Decisions

A mid-afternoon post, in a break with all the traditions this country holds dear, because I'm going down to Bristol a bit later and I'm weighing up the advantages and disadvantages of taking my laptop down with me. On the one hand, I'm really having a problem lately with internet addiction (my only vice), and it would doubtless do me a lot of good to go cold turkey and not stay up all night chatting and playing. On the other hand, well, I'm having a problem lately with internet addiction and I really want to take my laptop with me. It's not a very well-reasoned argument, but it's one that I'm finding very persuasive just at the moment.

Greece is the word

Or at least, it's the word people are using more than any other today in response to questions like "Where is this year's world othello championship going to be held?". I'd really love to qualify for it, I've never been to that part of the world before. Not that I have any real chance of qualifying, but you never know.

Also in the news, I've ordered some new packs of cards over the internet. 48 of them, a big box that the makers presumably intended people to sell individually in shops rather than use for memorising themselves. But my old ones, that I've had since 2004 or even earlier, are getting a bit tatty and inclined to stick together, and now's the time to switch to new ones if I want to be comfortable with them before the competitions in July. It takes a bit of adjustment, and a bit of dropping the slippery new cards all over the floor and cursing.

And this is the real post

As you know (everyone reading this remembers everything I've ever posted on here before, right?), I'm going to Bristol for the comic expo this weekend. Ravinder's also coming to film, and, keen to make the experience in some way relevant to my memory stuff (I keep telling him that nothing in my life is, but he insists), he asked if any of the guests there created any of the various comic characters in my list of images. As it happens, they did, and now it seems Kurt Busiek has agreed to have a chat with me on film about it.

Kurt Busiek. THE Kurt Busiek! What the heck am I going to say to Kurt Busiek? Well, actually, I know exactly what I'm going to say to him. It will involve tongue-tied stammering and not being able to form a coherent sentence. Possibly shoving my copy of Marvels or Thunderbolts #1 at him and hoping he'll appreciate that I want an autograph. I mean, by all accounts he's a very nice guy, a lifelong devoted superhero comic fan who became one of the world's most talented and popular writers. We could theoretically talk at great length about comics, except that he's totally my hero and idol and I'm wildly unworthy of actually meeting him. Seriously, Kurt Busiek!

Rampaging Hulk

This is a bonus post, the one I was going to do last week but couldn't upload the pictures to Photobucket. It's not my real blog entry for tonight about the latest Zoomynews. But enjoy it anyway!

I think it's time this blog had a change of pace. Too much waffling lately about what I've been up to, not nearly enough pretending to be clever and knowledgeable about comics. So inspired by Lew Stringer's wonderful blog, here's a little treatise on the subject of Marvel UK's late-seventies comic, "Rampage". I didn't read it at the time it came out (I was born in 1976, it launched in 1977), but I’ve found quite a lot of them at car boot sales over the years.

In those days, before the Transformers comic showed the world that Marvel's British offices could produce their own material that was much better than the American stuff, British Marvel comics consisted of black-and-white reprints of years-old American comics. Rampage specialised in the adventures of the Defenders, a great favourite team of mine. It reprinted a complete issue of Defenders, 22 pages, every week, which was excessively long by the standards of British comics, which usually consisted of a series of six-page stories. And Rampage also had back-up strips, of course (nobody then believed British readers would touch a comic with only one story in it) - you could also read a quarter to a third of an American issue of Iron Man and Nova in every issue. Well worth 10p of anyone's pocket money.

What I like about Rampage is the covers. They used the same line art as the American comics, but re-coloured and re-lettered. Sometimes with the same words as the American version, sometimes subtly different. They seem to have been reluctant to use so many words on Rampage. For example, the speech bubbles on the cover of Defenders #30 go:

Hulk: NO! Hulk can't fight GAS!
Nighthawk: We haven't a CHANCE! Can't get PAST these choking FUMES!
Doctor Strange: We're facing our most INCREDIBLE foe -- and he may DESTROY US ALL!

Whereas on Rampage #30, they say:

Hulk: Hulk can't fight GAS!
Nighthawk: NO WAY can we pass those choking FUMES!
Doctor Strange: We're facing our deadliest foe -- and he may DESTROY US ALL!

