I’ve become quite addicted to Morpheus. It all started innocently enough. I wanted to see what was out there, and everyone told me that Morpheus was way better than Bearshare. With Bearshare, you had to download a new version practically every time you connected. Not so with Morpheus. It’s way faster too since you’re downloading snippets of files from various people, and the program then stiches them together. I’ve downloaded a ton of TV lately, and some cool video clips. Now I know that these things are supposed to be used to get MP3’s and porn…but I’d really rather check out the new episode of Justice League, or that really cool Batman Beyond that I missed. What can I say? I’m old and married. I’m all porned out!
Which brings me back to my topic, Why was it all better when we were kids? No, not porn sicko…I’m talking about cartoons. I downloaded and watched the new Justice League cartoon, and a couple of last season’s Batman Beyond’s which had the JLU in them. Both were really impressive, and made me nostalgic for the days of the SuperFriends. So as I was looking for this weeks episode of JL, I happened across a couple of old episodes of JLA, they said they were ancient, but I think they were from the mid 80’s, when Perez was writing the book, and Batman had his own cartoon (because Bats isn’t in the title credits). They sucked. The animation was bad, aided only by strobe flashes which just gave me a headache. The voices were horrible (I swear Casey Kasem must have been on every single bad cartoon in the 80’s, and could probably die on the fat royalty cheques he’s getting from Comedy, Cartoon, and Sci Fi networks in the States right now).
After watching this drek, I had to find some quality Warner Brothers stuff to clean my palate (sort of like sucking on pickled ginger after sushi). Now this is great stuff…and my kids will probably never get to see it. Y’see ole Bugs and pals weren’t exactly what the kids these days call “Pollitically correct”, mind you this was almost 50 years ago…but DAMN some of this stuff is nasty. Funny, but nasty. It’s funny though, I remember seeing these cartoons as a kid…I think I turned out pretty well. So why can’t some of them get shown today? Tweety never did anything wrong…just used a little dynamite. Oh, like that’s a bad thing? Listen, if my kid is gonna be eaten by some cat, he damn well BETTER be using dynamite on him. That’s not overly violent. That’s just common sense. That stupid Coyote got everything he ever deserved. Those cartoons showed us two things. 1: Acme makes really cool stuff. and 2: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. That’s right, so far cartoons have taught us basic Darwinism (survival of the fittest), and Newton’s third law of physics! And that’s just using two cartoons. Speedy taught us that if you were diligent and a hard worker…your friends would use you. Sure the cartoons were rife with stereotypes, but when they’re done as parables, shouldn’t that make them okay? I mean were the Speedy Gonzoles cartoons really telling us that all Mexicans were lazy? Or were they telling us that the Mexicans we were seeing in this instance were lazy. Speedy wasn’t lazy was he? Hopped up on speed and lord knows what else maybe, but lazy? No way!
Just take a look at what the two or three generations of kids who grew up on unadulterated Warner Brothers cartoons grew up to do, and then take a look at what this latest generation has accomplished…and tell them to pull their damn pants up while you’re at it.
Ironically, it’s the two or three generations before this one who has decided it would be better for them if the old cartoons weren’t seen anymore.
Go get them on Morpheus or Bearshare, before they take them away from us the same way they took Napster away.
Album Du Jour: Buffy the Musical (the songs are stuck in my head!!!)
DVD of the week: The Matrix Revisited
Movie of the week: This was a movie free week for me…sad isn’t it?
Game of the week: Metal Gear Solid 2 is the reason it’s a movie free week this week.
Website of the week: I’ve been using Morpheus a lot lately, so it gets the nod for this week.
Comic of the Week: Powers started a new storyline this week, and as usual it was about as solid as a comic gets. This one had just the right amount of intrigue and enough mystery to really make you want to know what happens next. The Powers stuff reads so well as a TPB, but it really is best as a monthly comic…you always want the next issue to come out now!