I wish to disavow involvement with the incidents of a red fox biting nine people on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, and have a perfect alibi; she was a female, you see…
She was a fine specimen, it must be admitted, and I’m sure that many of us can sympathize with biting people on the ankle, especially congressmen, but with nine confirmed bites, her doom was sealed. It saddens me to report that the fox was captured and euthanized, and did test positive for rabies. Even sadder is the fact that her kits were also reportedly captured and euthanized, too…
Rest In Peace, magnificent lady! You just took bite the power a bit too much to heart… 🦊
Based on a highly successful kid’s book series by Australian author Aaron Blabey that premiered in 2015, The Bad Guys is a kind of crime comedy focusing on the criminal exploits of five anthropomorphic animals that include Mr. Wolf (a pickpocket), Mr. Snake (a safecracker), Mr. Shark (a master of disguises), Ms. Tarantula (a tech wizard), and Mr. Piranha (mob muscle). It’s kind of like an Ocean’s Eleven theme, but with furries. We’re not all cute and harmless, ‘ya know. I myself have kind of a dark side, which comes with being of a predacious species. Get a bunch of us together, and you have a force of nature, literally and figuratively…🙀
Now Mr. Wolf (Sam Rockwell) is the gang leader, and is both slick and hot. Get in line, ladies…but when a caper goes sour, he cuts a deal with the authorities to avoid prison time in exchange for his gang going good, which he really has no intention of doing. In the course of doing good, however, he finds that being a do-gooder actually strokes his inner need for acceptance. I should mention that Mr. Wolf has a love interest who is a real fox, one Diane Foxington, whose ears to me look rabbit-like…
As a tag line goes, these guys may be bad, but they’re good at it…and being good is no fun! Although intended for kids, The Bad Guys has something for everyone, especially if you like anthropomorphic animals with some classic themes thrown in, and a wolf who wears his threads well and can hold his own on the dance floor. The Big Bad Wolf here is really just a party animal who’s capable of redemption, only needs to channel his gifts in a socially-acceptable way, just wants to have fun, and I likes him! So let’s all let our inner animals out, whaddya say? There’s a little furry in all of youse…Yowsa! 🦊
Warning: this post may not be suitable for some of our more sensitive viewers. Well, you’ve already seen the headless chicken photo, so what remains are the gory details…
In September of 1945, a farmer who lived in Fruita, Colorado by the name of Lloyd Olsen who raised chickens was killing large numbers of them to take to town for market, and using a hatchet for the fowl task. Most of the chickens obligingly died as expected, although chickens beheaded will sometimes kick and run about for several minutes before succumbing. One chicken, however, had his jugular spared and retained most of his brain stem, and was able to develop a blood clot to prevent bleeding out, and so remained ambulatory. The brain stem which remained controlled his breathing, digestion, and heart rate.The fowl also retained an ear.After his decapitation, the headless chicken got up, and began to strut around the farm.
The farmer took this curiosity and kept it in an apple box overnight, the next morning describing that “The damn thing was still alive.”The event then took on a life of its own, so to speak. As the rooster survived, Olsen let him continue to roam around. He would sleep with his neck stub tucked under his feathers, tried to peck for food with his neck stub, and even gained weight due to the chicken being fed milk and water directly into his esophagus with a dropper. He could even so digest small pieces of corn…
Recognizing how unique a living headless chicken was, his owner made a cash cow out of him, taking him on the road where he became a sideshow sensation, and earning 25 cents per head (so to speak) for people to gawk at him. At the height of his fame, Mike made his owners $4,500 per month...not exactly chicken feed, in the 1940’s.
Sadly while on road tour in Phoenix, Arizona his owners awoke to the sounds of Mike choking. As they had to suction mucus from his throat throughout the day, they would usually keep a syringe nearby, but had forgotten this equipment at a previous sideshow event. Mike couldn’t dislodge the mucus himself, and so suffocated in March of 1947, about 18 months after his decapitation. From thesideshowprofits, however, his owners were able to buy a horse, mule, hay baler, two tractors, and a Chevrolet pickup truck.
