Whine and Cheese

Last Friday, one of my coworkers retired after 30 years of service. It was a good party. The planning committee did a great job, setting up the food and decorations. The retiree has been a friend of mine for years. She and I often laugh about TV, work, etc.

The retirement cartoon that I drew for her was pretty good. It was well received. And the planning committee even had it put on her retirement cake. I had the original in a frame to give to her.

I did a five minute standup routine when I presented her with the cartoon. I wore a Hawaiian shirt that she despised, which is a joke between the two of us. I made jokes about her inappropriate Abercrombie and Fitch lunch bag, her inability to understand multiple driving paths to work, and, naturally, fart jokes.

I was sitting at a table of past retirees, when one of them decided to point out that she did not get a retirement cartoon. The lady is one of questionable temperament. I have passed her in the hallways at work, said hello or good morning, only to have her completely ignore me. I told her that I drew retirement cartoons when I had the time. I told her about other retirees who did not get a retirement cartoon, because I was either busy or traveling or on vacation.

Later that day, it occurred to me that the lady who questioned her lack of retirement cartoon, did not have a retirement party because she just left one day and didn't return.

I don't feel guilty about failing to draw her a cartoon, since no celebration was held. Still, it did bother me that she chose to point this out in front of everyone.

Oh well.

Last night, I was struggling to find something to watch on TV. Odd, I know, considering there are a lot of new shows out that are good. I still have yet to watch "Marvel's Agents of Shield," but I have them recorded and just had not had a chance to sit down and go through them. So I settled on last week's episode of "The Walking Dead," which was awesome, followed by a spin through Netflix.

Netflix recently added a "Superman" cartoon series to the line-up. These are the Fleischer Studio Superman cartoons from the 1940's. I adore them. For its time, the animation is IMPRESSIVE, with the action moving so smoothly and the artwork being almost flawless. I imagine at the time, it garnered a lot of "oooh's" and "aaah's." They were very expensive to make, at $10K to $30K each in 1940. I watched several of them last night, as they are relatively short.

Some of them are politically themed, especially with WWII going on, with Superman fighting the Nazis and the Japanese. And Superman in the earlier cartoons could only leap from building to building at the time, just like in the comics. The cartoons actually are the ones that got Superman flying, according to the Wikipedia article, because the animated leaping looked a little silly.

All of these cartoons are in the public domain now. If you want to watch them, I'm sure a Google search will find online downloads (and I think even the Wikipedia entry has links for that).