• An angled print of “Bull Running on Empty” is on Dailymotion

Critters (Warner, Batman, 9/18/98) – One Enoch Brown (affectionately, “Farmer Brown”), an old-timer of country stock who looks and talks like he stepped out of “American Gothic”, but is in reality a highly-skilled biochemist, puts on a presentation with his attractive young country daughter (whom Bullock later refers to as “Elly Mae” for her resemblance to Donna Douglas of The Beverly Hillbillies) at an agricultural expo. Brown presents his solution to world hunger – growth hormones, which have produced a cattle specimen of proportions worthy to provide a meal to King Kong. The bovine is startled by flash photography in the same manner as the legendary ape, and breaks loose, with Commissioner Gordon and Bruce Wayne present in the front row. Bruce finds the creature chasing him, and pulls down a large red theater curtain, which drapes over the beast’s eyes like a cape, causing him to crash into the wall and stun himself, while Brown administers a sedative to leave him dreaming of green pastures. Gordon praises Bruce for his quick thinking, but Bruce covers for his uncharacteristic bravery, informing the Commissioner that he only pulled down the curtain to try to escape through the window.

Brown receives an injunction to cease his experiments and remove all live specimens from Gotham. Brown protests that this will mean financial ruin, but the judge responds, “You should have thought of that before you started creating these monsters.” Brown exits the courtroom, muttering, “I’ll give them monsters.” Before long, the city receives a “trial run” of giant aphids (or are they some form of mantis?), genetically altered to be immune to insecticide, but self-destructing to provide a warning. Then, a massed attack of Pterodactyl-like giant chickens, and a rampaging cow and bull bigger than the previous prototype. Batgirl and Robin, on prowl patrol in the batmobile, find themselves in the middle of the stampede. “Holy cow”, utters Robin, as Batgirl responds, “You had to say it.” Batgirl leads the cow into a construction yard, then lassos its legs with a batarang and rope, tripping it into a vat of cement mix. The bull of course invades a china shop, but is lured out by Robin waving his cape in matador fashion and shouting “Hey, Ferdinand.” The bull gives chase, as Robin leaps through the plate glass of a building window, and the bull tries to do the same, getting his head caught within the concrete framing. Batgirl assists, commandeering a garbage truck and driving it up against the bull’s hindquarters to prevent it from extricating itself. Robin looks out upon the scene from an upstairs window, and can’t resist the remark, “That’s a lot of bull.”

Of course, Brown is behind it all, operating from a new secret island lair outside the city limits. He demands a payoff of 50 million in unmarked bills, or the bugs come back for good. Batman and the Commissioner pull a switch, with most of the bills consisting of blank paper, and one of Batman’s homing devices concealed on the stack. The showdown at the island lair contains no further bullfighting, but attempts to place the bat-trio and Bullock in a silo which is really a rocket for launching into Gotham the hive of mutant bugs. Batman not only tricks one of the insects into ripping open the rocket door so as to allow for an escape of the heroes, but aims the armored car in which the money drop-off was made on a collision course with the rocket doorway before liftoff, sabotaging its flight and killing-off the bugs in the explosion. Brown and his daughter are arrested for an anticipated prison term of 10 to 20, with Bullock offering them the encouraging word that maybe he can find them a nice prison farm.

• Batman’s “Critters” is on DailyMotion

Pokey Mom (Film Roman, The Simpsons, 1/14/01) is one of two Simpsons episodes to include bullfighting. The setup for this one is both brief and odd. While driving hope from an apron festival, Homer spots a sign advertising a prison rodeo at a local penitentiary. The Simpsons attend the event in a front row of the grandstands, watching various inmates get thrown violently in the events. Among them is a prisoner who gets thrown and wedged into the fence on another side of the arena by a bucking bull. Marge wonders where the rodeo clowns are to keep the bull away from the helpless prisoner. They are still in the dressing rooms, fussing over their clown makeup. So Marge flails her arms wildly, trying to attract the bull’s attention away from the inmate. The waving has no effect. Homer calmly informs Marge that to get a bull’s attention, you need to wave something red at them. So, he picks up Lisa in her red dress, and dangles her precariously over the railing, waving her as a ready target for the bull’s wrath. But Homer isn’t a cruel parent, and pulls Lisa back to her seat as the bull’s charge toward them begins. Now, Homer says, all they need to do is wave something in calming blue at the beast to quiet him down. Homer reaches for Bart, but is aghast to find that Bart is not wearing a blue shirt. This is hardly a surprise, as Bart, who always wears red, points out, “Dad, I don’t even OWN a blue shirt.” The bull continues unabated, smashing into the grandstand, knocking Homer over the railing, then head-butting Homer halfway across the prison yard into the side of a guard tower. Unaware of what caused the impact vibration, the guard above responds reflexively, launching a volley of tear gas bombs into the stands, and dispersing the crowd.

The remainder of the show diverts entirely from the subject of bullfighting, splitting into two separate stories. Marge attempts to rehabilitate a prisoner she discovers has natural artistic talent, while Homer attempts to rehabilitate a battered back resulting from the accident. He is referred to a chiropractor who provide only temporary relief, and wants Homer to return for multiple weekly visits over the next three years. Homer discovers a better solution by accidentally falling backwards over the side of a tipped trash can – which instantly sets his vertebrae into proper position. Seeing possibilities in this easy cure, Homer opens his own chiropractic practice, without a license, administering the same treatment to every one of his patients, with miracle results. That is, until two mysterious men express an interest in buying into Homer’s idea, but turn out to be rival chiropractors, who destroy his trash can.

• The best I can find on “Pokey Mom” is a time-compressed vertical set of clips with audio and superimposed narration, on Youtube. Or you can watch it on Disney+.

Million Dollar Abie (4/2/06) is another roundabout script that seems to throw together several short and disparate ideas to fill out a half-hour timeslot. Homer sets his mind to spearheading a campaign to bring the NFL’s latest expansion team to Springfield. The campaign works as if by a miracle, and a new stadium is built, the whole town painted in the jersey colors of the soon-to-be Springfield Meltdowns, and all the streets renamed for various football terms and phrases. This renaming disorients the NFL commissioner in finding directions to the stadium to publicly sign the contract, his old road map only showing the street’s old names. He stops at the Simpsons’ house to phone for directions, finding Grandpa Abe to be the only one home who did not go to the stadium. Grandpa becomes mistakenly convinced that the stranger is a hoodlum intending to rob the house and prey on the elderly – so knocks the commissioner out with a blow from a golf club, and keeps him tied and gagged in a chair until late in the evening, when everyone at the stadium has given up waiting and gone home. The family arrives to discover Abe’s blunder, and release the commissioner, only to hear him swear that he will never return to this crazy town – and neither will the expansion team.

Abe is treated as an outcast by the town for losing the franchise. Another resident of the retirement home suggests he visit a physician specializing in assisted suicides, to put himself out of his misery, as well as satisfy the urges of the town to kill him. Grandpa ultimately consents to death by a suicide computer (looking much like a giant smart phone) to cut off his vital systems. Things do not go according to plan, as the police break in for a raid two minutes before Abe is to expire, announcing that the assisted suicide law has been repealed. The doctor swears, “I’ll kill you” – that is, once the repealing law is itself repealed. Grandpa revives in an emptied room, and thinks he’s dead. He wanders around in a hospital gown, ignoring busy crosstown traffic and taking other risks, believing he has nothing to fear. However, he spots the Simpson family in a restaurant, and thinks Homer or Bart went berserk and killed them all in a murder spree. They inform him that he is not really dead, and are shocked to find that he nearly suicided. But Abe declares he’s through with thoughts of suicide, observing that these few moments when he felt there was nothing to fear were the happiest moments of his life. He resolves to spend the rest of his life in such fearless manner. So, when a town meeting is called to figure out what to do with the empty football stadium, and the proposal is raised to turn it into a bullfighting arena, Abe volunteers to be the town’s first matador.

Abe trains in the backyard, using as a bull Bart on a bicycle with a set of horns strapped to the bicycle basket. Abe is too fast for Bart, but Homer is not, and nearly gets speared in the rear while bending over, then turns around to walk right into the horn points, catching him painfully at a key spot between the lower limbs. Lisa, as usual, is completely opposed to the idea – not so much for Grandpa’s safety, but because of the pointless slaughter of helpless bulls. She serenades her pleas for an end to the plan outside the stadium, self-accompanied on Spanish guitar, while the townsfolk merely admire her as cute but ignore altogether her message. Grandpa makes his debut in full matador garb, performs multiple “Veronica” cape passes, and tires the bull out, who lays on the dirt prone and exhausted, while Grandpa, with only momentary hesitancy, follows the crowd’s verdict of “thumbs down” to the bull, and with only the bloodletting kept offscreen, finishes the beast. That night, Grandpa stands admiring himself in the mirror, while Lisa enters, asking him how he could do it. Grandpa explains that for the first time in his life, people were cheering him for what he did, driving him to follow through. Lisa remarks, “I was cheering for you all the time, Grandpa – till now.” As she exits, Grandpa contemplates how she always knows what to say to get to him. At the next bullfight, Grandpa’s performance remains the same as the debut, with the bull again falling to the dirt in exhaustion. But this time, when Grandpa pulls his sword, he tosses it away across the arena, leaving it sticking in the arena fence, then walks to the corrida gates, opening both the main exit and the door holding back all the remaining bulls. Springfield experiences its first-ever running of the bulls, as they stampede down Main Street and everywhere they can find anything red or anyone engaged in selling meat. Only Abe and Lisa rise above the situation, in lawn chairs suspended in mid-air by helium-filled toy balloons. Lisa congratulates Grandpa on turning over a new leaf – but Grandpa’s woes may not be over yet, as two bulls rise into the sky on either side, also suspended by balloons. “Uh oh” moans Grandpa, for an abrupt cut to credits.

There is also a brief “couch gag” bit, with horned couches charging the family like a running of the bulls, from Season 25, episode 16.

What Goes Around (Dreamworks, The Penguins of Madagascar, 9/19/09) – The Penguins leave the zoo on a secret mission to replace the dolly of a little girl (which they have accidentally caused to be lost down a sewer grating at the zoo). Rico just happens to possess an identical doll as one of his private treasures, and is sweet-talked by Skipper into sacrificing it to prevent the thought of the never-ending weepy-eyes of the little girl. But once the mission is accomplished and the substitute doll left for the little girl to find, the problem remains of returning home cross-town to the zoo – particularly when a psychotic male animal control officer with high-tech capture van spots them on the street, and declaring them strays, says “They’re mine.” (This character may be said to predict the equally determined French female officer who would later appear in Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted.)

Throughout the episode, Rico feels dejected that his own dolly was sacrificed to make the girl happy. Private keeps reassuring him that good deeds don’t go unrewarded, and that what goes around, comes around. Yet, the penguins’ luck seems to keep going from bad to worse as the control officer remains hot on their trail. The penguins seem finally cornered, with the van blocking their path to the zoo. The officer wise-cracks that he knows why penguins are from the antarctic – they can’t take the heat. This angers Rico, who coughs up, from his never-ending belly full of useful objects and supplies, a bullfighter’s hat and red cape. He waves the cape before the van, taunting its driver to advance. The van charges Rico at full speed, but the penguin nimbly dodges, again and again, creating a needed diversion. Meanwhile, the other penguins swing down on ropes as the van passes, each of them armed with a monkey wrench. When the van pauses briefly at the end of each charge, the penguins use their wrenches to loosen bolts in the hubs of the van’s wheels. By its final charge, the van’s wheels fall off, capsizing the vehicle on its side. Rico mutters one word of clear dialog: “Ole!”

