The Bullwinkle Paradox

From: ridetheory <ridetheory@notmail.com>
Date: Fri, Apr 16, 2004

Artemia Salina at y2k@sheayright.com wrote:
> But what about the Rocky and Bullwinkle show? That too was aimed at
> adults, mostly lampooning the Cold War, with Boris and Natasha as
> Russian spies, etc. As far as I know, the Bullwinkle show was never
> run in theaters; it was made for television and broadcast during the
> day when the audience would be mostly kids.
>
> What's up with that?

It wasn't so much aimed at adults as it was created to entertain the
creators, who happened to be adults. Everyone involved with Rocky and
Bullwinkle was what Candi Strecker once called a "Self-Amusing Personality".
The whole point of making the show was to amuse themselves. Because your
sense of humor overlaps with theirs, you REALLY enjoy the show.

When I was a kid, I could tell which cartoons were made by people who were
not amused by their own work -- The Flintstones; The Jetsons; Scooby-Doo;
etc. The Funky Phantom. The "artists" involved were aiming to make STUFF
to sell other STUFF, and they had no intention of wasting any time with
amusing themselves as they went along.

This is why Friends sucks and Curb Your Enthusiasm rocks; the former is
created with the idea of making an audience OF NORMAL PEOPLE laugh (which is
why it never made me laugh) and the latter is created because something
struck the ABNORMAL CREATOR as funny. Comedy is created to make others
laugh -- humor, to make the creator laugh. I HATE COMEDY!

This is also why Starship Exeter rocks, even while sucking. It is
heartbreakingly poignant to watch KIND OF STUPID S.A.P.s create something
that almost corresponds with one's tastes. Hence cometh the adoration of
badfilm in this church.

"I always tried to make something I wouldn't mind paying a dime for." --
St. Carl Barks

iggy topo

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgeniusNOSPUM.com>

ridetheory <ridetheory@notmail.com> wrote:
> It wasn't so much aimed at adults as it was created to entertain the
> creators, who happened to be adults. Everyone involved with Rocky and
> Bullwinkle was what Candi Strecker once called a "Self-Amusing Personality".
> The whole point of making the show was to amuse themselves. Because your
> sense of humor overlaps with theirs, you REALLY enjoy the show.
>
> When I was a kid, I could tell which cartoons were made by people who were
> not amused by their own work -- The Flintstones; The Jetsons; Scooby-Doo;
> etc. The Funky Phantom. The "artists" involved were aiming to make STUFF
> to sell other STUFF, and they had no intention of wasting any time with
> amusing themselves as they went along.
>
> This is why Friends sucks and Curb Your Enthusiasm rocks; the former is
> created with the idea of making an audience OF NORMAL PEOPLE laugh (which is
> why it never made me laugh) and the latter is created because something
> struck the ABNORMAL CREATOR as funny. Comedy is created to make others
> laugh -- humor, to make the creator laugh. I HATE COMEDY!

I never heard it put that way. Maybe this is why in my whole life I
have never been tempted in the very slightest to set foot inside a
comedy club as either audience or performer. I have a huge stash of
recordings of comedy guys doing their monologs (all downloaded --
there's an infinite ocean of stand-up on mp3 out there) and I never
listen to any of it. Never even heard most of them once. Except Bill
Hicks. But he doesn't count because he was an Angel, not a "comic".

Maybe that's why I just can't seem to bring myself to even TRY to get a
JOB WRITING FUNNY STUFF. I mean a real job. I've had them before. Jobs
writing funny stuff -- columns for magazines, or articles. And it was
just WORK. I'm resigned to working for money, but I'd rather do
something I halfway enjoy if I must work for money. I enjoyed driving a
delivery truck for money more than I ever enjoyed writing funny stuff
for money. The pay was about the same. (This attitude was a problem in
my first marriage. Someone else felt I had the potential to be the next
What's His Name, and make real money off popular books of whimsical
humor that *didn't* grossly mock the beliefs most sacred to the vast
majority of the public. But some evil inner devil monster of
SubGeniusness would always seduce me into posting what whimsical takes
on childrearing that I DID write to alt.slack, instead of to editors on
6th Avenue. TYPICAL.)

