Saturday, May 23, 2015

A Clean Weekend

Started an absolutely gorgeous morning with breakfast and Popeye wartime shorts. Popeye was another cartoon character who entered the services even before the war began, in "The Might Navy." (It's pretty easy to tell this short was made before Pearl Harbor - the enemy isn't named.) Though a lot of Popeye's shorts still revolved around him and Bluto chasing Olive, like "Kicking the Conga Around," he did see some fighting. "Blunder Below" has him thrown into the boiler room after he makes a mess of gun training. He's the one who finally takes down a submarine. "Fleets of Stren'th" is more or less the same idea, this time done as air battles. He and Bluto discover that "Olive Oyl and Water Don't Mix" when Olive's visit to their ship ends up wrecking havoc.

Work was very busy for most of the afternoon. Between the holiday and the beautiful weather, people were coming out in droves, shopping for parties and barbecues. Thankfully, my relief was right on time.

When I got home, I put on old clothes, then decided it was time I did something I put off for weeks. First of all, I swept the remaining fuzzies and sticks off the side of the porch I could get to. Then, I brought out buckets of water and scrubbed the porch chairs, the trash can, and the recycling canisters. At least, I washed the porch furniture as best I could. They're so old and dirty, they're kind of beyond scrubbing by now. The trash can didn't smell much better, but at least it's clean.

When I got in, I had leftover Chicken Vegetable Soup while watching the remaining Popeye shorts. The Fleischer Brothers finally lost their studio to Paramount in 1942. Paramount reopened them as Famous Studios and continued with most of their properties, including Popeye. Unfortunately, a lot of the Popeye shorts from this era are kind of hard to watch, thanks to heavy racial caricatures. I skipped to "Spinach Fer Britain," which has Popeye battling the Nazis to get food to England. Popeye has "A Hull of a Mess" when Bluto continuously sabotages his efforts to build a ship and get it out as quickly as possible.

Switched to the Looney Tunes as I made Blueberry Muffins. "Super Rabbit" has fun with Superman as Bugs fights a cowboy and his horse out west with superpowered carrots. Daffy does everything possible - and not possible - to dodge the persistent Little Man From the Draft Board in "Draftee Daffy." "Falling Hare" is one of the few cartoons where Bugs deals with an antagonist who gives as good as they get as he tries to keep a clever gremlin from sabotaging a plane.

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