Tag Archives: billiards cartoons

Hey Kids! Want to Watch Billiards?

Jason Ferguson, the Chairman of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA), has argued for the inclusion of billiards at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics because of the sport’s global reach and influence.  According to Mr. Ferguson, snooker is watched by a half billion people worldwide and played in 90 countries. When pool and carom billiards are added, the sport is played competitively in almost every country in the world.[1]

Pat & Mat billiardsI speculate that critical to the sport’s worldwide popularity is the introduction of billiards to children at a very young age through creative and enjoyable television programming. In the past, I’ve blogged about several of such shows, including Pat & Mat (“Billiard”) from the Czech Republic, Shaun the Sheep (“Shaun Goes Potty”) from the UK, and Benrat (“Billiards”) from China.

This time, my globe-hopping, TV-watching peregrinations took me to Scotland, South Korea, and Russia for some billiards-themed programming aimed at the 3- to 8-year-old crowd. It’s hard to imagine how exposure to the sport at such a developing age doesn’t contribute to the ubiquitous phenomenon of competitive billiards.

Nina and the Neurons – Get Sporty: “Snooker”

Nina and the Neurons billiards“How do you play snooker?,” asks one of the two child Experimenters on the “Snooker” episode of Nina and the Neurons, a Scottish television show aimed at helping four to six-year-olds understand basic science.  It’s the type of question that could spark a billiards battle royale. Fortunately, the show’s lead, Nina (Katrina Bryan) is not prone to the braggadocio and showmanship that might accompany a response, but rather enlists her five Neurons (animated characters representing the senses) to answer the question.

In the “Snooker” episode from the 2014 Get Sporty season, the Neuron that answers Nina’s call is Luke, who represents the sense of sight.  Along with the pint-sized Experimenters, Nina and Luke arrange a series of experiments to illustrate various scientific principles of snooker, such as “balls can’t move themselves, so we use a snooker cue” or “balls move in the direction on the opposite side that they’re hit.”  (This particular experiment involves turning the two moppets into giant snooker balls.) Finally, Nina takes the Experimenters to visit professional snooker player Dylan Craig to show how bouncing balls off a rail cushion is another way to move them into pockets. The full 14-minute episode is available to watch here.

Bernard – “Billiards”

Bernard billiardsKnown as Backkom in its native South Korea, the South Korean-Spanish-France computer animated television Bernard series centers on a curious polar bear named Bernard, whose bumbling slapstick antics typically result in the bear being knocked unconscious or being severely injured by the end of an episode. Bernard is also typically accompanied by one or more members of his menagerie of friends, including two penguins, a lizard, a Chihuahua, a do, and a porcupine.

In the three-and-a-half minute “Billiards” episode, which aired sometime between 2006 and 2012, Bernard competes in a game of 9-ball against his lizard pal Zack.  Bernard has a strong break and some modicum of talent, but he’s no match for his lacertilian opponent.  Once it is Zack’s turn, the lizard brings his A-game, making a behind-the-back masse shot followed by a jump shot the length of the long rail and then a second masse shot.

Realizing Zack is about to run the table, Bernard sabotages his game, frightening him into missing a shot and then blocking the path of the 1-ball with his ursine girth. This causes the frustrated lizard to quit. But, the moment Bernard attempts to savor his victory, he slips on a discarded ball, banging his head on the side table, and falling unconscious. The full episode is available to watch here.

Kikioriki – “The Game Must Go On”

Kikioriki is a Russian animated television series that consists of more than 200 episodes, each 6 minutes and 30 seconds, aimed at children 3- to 8-years old. The series premiered in 2004. Four years later, the English-language rights were acquired and it began airing on The CW under the name GoGoRiki. Created as part of Russia’s cultural-education “World Without Violence” project, the series features stylized round animals, known as Smeshariki, that engage with one another around complex themes

KikiOriki billiardsIn “The Game Must Go On,” which aired in 2009 as part of the second GoGoRiki season, Dokko, a golden moose who is an eccentric scientist, and Carlin, a dark blue crow, play a friendly game of billiards that gets a wee bit too serious.

Oh, there is so much to like about this episode! For starters, the characters are playing Russian pyramid, a version of billiards that requires opponents to sink 15 numbered white balls. Then, there is the priceless dialogue, such as Dokko’s professorial yet condescending opener: “Billiards is a game where everything counts, both physical and geometrical laws, an eagle sharp eye, a hand steady as a boulder, and ice cold nerves. If you lack even one of those things, you’ll never amount to a much of a player.”

