Countdown to Halloween: The Haunted Ship (1930)

For the month of October, Cinema 4: Cel Bloc is taking part in an annual internet celebration known as the Countdown to Halloween. This is the fourth year that I have participated in this countdown, but the first with my Cel Bloc site. To find out more about the Countdown to Halloween, and to see a list of participating websites and blogs, go to http://countdowntohalloween.blogspot.com/.

The Haunted Ship (A Van Beuren Studios Aesop's Fable, 1930)
Directors: Mannie Davis and John Foster
Cel Bloc Rating: 6/9

Part of the joy of continuing this experiment has been rediscovering for myself cartoon characters with whom I was fleetingly familiar, but had discounted because they weren't as famous or prevalent as other characters. It has been a distinct pleasure to reunite my eyes with Van Beuren's Tom and Jerry, the human tall guy–little guy combo which starred in a couple dozen films in the early 1930s, though some of the films are much better than others in the series.

I will be utterly honest in my assertion that I was not aware that the original Tom and Jerry (who had their semi-heyday long before MGM's cat and mouse came along) had morphed from an even earlier Van Beuren team: Waffles the Cat and Don Dog. Starring in a handful of Van Beuren's Aesop's Sound Fables, Waffles, the more excitable of the two, and Don, the short, cool breeze who fears nothing, are close enough to their human descendants to have caused me to do a double-take when I first viewed their first film, The Haunted Ship, from 1930.

With a beginning strikingly reminiscent of the some of those Tom and Jerry shorts, Waffles and Don start out buzzing through the skies in a plump little airplane, that seems about as able of flight as a Vienna sausage. Don sits nonchalantly on the tail of the plane and casually lifts his hat to us, and Waffles, who is ostensibly the pilot because he occasionally maneuvers a small steering wheel, is more concerned with playing the entire plane's body as if it were a vibraphone. He runs two mallets back and forth in musical fashion over the exhaust pipes, the wings, and even off the whirling propeller, happily playing away, pretty much oblivious to any need to guide the plane along its way.

However, in the skies overhead, a nasty-looking cloud forms a grimace filled with evil intent, as it blows wind and lightning down on the chubby plane. Waffles blows too, not wind and lightning like the evil cloud, but a trumpet instead, as he carries his jazzy tune over from bashing the parts of the plane to playing an actual musical instrument, while his diminutive buddy Don does a neat tapdance upon the tail of the plane, displaying a daredevil's lack of fear of heights. At one point, Don even dances off the edge of the tail into midair, and then shuffles backwards to safety, with nothing more than mild surprise that we went a tad too far. However, we see the cloud overhead, where its top edge has now formed into the shape of three working figures who pump and bucket the rain through the cloud and down onto the inhabitants of the plump plane.

Waffles and Don have taken to rowing their plane through the rain, but another lightning strike causes their paddles to disappear, and a third strike has Waffles yowling and hiding in the cockpit. A body made of lightning lands on the wing, and after the fear-ridden Waffles points it out, the pugnacious Don wallops the lightning-figure on the head and knocks it off the plane. But they are nowhere near to safe yet. The pair zoom off as fast as the little plane can go with the lightning-figure running through the air after them. They hop the next cloud that they meet, yelling "Hey!" and landing back inside the plane. The lightning follows, and when they meet the next cloud, they leap and yell "Hey!" again, but land on top. They fall into the cloud, and the lightning leaps inside for the fight. The plane, now wrecked, falls down towards the ocean with the pair inside it.

Thinking fast, Waffles and Don pop open a trap door and climb down an escape ladder in its rear, both wearing life preservers. They leap from the ladder and splash into the ocean, but as the plane nears impact, they climb up the ladder and back into the craft, perhaps thinking that it might float on the surface. The plane, however, sinks below the waves once they climb back inside, and so they drift down to the bottom of the ocean, where a dapper-looking walrus sings to them in the heaviest of baritones of impending doom: "Many brave hearts are asleep in the deep, so beware! Be---ware!" As the shanty-singing mammal departs, Don blows him a quick raspberry, which forces Waffles to knock Don in the head with a hammer for his rudeness.

