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 2026as it’s still in the early stages of development, and little information is available…
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!
Nowhere’s an idea from antiquity that we moderns could really benefit from adopting! Although the Egyptian pharaohs were considered as gods by their subjects, usually in the 30th year of a pharaoh’s reign and every three years after that, he had to prove his worth by participating in a footraceduring the Heb-Sed or Sed festival! During this observance, they might construct temples and sculptures.The tradition datedback to the first dynasty of ancient Egypt, around 3,000 BCE…
Now it gets better! The pharaoh while competing was dressed in a kilt with an attached animal tail! I am so envious…they had animal-headed deities, plus their king got to act like a furry, all to demonstrate their physical fitness for office! If a pharaoh couldn’t complete the race, it meant that it was time for a younger, healthier ruler as the ancient Egyptians related the health of their head honcho to the overall health and vitality of the kingdom…
Since 30 years was a long time against the life span of an ancient Egyptian, only a small percentage of pharaohs lived long enough to celebrate a Heb-Sed, and many kings and queens were troubled with various maladies caused by inbreeding. Still, the idea of running a footrace to prove physical fitness might be worth incorporating into the American political system. Healthy mind in a healthy body, ‘ya know. I’ll bet that Kamala could have run the course…I doubt that the Orange Dude would have. I’d race, if I got to wear a fox tail…better a partial fursuit than none, I always say…
All of this shows us once again why the ancient Egyptians rocked!
While Mr. Ed gets most of the attention, he was preceded by Francis the Talking Mule. The original Francis movie was released in 1950, and would go on to appear in a total of seven, yes seven movies! Elvis had not yet hit the scene, and people in the 50’s needed something to do, so they translated to film from three short stories written by David Stern for Esquire magazine about a talking army mule who would only talk to a dimwitted lieutenant, helping him in his military and other ventures…
NowFrancis was actually a female donkey named Molly, selected because she was easy to handle. She supposedly cost $350 to buy, but made millions from the film series. To create the illusion that the mule was actually talking, thread would be fed into the animal’s mouth which would cause the mule-actress to try and remove it by moving her lips. The same technique would later be used for Mister Ed! Francis would also appear in a 1952-53 comic strip, Francis, the Famous Talking Mule.
A talking donkey, however, preceded Francis in The Bible! In the Biblical Book of Numbers, Chapter 22, verses 21 – 39 we are given an extraordinary account of an Old Testament furry, a female donkey who had her mouth opened by the Lord to the extent that she was able at least temporarily to talk to her abusive master and engage in a dialogue with him!
It would seem that Balaam was a pagan non-Israelite prophet and diviner who was commissioned by Balak, King of the Moabites, to lay a curse on the Israelites. After divining and seeing that the Lord was really with the Israelitesand that they could not be cursed, Balaam relayed his message to Moabite king, who would not take no for an answer. Yahweh then instructed Balaam to to follow the Moabite delegation to the hill upon which Balak thinks Isreal would be cursed…
On route, Balaam rode his donkey, who alone perceived an angel standing in the road with a drawn sword in his hand, and turned off the road into a field. Balaam beat the donkey to get it back on the road. Then the angel stood in a narrow path through vineyards with walls on both sides. The donkey pressed close to the wall, crushing Balaam’s foot against it. The louse beat the poor donkey again…
So the donkey moved ahead, and this time the angel appeared in a narrow place where there was no room to turn either to the right or the left. The donkey simply lay down at that point under Balaam, and the crud became angry and beat the poor animal a third time!
Then the transformation happened. The Almighty opened the donkey’s mouth, and it said to Balaam, “What have I done to you to make you beat me these three times?” Balaam answered his pack animal, telling her that she had made a fool out of him, and that had he a sword in his hand, he’d kill the poor thing right then! The donkey’s words revealed that it had been trying to warn Balaam about the angel, to which Balaam finally bowed and admitted his sin. Sadly, the donkey kinda drops from the Biblical narrative at that point, but is an early example of an anthropomorphic being, as well as an early animal rights advocate. One can imagine them being voiced by Eddie Murphy as in Shrek…
So guys, if you come across a talking mule or donkey, give them a listen…you just might become a believer!
In this IKEA TV spot, a family is called by “Uncle Ricky” to be reminded that they had offered to host a barbecue next weekend, a fact that they had obviously forgotten. Looking out at their backyard to check the status of their yard, they find that nature has quite taken it over, for there are raccoons, opossums, rabbits, and even a background deer cavorting around!
“What are those rabbits doing,” questions the son. While we are not shown the act, one suspects from their positioning that the rabbits are “doing what comes naturally,” and giving junior a free lesson on reproduction. Mom and Dad look at one another, and converse, “IKEA?- –IKEA!”
