Reviews

. . . of this show HOW TO PLAY WINNING TENNIS, or refer to it by its actual title, HOW TO WIN WITHOUT REALLY PLAYING THE GAME, Bullwinkle provides valuable pointers for Today's ultra-fragile so-called "pros." Modern netters rely far too much upon brute force, rather than the thinking part of their game. America's favorite moose, if reviewed by these cave people types, will serve to remind them that a well-thought-out variety of serves and occasional trickery will minimize the chances or season or career-shortening injuries by reducing wear and tear on the player's body. Drop serves and psychological ploys can add many years to a career in tennis.

. . . about which is best: Bob L. Stevenson's poem, THE SWING, or Bullwinkle's Corner 1962 adaptation of said stanzas. Ripped from the end pages of Bob's "A Child's Garden of Verse," THE SWING is not exactly on par with THE RAVEN or even ROSES ARE RED. With such palaver as "Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing ever a child can do!" it is difficult to picture a third-grade instructor awarding THE SWING a passing grade in composition class. However, the Bullwinkle people incorporate a passing reference to cattle as the catalyst for giving these twelve lines the breath of Life. Gunfire swiftly ensues.

. . . JACK BE NIMBLE gets the Bullwinkle's Corner treatment during Episode 4 of Season 3 from his namesake television show. Scrawled on an out-house inner wall by a three-year-old Chuck Dickens in 1815, this future masterpiece was discovered by beat bobby James Dot and subsequently collected by James Orchard Halloween about 35 years later after the latter gentleman realized that only the genius behind OLIVER TWIST could have dreamed up JACK BE NIMBLE. This verse, of course, started the world-wide craze of candle-jumping which has persisted into this Our Modern 21st Century and tragically led to the Cathedral of Our Dame burning down during a workmen's lunch break a few years ago.

. . . the content of this show's "Mr. Know-It-All" segment, HOW TO DIRECT A TEMPERAMENTAL MOVIE STAR, aka HOW TO DIRECT TEMPERAMENTAL MOVIE STARS. It's understandable that there would be some confusion over the title of this animated bit, because Boris Bad-Enough plays three different types of problem actors. Initially he's a spoiled child terror named "Muriel Merkel." Next, he poses as "Hoot Nix," a non-singing cowboy actor. Finally, Boris essays the role of pretty boy Zip Farnsworth, posing in a bathtub with a bar of soap for commercial purposes. Bullwinkle finds this unsavory, as it's probably an Irish sprig garnished with old spice.

. . . especially when Rocky asks his favorite moose "What's a tough fit?" This question comes up during the "Bullwinkle's Corner" segment appearing midway through this half hour program. Rocky's query is still being asked today at American jet liner factories, when weightier workers are expected to jump up and down on major pieces of aircraft fuselages, in order to smash the odd tough fit into place. This may not be to the book according to Hoyle, but assembly line employees always are instructed not to let the perfect be the enemy of the possible. In other words, the first order of business is never to slow down the line. Otherwise, you're as likely to end up as under-employed as LITTLE MISS FIT.

. . . which it actually is, or Another Anonymous Fan Club without a Name, the Bullwinkle's Corner portion of the Season Three, Episode Three television show illustrates why new airings of the Moose's Minute were nearing an endpoint. As the director of an Uncle Tim's Cabin-style melodrama, Boris Bad-Enough goes a giant leap too far with his scandalous innuendo during a line reading for the beleaguered moose, miscast here as the slumlord villain of a story tagged as SHE CAN'T PAY THE RENT. Rocky the flying squirrel is equally abused by Boris, forced to play Natasha's babe in arms. Therefore, this brief picture has a very high "Yuk!" score.

