Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 7: Redbeard

Today’s episode of Popeye and Son, as I continue my award-winning series about the neglected show, comes to us by Eric Lewald. You know him from like every episode, now, at this point. And we’ve got pirates! A stowaway! Tourists! Everything we might hope for. Let’s look and see what the episode is like.

The Plot: When an old pirate-hunting friend of Popeye’s can’t talk him into chasing down one more ship, Junior stows away to a life of adventure and shipboard duties. But when the pirates get the drop on Redbeard who’s going to save the day? Popeye, yes, but how is Junior going to help? Oh, by having some cans of spinach. Well, that all makes sense then.

This is a cartoon full of welcome surprises. It starts right away with Junior having an interest and wanting a thing, adventure. Wanting it enough to take up the call to fight pirates that his father turns down. Popeye being dragged on into the adventure when he finds his son missing. Popeye having a reputation. The wonderfully unnecessary but welcome intrusion of a couple tourists from Florida. Some top-notch mutterings by Popeye; Maurice LaMarche seems to have finally got his voice to where it sounds right and says things right.

Waiting for me to come up with gripes anyway? Sorry, I’m mostly going to top out at “the audio is mixed badly, early on, so Junior complains about something we don’t hear happening right at the good part of his story”. And we do hear it, it’s just not loud enough for my tastes. We may also ask why Junior is hiding under his bed reading a book by flashlight when his room lights are on, but maybe he’s a kid and doesn’t quite understand the reading-under-the-covers thing. Maybe that Olive talks about how Redbeard is filling Junior’s head with tall tales and we get maybe one sentence of that stuff.

There is a side I’m sorry wasn’t explored more. Redbeard came by to invite Popeye to another adventure in pirate-busting. Popeye turns him down, because there’s navies to do that stuff and besides he’s got a respectable life now. I complained so many times in the King Features cartoon reviews about Popeye’s Boring Suburban House. And if I ever talked about the Famous Studios cartoons that would come up too. I would like to see Popeye wondering when he last was the guy going out looking for someone who’d give him a good enough fistfight.

I’m not sure there’s anything to cut to fit that, though. And it would take the focus away from Junior, who’s doing well now that he has something we wants to do. I’m a little sorry Popeye swoops in and demotes him to a secondary role, but Popeye is doing great here, with a lovely ridiculous disguise and good solid commentary as he’s captured and all. And having it shown that his name brings pirates to full alert.

“Did you hear that, honey? Randy Milholland is casting us in a four-Sunday story with Sappo’s wife and Mister Bigdome!”

And then there’s Fred and Eileen Furple from Fearville Florida, the tourists chained up in the dungeon. I called them unnecessary above, but that’s only from a strict plotting point of view. The same events would unfold without them. But story is more than plot; it’s also about what fills the space you have. These characters are great marginalia doodles, making the world a little more silly. I guess you could argue that, as tourists captured by the pirates, they’re foreshadowing Popeye’s scheme to get in. But I doubt their role prevented any questions about the plausibility of Popeye’s scheme.

With this episode we’ve crossed over into the second half of Popeye and Son’s existence. At least until Randy Milholland brings them back in some weird multiverse event. If the rest of the series is at this level I’m going to become an annoying nag demanding to see more of these folks. We’ll see how things develop next week.

What’s Going On In Olive and Popeye? Who’s the guy capturing Popeye in a bubble? September – December 2023

Don’t know yet. Popeye and his gang arrived on an island, in search of Plaidfoot’s Treasure. The party’s arrival was noticed by the robots serving some mysterious, not-yet-seen figure. We haven’t seen their face or an obvious gimmick. It’s not just my lack here; from the comments others haven’t reached a consensus. The Grand Archivist is the only guess people have and this doesn’t feel like his vibe to me. And, we’ve seen, Randy Milholland is willing to draw on the entire roster of every Popeye villain ever in the comic strip, cartoons, or old time radio for his appearances. We’ll see.

So this should catch you up to early December 2023 in Emi Burdge and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye. If you’re reading this after March 2024 there’s likely a more up-to-date plot recap here. You’ll also find all my recaps of the various Olive And Popeye strips there, as I try to become the world’s premiere Popeye blogger against maybe competition? Enjoy, please.

Olive and Popeye.

