Getting back into the saddle, click on these bookmarks for:
Wha' hoppen this time, Uncle Tom?
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The emotional equivalent of the incident. |
It was not a dark and stormy night. It was an afternoon, sunny and a little cool, as I was updating this web page. There was no sign of trouble coming. My Sneakascope and Foe-Glass indicated nothing. All of a sudden, SPARKS flew from the back of the power supply of my little Windows computer, and everything went black.
Replaced the power supply, hoping that there was crowbar protection on the powr supply's output. No such luck. The system wouldn't boot. That meant that the motherobard and the CPU, at least, were dead.
Figuring that the motherboard was blown, went to Ebay to find the identical motherboard; it could be that I wouldn't have to reinstall everything if the "mobo" was identical. Finally found someone with a PC Chips M598...in Canada. Learned to my horror that, since September 11th, there is no such thing as "overnight shipping" from anyplace outside the United States.
Replaced the board. It was close, but not exactly, the computer I remembered. Windows partially booted. Gave up, and reinstalled Windows completely. It took two weeks to get back to right now, when I can write and do things with the system.
My apologies, folks. This is proof that, despite backups, careful behavior, and paying for your shareware, you can receive an anal probe from the Fickle Finger of Fate. All you can do is go forward from there.
First of all, thanks for all the letters reminding me that I was supposed to write about animation occasionally. And since the current status of TOON Magazine is up in the air, it's better to keep going and hope for the best (as I learned with my computer fiasco). So...
Hanna-Barbara's Only Superstar
It must have been standard Suit Thinking. Someone at AOL looked at the inventory of shows available to Cartoon Network. There was one huge, humongous pile of shows from the early days of Hanna-Barbara. And all of them, to use the youthful vernacular, suck.
Forget the animation with endlessly repeating backgrounds. Forget the aged, scratchy film. It's their similarity. H-B cartoons are interchangeable. A story written for Huckleberry Hound could just as easily fit Hokey Wolf or Chopper. The characters were all very much the same; they all reacted to things with dry, sardonic words of wit, never connecting with emotions like anger. "Oh, look. An anvil fell on my head. That's going to leave a mark." Where their earlier creation Tom would chase Jerry Mouse with smug sadism, Mr. Jinks would "hate meeses to pieces," but didn't sound like he really cared.
For the first few years, all H-B cartoons used the same pre-recorded music library, and once they could afford to record new music, they ran it over and over. The music from H-B's Fantastic Four was reused in nearly every superhero cartoon they did. The earliest shows used the same four-piece Dixieland band for music, like Joe Barbara had smuggled a tape recorder into Disney to record the Firehouse Five.
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Would you recognize him if you saw him? ™ AOL Time Warner. |
Normally, cable networks take their least desireable shows - like the early H-B's - and move them to the late night slots, or the Sunday afternoon slots, just to fill up time. But the young Suit looking at the pile of H-B drivel thought, "Maybe we can use this to make a whole new cable channel! And make a lot more money on it too. Nick at Nite did it with TV Land. People watch crap if you make it look nostalgic - the baby-boomers should eat it up. Boomer...hmm, that's a title! Boomerang!"
There was a great fallacy in this Suit's computations. Little kids didn't watch those cartoons because they loved them. They watched them because there wasn't any other kind of animation on TV. A really good show, like Warner's Batman: The Animated Series, would have blown away the entire H-B clan if it was available in 1965. Watching those old cartoons today is a bit of an embarassment. "We really watced this crap? God, how stupid we were! And how stupid are we now, watching this Boomerang channel?"
TV Land's live-action sitcoms are different. People watch them because they represent the series of values that the 1960's had, that we remembered - life before everything went to hell. (Every generation feels that life has gone to hell since they were kids. It's genetic.) Shows like I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched represent those values. H-B cartoons don't represent values of the time - outside of silly jokes and really limited animation.
Until Jonny Quest, H-B looked like kiddie fare and nothing else. Quest tried for a more adult audience, and that meant writing characters that were more than hooks for gags. The Quest team wasn't as fleshed-out as much as a live-action show, but they had more depth than any cartoon character Americans had yet seen. (Sometime in the future, we'll look at why Jonny Quest was the worst opportunity blown by H-B.)
Choking on the Truth
This is the hardest thing I've done in years. It's like pulling teeth through the sinuses. But it must be said; the only true superstar of Hanna-Barbara's lineup is...Scooby-Doo.
I never liked the dog. He was a coward, running from the slightest hint of danger. He was dopey and giggly. His primary occupation was finding something to eat, quite often stealing it from his buddy Shaggy. Now that they're making a live-action movie of the mutt, I dislike him even more. The "Batman" trailer for the movie is the last straw; AOL Time Warner can't produce a good movie with the Dark Knight, a genuine and courageous detective, and so they give us this dog as an imitation Batman?