A statue of Mike was erected, and Mike the Headless Chicken was awarded his own special festival day, celebrated annually in Fruita, Colorado with a chicken lunch, an egg toss, a chicken dance, a race, and even chicken bingo, which is chosen by chicken droppings that land on a bingo board! Mike would have liked that. Only in America…is this a great country, or what?!
Alpacas are cute and appealing, and as we learn from a recent CarMax commercial, apparently quite clever! We see an alpaca on a farm watching the owner return in his pickup truck, his faithful dog hanging out of the side window. Digging this scene, the alpaca apparently feels that he would like to ride shotgun, too…
So to a minimal instrumental theme that sounds vaguely western-ish, we are shown the crafty alpaca making his way to a shed towards evening where behind closed doors, where he is apparently able to go on line, surf the web, and apparently order a vehicle with sunroof, all without the benefit of digits!
The next morning, the vehicle is delivered to the astonished farmer, neatly tied up with a bow! In the closing scene, we see the new wheels out on the road, the alpaca getting a commanding view with his long neck and head extended out of the sunroof! This alpaca (whose name is Randy) is like the closing theme tells us, “Bad to the bone!”
Many of us have seen Kia’s “Robo Dog” commercial that premiered during the Super Bowl. The dog itself is incredibly cute and appealing, unless you stare for too long into it’s camera eyes, which look like they could draw you in. We’ve likely too seen robotic dogs actually developed, although most of these are more uncanny and borderline creepy than cute, lacking such embellishments as a distinct head. These dogs look like they’ve been engineered by Skynet to hunt out the human resistance…
The successor to the Kia Soul hamsters, Robo Dog represents the EV6 line, and we first see him sitting forlornly in an electronics store. Seeing an EV6, the robotic dog escapes the store and goes in pursuit of the vehicle and it’s driver, navigating remarkably well until it leaps off a building and runs out of battery charge…
Rather than shattering into pieces on the hard surface beneath, Robo Dog inexplicably survives the plunge, and is recharged back to life by the Kia owner, who adopts the ersatz canine we then see happily in the car…happy ending!
Bonnie Tyler’s memorable “Total Eclipse of the Heart” provides the sound track for the commercial, which reminds us to Live Fully Charged. I’m still glad to be a biological unit, thank you…🦊
I wish that I could be a beatboxing fox like Charlie Puth’s version in this Doritos commercial, but that’s not my part of the forest. I live in the literary section, a place of writers and dreamers…
Still, I respect their work. It means that my people have arrived, and that we are among you, gradually making inroads despite being a subculture. Our influx will be subtle but catchy, and you’ll hardly noticethat we’re gonna Push It, as in this 2022 Doritos commercial that debuted during theSuper Bowl.
A number of years ago, hardly anyone bothered with sloths, regarding them as boring, slow-moving shirkers who were about as interesting as watching grass grow. Today, they are regarded as hip, cute, and cool, almost in the vanguard of pop culture…and so it is that in this commercial, the sloth is kind of a headliner.
When a nature-watching young woman up in a tree drops bags of Doritos and Cheetos, they fall to the forest floor, and are cautiously crept up on by a sloth, who tastes one and finds it good, followed by a deer, a bear, water buffalo, and other animals, each providing a vocalization of their pleasurable surprise. When a crocodile comes along and opens his mouth to reveal a vocally talented red and black bird (Megan Thee Stallion), we have a full complement to perform the Salt ‘N Pepa “Baby Baby” refrain from “Push It…”
When the nature watcher descends from the tree to retrieve the scattered snacks, the sloth distinctly exclaims “Nope!,” and absconds with the Doritos, moving with surprising speed. A barely visible note at the bottom of the screen reads, “Do not feed to animals.” I prefer the ranch or nacho flavors, myself… 🦊
Walter, the Chevy Silverado ad cat, is impressive. OwlKitty, however, is awesome! The black female cat’s real name is Lizzy, and OwlKitty is an assumed stage name. Assume the stage she does, being skillfully edited by her owner, Tibo Charroppin, into parodies of iconic scenes from such movies as Titanic, Jurassic Park, Avengers Endgame, Star Wars, and more…
…and OwlKitty can do it all, covering a range from theromantic role of Rose in Titanic to Sith Lord Darth Vader in Star Wars. Give her an action movie, and she can morph in size to substitute for raptors or a T-Rex in theJurassic Park franchise, or perch atop Captain America’s shoulder in Endgame to seek out Thanos in singular combat, and send him flying, blue energies arcing from her small but mighty body. Still a proper cat, she grooms herself afterwards… 🐈⬛
Godzilla on the rampageagain? – – No problem, you need a Kong-sized OwlKitty to set that bad boy straight!