12 September – 5 December 2023.

Last time you’ll recall, Olive Oyl has decided to help the ghosts she now sees all over the world. It turns out there are a lot of ghosts around Sweethaven. And we spend a good bit of time chatting with ones who mostly met their ends in ridiculous ways.

This coincides with a series of the Olive strips drawn by Ryan Milholland. Milholland’s been drawing the Thursday, Popeye-focused strips, as well as the Sunday strips for Thimble Theatre Presents Popeye. But for the gap between Shadia Amin leaving — in late August, with Olive and company declaring they’re going on an adventure — and Emi Burdge taking over in early October Milholland drew both sides of the strip. (I don’t know how far ahead the scripts were written, or how they were coordinated during the transition.)

Emi Burdge’s Olive and Popeye for the 14th of November, 2023. I agree, this sure seems like it’s got to be Charon they’re talking about, and the character acknowledge as much today. But is it? … Probably something sillier than that. Does it have any link to Popeye and his adventure and the mysterious figure there? I don’t know. Seems imaginable, but I’m not sure how.

From talking with the many, many, many ghosts wanting her attention Olive finds a mystery: the “old boatman” who’d escort them to the other side has disappeared. And the ghosts are desperate. Also, Olive’s desperate for a night’s sleep. One sympathizes. Also along the way we the readers learn that Cylinda Oyl can see and talk to ghosts, something that Mae can’t. That or she’s just saying that every now and then and got lucky.

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Meanwhile on Popeye’s side of things. He and his fathers — Poopdeck Pappy and Whaler Joe — meet up with Pommy. Sir Pomeroy, 10th Earl of Vauxhall, I’m told by the Popeye wikia was a regular adventure partner back in the 1950s, when Ralph Stein wrote Thimble Theatre. He’s new to me too. Pommy’s investigating, first, a town rampaged by some kind of thing. Also the map to Plaidfoot’s Treasure. Plaidfoot the Pirate said it was a treasure sacred to a race of easily-fooled monsters he swiped it from.

So here’s where they’re noticed by that shadowy figure mentioned above. The figure knows who Popeye is and that he’ll ruin everything. Also the figure has Professor O G Wotasnozzle in captivity. And some of Wotasnozzle’s rather cute robots serving him. The figure sends the robots, who’ve captured Popeye in a bubble. And that’s where we stand, this week.

Next Week!

Journey through time, space, and history-warping insects with Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop … unless something happens to change the timeline and the schedule!

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 4: The Lost Treasure of Pirate’s Cove

Are you still interested in my journey through the 1987 series Popeye and Son? You can see all my reviews of the series here. Today’s episode, the second cartoon of episode four, is The Lost Treasure of Pirate’s Cove. Its writing is credited to Eric Lewald, whom we know for bringing us The Sea Monster. And what’s he giving us now?

The Plot: Junior and his friends take an unsupervised afternoon to go shallow-sea diving in search of buried treasure. Despite mishaps including being carried off in a giant fish’s mouth, they find a sunken ship with a treasure chest. Ah, but Tank and his friends, pretending to be ghosts, steal the treasure chest — only for real actual pirate ghosts to help Junior get some spinach, rescue his friends, and get back home, never suspecting that the real treasure is the cabin full of gold coins he passed along the way.

So for the first time (to my knowledge) we have a story just with Junior and his generation. Popeye and Olive go off to tea, and to tease me with the prospect of seeing her parents. Maybe they turn up in another episode; I imagine the writers were encouraged to use whatever minor characters they felt like. It’s a good excuse to let Junior drive the story, which turns into what at least some Internet corners call a “Kids on Bikes” movie. In eleven minutes.

Most of the action is drifting between underwater jokes. That’s in a good tradition of sunken-treasure cartoons, including in the Popeye universe. The scene of the fish playing baseball was included in the teaser before the opening credits, and it had me wondering what kind of pun was being demonstrated. Was there a ”batfish” I never heard of? A ”basefish”? No, turns out it’s just a school of fish at recess. It’s a corner of the joke I haven’t seen before, will credit that. If it doesn’t work for you, that’s your business. Junior talking a couple eels into becoming an electric light is a solid one, and would be right in line with the 1930s version of this cartoon. It’s undercut only by the animation not making the setting dark enough before and bright enough after.

Oh hey, some fans of the Marlins.