While the remainder of the film features no bullfighting, a final stand by the control officer at the zoo gates leads the penguins to notice he is standing just under a pipe connected to the zoo’s sewer line, prompting Rico to spit out a tool large enough to sever the pipe, in hopes of deluging the officer with the pipe’s foul contents. Yet nothing comes out as the pipe is cut. The officer lassos the birds, and calls the office to arrange for a nice tight-fitting cage for the four of them. Then, a rumbling and whistling is heard by Skipper. Looking up, the pipe is vibrating in threatening fashion, and Kowalski realizes something has been blocking the pipe, and it’s gonna blow. Out shoots, with the speed of a bullet, the lost dolly of the little girl, right in the officer’s face. As the doll bounces back, landing at the feet of Rico, the long-anticipated sewer water spews all over the helpless control officer, placing him out of commission. The penguins are able to return to headquarters safely, while the animal control officer is dragged away for causing seven blocks of destruction in his wake, and his remarks about wild penguins treated as the frantic ravings of a lunatic. And Rico hugs his new dolly in replacement of the one he gave up, proving that the universe eventually catches up in providing the return good luck for a deed well done.

• “What Goes Around” can be found, with last shot clipped, at DailyMotion.

There have been two fairly recent features built on The Day of the Dead. I am not truly into the ins and outs of such cultural mythos, nor can say that I quite understand it. (For example, both films carry a message that to be forgotten by the living is to bring an end to your afterlife. A sentimental idea, but does this mean that no one’s afterlife extends beyond the next generation or so who knew them personally? Or do passed-down stories count as being “remembered”? Furthermore, Pixar’s “Coco” places importance upon having a photograph. So what happened to souls before the invention of the camera? Honestly, these films’ explanations get as mixed-up as details of the life and origins of Santa Claus.) Yet, despite Pixar’s higher budget and more sophisticated technical know-how, I am surprised to say I give the edge in a comparison-test of the two projects to The Book of Life (Fox/Reel FX Animation, 10/17/14). Perhaps it could be said that the simpler visual style of this film has a certain UPA-ish attraction for stylistic and innovative design, making excellent use of color and Mexican art-inspired imagery in both costume and set design. The fashioning of nearly all of its characters as portrayed by wooden puppets from a chest of museum artifacts, together with the transformation of these deliberately-blocky designs into stylized skeletal versions as they visit the realms of the dead, is also quite creative and surprisingly well-executed, not looking cheap despite being an obvious money-saver in computer modeling. Plus, its storyline plays, and homages, more to themes traditional to Mexican cinema than the Pixar film did, and gives us characters who, even if bordering upon traditional stereotypical roles, tweak the stereotypes enough with updated attitudes and humor, and play the roles with enough emotion and soul, to make them more engaging and memorable than the Pixar cast. And, there are enough laughs and plot twists to maintain viewer interest throughout its length, with no real lags (something I found not always true of “Coco”). The effort, while not rising to the level of blockbuster in box office, was financially and artistically viable, doubling its original investment, and earning positive reviews and a Golden Globe nomination. If memory determines the length of afterlife, we can only hope that those who have seen it will keep this film alive considerably long after Coco has fallen to the dust of the forgotten.

The storyline follows a tale related by a shapely museum curator in an exhibit of Mexican cultural artifacts, penned into the Book of Life, an ever-changing magical volume containing the life stories of every soul, of a legendary wager between La Muerte, a skeletal but alluring female spirit who presides over the festive land of the remembered, and her erstwhile paramour, Xibalba, ruler of the deeper and danker land of the forgotten, where those not remembered go to crumble into dust. (Xibalba may be said to be the only character directly derivative from another studio’s work – but perhaps this is a good thing, as he is almost a “dead” ringer for the entertaining Hades from Disney’s “Hercules”). Xibalba wants out of his present job, and wants to swap realms with La Muerte. He apparently got stuck with his job by losing a previous wager, and, knowing La Muerte’s weakness for a good bet, offers another one. Two random child youths (Juaquin and Manolo) are observed on Earth, both sweet upon the same Senorita (Maria). Each of the gambling spirits chooses a boy as their champion, with the bet to see which one will marry Maria. If Xibalba’s boy (Juaquin) wins, realms are swapped between the spirits. If La Muerte’s Manolo wins, Xibalba agrees to stop meddling in human life forever (his only enjoyable pastime). Of course, Xibalba isn’t above cheating.

Juaquin aspires to be a soldier and hero like his military ancestors and living father, while Manolo is a gentler kind, torn between his love of playing soulful guitar and his family’s (the Sanchezes) generations-old legacy of being champions (and becoming quickly deceased) in the bull ring. Manolo is fine at learning the moves of the cape – but when to comes to the sword, sees no justification as to why the bull must be killed. Papa and Grandma Sanchez insist upon the old ways, and will show no regret for the conduct of generations of Sanchezes in slaying El Toro in the ring, living by a family motto – “a Sanchez never apologizes.” Maria, an intelligent and spirited girl, likes them both, but seems to show a bit of a edge toward Manolo, who holds more of the key to touching her heart than the brave but slightly self-centered Juaquin and his attempts to impress her with boisterousness and bravado. Even Xibalba soon sees this edge quickly, and decides to even the score, by somehow obtaining custody of a glowing green medal possessing magical protective powers for its possessor, either lost or stolen from a dreaded Mexican bandit cheiftan named El Chakal, and slipping it to Juaquin in a trade while wearing a human disguise. Thus, Juaquin’s success in the future battles he will face is assured.

Time passes, and the three youths grow to maturity, with Maria returning to the village after an extended tutelage in Spain, a natural and self-assured beauty. Juaquin has carved out an impressive military career for himself, with a chest decorated in medals of bravery (though keeping concealed within his uniform the “lucky” green medal obtained long ago). Manolo has been garbed as a matador, but still plays the guitar he had received as a going-away gift from Maria, with a carved inscription on the side telling him to always play from the heart. It is the day of Manolo’s first public bullfight. But, despite his elders’ insistence that he use the sword in the ring as intended, Manolo cannot bring himself to finish the bull, angering the crowd and disgracing the Sanchez name. Only Maria remains behind as the arena empties, the only one appreciating that he stood his moral ground, and listens in the shadows as he consoles himself with a plaintiff soliloquy on guitar. On the opposite battlefront, Juaquin surprises her with an engagement ring and a proposal, but lets slip enough verbal hints that his idea of an ideal married life is for the woman to devote herself solely to pleasing her husband, that Maria realizes he has retained the worst aspects of his self-centered nature. Though her father tries to give consent to Juaquin in advance of her own word, aimed more personally at keeping Juaquin around the village to protect against the bandit attacks of El Chakal, Maria will not give Juaquin an answer, though not locking him out of her life entirely with a no, hoping for the sake of their old friendship that maybe someday he’ll wise up and change his ways.

Though utterly disappointed in his son’s performance in the bull ring, Manolo’s father, hearing of Juaquin’s inability to obtain an immediate yes from Maria, convinces Manolo to at least act like a Sanchez by fighting to win the favor of his lady love. Manolo thus serenades at Maria’s window, and asks her to meet him secretly at dawn at a scenic vista on the outskirts of town. Overhearing this and other developments of the day in the shadows is Xibalba, checking in on his bet. He senses disaster if the romantic meeting takes place, and (in what could be said to be another borrowing of a story element from a Disney feature, this time “Aladdin”), transforms a snake-shaped walking staff into a living venomous reptile, to “take care of things”. As dawn breaks and finds the prospective lovers bonding, the snake does its work, biting Maria on the leg before Manolo can defend her. Maria is carried lifeless in Manolo’s arms to her father, and Manolo is blamed for once again not rising to the occasion as a man should have. Manolo remains on the spot, pouring out his emotions in a solo song to the skies at wishing to follow Maria. Who should appear in the same human disguise as before but Xibalba, who asks if he really, from the heart, wants to follow her to the land of the dead. Manolo answers yes, and Xibalba responds, “Done”. The snake reappears, biting Manolo twice.

We are transported with Manolo to the happy land of the remembered, where every day is fiesta – but especially today, being the Day of the Dead. A skeletal but recognizable Manolo is united with the entire deceased family line of the Sanchezes, most of whom perished in the ring, but still brag of their exploits. They are disappointed in Manolo, but not in a hard-handed way, and generally accept him, together with the loving arms of Manolo’s deceased Mama, who seems to be the one from which he inherited his soulful heart. But where is Maria? No one seems to know or have seen her. Suggestion is made to see La Muerte about it – but who instead is discovered to be sitting in her throne but Xibalba! Xibalba reveals the stakes of his bet, and declares that La Muerte is now down in permanent exile within the land of the forgotten. Manolo demands to know how Xibalba could have won the bet with Maria dead. Xibalba reveals that his snake requires two bites to make death permanent – only one bite has the “Snow White” effect of a sleeping death, revivable by a love’s first kiss. And Juaquin placed a kiss upon the lifeless form of Maria, bringing her back to life! Although Maria does not truly return the love of Juaquin’s kiss, upon learning of the death of Manolo, she has given her consent to Juaquin to please her father and the town and provide them with a protector against the bandits. So, Xibalba has claimed a win of the bet early, and La Muerte, unknowing of Xibalba’s cheating, has lived up to her side of the bargain. Manolo thus embarks on an unprecedented trek to the land of the forgotten, never survived (or perhaps we should say, accomplished) by any former mortal’s soul from the land of the remembered before his or her time. After facing several harrowing challenges, including a labyrinth with three rolling boulders of the Indiana Jones variety of crushing weight, Manolo is deemed pure of heart and worthy enough to gain entrance past the underworld’s gatekeeper spirit. La Muerte is tipped off, and she and Xibalba do a good job of spitting fire with words and tearing hair between themselves, until Manolo reminds them that this is getting him nowhere in trying to set things right for himself and Maria. The need to return to Earth becomes even more magnified when word reaches them that back at the village, a battle has taken place between Juaquin and some of El Chakal’s men, who have discovered in the battle Juaquin’s possession of the glowing green medal. Chakal has sworn death to the whole village in effort to retrieve the amulet – in which event the Sanchez clan would lose all remembrance among the living (but what about the spectators who knew of their fame in the bull ring?), and descend to the crumbling ranks of the forgotten. Manolo asks to be sent back to Earth, which both La Muerte and Xibalba at first declare out of the question. However, realizing their gambling spirit from their tales of deception, Manolo proposes a wager of his own – that he will face any challenge Xibalba can think up in return for the chance to go back. (It is not entirely clear what would be the penalty if he loses, that he would not already face when his village forgets him.) Xibalba thus zaps into existence a ghostly bull ring, with the Sanchez spirits and other skeletons in attendance, and poses the challenge to Manolo – to fight the spirits of every bull the Sanchez clan slaughtered over the years, all at once. Manolo knows this is likely to be more than he ever thought to bargain for – but with a ring of fire encircling him within the arena, he has little choice but to lift cape and sword, and face the onslaught.

