Stupid Rabbit

***STUPID RABBIT***

It’s no secret that Looney Tunes had a huge influence on me as a kid and still does as an adult. Many of my Poison Tongue Tales entries have been compared to Looney Tunes cartoons and I take that as a compliment. My mom is also a Looney Tunes fan, so much so that I got her a DVD collection of the cartoons as a Mother’s Day present one year. I guess you could say that it’s a family tradition to be a fan of this genre. That’s why when I saw a You Tube video of Yosemite Sam’s piano bomb prank on Bugs Bunny, I had to make it a part of my motivational self-talk.

What happens in this cartoon is Yosemite Sam rigs a grand piano with dynamite that’s set to go off when a certain key is struck. He then challenges Bugs Bunny to play a song on that piano where one of the notes is the detonation key. Bugs cracks his knuckles and plays the song without striking the key. Furious, Yosemite Sam yells, “No, that’s not it! Try again!” Bugs tries again and still fails to hit the trigger key. Sam then screams, “Oh, you stupid rabbit! Like this!” Although Sam played it the correct way, he triggered his own trap and blew his facial hair off. This piano bomb gag was common in Warner Brothers cartoons, but Yosemite Sam’s version is the one that sticks out to me the most.

Now whenever I make a grave mistake in either my writing or my drawings, I mentally yell to myself in Yosemite Sam’s voice, “No, you stupid rabbit! Try again!” It sounds negative on the surface, but it’s Yosemite Sam’s voice, so it’s actually a giggly form of motivation. And it’s true: in the world of creative work where introversion is the key to getting shit done, you get an endless supply of chances to make things right. You’ve written a first draft novel? Try again! You’ve miscalculated the limbs on a drawing? Try again, you stupid rabbit! Although, you won’t ever have to worry about your keyboard or colored pencils being hooked up to a bomb.

In a world where everybody is telling artists to give up and get STEM jobs, you need as much positive motivation as you can possibly get. Even though Yosemite Sam is yelling “Stupid rabbit”, I get a chuckle out of it instead of getting down in the dumps. Being able to laugh at yourself is the most powerful thing you can do as an artist. If you can’t laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?

Although having a massive ego is completely natural (we all have one whether we admit it or not), being able to tame that ravenous beast is one hundred percent necessary. That doesn’t mean you can’t believe in your own ability to improve. It just means that not all critical advice is bad. I paid Marie Krepps to critique Beautiful Monster and she delivered the goods and more. Now I’m contemplating rewriting the whole story from scratch to accommodate the radical changes she suggested. And while I’m doing it, I’ll be hearing Yosemite Sam’s voice echo in my brain.

“No, you stupid rabbit! Try again!”

You have no fucking idea how good that feels. I love the Looney Tunes, damn it! I’m Garrison Kelly! Even when you feel like dying, keep climbing the mountain!

***PROVERB OF THE DAY***

“There are two motives for reading a book. One, that you can enjoy it. The other, that you can boast about it.”

-Bertrand Russell-