The story is almost written from the moment you know the premise. The big uncertainty to me was whether it would turn out the map was some prank (by Popeye, maybe, or perhaps a promotion for Pirate Cereal or something) or accidentally sincere. I guess it’s a good thing I wasn’t sure until Tank and his friends, whose names I still don’t have, turned up as ghosts. From that, with the time remaining in the episode, I knew there had to be at least one real ghost. So the story didn’t have great surprises, but it was amiable enough and the jokes along the way were fair enough.

Where I’m dissatisfied is in characterization. I continue to have no idea who these people are. The one thing that’s certain is that Popeye Junior does not like spinach but eats it anyway, which is why he makes this little ‘yuck’ noise after eating it. It’s an obvious but workable way to distinguish Junior from Popeye. But since they never talk about it, and it never even slows Junior down from his spinach power-up, it doesn’t affect anything. Tank hasn’t even got that to distinguish him from Bluto, and then there’s five other characters before the Pirate Ghosts come up. Granting the Pirate Ghosts don’t need personalities. But why stuff the cartoon so full of characters and not give them a verbal hook?

Since I mentioned the cartoon undercutting the electric light eels by not being shaded enough let me complain about animation some. Any given still of the cartoon is fine; Hanna-Barbera of this era had enough time to design characters and draw them right. But the motion is sloppy, and has been throughout the series. The fun in seeing some feat of ability, like Junior tossing the ship up and having it land back where it was, is seeing the movement come together. Seeing the ship slide off to the right and then drop into place from the left is unsatisfying. Every episode so far has had something like this. I understand they’re working with limited time and budget to plan out complex movement, and you can’t write cartoons where no interesting movement happens. But animation where the stunts match what the story wants them to be would bump the cartoon up a full letter grade.

What’s Going On In Olive and Popeye? Who is Patcheye and why should we care? June – September 2023

Among the characters brought back to Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s twice-a-week Olive and Popeye comic is Patcheye. Patcheye is a pirate ghost, introduced by Bud Sagendorf into the comic book back in 1963. Bud Sagendorf imported Patcheye into the main strip in a 1971 story. Comics Kingdom conveniently reran the whole story again late last year/early this year. So it’s easy to catch the whole thing if you want to read it yourself and have a subscription.

Patcheye’s deal is that the ghost of Popeye’s great-great-great-gran’pappy, waiting for a boy in the family to want to be a pirate. Swee’Pea declared that wish and so we got a couple weeks of Patcheye training Swee’Pea into piracy. Patcheye puts together a crew of Swee’Pea and Olive Oyl and in a rowboat takes on a battleship. It then becomes a story of getting Swee’Pea out of jail on the piracy charge. Patcheye then disappears from the story, returning only to leave in disgust when Swee’Pea is spanked as a naughty little boy instead of hung as a pirate. An underwhelming use of a neat idea? That’s the Thimble Theatre Plot Promise.

So this should catch you up to mid-September 2023 in Popeye’s comic strip adventures. Most of the action is in Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s twice-a-week Olive and Popeye. I guess I’m doing a follow-up to this around December 2023, that’ll someday be at this link. If all goes well. Until then, here’s what has gone on.

Olive and Popeye.

20 June – 12 September 2023.

Last time, in the Shadia Amin Olive-focused side of the strip, Olive Oyl and Petunia (Whaler Joe’s daughter) were spelunking in the Soulful Cave. (Whaler Joe is the guy who raised Popeye after Poopdeck fled and Popeye’s Mom, Irene, was lost at sea.) But Olive Oyl got attacked by a giant leech, and Petunia pulled her body out. Her dead body.

Luckily, as Linden (the Sea Hag’s intern) explains over the phone, it’s the Soul Full cave. It’s chock full of all kinds of soul and soul-location-management tools. Petunia’s able to find an altar of some kind that puts Olive’s soul back in … well, Petunia’s body. But Olive Oyl’s able to get this sorted out fast.

Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye for the 25th of July, 2023. Amin’s page here. Much of the story has been in a lighthearted, bouncy tone for stuff about death and unquiet ghosts and all that. (For example, Olive Oyl gets back in her right body by threatening the Soul Altar Or Whatever with a hammer.) This is one of the quieter panels and unusually affecting. A bit of this sells the whole drama.