Maybe I just wasn't getting paid ENOUGH to sell out properly. Now
there's something to consider.

The ignoramus might say, "but you guys had contracts and advance money
against royalties when you put those SubGenius books together for Simon
& Schuster," but really what that "PAY" was for, was the TEDIOUS
SORTING and EDITING of channelled wisdom, gags n' Hints that had all
been Spouted and spewwed by Crazed Religious Doktors, with "a book" or
pay being the last thing on anybody's mind. Except maybe mine. I always
had the tape recorders running back in them days. But I was the only
Emergentile, so I probably would have been doing that anyway... running
around frantically doing stuff like that happens to be my idea of
Slack, or was at the time anyway.

God damn it, the bottom line is, we should all be born rich and get
everything we want for free, AND still be able to complain about it day
in and day out.

The early Bullwinkle cartoons OFFERED us that dream. They gave us a
TASTE of it, in that they led us to believe the world might be full of
weird humor and good cartoons forever. There are still plenty of good
cartoons and weird humor, but that sure isn't what the world is full
of.

> This is also why Starship Exeter rocks, even while sucking. It is
> heartbreakingly poignant to watch KIND OF STUPID S.A.P.s create something
> that almost corresponds with one's tastes. Hence cometh the adoration of
> badfilm in this church.
>
> "I always tried to make something I wouldn't mind paying a dime for." --
> St. Carl Barks

With inflation I guess that would translate to what, about $3.50 or $4
today.

TOO MUCH TO PAY FOR A CUP OF COFFEE OR A COMIC BOOK.

MAD Magazine now has ADS in it, by the way.

END TIMES.

How I spell relief:
alt.binaries.monter-movies

--
4th Stangian Orthodox MegaFisTemple Lodge of the Wrath of Dobbs Yeti,
Resurrected (Rev. Ivan Stang, prop.)
PRABOB

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgeniusNOSPUM.com>

Dunter Powries <fech.redcaps@spedlin> wrote:
> HellPopeHuey <hellpopehuey@subgenius.com> wrote:
> > I remember this exchange fondly:
> >
> Tom Tom the Piper's Son, stole a pig and away he... oops!
>
> Whadda ya got in the bag?
>
> It's sort of a pig.
>
> You got a permit to pack a pig?
>
> Well, no, I, uh...
>
> Better come along with us. You know it's a felony to pack a pig over state
> lines?
>
> No!
>
> Pig-napping.
>
> But it's a pig in the poem.
>
> Bought a pig in a poke, huh?
>
> Not poke, 'poem'... pig in the 'poem.'
>
> Pig poem?
>
> Not so big, it's about...
>
> You making fun of the way we talk?
>
> No! But it's catching!
>
> Name?
>
> I'm Tom Tom the Piper's Son.
>
> Alright, Piperson, what were you going to do with the pig?
>
> Well, the poem, it says 'the pig was eat', but...
>
> Gonna eat it, huh?
>
> No...
>
> On a platter?
>
> No!
>
> Apple in its mouth? Like that?
>
> Certainly not!
>
> Alright, Piperson, you can go. But don't leave town.
>
> Thanks, can I have my pig back?
>
> No. Evidence.

I MUST KNOW!!! Did you type that up from memory...? Or is there a
website somewhere that's page after page of such reprinted script
treasures?

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Dunter Powries" <fech.redcaps@spedlin>

I have most of the period from 1960 to 1976 committed to memory, after which
various self-administered substances prevented me from properly assimilating
much additional environmental input.

And then, after 'Green Acres' went out of reruns, I just couldn't see the
point in getting involved anymore.

Dunty Porteous,
Human Sacrifice

--
"Thank you! Good-bye! Well, weren't they nice? Hmm. Out of their bloody
minds, but still."
-Mandy Cohen

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgeniusNOSPUM.com>

HellPopeHuey <hellpopehuey@subgenius.com> wrote:
> I remember this exchange fondly:
>
> "Bullwinkle, that's it!"
> "What? What's it, Rock?'
> "They're taking diet pills!"
> "Without a prescription??"
>
> Bet Lenny Bruce laughed his ass off at that one. He had meth scrips
> going with a doctor in every other metropolitan area in the
> continental U.S. and 12 docs in Europe. As Saint George Carlin once
> said, "Lenny died so that we could talk dirty."