Incidentally, the deadly foe was a tap-dancing super-villain called Tapping Tommy. On the other hand, the reprint of Defenders #2, which had no speech bubbles on the original cover, is enhanced by the bad guy shouting "Surfer! Hulk! Namor! None of you will survive the WRATH of the WARRIOR WIZARD!"

Occasionally, the re-lettering required some intelligence. They fixed the problem with Defenders #27, which showed Dr Strange intoning "The Baddoon WOMEN are far more SAVAGE than their men! Unless I strike swiftly, HULK and VALKYRIE are DOOMED!" This rather gave away what was supposed to be a surprise plot twist in the NEXT month's issue, that the lizard creatures the Defenders were fighting were in fact the females of the Baddoon species they'd been tangling with for some time. The Rampage version replaces Doc's faux pas with "The LIZARD CREATURES have risen from the MARSH!"

This, however, is the most interesting of the Rampage covers. Here's Defenders #17, published in 1974:

And here's Rampage #16, from 1978:



Notice that the Hulk's role has been strikingly diminished as it crossed the Atlantic. Now, the Hulk ("Marvel's TV Sensation", as they liked to call him in those days), was the only reason a lot of people read Defenders in the first place. A couple of later Defenders covers claimed he was in an issue where in fact he didn't appear at all. There's no way the UK Marvel people decided to re-draw the cover to make the Hulk less significant. They must have got hold of the original American art, which must have been altered before the American Defenders comic hit the newsstands to make the Hulk MORE prominent and sell more copies! And they would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for those meddling Brits.

Another funny thing about Rampage is the issues of Defenders it chose to reprint. The earliest one I've got is Rampage #3, containing Defenders #2. So either the first two Rampages each only contained half of Defenders #1 (which wasn't double-sized) or they reprinted one of the three issues of Marvel Feature which introduced the team before they got their own series. I have no idea which. Rampage then reprinted a complete Defenders story every week, but skipped Defenders #9 and #10, which were part of a crossover story with Avengers (to get the whole story, you had to read an issue of Defenders, then an issue of Avengers, then the next Defenders and so on). Maybe Marvel UK repeated the whole crossover somewhere else, maybe they just didn't bother with it, I don't know. So from that point on, Rampage’s issue numbers were one behind Defenders.

However, as well as the Defenders comic in America, there was also ‘Giant Size Defenders’, part of Marvel’s experiment with longer, more expensive, quarterly comics. They didn’t catch on, and their only lasting legacy is the existence of a comic called “Giant Size Man-Thing”, but there were also five less innuendo-worthy Giant Size Defenders comics too. The first of these consisted of reprinted stories with a perfunctory framing sequence, so it’s understandable that Rampage chose not to reprint it. The second was a weird story involving the Son of Satan that’s in a very different style to the usual Defenders stuff, and I think I would have skipped it too if I’d been in charge of Rampage. But they also skipped #3 and #4, the first of which, although self-contained and having no bearing on the long-term plot, was absolutely brilliant, and the second containing a very significant moment (Nighthawk’s love interest has her arm blown off in an explosion, which is a very unusually graphic kind of injury for seventies comics) which is referenced repeatedly in future issues, but which Rampage readers never got to see. Rampage finally gave in and reprinted GSD #5, which was an integral part of a long storyline – they split it over two weekly issues and changed the cover blurb from “A complete Defenders story every week!” to “A book-length Defenders story every week!”

But then they unfathomably skipped Normal-Size Defenders #26, another part of that extended plotline, albeit one that consisted almost entirely of unnecessary filler. You can cut it out and still follow the story with no problems, but why would you want to?

Rampage kept on reprinting Defenders for quite some time, even after the American comic was a long way past its best, but finally gave in to popular demand and switched to reprinting Hulk and X-Men stories instead. Shame, really, because if I’d been a comics fan at the time, Rampage would have been my favourite.

Asking only workman's wages, I come looking for a job

So, the time has come when I need to find a job again. Well, not need, technically, but definitely should before my brain and body completely atrophy. I was going to get in touch with the agency today, but I remembered I was going to give blood, and that's scary enough without being stressed by job-hunting, so I've left that till tomorrow. Then I get the delights of trying to persuade them to put me forward for a job at the same level as the one I had last time, rather than a level above. Agencies never want to do that. They assume everyone has high-flying career aspirations rather than just wanting a semi-senior number-cruncher position that pays enough to live on. I'm sure I can't be the only accountant who doesn't want to become a financial director some day (they're always posh and almost always completely useless, so I don't think I'd be qualified).