. . . nefarious conglomerate that swallowed up America's beloved Columbia Pictures outfit, along with Screen Gems and other assorted U. S. national treasures. You won't find England selling its crown jewels to desert fiefdoms, but Uncle Sam has no qualms about allowing erstwhile Axis of Evil waste dumps to seize Yankee intellectual property for an off-key song. This results in pernicious trash such as TAROT, deviously designed to vacuum all the joy out of the mainstays of American Life, such as card games. Consider our national pastime. M. L. B. owners have been bamboozled into surrendering hallowed century-old records posted for All Time by such legends of the game as Babe Ruth, George Sisler and Ty Cobb to bogus pretty boys who never earn their way to the Show through the Hard Knocks School of the Minor Leagues. Obviously, the same cheapening of American inventions is happening in Tinsel Town with nihilistic voids such as TAROT.

. . . Mr. Know-It-All segment--HOW TO INTERVIEW A SCIENTIST--really blows the whistle against the scourge of so-called Modern Science. Such public enemies are universally referred to as "mad scientists" for well-founded reasons, Bullwinkle reveals. In the moose's heyday, his show's characters enjoyed tobacco products, gas-powered cars, effective pesticides such as D. D. T., all manner of weaponry, thrilling stunts and galactic travelers with few if any qualms. However, those suffering in our current Nanny State lack open access to enjoying and savoring these and many other simple pleasures of the 1960's, thanks to the War on Civilization being waged by the ilk of mad scientists patterning themselves upon Boris Bad-Enough.

. . . the cultured moose displays printed information indicating that he's presenting a spiel about a poem by Hank W. Longfellow titled "The Arrow and the Song." The latter focus of this American Classic verse is not inconsequential, monopolizing the second of Hank's three four-line stanzas, and providing the punch line for the conclusion of this rhyming bit of wordplay. However, after dispensing with the title of Longfellow's lament, Bullwinkle stands totally mute in regard to said song. Normally, the musically-inclined moose doesn't miss a beat when warbling is in order. Perhaps he had a frog in his throat when he says I SHOT AN ARROW.

. . . Mr. Know-it-All's expose of the cut-throat music business, HOW TO HAVE A HIT RECORD. Unlike Today's Modern 21st Century, during the Bad Old Days of the 1900's the Tune Biz was rife with corruption, cheating, scalawags, exploitation, nefarious nepotism, nattering nabobs of negativity, pernicious Payola, deadly drugs, bribes, booze and wild vixen. Being a family show, Rocky and Bullwinkle go easy here on the drugs, harassing harlots, money-obsessed "managers," villainous violence and aircraft sabotage plaguing notables including Jenny Lind, Perry Como, Bing Crosby, the Big Bopper, the Leader of the Crickets and Elvis. What's depicted here is bad enough.

. . . Boris Bad-Enough Swats neighbor Bullwinkle J. Moose during this episode's segment of Mr. Know-It-All, HOW TO MAKE YOUR NEIGHBORS QUIET. Other pundits have contended that this title SHOULD read as "How to Make Your Neighbor Be Quieter." However, either way the frequently put upon moose is bound to wind up in jail--or worse--due to the malevolent intentions of Boris. Which raises the question of whether Rocky and Bullwinkle are largely to blame for the contemporary craze of catastrophic Swatting, in which anyone can end the life of a conscientious neighbor, a would-be whistle-blower, a no-longer-wanted spouse, sibling or child, a romantic rival, a fickle lover or a U. S. candidate for high office by simply informing their local gullible trigger-happy police unit that they're waving around a butter knife in their front yard.

. . . and instructive part of this segment for The Bullwinkle Show is Mr. Know-It-All's, aka, Bullwinkle's Corner's, rendition of that immortal verse, SEE A PIN. What three-year-old toddler has not memorized "SEE A PIN, pick it up all the day you'll have good luck!" Of course, this site's illiterate message destroyer function has programmed itself to believe that it can change thousands of years for Biblical or Literary Tradition by scrawling red underlines under various bits of the Holy Writ. It's akin to having a demented third grade teacher using her smeary red fountain pen to stymie any spark of creativity and intelligent thought upon the part of her students. Shame, shame, shame on this site!

