#yosemite sam icon

[mourgette]

Bugs Bunny Icons

++ Some matching icons..

Requested by a friend of mine!

[consumerofmen]

[arrowheadedbitch]

One thing I think everyone forgets about Bugs and Daffy's dynamic that has been phased out in recent years is that Daffy is perfectly competent when Bugs ISNT around. When Daffy was first introduced, for all intents and purposes, he WAS Bugs. He was the Bugs to Porky's Elmer Fudd, and also to that one dog's, I don't know, Yosemite Sam? Anyways, the point is Daffy was just like Bugs, outsmarting everyone, until he tried to outsmart Bugs the same way one day and couldn't. Bugs made Daffy look like an idiot SO HARD that everyone thinks that was the whole point of his character. (Bugs bunny is so fucking iconic) Which, if you ever wonder why in most media Daffy is insanely jealous of Bugs? Yeah, that's a big reason. And while this dynamic isn't touched on much anymore, Daffy tends to be portrayed as a total idiot whether or not Bugs is around, I kinda miss it. And of course Bugs still effects Daffy, Daffy still acts slightly different around Bugs, but the absolute complete CHANGE was so delicious. Daffy used to be a genius until Bugs made him look dumb, he was so smart until Bugs showed up and all of a sudden he was an idiot. The same thing happened with Wil E. Coyote btw, with BOTH the roadrunner AND Bugs on different occasions. Yeah but anyway, sorry about the rant, I just find it so interesting.

[ordinaryschmuck]

David Zaslav is on the phone as he enters his office.

David: It's nothing personal, it's just business. But don't worry, once another buyer offers eighty million, you'll have your property back. Okay? Okay. Goodbye, Mom. Love you.

He hangs up and notices a package left on his desk.

David: Huh. That's peculiar.

He walks over and sees that it's addressed to him. With a shrug, he opens it up.

*WHACK*!

And gets hits in the face with a springy boxing glove.

***

A burlap sack is ripped off David's head. He looks around and sees he's in a form of a warehouse, with the only light being the shining above him. In the shadows, he hears a crunch of somekind.

???: Eh, *tsk-tsk* What's up, Doc?

Out from the shadows comes Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Yosemite Sam, and even Foghorn Leghorn. They do NOT look happy.

David: Who...Who ARE you? WHAT are you?

Sam: OOOOOOOOOOOH!

He pulls out his guns.

Sam: Now I KNOW y'all didn't just say that you--

Bugs waves a hand in front of Sam.

Bugs: It's okay, Sammy Boy. Can't blame da poor, dumb, foolish suckah. (To David) Do ya know who Mickey Mouse is, Doc?

David: Is...that who you are?

Daffy: Doeth he look like a MOUTHE, you buffoon?!

Bugs: Daf. (To David) Mickey's the mascot of Disney, YOUR competitor. Fer bettah or woise, he represents da company. And to dis day is the backbone dat made Disney what it is. As for me and my compatriots, dat's who WE are for Warner Brudders.

David: I-I'm the CEO of Warner Brothers DISCOVERY.

Foghorn: Which is, I say, which is the result of merging with WARNER BROTHERS, ya dumb pig! No offense, Pork.

Porky: N-N-No-No-No offense taken.

Bugs: (To David) Ya see, Doc, we're da Looney Tunes. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Foghorn Leghorn, and Yosemite Sam. Ya see, while Walter was makin' the mouse dat would rule the world wid a goofy cartoon mouse that entertained the kiddies, we's was making some CLASS. Cartoons dat dee adults AND kids could appreciate, wid witty dialogue and cartoonish slapstick. Me and Daf, here? We made bank off a short where we discussed who got shot by Elmer Fudd, where da joke was ALWAYS Daffy getting hit.

Daffy: Took a lot of shotth to make that comedy gold. LIterally.

Bugs: And it worked. Wid a poifect simple premise dat people always remember, wid people going "Wabbit Season, Duck Season" to dis day. Dat's who we are, Doc...And ya messed it all up.

Sam: Ya messed with the WRONG pardners, Davie!

David: H-How? How did I mess with you?!

Bugs: Hey, don't feel too bad. Warner Brudders' have been messing wid us for years, but we always took it on the chin. Dey want us to do TWO basketball movies? Dey want us to get rid of Pepe Le Pew? Why not. He stunk anyway and we wanted him out for years. Dey want our iconic image for an animated sitcom? We did it. 'Cause we're da Looney Tunes. We can sell ANYTHING.

Porky: I-I-I actually l-l-li-lo-li-lo--Really enjoyed the sitcom.

Bugs: Okay, it can be argued dat da sitcom is criminally underrated, but dat's besides the point. What I'm getting at is dat we're willing ta sell anything just as long as we get some of dat green ourselves. But ya made a mistake, Doc. Ya see, you went after one of our own.

He makes a "come here" gesture, and both Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner come out from the shadows as well, with Road Runner comforting the Coyote.

Bugs: Pepe Le Pew is one thing. We understand that his sense of humor doesn't fit well wid dis day and age. But Wile? Oh brudder, why did ya have to mess wid him?

David: What did I do to him?!

Bugs: Coyote Vs. ACME. Ringin' any bells?

David: That...movie no one wants to buy?

Bugs: A movie ya overselled for a quick buck. A movie dat people worked night and day on. A movie written by James Gunn, yer golden boy who you have fixin' yer DC franchise.

Foghorn: Which is, I say, which is a whole DIFFERENT can a worms.

Bugs, ignoring him: A movie dat stars our very own Wile E. Coyote. A character who's toons and silly antics are timeless and, I'll admit, makes bank better than me. Wit no dialogue, just expressions and goofy signs, him and da Road Runner are characters where the possibility is limited by da power of imagination. And a movie where he sues ACME over their failed gadgets? Well, I'd watch that. Wouldn't you, boys?

The others all murmur in agreement.

David: Well, it might not make a profit--

Bug: Space Jam 2 made TWICE of what yer trying ta sell Wile's movie for. Ya would think that a man desperate to make money would release a film featuring their most iconic brand to get him MORE money. But, no, that's what a GOOD business man would do.

David: Please! I-It wasn't anything personal! I didn't even WATCH the movie!

The Tunes all stare at him.

Bugs: ...Ya didn't WATCH it?

David: N-No?

Bugs: You were willing to sell, shelve, and even DELETE a movie from existence because ya don't think it won't make a profit. Except ya nevah THOUGHT ta watch it yerself and make yer judgment?

David: ...Running a business is REALLY hard--

Bugs: You MAROON. You marooniest maroon that's ever marooned. I can't even comprehend how not only did you get yer job but how ya STILL have a job despite all da STOOPID decisions you've made in--How long has he been in charge?

Porky: A-A-A--Nearly t-two years, boss.

Bugs: TWO YEARS. Ya've been in charge for TWO YEARS and managed to cost da studio so much money that ya could compare it to da GREAT DEPRESSION! If Disney loses dat money, dey can make it back wid anothah Marvel movie or a live action remake of Moana! WE ain't Disney, Doc! We need every dime we get and we're losin' it because a YOU!

David: ...

