animals

If you haven't seen the new Animal Planet series Meerkat Manor, I encourage you to check it out. It's being promoted as a kind of mix between a soap opera and a nature documentary, but it's really not all that different than a normal nature documentary where they personalize the animals by giving them names and making them seem more "human" than they actual are. And, quite frankly, Meerkats are adorable creatures, so it works better than say, something like House of Maggots. Actually, that's not a bad idea for a show, either. Wait, it's not? Oh, okay. It also differs from a soap opera in that, unlike human soap operas, I actually care what happens to these animals. The series is narrated by Sean Astin. You can watch clips from the series here.

The fluff-stuffed bear of very little brain is not only popular here in the United States, having recently received a star on the Walk of Fame, but he also topped a recent poll in the UK of favorite animal characters, beating out other bears like Paddington and Baloo from The Jungle Book. Winnie the Pooh received fifty-one percent of the votes through a poll of 1,191 adults, with the daft but lovable Paddington Bear coming in second with forty-one percent of the vote, and Baloo coming in at  third. Other animals such as Peter Rabbit, Black Beauty, and Toad from The Wind in the Willows also finished in top spots. Rather interesting that all of these were originally literary characters before being re-imagined into TV and movie characters.

Despite their long history in comedy, I've never found primates of any kind to be inherently funny. I don't care how human they act, how many cowboy hats you put on them, or how many props you give them, they're just not that humorous. Of course, now I must contradict myself by saying that pretty much anything can be funny if it's placed in the right context, which is why The Chimp Channel, a program which ran on TBS for one season in 1999 and whose cast consisted entirely of chimps, sometimes made me laugh, despite my aversion to the idea of monkeys being a kind of comedic Holy Grail whose mere presence brings comedy to any situation.

In a nutshell, The Chimp Channel was a sketch comedy show with chimps, spoofing the television shows and movies of the day. Based on that premise alone it's no wonder the show only lasted one season, but the writing was actually quite solid and funny, and they were able to get some great performances from the animals. The series was actually much better than it had any right to be. I don't see how a show consisting of an all-chimp cast could have lasted very long, no matter how funny they tried to make it, but the TV landscape has seen more than a few shows like this one that were just too outlandish to ever find a wide audience. If you're lucky enough to catch these types of shows when they're on, they provide a nice respite from the mundanity of "normal" television fare. Also, it helps if you like chimps pretending to be characters from Star Wars. 

Roy Horn, half of the famous magic duo Siegfried and Roy, was performing in Las Vegas in 2003 when a white Bengal tiger shot him in the head. Wait, sorry, actually the tiger bit him. The attack, thankfully, did not kill Horn, but it ended the long-running show and left him partially paralyzed. Three years later, you may have thought you'd heard the last of it, but now PETA has filed a federal lawsuit demanding records compiled by the USDA concerning alleged violations of the Animal Welfare Act. USDA claims releasing the records would violate the privacy of witnesses, but PETA claims USDA has no choice under the Freedom of Information Act. The USDA issued its final report last year, citing no official reason for why the animal attacked. You know, except for the fact it's a freakin'  tiger.

Perhaps "Short-Lived Segment on A Longer-Running Program" would have been a more appropriate title, but I'll take any excuse to talk about one of my favorite cartoons of all time.

The Ant and the Aardvark was created by Friz Freling and aired as a segment on The New Pink Panther Show and The Pink Panther Laff And A Half Hour, two shows which followed the original Pink Panther cartoon and consisted of made-for-TV shorts rather than the theatrical shorts which made up the original Saturday morning cartoon. The Ant and the Aardvark segments aired from 1969 to 1971, totaling seventeen cartoons in all. Each episode would pit a dimwitted aardvark (almost always referred to as an "anteater") who sounded like Jackie Mason against a clever and resourceful ant who sounded like Dean Martin. Both characters were actually voiced by actor John Byner.

While the set up was similar to Chuck Jones' Coyote and Road Runner shorts, The Ant and the Aardvark had the benefit of being a "talkie," which made it a lot more hip and clever than the slapstick of Jones' tribute to the animal kingdom. And I say that as a huge Looney Tunes fan, myself. Also, the Aardvark's mumbling cadence was hilarious, even if you didn't know who Jackie Mason was. When I was young the Pink Panther never really impressed me much, but I always looked forward to the Ant and the Aardvark. If you want to check out some episodes, YouTube has a few. Unlike a lot of the animation found on that site, these are actually pretty decent quality.

My Gym Partner's A Monkey, the newest kid cartoon for Cartoon Network, doesn't officially premiere until Friday, February 24, but today Cartoon Network offered a sneak peak at the show. I'm a bit too old to really get into it, despite enjoying a lot of similar animated programs. Still, the show isn't without its charm and I think younger kids will get a kick out of it.

The show focuses on Adam Lyon, a kid who, because of his last name, is accidentally placed in a school for animals, Charles Darwin Middle School. Each animal's personality is based loosely on their real-life counterparts. For example, in the episode "Inoculation Day" the nurse, who's a gazelle, has trouble giving shots because her brain is only the size of a soy nut. Adam's best friend, a spider monkey named Jake, has a fascination with his own butt that's only odd if you're not a monkey. There's plenty of slapstick and poo humor, so it's pretty much guaranteed kids will love it. I even found myself cracking up a few times. The show was created by husband and wife team Jeff Cahill and Julie McNally Cahill, who previously worked on Baby Looney Tunes.

Two TV chefs in Britain, including Gordon Ramsay of Hell's Kitchen, got into a bit of trouble recently for showing animals being slaughtered on the air. Well, it seems they didn't actually show it in gory, graphic detail, but on chef Jamie Oliver's show, Jamie's Great Escape, he did slit a lamb's throat. On Ramsay's show, a slaughterman was brought in to kill a few turkeys with a stun gun. Both shows resulted in fifty-seven complaints, but Ofcom maintained that the killing of the animals was done in a responsible and humane manner.