The skeletal bull spirits are released. (It is quite unclear how one is supposed to finish a bull who is already dead – but we can only presume that the sword provided is somehow capable of accomplishing the task in traditional fashion.) Manolo performs not without natural fear, but nevertheless handsomely, in accomplishing pass after pass with his capework as bulls charge him every second from one direction or another. Seeing Manolo doing well, Xibalba ups the odds his own way, by amassing all the bull spirits into one giant, monster bovine towering several stories above Manolo. Manolo continues to perform amazing passes and capework, finally succeeding in causing the bull to crash into an arena wall, temporarily stunned and out cold. The Sanchezes (now including the soul of Manolo’s father, who has just arrived in the underworld by falling as one of the first victims to El Chakal and his bandits above) shout for Manolo to finish the beast. Manolo’s sword, as well as his guitar, have fallen into the dirt in the center of the arena during the battle. As Manolo reaches for the sword, his own reflection in the blade tells him once again that this is simply not his way – and instead, he reaches for the guitar. No, he does not sing off-key like El Kabong. Instead, he composes on the spot a sincere melody from the heart, admitting to all the amassed bull spirits that his family was wrong to have uselessly spilled their blood in the arena, and seeking within their heart forgiveness, through his own heartfelt apology. The bull is disbelieving at first, and butts Manolo and the guitar halfway across the arena. But Manolo still does not fight, and picks up the guitar to resume the apology. The beast charges again until he is nose to nose with Manolo – but hears the song’s words, stops short of collision, and allows Manolo to gently touch the bull’s face with one hand. The bull spirits become pacified, and the massed bull evaporates into what appear to be a flurry of wind-swept autumn leaves, the last one falling to rest in the palm of Manolo’s hand, having the shape of the outline of a heart. Manolo has won the challenge, yet stayed true to his ideals. The spirit of Manolo’s father repeats the old adage to him that “ A Sanchez never apologizes – until now.” A reconciliation occurs between father and son, and Manolo receives the right to return to Earth.

I won’t cover all the details of the final battle, which get a little tricky and leaves the subject of bullfighting. Suffice it to say that Juaquin loses his protective medal to the bandit, exposing that his courage was based on artificial help. Maria stands alone to rally the remaining townsfolk against what seem hopeless odds – but Manolo returns to everyone’s amazement, and stands up to Chakal, stating that he will fight. Chakal laughs uproariously, “You and what army?” An army does indeed arrive – the entire Sanchez clan reincarnated (La Muerte and Xibalba appearing and explaining that this being the Day of the Dead, they have some creative leeway). A battle royal takes place, with Manolo stealing away the magic green medal, which changes hands several times, fortunately being in Manolo’s hands when he and the bandit fall in a fatal blow to the bandit, but from which Manolo miraculously survives. Manolo tosses the amulet to Xibalba, to ensure it will not again fall into mortal hands. Manolo marries Maria, but the bride’s bouquet is caught by Juaquin, giving sign that he won’t be far behind to the alter among the local women. Even a reconciliation takes place between the formerly-bickering La Muerte and Xibalba, as the finale shot reveals that the museum guide telling the tale has really been La Muerte in disguise all the time, and Xibalba takes her in a final romantic embrace for the fade out.

Al Rojo Vivo (translation: “Red Hot”) (Disney, Mickey Mouse Cartoons (TV), 3/27/15 – Dave Wasson, dir.) – A Mickey episode with dialog entirely in Spanish, set in Pamplona, Spain for another running of the bulls. Mickey and Minnie watch on the sidelines, dressed in special white outfits of local design for the occasion – that is, until the wide – er, rear – of Pete looms in front of them to block their view. When Mickey politely asks that Pete step aside, all he receives is a kick in the gut from Pete’s peg leg, landing him in a barrel, and rolling him out into the middle of the street, where he receives a good trampling by a wave of bulls and the members of the crowd running ahead of them. Minnie is hung helplessly by her skirt upon a lamppost, while Pete tries to steal kisses from her. Mickey is peeved, and turns red from head to toe – not a good thing when you are in the middle of a bull run. One of the bulls who has passed him looks over his shoulder, stops, and his eyes turn as red as the color of Mickey’s anatomy. Minnie shouts a warning to Mickey, and the mouse turns white again – this time from fright. The color change is not soon enough to stop the advance of the raging bull, and Mickey flees for his life through the crowd, who parts a wide path for Mickey and the bull to pass.

Mickey ducks behind a parked van. However, its color is “Rojo!” (red). The bull’s horns emerge, right through the vehicle’s side. Mickey seeks refuge behind a flower cart – also full of “rojo” flowers. More destruction. Wherever Mickey runs, his surroundings seem to provide such objects as a red motor scooter, a red guitar, etc., and finally a whole neighborhood where almost everything seems to be red. Mickey spots one place in the neighborhood not red – a white door – so performs a transformation act, pulling off his black ears and blending into the scenery in camouflage fashion, while the over-stimulated bull tears up everything else in sight. The bull finally departs, and Mickey returns to his old, casual whistling self. But not for long, as it seems that part of the local festivities include a block-wide food fight – with red tomatoes! Mickey is plastered from head to toe with the dripping redness. The bull returns on cue, chasing Mickey through what seems a tidal wave of tomato juice resulting from the fight. He looks down at himself, to also remark with shock, “Rojo!”, as he too is now dripping red everywhere. Before the bull can ponder the question whether he should charge upon himself, who should backtrack to catch up with him but the herd of other bulls. Mickey and the first bull now race side by side, fleeing from the stampede of angry bovines behind them. Finally, Mickey decides he’s had enough, slams on the brakes, and holds up a cautionary hand to the “red bull” beside him to pause for a moment. Pulling out a large red handkerchief from his pocket, Mickey quickly wipes off the tomato goo from his own person, and then from the bull, restoring them to natural colors. The confused bulls behind them skid to a halt, realizing they have nothing more to charge at. Mickey grabs up all of their tails, and gives the herd a few small judo flips to show them who’s boss, then provides the herd with a new target, tossing the tomato-soaked handkerchief onto Pete. Riding atop the head of the lead bull, Mickey order a charge, and the herd knocks Pete for a loop that sails him entirely out of a long shot of the city skyline. Mickey accepts the applause and cheers of the crowd, and releases Minnie, who plants a kiss on his cheek. The bulls all stand behind them, cheering Mickey as their temporary friend. Mickey begins to blush from the kiss, which might be bad enough as the color red begins to flush through his cheeks. But even worse, the pants of his white outfit fall down, revealing that he is wearing his traditional red pants underneath! A scream from Mickey at knowing what’s to come, and a quick cut to credits.

Adios for now, amigos!

No, this is not a comprehensive history of images in motion on the animated screen. It instead is a look at the subject of animated characters uprooted from their surroundings, and facing the dilemma of relocation by choice or under adverse circumstances. Many a character avoided these consequences by having some hero burst in in the nick of time, to foil a traditional moustached fiend’s vile efforts to foreclose the mortgage. We’ll disregard these, and concentrate on the not-so-lucky, faced with packing up the content of the old homestead and having them carted away. Also, we’ll share focus with the other regular participants in such transient events – the “professional” moving man, who, at least in cartoons, is often responsible for more damage than if the property owners hadn’t bothered to invest in protective packaging for their heirlooms at all. I will not necessarily look at every instance where a character has taken on a new life in a new town or home, but concentrate primarily on the ones where the process of moving itself shares a primary role in the story development. Also, I’ll save a few sidelights for instances where it is not the characters themselves taking the trip, but some massive object newly acquired or among their belongings getting the ride – such as the proverbial favorite, piano moving.

Emile Cohl

Instantly, without the order or check even traveling to the company head office, a moving van is dispatched – with no driver. The gates of the company lot open to allow the van’s departure, also without human aid. In delightful stop motion, the van arrives at the address of the abode, its rear doors unlatch, and dollies, packing baskets, and large items of furniture begin to unload themselves in a magical parade of household items and bric-a-brac. Into the house, up the stairs, and into the respective master bedroom, parlor, and kitchen skitter the makings of a home, moving into position to find their appropriate spots to make the home appear comfortable and cozy. The labor involved in smoothly transitioning all these objects simultaneously into appropriate positions, including heavy china cabinet, stove, bedstead, etc., must have been a task which would have driven any Bekins man crazy. It is evident that portions of the footage were filmed backwards, making it easier for the final room to assume proper orientation by merely moving out objects from a finished room piece by piece. Yet, the effect is still wonderful and eye-catching. What’s more, the director(s) find the time to make the exercise more than merely mechanical, injecting into the proceedings a few moments of clever humor from the inanimate cast. A small end table which enters the bedroom can’t seem to find its appropriate spot within the room’s layout, and moves around as if in search of something. It attempts to exit the room, but gets briefly hung up when it mistakes the door of a wardrobe closet for the room’s doorway. Finally finding its way out, the end table encounters the furnishings setting themselves up in the parlor. It circles a central table, on which sits a small tiffany lamp. The lamp notices its old friend, and shimmies over to the edge of the table, intercepting the end table on the next go-round. It moves onto the surface of the end table, and the end table now moves as if satisfied, realizing “That’s what I was looking for.” It proceeds back to the bedroom, and finally takes its proper place against the wall near the head of the bed.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, dishes are unpacking themselves one by one from one of the moving baskets, sliding across the kitchen table to stack up into one neat pile. When the contents are emptied, the moving baskets begin to file out of the room – all but one mischievous small basket, which hides under a table. A larger basket, apparently in charge of operations, slides back into the room and pokes around, seeking the missing receptacle. It reacts in pantomime as if it has spotted the playful prankster, and loosens from its middle a strand of rope threaded through loops in the basket side for fastening it shut. Throwing the loose end of the rope like a lasso, the big basket loops the rope through a similar wicker loop in the front of the smaller basket, the rope twisting to knot fast around the wicker. Then, the bigger basket gives a tug, dragging the playful small one out of the room. All the baskets from the various rooms similarly loop rope ends together to form a single-file chain, much like a column of tethered mountain-climbers, and head for the stairs to make their exit from the house. But before reaching the bottom of the stars, they quickly shift into reverse, to allow a last forgotten item of furnishing to make its hefty entrance up the stairs – an upright piano. Then, all the baskets file out of the house, clamber into the back of the van, the van doors close, and everyone goes on their merry way to the next job, for a sudden finish to the film. All this in a mere 3 minutes and 47 seconds (though, in all likelihood, projection speed is wrong for the silent days, and the original running time was more like five minutes). Wonderous!