Bugs: Honestly, we was initially thinkin' a beatin' the snot out a yous and leaking da movie to da public. But now? Woof. NOW I know yer as dumb as an animal. And an animal needs to be treated as an animal.

He pulls out a dog whistle and gives it a blow. Within seconds, a small, brown tornado bursts through a wall in the warehouse and zooms over to the group, stopping its spin to reveal The Tasmanian Devil.

Bugs: Have ya heard of the Tasmanian Devil, David? Who am I kidding, of COURSE ya haven't. Well, let's just say that he'd be happy to meet you.

Taz looks at David, licks his lips, and starts jumping for joy as he heads over to him.

David: No. No! NOOOOOOOOOOOO--

***

David stands before a press conference, clothes torn up and his body bandaged.

David: I am now announcing that I'm stepping down as CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery...And as my last act, I will release Coyote Vs. ACME to the public.

Reporter: And are you going to release Batgirl too?

David: Well, no, that movie's unreleasable--

A batarang lands in front of him.

David: ...Batgirl and Coyote Vs. ACME. Both coming soon...to a theater or streaming service near you.

[mask131]

Exploring the Ice King (1)

As I write these lines, the first snowfalls happened in France. To fit with the weather, I thought of starting something I was planning to do for quite a long time... A series of posts talking about Adventure Time's Ice King.

Well... not posts talking really about him. But rather posts talking about the origin, the formation, the tropes and archetypes at play with this character. Adventure Time is a very, very weird media in terms of mediatic evolution as it is a very bizarre yet influential step in the evolution of fantasy, placing itself as the unusual crossroad between faithful homage, absurdist parody and fresh continuation. It's... well it's weird. And the Ice King, one of the most crucial characters of the series, is a literal melting pot of MANY many different elements of the fantasy fiction.

I will start in this post with the function of the Ice King, mainly how he manifests the type of the "recurring pitiful villain".

When I think of a potential cultural ancestor for the Ice King, being a French person, I immediately think of Gargamel, the main antagonist of the Smurfs.

Why? It seems at first the two have nothing in common... And yet when you think about it, the two are old, ugly men practicing magic. The two are recurring villains that become one of the iconic head of the show. The two start as a legitimate, creepy, evil threat and then devolve in a pathetic, foolish, almost friendly foe - notably because each of their scheme and plan is bound to fail or blow back in their face, as part of the law of "evil can't win". The two are driven by a monomania, an obsession that becomes their main trait (capturing princesses/capturing the Smurfs), and the two have an animal sidekick that they treat with a mix of abuse and love (Gunther/Azrael).

I can't claim that the Ice King was directly inspired by Gargamel... But it is interesting to point out that the Ice King answers to a very specific type of villain in older children cartoon: the recurring but ineffective villain, the returning protagonist who always fail and despite his antagonism is part of the "main cast" so to speak, the "evil" guy who isn't so much evil as just a weird goof we laugh more at than we really dread.

A more American example could be Dick Dastardly from "Wacky Races", who has the bonus point of also having an animal sidekick:

There are many, MANY iconic and classic exemples of the "recurring, ineffective villain" in older children cartoons. I evoked Gargamel and Dick above because of their familiar animal, which highlights the parallel, but other "predecessors" of the Ice King include The Professor from Felix the Cat (bonus point for being an old man with a strong white theme and this huge mustache - and extra bonus point when you know that "Felix the Cat" was one of the first inspirations for Adventure Time's artstyle):

Elmer Fudd, who was eventually so pitiful in his evilness that Yosemite Sam had to be introduced (Yosemite Sam could also have played a part in the Ice King's creation as he has the King's short-temper mixed with the luscious facial hair):

You can also count in Wile E. Coyote - he isn't obviously related to the Ice King and I don't think he was an inspiration, but he is one of the icons of the "loser villain" that keeps inventing extravagant schemes, a monomaniac who is doomed to never succeed.

Or Shredder, from the old Teenage Turtle Ninjas cartoon...

... Or even "Eggman" Robotnik from the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise (there is something to be said about how a lot of these characters enjoy excentric facial hair).

And to conclude we need, of course, to bring forward the greatest of all these ineffective antagonists, and one that clearly did have an influence over Adventure Time: Skeletor, who was such a failure that the writers of He-Man themselves took pity on the guy and ultimately replaced him with alternate antagonists.

All of these "predecessors" did form a type of villain, a niche that the Ice King nicely filled. However, the Ice King's first "function" was not to be such a sad clown of a villain...

[goqmir]

Any more thoughts on bugs bunny?

bugs bunny does things to me. i am at the point where the looney tunes show gets me blushing and dont even try to get me to watch the older cartoons because ive seen clips and frankly they put me in heat. hes a slutty genderfuck twink and his only goal is to eat the one food he likes in his bachelor pad rabbithole. he will do anything to live that life. he has killed annoying cisgender hater daffy duck and noted bastard yosemite sam more times than i can count and he doesnt even do it with combat he does it with fucking trickery and mischief he breaks their minds until they break themselves dont you just want to fuck a winner. cuz that cottontail doesnt lose. and god his cute little chest is what got me started thinking about him how they always draw that line between his twinky little pecs and those big ears those fluffy paws and. when you start thinking of bugs bunny as a sex icon you think oh haha but i could never like him because he talks like that! that silly accent the words he uses its too goofy. i tell you this when you make that transition and see the truth about bugs that voice is the nail in the coffin. god he carries such a smug demeanor hidden just enough by an air of genuineness that he can trick yosemite sam off that cliff time and time again. just imagine him calling you doc from down below you as he pleasures you its funny but in a way that only he can be funny. its comfortable. you trust him. of course he goes by he/him but like popeye and jerry the mouse and the other cartoon greats u can just kinda tell hes got something going on there right. the crossdressing certainly helps u can tell bugs has done his share of voice training and hes so comfortable wearing the aesthetics of femininity. those eyelashes. god i want him. i want to wake up in that rabbithole bed with him in my arms hear his soft cartoon mimimi as he sleeps safe beside me. that little bunny tail pressing against my stomach. i need bugs bunny

[detectivereads]

Batman/Elmer Fudd Special #1 by Tom King

5/5

This post is for fan entertainment, I am not being paid.

I went to my local comic shop recently to get some of the Batman Day comics that they had. I got a bunch. I was really happy to see some of the Long Halloween comics that were there. But this one the owner recommended it. At first I didn’t really know what to think, I know Loony Toons and Batman had some collaborations but when I saw the cover one this one I was not too sure I would like, so this was one of the first ones I read cover to cover, I am happy to say I love this, granted Elmer Fudd is not one of my favorite Loony Toons characters, after reading this I hope there is more in the series.

The comic shop had two variants the colored version and the noir version, I got the noir version.

Once I started reading this I started laughing, the way Elmer talks is iconic and the monologue that is shown within the first page. You have this super serious gritty scene. Gotham City at night it's raining down buckets and figure is seen trudging through the waterlog streets. Streets lights are dimly lit casting what little light they can, and you read the dialogue boxes and there is Elmer Fudd giving the token noir speech, heading to his regular bar: Porky’s.

Again, the sign for Porky’s, I like to see it as a nod towards the ending title cards after the cartoons.