Anyway, giving blood was fun. I filled in a form detailing all the diseases I haven't got, all the disease-infected people I haven't had sex with and so on, got talked through the whole procedure at staggering length, had a needle stuck in my finger and a drop of blood dropped into a test tube of green stuff. It did what it's supposed to, so then I went into the other room to lie down and have a whole lot more precious blood drained out of me.

The nurse put one of those inflatable squeezy things around my upper arm, and poked around at my elbow for quite some time, looking for a vein. "Hmm," he said, "there's one there, but it's quite deep. John, have you got a second?"

Another nurse in a swankier uniform came over, did the same thing with the squeezy inflatable thingy, poked my elbow and said "Hmm, there's one there, but it's quite deep." Exact same inflection, too. They must teach them to say that in nurse school. It seems my veins aren't in the same place as other people's, but the more important nurse found one on the side that worked fine. So it was just a matter of sticking another sharp thing into me, connecting it up to a scary-looking tube (which I tried not to look at too closely), lying around until it had finished, lying around for another fifteen minutes to make sure I didn't collapse or anything, commiserating with original nurse, who's a Sheffield Wednesday fan, about the terrible performances of our respective teams this season, having a cup of orange squash and a couple of biscuits and going home. Safe in the knowledge that I've done a Good Deed for the day. I can just hear my dad saying "You'll get your reward in heaven, old boy." I don't know why he always said that, since he wasn't religious in the slightest, but he did.

Since I don't think I've been quite boastful enough yet tonight, can I just talk about my othello game against Imre on Saturday? I've been looking at it with WZebra, on its highest setting, and it reckons I played just about as close to a perfect game as I ever have. I was a couple of discs ahead all the way through and just kept that lead, playing the good move every time. A couple of mistakes in the endgame, but he didn't find the line to punish me for them. I'm seriously happy with this game.

Also today (for a day when I've done nothing, it's been busy, hasn't it?) I won a set of dominoes in a tombola in the shopping centre. Woo.

Yawwwwwn

Wow, I'm tired. For one thing I've been getting up earlier and going to bed later than usual all weekend, for another, organising a memory competition is very nearly as tiring as competing in one. I'm knackered, to use the technical term. Despite that, though, Sunday was tremendous fun all round. Everything ran more or less smoothly and almost perfectly to schedule, we finished on time without too much trouble, there were no major disasters and really only one minor one (an unshuffled pack found its way into the speed cards event). Three entirely new recruits to the world of 'memory sports' who all seemed to have a good time and be planning to come back for more. Lots of entertaining memory talk at the pub both at lunchtime and afterwards. Two different film crews chasing people around with cameras and just adding to the sense of fun. A horribly noisy location that everyone in attendance was too polite to complain about. I started the day waking up at 5am, and finished it getting back to the hotel a bit before midnight after going for a curry with Charlie (possibly the greatest conversationalist in the world of memory, who I hadn't seen since 2004) and Jenny. I was even persuaded to have a go at the speed cards myself, and did 29.93 seconds in the second attempt, only to mess up the recall. Drat. Ah well, next competition is the British Championship down in Shropshire (which I must try to find on a map some time) on July 14th. I need to get back in training.

Not a blog post

I should be posting about the Cambridge championship, which went really well, but it's twenty to midnight and this hotel unreasonably expects you to vacate the premises by ten in the morning and I'm drunk, so I'll tell you all about it tomorrow.

Bow down and worship my othello-playing ability!

I've just stopped off at my hotel to enthuse about the othello tournament. I didn't win, but I came an even closer second than I did in Oadby, just losing to David on disc count. We only had the room until 5pm, so we agreed to have 20 minutes on the clock rather than 25, to make sure we could finish in time. Eight people there, so we started out on a seven-round all-play-all. Then Aidan turned up as well and rather threw things out of whack. In the end it turned into a nine-round all-play-all, with the last round played on the grass outside the school since we couldn't fit it all in in time.

I just seemed to keep winning, for some reason. I beat Imre again, although frankly that's happening so often nowadays I probably shouldn't even bother to record the fact. I also beat Phil and David, and was on 7 out of 7, until I lost my last two games to Jeremy and Geoff and let David catch up with me.

