“Screwball Squirrel’s” Short, Memorable Run…

Posted September 17, 2025 by vulpesffb
Categories: cartoons, furry, furry art, furry satire, humor, twisted reality, Vintage
Tags: ,

Tex Avery was an animation genius who rebelled against many traditions, creating in Screwball Squirrel a deliberately unlovable character who was intended to be a satire of cute, sentimental cartoon characters such as were often seen in Disney productions. Also known as Screwy Squirrel, this rodent was aggressively chaotic and obnoxious, and appeared only in five theatrical shorts between 1944 and 1946 before being discontinued as Avery himself grew to find the character annoying, and disliked him! This was not an affable, cutesy, or nice squirrel…

Screwy was really manic and wild, and so you might say that there were elements of Daffy Duck and the much later Roger Rabbit in him, but without any redemptive or likeable features. Screwy would actively torment a dim-witted dog called Meathead, and bring about the unseen but clearly implied destruction of other characters that he found offensive…

(“Disney-esque” squirrel versus “Screwy…”)

Screwball Squirrel meets his apparent death in a 1946 cartoon when he is crushed to death by a hug from a spoiled, dim, and emotionally-needy dog called Lenny. Since death is seldom permanent in cartoon characters, however, Screwy who “don’t move no more” appears at the end of the feature holding up a sign reading, “Sad ending, isn’t it?” The aggressively chaotic character would much later be seen in the 1990’s TV series “Droopy, Master Detective” and “Tom and Jerry...”

Comments: 6 Comments

The Werewolf of “Wednesday…”

Posted September 14, 2025 by vulpesffb
Categories: alternative realities, animal presence, anthropomorphic, furry, furry horror, furry television, paranormal, television
Tags: ,

To my knowledge, there hasn’t been an on-going werewolf character in a regular TV series since Oz on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Josh in Being Human. Fortunately, the Wednesday series on Netflix has introduced a leading werewolf character, a female no less, in the person of Enid, the roommate of Wednesday Addams.

Now Enid is not your typical dark and tormented werewolf character, but instead a rather cheerful and bright-spirited young lady who is just at the start of her werewolf journey, in the process of discovering herself and experiencing her first transformations. She contrasts almost completely with the darkness of Wednesday, having her half of their shared room in bright colors whereas Wednesday’s half is black and gothic. When asked at one point how she feels, Enid responds, “warm and fuzzy!”

Her upbeat nature initially causes Wednesday to keep Enid at some distance, but their relationship grows during the series, and in the second season now completed it’s revealed that Enid is not only a werewolf but an Alpha, capable of changing into her wolf form willfully without a full moon. Should she do so at this point, however, she will be permanently locked into her werewolf form, unable to transform back to human status…

Well, it turns out that when Wednesday is prematurely buried by a series villain and in danger of death by suffocation, Enid’s powerful werewolf form is needed to excavate Wednesday from her grave just in time. Fearless and unshaken, Wednesday declares “I enjoyed that” of her burial experience; you gotta love this dark girl! Enid, however, is locked in her werewolf form and feral, and goes on the lam. She is pursued by (hooray!) Uncle Fester and Wednesday at the end of the second season, with Wednesday riding in the sidecar of Fester’s motorcycle, and Fester ecstatic about the fun they’ll have pursuing such a dangerous creature!

It will be interesting to see the further development of Enid’s werewolf character, who Wednesday promised to pursue and restore. One hopes that Season 3 of Wednesday will not be long in coming…

Comments: 8 Comments

NJM “Tour Tram” Commercial…

Posted September 9, 2025 by vulpesffb
Categories: absurdities, advertising, alternative realities, aquatic, Brilliant but twisted, commercials, furry, television
Tags: ,

Perhaps the older souls among us can remember the classic “land shark” routine played on the original season of Saturday Night Live…a voice would come to your door, announcing a delivery of perhaps a telegram or candy gram, and when you answered the door, a large rubbery shark head would descend over the tenant and drag them outside, another tragic victim of The Land Shark! Yea, verily, it is written that when the oceans are full, the sharks will hunt on dry land!

Well, just when you thought that it was safe to leave your house or apartment, the land sharks, courtesy of NJM Insurance, are at it again! They appear to have evolved, however, and are much more genteel, having developed legs and even wearing ties and carrying briefcases, probably to lure us into a false sense of security before they strike and glom down on people…

Now a tourist tram train appears to be visiting a Hollywood set, where their on-board host tells the passengers that they’re in luck, an insurance commercial is being filmed! One lady talks to her companion, wondering if they’re shooting an action feature. The video director calls for action,, and we see our genial shark, walking along just like any businessman…then the director calls for a stunt shark, who appears, changes places with shark #1, and gets blasted with water!