DON'T try to change the subject.

Now this may piss some people off but I thought the FEATURE FILM of a
few years ago, "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle," was actually
pretty funny and remarkably true to the spirit of the Jay Ward
originals. We/I went to see it because we were curious about what Mark
Mothersbaugh did with the score, but were very pleasantly surprised
that the movie itself was much better than we expected. My only real
complaint is that Natasha was mainly seen but not heard. For this movie
Rocky and Bullwinkle remain animated, but Fearless Leader, Boris and
Natasha -- being less pure spirits -- manifest as live actors in the
modern world. Many of the gags are based on the reactions of the
innocent Frostbite Falls natives (frozen in 1965 when the series ended)
to the spread of Pinkness since then. What the Bullwinkle cartoons were
making fun of back then has since taken over completely, and that's a
subtext, as they say. The plot of the movie directly addresses the
shamefulness of making a Rocky and Bullwinkle movie.

The producer, Robert DeNiro, gives himself the best line in the movie,
by far. One of the classic moments of self referential screen comedy.

Speaking of self referential screen comedy -- DON'T change the subject
-- I watched that old Blake Edwards movie "S.O.B." last night, thanks
to Clone 6 posting it on monter. That movie is funny as hell. When the
depressed, suicidal director, full of drugs, wakes up and steps off his
bed onto the carpet, which is covering a hole in the floor, and drops
SLOWLY through the hole to land on his living room floor in the middle
of a huge orgy his friend arranged unbeknownst... and shuffles through
his own house while all these people are partying, trying again and
again to kill himself, but being interrupted by people getting in his
way with their fucking and sucking, and finally he's under a blanket
and about to blow his own brains out when a sudden unexpected blowjob
gives him a new lease on life and he decides to remake his shitty movie
only with Mary Poppins getting buttfucked -- MAN. I have BEEN THERE. I
have BEEN THERE!

It just now occurs to me the similarities between "S.O.B." and one of
my favorite movies of all time, "Fellini's 8 1/2". They're both about
depressed movie directors and the nutty shit that happens around them,
and they both have the uncomfortable ring of semi-autobiographical
truth -- albeit highly "doktored."

Oddly enough, "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle" has a lot of
that in it, too. Where I least expected it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "HdMrs. Salacia the Overseer" <SeventhSqueal@SlowOnTheUptake.edu>

"Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgeniusNOSPUM.com> wrote:
> Speaking of self referential screen comedy -- DON'T change the subject
> -- I watched that old Blake Edwards movie "S.O.B." last night, thanks
> to Clone 6 posting it on monter. That movie is funny as hell. When the
> depressed, suicidal director, full of drugs, wakes up and steps off his
> bed onto the carpet, which is covering a hole in the floor, and drops
> SLOWLY through the hole to land on his living room floor in the middle
> of a huge orgy his friend arranged unbeknownst... and shuffles through
> his own house while all these people are partying, trying again and
> again to kill himself, but being interrupted by people getting in his
> way with their fucking and sucking, and finally he's under a blanket
> and about to blow his own brains out when a sudden unexpected blowjob
> gives him a new lease on life and he decides to remake his shitty movie
> only with Mary Poppins getting buttfucked -- MAN. I have BEEN THERE. I
> have BEEN THERE!
>
> It just now occurs to me the similarities between "S.O.B." and one of
> my favorite movies of all time, "Fellini's 8 1/2". They're both about
> depressed movie directors and the nutty shit that happens around them,
> and they both have the uncomfortable ring of semi-autobiographical
> truth -- albeit highly "doktored."

Interesting. Lately I've been living Juliette of the Spirits. If I were a
coin, the wifey character is 'heads' and the bohemian libertine next door
neighbor is 'tails'.

Damn! I changed the subject! I watched Bullwinkle every day after the Bozo
show when I was four. After Bullwinkle came Love American Style which was
gross, so I'd go take my nap.

