Tuesday, September 09, 2008

This is insane...just the way I like it!

Started my Pink Panther box set last night (animated PP, not Clouseau)...damn that's good stuff.



(While I do infact own this teapot, this one is not actually mine.)

And so far I have seen several I've never seen before...I can't help but notice that he smokes in the ones I've never seen, so I'm curious if that's why...but what great fucking stuff. There are very few cartoons, if any, that I would actively sit down and watch these days, but the Pink Panther is certainly one of them.

Despite the years that have gone by, it is still artistic and intelligent--it still feels creative. D and I remarked on the lack of an established "set"--so often the action takes place on a loosely drawn "blank slate" with merely a door or whatever serves the plot's (for lack of a better word) purpose. It gives it an abstract feel that suits it beautifully.

And you know, the Panther can be kind of a shit sometimes. But unlike Tom & Jerry, which irritated me no end as a child (though I continued to watch), it never bothered me here. He's not always a shit, but even when he's antagonizing someone for no good reason, or getting away with shit he shouldn't, I really didn't object. I guess that was also a good aspect of it--sometimes he got away with it, sometimes he got totally shat on. And violence--though it had its fair share to be sure (where would we be without sex and violence, after all?)--was not essential to each story.

So I'm really enjoying revisiting (and in some cases, discovering for the first time!) these episodes. But anyhoo, I'm pretty sure that's way too much about the Pink Panther. I feel like Josh at the end of The Last Days of Disco delivering his diatribe about disco and then explaining that, though he does mostly believe what he was ranting about, he was really just prepping for his job interview that day.

On a completely different note (watch how I talk about cartoons and then proceed to judge a Top 20 educational institution), I know I'm a snob. (I mean, how many times can I reference Whit Stillman, anyway? Stay tuned.) One of the reasons I quite enjoy Lost In Translation is that I can identify with Charlotte, particularly when she explains to Bob (about her husband), "He thinks I'm so snobby." And how sad is it that I'm looking at the rankings for law schools, and I was looking at Vanderbilt's site (they're #15), only to find:

The school receives nearly 4,000 applications in a typical year, granting admission to less than 1,000 applicants, approximately 200 of which will form the next year’s entering class.

And the bad grammar really shouldn't deter me ("less" as opposed to "fewer"), but it does. I am certainly full of bad grammar and spelling mistakes myself, don't get me wrong, but considering how much money I'm going to have to shell out, well, I just think their website should have proper grammar. Sigh.

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