Once Elmer is the bar, we as the reader see multitude of people, humanoid version of our favorite Loony Toon’s character. You got Bugs, Tweety, Foghorn Leghorn, Yosemite Sam, Taz and so on.

At one point when were saw all the bar patrons I had a hard time telling who one was, I want to say its Marvin the Martian.

Elmer is looking for Bugs, in this universe Bugs is a hired hit man and he was tasked to take out a woman that Elmer loved. So, Elmer has come to return the favor. Bugs barters for his life, giving the name of the man who hired him: Bruce Wayne.

With some calls and favors pulled Elmer gets into the party that Bruce is hosting, he finds Bruce and shoots him. Fleeing the scene after the deed has been done, Elmer heads home. However, he is not alone.

This comic was a riot, I really didn’t see the ending coming, but since this was noir type comic, I should have seen it coming.

The only issue that I did have with comic is that sometimes I couldn’t really understand what Elmer was saying, I had to re-read it a few times to understand it better.

I had my doubts about this comic, but I am happy to say this is a gold star in my book, I got noir-type mystery, I got Loony Toons and Batman. I was happy to be proven wrong. I hope there is going to be more Batman/Loony Toons mysteries.

[unpassive-viewer]

Also, shout out to Jeff Bennett, who is apparently in literally just about every single cartoon I watched as a kid. This guy has a stacked resume in voice acting, and his voice is so iconic! Voiced Johnny Bravo, Kowalski from Penguins of Madagascar, Yosemite Sam in Looney Toons?! He's like 10 voices in Young Justice.

[xtruss]

What in Tarnation Is ‘Tarnation’? Yosemite Sam —The Fiery-Haired, Fiery-Tempered Scofflaw—Certainly Seems Like He’d Say The W ord.

— By Ellen Gutoskey | February 1, 2024 | MentalFloss.Com

Why in tarnation do we think Yosemite Sam always said "tarnation"?/Edited From Mark Anderson, Flickr // CC BY 2.0 Deed

There are plenty of ways to convey incredulity and confusion in just a few words. What in the world?, What on Earth?, and What the heck? all do the trick, as do a couple other less kid-friendly iterations of the expression. But when it comes to sounding like a pistol-toting, Stetson-wearing outlaw, none of those options can compete with What in tarnation?.

So, what exactly is tarnation?

The Meaning of Tarnation

The phrase What in tarnation? isn’t, as some people assume, a truncation of What in the entire nation?. Tarnation is basically just a gentler version of damnation, much like heck is to hell and darn is to damn. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, tarnation grew out of two terms: darnation, a natural variant of damnation; and tarnal, a pronunciation of eternal that was used as a mild curse. You might say “That tarnal cat!” in the same way that you’d say “That darn cat!” You could even say “That tarnation cat!,” as tarnation also worked as an adjective and adverb.

Though we generally associate tarnation with the Wild West, it wasn’t confined to that era (or region). The earliest reference to the term in writing is from a 1787 play called The Contrast: A Comedy in Five Acts, written by Royall Tyler and set in New York City. The play, often cited as America’s first theatrical comedy, satirized two notable sects of American society: the preening, snooty Europhiles and the hardy, honorable patriots.

A tea party in colonial New England from Howard Pyle's Book of the American Spirit (1880). / Culture Club/GettyImages

The character who uses tarnation—and tarnal and tarnally—is Jonathan, a manservant who functions as a caricature of working-class New England Yankees. Think of him as The Contrast’s Kenneth Parcell (of 30 Rock). Jonathan usually says “Tarnation!” as a solitary exclamation, but once he does ask another character, “What the rattle makes you look so tarnation glum?” He also mentions “a tarnal blaze,” “a tarnal cross,” “a tarnal curse,” and candles that “smelt tarnally of brimstone.”

In short, tarnation and its offshoots evoked a sense of homespun Americana—and that association continued as Americans migrated westward.

Did Yosemite Sam Ever Say “What in Tarnation?”

Many people consider Looney Tunes’ Yosemite Sam—the hot-tempered gunslinger whose mustache is almost as big as his hat, which is even bigger than he is—to be the poster child for the expression What in tarnation?. But the widespread belief that Sam has always been shouting that phrase could arguably be classified as an example of the Mandela effect: a shared false memory.

We couldn’t find a single instance of his saying the word tarnation in any original Looney Tunes cartoon, starting with his debut in 1945’s “Hare Trigger” and ending with 1964’s “Dumb Patrol.” And even if one did happen to slip by us, that’s hardly enough to earn tarnation (or What in tarnation?) the distinction of being an iconic catchphrase of the character. Far more often can you find Sam yelling “Great horny toads!” or leveling insults at Bugs Bunny—especially varmint (a pesky animal) and galoot (“an awkward or uncouth fellow,” per the OED).

That said, Yosemite Sam did utter the word tarnation on at least a few fairly recent occasions.

In the 1992 cartoon “Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers,” he says, “Tarnation! Some rabbit’s got his footy prints all over my desert.” (The line is similar to one in 1955’s “Sahara Hare,” in which Yosemite Sam says, “Great horny toads, a trespasser! Gettin’ footy prints all over my desert.”)

In “Fish and Visitors,” a 2011 episode of The Looney Tunes Show, he shouts, “What in tarnation is a-goin’ on here?” (Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are throwing a loud house party.)

In the 2012 episode “The Stud, the Nerd, the Average Joe, and the Saint,” he shouts, “What in tarnation are you doin’ here?” (He was sleeping through a house fire, which Bugs came to rescue him from.)

And in the 2013 episode “The Grand Old Duck of York,” Sam shouts “What in tarnation is he doin’ up there?” (Daffy is practicing the piano—loudly and poorly.)

so many people who grew up watching old Looney Tunes cartoons associate Yosemite Sam with the phrase What in tarnation?. As is often the case with the Mandela effect, there might not be a concrete explanation beyond the fallibility of human memory.

“What we know about false memory is that it arises through the reconstruction process,” Gene Brewer, Ph.D., an associate professor in cognitive psychology at Arizona State University, told Mental Floss in 2019. “When you recall an event, you use memories around it, taking elements or pieces of other events and fitting them where they make sense.”

The word tarnation appeared in other popular mid-20th-century TV shows, like Gunsmoke and The Beverly Hillbillies, and it’s possible that we collectively shifted it onto Yosemite Sam because it matched his persona so perfectly.

Moreover, Looney Tunes completionists would’ve heard the term on the program at least once. In 1949’s “Bowery Bugs,” when Bugs Bunny introduces the story of a thrill seeker who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge in 1886, an old man says with a chuckle, “What in tarnation did he do that for?”

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

To hell with the New York Times's top 25 commercial/luxurious travel experiences. You can have your own. Here's some of mine, and reflecting on them makes me feel quite replete and not in need of any gourmet well-beaten trails. I hope you have yours.

--travel the pilgrimage trail of St. Jacques de Compostelle from Paris to the Spanish border as a teenage art historian, with the great Mme Francoise Weinman interpreting, 1978. 