So when Uncle Ricky arrives, the family’s backyard has been transformed by the purchase of a large table and chair set from IKEA for a proper barbecue, and even the animals appear happy…
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I rather like the notion of having anthropomorphic internal organs that can function outside of our bodies without killing us by their absence, and come complete with their own sets of organs, such as limbs, eyes, mouths, and apparently brains, as such ambulatory organs can talk. We’ve earlier seen commercials for stand-alone organs such as the bladder (Myrbetriq), who (below) kind of resembles a large red apple with very soulful eyes…
Now wouldn’tit be cool if you also could at will detach various of your internal organs, and take the whole family out for, say, a walk in the park? Or perhaps send them on missions to do your bidding, even to freak out or scare people? There’s got to be a good horror movie in that scenario, with you having a perfect alibi for the police while your organs went out to terrorize the neighborhood!– –This could give a whole new meaning to venting your spleen! Why, with autonomous, detachable organs, you could even bring new meaning to the old song, “I Left My Heart In San Francisco!“I’ll bet that the heart could really belt out the old standards, I tell ‘ya!
(A heart in a piano bar, performing a medley of Tony Bennett songs…)
But I weirdly digress…the heart in this Repatha commercial is a sweet if wounded soul, wearing a bandage on her head to denote having suffered a heart attack. I’m assuming here that the heart has the same gender as its possessor, as it does have rather feminine eyes, eyelashes, and lips…but we’ll leave the matter of secondary sexual characteristics in organs to wiser heads than mine, such wasn’t covered in my biology courses…
Repatha is used to control LDL cholesterol when statins alone don’t do the job, and both the lady and her detached organ don’t want another heart attack. Appropriately enough, the sound track to the commercial is the song, “Listen To Your Heart…”
So a Happy Easter to all, and please leave your organs within your body, or at least keep them on a leash…don’t leave your muscles in Brussels! And if you leave your heart in San Francisco, maybe high on a hill, it will call to you…
Little Caesars has brought back it’s Pretzel Crust pizza touted in this commercial, and it’s all that office anthropomorphic sheep worker Brian can think about…so much so, in fact, that he keeps bleating that “It’s BAAAAACK,” at one point pounding his hooves on his computer keyboard to bring up the BAAAAACK legend on his computer screen…
While bosses would like to have sheepish, compliant workers, I doubt that those hooves of worker Brian would be capable of hitting individual keys on the keyboard.Brian does, however, sport good office attire, so we can perhaps forgive him if he acts a bit sheepish…
I’ve always found anthropomorphic plants a bit creepy, even if they are sunflowers…and this 2025 Flonase commercial is no exception! With a monstrous specimen of this size sitting on the couch right next to her, flowering vines and all, it’s no wonder that this lady has allergy problems…
Nowanthropomorphic flowers are rare in both horror and commercials, and this one appears to have eyes, a nose, and most disturbingly, teeth! One is hard pressed to think of ambulatory and even sentient plants, although The Day of the Triffids movies (1962 and 2018) come to mind. Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors (1986) was also a classicthat even generated a musical.Even more recently, we have the heroic and self-sacrificing Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy, so perhaps plants are starting to come into their own…
In the 2025 Flonase commercial, the lady complains to her floral companion that “He makes her feel so miserable!” The sunflower appears to feel badly about this, extending some vines in her direction but only causing a sneeze…
Fortunately, Flonase is taken, and we last see the lady and flower in the great outdoors, both untroubled to enjoy the experience!- – I just love happy endings, don’t you?
It’s hard to believe that The X-Files aired thirty years ago, and equally hard to fathom that David Duchovny is now 64 years old. Rejoice at least that the guy who brought Fox Mulder of the FBI to life is hosting and producing a new 10-part documentary show on the History Channel called, “Secrets Declassified” that may at least have something of an X-Files vibe to it…
David Duchovny and mysterious secrets seem to go together, and the series promises to “profile thegovernment’smost secretive, strange and mind-blowing activities that have been declassified throughout history.” Topics will, of course, include Area 51...
Secrets Declassifiedwill premiere on The History Channel April 4th, and I’m on board for it!
A classic Looney Tunes feature from 1948 is brought to your attention here as it includes a fox! In What Makes Daffy Duck?, you’ll note that the characters are drawn somewhat differently from this time period, especially Daffy. The inclusion of a fox is wonderful, and it makes me wish that Warner Bros. had perhaps included an on-going fox character, perhaps as a foil to Bugs and Daffy, even if they couldn’t render fox hind legs properly. The ‘toon was still remarkably ahead of its time for 1948, and what a wonderful closing line for Daffy…”Obviously, I’m dealing with inferior mentalities!”
It would seem that poor Daffy can’t even take a shower in the outdoors without drawing the attention of Elmer, but also of a rather lean and determined fox, who is easily as bright as Elmer, and manages to hold his own against him in spite of not having a firearm. The fox does speak, in addition, and manages to make off with Daffy at one point, although Daffy never appears terribly concerned about either Elmer or the fox…
It’s interesting to see Daffy featured in a type of role that in the future would be largely relegated to Bugs, who generally is more sarcastic and cerebral than Daffy, who is more manic. At any rate, I’ve attached a shortened version of the cartoon for you to enjoy that is basically the beginning and ending. Longer full versions are available on line, but those on YouTube have review voice-overs on them, which I find annoying…
And just a reminder that the new feature-length cartoon, The Day the Earth Blew Up, is opening on March 14th, 2025, featuring Daffy, Porky, and Petunia…
FOXSYLVANIA 
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