I was watching a tv show and playing with my dog. I got a song in my head and it was so odd I assumed it came from some weird video game. Like 1940s feel to it. And I stood there, hummed it, and managed to recreate at least some of the words. I got the idea it was Bugs Bunny. Like one of those ancient ones. So my guess was it was a real song, put in as a pop culture reference for Bugs Bunny in the 40s, when they had to entertain people between newsreels and such.
I looked it up and it was a 1936 cartoon. Not Bugs but Looney Toons. I remember this song well. I used to hum it and sing it when I was maybe…4-6 years old? Before I was going to school, for sure. It’s a very catchy kid-friendly tune with kind of baby words.
So this song was rattling around in my head from like 40 years ago. And it had its original genesis about 83 years ago. And it was influenced, per the blurb on the side, by Al Jolson’s Jazz Singer. Which was 1927. They just repurposed the whole movie as a short cartoon with animals and such.
http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/sammondn/clips/i-love-to-singa-1936/view
Thanks to the internet, I could just have a handful of words and look it up. I remember aspects of this cartoon very well. Mostly the slapstick and the song. If there was or wasn’t a plot, I didn’t have a clue. I see mention it was used in South Park. It was in the very first episode.
I hadn’t watched that in at least a decade, but maybe it helped keep it fresh in my brain? I don’t know. Kids are huge on repetition. There are still episodes of the Transformers cartoon, D&D cartoon, and the original theatrical release of Blade Runner that I can quote perfectly. Because I had them on VHS tape and they were the only things we had cuz VHS cost a fortune.
“Time I have plenty of. What do you have?”
“A jewel for the crown of your master.”
“Is he?”
“No. The red glow indicates the lifeforce is still with him. Tell Venger that Dungeon Master is his, for the right price. Now go. Very soon, Dungeon Master, you will be worth ten times the trouble it took to capture you.”
^ That’s from an episode of D&D. I haven’t watched that in at least 35 years. I typed it from memory and I looked it up. I want to see how well I matched it from what I remember. I got a few words wrong, but that ain’t bad. And the quality of this vid is like 10x better than the crappy VHS I had.
Anyway, it’s weird how we can hold on to stuff like this for so long. What evolutionary advantage is it that I can remember a bad cartoon from the 80s but not important tasks in my immediate future? It’s also cool how pop culture can filter and trickle and influence and pass along for such an incredible amount of time.