Max Fleischer presents the only other silent tale of moving I’ve so far found – and it’s a gem chock full of creative sight gags – Ko Ko Packs Up (Out of the Inkwell, 10/17/25). Max has decided to move the cartoon studio to a new undesignated location, and the live moving men are backing up their van to the front door. Ko Ko, peering out from under the stopper of his inkwell, sees Max wrapping up in paper bundles various art supplies from his desk, and tossing them into large packing barrels. He hollers for Max, apparently calling for him to complete drawing him, as he is only a head and shoulders as presently inside the bottle. But Max is too busy to oblige him, and (in missing intertitles) seems to merely inform him that they are in the process of moving. A cuckoo bird (animated, but in a real clock), emerges on the hour, but does not utter the traditional “cuckoo”, instead stating in words that appear on the screen, “Good-bye, Ko Ko.” This makes Ko Ko sad and sentimental, and he begins crying bitterly. His tears emerge from his eyes as ink, and the droplets begin to pile up in big and little stacks. The large stack transforms into the shape of Ko Ko’s lower torso and clown suit, allowing the upper half of Ko Ko in the bottle to jump on top and complete his form, while the smaller tear stack transforms into the outlines of Fitz. And so, our cast is assembled.

Seeing the moving men busy lifting the heavy loaded barrels one by one onto the truck, Ko Ko suggests to Fitz that maybe they’d better get busy and pack up their belongings too. So, they move into their world of cartoon drawing boards, and begin to ready for moving everything in sight. Ko Ko begins by detaching a pot-bellied stove from the wall, and wrapping it up in paper. (Uncertain if the stove is in operation, as the gag is missed of having the paper wrapping burn up from the stove’s heat.) Fitz heads straight to the ice box, and stashes in a packing box his private collection of meat bones therefrom. Ko Ko advances to a wall with four window panes, and removes the whole window frameworks from the wall as if they were merely the flat drawings on paper which they are, leaving the wall with no window holes when he is through. Max himself gets into the comedy act in his real-life world, plucking two live goldfish from the water of their bowl, and wrapping each up in paper in the manner of a fish monger – then also wrapping in its own paper the entire bowl, still full of water, and tossing the bundle into a barrel without signs of a visible leak. Back on the drawing pad, Fitz spots a small staircase leading to an exterior doorway. Ignoring any structural integrity the steps should have, Firs rolls up the stairs platform by platform into a rectangular block, wraps and tosses the block into a barrel. In another room, Ko Ko eyes a parakeet in a cage. He first pulls out the bird’s perch from under his feet, leaving him standing on nothing while Ko Ko wraps it. Then the squawking bird gets the paper-wrap treatment. Finally, before wrapping the cage, Ko Ko guzzles down for his own enjoyment the bird’s two receptacles of drinking water. Fitz finds a loaded bookshelf, and piles four shelves of books from it into a towering column. Then, he picks up the whole column and balances it on his shoulder as if the books were glued together, carrying it to a spot beside an empty barrel. The books become unglued as suddenly as they were previously magnetized, and Fitz merely climbs atop the topmost book, kicking with his feet to separately kick each book one-by-one into the barrel. Ko Ko spots the kitchen sink, and yanks it from the wall to wrap. The act releases a torrent of water from two busted pipes behind the fixture, and a stream of water upon the floor. Koko scratches his head to figure what to do, then again plays upon the flatness of objects in a cartoon, merely reaching to the edge of the frame, and rolling up the outlines of the water stream and gushing pipes into a scroll of flat paper, and tossing the scroll into a barrel.

Fitz now begins posting signs to advise the utility companies of the firm’s relocation. The first reads: “Notice to Gas Co. We’ve moved away. Please shut off the bills and send us the meters.” Another states: “Electric Co. Please shut off current. The service is shocking.” And one to the Telephone Co. states, “For out new address, please call ‘Information’.” Ko Ko continues wrapping up whole rooms in the wall-to-wall carpet as a humongous bundle, while Fitz sets upon the arduous task of individually wrapping each lump of coal in the furnace coal bin. Fitz ventures next to an outside background, where he uproots a water well to deposit in a barrel, then lifts the hole left in the ground from the paper as a precursor of Robert McKimson’s portable holes and tosses it in too. He then yanks down the sun from the sky, and scrolls up all remaining outlines from the background into another scroll of paper, leaving the scenics entirely empty save for the barrel. Ko Ko has meanwhile ventured outside his paper dimension, and in a nice combination of live action and animation, is seen completing the wrapping of a live meowing cat in packing paper. Fitz makes sure he’ll have something to eat, by coaxing a cartoon mouse out of a mousehole, then wrapping him up too. Finally, Ko Ko runs to a real-life vacuum cleaner in a corner, grabbing up the hose and carrying it to Max’s desk. He cuts a hole in the middle of Max’s drawing table, threads the vacuum hose through the hole, then installs his own inkwell as a vacuum nozzle on the hose’s end. He turns on the power. All the remaining contents on the desk, as well as the furniture in the studio, begin to spiral in the suction of air, and disappear into the inkwell nozzle. The pull is so strong, the two moving men, laden with more heavy barrels, are sucked backwards into the room, and miraculously compress to be sucked down the vacuum hose also. Then, of course, Max himself receives the same treatment. Finally, none are left but Ko Ko, who is also pulled off his feet, whirled around in the air several times, and disappears down the inkwell, with the inkwell stopper being last to be sucked into place, sealing off the adventure.

It is possible that Oswald Rabbit was the first cartoon animal to attempt to move a piano – though few living people can verify this, due to the extreme rarity of the short, Nutty Notes (Lantz/Universal, 12/9/29). Tommy Stathes seems to be the only one who has turned up a print, but has only publicly exhibited it in a one-time theatrical setting on the East Coast to my knowledge, letting only a little over a minute of the film become available online as a sample clip. The poster art and a few brief shots suggest Oswald’s task of delivering a piano from a music store, though little is known as to how he does it. If Tommy is reading, perhaps he might be kind enough to provide some form of plot synopsis with a few clues as to the precise moving gags – or maybe any avid fan who might have sat in on his special screening.

Here’s a clip from the film:

Mickey Mouse seems to be next in accepting the task of piano moving, though in fact he is delivering an entire shipment of various musical instruments by horse (or possibly mule) and buggy, in The Delivery Boy (Disney/Columbia, 6/6/31 – Burt Gillett, dir.). The film perhaps qualifies only for an honorable mention, as the actual moving task has practically nothing to do with the meager plot. Mickey just happens by, riding through the countryside with his load, when he spots Minnie washing out her laundry with an old-fashioned washboard and pail. Mickey hides out in a pair of bloomers on her clothesline to get close to her. Minnie, upon discovering him, pulls a stitch on the bloomers, dumping Mickey into the washtub. They’re still playful friends, however, and break into an extended song and dance rendition of “In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree”. Mickey carelessly pretends a beehive hanging from a tree is a punching bag, giving the hive several rhythmic jabs and a final knockout punch, sending it flying – right onto the rear end of the hitched mule. The mule kicks and bucks, scattering the load of musical instruments all over the farmyard. Mickey and Minnie duet on the piano, while other animals of the farm take up the other instruments, to perform another extended instrumental arrangement of John Phillip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever”. Pluto, who was an additional passenger of the wagon, meanwhile wanders into a construction site adjoining the farm, playfully fetching a lit stick of dynamite tossed by foreman Pete at a blasting site. Pete and a fellow worker refuse to accept from Pluto the retrieved “stick”, instead jumping for safety into a barrel of tar. Pluto thus brings the stick to Mickey and Minnie, who are too busy with the music to notice what the stick is. Pluto begins chewing on the stick like a bone while the fuse burns shorter and shorter. Pluto becomes distracted when his fleas, who have more intelligence than he does, recognize the danger and leap off their host’s back, abandoning the proverbial sinking ship. Pluto curiously follows the fleas out of frame, and out of danger. But the stick is still within immediate proximity of Mickey, Minnie, the piano, and the mule. BLAM!! Mickey and the piano stool land back o the ground relatively unscathed, but the mule has lost his hair, and stands behind the remains of the piano (now reduced to the keyboard and hammers but no strings) with his bony ribs visible as protrusions from his bare skin. Mickey merely lines up the piano hammers with the mule’s ribs, and finishes playing the finale of the march thereon, while Minnie comes down with a tambourine stuck upon her rear end, and smacks it rhythmically to beat out march time to close the number.

Bimbo’s Express (Fleischer/Paramount, Talkartoon (Betty Boop), 8/22/31 – Dave Fleischer, dir., no animator credits on surviving TV prints), is fairly weak as Betty’s cartoons go on gag material, and has no particular plot except for engaging the characters in moving Betty’s furniture. Bimbo runs the express company, with a horse-drawn van and two partners including a heavy hippopotamus and a scrawny alley cat. Bimbo makes a unique personal approach to Betty’s front door, somehow extending his legs and jacking up his own torso about five steps in height to match the height of the door, then scaling the steps leading to the door, retracting the length of his legs for each step so that his head remains at the same height throughout the climb. Betty is busy with some personal grooming, sitting in her nightgown in an easy chair with legs raised, trying to cut her toenails with a scissor. Bimbo knocks, announcing it’s the movers. She states she can’t come to the door right now because she’s in her nightie, and Bimbo replies, “All right, I’ll wait ‘till you take it off.” (Any wonder why the censors would later target this series?) When Bimbo enters (though Betty by now is wearing her full dress and garter), love is in his eyes, and each eyeball tracks an image of Betty in its reflection – slowly from head to toe. We’re over halfway through the cartoon, and not a single piece of furniture has yet been touched. The moving process for the most part lacks in the inventiveness of prop gags present in the previous Ko Ko epic. Bimbo carries a tall Grecian-style sculpture of a shapely woman toward the exit door, paying no attention to the dimension of his carried article and instead making more flirtations with Betty, so that the statue has to duck to avoid having its head snapped off in the doorway. The cat gets hung up on twice-repeating a slide down the staircase banister while carrying a canary cage – the second slide requested by the caged bird, who shouts “More! More!” The horse moves Betty’s stove into the van while still lit, frying an egg in a pan atop it as he goes. A briefly running gag has Bimbo dropping items out a window after yelling “Okay” to the hippo below. Each time, a crash is heard before the hippo responds that he’s got it, making one wonder about the unseen condition of the furniture. Bimbo carries away a bathtub, with an unknown dog bather still in it. A staircase is wrenched out of the wall and carried away by one of the movers (a gag later remembered at Terrytoons, to be seen again in a later chapter of this series). Everything is packed into or on top of the van, and the rig moves off, with the hippo sleeping up top in Betty’s bed, and the cat rocking in a rocking chair. Bimbo asks Betty where they’re going to, and Betty responds “Around the corner” – making the whole proceedings moot, as she could have walked her items to their destination! It is also revealed in song in the final shot that Betty only moved to dodge her rent.