I've also just calculated the latest British Grand Prix standings, not for any big-headed kind of reason, just because I know all my readers are fascinated by the competition and it would be letting them down if I didn't post them here for the world to see. It goes:

Me 410
Phil 400
David 390
Jeremy 310
Geoff 300

I've never been in the lead in the BGP before! Even though you'd think I would, seeing as how BGP are my initials, so it's pretty much the law that I should win it every year. Two more regionals to go - can I keep it up?

Tomorrow's memory competition is going to be in the same room, although we don't get kicked out till six so, if everything goes really, really quickly and smoothly, we won't have to do the speed cards outside on the street. Hopefully it won't be quite as noisy in the room tomorrow as it was today, with infant chess players running around screaming in the background. It's the over-twelves chess tomorrow, so they'll probably be shouting and swearing and writing graffiti, or whatever teenagers do these days.

Guest of honour

I'm in my hotel in Cambridge, complete with wireless internet access in the room. Rather temperamental internet access that goes on and off, so if you're not reading this, it's because the connection died before I could post it. Went to the new Wagamama in Cambridge with Jenny tonight - it's a very cool place, and it certainly seems to be doing excellent business, there were people queueing up outside all night. Meeting Jenny, of course, is just the first of many social engagements while I'm here - it's the othello people tomorrow, and the memory people on Sunday (along with the TV people pestering me all day, of course). I feel like the Queen in America, only on a slightly smaller scale and with a more stylish hat.

I posted the above, then realised I forgot to write the bit that would justify the "guest of honour" subject line, so edited to add: when I checked in this afternoon, the man said "Oh, yes, they're coming to film you on Sunday," with a grin, and was excessively friendly and helpful. I also have the idea that they've put me in the nicest room (because it is very nice indeed). There are definite advantages to being a celebrity.

Inventory

There are lots and lots of things I need to remember to take down to Cambridge with me tomorrow. And unlike other times when I go away for the weekend, a lot of these things are essential, absolutely can't forget or the whole Cambridge Memory Championship will be ruined, kind of things. It's not like forgetting my toothbrush or to wear any clothes.

So, let's see. There's my laptop, lots of brown envelopes full of memorising and recall papers, lots of packs of cards, the snazzy timers for the speed cards event, my stopwatch so I can keep track of the time, my alarm clock so I can get up at the crack of dawn rather than oversleeping and missing the whole affair, scrap paper and pens, the prize money, the event timetable and rules, a map of the area so I can find the way from my hotel to the venue, my hat so that I look cool...

I bet I forget something. The laws of comedy demand that I forget something important and essential for the memory competition.

I was going to write about comics tonight

But the scanned covers I wanted to include in what would have been a very long and boring post won't upload, so I'll save it for another day. Although that does leave me without anything interesting to talk about at all. I'm watching the snooker at the moment, and as usual thinking to myself "I could do that. Easy." I tend to forget that I can't play the game until the moment I find myself at the table with a cue in my hand. It's a lot harder than it looks, you know.

On the other hand, becoming snooker world champion remains one of my ambitions. When I'm a millionaire (that's another one of my unfulfilled ambitions), I'll have a big house with a billiard room and two or three servants to keep the table in perfect condition. There will also be a log fire and lots of bookcases with three-volume novels, and everyone who comes in will be required to wear a smoking jacket, although you won't be allowed to smoke. Then I'll practice snooker every day and become brilliant at it and win the world championship. You see, I don't just have ambitions, I have practical plans to make them happen. That's the secret to success.

Nosferatu

I'm going to give blood. I've never done it before, and I've spent practically my whole life saying 'I must get round to doing that some time'. Which is exactly the kind of attitude I always criticise in other people. So I've decided to do it, next Tuesday when the blood-sucking people (I think that's the technical term) are next in town. Hopefully it won't kill me. I gather that it doesn't usually, but I'm not a big fan of having needles stuck in me.

I don't even know what blood group I am. I have a feeling that I'm A and my brother's AB, or possibly the other way round, but I'm not sure. I also have a feeling that mine is one of the more useless blood types to have, but that's probably just my natural assumption that nobody could ever find a use for bits of my anatomy.

Maybe I'll donate some platelets too. I hear that's all the rage these days. Or bone marrow. Or a limb. I've got more than I need already, and I wouldn't want to be selfish.