As the match progresses, Dokko has a pitch-perfect comment for everything, whether it’s how to make a shot (“The angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection. Give it a little bit of spin, and release the hounds.”), or why his missed shot was an anomaly (“Even I mess up now and again.  Since it happened now, it won’t happen again.”)

But, Dokko vastly under-estimates Carlin, who starts to make his shots.  The score begins to tighten, and each player refuses the other’s mercy offer to end the game.  As the match progresses, torrential rain pours from the sky (“This isn’t billiards. It’s water polo played with a couple of sticks.”), but neither headstrong opponent will call it quits. Eventually, frustration and exhaustion set in, and the players break their sticks, and rip the table apart to use the rails as makeshift cues.  Only when lightning strikes, electrocuting both players, does the game reach its denouement with the players calling it a draw. The full episode is available to watch here.

Well, that’s enough traveling for one today. Fortunately, the pre-tween, billiard scene is sufficiently thriving that I can return to the topic in a future blog post to review shows such as Pleasant Goat (“The Focus in Billiards”), Danny and Daddy (“Billiards or Worms?”) or BinkieTV (“Learn Colors with Billiard Balls”).  Until then, may our kids learn life’s lessons, one billiard ball at a time.

[1]       “Billiards sports queue up for Tokyo 2020 Olympic inclusion,” Inside the Games, January 23, 2015

Birds and Fish and Sheep, Oh My!

Though few animals can shoot billiards with the same deftness and ability as the famous palomino in “Ed the Pool Player” from the television series Mr. Ed, the talking equine is not alone in its anthropomorphic pool prowess. On the contrary, the past half century has witnessed a number of animated animals pick up the cue stick, whether with wing, flipper, or cloven hoof, oh my!

billiards cartoonsAt the top of the list for pure pool showmanship is the famous Picadae with the unmistakable laugh, Woody Woodpecker. The red-white-and-blue avian, created in 1940 by Walter Lantz and Ben “Bugs” Hardaway, and the star of almost 200 episodes before calling it quits in 1972, re-emerged in 1999 on a new cartoon entitled The New Woody Woodpecker Show.

In “Cue the Pool Shark,” the six-minute segment kicking off the third and final 2002 season of that new series, Woody saunters into Buzz Buzzard’s Billiards Pool Emporium to play some pool, not realizing the proprietor, Buzz Buzzard (voiced by Jedi warrior Mark Hamill) sees him as “a new customer to con.” After Buzz’s lackey convinces Woody (with some duplicity involving magnetized balls) that his game is quite good, Woody agrees to compete with Buzz in a $79 winner-takes-all game of straight pool to 100 points. But, only a few shots later, Woody suspects he’s been hustled, especially when Buzz successfully calls “all the balls in the corner pocket, bank it off the lamp,” racking up 15 points in a single shot.

billiards cartoonsThat’s when Woody decides to turn the tables by hoodwinking Buzz into squaring off on a series of comically improbable trick shots, from “off the jukebox, over the moose, out the door, and into the mailbox” to “down the (telephone) wire, staircase, waste basket.” But, the raptor doesn’t realize that Woody is using the shots to lure him from “desk, off the clock, up the stairs, down the sink…” and into a jail cell.

It’s a shame that the otherwise humorous episode ends with Woody’s painful lament, “I think I’ll celebrate by playing some golf, Chinese checkers, anything but pool!” – and that’s even after reclaiming his $79. The full episode is available to watch here.

From Buzzards’ Billiards, we can swim over to Neptune Bay, where Wanda the octopus recently purchased a pool table, thinking it might “boost business.” That is the set-up for the 11-minute 2000 “Pool Shark” episode of Rainbow Fish, a children’s animated television series, based on the children’s book Rainbow Fish, written and drawn by Marcus Pfister in 1992.

billiards cartoonsIn “Pool Shark” the baize has barely had time to soak before Chomper’s cousin Slick, a beret-and-shades wearing shark, has taken center stage, effortlessly dispatching his opponents and winning kelp gushers. Rainbow’s not a bad shot, but he’s easily seduced by his fellow piscine pool player, and quickly swears his allegiance as a personal assistant, thereby blowing off his other friends, including Blue, a blue fish, who disdainfully suggests “pool is not even a real sport.” (Boo!!!)

