Ratings death awaits new woke Family Guy

You read it here first. Walt predicts Family Guy will be cancelled at the end of the current season. Now I'll tell you why.

I watched the latest episode last night. The plot was this. Lois sees the Browns having a family fun day, and decides the Griffins need to do that. They try card games and a make-your-own-pizza party. No fun. So they decide to have a movie night, with videos from Blockbuster. But the last remaining Blockbuster in the USA is in Bend OR, so the family goes on a road trip. 

That, right there, is your cue to start the death watch for Family Guy. It's turned into a wholesome Norman Lear sitcom! No-one, with the possible exception of Blockbuster [Do they still exist? Ed.] could be offended. And no-one laughs either.   

Think about it, fans. It's 2022 in Brandon's America. Humor is forbidden. Nothing's funny anymore, because nothing is allowed to be funny. Consider this list of Family Guy characters we used to laugh at (or laugh with), who have disappeared or been reduced to minor roles, all in the name of political correctness.

Stewie Griffin - Once a precocious but malicious baby who was a central part of most shows, he has now become snarky but cute and loveable. He used to be best friends with Brian, the dog, the only one who understood him, and they had many excellent adventures together. Now Stewie only gets one or two one-liners per show, when he appears at all. 

Brian Griffin - Once so popular that an attempt to kill him off flopped, and he had to be brought back from the dead. Like Stewie, Brian is no longer a central character. Maybe it's because we don't make fun of alcoholics. More likely, it's because he was a parody of progressive pseudo-intellectuals, who are people we must now take seriously.

Brian has a cousin, Jasper, who we no longer see or hear about, because Jasper is as gay as 18 balloons. The choices people make as to their gender identity are not to be mocked any more.

Glenn Quagmire - A resolutely heterosexual sex fiend and chicken-hawk, who is not an appropriate role model for middle-aged men. No more "Giggidy giggidy goo!"

Joe Swanson - Also playing a much-reduced role. How could anyone stoop so low as to make fun of persons who are differently-abled?! For the same reason, we no longer see or hear Angela, Peter's deaf co-worker at the brewery. Ditto Opie, who is not deaf but... errr... [you can't use the R-word! Ed.]

Then there are the gay characters, who only make cameos now that it's normal to be gay, like Bruce Straight (pictured, since some of you may not recognize his name). Bruce is a caricature of the sad, middle-aged homo who should be loved, not shunned, for his contributions to the community. You may know someone like him in your community, perhaps a Boy Scout leader or a priest.

John Herbert is a 90-year-old pederast, profiled on WWW almost eight years ago.  He used to be the Griffins' neighbour. I never heard that he'd moved, but somehow we no longer see him. Perhaps that's because pedophilia isn't funny. Indeed, some progressive thinkers argue that there's nothing wrong with it.

Other faces on the cutting-room floor are those of the (((Goldmans))). Muriel, the wife of pharmacist Mort Goldman, died a couple of years back, but Mort still had his drugstore, and his son Neil, was still trying to get a date with Meg, or anybody at Adam West High School. But we must now recognize that anti-Semitism is a lingering and serious problem in our society, so Jewish stereotypes are no longer permissible.

Speaking of stereotypes, Walt wonders what became of Consuela, pictured at top. It was never clear whether or not Consuela was a legal immigrant or an "undocument migrant". Notice I didn't say "illegal alien", let alone "wetback". There are no such people any more, so we can't make fun of them.

Seth MacFarlane and his colleagues seem not to have figured out what to do with the Browns, who weren't quite a stereotypical African-American family, in that Cleveland Brown, the father was still present, working to support his wife and children. The Browns live in a neighbour hood which would apparently be all-white, except for them, so they're still regulars.

Jerome is another black stereotype, but a good one. The new owner of the Drunken Clam, he's the successful businessman that we know all black dudes could be if they weren't the victims of slavery, racism and injustice. Even so, we don't see much of him because he's a little too... errr... Black, as we learned in the episode where it was revealed that he once dated Lois.

I could go on [No, you can't. Ed.] OK, let me conclude by observing that with the cancellation of all these characters, what we're left with is the basic Griffin family -- stupid father, smarter mother, and two kids suffering from teenage angst. In other words, a typical American TV family in the Age of Woke. Hence my prediction. Lifetime pct .980.

Funniest cartoon I've seen in ages

I confess that in the days when I subscribed to the New Yorker, I didn't read all of the articles, but always look at all of the "drawings", as they called cartoons by, among others, Tom Cheney, who a contributing artist for 42 years. 

Mr Cheney's work has also appeared in over 500 other reputable (and disreputable) publications in the US and other countries, including Esquire, National Lampoon, The Harvard Business Review, Mad Magazine, Penthouse, The Wall Street Journal, Punch, Barron's Magazine, Hustler Magazine, and the "Commies From Mars" comic book series.

He was the 1985 winner of the Charles M. Schulz Outstanding Cartoonist Award for his work in magazine cartooning. His cartoons have been spotlighted on ABC Nightline, CNN, CBS 60 Minutes, and NBC News. Originals of his work are on permanent display at the Museum of Cartoon Art, the New-York Historical Society, the headquarters of the United Nations, and the Empire State Building, as well as in numerous private collections.

