GOODBYE, DENNIS!

 RIP JAY NORTH (1951-2025)

An important part of my childhood has passed on! Jay North was the star of TV's DENNIS THE MENACE show. We were both the same age and I followed Dennis antics closely, identifying with him in many forms.  Sorry to see you go, Jay! You made my childhood brighter!

Jay North, who played Dennis Mitchell in the original 1959 “Dennis the Menace” TV series, died Sunday after a battle with cancer, his long-time friend Laurie Jacobson confirmed in a social media post. He was 73.  

                           Jay North with cartoonist Hank Ketcham, creator of DENNIS THE MENACE

DENNIS THE MENACE  reunion! (1988)

“Dennis the Menace,” based on Hank Ketcham’s comic strip of the same name, ran for 146 episodes across four seasons. The show followed North’s Dennis “the menace” Mitchell, a young troublemaker who terrorizes his aging neighbor Mr. George Wilson (Joseph Kearns) through a never-ending series of mischievous deeds. Other cast members include Herbert Anderson, Gloria Henry, Billy Booth, Sylvia Field and Gale Gordon.

 

YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS...

 

...AS TIME GOES BY!

THE DAY I MET MARILYN MONROE!!

                                                       Marilyn Monroe, the wax figure, I mean!

Mr. KELLY'S, Mexico's Classic Hamburger Joint, bids farewell after 5 decades.

 "Hamburguesas Mr. Kelly's", Mexico City's iconic hamburger place since 1972, closes its doors today, Sunday 24, 2024. Only four stores existed at one time and all of them disappeared until just one, over at Insurgentes Avenue remained standing. Today it bids goodbye to its many customers. I used to take my son Ricardo, to the Av. Universidad Branch when he came out of school every other Friday for a family lunch. Great times then, and the hamburgers were delicious!!!  I visited the hamburger joint for the last time on Friday, Dec. 29, 2017, and the hamburgers were still as tasty as ever. Farewell Mr. Kelly's!

BACK IN 1951

Now anyone can have their picture on the front page of any newspaper.

Thank you, Photoshop!

A CHRISTMAS PRESENT!

After years of waiting, the Flip The Frog Complete Series Blu-Ray discs from Thunderbean Animation Shop have finally been released and I just received my copy, as a Christmas present from me to myself!

WIKIPEDIA describes Flip the Frog as follows:

Flip the Frog is an animated cartoon character created by American animator Ub Iwerks. He starred in a series of cartoons produced by Celebrity Pictures and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1930 to 1933. The series had many recurring characters besides Flip, including Flip's dog, the mule Orace, and a dizzy neighborhood spinster.

Ub Iwerks was an animator for the Walt Disney Studios and a personal friend of Walt Disney in 1930. After a series of disputes between the two, Iwerks left Disney and went on to accept an offer from Pat Powers to open a cartoon studio of his own, Iwerks Studio, and receive a salary of $300 a week, an offer that Disney was unable to match at the time.

Iwerks was to produce new cartoons under Powers' Celebrity Pictures auspices and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The first series he was to produce was to feature a character called Tony the Frog, but Iwerks disliked the name and was subsequently changed to Flip.

The character eventually wore out his welcome at MGM. His final short was Soda Squirt, released in August 1933. Subsequently, Iwerks replaced the series with a new one starring an imaginative liar named Willie Whopper.

 Flip became largely forgotten by the public in the ensuing years, but the character would make a small comeback when animation enthusiasts and historians began digging up the old Iwerks shorts. And finally, now in 2023, the complete Flip The Frog cartoons are available on Blu-Ray discs and ready to be enjoyed by all of us who remember them fondly.

My son Ricardo's 50th Birthday!

Here are just a few highlights from those fifty years:

 

            

AND MORE TO COME!