Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Donald Duck

When I was young I enjoyed comic books with Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge.  When I got older I found out that Carl Barks, who drew their adventures without credit, is considered one of the medium's most brilliant artists. (Floyd Gottfriedson, who drew Mickey Mouse and Goofy's adventures, is also acquiring a big reputation.) I remember one comic where Donald was putting on a fancy garden party but his nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie ended up soaking everyone!

I also like a lot of Walt Disney's Donald Duck cartoons, especially those from the early years were he's creating chaos.  There's one where Mickey Mouse's band is playing the William Tell Overture and Donald takes out a flute and starts playing "Turkey in the Straw," and a moment later the whole band's playing it too! (The two tunes aren't so different.)

On the subject of cartoon ducks, there's also Daffy Duck.  When I was young I would have chosen Bugs Bunny as my favourite Warner Brothers cartoon character, but now that I'm older I prefer Daffy.  Especially the later cartoons where he developed into a curmudgeon!  One of his best cartoons is Duck Amuck, in which the cartoonist keeps changing the scenery on him and driving him up the wall.  And there's also Ali Baba Bunny, in which he and Bugs find themselves inside Ali Baba's treasure cave and Daffy lets it go to his head! ("It's mine, it's mine!")

Sunday, December 27, 2015

Soap operas

I'll admit I went through a soap opera phase.  When I was 17 or so I watched Another World, mostly on Fridays when they had the most dramatic stuff so people would tune in next week.  And later I watched General Hospital for a while.

I used to watch the British soap opera Coronation Street.  The British ones have a somewhat higher standard than their American counterparts.  This show is set in the Lancashire region around Manchester, and the dialogue makes good use of the local dialect. (Some Dutch people have been learning English from watching the show, so they're using expressions like "Flaming Nora!" and "I'll tell you something for nowt!) It's been around since 1961, when it was part of the "kitchen sink" movement of realistic British drama.

I spent a year in Scotland in my late 20s and took to watching a couple of Australian soap operas that they show on British TV.  One was Neighbours, set in a bland Melbourne suburb. (Kylie Minogue and Guy Pearce were on the show then.) The other was Home and Away, with a rural setting.  I read that in suburban England people have taken up Australian slang that they heard on those shows:  stuff like "a blue," which means "a quarrel."

Thursday, December 24, 2015

ESP

I've never been interested in this paranormal stuff like ESP or the Bermuda Triangle or Chariots of the Gods?  It's always seemed to me to be aimed at all the credulous suckers out there.

Do I believe in ghosts?  I'll believe in them when I meet one.  But if they're willing to leave me alone, I'll return the favour.  I like to think of myself as free of superstitions.  Yet when I'm in a subway station I never walk on an escalator that isn't moving.  It just doesn't seem right somehow.

I've heard that in India people take ghosts very seriously.  And the Vietnamese are very superstitious:  when Vietnam's soldiers drove the Khmer Rouge out of Cambodia and found their killing fields full of bones, they were afraid that ghosts would come after them.  Which I guess is understandable.

Which of course reminds me of another joke.  There are two burglars in an apartment, and one of them says, "I hear someone coming!  Let's jump out the window!" "But this is the 13th floor!" "Come on, this is no time to be superstitious!" (I heard that on a record called World's Worst Jokes.)

Thursday, December 17, 2015

Puns

I think it was Samuel Johnson who said, "Puns are the lowest form of humour." When I was little, I found that saying odd:  what's wrong with puns?  The higher forms of humour were still rather new to me.

I remember a lot of jokes from when I was little, including some puns.  How do you make a slow horse fast?  Stop feeding him!  What do you call a guy who plays basketball in a tuxedo?  A gym dandy!  And I recall my brother telling me a long joke about a castaway who built a boat called a bark, then tried to launch it in a bay called a bight, but it turned out that his bark was bigger than his bight! (boo hiss)

Remember when The Globe and Mail ran "Your Morning Smile"? Their jokes included some puns.  Someone submitted this joke: "When the eel in the sea bites you under your knee that's a moray!" (It helps to be of a certain age.)

Monday, December 14, 2015

Ice cream

When I was little, we had a cottage near Northumberland Strait.  Sometimes we'd go there and bring ice cream, but by the time we ate it it would be half-melted.  To tell the truth, I rather like half-melted ice cream. (You can enjoy the flavour more because your taste buds don't get deadened as quickly.) So I prefer ice cream in a bowl that's still hot from the dishwasher!

My favourite ice cream flavour is cherry vanilla.  I also like strawberry ripple, but they don't seem to make that any more.  My mother liked ice cream with nuts in it, but I never have.  I can't imagine why anyone links mint!

In my neighbourhood, there's a fine ice cream shop called Dutch Dreams.  It would be a good place to take your date, what with its cute retro look.  I'm hoping to get a girl there one of these days...

I read somewhere that the best ice cream in the world is made with ultra cold liquid nitrogen. (It can also make instant compost.)

I once saw a Scottish movie titled Comfort and Joy, about a Glasgow D.J. who settled a gang war among ice cream vendors by inventing ice cream fritters!

Sunday, December 6, 2015

A favourite magazine

One magazine I subscribe to is Harper's.  It has stuff like the Harper's Index, full of telling statistics, and Annotation, which takes a document and adds notes to show what it really reveals.

I used to read the leftist magazine The Nation a lot back in the 1990s.  I don't read it as much today because it no longer has columnists Christopher Hitchens and Alexander Cockburn, but I sometimes read Katha Pollitt.

I now read some magazines online.  Every day I glance at Salon, whose articles vary but are often interesting.  (Allen Barra used to write a sports column for them, and that's the only time I've followed a sportswriter!)

I also read The Huffington Post.  They have a wide range of writers, but for me the fun part is posting comments and getting into online quarrels.  Lately I've been supporting Bernie Sanders and putting down Hillary Clinton.  I've also criticized President Obama and incurred the wrath of people who worship him.


Thursday, December 3, 2015

Saturday afternoon movies

When I was young I saw some Saturday matinees.  Stuff like Mary Poppins, The Wizard of Oz, Bambi, Cinderella, Huckleberry Finn, Captain Sinbad, National Velvet, and a Marx Brothers double bill.  But serials and such were before my time.  I remember once before a show when the audience was chattering so loudly that the manager came onto the speakers and told us to quiet down!

I also saw some kiddie movies on Saturday morning on the local TV channel CHSJ from Saint John, N.B.  The show's logo was a rooster and the theme music was a jazzed-up version of Verdi's Anvil Chorus.  They showed stuff like Shirley Temple, Nancy Drew, 1930s comedies starring Joe E. Brown, the comedian with the wide grin, and Snow White and the Three Stooges, which was as odd as it sounds.