I just stumbled on this one, in the December 1985 issue of National Lampoon, on sale here. Since Mr Cheney has already won loads of awards, he has no need of our Wally award, but we award it anyway!

Caption (for those who have trouble reading it): Oh Cecil, Cecil, Cecil... if only you'd read the instructions that came with your chain saw!"

Hope that brightened up your dull November day. Be careful with that chain saw, eh!

B. Kliban: 2 hard-to-find collections just listed on Webstore

Bernard "Hap" Kliban (1 January 1935 – 12 August 1990) was an American cartoonist who contributed to Playboy magazine from 1962 until his death. An excellent draftsman, he had a bizarre sense of humour which shone through his drawings, which were signed simply "B. Kliban".

Playboy’s cartoon editor, visiting his studio, reviewed his drawings, mostly cats. She thought they should be compiled into a book, introduced him to an agent, who found a publisher, resulting in the 1975 book Cat. This led to several other books of cartoons ending with Advanced Cartooning in 1993. Since Cat, his cartoons have adorned many products including stickers, calendars, mugs, and t-shirts. 

The books that followed Cat consisted mostly of extremely bizarre cartoons, some of which first appeared in Playboy, that find their humour in their utter strangeness and unlikeliness. They often contained dysmorphic drawings of nude figures in extremely unlikely environments. 

Another frequent subject of satire was the type of wordless, step-by-step visual instruction manuals typically found with such things as office furniture. "B. Kliban" also had a recurring series of drawings called "Sheer Poetry", in which the page would be split into six panels, containing images of objects whose names, when spoken in the order presented, would form a rhyming, nonsensical verse.

One of Walt's supporters has just listed two of these books on Webstore.com.

Never eat anything bigger than your head... and other drawings by B. Kliban. Published by Workman Publishing Co.,1976. Unpaginated, probably around 150 pp, paperback.

Whack your porcupine and other drawings by B. Kliban. Includes "The Turk", section of uncaptioned drawings of... well... Published by Workman Publishing Co.,1977. Unpaginated, probably around 160 pp, paperback.

Click on the links for notes as to condition, etc. Auction starting price just $2.99. Shipping charge is a bit on the high side, but you can amortize it by buying both books at once, shipped in one packet. Tell `em Walt sent ya!

Chuck Jones' Rules for the Roadrunner and Coyote

Those who [like me! Ed.] have known Walt for donkeys' know of my undying love for Warner Brothers cartoons, but only the good ones which were produced for showing in cinemas. The later ones, from about 1960 onwards, produced for TV with the execrable Hanna-Barbera-style "limited animation", bite the big one. 

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the later Roadrunner cartoons, where the motion of the characters' legs and feet is just a circular blur. The BWBDOAT (Best Warner Bros. Director of All Time), Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones would never have allowed such cheap visual tricks. He had very strict rules -- he actually called them "rules", not just a style guide -- for the depiction of the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote, and the latter's fanatical pursuit of the former.

Here, courtesty of Agent 6, are Mr Jones' original rules for the Roadrunner & Coyote.

Th-th-th-th-th-th-that's all folks!

Hug-a-Muslim Day: Pope reaches out to Islamic leaders

Since it's National Hug-a-Muslim Day (in Canada, at least) -- see previous post -- Walt thinks it's appropriate to republish a cartoon commentary from the latest issue of The Remnant.

Click here to preview the January 31st issue of The Remnant, from which this was taken. The Remnant is the oldest Traditional Catholic newspaper in the world, and is available in hard copy and electronic formats. Tell them Walt sent ya!

Your wet dreams come true - Heidi Klum as Jessica Rabbit

Ed. here. We at WWW are under no illusions about why certain posts get 1000s of hits, and others, errr, about 14. A lot of our traffic, particularly from Russia, comes from boyz typing with one hand, looking for pix/videos of naked or nearly naked women. Well... yeah... human nature.

We don't like to pander but every now and then Walt sees a photo that warms the cockles of his heart. Sometimes his cockles get so warm he has to rub them with ice! Such a pic spread all over the Web like a rash this weekend, so we're going to share it with any of you who missed it.

Jessica Rabbit is an exquisitely drawn character -- a bawd with a bod -- from the fine Walt Disney film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Yes, it really is a Disney film, although far from being one of their syrupy, G-rated, "family entertainment" productions. It's fine for kids at one level, but really meant to be viewed and appreciated by adults of a certain age (like Walt) who look back with nostalgia to the golden days of full animation and cartoons that were zany and genuinely funny.

Jessica Rabbit, wife of the movie's central character, Roger Rabbit, looks like a gigantic sex toy. "I'm not a bad girl," she tells ace detective Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins), "I'm just drawn that way." She certainly is an eyeful. What man could watch the movie without dreaming of meeting [just "meeting"? Walt] a girl built like that. But hey, she's only a toon.

