Or, would a more appropriate phrasing be... "WRINGING-OUT 2020"? Considering just how much this terrible year of 2020 has "wrung" out of us!
Anyway, here's the perfect image to sum up (and Ring-Out) 2020 - from BATMAN #247 (DC Comics, Cover Date: February, 1973)!
Make of it what you will...
The "Ball" can be a metaphor for COVID-19, subversion of the Rule of Law, erosion of our Principles of Democracy, unfounded chaos deliberately thrown into our fair and traditional electoral processes... or even the people making misguided decisions in publishing current comics! BRING BACK SCOOBY-DOO TEAM-UP... and readable monthly American Disney comics!
The Villain and Batman can be analogues for the "individuals of your choice", depending on which side of these polarizing matters you happen to be on!
Why, the possibilities are ENDLESS!
Let's just hope the "possibilities" for 2021 are an improvement over 2020!
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL - AND GOOD RIDDANCE TO 2020... and every person, place, or thing that made it such a terrible year!
17 comments:
Here’s hoping for a “Legendary Super-Pickax”-less 2021!
Happy New Year to you and yours! And to all who read this. Wishing you all a HAPPIER new year!
My "new" New Year's movie this year was I'll Be Seeing You (1944), Ginger Rogers and Joseph Cotten. And Shirley Temple as the 17-year-old cousin! The Rogers character is on good-behavior-Christmas-furlough from prison, meets the Cotten character who is recovering from "neuropsychiatric" battle fatigue, said to be equivalent to WW1's shell shock. There's a Christmas scene in the aunt/uncle's home, but a much more extensive New Year's Eve party scene. This is not the first WW2-era movie I've seen dealing with PTSD--there's a Lassie movie with that theme! (Courage of Lassie, the one where Lassie's owner is Elizabeth Taylor) But it is the first movie of that time I've seen dealing with (SPOILER ALERT!!) sexual harassment/assault by a boss. An hour into the movie, you find out that Rogers' character is in prison for six years for manslaughter for accidentally killing her boss as she was fending off his attempt to rape her. I didn't find the movie entirely satisfying, even on its own 1944 terms, in how the romance is salvaged once the beans have been spilled. But definitely worth watching, for a period piece dealing with PTSD and work-based sexual assault in the context of a holiday romance.
I sought it out because one of my favorite Christmas movies is another starring Ginger Rogers, Bachelor Mother. Re-watched that last week!
Another interesting connection is between I'll Be Seeing You and another fine movie with a New Year's Eve scene, Remember the Night (1940) with Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray, written by Preston Sturges. The Stanwyck character is a repeating shoplifter whose trial/sentencing has been delayed for Christmas, and the D.A. brings her to his Indiana mother's home for the holidays. You have to wonder whether that plot helped inspire the plot of I'll Be Seeing You. Possibly the only two beautiful young white women facing prison time in the USA in the mid-20th century! :-)
Deb:
You write: “Here’s hoping for a ‘Legendary Super-Pickax’-less 2021!”
I’m afraid I have some bad news for you, Deb! There *will* be another “Legendary Super-Pickax-Post” coming in early 2021! I know because it’s already completed and waiting for the proper time to be let loose on an unsuspecting pickax-fearing-public!
The supreme irony in all this is that it was *I*, and not the person I was panning for writing that dreadful passage of dialogue, who made it what it is! In my own personal “We have met the enemy and he is us!” moment, I find that *I* am the guy who put the “Legendary” in “Legendary Super-Pickax”!
Like “Bird-Bothered Hero”, if it’s known for *anything* today (if just among our friendly little group), it has this humble Blog to thank for giving it a life of its own!
For this I feel alternatingly guilty and proud! …Though more proud than guilty, because both “Legendary Super-Pickax” and “Bird-Bothered Hero” have achieved FAR GREATER entertainment value for my efforts, than their creators could possibly have imagined!
Elaine (who wishes all of us “a HAPPIER new year!”):
It’s difficult for me to imagine a year in post-war, modern times being WORSE for SO many people around the world than 2020, but I can’t shake the feeling that somehow, we could find a way! …But, let’s let that unfold on its own… and not give it any help, shall we?
Yeow! PTSD, work-based sexual assault, AND manslaughter (…and it sounds as if this “man” deserved to be “slaughtered”) all in one Christmas holiday viewing spree? …As you so perfectly put it previously, “Because 2020”!
I must say MY Christmas holiday viewing and reading choices were a bit more benign than that! :-) They will be (unexcitingly by comparison) revealed in a soon-to-be-seen post, which is still under construction! …But, take heart… It WILL come before the “Legendary Super-Pickax-Post”!