But not without a change. Olive Oyl can see the spirits of the dead around her. Not just the ones who won’t shut up being around, like Patcheye. She decides she needs to convey messages from lost souls to the living. And she puts together a gang to sail around Sweethaven and take care of this. Mae as bodyguard, Sutra as the person who knows Linden in case of annoying occult business, Petunia as marine biologist, Cylinda Oyl as assistant. (Cylinda Oil had been Castor Oyl’s wife but was written out of the strip in 1928, that is, before Popeye was introduced to it.)

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On the Popeye side of things, there’s also an expedition going together. It has a less clear purpose. Mostly, Whaler Joe has been missing the sea, despite the pleasantness of Sweethaven and being with Popeye again. So they’re setting out on a little journey to see Sir Pomeroy, 10th Earl of Vauxhall, who I never heard of before this either. Turns out that apart from a guest appearance in the Bobby London era, he’s been out of Popeye since writer Ralph Stein left the strip in August 1959. He apparently was a British explorer with exaggerated mannerisms, which I’m sure hasn’t dated one bit since the end of the Anti-British National Liberation War/Malayan Emergency.

That’s the big development. The rest of the Popeye side of the strip has been about roping all of the sailor man’s family into a bunch that’s staying at Sweethaven. This includes Poopdeck Pappy, and Pappy’s mother, Popeye’s mother Irene, Popeye’s aunt Agnes Jones. Maybe even Agnes’s husband, Davy Jones, the spirit of the sea.

And in the main, Sunday-only Thimble Theatre Presents Popeye strip? Nothing much. Some fun one-off gags, with a nice mix of characters we know well and characters we haven’t seen since Herbert Hoover was President. Even an appearance by the long-forgotten Other Katzenjammer Kid. So that’s all fun but nothing that doesn’t explain itself. Except that a bunch of the Sundays have featured the wealthy Mr Kilph, last seen in the 1930s. He started as a philanthropist setting up Popeye boxing matches. He mutated into a villain setting up Popeye boxing matches, possibly because Elzie Segar forgot what Kilph’s deal was. Or because rich villains are fun to write and fun to beat. I don’t have any way of knowing whether Milholland is planning to go somewhere with this, but we’ve seen he is willing to do stories in the mother strip.

Next Week!

Who yanked out the plug at the center of the galaxy so everything could drain into the black hole? And how will Doc Wonmug, Alley Oop, and Ooola avoid responsibility for it? Also: hey, how about a trip to Creepy Animate Plant Island and some moss that makes you immortal but really fast? It’s time to look at Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop if the spacetime continuum doesn’t get all broken yet again.

Reposted: The Other 34th Talkartoon: Swim Or Sink; your choice

When I reviewed this back in 2018 I didn’t credit a good blink-and-you-miss-it joke. This rewatch, I feel like the bit where the ship falls back together, and smoke falls back into the smokestacks, is exactly the sort of little understated bit of silliness I wanted for that. I notice one of the pirates has a sword that grows a mouth and licks its lips. That’s a joke used in Bimbo’s Initiation to good effect too.

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So last week I reviewed what I called the 34th Talkartoon, Minnie the Moocher. But there is a definitional problem here. There was another Talkartoon released the same day, the 11th of March, 1932. Which one is first? Lists seem to have settled on Minnie the Moocher, I assume on grounds of alphabetical order. The other Talkartoon of that busy day is Swim Or Sink. It’s animated by Bernard Wolf and Seymour Kneitel, both names we’ve seen before. Wolf in Minding the Baby. Kneitel in Barnacle Bill, Grand Uproar, and several less notable shorts. Here’s Swim Or Sink, or as it’s often aptly titled, S.O.S..

In content that hasn’t aged well. There’s a quick rather Jewish caricature in a fish that shows up for a line about 2:50 in. And there’s a bunch of pirates who are clear what they plan to do with Betty Boop. Nothing like in Boop-Oop-A-Doop. And Betty’s dress keeps riding up.

Swim Or Sink is nowhere as famous or renowned as Minnie the Moocher. And fair enough, really. It has some quite good animation in the ship-sinking. And a couple nice effects bits. But it doesn’t have any technique as impressive as Cab Calloway rotoscoped into a singing walrus. And the music’s merely ordinary. Picking “What Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor” for a song about being at sea or being confronted by pirates doesn’t take imagination.

