Zoinks, And Away!

I spent most of the day at work. It was on-and-off busy, rather surprising given the gorgeous weather and the big play-off game between the Flyers and the Capitals. (Flyers lost, incidentally, 3-2.) It was 80 degrees today, partly sunny and hot all day long. It was so warm, I decided to run to the bank to deposit my paycheck in the ATM machine after work. I also ended up at WaWa to get a Cherry Lemonade (Tropicana Light Lemonade with cherry syrup from that awesome soda fountain with the flavored syrups) and bought turkey from Mahoney's Deli, a new place a few blocks down that replaces an almost identical deli in the same store. (And I won't be going back. Neither store had prices as good as WaWa's or Doria's.)

The first part of my birthday Amazon.com order arrived today. I skipped the second Looney Tunes Golden Collection and went with the third because it has two of my all-time favorite Warners shorts. While many people are probably familiar with Robin Hood Daffy, casual fans may not have heard of Frank Tashlin's classic black-and-white Porky-Daffy adventure, Porky Pig's Feat. Porky and Daffy try to get out of paying a huge hotel bill, but that big hotel owner is VERY insistent!

I first encountered a colorized version of this cartoon (and a Bugs favorite from the same era, Falling Hare) on a series of videos featuring public domain cartoons my mom and stepdad bought from the Acme in the early 90s. (Hard to believe I remember those retailing for about $12 each! Today, they'd probably go for less than a dollar.) Each tape featured a different character. One had a few of the Paramount Superman cartoons. Another had the two Popeye color "featurettes." One had all early Bugs shorts; another featured some of Porky's first adventures. The Donald Duck one had two World War II-era propaganda shorts, The Spirit of '42 and The New Spirit. The collection was wildly hit-or-miss, from the truly classic Superman and Looney Tunes shorts to the bizarre and dull Donald propaganda material to several tapes of "filler" shorts from various studios the world had forgotten, with good reason.

Mom finally got rid of those tapes around 2000 when my parents were going through one of their periodic attempts to weed out their massive video and DVD collection. I've long regretted only hanging onto the tapes with the animated Three Stooges shorts and the three Van Buren color Felix the Cat shorts. While much of the material (including the Donald propaganda, the Superman shorts, and the Popeye specials) have seen legitimate DVD releases, some of it still hasn't seen the light of day. (The Bugs Bunny cartoons have all been put out, but I don't think all of the Porky ones have.)