New Year's Eve! No, we were not going to MJS's party at his pole barn. (I don't even know, properly, whether he had one, but I expect he did.) Lot of places were having final pinball tournaments of the year, or having parties, which didn't appeal to me because I'm not under the delusion that the pandemic is over just because white people would rather stop trying.
So it was our third New Year's at home, making and eating an enormous number of hors d'oeuvres, and making popcorn and watching a movie. Which movie? We'd done Yellow Submarine the last two New Years', the revival of a curious tradition from my youth when WABC-TV would show it New Year's Eve. But, I had to admit, the last two years have sucked. We should maybe watch something else instead.
That something else: a DVD of cartoons. Some time ago I'd given ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger a set of Chuck Jones half-hour shorts. Three episodes based on the Jungle Books, three from the Cricket in Times Square cinematic universe. We watched the Jungle Books episodes, figuring we had about an hour and a half of good viewing time for us. This worked out well; what with various things we started out late so we only had time to watch two episodes before the ball drop got really under way.
This proved to be a pretty good, natural split between the shorts. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and The White Seal are more naturalistic, trying to put human narratives on the behaviors of animals. Something rather like what we now think of as Watership Down's game. And bunnyhugger noted, The White Seal has considerable similarity to Watership Down, as the White Seal is searching for a place he can bring seals where they won't be hunted by humans. Good luck there. Mowgli's Brothers, meanwhile, is more of an animal fantasy, with a few hosanas thrown towards ways animals might narrate their lives. It's also the book most loosely adapted into Disney's Jungle Book. The Chuck Jones version is much more serious (and stylistically experimental). It also raised questions in people like us who can't remember when we last read the Jungle Books like: oh yeah, I guess Mowgli was raised by wolves? And were his wolf parents even in the Disney movie? Are you sure?
It was a good seeing-in of a year that's started stronger than the last did, certainly. Too soon to say how it compares to 2021.
And now back to Christmas photography!
Finally arrived at bunnyhugger's parents, on the second try. She looks around at the things we brought and tries to figure out where to place them and all.
Here's their tree, set in the sun room. And doing very well despite it being one already cut when they'd arrived.
Looking from the base of the tree. The blue bags on either side were clothes shipped straight from Amazon, which has given up on wrapping stuff when you order it wrapped.
And we get at last to the unwrapping of gifts! I think this might have been a book.
bunnyhugger holding an astounding gift from my parents: a picture signed by one of the voices of Thumper!
The double-ribbon wrapping is one of the stylish tricks bunnyhugger's parents love doing, and that her brother's picked up. Also I'm pretty sure they didn't pick the wrapping to match her brother's pajamas (see right) but there it goes and happens anyway.
Trivia: By 1850 there were 2,215 miles of telegraph wire in Britain. Source: The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's Online Pioneers, Tom Standage.
Currently Reading: A History of The World's Airlines, R E G Davies.
PS: What's Going On In The Phantom (weekdays)? Where did the Bandar cavalry come from? October 2022 - January 2023 in plot recapping.
