Pop culture historian Michael J. Hayde has a great website Better Living Through Television where he waxes nostalgically about the good old days of network and syndicated programming. His most recent post, about the Ted Eshbaugh/Van Beuren cartoon THE SUNSHINE MAKERS, deserves a look. This bizarre cartoon, originally a thinly veiled commercial for Borden’s milk, was widely shown on TV in the 1950s and early 60s, then became a fixture of 60s head shows and rock concerts. I still get many e-mails asking the where-abouts of this cartoon. For the record, it’s available on DVD collection entitled, Cartoons That Time Forgot: Van Beuren.

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The Ottawa International Animation Festival website has been updated with details on its 2006 edition, which will take place September 20-24. This year’s festival poster (above) was designed by Gary Baseman. The entry deadline for films is June 1, and for the first time, films can be entered via an online entry form. Also, the festival has unveiled its programming schedule for 2006. Fans of the funny will be rewarded with retrospectives of three comedy masters: American Bob Clampett, Italian Bruno Bozzetto and Russian Konstantin Bronzit.

Cartoonist/animator Marc Deckter has a great post on his new blog about some of his favorite old-timey rubber-hose dance scenes. Van Beuren, Iwerks and Fleischer all get some love in his piece.

A confirmed FAMILY GUY hater named Randy has started a blog to “document every instance of Seth MacFarlane stealing jokes, and finally ending his completely undeserved reputation as some kind of genius.” Click here to read Family Guy Steals.

Last night’s episode of SOUTH PARK did a parody of FAMILY GUY. It’s little surprise that the SOUTH PARK version is funnier than the actual Seth MacFarlane show. Also, now seems like a good time to link to Jaime Weinman’s perennial blog post “Why I Hate FAMILY GUY.”

Here’s the SOUTH PARK parody:

The HOLLYWOOD REPORTER says that David Silverman is directing the SIMPSONS movie. They also offer a few more details about the movie trailer that premiered last week.

Mighty Mouse fan Neil Beck (no relation) has posted some pre-production images from the long-in-development MIGHTY MOUSE movie on his Mighty Mouse Home Page. I have no idea what’s going on with this movie, nor if these images are still related to the film in development at Nickelodeon Movies. But if it were up to me, I’d hire John K to make the film with traditional hand drawn animation.

I love print cartoons, comic strips and comic books. Maybe that’s why three of my favorite websites affectionately skewer classic and current comics - and I get more laughs out of them than I do from the daily comics section in the newspaper. First stop is Scott Shaw’s newly redesigned and relaunched Oddball Comics site. Scott’s been doing this for years and has quite an online archive and a great discussion board. Next I check out Josh Fruhlinger’s Comics Curmudgeon a hilarious daily commentary on some of the lamest comic strips currently in print. Rex Morgan, Mary Worth and Mark Trail are regularly, and hilariously, analyzed. And lastly, every Thursday morning Shain Minuk and David Merrill post a new page of Stupid Comics, an in-depth look at some of the dumbest comic book stories of all time. This site has awful navigation, but it’s worth searching through to find goofy things like this page on Battle of The Planets and this one on Harvey Comics.