My Internal-Monologue Reactions to Wile E. Coyote v. Roadrunner Cartoons

I put in Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 2 DVD into my creaky PS3 this Saturday morning. My daughter and I would watch cartoons like the old days. She’s a baby, though, and mostly played with the laundry. So I was watching cartoons. I didn’t realize until three cartoons in that Vol. 2 is all Wile E. Coyote v. Roadrunner cartoons. I got bored. Then I got drawn in. This is my internal monologue.

• Well, this oughtta be interesting (sarcastically)
• Desert again?
• Hey, Wile E., gravity called, it wants you back
• Ouch!
• No fuckin’ way
• Damn! That’s would just HURT!
• Wait, how did you become the jackhammer
• That’s actually a pretty good physics joke
• I can see where this is going
• Let me guess, a truck is coming through the painting — Oh shit! It came from the other side!! Bravo, Charles M. “Chuck” Jones.
• How many of these cartoons can fit on one DVD?
• So many canyons that are one plank-length apart at the top (not a Planck length, obviously)
• How much does this guy spend at Acme? Where does he get the money?
• Don’t do it, buddy…
• That’s actually not a bad idea
• Shit, that would hurt
• Look out!
• This is the most trafficky desert road ever
• Who staffs the pun department at Warner Bros. for these titles? “Whoa, Be-Gone!,” “Scrambled Aches,” “Guided Muscle”… Pretty sharp stuff.
• Treg Brown’s editing really shines in “There They Go-Go-Go!”
• No!
• Just when you think you’ve seen them all — wait, yeah, I’ve seen that before
• AGH! DAMN! That would fucking hurt so bad! Shit!
• “Ready, Set, Zoom!”?? Really? Pun department sort of mailing it in there.
• NOT THAT WAY!
• You know, Carl Stalling really carries a lot of this with his lively score.
• Oh, this is one of those where the dots just chase each other. That’s actually a pretty smart meta-take on this whole series.
• Clearly these guys were high
• How many times are they going to play with the Linnaean taxonomy of these animals? Coyote (Eatibus Anythingus)… Roadrunner (Accerlerati Incredibilis)… Burmese Tiger (Surprisibus Suprisibus)…
• LOOK OUT!
• You know, in a way, this is life. We just chase and chase and chase… What? The roadrunner is, what, money? No, happiness. We will never catch it. We are Sisyphus. Story editor Michael Maltese, hats off to you, sir.
• That. Is. Horrifying. Imagine being trapped in a concrete mold in the desert heat. Slowly dying of thirst or hyperthermia. You can’t move. You can’t scream. Damn, Roadunner, call the police at least. That is like MS-13 stuff. That is just madness!
• Just one more. How many can there be?
• Dude, that rope is not going to hold
• He is toying with you. Toying!
• I mean, on the one hand, I feel like Michael Maltese’s job is easy: Coyote chases roadrunner. Doesn’t catch him. The end. But on the other hand, he’s taking coloring inside the lines, and just owning it.
• Rocket skates. Gotta love rocket skates
• Wait, this isn’t a roadrunner one… Hubie and Bertie? Mice? Are they making fun of Tom & Jerry or are they really trying to really expand the Looney Tunes macrocosm? Or is this a joke on us? Or are they just saying fuck it?
• Unbelievable
• Wait, is Wile E. chasing the roadrunner, or is the roadrunner running away from the coyote? Maybe we’re the roadrunner, not the coyote, and the coyote is death? …No, the coyote is definitely chasing the roadrunner. Michael Maltese, you magnificent bastard.
• Has any Acme rocket ever worked? (I mean, other than when they work too well.)
• BYE BYE! (That one was me imagining my daughter’s internal monologue)
• Oh, there’s a lot more on here. OK, we’ll watch one or two more.
• What is it all for? Not just watching these cartoons, but everything. Why do we do it? Wile E. never catches Roadrunner and we won’t ever catch anything either. I should just go back to bed. The baby likes it though.
• This is the definition of the definition of insanity. Michael Maltese, man, you are really just one step above it all with this.
• NO!
• Wile E., maybe you should have a kid.
• Wait, didn’t he have a kid later, like in the late-’60s once this whole thing had totally jumped the shark? I bet Michael Maltese left at some point. Maybe that’s in Vol. 3.
• Never fails
• Always fails
• YOU IDIOT!
• The Roadrunner is kind of an asshole, when you think about it.
• NO!
• Oh shit, here we go again.