I was only eight blog.

I was going to forward a peculiar e-mail message I got at the office today to my home for discussion here this evening, but I forgot. So I’ll have to take up Scooby-Doo as a subject. Briefly.

Inspired by a box of crackers, which had the cartoon mutt on the front and the promise of sweepstakes prizes on the back, I went to the Internet Movie Database this evening to confirm that the cartoon began its run in 1969, under the full name, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? I was right, 1969, and it has been plaguing the world ever since. I watched it regularly in its first years, but I have a good excuse. I was only eight when it started, a susceptible age for awful TV.

Only a few years later I adopted a healthy disdain for it. Sometimes, as a fully grown adult, you learn to re-appreciate those things you disdained as an adolescent, but in this case my adolescent attitude is the one worth keeping. Every time I see that idiot dog and am reminded of that idiot cartoon, I think, why hasn’t it gone away? Why does it endure? Am I missing something?

No.

The grand prize in the sweepstakes, by the way, is a Mazda Minivan “customized like the Mystery Machine!” And, to make a joke that’s as original as any of the cartoon’s stories, the second prize is two Mystery Machines.