It might be the more strongly constructed cartoon, though. It’s got two parts, a big action scene of the steamer sinking, and then a chase scene of Betty Boop, Koko, and Bimbo menaced by pirates. Throughout there’s reasons for people to be doing what they’re doing. The spot jokes of animals struggling through the ship-sinking can mostly go in any order, but all of them work. And for some reason I’m always tickled by the lightning bolt that sews together the hole it’s cut in the sky.

The sinking ship almost does that “going down three times” gag about sinking that Roy Kassinger was asking about earlier, but it falls short. I think the pirate ship growing eyes and a mouth and swallowing Betty Boop’s raft is exactly the sort of joke we look for in black-and-white cartoons. So is the pirate captain morphing into a snake when he declares he’ll keep Betty to himself.

About 3:55 in the pirate’s sword menacing Koko grows a mouth and licks its lips; the joke was good in Bimbo’s Initiation and it works here too. The anchor shaking itself dry and sneaking into the doghouse is such a neatly done gag, too. I also like Koko, Bimbo, and Betty doing this funny little walking-dance while the pirate crew chases them.

There’s a suspiciously Mickey-like mouse at about 1:45 in, putting on a doughnut as lifesaver. Another’s on the pirate ship about 3:38 in with rather too much sword. And one more, for good measure, dangling from a rope about 6:05 in. I’m not sure there is a blink-and-you-miss-it joke. Maybe early on, when the parts of the doomed ship are falling back into place, when the last bit of the ship — the smoke — drops back into the funnels.

I don’t think there’s any body-horror jokes here, unless you count the pirate crew falling into a giant fish. They seem to be having a jolly time of it at least. The ending might seem abrupt. But “dodging out of the way so your chasers fall overboard” does make sense as a way out of a chase. Works for them.

Remembering the home computers of the 1980s

I wanted to share my experiences in home computing in the 1980s. I may not remember it quite right, but I remember it at all. You, I can’t trust to remember my experiences at all. I mean apart from my dad, who tells me he reads these things. But as I remember it, what he would remember is I disappeared into my room for up to 84 hours at a stretch. I’d emerge just because the groceries needed to be put away. And by putting them away myself I could put things in the freezer correctly, unlike everyone else.

Also I could get dibs on the microwave fried chicken. The microwave fried chicken was awful, understand. But it was convenient. Also the thighs would taste weird, which is not to say the same as good. But if I didn’t get away from the computer, someone else might eat that first. I don’t know whether my dad remembers this, but it’s got little to do with my computer experience. It would have looked the same to him if I spent all that time in my room re-reading the Star Trek comic book where the Excalbians went to Space War with the Organians because they were bored.

Big thing to remember is that how you got software was different. There were all these magazines that offered the promise of neat stuff, like, going around riding a dragon. And anyone could play this, if they just typed in six pages of three-column column text and didn’t get too much of it wrong. Then it turned out to be fun for maybe one-fourth the time you spent typing it in. Not everything was games, no. If you had a Commodore 64 you could type in programs that would let you use the graphics and the sound on the Commodore 64. It wouldn’t help you have anything to draw or … sound out. But if you ever thought of something, you were ready. Sometimes we would swap out the ROM version of the computer’s operating system for a RAM copy that was identical, except it didn’t throw a fit if you tried to find the ASCII value of an empty string. There were reasons this was important.

Still, games were great, because the only other software out there was spreadsheets and word processors. It still is, but now the spreadsheets and word processors are in a web browser so annoying ads can flash at you. But if you didn’t want to type in a game, you could get a professionally made game.

What rational person could resist getting this magazine and typing in the cover program? I mean, the chance to load, run, rename or delete IBM files at the touch of a key? Paradise! Fun fact: you could speed your Atari up to 30% just by tilting it backwards so as many electrons as possible were running downhill.

Thing to understand about computer games back then is that nobody ever bought them. You just … got them … somehow. Not really clear how, or who from. But they came on tape cassettes or on discs that a friend loaned you and that you copied, or that they copied and gave you. There were stores that claimed to sell software, yes. They had welcoming names like Professor Technofriend’s Software Empori-fun. Doesn’t matter. They never sold anything. The top-selling game of the 80s, Broderbund’s Karateka, saw sixteen copies sold in stores. There was never a game for the Amiga that sold. Game companies didn’t even try. They just gave the gold master disc to someone who knew this guy who worked(?) somewhere (??). He’d crack the copy protection and then make a kabillion copies with a fun message on the first screen. Every playground would have copies, although there was only one kid in school who had an Amiga. So that oversaturated the market.