Sowhen you have a problem situation, the right man for the job just might be a cat. OwlKitty does lighter, comic-touches, too. The look on her face when Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) dances her around in the Titanic parody is priceless. We haven’t seen a cat this compelling and relatable since Ellen Ripley’s cat Jonesy in Alien…
We’re quite used to seeing dogs in commercials, but cats not so much unless they‘re hawking cat food or kitty litter. Walter the Cat changes all of that, appearing in a commercial for Chevy Silverado where he does everything a dog typically does, and more…
In the commercial, Walter is shown corralling cattle, chasing a mailman, riding a snowmobile, retrieving a stick thrown into water, leading a dog sled team, and even extricating a downed skier like a St. Bernard!
It’s all in a day’s workfor the frisky feline, who rides shotgun in his master’s truck and shares a tent as well as any canine best friend. It is the Year of theTiger, after all…Rawrr! 🦊
In the depths of winter and the continuing pandemic, we could all use a little King Shark right now! Anthropomorphic sharks are a rare breed indeed, and this one is a metahuman criminal denizen of DC’s extended universe, a villain who somehow manages to be cute and even likable despite a taste for human flesh…
The son of a “King of All Sharks,” King Shark (real name Nanaue) is a demigod who is voiced to perfection by Sylvester Stallone in the Suicide Squad 2 movie. Stallone’s mumbling, monotone delivery suits the man-shark character well. Although quite deadly and almost indestructible, King Shark (shown above reading a book in prison upside down) is child-like and dull-witted, speaking in short, simple phrases. Just point him in the right direction, and then get out of his way!
You would want to be King Shark’s friend, because if you were not, you’d be nom nom, namely something good to eat. King Shark doesn’t eat his friends, although almost anything else organic would be considered fair game. He may be seen chewing happily on a human head and other body parts of those opposing him in the movie…
So catch King Shark as memorably created in the Suicide Squad movie. And when he celebrates Shark Week, you’d better party along…. 🦊
We’re all familiar with Disney’s 1940 adaptation of Pinocchio, and Pinocchio’s conscienceJiminyCricket,complete with formal clothing and umbrella. In a new retelling of the Pinocchio tale by Guillermodel Toro, the cricket is just as verbal but far more insectile, telling his audience that he “lived in theheart of the wooden boy.” Vaguely chilling, right? He’s even got a revised name…Sebastian J. Cricket! Plus this bug looks almost alien.- – I Iike him already!
Set in Italy in the 1930’s with Mussolini’s fascist power rising, this Pinocchio is depicted as a lost soul in a world he cannot understand. Disney sanitized the original Carlo Collodi tale, which included the cricket being killed early on and his ghost serving as Pinocchio’s conscience! Guillermo del Toro promises to return some of the original Frankenstein or nightmarish elements to the story, which included boys being turned into donkeys on Pleasure Island.
Sofor a darker, scarier version of Pinocchio that’s “aboutas far removed fromDisney as you can get,” you may want to check out this Pinocchio coming toNetflix in December 2022…and tell them that Sebastian J. Cricket sent you,buwahahaha!
FOXSYLVANIA 
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