~Salacia

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: hellpopehuey@subgenius.com (HellPopeHuey)

"Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgeniusNOSPUM.com> wrote:
> HellPopeHuey <hellpopehuey@subgenius.com> wrote:
> > I remember this exchange fondly:
> >
> > "Bullwinkle, that's it!"
> > "What? What's it, Rock?'
> > "They're taking diet pills!"
> > "Without a prescription??"
> > > > Bet Lenny Bruce laughed his ass off at that one. He had meth scrips
> > going with a doctor in every other metropolitan area in the
> > continental U.S. and 12 docs in Europe. As Saint George Carlin once
> > said, "Lenny died so that we could talk dirty."
> >
> DON'T try to change the subject.

When you're talking about cartoons and orgies, injecting a segment on
drug abuse isn't changing the subject; its just highlighting another
facet of the same, gigantic roc egg that IS the Church. Why, its no
less legit than hawking the promise of big-boobed space-sex babes
dropping from the sky in UFOs to rescue us all from the Mundanes. If
Jay Ward never smoked or dropped anything, then I am a big pink lawn
flamingo and I don't see no damned FEATHERS nowhere, organic OR
plastic. Perform the Salute, through your NOSE, through your fucking
NOOOOSSSSE!!!

HellPope Huey
My name is George Bush and I approve this message:
I am an Idiot.

"Like all primitives, he's afraid of the unknown,
afraid of what he can't understand."
- "Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger"

"If you can't do business with the evil and the greedy,
then who CAN you do business with?"
- "Tripping the Rift"

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: ridetheory@yahoo.com (ignatz topolino)

"Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgeniusNOSPUM.com> wrote:
> It just now occurs to me the similarities between "S.O.B." and one of
> my favorite movies of all time, "Fellini's 8 1/2". They're both about
> depressed movie directors and the nutty shit that happens around them,
> and they both have the uncomfortable ring of semi-autobiographical
> truth -- albeit highly "doktored."

I still haven't seen "American Movie," because it came out at a time
when I was completely burnt out on moviemakers making movies about
moviemakers. I later devised the idea of a movie about a writer who
is writing a script about a director who hires a writer to work on a
movie about an actor who is playing a writer...

No matter how GOOD (as in high-quality, as opposed to BADGOOD) a movie
about moviemaking may be (I mean, "8 1/2", what, I'm gonna say that
movie BITES?) (sorry about these parentheses, but I've been reading R.
Meltzer) there is still something that is SHITLESSLY BORING about
moviemakers who only know about moviemaking, and who insist on telling
us how fucked up Hollywood is. Duh. Maybe if someone made one of
these movies in an exotic locale -- like a Bollywood version,
whoowhee! Maybe if a clown did a circus act about how fucked up Clown
Alley is. Goddamn backstabbing JOEYS!

I don't wanna read no books about how fuh cuppet it is to be a writer,
neither.

iggy topo

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Paul E. Jamison" <pauljmsn@infionline.net>

Rev. Ivan Stang wrote:
> HellPopeHuey <hellpopehuey@subgenius.com> wrote:
> > I remember this exchange fondly:
> >
> > "Bullwinkle, that's it!"
> > "What? What's it, Rock?'
> > "They're taking diet pills!"
> > "Without a prescription??"
> >
> > Bet Lenny Bruce laughed his ass off at that one. He had meth scrips
> > going with a doctor in every other metropolitan area in the
> > continental U.S. and 12 docs in Europe. As Saint George Carlin once
> > said, "Lenny died so that we could talk dirty."
>
> DON'T try to change the subject.
>
> Now this may piss some people off but I thought the FEATURE FILM of a
> few years ago, "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle," was actually
> pretty funny and remarkably true to the spirit of the Jay Ward
> originals. We/I went to see it because we were curious about what Mark
> Mothersbaugh did with the score, but were very pleasantly surprised
> that the movie itself was much better than we expected. My only real
> complaint is that Natasha was mainly seen but not heard. For this movie
> Rocky and Bullwinkle remain animated, but Fearless Leader, Boris and
> Natasha -- being less pure spirits -- manifest as live actors in the
> modern world. Many of the gags are based on the reactions of the
> innocent Frostbite Falls natives (frozen in 1965 when the series ended)
> to the spread of Pinkness since then. What the Bullwinkle cartoons were
> making fun of back then has since taken over completely, and that's a
> subtext, as they say. The plot of the movie directly addresses the
> shamefulness of making a Rocky and Bullwinkle movie.
>
> The producer, Robert DeNiro, gives himself the best line in the movie,
> by far. One of the classic moments of self referential screen comedy.
>

I think, Rev., you've just given me incentive to track this one down. Thanks
muchly.