The traded tapes, though, they’d have like 428 games on them. This seems like great value, what with them being free. The drawback is the games were mostly boring. There’d be, like, tic-tac-toe only it’s a grid of four rows and columns. Or Blackjack, except there’s no graphics or placing bets and you can’t do that thing where you split a hand when you’re dealt doubles. You’d just press space and watch numbers come up in a row until someone busted. In hindsight, I don’t know how it is I spent so much time on this. Oh, well, there was a Wheel of Fortune game that was great. It was even better after I memorized all six puzzles and could start solving puzzles after five letters. I typed it in from a magazine.

I know this all sounds ridiculous. But if it weren’t ridiculous we wouldn’t have done it. This is still true.

The Other 34th Talkartoon: Swim Or Sink; your choice

So last week I reviewed what I called the 34th Talkartoon, Minnie the Moocher. But there is a definitional problem here. There was another Talkartoon released the same day, the 11th of March, 1932. Which one is first? Lists seem to have settled on Minnie the Moocher, I assume on grounds of alphabetical order. The other Talkartoon of that busy day is Swim Or Sink. It’s animated by Bernard Wolf and Seymour Kneitel, both names we’ve seen before. Wolf in Minding the Baby. Kneitel in Barnacle Bill, Grand Uproar, and several less notable shorts. Here’s Swim Or Sink, or as it’s often aptly titled, S.O.S..

In content that hasn’t aged well. There’s a quick rather Jewish caricature in a fish that shows up for a line about 2:50 in. And there’s a bunch of pirates who are clear what they plan to do with Betty Boop. Nothing like in Boop-Oop-A-Doop. And Betty’s dress keeps riding up.

Swim Or Sink is nowhere as famous or renowned as Minnie the Moocher. And fair enough, really. It has some quite good animation in the ship-sinking. And a couple nice effects bits. But it doesn’t have any technique as impressive as Cab Calloway rotoscoped into a singing walrus. And the music’s merely ordinary. Picking “What Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor” for a song about being at sea or being confronted by pirates doesn’t take imagination.

It might be the more strongly constructed cartoon, though. It’s got two parts, a big action scene of the steamer sinking, and then a chase scene of Betty Boop, Koko, and Bimbo menaced by pirates. Throughout there’s reasons for people to be doing what they’re doing. The spot jokes of animals struggling through the ship-sinking can mostly go in any order, but all of them work. And for some reason I’m always tickled by the lightning bolt that sews together the hole it’s cut in the sky.

The sinking ship almost does that “going down three times” gag about sinking that Roy Kassinger was asking about earlier, but it falls short. I think the pirate ship growing eyes and a mouth and swallowing Betty Boop’s raft is exactly the sort of joke we look for in black-and-white cartoons. So is the pirate captain morphing into a snake when he declares he’ll keep Betty to himself.

About 3:55 in the pirate’s sword menacing Koko grows a mouth and licks its lips; the joke was good in Bimbo’s Initiation and it works here too. The anchor shaking itself dry and sneaking into the doghouse is such a neatly done gag, too. I also like Koko, Bimbo, and Betty doing this funny little walking-dance while the pirate crew chases them.

There’s a suspiciously Mickey-like mouse at about 1:45 in, putting on a doughnut as lifesaver. Another’s on the pirate ship about 3:38 in with rather too much sword. And one more, for good measure, dangling from a rope about 6:05 in. I’m not sure there is a blink-and-you-miss-it joke. Maybe early on, when the parts of the doomed ship are falling back into place, when the last bit of the ship — the smoke — drops back into the funnels.

I don’t think there’s any body-horror jokes here, unless you count the pirate crew falling into a giant fish. They seem to be having a jolly time of it at least. The ending might seem abrupt. But “dodging out of the way so your chasers fall overboard” does make sense as a way out of a chase. Works for them.

Bunny Pirate Raccoons of the Delaware Bay

“Is it time yet?” our pet rabbit wanted to know. He was anxious, and I saw him getting ready to chew the wires of his pen to hurry me along.

“For … what?”

He grabbed his pen with his forepaws, which is fine, because that’s not so rattly. “To go outside! I’m all ready and set, let’s go!”

