Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
:: Today's soundtrack: Franz Lizst "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" ::
I'm a certified, grown up adult, but I still love my cartoons. Oh, yes I do. I have a very strong fondness for the old timey ones, like the old Bugs Bunny, Tom & Jerry, and Droopy. Do kids these days still grow up watching those? I sure hope so. You may think this to be a weird thing to hope for, but I actually got a lot from those old cartoons!! It's true! Allow me to elaborate:
An appreciation for classical music, for one thing. This is absolutely true. Take "What's Opera, Doc", for example. It uses music from a variety of Wagnerian operas like The Flying Dutchman and Das Rheingold. Who doesn't grow up singing "kill the wabbit" when they heard Ride of the Valkyries? Also, the number of cartoons featuring Franz Lizst's Hungarian Rhapsody Number 2 and music from The Barber of Seville is astounding. Of course, whenever I heard a tenor perform Figaro I always imagined he was being tormented by a someone disguised as the conductor, but that's beside the point.
The old cartoons also give you a sense of history. Hey, the majority of them were made during World War II, and you get a first hand look into life at that time. Everything from air raid blackouts, scrap metal drives and "Riveting Rosie" is brought front and center for the young ones watching to ask their folks what's that all about and learn something. Whenever Bugs Bunny yells "put out that light!" for example, is something only someone familiar with air raid wardens would understand. The end of Tex Avery's "Swing Shift Cinderella", too, has historic notations in that she had to be back from the ball by midnight in order to get to Lockheed Airport and build planes for the war effort.
An understanding of who is who in old film stars. Yeah, some of you may not care, but I love the classics and these old cartoons serve as a great introduction for the kiddies. James Cagney, Humphrey Boggart, Lauren Bacall, Clark Gable, W C Fields, the Marx Brothers and more were featured as caricatures in many old cartoons, particularly by Warner Bros. "Hollywood Steps Out" is reputed to be the first to do this trick, I for one am glad it started a trend. Hey, cartoons these days like the Simpsons feature topical celebrities, and that's just what they were doing for their time. I can only hope the cartoons that featured a caricature of Peter Lorre as the villain will spark an interest in some young child today as it did me.
Other miscellaneous stuff I learned from these cartoons
include: pretty girls don't like being whistled and screamed at; 80 year old
grandmothers can sometimes be just as horny as young men; rabbit is the chief
ingredient in hasenpfeffer; vanishing cream can make you invisible; alum will
make your mouth or head shrivel up; the white mouse will not explode; anything
from the land "of tomorrow" will have varieties available for father, the
missus, junior and the mother-in-law; dogs are stupid, but cats get undone by
their own arrogance; the tortoise will always beat the hare; Billy goats
will eat anything; many men have difficulty discerning the difference between a
man in drag and a real woman; the afterlife consists of Heaven and "the other
place"; furthermore, the people at the the pearly gates don't understand slang;
if ever someone is looking for peace and quiet or rest and relaxation, it
somehow becomes very impossible to get; aaaaaand lastly, gunshot wounds are easy
to shake off.
William (just a big kid)