“Possibly the only two beautiful young white women facing prison time in the USA in the mid-20th century! :-)”
Since Selina (Catwoman) Kyle is (alas) fictional, you may be right! :-)
Happy New Year, Joe! A very appropriate cover for our times, indeed! Though I think we all wish it wasn't so, regardless of "which side of these polarizing matters you happen to be on." 2021 certainly does not look like it's shaping up to start off any better than 2020, but let's hope that the vaccination efforts go well and that things can be more or less back to normal by this time next year. And (again, regardless of "which side of these polarizing matters you happen to be on"), it would be nice to get to a place where the Donkey and the Elephant can *at least* agree on who won the last election... but I have a sneaking suspicion that that's asking too much.
Just finished watching Holiday Highlights (1940). To quote the Baby New Year in the beginning of the short: HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!! Bugs Bunny did it too in The Wabbit Who Came to Summer (1942).
And my Christmas holiday viewing was compromised of (in order of when I viewed it)Tom and Jerry’s Night Before Christmas, the (Amazing World Of) Gumball episode Christmas, the Looney Tunes short Bedtime For Sniffles, all 3 Christmas We Bare Bears episodes, A Very CatDog Christmas, and Pluto’s Christmas Tree.
Anon:
Yeow! I can’t remember when I last saw “Holiday Highlights”, but it certainly was a long time ago! You never can tell how long some of these links will be valid, but you can (hopefully) see “Holiday Highlights” HERE! It just seems right that vintage Tex Avery should help “wring” 2020 from our collective memories!
Tom and Jerry’s “Night Before Christmas” and Warner's “Bedtime For Sniffles” are long-time favorites of mine and have, on occasion, been part of my Christmas rotation - with Tom and Jerry having perhaps my all-time favorite ending of any Christmas cartoon! …And, since I just teased it so enthusiastically, I might as well throw it on to the “chestnut-roasting-open-fire” as well! Hopefully, if all goes well, you will be able to see it HERE!
Sergio:
You write: “2021 certainly does not look like it's shaping up to start off any better than 2020…”
Can’t disagree with you there, but take heart because one can hardly judge a year by what happens in January, or gauge a decade by the “00” year! Indeed, a decade doesn’t even get started until nearly it’s midpoint… I submit 2001 as indisputable proof of the former – and the 1960s and 1970s as indisputable proof of the latter! ...Other examples abound!
And, while I made a rather herculean effort to be fair and unbiased toward our nation’s two dominant mindsets (and I’m glad you picked-up on that), I fear that “the Donkey and the Elephant” may never agree on very much ever again!
But, a very Happy New Year to all, regardless of "which side of these polarizing matters you happen to be on"!
Yes! Loved the Tom and Jerry "Night Before Christmas", which I had never seen. Thanks, Anon and Joe! Certainly reminded me of both "Pluto's Christmas Tree" and "Toy Tinkers", though it predates both of those. It did the "shut someone's mouth with a 'do not open until Christmas' sticker" gag 11 years before "Pluto's Christmas Tree". Yes, it has a great ending...one mousetrap after another! It turns from an all-out battle around the tree to a True Spirit of Christmas story very effectively. Neither of the Chip 'n' Dale cartoons does that anywhere near as well.
You’re welcome, Joe and Elaine!
Elaine:
And, if you watch it closely, you come to realize something it took me more than one viewing to catch…
We begin with the mouse trap fully baited in Christmas décor… and Jerry indignantly avoids it, setting into motion the event chain of holiday havoc.
But, if Jerry had initially… um, “taken the bait”, he would have realized the Christmas surprise that was presumably left for him by Tom from the get-go – and peace on Earth would have reigned, at least for the next 8 minutes. (Notice the extra length this one got? Very deserving of it too!)
I just LOVE the sheer unexpectedness of that ending! The revelation of the nature of BOTH Jerry’s trap for Tom, and Tom’s non-trap for Jerry!
I even have copies of the Little Golden Books Tom and Jerry’s Merry Christmas and Donald Duck’s Christmas Tree (both 1954)
Ah, yes… We all have our individual treasures, and that’s what’s so great about this time of year – even in 2020!
I wonder what treasures Averi and Cici will have! …And I hope to have a hand in some of them.
In the waning moments of 2020, I’m struck by the urge to return to one of this humble Blog’s old standards… BAD GOAT JOKES, but with a decided nod to 2020!
How did the goat get to the head of the line for COVID-19 vaccinations?
He decided to BUTT-IN!
So long, 2020… See ya never-again!
Welcome, 2021!
Ah - we of the Gaggle of the Golden Goats can think of no better way to ring in the New Year than with goat jokes! Happy New Year, Joe - from us and every Strangely-Colored Secret Society!
Golden Goats, eh? Your society had better remain secret from Scrooge McDuck, if you know what’s good for you! He’d be arranging a safari, as soon as he gets a sniff!
Besides, I can’t even make any Bad Goat Jokes about you guys! ‘Cause, no matter how “bad” I try to make ‘em, they always come up “Golden”!
Anyway, here’s to you and all the other Secret Societies that, that… that (oh, yeah!) keep my Blog interesting! That’s it… keep it interesting!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
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