Be Prepared

I still need to print everything out for the Cambridge championship. It's surprising how much all those sheets of paper weigh, you know. Last year I felt like I was lugging a ton of bricks around with me. There's not just piles of papers, there's lots of packs of cards (at least it's just tens, not hundreds like the WMC), my laptop, and the snazzy timers for the speed cards (yes, we've got them this year, not the hopelessly 20th-century people with stopwatches). It's a good job I'm such a perfect physical specimen.

I wasn't going to write anything else tonight, but then I remembered that last night's blog entry was one of my occasional super-brief rip-off ones, and that makes me feel guilty about not giving my readers their metaphorical money's worth. So here's a second paragraph, for your reading pleasure.

I fixed my video!

That tape I trod on last week? Fixed! Thanks to Ravinder, who advised me that you can cut the clear plastic bit out without ruining it, and gave me permission to blame him if I did ruin it despite that.

Apart from that, I've done nothing else all day today, but I still have a great sense of achievement.

Windows, at all?

There are some things about Boston that are going to stay the same forever. The double-glazing saleswoman in the market who has spent every Saturday since time immemorial trying and failing to hand out flyers to passers-by with a forlorn, muttered "Windows, at all?". The graffiti on the wall behind Kwik-Save ("R.N. BOASTS WE SANK TWO IRAQI TANKERS") which has been there since the first Gulf War. The May Fair, on its way next week (notices already up telling people, all of whom must surely know already, that the market will move to West Street while the fair's in town. If people don't know, the complaining market traders will soon fill them in without the need for notice boards). George the friendly mentally-handicapped old guy who can always be found in the town centre somewhere on a Saturday, cheerfully saying good morning to everyone whatever time of day it is. The dishevelled exotic birds in the shabby aviary in the park. And a football team who can't win a home game against the worst team in the league who've had a player sent off in the first half.

When you support the second-worst team in the league, there are few occasions when you can look forward to a win with some trembling confidence, but this was one of them. And the omens were good - we had a whole eleven full-time players to choose our team of eleven from, Torquay had already been relegated and had nothing to play for but pride, the home fans had turned out in droves for once (attendance about 2600, roughly eight of whom were die-hard away fans who'd come all the way from Torquay) - and the Pilgrims started brightly. We could have had half a dozen goals in the first half, it's a long time since I've seen them look like they could actually score. David Galbraith in particular had an amazing curling shot from outside the area that Wayne Rooney would be proud of, which was tipped over the crossbar by an equally Premiership-worthy save from the Torquay goalie. Three or four more times the ball was somehow cleared off the line by their defence at the last second. Then one of their players was sent off for hitting Ernie Cooksey while the ball was at the other end of the pitch and he presumably hoped the referee's eyes were too. Still nil-nil at half-time, but it looked hopeful.

When a team comes out after the interval and plays much, much better, people tend to attribute it to an inspirational manager's speech. So I can only assume Steve Evans delivered the exact opposite in the dressing room, because the Boston who came out again for the second half were woeful. Torquay were still awful too, so it shouldn't really have mattered, but then they got a goal out of nowhere, to everyone's surprise. Another of their players was booked for shoving Cooksey in another off-the-ball incident (he's not much of a player, but he must be great at annoying people). The crowd, who'd been enthusiastic all the way, switched to yelling abuse at the Boston players, especially the defenders who seemed very reluctant to tackle the opposing strikers, or even move at all unless it was absolutely unavoidable.

But Drewe Broughton got an equaliser in the 83rd minute, and it ended up 1-1. Which could have been worse, I suppose. Basically, this means that it all comes down to the final game, away at Wrexham next week. If we win that, we'll avoid relegation (at the expense of Macclesfield or Wrexham themselves). If we don't, we won't. Goodbye, football league. And it's five years to the day since we won promotion, too. I personally don't think we have a chance of winning that game. I know it sounds disloyal, but bluntly, we suck. I'll keep supporting them to the last, but... gah! Maybe I'll switch to Derby County.

Movie star, a movie star...