The pair leave the confines of their downed and drowned plane, and make their way to a sunken ship which bears the name "Davy Jones" upon it. They dive through a window and into the hold where they discover vast amounts of treasure. Their joy is cut short suddenly by a piercing noise of a slide-whistle and a door which opens on its own accord. A question mark appears above Waffles' head and then zips around to Don's tail, where it pokes him and pushes the duo towards the now closing door. (Kind of a reverse variation on a Felix-style gag.) Another whistle whines, the door flies open, and a huge black octopus ambles threateningly through it, and then moves towards the camera until it crowds out most of the frame, and then swims out of the shot. As they reach for the door again, another fearsome monster fish with a lion-like mane and jaws, slides out from underneath some furniture behind them and slinks off to not be seen again. [Note: The animation for these creatures would be used again, notably in the later Tom and Jerry underwater short, Rocketeers, in 1932.]

They step swiftly into the hall, where Waffles is confronted by a floating skull. He is absolutely chilled by the site, and yowls and screeches in place but Don merely rocks back and forth calmly on his heels. Waffles twirls about to hide his eyes, but another skull pops up in the porthole behind him, scaring the yowl-ready Waffles yet again. Don, meanwhile, only scratches his head in boredom. The skull disappears, but a large anchor chain nearby them starts moving and rattling about, and it is discovered that the arm of a skeleton is pulling it. Don, ever the calm one, pulls out a hammer and casually wings it at the bones, causing the skeleton's hand to drop the chain and disappear from view. A fish swims towards the camera, getting larger and larger and then turning, showing that its full size easily dwarfs the pair of them, and Waffles continues to shiver uncontrollably. Then a trapdoor opens under their feet!

Waffles and Don find themselves sliding down a huge staircase. A tremendous dragon-like eel, then an an odd combination of eel and ray, and finally a shark with a strange style of dorsal fin glide past them from opposite directions, causing Waffles to leap back and forth in utter fear. Finally, the fraidy cat discovers a bell, which naturally has has to ring. The call for service brings a pair of skeletons down the stairs: one whose bones are the normal bleached white, and one with entirely black bones (but a white jaw, most likely a nod to blackface makeup, to make the skull appear as if it has large lips, and therefore a racial joke). The skeletons dance in practiced formation at the bottom of the stairs and salute in attention, but Waffles pushes Don into the skeletons, and the head falls off the white one's shoulders.

As Waffles makes his escape, Don picks up the skull and hurls it all the way down the hall until it hits Waffles in the head and knocks him flat. When Waffles comes to and sees the skull floating above the floor, he jumps clear out of his clothes and reenters them through his pants legs. He starts to berate Don, but an eel breaks up his complaints when it slides out of a hole in a barrel behind Waffles and swims through his legs. Then all of the cabin doors in the hall open up, revealing a waving, dancing skeleton in each one. Waffles and Don run away from the hall and enter a bar-room. Waffles, however, runs into the wall and hits his head, and since he is all shaken up, Don laughs at him and places him at the piano. Reluctantly at first, Waffles starts banging out a tune on the keys, and Don picks up two mallets and uses a sleeping crocodile for a vibraphone.

Waffles and Don continue to play as four drunken sea turtles stand at the bar and slug down one more shot each, and then join together to sing the old standard Sweet Adeline in swell four-part harmony.

"Sweet Adeline,
(My Adeline,)
My Adeline, 
(My Adeline,)
At night, dear heart, 
(At night, dear heart,)"

At the start of the second line, a fat catfish embellishes the song with a Gershwin riff played through a clarinet formed from his lips, while two happy starfish caper by his tail.

"For you I pine. 
(For you I pine.)
In all my dreams, 
(In all my dreams,)
Your fair face beams. 
(Your fair face beams.)"

Soon, we see another crocodile with his mouth agape, and a frog, who may be meant to resemble Harpo Marx though it bears no wig, has several strings wired through the croc's teeth and plucks at them for a harp solo.

"You're the flower of my heart, Sweet Adeline!
(Sweet Ad-e-liiiiiine!)"

When the turtles finish their verse, their tongues hit the floor in drunken reverie (they make a "Nyaaagh!" sound and pass out) and Waffles and Don carry off the tune with an extended vamp in a tango style. Fish sway all about them, and a lobster wields its claws like castanets, until its shell drops to its tail and its polka-dotted underwear are revealed. Two smiling eels dance to the beat, and a ten-limbed octopus shuffles its three pairs of feet while waving its four gloved hands. Don does a tap dance, and we see many fish out on the dance floor take up his lead. The turtles revive themselves, crawl out of their shells completely naked, each with a cute bellybutton, dance a quick jig and then reprise the final line of Sweet Adeline.