 --bathe in a bathtub on a hillside on Western Shoshone land above matriarchs and federal challengers Mary and Carry Dann's ranch in eastern Nevada while listening to Lucinda Williams for the first time (music courtesy of Lauri Di, who then gave me the homemade cassette), 1991. 

--raft trip on assignment for Sierra Magazine, 1995, in a roadless wilderness the size of Portugal in NE British Columbia, where the whole community of wildlife was living its many lives largely undisturbed.

--Dance all night in the streets of Paris, Fete de la Musique, circa 1998, be serenaded by Timothy O'Toole's brother with Marianne Faithful's "Ballad of Lucy Jordan" in parting. (Research for Wanderlust was the official reason to be there.)

--Seattle Nov. 30-Dec. 1, when the protest in the streets galvanized the poor countries to resist the World Trade Organization's bullying on behalf of the rich corporations and countries and the fate of the world took a left turn. "When hope and history rhyme." Thank you David Solnit, who had a lot to do with it. 

--Hike with Lucy Lippard to the remote valley whose entrance is framed by two great natural stone slabs on each of which a life-sized cornstalk petroglyph appears; take Barry Lopez to see the life-size bear petroglyph nearby and the giant zig-zag snake petroglyphs, get drenched in a monsoon rain together, New Mexico circa 1999-2001 or so

--Multiple times participating in the Good Friday pilgrimage to Chimayo, NM, circa 1998-2010, witnessing the landscape, the devotion and dedication, the generosity, and the low-rider Cadillac of the stations of the cross. 

--find the exact places Eadweard Muybridge, Carleton Watkins, Ansel Adams, and Edward Weston stood to make their iconic pictures of Yosemite with Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe (in what became our book Yosemite in Time), and camp out in the supremely serene jeffrey pine forest south of Mono Lake while working on the project, 2001-4

--repeat visits to New Orleans to first understand the terrible things of Hurricane Katrina and then fall in love with the wonderful culture and dance in various second lines, etc., 2006 onward....

--Zapatista Women's Encuentro, late Dec.-January 1, Chiapas, Mexico, with Marina Sitrin and Sam Sitrin

--Iceland, summer of 2008 (partly melancholy, but studded with epiphanies): "I traveled a little, and on the south coast of Iceland had one magnificent midsummer day that began with a long walk on a path edged with tiny flowers past the largest glacier in Europe, went on to a bay in which the glacier was calving icebergs that were vivid blue in a blue inlet of the sea, and then traversed a long strand of wet sand that reflected the white clouds and blue sky so that heaven and earth were indistinguishable, and the clouds overhead seemed to be almost close enough to touch and those near the horizon seemed to be very near infinity. It was as close to a vision of paradise as I’ve been granted with my eyes open. After that I saw another bay full of hundreds of swans and a steep valley through which dozens of thin waterfalls trickled and poured from the heights. That day ended at a robin’s nest Klara showed me in the low willows in the quiet light at midnight, five small mottled eggs like turquoise stones." 

--first visit to David Rumsey's map collection, San Francisco, with David's visionary insight into cartography....-

-two weeks aboard a Swedish vessel circumambulating Svalbard in the high Arctic, 2011

--Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, raft trip, summer solstice, 2014 (also working as a journalist), but also thank you Michael Brune and Dan Ritzman https://www.theguardian.com/.../alaska-wildlife-sanctuary...

--Mt Burdell in green winter splendor, over so many years...

--wake up at Standing Rock to see thousand of joyful people celebrating their determination and solidarity on the great green prairie, 2016 (I went there to report for the Guardian, all too briefly)

--Traveling with Dolpo Tulku rimpoche through Dolpo, the Tibetan plateau/Buddhist land in which he is the spiritual leader, fall 2017, with Roshi Joan Halifax and various others, and doing another version of that route in 2015 that repeats Peter Matthiesson's in The Snow Leopard, including being welcomed into Shey Gompo, and seeing people engaged in daily life on almost medieval terms: plowing with yaks, threshing and reaping and winnowing by hand, traveling on foot or by beast, weaving on wooden looms, tending livestock, crossing high passes up to 17,600' high, spending a month on foot (and occasionally horse)....

--the enchanting walk from the Baldock train station to the cottage Orwell lived in 1936-1940s, through wheat fields full of flints formed undersea and rural rights of way, crossing the ancient Icknield Way (returning to where I first met those roses he planted, if they're his, on Nov. 2, 2017), 2019, walking it again this summer with Rob Macfarlane, 2022

--So many mornings of glorious light at Ocean Beach, because like all of you I also live in the destination.

--camping with my great-nieces who make everything new and exciting again. p.s. Just a reminder: I have had adventures, but my everyday life is staying home quietly turning words around and trying to make meaning with them.

[Rebecca Solnit ]

[insipid-drivel]

Traditional Southern US Foods To Make You Question Reality (Or Salivate Aggressively)

I know that many people are aware of the fact that Southerners from the US like to deep fry things that have no business being deep fried. But did you know that the older “iconic” Southern foods are even more disturbing or esoteric?! You’re about to find out! Here are some recipes that my old Southern family survived on and felt compelled to pass on the oral emotional trauma down the generations:

-Pickled Okra. If you don’t know what okra is, it’s basically a suspiciously phallic vegetable that produces absurd amounts of slime. If hagfish knew about okra, they’d sue for copyright violation. It’s used a lot in Southern cooking as a healthy vegetable that grows in abundance and is often incorporated into various recipes using its plant-slime for texture. A lot of Southerners will eat okra on its own or, most popularly, pickled. They’re also popular fried, but I refuse to eat any form.

-Black Eyed Peas and Ham Hocks. This one is actually pretty good, although I’m neither a huge fan of black eyed peas nor of pork. Leafy greens like kale or collard greens are often thrown in for added texture and nutrition. Black eyed peas are actually beans, and the recipe came about because both the ham hocks and beans require a very long cooking time at a low temperature and tend to finish cooking at the same time.

-Deep Fried Chicken in Motor Oil. No, this is not a joke. Prior to the era when detergents that induce vomiting to prevent ingestion were introduced into things like gasoline and rubbing alcohol, gasoline and motor oil were used for a lot of things in the South. Gasoline was used as everything from hair pomade to laundry detergent. For want of large quantities of other food-based oils in times of severe poverty, motor oil used to be a viable option as a frying oil because it 1) Basically air-fried the food you put in it without absorbing into any of it, or so I’ve been told by older relatives and 2) You could use it in the truck engine after you were done and save money on both food and vehicle maintenance. I feel that it should go without saying, but don’t try this one at home ffs.

-Peanuts And Coke - To be clearer, I mean the actual soda Coke, but in the South “coke” is commonly used as a general term for all sodas. This one comes from practical purposes from people (usually men) who worked as miners. To keep coal dust and other gross crap from getting on a packet of peanuts (this was before energy bars were a thing), pouring them into Coke not only added flavor to them, but kept the peanuts from getting dirty. Peanuts and coke later evolved into what we now recognized as Boston Baked Beans!

