Mumbles … Riddle

Why did the man throw the clock out the window?  He wanted to see time fly!  I’ve heard that joke many times.  That and about a dozen others that seemed to be repeated a lot were a part of my childhood.  Every day after school I’d rush home to watch The Floppy Show.  It was a local television show featuring Duane Ellett and his dog (a puppet in a box) Floppy.  In between cartoons there would be children there in the studio who would stand in line to tell Floppy a riddle.  Why did the man put the car in the oven?  He wanted a hot rod.  What time is it when it’s thirteen o’clock?  Time to get a new watch.  They were all pretty basic riddles and jokes.  Occasionally a child would make up his or her own joke… often with a off the wall punch line that didn’t work.  But Duane and Floppy would still laugh at every one!  It was a unique way to keep children interested in the show.  It lasted for many years from 1957 to 1987.  It was even a cult favorite among college students in the area.

In this day and age there is nothing locally made other than the news.  No cartoon kids show, not late-night fright flicks on the weekends, it is a real loss to the current generation.  No, they were not smooth seamless perfectly polished shows… they were pure and innocent.  Something this world could use a lot more of!

 

(Both images from Google search)

Written for Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (FOWC) – riddle

Mumbles … Cartoon

Cartoons are not the same. As a kid growing up your choices for cartoons were pretty limited. We did have a local weekday show for kids that would run some cartoons, but mainly it was waiting in anticipation for Saturday morning to arrive when we could sit in front of the TV all morning and watch cartoons. Now you have a very limited amount of Saturday morning cartoons to watch, but there are a couple of cable channels that offer round the clock kids programing.

My favorite series has to be Looney Tunes. Then it is a tie between Bugs Bunny and Marvin the Martian. Bugs is one smart little rabbit and always seems to know how to manipulate things to his advantage. Marvin is shear determination and yet somehow makes me feel sad for him… “Where is the kaboom? There was suppossed to be an earth shattering kaboom.”

I have seen some of the “new” cartoons and they are not bad. I know when my daughter was little we would watch Rugrats, The Powerpuff Girls and Spongebob pretty regularly. And has always been the case, the best cartoons are those that throw in a little adult content that just flies right over the kid’s heads but makes mommy and daddy laugh.

Yeah, I think kids today lose out on that anticipation of waiting for Saturday morning cartoons. The world is instant now with episodes a few keystrokes away or the push of a few buttons of the remote. I think that anticipation made my generation appreciate Saturdays a little bit more. What was your favorite cartoon?

 

Written for Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (FOWC) – cartoon

Underdog

There once was a cartoon

That made all the poodles swoon

The star you see

Was different than you and me

He was not a little green frog

This hero was a real dog

No matter if night or day

He would always say

“There’s no need to fear

Underdog is here”

Then he would rescue Sweet Polly

In a manner that was jolly

 

(I can’t believe I just wrote this

But this word I could not dismiss

I made a promise at the start of the year

And completion of my goal is near

So I will deal with this difficult word

And write like some kind of poem nerd) 🙂