Maniacal DVD

The Animaniacs are released from the Water Tower and onto DVD today.

I can't recommend highly enough the antics of the Warner Brothers, Yakko and Wakko, and their sister Dot. Kid-funny? Certainly. Adult-funny? Absolutely.

For example--scene from the schoolhouse:
Teacher: Let's start with verbs. Yakko, can you conjugate?
Yakko: Me?! I've never even kissed a girl!

And the songs are new classics! Conjunction Junction is a major malfunction compared to the musical numbers, often educational, these kids come up with. Today's kids don't need to know where to get their adverbs (Lolly's), but need to be warned about eating junk food with all those chemicals.

I so wanted to move to Burbank and be a writer.

This one is a little ironic with its last line. Sadly, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

But as a San Franciscan, an animated number about California Earthquakes is pretty funny.



Typical educational ditty-all in 40 seconds with a grown-up gag thrown in:



And they even are self-depricating enough to mock their own genre. All afternoon kid shows are required to have some educational value and offer some moral example. So often at the end of the show (or maybe just as a time-filler) the Animaniacs would turn to "The Wheel of Morality:"



If you're good, I'll post the bit where Yakko sings the names of all the nations of the world in under three minutes. "United States, Canada, Mexixo, Panama..."