-Succotash. I’m including this one not because it’s necessarily an unusual flavor profile, but because a lot of people don’t know what the hell it is aside from being Yosemite Sam’s catchphrase. It’s essentially a cold or warm salad built on a foundation of corn and lima beans (this is essential because the two form a complete protein when eaten together). Succotash is supposedly one of the foods served at the first Thanksgiving between white settlers and Native Americans. It’s usually accompanied with additions like bacon bits and sun-dried tomatoes.

-Chicken and Dumplings. Not a gross one (in my estimation) but a very anthropologically revealing dish! If you come from an old Southern family that immigrated from England and/or France, the way in which you prepare the dumplings in chicken in dumplings reveals where your ancestors came from! Unleavened dumplings (no yeast), or “slickers”, are traditionally considered to be passed down from origins in Southern England. Leavened dumplings (”floaters”) indicate the opposite. For those who don’t know, it’s a stew made from white gravy and pepper full of shredded chicken and wheat dumplings. Other ingredients can be added or removed based upon the family or person making it. It’s a Southern mainstay, especially during times of economical crisis.

-Chipped Beef, aka “Shit On A Shingle”. “Chipped” beef refers to “dried” beef, which was a very common staple protein before the advent of Spam. To hydrate the dried beef and make it into an edible meal, it’s cooked low and slow in white gravy and pepper and served on toast. It’s... food.

-Dutch Babies - No, we’re not going down the road to cannibalizing infants from the Netherlands. Dutch babies are actually awesome and tasty, and are a very simple pastry recipe that takes the concept of a pancake, a crepe, and a popover and bastardizes the shit out of them. Traditionally, the pastry is made in a Dutch Oven (aka a large, flat-bottomed cast iron pot, often with metal legs so it can be placed directly onto a campfire or into an old fashioned wood stove), and can be either eaten with fruit, syrup, and a dusting of powdered sugar, ungarnished, or you can fill it with whatever suits your fancy, like jam.

-Beignets (pronounced “ben-yays”) - Possibly Manna from Louisiana’s version of heaven. Beignets are another Southern mainstay of patisseries, although they’re most closely associated with Louisiana. They’re amazing light, fluffy pastries that are like lighter, crispier versions of doughnuts that are aggressively coated in powdered sugar. Speak ill of beignets and I will fight you.

-Po Boys - Another Louisiana favorite, the name comes from “poor boys”. History has it that the first official use of the recipe and name came out of New Orleans in 1929, when a large-scale strike held by streetcar drivers left many people low on money and hungry. Benny and Clovis Martin, aka The Martin Brothers, began giving their shrimp sandwiches away for free to picketers, calling out, “Here comes another poor boy!” when they’d spot a hungry driver coming up to their shop, and the brothers fed the strikers for free until the strike’s end. They’re most often served on French bread or hoagie bread and feature deep-fried, spiced shrimp covered in Cajun spices, lettuce, tomatoes, and a little bit of (spicy) mayo.

-Shoo Fly Pie- You may have grown up with the song “Shoo, Fly, Don’t Bother Me!” and this is where it comes from. Shoo Fly Pie, as I recall was originally invented by the Pennsylvania Dutch/Amish and was adopted by many Southern families as a cheap and easy dessert that didn’t need a lot of refrigeration to keep well. The primary ingredient in the filling is thick black strap molasses (hence the name), and it tends to taste like sugar that is also on fire.

-Green Tomato Pie - Oh yeah. You may have heard of “Fried Green Tomatoes”, but green tomato pie is a classic. It’s made either sweet or savory, but usually sweet, and is most commonly made at the end of the tomato growing season as a means of making use of green, unripened tomatoes that won’t reach full ripeness before the season changes and they start to rot on the vine.

-Tumbleweed Stew - This time the name is as literal as it sounds. In some cases, families devastated by the Dust Bowl and Great Depression were left eating whatever they could find that wasn’t lethally poisonous, including tumbleweeds. Luckily for them, the Navajo and Pueblo peoples had been cooking with tumbleweeds for generations. You can find a recipe for authentic tumbleweed stew that’s as close to Native tradition as I, a non-Indigenous American can find, Here.

-Bacon Grease - Yeah, just the grease. Bacon grease is largely used in pretty much any recipe you don’t have salt for. Bacon grease/fat is also used for curing cast iron cookware (the most popular traditional Southern cooking vessels because a good cast iron skillet can last for generations). Aside from using it as a replacement for salt and other flavorings when money is tight, an essential part of kitchen maintenance comes in the form of keeping your cast iron cookware cured with grease. It keeps your food from picking up iron flakes and prevents rust from forming. Be very careful about asking how your food is prepared if you are vegan/vegetarian, Kosher, Halal, or otherwise cannot consume pork or certain other animal products if you’re eating in the South.

-Ambrosia Salad - Quite possibly the most unhealthy salad on this planet that remains a must-have at any Southern family gathering, it consists of canned fruit salad, mandarin orange wedges, marshmallow creme (bonus points if you use Cool Whip), mini marshmallows, and the bitter tears of doctors.

-Boiled Peanuts - A lot of people lose their minds about this one, but yes! Peanuts are legumes, and boiling them tends to convert their texture to being similar to water chestnuts. They absorb the flavor of whatever you put in the water, including very hot spices. No, you don’t eat the shells.

-Pickled Pigs/Chicken/Calves Feet - Picked-anything is a very Southern way of preparing food, but pig’s and chicken feet in particular are a cultural mainstay. From a background of such intense poverty, Southerners couldn’t afford to throw out “unappetizing” parts of animals and had to get clever with how to make them palatable.

-Grape Dumplings - Another recipe that originates with Native Americans that my own grandmother learned from the residents of the Reservation near where she was born in Oklahoma. Using unleavened dumpling bread, families would boil the dough in grape juice with a little extra flour for thickening and allow the juice to render down into a sort-of coulis. It tastes better than it looks.

Enjoy your next meal, y’all!

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Michael in the Mainstream: Space Jam/Space Jam: A New Legacy

I am genuinely confused, guys. Space Jam: A New Legacy has come out, and it is just getting a critical thrashing on all fronts. It is being derided as being a retread of Ready Player One, it’s being mocked as a shameless commercial, it’s being called the ‘definition of corporate’… And all of this is just baffling because this is literally no different than the original film, which was based on a commercial and just made to cash in on 90s culture. The original is a cult classic now and something of a meme in its own right, but it is undoubtedly a big fat commercial made to cash in on the times and boy did it ever because we still remember it fondly to this very day.

But I think there’s plenty of value in this new film, and I think a lot of it might be fondly remembered by younger generations down the line like the original is by people like me. What helps is that, in a lot of ways, this movie does things way better than the original… though I certainly won’t say this new film is perfect by any means. You’ve gotta go in with the mindset that this is just a dumb, silly commercial that you’re watching for cartoon antics and shameless product placement, first and foremost. Do that, and you might be able to handle all the stuff I’m about to talk about.

