infamous

Former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins masterfully examines the poetry of Loony Tunes in an article for the Wall Street Journal .  His colorful commentary on the simple aspects of life that are dealt with by the shifty characters is spot on.  He even gifts us with some of his own poetry on the subject.

Elmer
The mailbox in front of the neat cottage
spells out the unfortunate name.
This morning the homebody
is singing in his sunny kitchen
dum-dee-dum, waiting
for the tea water to boil.
Later he will have his nap,
the enormous pink head
rolling on the pillow
dreaming again of the wabbit,
the private carrot patch.
Waiting by his bed
is the shotgun and the ridiculous hat
for he is the human.

He has several of the characters outlined in poetry, however Elmer is my favorite as he most closely represents us on the screen in this cast of cartoon crazies.  There is also an interesting parrallel drawn between the dramatic writing of these characters and the French surrealist movment.

And just as Pirandello and other modern dramatists sought to break down the actor/audience barrier, so Looney Tunes allowed an animated character to talk directly to the movie house audience or to criticize the very hand of its animators, thereby betraying the text itself. In one cartoon which mixes animation with a live action sequence, Porky Pig barges into producer Leon Schlesinger’s office demanding to be let out of his contract. Another cartoon opens quietly with the figure of Elmer Fudd in full hunting regalia tip-toeing left to right through the woods. Then, as if noticing a noisy late-comer to the theater or the sound of a shaken box of candy, Fudd stops, turns to face the audience, puts one of his four fingers to his lips and says in a seething whisper: “Shhhh! It’s wabbit season.” Ah, Elmer, you unlikely modernist!

I didn’t know that my parents where giving me or that my son was getting such a high brow education by watching cartoons on Saturday mornings.  Perhaps sitting so close to the television wasn’t so bad afterall.

A great man died yesterday. After an amazing career, chronicled in the NYT this morning and inspirational routines bringing to mind our faults as a society, George Carlin’s dead. Now you might think “dead” to strong and that it might be more appropriate to say, “he’s no longer with us” or “passed on” or “deceased”, but if you are a Carlin fan, you know he would just prefer dead. Remove the bullshit and see what’s left. From the NYT:

George Carlin, the Grammy-Award winning standup comedian and actor who was hailed for his irreverent social commentary, poignant observations of the absurdities of everyday life and language, and groundbreaking routines like “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” died in Santa Monica, Calif., on Sunday, according to his publicist, Jeff Abraham. He was 71.

The first time I heard Carlin was in a buddy of mine’s car on a road trip to Hot Springs, AR. We listened to Class Clown while driving down the pine tree lined two lane southern highway. It was a beautiful sunny day without a cloud in the sky. We were sixteen, newly licensed, and felt free for one of the first times in our lives. A hundred miles away from home by ourselves for the first time Seven Words You can Never Say on Television comes on and I’m hooked. It occurs to this sixteen year old how silly it is that we regiment our language, which then is translated in my growing mind, how we regiment or society. In a grand chorus that only a group of sixteen year old boys a couple hundred miles away from home can muster, we screamed a salute of, “Fuck Yeah!” and went and scored some cigarettes.

Although some criticized parts of his later work as too contentious, Mr. Carlin defended the material, insisting that his comedy had always been driven by an intolerance for the shortcomings of humanity and society. “Scratch any cynic,” he said, “and you’ll find a disappointed idealist.”

Still, when pushed to explain the pessimism and overt spleen that had crept into his act, he quickly reaffirmed the zeal that inspired his lists of complaints and grievances. “I don’t have pet peeves,” he said, correcting the interviewer. And with a mischievous glint in his eyes, he added, “I have major, psychotic hatreds.”

Thanks. Thanks for giving for giving us exactly what we deserve.
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