Looney Tunes Archives - The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

Mar112012 by Chris HolmesNo Comments

Sunday Jazz: Shorty Rogers, Stan Freberg, and “Three Little Bops”

Music, Sunday Jazz

I'd like to deviate from the usual Sunday Jazz fare to pay small tribute to one of my favorite cartoons of all time. "Three Little Bops" is one of the great entries in the Looney Tunes catalog, and came out in 1957 -- a time when Beat culture was very much in the American consciousness. Not only is it funny, it swings! Dig it, man: I could watch that all day. So anyway, not much is absolutely confirmed about the men behind "Three Little Bops." Stan Freberg and Shorty Rogers are credited with vocals and music, respectively, but that's about it. Some enterprising folks have done a lot of digging to uncover the rest of the musicians, and have come up with this lineup: Vocals -- Stan Freberg (credited on the short) Saxophone -- Pepper Adams (or possibly Jimmy Giuffre) Trumpe...

Jul132009 by Chris Holmes2 Comments

Attn: Cartoon porn enthusiasts

Blogstuff

I'm always thrilled when any of my content generates a lot of interest from the inter-tubes community, but there's been a recent trend that I find a little...disturbing. You see, just over two years ago I posted an amusing news story about Comcast subscribers seeing a little porn on their Disney Channel feed. Well thanks to a spike in the number of people searching for terms such as "Disney porn" or "Disney Channel porn" it's been one of my most popular posts for about a month (as you can see if you look at the sidebar over on the right). I'm not going to lecture anyone looking for porn on the internet here, nor am I going to get all judgmental but seriously, Disney porn? I understand that there's all sorts of interesting fetishes out there, but how does one make the leap from watchi...

Jul62008 by Chris Holmes6 Comments

GFS at the Movies: WALL-E

Movies

I'll cop to not being a huge Pixar believer. I've seen Toy Story, The Incredibles, and a few of their other features, but for some reason they've always left me a little cold. Oh sure, they are marvels of computer animation technology, but I have always preferred the old school style. It's hard for me to get emotionally invested in movies that look more like extended video game cut scenes. But I have to say that watching WALL-E got me about as close as I've come to getting really engaged with a computer-animated movie. But not because of the main plot, which concerned a slowly developing romance between the title character (a trash-collecting and compacting robot) and EVE, a nominally female robot who catches WALL-E's fancy. While it was cute, it was a tad predictable. No, w...

Nov202007 by Chris HolmesNo Comments

Scenes from the WGA strike

Funny Stuff

Most of the picket signs I've seen during the two-week-plus WGA strike have been pretty uninspired. But if you look closely enough you can spot some real keepers: I think Jesse floats through the air when cameras are near, like the old Looney Tunes bits where a character would drift towards a freshly baked pie. I'm surprised Jerry Seinfeld didn't use this space for another friggin' Bee Movie ad. Yes, we know Tina. A rare moment of intellectual honesty from Hollywood.

Jun292007 by Chris Holmes18 Comments

Note to John Kricfalusi: Enough already

People, Rants

There was a time when I saw the name John K. and knew I was about to witness high-quality entertainment. For those who don't know him (or have forgotten), John K. introduced the world to the world of The Ren & Stimpy Show in August 1991. The first season of R&S is still revered by many animation fans as one of the finest ever for any cartoon. When it debuted it was seen by fans (if not by critics) as imaginative, frenetic, and the perfect antidote to a world of bland, predictable animation. But that magic didn't last long. By the time the decent (albeit uneven) second season started there were already huge delays (as long as one month between new episodes) and reports of friction between John K. and his bosses at Nickelodeon. Prior to the start of the third season in 1993, Kricf...