An Animated Memorial Day

First of all, I salute all of our people in the Armed Services, past and present, on this Memorial Day. I'd like to give a special note to my brother Keefe and my good friend Jen Waters, both of whom are currently serving in the Navy.

Second, I spent most of a very hot day continuing the cleaning. The kitchen was really grungy, especially the sink and dish rack. It needed to be done badly. I dusted and washed the windows, too. Didn't have the chance to get to anything else. I did a lot of dusting before Lauren visited and shouldn't need to do much more. I'll get to the vacuuming tomorrow.

I honored the Armed Services by running wartime animated shorts for most of the afternoon. Three of my favorite 40s Looney Tunes are wartime-related. A chemically-enhanced carrot turns Bugs into a superhero in Super Rabbit. When a Yosemite Sam-like villain gets the best of him, he finally decides it's a job for a real hero...a soldier. Daffy tries to dodge the persistent "Little Man from the Draft Board" in Draftee Daffy. And in Fallen Hare, Bugs tangles with a Gremlin who is bound and determined to wreck havoc on airplanes.

The loonies at Termite Terrace were far from the only cartoon studio to put a comic spin on the realities of World War II. The home front audience's fondness for raucous humor made Donald Duck Disney's number one short subject star during and after the war years. (Mickey wasn't even seen between 1943 and 1947.) Donald did a series of cartoons set in the Army that are favorites of mine; these include the surrealistic, Oscar-winning Der Fuherer's Face, the wonderfully silly The Vanishing Private, and the pair that amounts to a two-parter, Donald Gets Drafted and Sky Trooper. Unlike Daffy, go-getting Donald has absolutely no problem with joining the Armed Services. What he really wants is to be in the glamorous Air Force, but he finds himself dropped in the Army without a paddle. Sergeant Pete tries to whip him into shape, but Donald ends up peeling potatoes. When Donald does finally gets into the air, it leads to an explosive confrontation with Pete!

Woody Woodpecker was another beloved character who became a star during the war years. His only really war-related short was Ace In the Hole, a variation on Sky Trooper. Woody, too, wants to join the Air Force, but he ends up shaving horses. Stealing a plane probably doesn't amuse his bulldog sergeant either, or what he does with it when he finally gets in the air.

Walter Lanz also did several one-shot wartime shorts. Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B depicts what happens when a black trumpet player is drafted. Yes, the stereotypes come thick and fast and obnoxious, but this short has a really swinging version of the title tune and is one of the few cartoons of the era to depict minorities in the military. (It was also, interestingly, released several months before the war began.) Pigeon Patrol is a more conventional war story. A country bumpkin pigeon is rejected from war duty, but manages to get a message through anyway and impress his sweetheart back home.

The Pink Panther became one of the few 60s animated characters to enlist in the Vietnam War in G.I Pink. Like Donald, he enlists because he thinks it looks glamorous and powerful. He ends up encountering land mines, cranky drill sergeants, and canine mascots who think he's for dinner!

I returned to the Stooges during a quick lunch of a Peanut Butter and Strawberry-Raspberry Wrap and a pear. Conveniently, the shorts in the set I ordered from Amazon.com last week were made between 1943 and 1945, when World War II was at its height. In Back From the Front, the boys are adrift in the ocean and find themselves aboard a Nazi battleship, where they proceed to capture the enemy. They Stooge to Conga gets ugly even for these guys when they accidentally find a Nazi war room...and Moe gets a spike shoe in the ear. No Dough, Boys has them mistaken for spies when they're dressed as Japanese men for a modeling job.

It was still hot outside when I headed to work, but not quite as humid as the past few days. Not surprisingly on a holiday, work was busy up through around 5PM, after which people must have gone off to barbecues and picnics. There were a few annoying people, notably the couple who argued so violently, they just ended up taking off and leaving their order behind - good thing it was small. Otherwise, there were no major problems and I was in and out.