"You're the flower of my heart, Sweet Adeline!"

With the last note, the catfish swings a bottle into the head of the baritone turtle. A full crowd of sea creatures go crazy with their applause and laughter, but the noise is enough to wake up the spirit of Davy Jones, and his captain's hat-wearing skeleton hops out of his locker looking for trouble. Waffles turns a passing turtle into a squeezebox and Don plays off the heads of three eels to start the next number, but Davy Jones intervenes. "Who are you?" a shaking Waffles the Cat asks of the skeleton, and the reply comes back, "I am Davy Jones!" Waffles splits immediately, with Davy Jones fast on his heels, but Don, who is not afraid of anything apparently, follows them and sticks his mallets into Jones' bones and sends the captain crashing into Waffles. The two of them tumble head over heels together for some distance. Outside, we get a very detailed shot of the deck of the haunted ship from above (but slightly off center) as vast numbers of sea creatures spill out of the hold and swim up towards the camera and then past, followed by Waffles and Don, who in turn are still being chased by the evil Davy Jones.

Inside the bar, the four turtles are still piled in a heap on the floor, but they revive long enough to sing:

"You're the flower of my heart, Sweet Adeline! Sweet Ad-e-liiiiiine!"

Their open mouths crane forward to take up the entire screen, and we can see their uvulas shaking with the final held note. Staring straight down their gullets, we see the iris out.

When I started to watch this cartoon, I immediately thought I was watching a Tom and Jerry short, and it took me a few seconds to realize that I was dealing with a cat and dog act. But their personalities are almost the same as the human version, though if anything, Don is an even cooler customer than Jerry, though both seem to always be itching for a fight. Tom is as much a flustered 'fraidy cat as Waffles, though in Waffles' case, he quite literally is such a creature (being an actual cat, you know... well, an actual cartoon cat).

The film itself, with its concentration on small character work rather than extensive gags, is quite enjoyable, in fact, I find it to be one of the more satisfying of the hit-and-miss Aesop's Fables series. Certainly, many of the elements are repeated in later, arguably better Tom and Jerry shorts, but the sequential progression of the story actually moves along with few bumps, being a lot smoother than, say, some similar shorts from the company's same period. And there is a spooky enough atmosphere inside the ship to make this necessary for an annual Halloween revisiting. That final shot with the sea creatures flying out of the hold is certainly a unique one so far, though it does display a lack of true resolution in the story. The musical sequence stands out even larger, and I especially love the concentration on the singing drunken turtles. Somehow, their design reminds me an awful lot of Dr. Seuss's Yertle the Turtle.

But not as much as Waffles and Don remind me of Tom and Jerry. Sure, Waffles has a tail and Don's hat is different from Jerry's, but if you squint, you could easily miss that the former are a cat and dog (except for Waffles' annoying habit of yowling). What I didn't miss is the fact that I have spent most of my life missing out on this excellent entry in Aesop's Fables.

I have a feeling I will be diving back down to The Haunted Ship again every Halloween.

RTJ

*****

And in case you haven't seen it...

[Note: The original version of this article was posted on June 2, 2006, but has been given a drastic revision and updated with new photos and a video link on October 19, 2016.]

Hells Heels (1930)

Hells Heels (Universal, 1930)
Dir.: Walter Lantz
Cel Bloc Rating: 7/9

The recent news that a long-lost Oswald cartoon has been found by the British Film Institute (BFI) and restored by Disney has filled my heart with joy, especially since I was watching a couple of Oswald shorts, albeit Walter Lantz ones, earlier in the day. Of course, we will have to wait until after the premiere of the short -- titled Sleigh Bells -- in December at an event in London, and then even longer until Disney does some sort of release -- my guess is in a holiday Blu-ray collection -- to see the damned thing. For now, only a short snippet has been given as a preview (follow the link at the beginning of the article), and so Oswald fans will need to make do with what we already have at hand.

And I certainly have more Oswald films on my shelves than I did a few years ago when I stopped writing for this blog. In that time, Disney, having regained the rights to the character, put out The Adventures of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in 2007 as part of their then flourishing Walt Disney Treasures series. It came in a limited edition, golden metal box, and featured thirteen of the 26 shorts Disney and Ub Iwerks created before Oswald was whisked away from them by Charles Mintz (some of those shorts are lost films, though obviously there is one less now).