Krazy Kat next accomplishes what Oswald Rabbt might have done in his film, taking moving to new heights in Piano Mover (Charles Mintz/Columbia, 1/4/32 – Ben Harrison/Manny Gould, dir.). Krazy and a small dog assistant (who rides inside the piano) transport an upright model to the site of a mile-tall apartment building by horse-drawn wagon. Krazy’s wagon includes an interesting tail-gate, which folds down to form the shape of steps, allowing the piano itself to come to life and descend the few steps to the ground in an effeminate walk. The dog is small, but removes his shirt to expose bulging muscles to accomplish the task. He threads one end of a rope into a knot around the piano, then forms the rope’s other end into a coil, upon which he jumps as if the rope coil were made of spring metal. Upon jumping off the rope, the compressed coil springs up into the air, traveling twenty stories up, and makes a precise loop to thread itself through a pulley attached to the roof, its end falling back down to the ground. The dog sets himself to pull the rope, while Krazy hops atop the piano to ride it to the top. Unfortunately, as the dog pulls, a sidewalk elevator panel descends below his feet, causing Krazy to be hauled into the air more rapidly than he expected. The fast-rising piano begins to shift its weight in the rope loop, and Krazy desperately struggles to maintain his footing as the piano tips first one way, then another. Several spectacular shots appear throughout the film from overhead view looking down upon Krazy and the suspended piano, with vehicular traffic proceeding through the busy intersections many stories below. Krazy loses his footing, grabbing onto the end key of the piano keyboard with his hands. The keyboard as a unit is yanked nearly off its wooden mounting, then wondrously retracts as if held on by springs, pulling Krazy back up to its level.

Krazy spies a window ledge, seemingly within reach. He cautiously steps across the piano top, planting one foot on the ledge. Suddenly, the piano and rope slide away from him at an angle, causing his legs to engage in an impossible split between piano and ledge. His outmost leg extends halfway across the street, and a playful anthropomorphic tower clock on a building across the way uses its clock hands to grab the piano, and pull it still further away from the apartment building, extending Krazy’s legs to the limit. When the clock can’t quite bring the piano over to his side of the street, it lets go, causing the piano to swing back, and smash Krazy like a pancake against the wall of the apartment building. Krazy recovers, now finding himself hanging by his hands from the window ledge. The window is closed above him, and he desperately knocks on the window glass, hoping someone will let him inside. In one of the film’s best gags (definitely pre-code), a feminine hand opens the window partially, reaching outside to offer Krazy her apartment key! Krazy shakes his head in bewilderment, but nevertheless makes a lunge to grasp the extended arm – and misses. He tumbles down several stories, before spotting two straps hanging out a window from under a pulled windowshade. He grabs for the straps and hangs on tight. They elastically stretch, then retract to draw Krazy up to the new windowsill, as the shade goes up to reveal a female pig, wearing a corset to which the straps are attached. The embarrassed pig smacks Krazy in the jaw, launching him skyward again, then tries to pull down the windowshade, but only adds to her embarrassment by yanking the shade off its mounting entirely.

Krazy finally finds himself in a position of temporary safety, landing in a belly-flop atop a window-washer’s scaffold, on the same floor level as where the suspended piano still hangs. Out of a window immediately above pops Kitty, who remarks, “Ooh, my piano!”, and steps out on the scaffolding, taking a position at its edge to begin playing the instrument while it remains still hanging from the rope and pulley. As it seemed most every studio’s major characters had to do at one point or another in their 1930’s films, Kitty breaks into an extended musical number, of “That’s My Weakness Now”, eventually drawing Krazy into her moment of musical madness, for a vigorous dancing session upon the building ledge. The mood becomes infectious enough for the two that they pay no attention to where they are going, and dance right off the building at the corner. Kitty manages to grasp upon the edge of the ledge with her hands, while Krazy clings to her lace panties, to Kitty’s displeasure. The dog, who all this time has been holding on to the rope below, finds his massive muscles softening to putty from the strain, and extends his neck all the way to the 20th story to yell “Hey!” to Krazy, reminding him he has a job to do, and that the dog’s strength is giving out. Krazy thus gives a jerk upon his own tail like the string pull of a windowshade, and he and Kitty roll up like a retracting shade into a cylinder, regaining the ledge and rolling across its length, back to the other end where the piano still hangs. Whether by the dog’s pulling or by elastic force when the two cats land atop the piano, the instrument and rope shoot skyward once again. Irrepressible Kitty thinks the ride is all a fun game, and begins rocking the piano between her side and Krazy’s like a see-saw. Another overhead shot adds to the impression of visual vertigo by photographically blurring the perspective background behind the characters and spiraling the drawing, giving an interesting effect. Above them, a small bird sits in a nest upon another ledge corner of the building. Spying the twisting rope moving close to him, he becomes convinced that the strands are a tasty treat, and begins eating them away one-by-one. Krazy and Kitty scream below for him to stop, but their pleas are ignored, as the bird snaps the last strand. Another spiral blur follows the cats and the piano down in their dizzying fall. The piano becomes speared upon the top end of a telephone pole, and its descent rate is slowed somewhat by the impact of breaking off each of the step rungs protruding from the pole on the way down. The piano still maintains enough speed to crash through the pavement into a rectangular hole – but it appears that the hole may have already been the existing panel of another street elevator, because the piano rises back to street level from the hole, with the modification that both the instrument and the two cats now rise and fall in compression and expansion, as if built like the expandable bellows of an accordion, for the iris out.

Annie Moved Away (Lantz/Universal, Oswald Rabbit, 5/28/34 – Bill Nolan, dir.) – This one’s plot definitely centers around the subject of moving – but with not a moving man or truck in sight. Annie travels light, getting everything she needs into a small suitcase. Annie is the sweetheart and fiancé of Oswald, and Oswald believes he has everything planned for the big day. Phoning Annie from a drug store pay phone, Oswald declares he has a shiny new roadster, a honeymoon cottage, and the marriage license all at the ready – all he needs now is her. Annie is plenty eager, and agrees to be ready immediately for Ozzie to pick her up. But true love never runs smooth in a cartoon, and a standard model silk-hatted and moustached villain, cad, and rival has overheard it all from outside the phone booth. He hurries out of the store ahead of Oswald, hopping upon a motor scooter that has a bad case of recurring backfires, spraying soot over anyone in its wake, including Ozzie’s anthropomorphic roadster and a stray dog who likes to chase tires. Turning up at Annie’s residence, the roguish ruffian hastily scribbles down on paper a note, reading “This handsome gentleman will fetch you to me. Oswald.” He presents the note to Annie at her door, and out heroine is taken in by the ruse – and taken away atop the handlebars of the villain’s scooter, traveling bag in hand. The neighbors have all witnessed the hasty departure, which quickly becomes the subject of local gossip, as they know nothing of the villain’s fraudulent note. Oswald finally arrives, and makes inquiries for Annie. Convinced that she has dumped Oswald for a more handsome and wealthier man, all the neighbors break into an extended production number, set to a current pop tune most typically associated with Guy Lombardo, “Annie Doesn’t Live Here Aymore”, but with updated, custom lyrics. Several folks of various ethnic or socio-economic stereotype participate in breaking the bad news to Oswald that Annie has vacated for good, and that he has very little chance of ever finding her again – including a Jewish housewife, a bowery tough guy, an English cockney, a black mother and her three offspring in Southern drawl, and an old crone village gossip.

Meanwhile, miles down the road, Annie sits on a bench beneath a tree alongside the villain, waiting for an Oswald who seems destined never to show up. When she inquires of the villain where Oswald can be, the vile opportunist makes his move. “Aw, forget that mug. Give daddy a kiss…” He grasps Annie up in his clutches, and steals several kisses, as she screams Oswald’s name, hoping for help. Of course, Ozzie and his roadster come sadly trudging down the road in the nick of time. The villain grabs Annie and again hops on his scooter. But who else should turn up further down the road but the dog who was left covered in soot by the villain in the earlier sequences. He turns to the audience, and remarks, “Ah, revenge!” Grabbing up the root of a large tree, he physically drags the entire tree into the middle of the road, causing the villain’s scooter to crash into it. The villain lies prone on his belly in the road, while Annie is thrown from the motorbike, right into the waiting Oswald’s arms. Meanwhile, the damaged bike bounces around in the road, sputtering and backfiring twice as badly as before. The dog sees a chance for further sweet revenge, and pulls upon the belt of the villain’s trousers, opening up the rear end of his pants just wide enough to admit the motor scooter as it bounces from the reverberations of its own backfires. The villain thus finds his pants loaded with more than he can handle, and disappears down the road, being bounced all over the countryside by the belching black smoke emitting from the bike in his trousers.

Oswald produces the marriage license, and, in a reuse of half the finale sequence from Oswald’s earlier cartoon “Five and Dime”, is married at the local church to Annie, and arrives with her at the honeymoon cottage, all without missing a beat of their strutting step. They are greeted at the gate by Doc Stork, who suggests that he can bring “a little gift for you”. Oswald tells him they’re sorry, but the house is only big enough for two. “Well, you should have told me that before”, Doc remarks before leaving – as it turns out, his work has already been done, and Oswald and Annie are greeted by 16 junior bunnies, just inside the cottage door. That’s the end, if ever there was one.

Moving Day (Disney/UA, Mickey Mouse, 6/2/36 – Ben Sharpsteen, dir.) – It’s the first of the month, and the wall calendar in Mickey’s and Donald’s rented home indicates that the rent is six months overdue. Mickey and Donald have worn a circular path into the carpet from pacing the floor and wondering what to do about it. A violent knocking at the door (shaking down all the wall fixtures) heralds the arrival of the Sheriff (Pete), armed with a Notice of Dispossession, authorizing him to sell all of Mickey’s and Donand’s furniture to collect the arrearages. Pete is at his most brutal, socking Mickey in the jaw through the door peephole to gain entry, and also physically abusing Donald, lighting a match by striking its tip against the underside of his bill, then lighting his cigar and tossing the still-burning match down Donald’s throat as if he were an ash tray.

Goofy, in this instance cast as a mere friend of the mouse and duck rather than their roommate, pulls up to the rear of the house to make a delivery of ice with his old stake-bed truck. Pete meanwhile busies himself out front, hammering up signs to advertise the Sheriff’s Sale, driving the nails in the wall with punches from his bare hands. “We gotta move”, Mickey and Donald declare to Goofy, informing him of the Sheriff’s presence. Without a word of question, Goofy pitches in to help the boys in their last ditch effort to avoid the consequences. Mickey is next seen in a brief shot, attempting to pack all of his and Donald’s clothing into an old steamer trunk, but having it pop open from being too overstuffed. As was altogether too common the case in the “trio” shorts of the series, Mickey is from this point on nearly entirely written out of the script, with all action and gags handed over to Goofy and Donald. Goofy engages in an extended epic contest to determine who is the most intelligent – one live Goof, or one inanimate upright piano, which refuses to stay on the truck, and keeps rolling back into the house. Goofy catches on that the instrument only likes to roll home when he isn’t looking, so plays games with it by positioning his hat just at the windowsill to make it appear he is watching the piano’s moves. He can’t resist finally appearing at the doorway while his hat remains at the window, to give the piano a razzberry. The piano retaliates by slamming into him in the doorway, thrusting him into the kitchen and right through the refrigerator door. Unphased, the Goof is found inside the refrigerator, happily eating fresh watermelon.

