There are some days, I'm very glad I'm a writer. Not a professional by any means, but a writer none the less. I especially like being a writer on a day when I actually have words I want to spread across a blank page. Today is one of those days.
I turned on my TV this morning to get a weather report, and had to wait a few minutes while the co-hosts waded through a few stories. After which they bantered back and forth about the clips I was just shown.
One story was about a hot air balloon event being held here this weekend. They showed the balloons coming to life. One was the likeness of Pepe Le Pew. The co-hosts then reported that some of the younger employees of the TV station did not know who Pepe Le Pew was. WHAT???????
You mean to tell me, my kids were the last kids to see a Pepe Le Pew cartoon? Oh,my goodness!
So, for my younger readers...if I have any...maybe...I'm going to tell you about sweet, love-lorn Pepe. Warner Brothers brought him to life in 1945. He's a cartoon skunk who lives in Paris. He's a skunk, he smells, okay. But that does not stop him from having an eye for a pretty, single, female kitty. Each cartoon revolves around his desire to shower love and affection on said female kitty, only to be spurned because, as I mentioned before he SMELLS.
Personally, I adore him, he tries sooo hard to get the girl. It was not his fault he smells. Frankly, he does not know that he does. (Oh, if only someone had told him.) (Poor little guy, all he needed to do was leave the crowded sidewalks of Paris and stroll into the neighboring woods...he would have found his true love for sure.) Instead, in each episode (full of amor'e), he pursues that sweet, black kitty. She usually has an accidental white stripe (perhaps from an up-ended can of white paint) down her back, that makes her look like...well, him; so you can understand his confusion and desire and wanting to shower affection upon her. Meanwhile, kitty spends the episode scurrying away from smelly Pepe's unwanted advances always managing to allude him, though he never give up in his pursuit. Sigh, love, unrequited. So sad, so sad.
How nice it would have been for Pepe if he had found his true love in his final cartoon.
I always let the kids watch cartoons I'd watch them, too. It never occurred to me to look for agendas hidden inside them. They were fun, we'd laugh. But, then one day some parents thought that having an Acme Safe fall on Wile E Coyote or seeing Sylvester Cat chase tiny, yellow Tweetie Bird was too violent for children to watch, then it became too politically incorrect to show a Pepe Le Pew cartoon, what with sexual harassment and stalking being what they are today. Over time, before school and after school cartoon shows became a thing of the past.
Oh, there are special television channels for children these days, but for the most part, kids bury their noses into hand held devises, watch and play animated games, with life-like violence so real that some teens and young adults have come to believe it is okay to act out with said violence, hence, we see horrendous incidents of mass shootings at malls, schools and movie theaters. Family members are murdering family members, generations are being wiped out.
I don't know about you, but I yearn for the days of Porky Pig, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Yosemite Sam, Roadrunner, Foghorn Leghorn, and a dozen more delightful cartoon characters. They were funny, silly, and imaginary, 99.999% of people who watched them knew they weren't real...even Foghorn knew, for he would frequently state, "That's a joke, ah say, that's a joke, son."
I wish kids today knew Pepe Le Pew I remember him fondly. I also remember wonderful cartoon quips and quotes, and in your memory Pepe, I include the following: "I tawt I saw a Puddy Tat. Sufferin' succotash. Beep-beep. What's up, doc?"
And finally, "T-t-t-that's all folks."
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