But at least he has character. He has attitude, of sorts. He goes forth and does things. That can't be said for most H-B characters. A lot of that character resides in the voice, quite often performed by Don Messick. Have you ever heard a talking dog with a voice like that, so full of childish enthusiasm for anything?
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How can you identify the superstar? You could say "needs to be treated for fleas," "is covered with hair," "is not human," and you still wouldn't properly eliminate the others. It's Scooby-Doo, okay? See Cartoon Network's web site (http://www.cartoonnetwork.com). ™ AOL TimeWarner. |
Scooby is, theoretically, the sidekick of Shaggy. But have you ever seen a sidekick character get involved in the action so much? The usual H-B sidekick makes a fool of himself and stops the action dead (for an appropriate example, see the Blue Falcon's Dynomutt.) Scooby gets involved in stupid stuff, too, but most of the time he actually advances the plot. Together with Shaggy, he expresses emotion - something Fred, Daphne and Velma don't know how to do.
This may not seem like much recommendation, but it makes Scooby-Doo the only H-B superstar.Before The Simpsons, Scooby-Doo was the longest-lived animated character created specifically for television. He had more new shows than any other character. It doesn't matter that his career was kept alive by gimmacks; the "movies" with guest stars from CBS's lineup; the introduction of Scrappy-Doo, the annoying little pug; the misuse of Vincent Price as a pseudo-Doctor Strange in The Thirteen Ghosts of Scooby-Doo; and what has to be the lowest of the low, a satire of a satire, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo.
H-B's first characters for TV, Ruff and Reddy, are long forgotten; they weren't even revived for Yogi's Ark Lark. Their first continuing character, Huckleberry Hound, did very little after his first show. The closest thing to a contender for Scooby's status is Yogi Bear, and his whole personality is tied up in his one catch phrase, which is a lie - do you believe he's smarter than the average bear?
If the current hype about this Great Dane bothers you, take heart; the live-action Scooby-Doo movie will still die a quick and gory death. It'll be on TV in a year or so as kiddie fodder - assuming they can clean up the minor naughty bits, like Sarah Michelle Geller supposedly flashing her buttocks at the camera (for which she used a body double). But no matter what happens to this awful movie, Scooby will survive it, just like he survived the tragedy and sorrow of Scooby's Laugh-A-Lympics.
Number Three, Rest in Peace - NOW!
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The real spirit of racing. Plus Dale Earnhart. |
It's now one year since Dale Earrnhart died in a car crash. Thousands of other people die in car crashes. Perhaps a dozen die in car crashes during legitimate automobile races each year. But in the South, everyone mourns Dale Earnhart. Every other pickup truck has that italicized number 3, quite often with a halo. Earnhart is continually mentioned as a great racer.
Why? There's only one reason I have been able to discern; he sold a lot of merchandise.
Earnhart was not Mother Teresa. He was not known for his wit and wisdom. He didn't help the poor any more than you do; he didn't free any slaves or rescue any hostages. He raced cars. He raced with the support of major corporations like RJR-Nabisco, and fans who bought tons of his merchandise. The only personality trait I have seen publicized comes from his nickname, "The Intimidator."
Perhaps in stock car racing, being a bully is a virtue. The sport thrives on insane competition, with statements like "there ain't no second place" accepted as galactic truth. In that one venue - driving a fast car and keeping it on the track and intact - perhaps it matters. But just because a man succeeds at that one thing doesn't make him a role model, any more than throwing a ball through a hoop or hitting a baseball.
The only tangible statement made last year, at the time of Earnhart's death, was that the souvenir sales would really suffer. The little old ladies and gents who pitch T-shirts, with corporate logos and commercial cars plastered all over them, will have trouble making their rent payments without their five-percent share of the profits from all those Earnhart T's.
Look, I understand fandom. Wearing a T with Elvis, or Harley Quinn, or Spongebob Squarepants or any other celebrity, makes a degree of sense. You associate with the personality of that person or character. But Dale Earnhart didn't have a lot of personality going for him. Even Selena and Aileyah, who died before they could become complete successes, wore their personalities publicly. Their songs, their looks and their stance on stage meant something to their fans. Before he died, did Dale Earnhart say more than ten words on camera to anyone?
If he had lived, would Earnhart be doing Broadway? Would he write an inspiring biography? Would he even be a commentator on ESPN's auto races? Nothing he did suggested he knew how to do anything but race cars.
So therefore, why not just let the poor guy rest in peace? Give him a nice tombstone with the motto, "Hanes 50/50 Beefy T." Hey, if he merchandised in life, why not do so in death? Let him go to heaven covered in Hardee's and Tide decals. If you'd like to argue this point, e-mail me at hatemail@off-model.com and you tell me why Dale Earnhart deservs the kind of adoration normally associated with drooling Trek fanboys or loony rock star groupies.