Also in 2007 and 2008, eleven restored Oswald films done by Walter Lantz came out on two separate Woody Woodpecker and Friends collections. And finally, Thunderbean put out a disc in 2013 titled Lantz Studio Treasures starring Oswald, which featured eight Lucky Rabbit shorts, including two Disney titles (The Ocean Hop and The Mechanical Cow) with the soundtracks that were added to them when Lantz reissued them in 1932. Still, with 195 Oswald titles in total, that means there is a lot of Oswald we are not getting to see yet. Sure, you can find a lot of the unreleased shorts online at various sites, but the quality is very mixed. Not knocking it... seeing something in any sort of condition is better than not seeing it at all. It just seems to me that in this age, where studios are finding success with archival sites where customers can order DVD-R copies of their long lost favorite films, thereby cutting down the costs of printing untold thousands of unsold copies in stores, that we should have access to all of these cartoons with ease. Not the way it works, apparently...

But on to the film I was watching the morning the news came out about Sleigh Bells. When I first saw the title Hells Heels when I opened my Woody Woodpecker and Friends Volume One set, and saw what year Hells Heels was released (1930), I immediately thought it was going to be a spoof of Howard Hughes' Hells Angels film, also released that year. Until I watched the cartoon, I assumed Oswald would be taking to the skies in a World War I era plane and fighting the Germans. Never gave it a second thought, except that I assumed I had it all figured out like some big shot. How wrong I was (as usual). Turns out, the film takes place in the desert, and after a quick bit of research, I discovered Hells Heels is actually a spoof of another film released earlier in the year by Universal, Hell's Heroes. (And it turns out it couldn't have been a spoof of Hell's Angels anyway, because the Hughes film wasn't released until November of that year, well after the Oswald short.)

While I have yet to see the film, I have seen the story before, as Hell's Heroes is only the fourth of six versions released through 1948 of Peter B. Kyne's Western novel, The Three Godfathers. (The most famous version was directed by John Ford and starred John Wayne, of course.) The basic premise is that a trio of robbers, having been unsuccessful in their efforts to steal from the bank of a small town, escape into the desert and are close to perishing due to lack of water. They discover a woman who has just given birth but is close to dying herself. She begs them to bring the child back to its father, and so they essentially become the three godfathers of the title, and risk life and limb to save the child. It all ends both miraculously and tragically at Christmas. (The three godfathers basically represent the Three Wise Men of the birth of Christ story.)

Hells Heels pretty much establishes this same premise from the start of the film. We first see Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in his classic look (no shirt, but with pants) strutting alongside Pegleg Pete (actually a Disney character, but Lantz made use of him or a character roughly like him deep into the '30s) and a dog wearing overalls and an eyepatch. As they strut, the trio sing a tough tune full of boasts:

"We're heading for the desert
and three bad men we do be.
We're heading for the desert
and a good ocean that's free."

Oswald breaks away and sings:

"We're bad babies!"

And then the other two join him again:

"As you very soon will see.
We're a highfalutin',
rootin', tootin',
shootin' company!"

The three come to a stop at a sign hanging off a dead tree, with a series of skulls piled on top of its trunk. The sign reads "To Heela City -- a Naughty Town for Naughty Men". At the end of the branch is a sign that reads "Welcome" and just below it, hanging off the branch, is a noose. When they stop, the skulls hop up one at a time in order, and then the largest skull at the bottom of the pile, replete with bull horns, starts to sing:

"How dry I am!"

The tiny skull at the top of the pile repeats the same line. The bull skull continues:

"Boom boom boom boom!"

The tiny skull adds:

"And so are you!"

The bull skull sings (joined by the tiny one on the last three words):

"Nobody seem
to give a..."

The tough guy trio have heard enough. Pete pulls out his gun and with four shots sends the quartet of smaller skulls flying. Oswald takes aim and shoots with his own gun at the bull skull, but he misses. The bull skull sticks out his tongue and blows a raspberry at Oswald, but the rabbit's second shot finds its mark and knocks the skull away. The trio pick up the final refrain of their song where they left it:

"We're a highfalutin',
rootin', tootin',
shootin' company!"