The obvious starting comparison for the films is the leads. Michael Jordan in the original is, to put it lightly, not an actor. He puts in a very corny performance by even the nicest definitions. But still, I think that lends him a charm all his own, and he’s not detrimental to the film at all. In fact, his lack of acting talent is easily smoothed over by the general charisma Jordan brings to his role. In comparison, LeBron James is a much better actor (though let’s not pretend he’ll be winning an Oscar any time soon), but he lacks a lot of the charisma Jordan brought to his role. That’s not to say James is weak, though; he acts just enough to bring the awkward, dorky charm of someone not an actor by trade trying their best to the role. It’s hard not to like him, at least a little bit, and he does have some decent interactions with the Tunes, though I think Jordan definitely has him beat there.

Speaking of the Tunes, they are a clear improvement over how they were in the original film. A common criticism of Space Jam is that, as fun as the Tunes were, a lot of the time they were a bit out of character, and the one newcomer (Lola) was nothing but oversexualized furry bait who existed to be a love interest and whose personality began and ended with ‘girl.’ The new movie fixes this by giving the Tunes a lot of fun, cartoonish antics that feel far more in line with how they are usually portrayed. Bugs is back to being a tricky rascal, Daffy is an egomanical jackass, and so on. Much like a lot of modern portrayals, the movie fixes Lola by amping up her badass qualities while still staying true to her original appearance by having her be good at basketball, but not to the point she overshadows everyone. There are some issues with the Tunes, such as the weird stunt casting of Zendaya as Lola and Gabriel Iglesias as Speedy instead of using their more modern voice actors, as well as using a voice for Bugs that makes him sound really off at times, but overall the Tunes are treated far more respectfully and with far greater dignity than the original afforded them (except my man Marvin, they really did him dirty in this one).

When it comes to the main villain, there is absolutely no contest here. Swackhammer is a bland, horribly forgettable corrupt corporate executive archetype with little to no interesting twists to him, and he commits cardinal sin of cinema by wasting Danny DeVito. A New Legacy, on the other hand, gives the Oscar-nominated superstar Don Cheadle a hell of a lot to do in the movie. Al-G Rhythm is a sentient computer virus who wants to capture LeBron James and use him to churn out lazy, soulless cashgrab films, and he does it all while hamming things up to the high heavens. Cheadle looks like he’s having an absolute blast, and he’s definitely one of the most fun villains in a kid’s movie in a long while (especially since Disney doesn’t seem to be able to make good villains anymore). Unfortunately, this does come at a price it seems. In the original, the opposing team is comprised of the Nerdlucks/Monstars, who all build themselves up throughout the movie as an actual intimidating threat. The opposing team here gets no buildup, being conjured up solely for the big game at the end, and while they’re not awful, they really aren’t particularly memorable either.

Speaking of the big game, I’m just gonna say it: A New Legacy blows the original completely out of the water in this regard. The cartoonish antics are through the roof and are mixed in with video game antics, Don Cheadle hams it up to the high heavens, and there are cameos from the most ridiculous array of Warner Bros. Properties you could imagine. This has become a prominent source of derision, but if you feel no joy at seeing Arnold Schwarzengger’s Mr. Freeze, the Droogs, Pennywise, and one of the nuns from The Devils doing idle animations and losing their shit over a Looney Tunes basketball game, I’m not particularly sure I care about your opinion. This is the exact sort of stupid fun I’d want from a movie like this. I’ll certainly take it over Bill Murray showing up out of nowhere for no good reason, that’s for sure.

The humor of A New Legacy far outshines the original for the reasons I mentioned with talking about the portrayal of the Tunes, but there are some issues. The montage where Bugs and LeBron recruit all the Tunes is a bit rushed, and the concept (the Tunes have migrated to other Warner properties) is really glossed over save for Daffy and Porky in the DCAU and Lola training to become an Amazon in a comic book-style take on Wonder Woman (complete with the now-iconic theme!) that really goes to show she should replace Gal Gadot. Other than them, we get Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner in Fury Road, Sylvester and Elmer in The Spy Who Shagged Me, Granny and Speedy in The Matrix, and Yosemite Sam in Casablanca, and while all of these gags are great and funny, they’re over far too quickly and could have been expanded into a whole sequence of their own rather than just a montage. I don’t know about you, but I really am far more interested in seeing what the hell Game of Thrones is like with Foghorn Leghorn as Daenerys than I am most other things in movies. It’s just a whole lot of missed opportunities. I’m less forgiving to the out-of-nowhere rap battle in the middle of the basketball game, but is it really worse than the out-of-nowhere Pulp Fiction reference in the original or, again, Bill Murray just showing up at the end?

Look, I’m not trying to say either film is some masterpiece of emotion or storytelling or anything like that, but both films have their place. The original is a fun, corny piece of 90s nostalgia that manages to be fun almost in spite of itself, while the new film is a fun, goofy spectacle that takes everything good about the first film and makes it better while still hosting problems of its own. They’re fun, flawed, amusing, and stupid commercials, and they absolutely deliver on what you want them to be. The Looney Tunes play basketball with a superstar against a bunch of crazy opponents while a cavalcade of cameos watches from the sideline… If you’re expecting anything more, you’re watching the wrong movie.

[katzkinder]

Top iconic/classic Halloween costumes each of our fav characters would dress up as? These are all meant to be silly. There were a few I couldn’t think of… but like your input too, so if you want to replace some or something please by all means

Nico - male equivalent of banshee… this boy does some screamin’ on Halloween

Ildio - headless horseman (literally ripped the top/stem of the pumpkin off with his hand, slammed the pumpkin on his head and he’s just eating the pumpkin from the inside out)

Hugh - “he looks like a mini Dracula!” - Mahiru Shirota

Tetsu -

Lily - the birth of Venus

Misono - Sebastian the crab

Licht - Gerard Way (black parade era)

Hyde - kinky boots or Oscar from Shark Tale or Gerard Way (Killjoy era)

Crantz -

Guildenstern - Oswald the octopus

Mikuni - Indiana Jones

Jeje - Slenderman

Mahiru - Timmy Turner

Kuro - Jack Skellington

Inner Kuro - Oogie Boogie

Gear - male red riding hood in wolf form because… irony

Yotaro - red riding hood’s sassy knitty grandma

Toma - demon

Toru - George george George of the Jungle

Tsurugi - Chuck from angry birds

Yumikage - Red from angry birds

Junichiro - Bomb from angry birds

Freya - Meg from Hercules?

Izuna - (suicide squad version) Harley Quinn w/ a heart of gold

Gil & Ray - don’t even try to convince me these two wouldn’t be an AWESOME Pain & Panic duo! https://images.app.goo.gl/4NUcnHwqKuxhRMbo8

Tsuyuki - he just told me “no”…

Johannes - Beetlejuice or dr. doofenshmirtz

Tsubaki -

Sakuya - combo between Freddy Kruger and dark knight Joker

Berukia - magician piñata? Or Grell Sutcliff

Otogiri - naughty bunny

Higan - Captain Hook or Yosemite Sam

Shamrock -

Oh god I got to Lily as Birth of Venus and almost threw up from laughing 😭 and then you took me out again immediately after with Misono as Sebastian the crab, fuck...

Tooru as George of the Jungle also got me www

I actually did some Halloween costume ideas like... Two years ago? Here❣

Thanks for the ask! I'm still not back to 100% yet so finding this in my inbox was really nice ;w;

[fandomfrenzy625]

My problem with the new space jam a new legacy

If you haven't watched it yet, probably don't read it as it will contain spoilers

Ok so my first and probably only problem with this film is that

WHY DID THE DO MARVIN SO DIRTY?!