I've been talking at great length just lately with Ravinder about this documentary. It does look like it's definitely going to happen, and it's really definitely going to involve filming me and everyone I come into contact with in Cambridge next weekend and Bristol the weekend after. And probably elsewhere, too. Actually, it's only really occurring to me right now that this might get annoying pretty quickly. It probably won't - I could tolerate Nick following me around, and Ravinder's more fun to talk to (and I'm not just saying that because he reads this blog). Although it is going to be a director in charge of the filming, rather than Ravinder himself, and I might not like her. And then there's the worry that I'm going to end up looking bad, and the billions of people watching the documentary will be thinking "gor, lumme, what a complete eejit that Pridmore person is". I'm assuming all the viewers will have a sort of cockney-cum-Irish accent, naturally.

I was actually thinking of emailing all the friends I can think of to see if they want to be filmed hanging out with me, working on the theory that the less of me and the more of other people in the film, the more watchable it'll be. But then last time around the VPS people were all rather reluctant to be taped at one of our get-togethers, just because they generally involve drunken and unseemly behaviour. I suppose we could hang out and be sober and seemly, but then it would just look boring.

Anyway, I'm going to the football tomorrow. An even more crucial, must-win game than the numerous other crucial, must-win games I've mentioned so far this season. If we win this, and it's only against Torquay so we darn well should, it'll lift us out of the relegation zone with one game to go. Woo! Now if only we can find eleven fit players, we're sorted. We'll survive for another season and then get relegated next year (about to go into a voluntary arrangement because of the huge debts, which will mean a 10-point penalty).

Noone know what I do, but everyone calls me "boss"

For some reason, everybody in the world has emailed me about the Cambridge championship today. Okay, partly my fault since I posted on the forum to confirm that the event is being filmed for a Channel 5 documentary (woo!), but also Aubrey has volunteered me to organise the rest of the Cambridge MSO event on the Sunday (he's somewhere exotic prolonging the human lifespan). It's just a case of telling the other competitions where to go, but that's liable to make me unpopular, because there's the big sports hall and a separate room, and I'm having the latter for the memory competition. However much the go and shogi players complain about having to share space with backgammon and chess. There's only a separate room at all because I pestered Aubrey into arranging one the other day when he sprung it on us that he'd only arranged the sports hall. If there was a bit more time before the event, I'd find another venue in Cambridge, but at a week's notice it'd be hard to come up with a cheap, quiet and small place. I hate being in charge of things. How did I end up in charge of things?

Creative fervour

I've spent the whole afternoon doodling. That comic strip I was artist's-blocked with last week - I suddenly had the urge to sit down and draw and not care how bad it looked, so I did. And once I'd started, I obviously didn't want to stop in case the enthusiasm evaporated.

Also spent an hour and a half talking on the phone with Ravinder about this documentary, and he specifically asked me to mention him in my blog, but I'll go into more detail about that tomorrow, because all that scribbling has taken up too much of my time.

Oh, and I don't think I'm quite ready to actually SHOW anyone what I've been drawing yet.

Tradesmen and the scraper still troublesome

I'm watching "The Diary of a Nobody" on BBC4. It's not a dramatisation so much as Hugh Bonneville reciting edited highlights, Talking Heads style, and I don't think it entirely works. It's not a book that really lends itself to TV adaptation (although it has been done before), but it seems pointless to do it like this. It's a lot more enjoyable to read the book yourself - this version doesn't really add anything and takes quite a bit out. It's part of the Edwardian season on the BBC, although I'm not sure what definition of "Edwardian" they're using, since the diary dates from the late 1880s. But on the other hand, that's the kind of pedantic observation that Mr Pooter might have made himself, so I probably shouldn't say anything.

Curse my clumsy great clodhoppers!

I trod on a video tape and now it doesn't work properly any more. It's one of the ones with cartoons taped off the telly, and there are some good ones on it too. The most irritating part is that I have a feeling I could maybe fix it, but that if I tried to do so I would almost certainly ruin it for good. The tape itself is all fine, it's just the plastic casing that's cracked and sort of pushed in a bit, and not in a way that I can just pop it back into the right place. Now when I try to play it it stops after a few seconds and starts rewinding.

I suppose this might be a lesson to me to store videos on a shelf or on top of the telly or somewhere other than just lying on the floor, but I don't have a history of learning this kind of lesson. But darn it, what if I want to watch "Go Fly A Kit", or "Johnny Smith and Poker Huntas" or "Scaredy Cat" or "High Note", or about 40 other classic Looney Tunes? I'm annoyed now.