The trio enter the street of a small Western town and sneakily approach the bank to the strains of Mysterious Mose. On the last few notes, their necks shoot upward from their bodies, and then their heads rattle and jut forward, puffing up and pointing at the bank. Then the two other robbers say to Oswald in unison, "You're gonna rob that bank! Here!" Pete forces a giant stick of dynamite into Oswald's hands. Oswald asks, "Who?" and they respond "YOU!" The rabbit quakes with fear as Pete lights the TNT. Pete picks up Oswald and throws him inside the bank. There is a huge explosion! When the smoke clears, the only thing left standing where the bank was is a safe, and the only thing left standing where Pete and the other robber were are their skeletons, still wearing their hats. (Pete's leg has seemingly been restored, as you can clearly see he has bones where both legs are.) The skeletons dance off, and Oswald falls from the sky and lands with a bounce upon the street.

Oswald tries to open the safe, but then he hears a voice, as if on radio. "When the gong rings, it will be exactly one minute past." The gong rings, and the top of the safe pops open. Out jumps a large bulldog sheriff, whose badge leaps forward from his chest towards the viewer to inform them exactly who he is. He glares at Oswald, who prepares to flee. The rabbit runs towards the screen and we get a perspective shot of him running with the street rolling behind him at an angle, as he yells for help. The camera cuts to the sheriff, who seems to be barking with each step, but then he stops to say, "And if you ever come back, I'll..." He runs a finger across his neck in the commonly accepted cutthroat sign, but all he does is severe his own head. It falls before him onto the ground, and his body starts searching blindly for it. His hand reaches for his head, but the sheriff bites his own hand, yelling "Ouch!" His hands then grab the head and put it back in place, only facing the opposite way, and he starts walking back towards the town in this manner while his body is still facing forward.

The scene changes to that of a baby crying in the back of a wagon, which sits behind the skeleton of a cow, which still has a bell on its tail and somehow has a working udder. The baby leaps out of the wagon with two cups, and attempts to leap up and pull the udder down from the body. His first two leaps end in failure, as the udder keeps pulling its nipple up away from the baby, but on the third leap, he stretches the whole udder downward and fills up one of the cups with milk. He puts the second cup on top of the other and shakes the concoction a couple of times merrily. He then throws the milk straight up in the air and catches it in his mouth, only to have the cow skeleton bonk him on top of the head with the bell on its tail. The baby starts bawling wildly, just in time for Oswald to reach him.

Oswald asks the baby, "Who are you" in his usual falsetto, and the baby pulls a photo out of nowhere and answers in a far deeper voice, "That's who I am!" The photo is one of the sheriff holding the baby, with the word "DAD" printed below. Oswald yells, "WOW!" and splits, but the baby's arm stretches out and drags the rabbit back into the frame. "You're gonna take me to my dad. Oswald sweats bullets, but the baby starts crying again. Oswald pulls himself together and tries to find something to ease the baby. He reaches into the wagon and finds a diaper, but the baby pulls it away from him, and puts it on himself. He grabs Oswald's hand and pulls him away on their journey.

They first come to a large sign reading "Wanted! Oswald" and a large skeleton pops up from behind the sign, points to the rabbit and says "Aha!" Oswald runs in fear, but the baby stretches out his arm to catch him, which reels the baby all the way up to where Oswald is. When the baby starts crying, Oswald starts to tap dance to calm the brat down. On top of a strange-looking cactus formation with a flat top and stairs, he starts to bounce around on all four limbs, his head, and bottom, even breaking into a quick soft-shoe bit before resuming his tap dancing. He ends up falling down the stairs on the cactus and landing on his butt. He yells "Ow!" and pulls a chunk of cactus with needles out of his rear.

The baby grabs Oswald and they begin their trek anew. They come to a second sign, this time reading, "Wanted! Oswald -- Dead or Alive". Two skeletons pop up from behind it, point at the rabbit and yell, "Aha!" Oswald flees yet again, the baby stretches and catches him as before. With the baby bawling again, Oswald dances over to a half-buried bull skeleton, picks up two bones, and starts to play the ribcage like a vibraphone. A crow caws along with the song, a donkey skeleton (still with flesh on its tail, feet, and head) brays along, and the bull skeleton rattles its tail bell to Oswald's merry tune.

