I can open up an ocean

[austin_dern]

I stepped into the bathroom for practical reasons, and at the sinks was presented with three young fellows in similar red shorts with black T-shirts (the center guy stepped aside so I could wash). Covering all the counter space and stacked several high were small plastic bags, filled with water, and tied shut. A plastic bag with tied top is a popular way to carry out drinks, as it's convenient and practical to put a straw into the open bag, and it works for precisely as along as you don't set your drink down. Still, ordinarily, drink bags come from drink stalls.

To try prodding some explanation, I said, ``I hope you aren't planning to drop those on me.'' They laughed a bit, smiled, and said no, they didn't, and that's where things stopped. I waited and recognized that they had nothing further to say. Having turned an odd scene into an awkward one, I triumphantly left. When I got to the elevator, a trio of similarly-dressed girls carrying several buckets full of bags full of water got off. I have to infer the existence of some kind of mass athletic activity.

Meanwhile, great news! King Features Syndicate has finally responded to the rocks tossed at their windows by generations of Popeye fanboys, and after asking people to at least wrap messages around the rocks, has signed an agreement to release the Popeye shorts on DVD. The deal is for everything: all 109 Fleischer (or ``Great'') shorts, all the Paramount/Famous Studios (or ``Good declining to Boring'') shorts, all the made-cheaply-in-the-60s (or ``Jaw-dropping'') shorts some of which are already released, the 1978-81 Hanna-Barbera (or ``Boy, if only they had a sense of timing'') ones, and the Popeye and Son (or ``Mauriche LaMarche was Popeye?!'') cartoons from 1987. Jerry Beck's already a consulting producer. Plans are to get them all digitally processed for maximum grumbling from the hardcore fans and everything. I don't want to sound jaded: I'm really psyched about this.

Trivia: For the 1936-37 Popeye the Sailor radio series Popeye got his remarkable strength from Wheatena, the sponsor. (``Wheatena's me diet / I aks ya to try it/ I'm Popeye the sailor man!'') Source: On The Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, John Dunning.

Currently Reading: Willard Gibbs, Muriel Rukeyser.

Comments

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Given that it's a university, and given young women and men in identical dress, I'd suspect some sort of fraternity/sorority water balloon battle. Then again.. I'm not at all certain what your university has for fraternities or sororities, if they in fact do.

Will the Popeye cartoons include those Olive Oyl and Alice The Goon in the army cartoons?

---Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

These weren't water-balloon type balloons, though; they were ... well, drinking bags. They're about half the size of a sandwich bag, with a string through the top to tie it off. And the clothes were the kind you might wear to a field day, loose enough to run around and fall on the ground on, but not expensive enough to be a league event.

There aren't fraternities or sororities, but hall organizations serve much the same role.

The Olive and Alice in the Army cartoons were from the 1978-81 Hanna-Barbera series, so they ought to be included. Of course, if they're releasing things in chronological order (that was what Jerry Beck's blog indicated) it's going to be quite a while before they get to that, and that'll depend on the market getting past the 1950s Famous Studios stuff made when none of the staff much cared what the product was like, and the 1960s King Features Syndicate stuff that takes on the majesty of mind-blowing awfulness.

Ugh, 50s-60s Popeye.

[sslaxx.livejournal.com]

20s-30s was definitely the heyday, not least because EC Segar was still alive. Watched some of the 50s/60s Popeye cartoons, I thought they were just terrible.

Re: Ugh, 50s-60s Popeye.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Well, Segar didn't have so much to do with the cartoons, but the Fleischers just had a mentality that fit perfectly with the characters. When the Fleischers were bumped out of the business the people brought in just didn't have the same personality or drive to innovate, though they had some imaginative stuff for a while there.

The 60s cartoons got so bad -- at least, so hurried and so ill-planned and quickly animated -- that they take on a certain glory in being raw neuron impulses projected on screen, with dreamlike illogic and weirdness. A few of them are even sincerely good, rather neatly dissecting Popeye cliches, sometimes I think intentionally.