. . . is a total rip-off. Mr. Know-It-All first reported this to our Homeland on Nov. 5, 1961, with his expose titled HOW TO GET YOUR MONEY BACK IF NOT COMPLETELY SATISFIED. As Bullwinkle documents here, this is usually an impossibility. No matter how defective, shoddy, fragile, failure-prone and deficient your purchase proves to be, the mean obtuse misnamed "customer service flunkies"--represented by Boris Bad Enough here--will harass, demean, belittle and disrespect you from the instant you show up at their torture counter until the moment when you're forced to flee their viper pit to preserve what remains of your sanity. Once Big Retail has your money, it holds onto it more firmly than quicksand.

. . . buckaroo Boris informs. Bullwinkle J. Moose, dressed in the guise of LITTLE BO PEEP, during the antler-bedecked.character's namesake corner. Bullwinkle seems to have a special affinity for sheep. Later during Season Three of his television show, he dons a suit of thick wool himself throughout the infamous Corner chat, MORRIE HAD A LITTLE LAMB. This would be the egregious series entry during which he and sidekick Rocket J. Squirrel attempt to convince America's school kids that the insecticide D. D. T. Is their friend, and that they should run out into their street whenever the poison-cloud spray trucks are traversing their neighborhoods to bathe in the toxic fumes. This probably resulted in more dire consequences than Boris' attempt to encourage dangerous gunplay during LITTLE BO PEEP.

. . . one of the biggest boondoggles in American History during Mr. Know-It-All's segment, HOW TO BE A SUCCESSFUL MEMBER OF THE U. S. PEACE CORPS. My dad considered applying for this pernicious program way back in the 1900's. He said the application illustrated how this House of Cards was set up as a rickety pyramid scheme, requiring naive young applicants to obtain testimonials from dozens of past classmates, teachers, principals, bus drivers, neighbors, cousins, maiden aunts thrice removed, ministers, rabbis, priests, pediatricians, dentists, store clerks, umpires, referees, coaches: basically, everyone they had ever met in their brief lives. Pops recognized a scam when he saw one, and avoided being dropped off in some swamp, desert or jungle on an impossible, counter-productive and thankless task.

. . . the main date associated with the onset of the world's Great Depression, leading to World War Two, this Bullwinkel's Corner spin on MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB ranks as an equally important October 29 red letter date. Environmentalists generally cite the malicious mutterings of a moose and squirrel, as they heap praise upon the bald eagle-killing insecticide D. D. T., as the initial inspiration for Today's Environmental Movement. Within weeks of LAMB's screening, Rachel Carson dashed off her SILENT SPRING expose to rebut the malarkey promoting Big Business and Corporate Cataclysm on The Bullwinkle Show, highlighting how seldom-tested modern chemicals were endangering every aspect of Life on Planet Earth. Therefore, Rocky and Bullwinkle deserve a back-handed compliment for Saving the World.

. . . America, Bullwinkle's Corner: FAN CLUB #9 deals with the decline and fall of American Journalism, the sprouts of which were already evident in 1961 when the Lazy Jay Ranch episodes of The Bullwinkle Show first began. It was around this time that news periodicals, particularly daily or weekly "papers," began devolving into increasingly narrow "niche" publications, appealing only to smaller and smaller pieces of America's swiftly fragmenting current-events consuming pie. Compounding this problem, management began putting the bean counters in charge of everything, sacrificing journalistic integrity to the almighty bottom line. All of these trends and more are thoroughly explored in FAN CLUB #9.

THE COLOR PURPLE is not really anchored in a particular group of decades or on a specific planet. Certainly, it would be naive to characterize PURPLE as taking place in the 1900's within these United States, despite the various date and place title cards occasionally appearing on-screen. Allegedly spanning the era of World War I, the Great Depression and World War II, PURPLE takes little if any notice of these Real-Life events which shaped the milieu for nearly every actual American living through this notable epoch. Furthermore, PURPLE is especially blind to the facts of life when it comes to the particular U. S. cohort upon which the story is focused. PURPLE may be a color, but the shade presented here is barely visible to the mind's eye.

