Happy Sunday, everyone!

Every Wednesday, blogging buddy Aaron over at The Confusing Middle posts a “Sunday Scribblings” prompt for other bloggers to ponder and respond to on the following Sunday. If you’re a blogger looking for more inspiration, I highly recommend jumping in and joining in on the fun!

This week’s prompt is: Mother Goose!

This little piggy went to market
This little piggy stayed home
This little piggy got her own prime-time sitcom
And it really kills me because I’m so much more talented than she is.
Thank you.

This has been another visit to Dot’s Poetry Corner.

My initial instinct when I read this prompt was to write about CD ROMs that I played as a kid. I’ve had a half-written draft about this for quite some time. The main reasons I haven’t finished it being the lack of motivation to actually write the post as well as the challenge of tracking down all of the games to find playthroughs or at least synopses of the games. I am fairly certain that I had some sort of Mother Goose game, but after several bouts of intense Googling, I cannot find the game that I somewhat remember (and no, it is not Mixed-Up Mother Goose). In reality, I’m not even sure if it was a Mother Goose game or if the game even existed at all. At this point, there is a chance that I may never know. I blame my parents.

The biggest gripe I have with my parents right now: not saving all of my CD-ROMs from 1998 so I can write a blog post about them 🙄🙄

— Renata Leo | Buffalo Sauce Everywhere (@renataoleo) April 28, 2022

Since I couldn’t write about this game that may or may not have existed, I figured I would write about something else that reminded me of Mother Goose that I enjoyed in the 90s: Animaniacs.

In case you didn’t know, the rhyme at the beginning of this post was from a series of short skits from Animaniacs called “Dot’s Poetry Corner.” In these skits, Dot (the Warner sister, if you recall) would be standing at a mic at the front of a dimly-lit coffee shop reading a “poem,” which was basically a nursery rhyme rewritten in a funny way. 

I looked up the Dot’s poetry corner “poems” for this post and found all of them on a webpage that was last updated on May 5th, 1995. Many did not age well…

My parents loved Animaniacs, so I was exposed to it a lot as a kid. We not only watched the show, but also owned all of the cassette tapes (eventually all the CDs), and my parents bought me Yakko, Wakko, and Dot stuffed animals as well as a plastic cube that says all of their catchphrases.

A moment of silence here for the Warner Brothers store. I miss all of the cool novelty things that I could get there (like the pocket watch I got in this post).

Variety shows like Animaniacs particularly me because I get bored easily and…well, I enjoy variety. That punchy, slapstick humor really works better in short bursts, and they nailed it. Like any variety show, there were skits that I really enjoyed and others that I didn’t love, but when the skits only last a few seconds or minutes each, then it doesn’t matter!

I feel like this is sacrilegious, but I was never a huge fan of Pinky and the Brain. I prefer the skits with The Goodfeathers and Slappy and Skippy. I think the plotline for the Slappy and Skippy skits is so clever, and Slappy’s dry, sarcastic humor always has me in stitches. I have to give it up for Rita and Runt as well because…well, Bernadette Peters. Need I say more? And of course, I always enjoyed the skits with Yakko, Wakko, and Dot. The humor is spot-on, clever, and absurdist. Some of my favorite things.

Plus, Yakko was one of those animated characters I admit that I had a bit of a thing for. What? I like clever…
But the show wasn’t only a funny thirst trap, it was also educational! From the pop culture references that I definitely didn’t understand as a kid (and mostly still don’t understand as an adult), to the songs like the one listing the state capitals, there was always something to learn in an episode of Animaniacs. I even used the president’s song to lead my team to victory in the AP US History bowl in high school!

From the CD songs to the skits themselves, the show was full of earworms. I literally could not get through this post without hearing:

Gee Brain, what are we going to do tomorrow night…?

It’s time for another good idea, bad idea.

You’re defin’ly a good dog, Rita. Yeah, defin’ly a good dog.

Helloooooooooooooooooooooo, nurse!

Okay lady, I love you, buh-bye!

Glidden: the San Francisco treat.

What am I, some clown here to amuse you?!

You wear a disguise to look like human guys, but you’re not a man, you’re a Chicken Boo.

Dana Delany (complete with the sight of Yakko’s eyebrows moving up and down)

Ahhhhh, enough with the singin’ already!

In case you haven’t heard, they did come out with a new reboot of Animaniacs. While I haven’t even watched the entirety of the first season, I just couldn’t get into the few episodes that I did watch. I’ll stick to rewatching the old seasons once a year or so when I feel like revisiting that 90s humor and want to see a topless Yakko Warner on my screen.

Goodnight, everybody!