Literally, Marvin the Martian is one of the most iconic and lovable toonss of the looney tunes. He has memorable catchphrases (which yes were said in the film but could have been done more effectively) and has a lot of merchandise because of how popular of a character he is

And when the film came out I was so ready to see what was instore

In my mind, you could hear “bring out Marvin, bring out Marvin!”

But when he did appear the first time there was good all looney tune banter, guns, trickery and eventually LeBron James and Buggs stealing his ship

But then when Buggs was picking out the “team” of all the tunes that had left to collect for the game

But the picture of Marvin was put in the bin on his computer....

WHY?!

Of all the tunes you could have used Marvin had to be one of the most useful

And you can't say “oh it's because he's a villain” because he had gone to get elmer fudd and have Yosemite Sam have tried to harm him and the other toons on multiple occasions

Marvin is a technical and weaponry genius that could have gained the tunes a great advantage

Other than that exchange we only see Marvin being crushed by the door of his ship, which is a good gag but that was it

that was all they did for Marvin

I understand the first film where Marvin was just the referee since it was tunes vs aliens and since Marvin is both he would be a neutral party

But the second film?!

He was used even less?!!

And these fake film toys/advertisements did not make the pain any easier

THE ROBOT SUIT WOULD HAVE BEEN SO COOL TO SEE

and him in the little toon uniform would have been so adorable

So when they said “we need a secret weapon” I honestly thought that they could have been referring to THIS!!!

It would have been so cool and finally give Marvin the spotlight he deserves

He's one of the most famous cartoon characters, being referenced in a lot of alien gags e.g

And even a Simpsons reference

So I fail to see why they thought that leaving Marvin out of the game and yet advertise promising and exciting toys highlighting things in the movie was a smart move

Does buggs just hate him? And if so give us a reason!!

That's just my biggest problem in the movie

Other then that it was good, good story and good graphics (although it would have been nice if they got in deeper into it, like giving a chance for Daffy to properly take up the coaching team and get rid of some of the characters that just didn't seem needed in the team, like I know buggs wanted his family back but characters like Gossamer, Elmeer, Sam, longhorn and even Sylvester hardly did anything to help the the team is out so having Marvin on the team would have helped their chances out a lot more

also, another thought does buggs hate Marvin so much he doesn't think of him as family? Marvin since he's an alien could be moving to the planet to the planet so that does make sense of why he isn't in many episodes of the original looney tunes, but he is a tune made for that purpose so it's a bit unfair to just throw him out since the creators used him less for the occasional video and that he's going out collecting planets, in fact buggs could have seen that as a plus since he destroys these planets which would mean the toons would have less planets to go and stay in the looney tunes planet

Marvin even though gun-happy would have more sense than others than to destroy the planet he belongs to as a tune himself, not his fault he was created as a martian

So if you're watching this movie for amazing Marvin content then be ready for disappointment, you only see him in 3 shots and the other 2 are just disappointing and sad

I didn't stay for any secret end credits or scenes because I had to get home, but once those credits rolled, I knew it was over (unless there was something I missed that gave Marvin the appreciation he deserved then I'm not interested)

But I'm probably getting of topic and will stop here, the rant is over, you may disagree but this is my honest opinion, thank you

[frankendykes-monster]

Space Jam: A New Legacy is content to be content.

The original Space Jam was a calculated marketing exercise. Michael Jordan was the biggest sports star of the nineties, and Space Jam capitalised on Jordan’s brand potential while also allowing the athlete to refashion his own narrative into a family-friendly mythology. Space Jam packaged Jordan for a generation, smoothing the wrinkles out of his story by presenting a wholesome family man making an earnest transition from basketball to baseball.

It also helped Warner Bros. to figure out what to do with their��Looney Tunes characters, which had largely laid dormant within the company’s intellectual property vaults. There had been a conscious effort to revitalised the company’s animation with shows like Tiny Toon Adventures and even Animaniacs, but those classic and beloved cartoons were a merchandising opportunity waiting to happen. So the logic of the original Space Jam was clear, it was an excuse to tie together two potentially profitable strands of intellectual property.

Space Jam itself was something of an afterthought. The movie struggles to reach its ninety-minute runtime. It often feels like the production team have to utilise every scrap of film to reach that target, with extended riffs focusing on Bill Murray and Michael Jordan on the golf course and with a lot of the improvisation from the voice cast included in the finished film. The movie’s ending comes out of nowhere, and Space Jam struggles to hit many of the basic plot beats of a scrappy sports movie.

The movie itself was immaterial to the success of Space Jam as a concept. After all, the film only grossed $250m at the global box office, enough to scrape into the end of year top ten behind The Nutty Professor and Jerry Maguire. However, the film’s real success lay in merchandising, with the film generating between $4bn and $6bn in licensing and merchandising. Key to this was the success of the six-time platinum-certified soundtrack which remains the ninth highest-grossing soundtrack of all-time.

In some to trace a lot of modern Hollywood back to the original Space Jam. So much of how companies package and release modern media feels like an extension of that approach, the reduction of the actual film itself to nothing more than “content” that exists as a larger pool of marketable material. After all, the unspoken assumption underlying AT&T’s disastrous decision to send all of their blockbusters to HBO Max was the understanding that HBO Max itself was often packaged free with company’s internet. Movies would no longer be their own things, but just perks to be packaged and sold as part of larger deals.

In the decades since the release of Space Jam, the industry has become increasingly focused on the idea of packaging and repackaging intellectual property. It has become increasingly common for films to showcase multiple intellectual properties housed at the same studios. Simple crossovers like Alien vs. Predators or The Avengers now seem positively humble when compared to the smorgasbord of brand synergy on display in projects like The Emoji Movie or Ralph Breaks the Internet.

Interestingly, as Disney have steadily securing their intellectual property portfolio with additions like Pixar and Lucasfilm and Marvel Studios and 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros. have becoming increasingly bullish about showcasing the depth and breadth of their bench. The LEGO Movie imagines a wide range of properties consolidated under one brand. Ready Player One depicted a pop culture user space lost in nostalgia for properties and trinkets. However, those movies also managed to tell their own stories, even as they grappled with the weight of brand synergy pushing down on top of them.

Space Jam: A New Legacy has no such delusions. It understands that it does not exist as a story or as a feature film. Instead, it has distilled cinema down to a content-delivery mechanism. The plot of the movie finds basketball star LeBron James sucked into the “Serververse” and forced to ally with the Looney Tunes in order to play a basketball game with the fate of the world in the balance. However, while the original Space Jam ran a brisk and unfocused ninety minutes, A New Legacy extends itself to almost two hours. There is always more content to repackage and sell, after all.

A New Legacy slathers its cynicism in nostalgia, directly appealing to a generation of audiences who have convinced themselves that Space Jam was a good movie and a beloved childhood classic. A New Legacy is built around the understanding that the original Space Jam walked so that it might run, counting on the audience’s nostalgia for the original film to excuse a lot of its indulgences. After all, it would be a betrayal of the franchise if A New Legacy wasn’t a crash and vulgar cash-in. In many ways, A New Legacy does what most sequels aspire to do, scaling the original film’s ambitions aggressively upwards.