“You mean to play the raccoon?”

Here I have to explain. We put up a wildlife camera in the backyard, and it’s taken a month’s worth of photographs of us checking to see if the wildlife camera is taking photographs. We asked our rabbit if he’d go outside and hop around, so we could know whether the camera would photograph something like a raccoon.

He started to chew on the cage, “Yes! I’ve been doing a lot of research and I’m all set!”

“You really just have to exist. You’re already very good at that.”

He stood up on his hind feet and looked up and raised his left forepaw, and cried, “Arr!”

“It’s threatening rain. I thought we’d wait for … what?”

“Avast ye mateys! Ready with the jibs! We’re off to the Egg Harbor!”

“That’s a pirate.”

He nodded. “I’ve been doing a lot of research for this part!”

“We asked you to play a raccoon. That’s completely different from being a pirate.” He looked at me impatiently. “I’m sorry to be the one who tells you this.”

He rolled his head back and sighed. “I’m playing a raccoon who plays a pirate.”

I lapsed into a dignified silence because I was unprepared to answer something like that.

“My raccoon character is named Berkeley Nishimori, and he’s long been fascinated with the history of piracy on the Atlantic seaboard.”

“You don’t need to have a character, though. You just need a body, and you’ve got one.”

“If I don’t have a character this’ll be lifeless. It’s having someone who wants things that makes for compelling scenes!” I looked toward the back window. “Drama or comedy, put in an obsessed character and you’re in good shape! Mister Brock, we’re off for the Egg Harbor!”

“But all I want is you to be there.”

“Now, Berkeley has gotten particularly interested in the mid-Atlantic coast, and he’s set up his pirate character as operating from the South River, as the Dutch termed the Delaware River, but obviously operating as far afield as possible.”

“… Really doesn’t come into play for hopping around the pond.”

“He reasons that the Delaware Bay area is a good one for operations since even though it’s less active than Boston, the divided authorities between the main of Pennsylvania, the Lower Counties, Maryland, and the reunited New Jerseys will make hiding from official inquiries easier.”

“I figure if you just look at the camera, and then look away from the camera … ”

“Now, Berkeley sets Davis — ”

“His pirate?”

“Yes, Davis, and I admit Berkeley hasn’t established whether Davis is his first or last name, but it seems one historically plausible enough either way, and he’s leaning towards working `Trent’ in there for obvious reasons, is aware that at this time New-Jersey itself was administered by the Governor of New-York, so that helps the administrative confusion, obviously.” No, I did not doubt that he was using the hyphens for the colony names.

“Maybe stand on your hind feet. I imagine raccoons in the wild do that too.”

“Now, Berkeley has figured that Davis isn’t a pirate for reasons of petty greed, of course. He reasons that Davis was driven to it to support his family, disgraced after being named as accomplices to the theft of the colonial treasure chest from the western capital of Burlington in 1714.”

“So all I mean is, you don’t need to have a recursive mass of character.”

“Obviously, I’m drawing on the 1768 theft of East Jersey’s funds from treasurer Stephen Skinner’s house for this. But Berkeley figures that setting his pirate in that era necessarily involves him in pre-revolutionary politics that he doesn’t want to explore just now, and while it wouldn’t require relocating the action to the North River — ”

“The Hudson. I know.”

“Well, it would bias the setting anyway. I should say I don’t think I’ve completely ruled out the other interpretation of this relocating, besides just making up an incident.”

“I really think you’re over-working the part — ”

“And that is, maybe Berkeley is just sloppy about character development. He might have made it up without realizing there was a strikingly similar scandal a half-century later.”

“You really don’t need a character.”

He sneezed at me, so I knew I was in trouble. “You know you’re terrible at improv? You haven’t given me a single `Yes, and’ all this time.”

“Hold on. First, not all life is improv” — he sneezed again, that little buzzing noise — “and second, you haven’t actually responded to my perfectly reasonable skepticism about you over-planning a little hop in the backyard, so how good at this are you?”

He didn’t sneeze at that, but his ears did droop.

“I need to establish,” he finally concluded, “whether Berkeley is deliberately moving the Skinner treasury theft to Burlington circa 1712 or whether he’s making it up. We can wait.”

I agreed, but said, “You’re getting caught in a research spiral. Carry on like this and you’ll build everything about your character and never play him,” while it started to drizzle outside.