. . . as Mr. Know-It-All learns during HOW TO SELL SOAP, a segment of the Season 3, Episode 15 Bullwinkle Show. Even a moose would be hard-pressed for success as an itinerant piano seller, since lugging a wide selection of such wares would be hard on the back. In an earlier episode, the much-maligned moose threw out a disc as he toted around a full set of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which he tried to hawk door-to-door. In an attempt to save his spine, Bullwinkle down-sizes to laundry detergent in the current foray. Unfortunately, he again has Bad-Enough for a potential customer, which constitutes slim pickings. Watch the film for yourself to find out who gets agitated.

. . . portion of The Bullwinkle Show, Season 3, Episode 24 is Bullwinkle's Corner. The actual title of the obscene poem being recited here is unprintable on a family website. The fact that this portion is a lazy repeat salvaged or scavenged from an earlier Bullwinkle episode makes viewers question the sanity of producer J. Ward. It's bad enough that he got away with peddling such sleaze the first time around, but what could have possibly induced him to take a chance on fielding a second helping of the massive mountain of complaints sure to be elicited by highlighting such purple prose during an alleged children's program?

. . . which is willing to go to any length to discourage Progressive People from visiting, it is not surprising to see them churn out yet another flick likely to deter anyone with a mind from venturing within 50,000 miles of this self-proclaimed Pocket of Perdition. MONKEY MAN depicts an India befouled beyond any possibility of repair, rife with corruption and writhing in the grip of false prophets proclaiming allegiance to out-of-date belief systems thoroughly discredited for thousands of years. It's not even safe to visit what passes for the loo in India, as those seeking relief are as likely to fall prey to extreme violence as they are to find empty paper rolls. Bottom line: Never put India on any bucket list, unless it is marked "Slop."

. . . containing the moment which would soon be referred to as The Bullwinkle Show "jumping the shark." The said infamous outrage is pinpointed, of course, with the egregious repeat of Bullwinkle's Corner: PAT-A-CAKE, which was one of the more maligned entries in said series of one-minute films. PAT-A-CAKE is NOT authored by Edgar Allan Poe, or even that old standby, Bob Lou Stevenson. It kind of sounds like something Gertrude Stein may have said, if she had been born 400 years earlier and came done with an even worse case of dementia. This terse verse is too juvenile for Louisa Mae Alcott to feature during LITTLE WOMEN. Its best use would be as cannon fodder.

. . . MR. KNOW-IT-ALL: FALLING ASLEEP ON THE JOB CAN LEAD TO A RUDE AWAKENING is when Bullwinkle J. Moose says that he is standing sentry duty as an admiral in the Army. As anyone who has attended the Army/Navy fall football game well knows, Navy has admirals, but NOT the Army! The latter service refers to its Admiral-level officers as "generals." Furthermore, whether a high-ranking military honcho is in the Army or the Navy, he would seldom if ever be called upon to stand sentry duty. This would be tantamount to requiring him to.peel potatoes on kitchen patrol or K P., which he may well take as a gross insult.

. . . Show episode is its expose on swimwear of the 1960's. During the Mr. Know-It-All segment--HOW TO TEACH A MEAN BULLY A LESSON AT THE BEACH--Fatal Natasha is clad in a modest one-piece bathing suit, which nevertheless reveals that she has had bosom reduction surgery since Seasons #1 and #2. America's favorite moose, on the other hand, sports a pink and white horizontally striped singlet-style swimsuit that would put any sort of Speed-Oh sea-front attire to shame. These are definitely not the racy sort of decadent beach duds plaguing Mankind during the 1950's. Bikinis, monocle-keen-knees and bare mammalian paraphernalia are nowhere in sight here.

. . . Scotch poet Robert Burns, famed author of the New Year's Eve song "Old Lasagna," and Allan Cunningham even edited a collection of Burn's rhymes. However, this episode of Bullwinkle's Corner spotlights one of Allan's own poignant poems, A WET SHEET AND A FLOWING SEA. As veteran urologists well know, Scotsmen rank first in the world when it comes to adult incontinence. This is what the term "Gaelic Gusher" denotes. Allan Cunningham addresses the Heartbreak of Damp Bedding in a metaphorical manner, calling upon nautical imagery to "sanitize" the Scourge of the Scots. Bullwinkle follows Allan's lead here, at least until his final remark to Rocket J. Squirrel.