Okay, well...
Showing posts with label duck. Show all posts
Showing posts with label duck. Show all posts
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Classic Cartoon Showcase: Before They Were Stars: Donald Duck in The Wise Little Hen
Here, in the spirit of the previous post, is Donald Duck's first-ever cartoon! In this classic rendition of the tale of the Little Red Hen, the titular hen finds a kernel of corn which she plans to plant and harvest. The only problem is, she can't convince lazy Donald Duck and Peter Pig to help her with any of the work! What will she do? Please enjoy!
Fun Fact: Donald's buddy Peter Pig was voiced, like Donald himself, by Clarence "Ducky" Nash; apparently, according to Walt Disney, the reason Peter disappeared after this cartoon was that his voice was even more unintelligible than Donald's. Peter did, however, eventually migrate to the comics, where this wasn't a problem.
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Bookstore:Donald Duck in A Christmas for Shacktown by Carl Barks
He's my little pal,
Quack, Quack, Quack, Donald Duck,
Daisy is his gal,
Quack, Quack, Quack, Donald Duck,
In his sailor suit,
Quack, Quack, Quack, Donald Duck,
Gee, I think he's cute!
I love the way he waddles and I like to hear him talk,
And when somebody makes him mad,
QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! How he can squawk!
Quack, Quack, Quack, Donald Duck,
Cocky as can be,
Quack, Quack, Quack, Donald Duck,
Here's what he taught me,
When someone knocks you down,
Get right up again,
Show some pluck like Donald Duck,
QUACK, QUACK, QUACK, QUACK, QUACK!
The second volume in Carl Bark's ever popular Donald Duck series, this high-quality collection catalogues the further adventures of a certain famous duck, his nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie, his girlfriend Daisy, his Uncle Scrooge, and guest pest Gladstone Gander. Some must-reads are:
A Christmas for Shacktown-Donald, Daisy, and the kids all want to chip in money to make a good Christmas for the impoverished families of Shacktown. There's just one tiny little itsy-bitsy(fairly huge) caveat: getting tight-fisted Uncle Scrooge to part with so much as a penny!(As the ever-quotable Babs Bunny once said, "Playing on his sympathy has worse odds than the lottery!") How will Donald get the money?
The Big Bin on Killmotor Hill-Uncle Scrooge builds a new maximum-security money bin, which the Beagle Boys evince an interest in. Can Donald help save his uncle's fortune?
The Screaming Cowboy-Donald composes and sells a song to a radio station, thus winning a trip to the mountains. Little does he know that a hermit living there despises the song! (There's a Little Bad Wolf lookalike kid in this story, BTW.)
Oh, please.
Statuesque Spendthrifts-One of the funnier stories in this collection, Uncle Scrooge and the Maharajah of Howdoyustan feud with each other over who's richer by each building bigger and bigger statues.
Rocket Wing Saves the Day-The kids adopt a racing pidgeon and train him for an upcoming pidgeon race; there's just one problem...he's afraid of train whistles!
The Think Box Bollix-Donald is annoyed when the kids begin helping wacky inventor Gyro Gearloose with his inventions, and tries to play a prank on them...but the prank backfires(majorly)!
An excellent read, and a good companion piece to Lost in the Andes.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Christmas Music Showcase:Barnyard Christmas by Spike Jones
A cute and amusing ditty by the legendary novelty singer Spike Jones, complete with many cute and funny visuals. Please enjoy!
If you like farm animals and you like Christmas music, this is the song for you!
Monday, July 16, 2012
Book Review:The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl
Another review of another classic by the great Roald Dahl.
This story is told from the perspective of a little girl whose neighbors, the Greggs(Mr. and Mrs. Gregg and their sons Philip and William*) are very avid hunters; every Saturday, they go into the woods seeking out various animals(mostly ducks and deer) for the pleasure of shooting them. Naturally, the little girl doesn't appreciate this, and she tries to tell the Greggs to stop, but they rudely give her the brush-off. Well, this turns out to be a very unwise move on their part, because something they don't realize about this particular little girl is that she has...a MAGIC FINGER!
All this little girl has to do is point her magic finger at someone, and fantastic things happen to them. Proof positive comes the next morning when the Greggs wake up to discover that they've shrunken down to duck size and grown wings!!
My thoughts:This is a very cute, clever, well-written book; the illustrations by Tony Ross(who also illustrated, among other things, the Little Wolf book series) are excellent.** The story, interestingly enough, has two morals. The first, more obvious one is, as the ever-quotable Popeye once said, "Be kind to aminals", which is, in fact, a pretty good idea. :-D The second, slightly more vague moral is presented by the little girl herself, in that she tends to zap people, in anger, with her magic finger, and ends up appalled by the end results, the implicit moral being, "It's best if people control their tempers, otherwise they never know what can of worms they might open," which is also a pretty good idea.
My only beefs about this book are:
-It's kind of short, especially compared with Dahl's other books.
-We never do find out what the little girl's name is.
All things said, this is a good, high-quality, and very enjoyable Roald Dahl classic.
*On an interesting note, the sons' names could be abbreviated as, "Phil and Will"(or possibly "Phil and Bill), which sounds similar to the names of another certain famous pair of siblings.
**There's another version of this book with illustrations by Quentin Blake(who's illustrated most of Dahl's other books); the illustrations of which are also very good.
Friday, July 6, 2012
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Bookstore:Twenty-Odd Ducks by Lynn Johnson
Thought they meant, "Somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty ducks"; guess I was wrong. :-D
This third addition to Lynn Johnson's very nifty(and extremely funny!) series of wordplay books, which also includes Eats, Shoots, and Leaves and The Girl's Like Spaghetti, plays with various punctuation marks and how they affect the meanings of sentences, with such examples as, "The cowboy roped the steer(on his horse)." versus "The cowboy roped the steer on his horse."(How the steer got on his horse, he never did find out!), "This is Sharky, who lost a tooth." versus "This is Sharky. Who lost a tooth?"(Maybe Sharky knows?), and "'Do you know who came last night? Santa Claus!' said my mom." versus "'Do you know who came last night?' Santa Claus said. 'My mom!'"(And she left goodies!) Proof positive that every punctuation mark certainly does count!
Here are a couple of my favorites:
or
The pyramids really brought back memories for her.
or
The question is, who has worse manners, the dinner guests or the Queen?
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
U.S. Acres:Jim Davis' Lesser-Known Comic Strip
U.S. Acres was a newspaper comic written by Jim Davis, creator of Garfield, in 1986. The strip(which was known as Orson's Farm outside America) followed the wacky hijinks of several kooky farm animals. The cast consisted of the polite, intellectual pig Orson who was the strip's main character, the bossy, loudmouthed rooster Roy, the cowardly but lovable duck Wade, the feisty little chick Booker who would often try(and fail) to catch a worm, his easygoing little brother Sheldon(no relation) who lived inside an egg shell which had similar properties to Snoopy's doghouse, the friendly but not-too-bright sheep Bo(he was more of a surfer dude type in Garfield and Friends), and his grumpy sister Lanolin who would often spar with Roy.
In Garfield and Friends, the group was often antagonized by Orson's three big, nasty brothers Gort, Mort, and Wart(who had appeared in the strip previously, albeit for only the first few weeks). Orson's brothers lived on the farm next door and would often come over to Orson's farm to steal food or cause some sort of trouble.(Which they fortunately were never successful at!) Further antagonists were a weasel, a fox, and a wolf, all of whom had the same goal:to steal chickens. (Honestly, IMHO, it would've made more sense for the wolf to be stealing sheep, but there it is.)
A pair of temporary additions to the cast were Cody the dog and Blue the cat(The latter being of obvious coloration). This may be just IMHO, but it seems that part of the reason for these characters' short-lived career(although they did appear in the various kids' books) seemed to be the fact that they didn't have quite as much personality as the rest of the cast(Cody in particular didn't seem to have any personality at all other than chasing and attacking the other animals). On a related note, for unknown reasons, Cody and Blue also never appeared on Garfield and Friends. (One could possibly call them "The Lymans of U.S. Acres.")
The comic had a small fanbase, though it never became quite as popular as Davis' more famous strip, Garfield, and only ran for three years.(Although the franchise had a much longer lifespan on Garfield and Friends.)
Overall, U.S. Acres was a fun, humorous, and very nifty comic with a good, likeable cast. Despite it never having quite the popularity Garfield did, it's definetly worth a read! (Or, "worth a watch" in the case of Garfield and Friends.)
Here are a couple of my favorite strips below(although, honestly, it was hard to pick just two!):
The entire comic series has been released in book form; the books are available at the links below(some, regrettably, are a little pricey, but well worth it for any U.S. Acres fan):
For younger fans, there were also several kids' books made, which are available at the links below*:
Booker Meets the Easter Bunny
*There are also two other books in this series entitled "The Great Christmas Contest" and "A Most Special Easter Egg" which, regrettably aren't currently available on Amazon, but they do occasionally show up on Ebay.
There were also plushies made of the characters, which show up on Ebay from time to time.
Hmm...the animals in the last panel of this comic look...familiar, somehow.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Donald Duck in Trail of the Unicorn
This unicorn looks like he ought to switch to low-cal oats.
As per my previous post, I found this very nifty Donald Duck comic online. Uncle Scrooge has called Donald and the kids to help him find a unicorn for his zoo, for which he'll pay handsomely. Scrooge mentions having seen one in the Himalayas, so Donald and the kids trek off to India in hopes of procuring one of these fantastic beasts, but Gladstone Gander plans to sabotage their efforts (as usual). If you like Donald Duck and you like unicorns, this is the comic for you!
A Funny Thing Happened On The Way to the Bookstore:Donald Duck in Lost in the Andes by Carl Barks
Who's got the sweetest disposition?
One guess. Guess who?
Who never, ever starts an arguement?
Who never shows a bit of temperament?
Who's never wrong, but always right?
Who'd never dream of starting a fight?
Who gets stuck with all the bad luck?
No one but Donald Duck!
And those last two lines of this famous song were never more true than in this comic collection by the late, great Carl Barks, creator of Scrooge McDuck, Gyro Gearloose, the Beagle Boys and many others. This high-quality collection follows the eponymous duck and his ever-present nephews (with the occasional company of Daisy, Uncle Scrooge, and jerkwad extrordinaire Gladstone Gander) on many exciting (and hilairious!) adventures. Some must-reads are:
Toyland-Santa calls on Donald and the kids to test the toys in his workshop before he makes his nightly run, but they have a little too much fun with this task.
The Crazy Quiz Show-Donald expects to win big on a game show, but the kids keep one-upping him.
(This story contains a shout-out to Mickey Mouse, BTW.)
Donald Duck's Worst Nightmare-Donald seeks a cure for his recurring nightmares, but will the cure end up being worse than the disease?
The Sunken Yacht-Donald and the kids discover a sunket yacht and hope to strike it rich by salvaging it. (This story is particularly notable in that the method used to salvage the yacht was tested in an episode of Mythbusters.)
Managing The Eco-System-In what may be the most hilarious story in this collection, Donald and the kids try to match each other in a battle of echoes.
Plenty Of Pets-The kids bring a series of "pets"(a possum, an owl, a squirrel et al.) home from summer camp...much to Donald's chagrin.
This collection has it all and is a must for any Disneyana Collector.
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