The baby has had enough and pulls Oswald away once more, where they encounter a third sign reading, "Wanted! Oswald DEAD". When three skeletons pop up this time, Oswald hits the bricks, and the baby repeats his arm-stretching trick. Oswald forms his ears into the hat of a parade marshall, grabs a bone and throws it around his body like a baton. He starts to march to the tune of The Stars and Stripes Forever. The tune is kicked off by a rattlesnake who knocks his nose on a skull and then rattles his tail. A cactus is inspired to march along, taking on semi-human form (only with bristles) and is joined by a tree, whose leaves drop about the tree's middle to form what is supposed to either be a tutu or what really appears to look like ostrich feathers (or both). The cactus and tree dance together to the music for a bit, but then Oswald spies danger!

He drops the bone and he rushes to where the baby is attempting to drink water at a small pool, which sits next to a dead tree with a branch sticking through a skull on top of it. A small sign reads, "Poison Water -- Help Your Self". (There is even a handy cup on a hook to help the thirsty traveler.) The baby tries to drink but Oswald pulls him away. The lad breaks free by punching the rabbit in the face, and then drinks down everything in the pool. When he does, the screen goes black, and then the black moves downward on the screen to reveal the inside of the pool. We see a walrus wearing a professor cap, three fish playing trombone, drums, and cello respectively, and a lone frog with a clarinet. The walrus commands, "Eins, drei, Spielen!" and the band starts to play How Dry I Am. (The walrus prof is not very pleased with their performance.)

Back on the ground, the baby finds his father sitting under a makeshift Christmas tree (a cactus with a combination of pipes, branches, bottles, corkscrew, sombrero, umbrella, and an old boot) with a sign that says, "Piece [sic] on Earth". "Merry Christmas, Dad!" the baby cries, and he pulls Oswald up to the sheriff by his rabbit ears. The sheriff is joyous to see his son but even more so to catch Oswald. When he reaches to grab the rabbit, Oswald jumps out of his skin, revealing his skeleton, but falls back in as the sheriff misses. Oswald runs, but the sheriff grabs his powderpuff tail. Oswald keeps running, and his tail stretches tremendously far, until the sheriff lets go. The tail snaps back violently at the would-be robber, and splits Oswald briefly into eight tinier Oswalds, which then form back into the full-sized one.

On the soundtrack we hear a chorus sing as Oswald continues his escape:

"I'm heading for the desert...
Boop-boop-a-doop
Boop-boop-a-doop
Boop-boop-a-doop
That's Oswald!"

The film cuts to a cartoonish Universal Pictures logo, signifying the end of the cartoon.

Hells Bells is exactly the sort of early '30s comic surrealism that I adore, and it is a really fun cartoon. Adding to the fun are the backgrounds, which really remind me of Herriman's Krazy Kat (the comic strip, of which I am a big fan, but not the cartoon series, which goes far afield of the original creation). I love the roughness of the background drawings. Rather than have the polished and painted backdrops of later films (which I love as well) for all studios, every pile of rocks and tree and even the town looked like they were sketched really fast and thrown up on screen. This works because the draftsmanship is excellent. And combined with the rubber hose animation, everything comes together in a very pleasing way. A lot of the credit for this goes to Bill Nolan, who not only wrote the story but also animated portions of the film, and who previously worked on Felix the Cat and Krazy Kat as well before coming over to Lantz.

I know that as a Disney fan, I was immensely pleased to find out that Disney had somehow found their way back to owning Oswald again where he started. But Oswald has been around for so long, and gone through so many iterations, I have a hard time believing that the one that is now back at Disney is the same rabbit. I have gone wild in purchasing nearly everything with the rabbit on it: ears, a hoodie, a phone case, pins, t-shirts... I've been grabbing whatever they have come out with so far. 

But I also know that the Oswald at Disneyland is not necessarily the same Oswald I saw in cartoons occasionally over the years. I mostly saw shorts done by Walter Lantz, some in the same tone as Hells Heels, some where he has been softened somewhat and cavorts through fairy tale adventures, and even some of the later ones where Oswald was a white rabbit mysteriously and was overly cute and schmaltzy. The Oswald in Hells Heels is closer to that original rabbit, and that seems to me to be the prime place to watch him; freshly purloined from his original creators, but getting a charge from being at the forefront of the rubber hose groove. The best way to handle a rabbit with multiple personalities is to hang out mainly with the personality that is the most fun.