Donald, meanwhile, faces his own troubles, first with a plumber’s helper stuck to his tail, then switching it for a goldfish bowl, while the plunger becomes stuck to his head. His efforts to free himself climax in tying a rope around the bowl, with the other end of the rope fastened to a doorknob, and running with all his might. The bowl pops off, but Donald’s beak gets stuck in a gas jet, which inflates him like a balloon. He pops out of the gas pipe, jetting around the room in deflation, and knocks over everything Mickey and Goofy are trying to carry out of the house, causing general destruction and chaos. Pete overhears the commotion from outside and barges in again. “Busting up my furniture!” he roars. But Donald displays an unusual streak of cleverness, remembering what Pete did to him before. As if to pacify Pete’s anger, Donald raises his head high, exposing the underside of his beak, in an invitation for Pete to strike a match again. However, the wily duck is well aware that gas is still escaping from the gas jet – so when Pete lights up, “KER-BLAMM!!!!!” The camera’s view is entirely masked in explosions and white smoke, and when our vision clears, Goofy has his ice truck in motion, catching every item of Mickey and Donald’s belongings flying from the wreckage into the bed of the truck, along with Donald and Mickey too. Clever Donald looks back at the house with a grin, to view the whole structure blasted away except for the skeleton of the interior plumbing, with Pete stranded in an upstairs bathtub and the shower water nearly drowning him. Donald laughs uproariously – until the last item of the household belongings lands upon him – the plunger, again stuck to his rear end. Donald whirls around in a fit of temper like a dog chasing its own tail, for the iris out.

NEXT: We’ll keep things moving into the later ‘30’s – I promise!

A final installment of cartoons looking toward the new ways of present times, or bringing backwards characters of the past up to speed. We’ll deal with a couple of features, a Garfield special, a recent Mickey Mouse, and a lot of up-to-date action from the Looney Tunes gang.

Garfield Gets a Life (Film Roman, 5/8/91), a half-hour prime-time special, could more appropriately be called “Jon Gets a Life”, dealing with the boredom that is Jon’s existence, and its contagious effect upon Garfield as well. The most exciting thing Jon seems to do is organize his sock drawer – two of them – by size, color, materials, blends, and all neatly tucked-in. When not occupied with socks, Jon counts ceiling tiles while flat on his back – and Garfield takes to doing the same thing, as they compare counts between the ceilings in the bedroom and living room. Garfield (perhaps for lack of anything better to do) tries to break Jon out of his rut, remembering an old copy on Jon’s bookshelf of “How To Make Friends and Fool the Rest”. Jon spots a chapter on getting dates, and attempts to follow it to the letter. Efforts to pick up girls in the park, at the beach, in the laundromat and at the video store fail miserably. Jon almost has accidental luck at a singles club (Club Ticky Tacky), as, while badly reading aloud from his book just for practice the line, “Hey there, would you like to dance with me?”, an equally-bored girl at the bar overhears him, and half-heartedly responds, “Sure, why not?” “YES!!”, shouts Jon, escorting her onto the floor. But Jon quickly loses her, by throwing her into a couple of forceful spins that spiral her right off the dance floor, then breaking into his own solo elaborate disco number (predicting Goofy’s in An Extremely Goofy Movie). Patrons of the club momentarily stare at the display, but, as the number reaches its close, the house lights go up, and Jon stands alone in an empty club, with total silence except for Jon’s last footfalls. Nevertheless, Jon strikes a closing Jon Travolta-style pose, only to hear from the rafters the voice of the D.J, yelling, “Hey, jerk. Disco is DEAD!” “What?? When??”, reacts Jon, and trudges away with Garfield, complaining how you learn a new dance, and 14 years later, they change it. “Go figure” responds Garfield in characteristic underplay.

A television ad by a dweebish-looking guy for his school, Lorenzo’s School For the Personality Impaired, intrigues Garfield and Jon – especially when mentioning such characteristics of the average students he helps as counting ceiling tiles and thinking disco is still in. Jon and Garfield arrive at Lorenzo’s meager institution (a run-down building complete with broken and partially-boarded windows and cracking plaster). They know they’re in the right place when they find every student in attendance looking up to count the ceiling tiles. Lorenzo dispenses rather meaningless advice, such as extend a hand to the one next to you and say, “Hi, my name is so-and-so”. Most of the students quote him verbatim, never including in the sentence their own name. Another suggestion is to make people believe you can speak a foreign language, by only sounding like you do. He thus utters French-sounding gibberish meaning nothing, then teaches Canadian by merely adding the syllable, “eh?” every few sentences.

Jon’s handshake extension during the class causes him to make the acquaintance of a moderately pretty girl, who is as unsure of herself as Jon is, and certain that she is blowing making a good first impression. Jon and the girl find themselves equally matched in awkwardness and shyness, and begin to open up to each other about it, being themselves – and really hit things off. Garfield is both amazed and puzzled that this is possible, having never thought Jon to have the potential for striking up any serious relationship. The two decide they’ve had enough education for one day, and step out for a bite to eat, then spend the entire evening on Jon’s porch, getting to know each other – and all the time being themselves, without following any of their professor’s advice. Things get personal for Garfield when he overhears Jon, carried away in conversation with the girl, refer to him merely as “his cat”. “Yesterday, I had a name”, Garfield complains to himself, seeing his best buddy and confidant relationship with Jon slipping away. Garfield lapses into a dream of what will happen if Jon marries, a toddler arrives, and the abuse he will endure as the toddler grabs at him and chomps upon his tail. He marches outside, seizing Jon by the collar and trying to shake some sense into him. The girl, taking her first notice of Garfield, reaches out to pet him behind the ear. “She’s trying to get to you by getting to me”. Garfield warns in thought and pantomime – but a few scratches in just the right places, and even Garfield finds himself being won over, resting in her lap as she scratches his back above his tail. However, the girl has pushed her luck, and an old nemesis of hers arises – an allergic sneezing fit when she is around cats. The two humans are heartbroken at this development, but Jon stays faithful to Garfield, giving his pet a hug. Garfield remarks at the value of having seniority. The two humans realize they can’t be a serious part of each other’s lives, but promise to see each other from time to time. Garfield still wants to ensure that things will stay this way, by promising to himself that their meetings will be chaperoned – riding along with the couple as Jon drives her home, not inside the car, but stuck to the rear window by suction cups on his feet and hands, just like so many plush Garfield ornaments decorated real-life car windows of the period.

• “Garfield Gets a Life” is on Dailymotion

My Generation G…G…Gap (Looney Tunes (unreleased, direct to video), Porky Pig, 3/31/04 – Dan Povenmire, dir.) – Hard to say if this one should have ever been produced. It was scrapped for theatrical release when box office on Looney Tunes: Back in Action failed to reach expectations (undeservedly). And it is definitely a departure for Porky, perhaps more jarring than Goofy’s 1950’s transformation to the “everyman”. Somehow, Porky is married? With a hip teenage daughter? (Where did Petunia fit into all of this, as she is never seen nor mentioned in the film.) Porky drives his daughter to her first rock concert, waiting outside the arena at a local coffee shop – where he sees a news story on TV about how out-of-control the concert tour has gotten at its previous venues, and sees a live shot from inside the area of his daughter wildly riding on the shoulders of a burly hunk. Porky spit-takes, and races for the arena, convinced that the performance is unsuitable for the likes of his young girl. A bulky gate attendant with a build reminiscent of construction worker Hercules from Bugs Bunny’s “Homeless Hare” refuses Porky entrance without a ticket, and even the influence of a talking Abe Lincoln on a five-dollar bill Porky offers the guard fails to impress him. Porky scolds Lincoln: “Y-y-you didn’t even try.” Yet, a couple of shapely girls get past the guard just on their good looks without any pass. Porky tries the same thing in drag, but just gets socked in the mush. Porky resorts to hiring a helicopter to lower him to the arena roof – however, the pilot is still giving him instructions when Porky jumps – and has not yet attached Porky’s safety cable. Porky falls through some high-tension wires, then crashes through the arena roof – in three dissected sections.

Inside, Porky lands inside an open guitar case next to the stage. The performance in progress has a rocker using guitars to smash everything on the stage – and Porky is the next “instrument” wielded. Bruised and battered, he is discovered by the guard. Running backstage, Porky ducks into wardrobe, and emerges wearing rocker’s garb, a mohawk wig, eye makeup resembling a member of Kiss, and two-foot tall platform shoes. Thinking he has spotted his daughter waiting around a dressing room backstage, Porky mistakenly demands that the young lady come home with him. She turns to reveal that she is a total stranger – and the other girls in the line would like to be taken home as well. Porky finds himself in the traditional predicament of all rockers – pursuit by an over-stimulated mob of women. He runs right into the guard, who fails to recognize him, and informs him that he should be on stage. Porky is deposited in the spotlight, while an almost stone-quiet audience tries to guess who he is. Porky tries to back away, but jostles a tall speaker, upon which someone has carelessly left a paper cup full of water. The water lands on a transformer, producing a short circuit, which makes its way up the cord of the microphone next to which Porky is standing. ZAP!! SIZZLE!! Porky engages in the most electrifying series of screams ever presented on stage, while a drummer in the back-up group behind him provides accompanying rhythmic beats. The whole stage blows up, and Porky is revealed next-to-naked. His daughter wails from the audience, “Daddy, how could you…” But the incident provides Porky with a new career, depicted in a mock TV commercial for a mail-away record album featuring 22 or so rock hits of other artists performed by a stuttering pig. As the list of hyphenated song titles scrolls across the screen, we fade out on Porky singing “B-b-b-bad to the bone.”

Rabid Rider (Warner, Road Runner (CGI), 12/17/10 – Matthew O’Callaghan, dir.) – A late theatrical short, produced in CGI. Wile E. Coyote is rarely one to be intimidated by new advances in technology. But for once, a new innovation has him perplexed – mostly, as to what to do with it. Wile E. eagerly unpacks the crate of the Acme Hyper-Sonic Transport, and dons his protective safety crash helmet before mounting up. As Road Runner passes the boulder behind which he hides, Wile E. rolls into view – at a relative snail pace and in jerking and tenuous motion and direction, atop a self-balancing platform! The device makes sudden stops causing the coyote’s belly to jam into the handlebars, topples forward to smash his face into the ground and then rights itself again, rolls him face-first into a boulder, then shifts into reverse uncontrollably, taking Wile E. Past the camera, only to be knocked back into view as he is hit from behind by an oncoming truck. As Wile E. lies prone upon the pavement, his fingers nervously drumming, the conveyance rights itself and wheels its way up to his side, letting out a beeping signal to indicate that it is ready to go again.

Wile E. knows this thing needs more speed. Standing atop it, he attempts to lasso the Road Runner passing around the neck, hoping to be towed like a chariot. His toss misses, but catches the next best thing – the air-fin of a passing sports car. Wile E. is off to the races, but has to do some fancy pulling of the “reins” to swerve and avoid being hit by oncoming traffic in the other direction. He finds himself rolling faster than the car he is tethered to, and facing the reflective rear of the back of a tanker truck between himself and the bird. Wile E. manages to fight the balancing instincts of his conveyance, leaning backwards to do a “limbo” pass under the truck’s axles. Now in front of the truck and still proceeding at a good clip, he lets go of the rope, and extends his arms in attempt to reach the Road Runner’s neck. But, the road reaches one of those inevitable T-intersections at the edge of a cliff, and Wile E. and the platform fall into the canyon below. They do not hit the ground, but come to rest straddling a pair of power wires, with the platform mid-way between two poles. Wile E. shimmies over to join his platform, but their combined weight bends the poles together at the top until their transformers touch. ZOWIE! A well-fried coyote and his platform shoot up into the air, striking into the bottom of a rock ledge overhanging above, then roll down the cliff face, Wile E. giving us a look as if to say, “Not again.” He and the platform roll past the Road Runner below, and come to rest in an intersection between a road and a train track. The platform’s wheels are sandwiched in the track bed between the rails and the cross-ties, and the machine rocks back and forth in its confined space helplessly, as Wile E. sees the approach of a train’s headlight. The coyote wisely hops off the track and his vehicle to avoid the train, only to get hit by a crossing truck. As the shadow of the train passes the flattened Wile E. in the roadway, the platform somehow emerges from the incident unscathed, and beeps again to signal that it is charged and ready for more.