Or so it was until this weekend, when 42-year-old model Heidi Klum decided to dress up like Jessica Rabbit for her annual Hallowe'en bash. MailOnline reports (with pix) that doing so took a lot more than slipping into a red satin dress slit up to heaven. Ms Klum had to don rubber eyelids and a fake bum. [If it had been made in London, we could call it a London derriere. You're welcome. Walt.]

It took a team of specialist make-up artists nine hours to painstakingly add layer upon layer of prosthetic face and body enhancements to create Jessica Rabbit's stunning sultry physique. The result is certainly something to behold, and we know 1000s of you will do just that, for weeks, months and years to come. Enjoy.

Incredible! Brian Griffin returns!

Last night, on the hit TV series Family Guy, Brian Griffin, beloved dog, came back from the dead! Just like Bobby Ewing, only much quicker, and with a convoluted plot twist which made the old "it was only a dream" shtick look reasonable.

For the three or four people on the planet who don't watch Family Guy, Brian was hit by a car last month. Stewie, having just destroyed his time machine, was uanble to go back in time and rescue him. And so the Griffins got a new dog, Vinnie, who seemed to have been abandoned by a family of Mafiosi.

In last night’s episode, Vinnie takes Stewie to visit the local mall Santa, to cheer him (Stewie) up. Stewie asks Santa to return Brian for Christmas. "I want my friend back," he cries. "My best friend, my dog, Brian, he’s dead. It’s out first Christmas without him and no one has even mentioned his name. I don’t care about this stupid carnival or Christmas! I don’t care about anything but Brian!"

And, he adds, "Oh yeah. I'd like a bike, too." But Santa can't produce a bike, let alone Brian, so Stewie is disappointed. But then... here it comes... Stewie spots an "alternate Stewie" (the product of an earlier travel through time) in the toy store, and remembers that the other Stewie has a copy of the time machine was hidden in his backpack.

Mirabile dictu! Stewie swipes alternate Stewie's time machine, goes back to the scene of the accident in which Brian was killed, and pushes him out of harm's way, just in the nick of time! Vinnie is left in the future -- I guess -- along with alternate Stewie, and Stewie and Brian are BFFs once again. Got it?

Walt wonders if Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane was genuinely moved by the outpouring of grief of 1000s of Brian-lovers, or the numerous online petitions to bring back the loveable dog. Or was this MacFarlane's "New Coke" strategy, killing off Brian and introducing the new character who made the hard-drinking, sarcastic, lecherous Brian look good by comparison.

If this tortured plot twist was indeed planned months in advance, in an attempt to create a buzz and build ratings, that would have been a very cyncial move, wouldn't it. Could TV producers be cyncial manipulators who delight in playing on the emotions of their audiences? Could bears still defecate in the shrubbery? Anyway, welcome back Brian!

Your Sunday smile

Ed. here. Walt isn't available today -- making up for the role of Zwarte Piet at a Christmas party -- so I'm dipping into the slush pile to share a little cartoon someone sent us a while ago. Let it be your Sunday smile.

Budding career in cartooning nipped in the bud

For decades now, Canadians have been doing well in the exciting fields of animation and satire. There's John Kricfalusi, creator of Ren and Stimpy. And all those guys who write for the Simpsons, South Park and Family Guy. You knew there was a reason for all those Canuck jokes, eh?!

Jack Christie is a senior at Douglas A. Wilson Secondary School in Whitby, Ontario. He aspires to make people laugh and get paid for it, thus to rocket to the top of the cartooning heap, just like the creators of South Park, Family Guy etc.

And Jack has been practising. With his buddy Connor Brazeau [How's that for a Canajan name? Ed.] he has created three cartoon shorts which Walt predicts will go viral in about 35 seconds from now. Since embedding is disabled, all I can show you is a YouTube screen grab from "Jack Christie Talks to Children 3 - Run for the White House". Click here to see the video...if it hasn't been pulled down by the time you get to this.

Why should it be taken down? Well, Forces for Good at the Durham District School Board have deemed Jack's little opuses [opi? -- just say "works"! Ed.] a mite, errr, offensive. Apparently lines like "kill all the black people" and the assertion that Senator Joe Lieberman "sticks his penis in goats" are not politically correct.

Said board spokesthingy Andrea Pidwebecki, "If a student produces or submits work that encourages the destruction of an entire racial group, we’re going to report it. We have moral and professional obligations."

Ms Pidwhatever added that the matter has been referred to the school’s liaison police officer, Officer Barbrady. [Are you sure about this? Ed.]. She could not or would not comment on Jack’s statement that teachers reportedly found the videos -- this is the third in the series, so far -- funny. She said only that the matter had been suggested to him that he consider taking the videos down and that "he should be focusing on graduation."

Said Mr Christie, "I can understand why people take offence. Really, my problem in the end is people in power taking those films and labelling me as some sort of threat. I believe [that] does infringe on some very fundamental rights of the Constitution ... the right to freedom of expression and media."

Walt isn't sure that the word "media" actually appears in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. However, let it be remembered that cartoons are not required viewing. If someone is going to be offended, better they not look.