Post #2 - A Tentative Attempt - A Blog Within A Blog

To check the ongoing commentary by my animation students, here is their collective consciousness -- www.kcccartoons.blogspot.com

 

(A later observation - not much remains at this spot - blogs were fading fast even in 2006)

The First Posting - Young Frankenstein on a Friday Morning

Amid promises of a serious bit of nasty weather--the local meteorologist offered the snow in ranges of 2 - 16 inches (truth to tell, we barely made 1/2) -- the college educators were hoping for a three day weekend on the heels of a four-day Thanksgiving holiday.
Sadly, we wound up having class anyway.
The initial lecture for the day was on endocrine disorders, and that evoked images of exophthalmos secondary to Grave's disease, and who better to demonstrate that visually than Marty Feldman. I ran his introductory scene from Young Frankenstein at the midpoint of the presentation to an audience of 20-somethings who had never been exposed to this classic ("I never knew those old black-and-white movies could be so funny!" one of the students told me later, and I realized that 1974 is further back than they, and that I have ties that old and that at that moment I would have rather retreated into my office with Young Frankenstein instead of performing a segueway to the effects of high-fructose corn syrup on the pancreas).
I then remembered how thrilling my first viewing of Young Frankenstein was, how neat is was that Mel Brooks made TV trailers for it that actually were funny, and that the novelization of the script was packed with added material that didn't make the final cut (the film being better for the excisions), that Playboy had the entire charade sequence dialogue in one of its issues, and then I realized that the class was staring at me, pretending to be actually interested in the autoimmune consequences a viral infection could have on the beta cells of the Isles of Langerhans...
So I decided to chuck it all and just run the movie a little longer...up to the "What knockers!" gag... no up to the first "Frau Blucher" gag... no up to the "Put The Candle Back" routine... no, up to the "I Ain't Got NoBody" gag... by the time I got to the Zipperneck line, I realized I had completely lost track of the time, that the class had been over for 20 minutes, and that I was sitting in the lecture hall, laughing til I was crying, with a couple of other students who decided to chuck it all for a Friday morning that really had little else to offer besides fact after dreary fact.
They'll always come up with more facts.
There's only one Young Frankenstein.