As with the original Space Jam, there is layer of irony to distract from the film’s clear purpose. In the original Space Jam, the villainous Swackhammer planned to abduct the Looney Tunes and force them to play at his themeparks. The implication was that the characters did not want to be sold into corporate servitude, stripped of their own identity and rendered as crass tools of unchecked capitalism. The irony of Space Jam lay in the fact that the entire movie was a variant on Swackhammer’s themepark and the Looney Tunes were dancing to that theme anyway as Daffy puckers up and kisses the Warner Bros. stamp on his own ass.

In A New Legacy, a sentient algorithm – Al G. Rhythm – is cast as the movie’s primary antagonist. The film gestures broadly at a satirical criticism of the modern film industry, with Al G. Rhythm shaping and warping the future of movie-making by suggesting things like computer-generating movie stars and producing a constant array of recycled intellectual property. A New Legacy recognises the machinations of Al G. Rhythm as unsettling and horrifying, with throwaway jokes about the theft of ideas and the violation of privacy, but the villain largely serves as a smokescreen to let the movie have its cake and eat it.

After all, A New Legacy revels in Al G. Rhythm’s plans. LeBron James is turned into an animated figure and dumped into classic Looney Tunes shorts like Rabbit Season and The Rabbit of Seville. The film understands that while the audience might be afraid of the algorithm, they also yearn for it. After all, it isn’t Al G. Rhythm who structures A New Legacy so that the film spends an extended sequence touring the company’s beloved intellectual properties.

A New Legacy is really just an investors’ day presentation that celebrates the sheer amount of content that Warner Bros. own. It’s not too difficult to imagine the film screened investors before the Discovery deal, as proof of just how many viable franchising opportunities existed within the copyright of the company itself. It’s a weird and unsettling showcase, in large part because it feels like that warning from Jurassic Park. The studio were so obsessed with whether they could do a thing that they never stopped to consider whether they should.

The film’s middle section includes a whirlwind tour of the properties owned by Warner Bros. After Bugs “plays the hits” with James, the two set off on an adventure to recover the other Looney Tunes from other beloved Warner Bros. properties. Some of these advertisements make sense: Daffy and Porky are living in the world of Superman: The Animated Series, while Lola seems to have found the Wonder Woman from the Bloodlines animated films. Others make much less sense in a movie aimed at kids, like the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote hiding in Mad Max: Fury Road or Yosemite Sam living in Casablanca.

Of course, it’s debatable how much of A New Legacy is aimed at kids, as compared to the kids of the nineties. Its target market seems to be kids in the late nineties who never grew up, because they never had to. Elmer Fudd and Sylvester are hiding out in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Granny and Speedy have taken refuge in the opening scenes of The Matrix. While the original Space Jam featured odd pop cultural shoutouts to things like Pulp Fiction, at least that was somewhat contemporaneous.

To be fair, there is no art driving these choices. Many of these references serve to point the audience towards established properties. It is a sentient recommendation algorithm for HBO Max and a handy way of stoking audience interest in upcoming projects like The Matrix 4 (December 2021) or Furiosa (June 2023). It is a helpful reminder that Superman: The Animated Series has been remastered in high definition to stream on HBO Max. Foghorn Leghorn even rides a dragon from Game of Thrones to remind viewers that the show is streaming on HBO Max and that there are prequels coming.

It’s all very bizarre, but also strangely lifeless. The climax of the film finds the inevitable basketball game played in front of a crowd of familiar pop culture icons drawn from a wide range of sources: King Kong, The Iron Giant, Batman ’66, The Wizard of Oz, The Mask and many more. It feels very much like a surreal power play, a company showcasing the depth of its own vaults at a turbulent time in the industry. It leads to weird moments, like Al G. Rhythm even quoting Training Day, perhaps the film’s most unlikely draw from the “Warner Bros. Intellectual Property Vault.”

The most revealing aspect of the movie is its central conflict, with Al G. Rhythm cynically manipulating LeBron’s son Dom. Dom is convinced that his father doesn’t understand him, that his father is unable to see that his skill lies in video game coding rather than old-fashioned basketball. Rhythm is able to create a schism between father and son, using Dom’s code and his anger to attack and undermine LeBron James and the Looney Tunes. It’s a very broad and very archetypal story. There are no points for realising that Dom eventually comes around to his father and accepts that Rhythm is a villain.

However, it signals an interesting shift in these sorts of narratives. Traditionally, these sorts of generational conflicts played out between fathers and sons, with fathers presented as antagonistic and sons presented as heroic. The original Star Wars saga is built around Luke Skywalker trying to wrestle and grapple with his father Darth Vader. In Superman II, the eponymous superhero is forced to confront Zod, a representative of his father’s generation and the old world. Even in Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne is set against his surrogate father figure Ra’s Al Ghul.

The metaphor driving these sorts of stories was fairly simple and straightforward. Every generation needs to come into their own and take control of their own agency within the world. Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi ends with Darth Vader dead and Luke staring out into the wider universe. Times change, and each generation has an obligation to try to create a better world than the one left to them by their parents. In the conflict between parents and children, it has generally been children who have prevailed.

However, in recent years, the trend has swung back sharply. It’s notable that the villain in Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens is an errant child who doesn’t properly respect his parents, and that Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker ends with order restored when the protagonist takes the name of the beloved heroes of the older films. Shows like Star Trek: Picard are built around the idea that kids need their older generation of parents to swoop in and tell them how to properly live their lives.

A New Legacy is an interesting illustration of this trend. The movie ends with a reconciliation between LeBron and Dom, but it is very clearly on LeBron’s terms. Dom is manipulated and misled by sinister forces, and his father has to save him while realigning his moral compass. Father knows best. It demonstrates how the underlying logic of these stories has shifted in recent years, perhaps reflecting the understanding that perhaps the older generation won’t surrender the floor gracefully.

As with Ready Player One, there’s a monstrous Peter Pan quality to A New Legacy. It is a film about how the culture doesn’t have to change. It can be recycled and repurposed forever and ever and ever. At the end of Space Jam, Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny parted ways. There was an understanding that the two worlds existed apart from one another. However, A New Legacy ends with the collapse of these worlds into one another; the “Serververse” manifesting itself in the real world. As LeBron walks home, Bugs asks if he can move in.

Of course, with HBO Max subscription, the audience can take Bugs home anytime they want

[corhore]

About the Marge post, I remember when me and a bunch of other people on /co/ were hate-watching The Simpsons, and it was a Skinner and Chalmers episode, and we were glad to not hear Marge's voice, and as soon as I posted about that, Marge appears in the second to last scene.

Her voice just sounds rough as hell. She went from having a smoky to sounding like she's been smoking for 50 years and has throat cancer.

Julie Kanver is 70 and has been doing the voice for over 30 years. I think its time to retire the show. Not recast just end the show. I can't imagine recasting one of the most iconic characters in animation.

There's a reason Mel Blanc stopped doing Yosemite Sam in his later years.