Nostalgia.

Can you still call it that when it's not something you originally lived through? Ever since I was young, I always thought everything seemed cooler 'back in the day'... spent hours looking through my grandparents' stacks of '50s-'70s Popular Science and Mechanix Illustrated magazines, reading the reviews and ads for cars and tools that looked way cooler than anything modern. Even the typefaces used in these old mags looked awesome to me. And of course, to go along with this, I got to grow up during the last gasp of proper Saturday Morning cartoons! Looney Tunes, Merrie Melodies, the old MGM shorts, Tom and Jerry, the older half-colorized 'toons where everything was badly tinted red/green, "(Blank) On Parade"-style singing, 'things coming to life' shorts, caricatures of 'old timey' celebrities, and from what I could tell, all the jokes that would later be considered sexist/racist were left intact. I grew up with all this, and still enjoy it. It really bothers me that many of these old 'toons are only shown in censored versions nowadays, if you can find them at all. For instance, I caught a replay on Boomerang of the classic Tex Avery short "The Car of Tomorrow" that was missing the "Indian convertible" and "rickshaw car" gags. What the hell, man? Watch this for yourself and see how "offensive" these jokes really are!



I would have thought that "the suits" running Boomerang/Cartoon Network would have more issues with the woman driver/mother-in-law jokes than the throwaway gags involving a teepee and a rickshaw. The "Thrifty Scotsman Model" was left in there for broadcast, too. I don't see anything that's sooo offensive that kids these days shouldn't see it, and especially when you're gonna show this 'toon on a special cable channel that you've gotta pay extra for whose intended audience seems to be baby boomers and older folk who remember these cartoons from their youth??? Makes no damned sense to me. Oh yeah, here's my Wikipedia-style disclaimer: I believe my posting of this short falls within fair use guidelines because I am using it to illustrate a point and its low resolution is in no way a replacement for any shiny uncensored DVDs that the Time Warner empire wants to sell me and you. Offer a DVD version of the Compleat Tex Avery laserdisc with all the same content and I will buy that puppy in a heartbeat! It sucks when the only place we can see many of these older 'toons is in low quality on YouTube or similar sites. I was inspired to post this after stumbling upon John Kricfalusi's blog.