I can remember watching the Rocky Show when it first came out. Mom
told us kids about it, and I remember groaning because I thought she
said "Rocky Jones, Space Ranger" (and why would I balk at watching
*that*, I wonder?), but, no, it wasn't, and we watched the first episode,
and came back for more. Thankfully, they sooned dropped the laugh
track.

We went on to enjoy "George of the Jungle" (and the live-action movie
wasn'y *that* bad) and even "Hoppity Hooper". Damn good stuff.

> Speaking of self referential screen comedy -- DON'T change the subject
> -- I watched that old Blake Edwards movie "S.O.B." last night, thanks
> to Clone 6 posting it on monter. That movie is funny as hell. When the
> depressed, suicidal director, full of drugs, wakes up and steps off his
> bed onto the carpet, which is covering a hole in the floor, and drops
> SLOWLY through the hole to land on his living room floor in the middle
> of a huge orgy his friend arranged unbeknownst... and shuffles through
> his own house while all these people are partying, trying again and
> again to kill himself, but being interrupted by people getting in his
> way with their fucking and sucking, and finally he's under a blanket
> and about to blow his own brains out when a sudden unexpected blowjob
> gives him a new lease on life and he decides to remake his shitty movie
> only with Mary Poppins getting buttfucked -- MAN. I have BEEN THERE. I
> have BEEN THERE!
>
> It just now occurs to me the similarities between "S.O.B." and one of
> my favorite movies of all time, "Fellini's 8 1/2". They're both about
> depressed movie directors and the nutty shit that happens around them,
> and they both have the uncomfortable ring of semi-autobiographical
> truth -- albeit highly "doktored."
>
> Oddly enough, "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle" has a lot of
> that in it, too. Where I least expected it.

I enjoyed "S.O.B." muchly myself, and not just because
Julie Andrews showed us what she's got (which was
nothing to be ashamed of, really). There were some
great lines in that film. "Is Batman a transvestite - who
knows?" "What if he *catches* something?" Fun film.

Paul E. Jamison

"Who reads, learns, lives the Ferret Way becomes keeper
of light, ennobling outer worlds from one within."
- a prophecy from the Ancients

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: reverendmack@hotmail.com (Rev. Mack)

Artemia Salina <y2k@sheayright.com> wrote:
> In my opinion, all of the "good" cartoons that I watched on TV as a kid
> were ones written for adults. This is why I preferred old cartoons to
> the newer ones. Example: Bugs Bunny's ubiquitous line "Which way did
> they go, George?"

Bugs Bunny never said this. He talked about "my brother George"
in a Liberace sort of way. It was a dog that said the other.

Not that it matters to "Bab"

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Paul E. Jamison" <pauljmsn@infionline.net>

Beg to differ, sir. Check out "Falling Hare" (1943), one of the few
cartoons in which another character (a gremlin) gives Bugs
a hard time. At one point Bugs does the "Which way did they go,
George?" schtick after getting hit on the head or something.

Paul E. Jamison

"Who reads, learns, lives the Ferret Way becomes keeper
of light, ennobling outer worlds from one within."
- a prophecy from the Ancients

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: nenslo <nenslo@yahoox.com>

Artemia Salina wrote:
> nenslo wrote:
> > You have an opinion about something, that's what. People have opinions.
> > Some people like some things and some people like other things.
>
> Why?

SHUT UP, that's why.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "ghost" <ghost@ghost.net>

The documentary I saw was "Of Moose and Men: The Rocky & Bullwinkle Story"
produced by Benjamin Brady Magliano, PBS 3/91.

Might be able to find it on video somewhere. I'm sure it's at the Museum of
Television and Radio for metro SubGs.

There's also "The Moose That Roared" a (written) history of Jay Ward's
career.

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Original file name: Re- The Bullwinkle Paradox.txt - converted on Saturday, 25 September 2004, 02:05