Animal Acts
Feb. 26th, 2021 12:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogEleanor heard about a new Disney film called Flora and Ulysses. I didn't realize how unanimated it was- just the co-starring CGI squirrel and some assorted Marvelish superheroes- or that it had a whole superhero plot to it. It took me well over an hour into the 90-minute film to realize that there was a connection between the superheroish squirrel of the story and my favorite superhero parody of all time:
It's part of the National Lampoon's Sunday Newspaper parody from the late 70s. They had an incredible cast of artists and writers on this project, including P.J. O'Rourke and the late John Hughes.
My favorite line from that comic, which I use to this day, is at the bottom of this panel:
Ulysses isn't quite that mean, but he does get plenty of licks in on the character reprising the Carl The Groundskeeper trope from Caddyshack.
Disney has been pushing the super-envelope with its ownership of Marvel, both with this movie and the WandaVision series. I've only watched the first of those episodes, but I like the concept of spoofing both MCU storylines and television tropes from the 50s onward. They even brought Dick Van Dyke in to consult on how they were spoofing his original show. Despite those likes, though, I hope the Mouse doesn't overdo mixing their stable of metaphors; I do NOT want Leia as a Disney Princess, or Luke throwing down with Tony Stark to see who's got the better prosthetic arm.
----
Not to be outdone, Pepper decided to put on an animal act of her own this morning.
We had a full rich couple of hours to start the day: I had a court hearing "with" a client at 9:30, while Eleanor headed off to her quickly-scheduled appointment to get her car inspected. This was the first of these mandatory bankruptcy hearings done over the phone where the client wouldn't be in the office with me. Since I had no reason to do it from the office, and since it was first-thing, I decided to do the call from home. Everything went fine in terms of the tech- she got through, so did I, and everyone could hear everyone except when we were muted- but a few minutes into the first hearing on the calendar before ours, Pepper decided that lawyers were scary. She started whining while listening to a very nice attorney explaining something for his client. I let her out of the room and that made her whine louder. When I speculated on Facebook about why she was complaining about some very nice people, one of the other trustees on the panel saw my post and replied:
Swear in the dog; likely the answers will be as fulsome.
Making that even funnier was that he was the presiding trustee earlier in the week when somebody's dog started barking in the background of the call and he asked why it wasn't listed as an asset in the case. (It belonged to one of the lawyers.) Eventually, to cut the whining before my case was finally called, I headed to the kitchen and got Pepper a rawhide to shut her up. My only hope is that I won't be carted off to federal prison for bribery under 18 U.S.C. §152(6).
----
No animals in the final act of our fun morning, but while the client was testifying and the dog was chewing, Eleanor was texting. Even though they knew she had a short window for getting to work and she was there first thing on time, it was approaching Go Time with no inspected car in sight. So I loaded up the laptop, other stuff to take to work from there and some pre-work snackage for her and headed over to the dealership- forgetting that my last mask in the car had its ear strap break off in Wegmans last night. They found a new one for me, we did Fire Drill with my car, I settled in while they finished,.... and two minutes later it was done. No charge.
I guess I won't spit acorns at them or whine any further.
It's part of the National Lampoon's Sunday Newspaper parody from the late 70s. They had an incredible cast of artists and writers on this project, including P.J. O'Rourke and the late John Hughes.
My favorite line from that comic, which I use to this day, is at the bottom of this panel:
Ulysses isn't quite that mean, but he does get plenty of licks in on the character reprising the Carl The Groundskeeper trope from Caddyshack.
Disney has been pushing the super-envelope with its ownership of Marvel, both with this movie and the WandaVision series. I've only watched the first of those episodes, but I like the concept of spoofing both MCU storylines and television tropes from the 50s onward. They even brought Dick Van Dyke in to consult on how they were spoofing his original show. Despite those likes, though, I hope the Mouse doesn't overdo mixing their stable of metaphors; I do NOT want Leia as a Disney Princess, or Luke throwing down with Tony Stark to see who's got the better prosthetic arm.
----
Not to be outdone, Pepper decided to put on an animal act of her own this morning.
We had a full rich couple of hours to start the day: I had a court hearing "with" a client at 9:30, while Eleanor headed off to her quickly-scheduled appointment to get her car inspected. This was the first of these mandatory bankruptcy hearings done over the phone where the client wouldn't be in the office with me. Since I had no reason to do it from the office, and since it was first-thing, I decided to do the call from home. Everything went fine in terms of the tech- she got through, so did I, and everyone could hear everyone except when we were muted- but a few minutes into the first hearing on the calendar before ours, Pepper decided that lawyers were scary. She started whining while listening to a very nice attorney explaining something for his client. I let her out of the room and that made her whine louder. When I speculated on Facebook about why she was complaining about some very nice people, one of the other trustees on the panel saw my post and replied:
Swear in the dog; likely the answers will be as fulsome.
Making that even funnier was that he was the presiding trustee earlier in the week when somebody's dog started barking in the background of the call and he asked why it wasn't listed as an asset in the case. (It belonged to one of the lawyers.) Eventually, to cut the whining before my case was finally called, I headed to the kitchen and got Pepper a rawhide to shut her up. My only hope is that I won't be carted off to federal prison for bribery under 18 U.S.C. §152(6).
----
No animals in the final act of our fun morning, but while the client was testifying and the dog was chewing, Eleanor was texting. Even though they knew she had a short window for getting to work and she was there first thing on time, it was approaching Go Time with no inspected car in sight. So I loaded up the laptop, other stuff to take to work from there and some pre-work snackage for her and headed over to the dealership- forgetting that my last mask in the car had its ear strap break off in Wegmans last night. They found a new one for me, we did Fire Drill with my car, I settled in while they finished,.... and two minutes later it was done. No charge.
I guess I won't spit acorns at them or whine any further.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-26 05:57 pm (UTC)https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squirrel_Girl
WandaVision gets even better. It's doing something really clever and interesting.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-26 08:53 pm (UTC)https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/02/15/who-really-created-the-marvel-universe
ROFL
Date: 2021-02-27 12:00 pm (UTC)