Our touring lady appears disappointed, commenting that nothing blew up…but perhaps Chief Brody should be put on alert, just in case! Maybe they’ll need a bigger boat…

We’ve heard of The Wolf of Wall Street…why not The Land Shark of Hollywood?

Comments: 4 Comments

Lady Gaga’s “The Dead Dance…”

Posted September 4, 2025 by vulpesffb
Categories: bizarre, Brilliant but twisted, cool things, creature features, fantasy, historical perspectives, horror, Questionably creepy, spooky
Tags: ,

Lady Gaga has given us all of us Halloween heads a great early gift for spooky season in The Dead Dance, a masterpiece of song and dance. It ranks up there with Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Wednesday’s dance from the Netflix series Wednesday. There are some Jacksonian moves to it, yet the production, directed by Tim Burton, is unique and distinctly Lady Gaga’s.

For one thing, the video incorporates the feeling of Mexico City’s Island of the Dolls, a place where aging, discolored, rotting, and dismembered dolls are strung up in trees and around the landscape. Such dolls are rather creepy, and appear right from the beginning of Lady Gaga’s video wheas such does not appear in Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Lady Gaga’s zombified dead also seem to do a lot more twitching as they hover in that nether world between death and a recall to life…

Is there anything that Lady Gaga cannot do? She sings, dances, and writes songs, and The Dead Dance can easily be interpreted to represent recovery from romantic break-ups, depression, and other forms of mental illness and personal setbacks in life. Although its topic is dark and presented in terms of the paranormal, the video is both dazzling and yet uplifting…what a triumph! Enjoy, if this is your first viewing of the video…

Comments: 5 Comments

Allstate “Check First Neighbors” Commercial…

Posted August 22, 2025 by vulpesffb
Categories: advertising, animal problems, animals, furry, furry commercials, television, twisted reality
Tags: ,

I find screaming goats, at the very least, disconcerting. Although such goats are not actually screaming but bleating or calling, their vocalizations are loud, and can sound eerily like a human in extreme duress, say being tortured.– -Why, you might ask, do some goats make these verbalizations? It could be a sign of hunger, distress, or simply an attention-getting device. It sure would get my attention and displeasure, pronto. You could build a low-budget horror movie around these goats!

In a recent Allstate commercial Check First Neighbors, a couple is celebrating their first night in a new house. They hear a muffled shriek in the background. Looking out the window, they find goats clamoring all over their neighbor’s yard! Then the goats become invasive…one even loudly screams at the new occupants from within their house! Why is the goat shrieking?- -Possibly he wants fed, or more grain in his diet; the scream is certainly an attention-getting device. Goat farmers have noted that the goats sometimes will keep up this behavior for half to three-quarters of an hour before giving up…

You see, our new homeowners had neglected to check out the neighbors before buying the property, and you really should do that. Allstate can then save you hundreds on your homeowners insurance…

About the only thing I can think of that might be worse than living next door to a herd of screaming goats would be residing next to a family of howler monkeys…

Comments: 2 Comments

It’s “Wednesday” Again, and Full of Woe!

Posted August 9, 2025 by vulpesffb
Categories: alternative realities, Brilliant but twisted, cool things, horror, television
Tags: ,

It’s been a long time waiting until Season 2, but Wednesday Addams is finally back on Netflix, which has added nicely to the series. For one thing, Wednesday’s brother Pugsley is now in the cast, and is far more fleshed out as a character than in previous imaginings of him…for one thing, he stands taller than Wednesday, although she remains dominant, and Pugsley has the ability to cast bolts of electricity from his hands, an electrical affinity that he shares with Uncle Fester…

Now the ability to readily tolerate and produce electrical current is a gene that apparently skipped father Gomez, who can boast no such powers. But thankfully Fester is back and wonderful, and we see him enjoying electroshock treatment in a psychiatric hospital, where he begs for more treatments! “They used to call it a Funny Farm!,” Fester reminds us about the institution where he self-admits to gather information for Wednesday. Warned that he may be tortured, Fester gleefully exults, “Oh, this is gonna be FUN!” You gotta love the guy…

Wednesday has a number of psychic gifts including precognition, and she can envision the past or future of an object or person by touching them. When her gifts are used too much, however, black tears stream from her eyes. At the Nevermore school (like Hogwarts but darker), Wednesday has become an icon for her fellow students, but despises that role. “Put me on a pedestal,” she counsels, “and I’ll burn it down!” Wednesday is kind of at odds with her mother Morticia in Season 2, at one point engaging in a blindfolded duel with her in the woods after dark (a family tradition, we are told)…