Wile E. has had enough of this troublesome contraption. Swinging it around himself several times, he hurls it off a cliff. The vehicle lands on a rock ledge, balanced on a fulcrum like a teeter-totter, with a massive boulder positioned on the other end. The boulder is propelled into the air, and lands mere feet behind the sulking coyote walking on a road. Wile E. is barely phased in his bad mood by the near-miss, but his bad luck isn’t over. A large delivery truck swerves to avoid collision with the boulder, and its trailer payload is thrown over the rock, landing again mere inches behind the fleeing coyote, and covering him in a cloud of dust as he falls to the ground. As the dust clears, a chorus of electronic beeps announces the rise from the ground, one by one, of an armada of self-balancing platforms carried by the truck, who line up on each side of the roadway like an advance guard for a royal procession. Who speeds down the middle of the rows, plowing over Wile E. in the process, but the Road Runner, aboard one of the platforms himself, uttering his “Beep beep” and riding off into the sunset, passing a canyon wall on which the words ‘That’s all, folks!” appear.

Arthur Christmas (Aardman/Columbia/Sony, 11/23/11) attempts to bring the magical realm of Santa Claus into the modern hi-tech era. It also debunks a myth as to the everlasting nature of the man with the red suit and the white beard, who seems to have lived a good many lifetimes past the average human. There really wasn’t just one Santa, but several. In fact, the title has been passed down in the family for generations, the role of successor handed off twenty times since St. Nicholas to the most eligible of the clan, whenever one of those in charge reaches a stage of being past his prime.

The current Santa has already flown 70 missions. However, there’s been a lot of change to keep up with the demands of supplying toys to the entire world’s children in one night. No longer is the mission approached in the likes of a wooden sleigh. Instead, Santa’s vessel looks more like something out of Star Trek – the S-1, a giant, hovering behemoth of a space platform, complete with an underside of camouflaging cloaking panels to make it indistinguishable from the night sky as it moves into position to cover entire major cities. On a signal, an armada of elves drop on lines from the ship onto every rooftop, secure the area, and mass-unload the toys from panels in the bottom of the ship. Finding every which-way to enter into premises (one team is shown delivering presents to the president’s children in the White House by power-sawing a hole around a ceiling decoration of the Presidential seal), the elves scan sleeping children with a digital scanner that determines their percentage rating of naughty vs. nice before okaying the release of gifts from a supply chute. (One elf takes pity on a child who receives a borderline rating on the scanner, turning the device upon himself to register a more favorable rating and release the gifts.)

All is going well, and is monitored at a massive mission control base carved into the ice below the North Pole, until a child almost awakens to see the current Santa (who, more or less as a figurehead, delivers a few select toys personally). An emergency protocol is initiated to get Santa out of the touchy situation, and in the melee, a bicycle intended for a little girl falls from the ship and rests somewhere below undelivered. At mission control, two offspring of the current Santa become aware of the situation: one Steve, the elder brother and presumed next-in-line for the Santa title, currently in charge of mission control, and the younger Arthur, who has no dreams or realistic hopes of ever becoming Santa, and is a soft-spoken, sentimental type in charge of answering the letters to Santa. Arthur is distraught at the thought of the little girl who wrote for the bicycle facing complete disappointment on Christmas day when her bike doesn’t arrive, while Steve, more concerned for his own self-image and obtaining the family’s prestigious title of Santa the 21st, is not about to have it laid upon himself as being the first to allow the family’s perfect record of gift-giving to be spoiled. Steve talks his befuddled and confused Dad into classifying a one-in-a billion misdelivery as an acceptable margin of error, and Dad and Steve refuse Arthur’s request to send the S-1 out again to make the botched delivery. But Arthur will not rest until he sees that bike delivered – even if no one else will help him.

Arthur finds an unlikely source of assistance in the form of his cantankerous, headstrong, and a bit off-his-rocker Granddaddy, who was Santa before Arthur’s dad. Granddaddy claims he has a way to get Arthur to his destination to deliver the gift, and reveals out of hiding away in an ice cave something he’s been saving that no one else seems to know about – the original wooden sleigh previously used in his own heyday and by generations of Santas before him. Powered by magic dust distributed upon a team of reindeer, the “relic” can still make a top speed of 45,000 miles per hour, and maneuver under the hands of one trained in the reins to spin on a dime, streak through the skies like a comet, and fly to the moon and back if necessary (Granddaddy does so for Arthur, just for show). He remembers the good old days when the Clauses were the only humans who knew how to fly, and thinks of the present Santa (his own son) as a wimp who’d barely be able to control one of these babies. The Sleigh, in honor of the holiday, has been affectionately named “Evie”. Arthur experiences a white-knuckling but fascinating ride without the benefit of seat belts, and grows to have an equal admiration with Gramps for the ways of old, as Gramps shows him tricks like making a snowman out of cloud formations. But, a storyline we must have to support a feature-length CGI film, and a mishap places Gramps out of the driver’s seat and Arthur left holding the reins. Arthur does a good deal of globetrotting, arriving at the wrong destinations, losing the reindeer, and ultimately having the sleigh destroyed, while back at mission control, Dad and Steve finally get wind of Arthur’s secret mission, and embark on their own mission to rescue Arthur. Ultimately, all four surviving males of the Santa clan converge on the same location to try to right the wrong at the crack of dawn, but it is Arthur who, with his large heart (Steve in the course of the action discovering that he just doesn’t have a natural knack for getting along with children), receives the honor of placing the present under the tree. At Arthur’s suggestion, all of them hide behind a door, to witness the glee of the little girl when her present is opened. Dad remarks that in his 70 years, he’s always been too busy to see such an event firsthand – and realizes he should have made the time for it all this while. Even Steve is touched, and, with his blessing, allows Dad to pass the honor of the Santa title to – Arthur. By the next year, Arthur is at the helm of the S-1, but with a few changes. Its name has been changed to “Evie” in honor of the magic sleigh. And its power source is now the hooves of five thousand reindeer!

Tokyo Go (Disney, Mickey Mouse Cartoons (TV), 7/12/13 – Paul Rudish, dir.) – Another of Mickey’s frequent international episodes from this series, this time set in Japan, providing plenty of opportunity for imaginative and colorful background art. Mickey plays a typical Japanese commuter, facing the day-to-day hustle and bustle of trying to get to work from the congested urban setting of a busy railway station, and facing the current rage of commuter technology, the bullet train. He purchases a ticket for the blue line, then attempts to follow the colored lines on the station floor to his train’s departure zone. Unfortunately, the blue line on the floor intersects at right angles to a red line, and a mob of pedestrian cross-traffic sweeps up Mickey, pressing him onward toward the red train instead of the blue one. As bad or worse than New York subways, Mickey is tightly crammed into the train doorway by a station guard, so that when the doors closed, Mickey is plastered between the door’s glass windows and someone’s butt. Mickey pops out of the collar of the passenger’s coat to get a breath of the meager air supply inside the car as the train takes off, with enough inertia around a curve to send shock waves to the street below, piling four cars one on top of the other. Mickey looks around, seeing the blue train out the windows running at equal speed on another track – then also sees a sign at the end of his car reading in both English and Japanese, “Exit”. Mickey slips his way through people’s pantlegs, briefcases, and collars, attempting to make his way to the exit door through the sardine-can of humanity. His pants are punctured by the spiked heels of a gang of punk teens, but he manages to pass over them by swinging from the hand-holder handles in the ceiling of the car like Tarzan. But one passenger is unavoidable – a Sumo, whose girth blocks the whole car. Mickey has to peel off his trousers, revealing a Sumo’s pant-bandana underneath. The Sumo meets his challenge, also peeling down to the same bandana, and the two circle one another for combat. They both charge one another – but Mickey ducks at the last second between the Sumo’s legs. The behemoth crashes into the remaining passengers at the end of the car, both knocking himself out and clearing a path so that Mickey can escape through the exit.

Now, how to reach the proper train? The blue line is still speeding on a parallel track, but the speed of the trains makes any attempt to cross to the other seem impossible. Mickey is nearly blown away merely climbing onto the roof of the red train, and plays a dangerous game of dodging oncoming low signs and signals which protrude over the train roof as it passes them. Mickey shimmies every which way to miss being hit, and at one point even has to temporarily detach his ears to avoid disaster. More barriers in the form of poles or walls pass between him and the blue train to prevent a safe crossing. Finally, the blue track veers away, descending at an angle to a lower level, where its track passes under a bridge of the red line to cross at a right angle. Mickey’s last chance. In slow motion like a Japanese anime film, Mickey takes a daring leap from the bridge, passing a flock of ducks on the way down, and miraculously lands successfully upon the blue train’s roof. (How could he not be swept off or bounce given the blue train’s equal speed? But this is, after all, a cartoon.) In a matter of moments, the blue train screeches to a halt at its destination, and Mickey hurries from the local rail platform to a small park with a miniature red barn, entering the structure and flipping over a door sign in the window to read “Open”, then punching a time clock which finds him right on time. His job? The engineer of a Tokyo Disney duplicate of the “Casey Jr.” circus train ride known from Fantasyland in the States. Mickey displays a contented preference for the leisurely pace of this mode of travel, breathing a relaxed sigh as he circles the course with a load of happy children in tow.

World Wide Wabbit (Warner, Wabbit (Bugs Bunny), 9/22/15) – Yosemite Sam’s been in prison for 20 years, but finally tunnels his way out into the big city and freedom. “I’m free, I’m free…I’m broke”, he observes from his empty pants pockets. Conveniently, he has come up just outside the doors of a bank – the easy answer to his cash problems. He observes he has no firepower, but, setting up a running gag for the film, realizes that his pointing fingers pack as much ability to shoot up his surroundings as a pair of pistols. Thus, he marches into the bank, telling everyone to reach for the skies. The modern bank, however, is something absolutely new to him – no tellers, vault, or long lines, just Bugs at an ATM machine. So how do you hold the place up? Bugs tries to explain to him that everything’s gone digital – lots of ones and zeroes. Sam states he wants lots of bills with ones on them – followed by a lot of zeroes. Bugs continues that there’s nothing here to give, as its all on the Internet. “Okay – Hand over the Internet!!”, screams Sam. “Oh, boy”, mutters Bugs, realizing he’s dealing with a hopeless boob. Bugs again begins by informing Sam that the Internet isn’t something you just had over, and is hard to explain. He asks Sam to imagine a big delivery tube. “A big tube – got it!”. jumps Sam to conclusions, then checks outside for a kid’s drinking straw, an inner tube floating at a pool party, and even a girl’s tube top. “Eh, no”, cautions Bugs before he can touch it. Sam finally spots the biggest tube he’s ever seen, and runs into a subway tunnel, to be quickly run down by a train.

Bugs explains again that “tube” was merely a metaphor, and that digital information is in the cloud. Of course, Sam commandeers a hot air balloon to reach it, and Bugs makes sure he promptly falls out of its basket. Sam orders Bugs at trigger-finger point to take him to the Internet. Bugs leads him through a dark ventilation shaft, into a room where a game of turning on and off a pull-string light switch results in an unexplained change of locale and/or costumes with every pull of the switch (including lion’s dens, train tunnels, and even a gold room to which Sam just can’t return by turning the switch on and off again). Enough shenanigans, declares Sam, shooting away the pull string with a shot from his finger. Bugs finally tells him that the Internet is directly above them. Sam climbs a stepladder and saws a hole in the ceiling, then climbs up. “I’m on the Internet”, he shouts with jubilation – until he looks at his surroundings, and discovers he’s made his way right back into his jail cell, with a mob of police standing ready to capture him. As the sounds of police brutality echo from the hole above Bugs, Bugs climbs the stepladder himself, sticking a cell phone with camera up through the hole, and declaring “You’re on the Internet now, Doc.” As the live video records, the groggy voice of Sam is heard to say from the beating, “I’m up to a million hits already.”

Hareplane Mode (Warner, Wabbit (Bugs Bunny), 10/15/15) – Bugs is crossing the street, when Yosemite Sam careens down the road, texting while driving. The result is inevitable, with Sam’s car a wreck, and Bugs thrown onto the sidewalk. Sam has no concern for the victim he just collided with – only for his Smart phone, which bounced out of his convertible onto the pavement. Sam blames the rabbit for carelessly walking into the road when he could see Sam was texting, and threatens to sue when he notices a hairline crack in the screen of the phone. “I’m gonna sue the pants off ya”, he shouts, until Bugs points out he’s not wearing any pants – and also points to a billboard, advertising a new model phone available today. “Ya done me a favor”, Sam acknowledges in making him need a new phone, and Sam approaches the line in front of the “Phone Home” store, shoving all others to one side to be first in line. Who should be behind the counter in the store but Bugs, disguised as a typical teenage sales clerk, ready to seek revenge on this menace to society. “Gimme, gimme, gimme”, insists Sam, while Bugs deluges him in paperwork to sign and other red tape. Bugs demonstrates new security features, like a self-defense mode available at the push of a button, causing a gorilla fist to emerge from the phone screen and sock Sam in the jaw. Bugs sets a ringtone to a setting marked “Lion attack”. It goes off, emitting the sounds of a purring kitten. “That don’t sound like no lion attack”, complains Sam – until it signals a real lion to maul him. Bugs suggests switching to vibrator mode, but Sam insists it be nice and strong so he doesn’t miss any calls. Bugs sets the vibrator to “Apocalypse”. At a board meeting, an incoming call vibrates Sam right out of a skyscraper window to a 40-story drop. His mere leaning against a tree and a building when on the ground during phone rings brings down on his head a bee hive and a grand piano.

Sam returns to the store, demanding to return the phone. Bugs states be can’t understand why Sam is having issues – “That never happens with modern technology.” Bugs convinces Sam to keep the phone or be faced with the shame of using an older model, and resets Sam’s vibration lower. But Bugs isn’t through. That evening, he calls Sam, impersonating someone informing Sam that he’s won a grand sweepstakes prize, but interrupting the conversation with voice impressions of static, as if the signal is breaking up. Sam tries desperately to keep the connection going, first moving the phone all around the room for a stronger signal, then outside, then into the desert, and next the mountains. He finally re-establishes the call, shouting “Hello, hello…”, and brings down upon himself an avalanche. Then, the previous ring tone gets reactivated, and Sam is mauled by lions again. A bedraggled Sam returns to the store, again demanding a refund. Bugs pretends to be willing, but holds up the phone, dripping from melted snow from the avalanche, and states that he can’t take the phone back due to water damage. Sam insists that there’s no damage and he can prove the thing is working right, but everything he presses activates the gorilla punch, until he finally knocks himself out. Removing his disguise, Bugs remarks that this new model still had a few “Bugs” in it, then turns to the audience as if another customer, closing as he did in “Rabbit of Seville”: “Next!”

More than I can write about comfortably with my DVD temporarily mislaid and out of reach is Disney’s Ralph Breaks the Internet (11/21/18). A complicated tale finds Wreck-It Ralph and child racer Vanellope von Schweetz, two characters from old arcade games, in a dilemma when Vanellope’s video game, “Sugar Rush”, is rendered on the blink by Ralph’s helpful meddling in attempting to liven up the game for Vanellope by building her a new digital road. The steering wheel of the game becomes broken, and is only available as a vintage part at high cost in the resale market on the Internet. To keep the game from being scrapped by the arcade owner, Ralph and Vanellope travel through a Wi-Fi router to the world of the internet, structured like a magical city, in search of the replacement wheel and enough digital bucks to buy it. The mission, however, becomes rather unnecessary, as Vanellope discovers the existence of an online urban street racing game where everything is wild and unpredictable instead of the repetitive and tame race courses she has been used to, and decides she’d like to stay. Ralph feels his trust and friendship have been betrayed, and his own insecurity is built upon by a villainous character who creates clone duplicates of Ralph, merging into a colossal mega-monster. Ralph ultimately conquers the monster by conquering his own insecurities, realizing Vanellope is wise enough to make her own decisions, and he and the little girl part company as friends, staying in touch long-distance via video/email.

The film is also remembered for a memorable, if self-promoting, incident where Vanellope, who is considered a princess in her Sugar Rush game, encounters a Disney website, and meets all the famous princesses of past Disney classics, rendered in CGI. There are some funny bits, like Cinderella defending herself from the intruder by breaking one of her glass slippers and wielding the broken half like a bottle in a barroom. There is even a crossover from Pixar’s “Brave” of Princess Merida, who speaks in a heavy Scottish dialect which the others admit no one can understand, as one princess adds, “She’s from the other studio.” By the end of the sequence, Vanellope has all the princesses thinking like her, and each wearing similar knit casual shirts like Vanellope instead of their usual gowns. I remember seeing a complete set of dolls from the sequence in the special shirts for sale at a Disney store for a high but not exorbitant price based upon the sheer number of dolls in the set. It was tempting but out of my reach, and I wonder how many people managed to acquire it (the only copy I have noticed intact on line selling for $179 bucks – not a bad rate of investment return).

Virtual Mortality (Warner, Looney Tunes Cartoons (Bugs Bunny), 11/25/21 – David Gemmill, dir.) – After all these years, Elmer is determined as ever to know the feeling of victory – of finally catching that wascally wabbit. His latest efforts have him axe-swinging over Bugs’ rabbit hole (his latest cartons don’t allow him to use a shotgun – but is axe-swinging any less violent?). Between swings, Bugs asks if he’ll ever give up. Not until he’s felt victory – just once. An idea hatches in Bugs’ head, appearing in the form of a light bulb – but a swing of the axe fractures the bulb’s glass. Nevertheless, the idea remains in Bugs’s noggin, and he runs with it. He and Elmer could go on like this all day, with Elmer accomplishing nothing. Or, Elmer could achieve the feeling of victory – right now. “I’m wistening…”, says a skeptical Elmer. Bugs reminds Elmer that they are now living a modern era of technological marvels, and demonstrates what he means by disappearing into his rabbit hole to tinker loudly with some tools within. Bugs emerges from the hole carrying an old football helmet, fastened to which are a set of yellow safety goggles, and a snorkel. Elmer asks what it is, and Bugs displays it as a virtual reality helmet. With this, Elmer can experience the virtual reality of capturing him – something that in all likelihood will never occur in the real world. Still not sure what to believe, Elmer is at least willing to try the device on. Bugs “activates the simulation function”, by clunking Elmer a resounding blow on the back of the helmet with a hammer. As Elmer’s blurred vision comes into focus through the goggles, he can’t believe the clarity and detail he sees – of course, of the real forest before him. But Bugs reminds him he is viewing a virtual world that “ain’t real”. To prove the point, he hands Elmer a lit “virtual bomb”. “Wow! It wooks so dangewous!” marvels Elmer. Elmer asides to the audience that if this was real, he’d be freaking out about now. But since it’s virtual, he can be fearless. KA-BOOM! Now Elmer marvels at how real the virtual pain feels.

Bugs giggles to himself at how good a setup that was, and too bad its over so soon. But the rabbit hasn’t counted on Elmer’s recuperative powers, and in a few moments, Elmer has him tied up in rope, thinking he has “virtually caught” the wabbit, and now gets to virtually cook him and find out how good he virtually tastes. As Bugs is twirled on a spit over an open fire, he realizes things are being carried a bit too far. So, in his usual manner, he bluffs, convincing Elmer to not settle for such a small prey in this virtual world, but to go for an even bigger “virtual rabbit” – like the one over there. Slipping out of his bonds, he points out a grizzly bear eating honey from a hive, with his back facing Elmer. Zipping around behind the honey tree, Bugs extends one hand out to simulate, with two fingers, long ears protruding from the bear’s head. Elmer takes the bait, and approaches the bear, grabbing his fur and ordering him to come along quietly. When the beast doesn’t respond, Elmer kicks him. “I’m talking to you”, Elmer shouts, then reminds the beast that this is virtual reality, and Elmer’s in charge. The bear comes face to face with Elmer and snarls. Elmer again marvels at how vicious-looking these virtual wabbits are. Soon, he is experiencing that remarkable virtual pain again.

Elmer walks wobbly over to Bugs, stating that he thinks he’s had enough of the virtual world. But Bugs convinces him not to be a quitter, and to experience what it would be like to virtually conquer his biggest fears. What are the things that frighten Elmer most in the world. He answers, fear of heights, and his mother. Bugs hands Elmer a “virtual” cel phone, calling up Mom, and Elmer, again reminded that this “ain’t real”, tells off his Mom in no uncertain terms, that he’s through having her pick out clothes for him at the store, and also through eating his vegetables – so gets “virtually” cut out of Mama’s will. “Congratulations” says Bugs, shaking Elmer’s hand in close-up, for conquering both his fears. Elmer is confused, as he hasn’t conquered his fear of heights. “Ya could’a fooled me, Doc”, says Bugs, noting how well Elmer has taken to virtual sky diving. The camera pulls back, showing both of them somehow in the middle of a free-fall. But only Bugs is wearing a parachute. Elmer slams into the ground, while Bugs uses his chute to make a graceful landing. Bugs finally asks for an opinion whether Elmer enjoys better virtual reality, or hunting in genuine reality. “Neither”, responds Elmer matter-of-factly. “I prefer metaphysical reality.” Elmer assumes a lotus position, floats upwards a few feet off the ground, and makes a departure from the cartoon through a worm hole. A puzzled Bugs looks at the audience, and closes with the observation, “Huh, I’m more existential myself, but different strokes for different folks.”

This series of articles will no doubt need supplementation as time goes on, and new trends, fads, music styles, or other changes roll around worthy of satire and comedy. Any ideas as to something worthy and modern that hasn’t made the medium of animation yet? You could have the inspiration for the LOL classic of tomorrow. Share your suggestions – – or better yet, get cracking on your own animated productions!