March 15, 2003

• Aaack! Beware, Caesar: it’s the Ides of March!
  Can St. Paddy be far behind?
  Erin go bragh, y’all.

  
  

  
  

  Weekend Fluff
  

  (or as fluffy as SuSu gets)

  
  

  
  

  
  What annoying internet entity are you?
   
  My battle cry:
   
  
  
  What’s your Battle-Cry?
  this quiz was made by Aroihkin of PlanetKulitron
   
  
  I’m getting there. I don’t suck, but I’ve got a ways to go.
  Are you a militant feminist?
  

  Does anyone recognize these toons?

  
  

  

  
  

  When I was seven years old, soon after my father’s death, my mother bought our first TV set.  Saturday mornings, I loved watching Crusader Rabbit and his sidekick “Rags”:  Ragland T. Tiger.

  
  

  Yesterday, Doug, who has been slowing my internet connection abominably with his music and animé downloads, in an attempt, I think, to mollify mom, offered to find something I would want to download.  He asked me if there was any old music or cartoon I would like to have.

  
  

  Immediately, I thought of Crusader Rabbit.   I got a funny sideways grin from Doug when I told him.  He knows how old it is.  I’ve mentioned it to him before.  His skepticism was right:  none of his file-sharing sources had any Crusader archives.

  
  

  Undeterred, and thankful for the reminder of something I’d been wanting to do, I tried Google for “Crusader Rabbit”.  That brought me to

  
  

  
  

  
  

  

  
  

  There, I learned that I had been witness to history back then:

  
  

  “Most animation sources list Hanna-Barbera as the originators of limited animation for television, and Ruff and Reddy as the first made-for-TV cartoon. This is not true. In 1948, Jay Ward (of Rocky and Bullwinkle fame) teamed with animator Alex Anderson and sold NBC-TV a series of cartoons featuring Crusader, a crusading rabbit, and Ragland T. Tiger, his sidekick.”

  
  

  Whether they were historic figures or just some Saturday morning fun, Crusader and Rags were friends to me at a time when I needed friends very much.  What I learned from Toon Tracker explains, also, what it was about Rocky and Bullwinkle that seemed so familiar to me in the ‘Sixties when I first saw them.  I thought it was just ’cause I was trippin’ that I loved them so at first sight.

  
  

  I still don’t recall the name of that dinosaur, or anything about the little brown character in the group picture.  Crusader had a horse, and I’ve not found any good pictures of it, and don’t recall its name.  Thus my quest for Crusader Rabbit continues.

  
  
  

  

  
  

  AND… Does anyone recall the first interactive TV show, Winky-Dink and You?  Greyfox and I both had the same experience, drawing on our family’s TV screens with crayons before our parents got us the stick-on “Magic Screen”.

  
  

  .

  
  

  .

  
  

  .

  
  

   

  
  

  I wish:

  • 12:06 pm
  • 7 Comments