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I quite enjoy many of the old cartoons from the Fleischer brothers, such as Betty Boop and Popeye, but their Superman cartoons, which aired in the early forties and are now available on DVD, never really turned me on. I think they were well-made, I was just never a big fan of Superman, I felt he lacked the vulnerability that made other heroes so interesting. Vintage Tooncast, one of many animation podcasts I subscribe to, has been showing a ton of these old Superman cartoons, so if you liked them, mosey on over and root through the archive. The other cartoons he has up are all worth checking out, as well.

Cast members of the sitcom The Facts of Life will be reuniting on Today tomorrow morning to talk about, I assume, how much fun it was to work on the Diff'rent Strokes spinoff. I'm sure the DVD release of the first two seasons will be mentioned, as well. Cast members to appear include Nancy McKeon, Lisa Whelchel, Kim Fields, and Mindy Cohn. What? No George Clooney or Cloris Leachman? And what about Mackenzie Astin, brother of Sean? Is he really that busy these days? Well, actually I did see him on an episode of House recently, so  I guess he's still getting work. The segment will air during the second half of the program. Charlotte Rae, who played Mrs. Garrett, won't be making an appearance, either.

I've mentioned Frederator's very awesome animation podcast a couple of times, but hold onto your socks, animation lovers, because the company recently launched another animation podcast, this one dedicated entirely to "old timey" cartoons. This week the podcast will focus on cartoons based on comic strips, kicking off with Ub Iwerks interpretation of "Reg'lar Fellas," a comic strip from the twenties and thirties. Later this week you'll also be able to catch animated shorts with Popeye and Little Lulu. Check the archives for some great Warner Bros. shorts, as well as an old Mighty Mouse cartoon. I've already got this podcast queued up in iTunes, so I'm guaranteed never to get any actual work done.

Another great podcast for old cartoons is Vintage Tooncast, which shows many cartoons from the same era, including a lot of the "Superman" shorts from Fleischer Studios, which, by the way, are also coming out on DVD.

Yesterday as I was getting ready to Tivo the Ricky Gervais episode of The Simpsons, I started to think about whether something like this had been done before, where an actor not associated with a cartoon was brought in to contribute to an episode. While I'm sure there's many, the only one I could think of was the Looney Tunes' short "The Mouse That Jack Built" which featured Jack Benny and his fellow stars from his famous radio and television program playing themselves as mice. The result was a hilarious short about Jack and his friends going out to eat at the Kit Kat Club, which turns out to be an actual cat. In the end, we're treated to a live-action shot of the real Jack Benny waking up from his nightmare, only to see the two mice from his dream crawl from his cat's mouth and scurry into a mousehole. Benny didn't write the episode, but by bringing in new voice actors with a more cerebral and less "cartoony" approach to humor, it resulted in one of the more unique Warner Bros. animated shorts when mixed with the slapstick and sadism for which these cartoons had become famous. Also, it should be noted that Mel Blanc, who voiced ninety-nine percent of the Looney Tunes characters, was also a regular on the Jack Benny Program, so maybe ol' Jack didn't need much convincing to appear in animated form. Rumor has it he asked for no money, just a copy of the cartoon. Oh yeah, and just to bring it full circle, the foppish shop owner on The Simpsons who says, "Yeeeeeesss???" is based on a character on Jack Benny's show. It's like a big ol' Mobius strip o' comedy.

So, my fellow cartoon-lovin' peeps, can you think of any other cartoons to turn themselves over to "new management" if only for one episode?

Well, maybe. Actually, a recent study showed older women who cite daytime dramas and talk shows as their favorite shows to watch did not score as well as those who listed other shows. However, Dr. Joshua Fogel of Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, the man who conducted the tests, was quick to point out this doesn't mean there's a direct link between stupid daytime shows and actually being stupid. Heck, if seeing stupid things on TV actually made you stupid this whole blog would be completely unreadable since we'd all be drooling and banging on our keyboards with our foreheads. Anyway, the research hasn't really proved anything, except their MIGHT be a connection between the shows we choose to watch and our own cognitive ability. Well, I know Grover's demonstration of "near" and "far" has helped me tremendously with my grasp of spatial relations, so maybe they're right.

Perhaps this news won't exactly set the world on fire, but it caught my attention. I grew up watching Robert Schuller's Hour of Power on Sunday mornings, where the gray-haired pastor would preach the word of God in a manner that was friendly and amicable, not the loud, obnoxious revivals you see nowadays. Schuller is now 79 and his son, Robert A. Schuller, will take over as head pastor of the Crystal Cathedral, the all-glass house of worship. The Hour of Power still takes in a worldwide audience of about twenty million. That's pretty impressive, and it continues to slaughter Cooking with Satan in the ratings.