Unfortunately Season 2 thus far is just Part 1 of 2, and we must wait until September to see the remaining four episodes, but I’m sure that it will be worth the wait for Wednesday, a force of nature or perhaps the unnatural…

Comments: 7 Comments

Walter, the Airsupra Dino…

Posted July 23, 2025 by vulpesffb
Categories: advertising, alternative realities, anthropomorphic, Brilliant but twisted, commercials, furry, furry commercials, humor, prehistoric life, television
Tags: ,

A mini-dinosaur might make an interesting if cumbersome pet, and of course they’d have to be well-behaved! With a name like Walter, this diminutive T-rex sounds rather domesticated, but he’s still awfully big for human environments, and so can barely fit into things like elevators and taxicabs…

Asthma medications haven’t changed much in fifty years, you see, so the albuterol inhaler is really a dinosaur of sorts. Walter is then a metaphor representing older, outdated “rescue” albuterol-only inhalers for asthma that primarily treat symptoms of asthma without addressing underlying inflammation. Airsupra is a “dual-action” inhaler that treats both symptoms and underlying inflammation of asthma…

So Walter is awkward and outdated on tandem bikes, being, after all, a dinosaur. We’re unlikely to see him in any of the Jurassic Park movies either, which is a pity because he does appear genial and is cute…

Comments: 9 Comments

Memorable MIA Commercial Characters…

Posted July 11, 2025 by vulpesffb
Categories: advertising, alternative realities, animal spokepersons, anthropomorphic, commercials, furry, furry commercials, furry satire, fursuits, television

If you’ve noticed, we now see Earl the Cat from the Smalls cat food commercials mostly as a simplistic two-dimensional line drawing these days. Rarely do we see the wonderful Earl as the guy in the fursuit anymore…

This is a shame, because fursuit Earl is far more captivating than line drawing Earl. He was so good and compelling that his presence probably distracted from the cat food product itself. There are other examples where a commercial character was so magnetic that they apparently distracted from the product being advertised, and so were sadly phased out. I just think that we had yet to see the best of fursuit Earl…

Consider Lactose Cow in the Lactaid commercials, aka “the Milk that Messes With You.” Mess with us she did, but was incredibly comic and memorable in doing so, far outshining the demure blue-and-white Lactaid Cow. I for one deeply miss seeing these commercial stars, and since I am powerless to return them, will leave you with a few memories of the best of The Milk That Messes With You. Characters gone but not forgotten…*sighs*

Comments: 4 Comments

Buffy The Vampire Slayer Reboot…

Posted June 28, 2025 by vulpesffb
Categories: classics, horror, humor, paranormal, television
Tags:

I’ve got good news, and bad news for y’all. First, the good news…the Buffy The Vampire Slayer TV series is having a reboot! Now the bad news…it will be behind the paywall of Hulu…

Technically more of a sequel than a reboot, the new Buffy series will introduce a new Slayer (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) who is mentored by Sarah Michelle Geller as Buffy. This is probably a good thing as the original series aired largely in the 1990’s, and that cast can no longer really hope to pass as people in their late teens to early 20’s. Reboots and sequels are seldom as satisfying as their originals, and some are outright travesties that should never have been made. Given how influential, compelling, and loved the original series was, however, a reboot or sequel is worthy of consideration. It’s just that there’s a lot at stake…hehehe!

Some of the original cast members will be returning, but unfortunately Oz the Werewolf as played by Sean Green won’t be among them…

The reboot will supposedly balance new and legacy story lines, but is unlikely to premier until 2026 as it’s still in the early stages of development, and little information is available…

Comments: 9 Comments

“The People’s Choice” with Cleo, the Talking Basset Hound!

Posted June 8, 2025 by vulpesffb
Categories: absurdities, alternative realities, anthropomorphic, comedy, cool things, furry, furry television, Vintage
Tags:

Before Mr. Ed, a forgotten show of the 1950’s called The People’s Choice starred Jackie Cooper but the real attraction was a basset hound called Cleo who appeared to be talking or at least projecting her thoughts to the human characters…

Now Jackie Cooper was one of the few child stars who actually found work as an adult actor once his 1930’s role in The Little Rascals was over. In The People’s Choice (1955-1958), he played an aspiring politician who initially was secretly married to the mayor’s daughter. Cooper would later go on to play Perry White in the first three Superman movies…but this post is about Cleo, who would offer sardonic commentaries upon the human actions about her.

This was hokey 1950’s comedy, but the concept of a talking dog was innovative for its time, and Cleo often did steal the show, paving the way for Mr. Ed and future anthropomorphic animal characters. Hard to find now, some full episodes of The People’s Choice may be viewed free of charge on YouTube…Woof!

Comments: 5 Comments

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »