10.15.08 life imitates art?

Category: dribblings

yesterday i came home for lunch at 1pm. i ate a sandwich and then sat in the green comfy chair by the front window. i had the windows open because there was a nice breeze blowing. i picked up one of the trillion books i have on the table to read. it’s Anne Rice’s Catholic Memoir of Supreme and Holy Self-absorption.

i read a lot of memoirs/autobiographies, it’s one of my favorite genres, but this book is one of the most self-absorbed, self-gratifying (i want to use masturbatory as an adjective, but i haven’t finished the book yet and there’s about 100 more pages to go and maybe it finally goes somewhere interesting?), and boring memoir i’ve read yet.

anyway, point is, i was sitting in the quiet room reading a book when i heard a faint noise. the noise got louder and i realized i could hear my dad playing his banjo across the street in his house. apparently he had the front door opened. it wasn’t so loud that i couldn’t read my book, but it made me laugh because it reminded me of the Bugs Bunny cartoon where the opera singer is practicing in his house with the door open and Bugs Bunny is playing his banjo and singing songs, and the opera singer can hear him in the background and keeps slipping the wrong lyrics into his opera and getting mad about it.

it’s about the first two minutes of that video. and the best part is when Giovanni Jones prances his huge body with his tiny little legs across the livingroom singing, “one and two and three and four she dances all day long!” it slays me. every time. and, because we are supreme nerds, mr. fleegan and i sing that song all the time. it’s one of those things we absently sing as we walk down the hall, make coffee, wait for the computer to boot up… (oh, and to add to my total nerdness, everytime we had to study David Hockney’s work (the paintings of L.A. houses and pools not his collages) i would think of that house. man, i may have a problem.)

i think about Looney Tunes cartoons all the time. if not once a day then at least every other day. i mean, just the Yosemite Sam mumble swearing i do under my breath after dealing with certain patrons alone covers three days a week. and at the start of a baseball game when they’re doing the roster i can’t help but think, “catching Bugs Bunny, left field Bugs Bunny, right field Bugs Bunny, Pitching Bugs Bunny…” and the whole “out!”/”safe!” gag. and at the end with the Statue of Liberty, “that’s what the man said you heard what he said he said that…”

one of my favorites is Bully for Bugs where he’s in the bull fight. i love the Mexican Hat Dance/la cucaracha  when he slaps the bull in the face. classic.
but to me, the best part of that one is when the bull somehow swallows the rifle and it’s in his tale and every time he moves his tale a bullet shoots out of his horn. and at first the bull is all, “what the-?”

but then he figures it out and the look on his face is so great.

i mean, come on, that’s perfect.

i could write a whole book on my childhood and my love of Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny and my favorite parts of Looney Tunes cartoons and how often i quote it and which quotes i use where (like when i’m with dad and he does something silly/embarrassing/goofy and i say, “oh father…” in that exasperated way that Sylvetser’s son says it when Sylvester gets creamed by a mouse or whatnot…) but that would be self-absorbed and boring, Anne Rice.

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