Ode to Toontown
 

This is part narrative, part lyrical, and all from my heart. ;)

When I was quite a young lass (like, early to mid forties) I happened upon a new world. The world was called, quite simply enough, Toontown. At first I wasn't sure. Sometimes I'm angry at the Disney. I suppose it stems back to my childhood (the one held during my actual childhood years) and my love of Looney Tunes. I mean, come on: Daffy is a far funnier and much more 'human' than that silly Donald. Who didn't love a Marvin the Martian, or Ralph and Sam, or a big old cock named Foghorn, I say, Foghorn J Leghorn? But I digress...

(work in progress...to be continued. Basically I'm pulling it out of my butt as I go and I think I'll ponder on it a while.)

But this game, this GAME. This magical place that Disney created where I could don a toon persona of my making, where I could run freely through the neighborhoods. I could fish, if I felt leisurely. Train my Doodle (tsk tsk boys), decorate my home, plant trees and flowere, race cars, play a multitude of mini-games solo or with up to four other toons. I could swim in the ponds and i could converse with other tunes with preset options (later this changed and one could opt-in to have actual conversations with other toons if they also opted in, but still one could never be accosted verbally due to considerably well-done filters.) My incarnations included Crazy Sadie Bumpenmonkey, a tall blue rabbit with gangly legs; a cat with a giant head but short legs (whose name escapes me) and my most recent, a multi-colored medium sized pig...

(Tbc)

I only found out a few years ago that 'foghorn' & 'leghorn' are both types of chickens.

Keep it coming, I'm loving this.

...A multi-colored medium sized pig, with long green legs, maroon arms, and a blue head who I dubbed Professor Popcorn Trickytoes.

(ugh...sometimes I get into a flow and sometimes I can't. I guess that's called 'writing.' I have a clear idea where I'm goign wtih this, but am mostly inspired in the evening when I only have the phone from which to post. It may be one of those things that seem really funny when you're high (or in my case, completely 'artiste-crazy' from withdrawal effects, like, you know, William Blake crazy) and you look back and hey, it ain't so funny. But I will keep working on it.)

Thanks Dana! :)

This summer I read the biography of Robert Ripley-'A Curious Man'. So many associations to the one-liners we use today. Great read!
Anyways, here's the connection I was looking for

BELIEVE IT!
In 1930 Vitaphone launched a series of animated cartoons
called “Looney Tunes” that would create such characters
as Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, and Elmer Fudd.
Introduced as Egghead in the late 1930s, the speech- impeded
and stuttering character who became Fudd was believed to
have been partly modeled on Ripley. One cartoon, “Believe It
or Else,” featured a bucktoothed Egghead wearing a loud suit
and spats. The narrator introduces the world’s loudest hog
caller, the human basketball, and the world’s fastest woodcutter.
“I don’t believe it!” says Egghead. Egghead/Fudd also made a
cameo appearance in The Isle of Pingo Pongo, a faux South
Seas travelogue cartoon that was later banned for its racist
depiction of black islanders.

The cartoonist who created Porky Pig worked with Ripley at the Walter Lanz studio in the 30's.

Ripley published a sketch of Charles Schulz's dog Spike as part of his Believe It or Not! cartoon on February 22, 1937.

I'm hoping you'll continue this, too, infi. It reminds me of some of the wonderful escapism and relaxation that comes from letting yourself be immersed in another world -- be it a game, a show, or a book.

Tad Dorgan another cartoonist who started with Ripley coined these phrases that we all use today.
"for crying out loud", "cat's meow", "cat's pajamas", "drugstore cowboy", "as busy as a one-armed paperhanger" and "Yes, we have no bananas," which was turned into a popular song.
"Twenty-three, Skidoo" and "hot dog" in reference to sausage.

I was taught that "hot dog" came about because during WWI no one wanted to call them "frankfurters" anymore. It was that generation's "freedom fries." Maybe the cartoonist was still the guy who came up with it though, or maybe I was taught an urban legend, I dunno.