billiards cartoonsUttering a line that might have come right from Finnegan on TruTV’s The Hustlers, Slick shares with Rainbow that the key to winning in billiards is “getting the edge on your opponent.” But, much like Woody, Rainbow starts to suspect that Slick is cheating, especially after he sees him exchange cue balls (an old hustling technique). The key is to catch him in the act. The opportunity surfaces when Rainbow challenges Slick to a game of Pacific 9-Ball (players alternate shots, winner is the first to clear the table), in which the stakes are the “winner stays at Wanda’s, the loser finds a new game.” Slick’s hustle is ultimately foiled when Wanda spies his sleight-of-hand, and the phony cue ball is cracked open revealing a disgruntled fish who is tired of swimming inside the ball and acting as its internal GPS. Slick is quickly forced to leave Neptune Bay, proving once again, kids, that crime doesn’t pay.

The “Pool Shark” episode of Rainbow Fish is available to download from the iTunes store.

Finally, back on dry land, in the “Shaun Goes Potty” episode of Shaun the Sheep, a flock of sheep are delighted to learn that the Farmer has had a new billiards table shipped to Mossy Bottom Farm, where he resides. Shaun the Sheep is a British stop-motion animated series that was spun off from the Wallace and Gromit franchise. The series first aired in 2007 and is currently entering its fifth season after 130 seven-minute episodes.

billiards cartoonsIn the second season “Shaun Goes Potty” episode from 2010, Shaun, the mischievous but clever ovine, challenges Bitzer, the Farmer’s sheepdog, to a game of blackball on the new table. (For the uninitiated, blackball, a game of pool popular in the United Kingdom, is a variant of 8-ball, with 15 solid, unnumbered red and yellow balls replacing their American solid-and-stripe numbered counterparts.) Shaun is a reasonable shot, demonstrating some masse and making a two-in-one carom, before pocketing the cue. He is well-matched by the cocky Bitzer, who runs a handful of balls and even attempts a no-look, before scratching. Down to just the blackball, Bitzer distracts Shaun with an air horn, resulting in a shot (similar to those in The New Woody Woodpecker episode) that goes off a tree, down a roof, down a gutter, into a gopher hole, before being ejected by the angry rodent and thrown back onto the table. Seemingly to have the game in hand, Bitzer confidently lines up his shot, only to get equally distracted by the horn of the Farmer’s approaching auto, and in the process, rips the table’s felt. Fortunately, the animal farm rallies to the rescue, patching the rip with some lawn and mowing it to verdant perfection. The full episode is available to watch here.

So, there you have it…a regular menagerie of pool players, from sharks and rainbow fish to sheep and sheepdogs to woodpeckers and buzzards. Throw in the talking horse, a cat and mouse (cf. Tom and Jerry – “Cue Ball Cat”), and maybe a famous duck (cf. Donald in Mathmagic Land), and we’ve got the founding membership of the future Billiards Congress of America Zoo of Fame.

Top 10 Cartoon Cue Stick Carriers

Beetle Bailey - Cartoon BilliardsRecently, I stumbled across the cover of a 1967 Beetle Bailey comic book featuring Private Beetle Bailey in one of his many ongoing efforts to taunt, tease, and rattle Sergeant Orville Snorkel, this time as he attempts to play pool. Looking at Mort Walker’s snaggle-toothed military man set up his shot, it made me wonder how many other cartoon and animated characters played billiards. While the list below is far from comprehensive, it is my attempt to list the TOP 10 CARTOON (AND ANIMATED) CUE STICK CARRIERS. Let the countdown begin:

Pinnochio - Cartoon Billiards10. Pinocchio. Gepetto may be harboring some regrets now that the Blue Fairy has breathed some life into his wooden puppet Pinocchio. In the 1940 film Pinocchio, the path to becoming a real boy is littered with distractions, including playing pool with the delinquent Lampwick and taking deep drags on fat cigars. My advice: keep listening to your “conscience” Jiminy Cricket…except when it comes to shooting billiards. For that, better to listen to Lampwick. He’s quite the shark!

Pat & Mat - Cartoon Billiards9. Pat & Mat. In the 1994 “Billiard” episode of the Czech stop-motion animated series Pat & Mat, the two handymen are determined to play a game destíkový carambol, which is Czech for “tenfold carom,” a variation of the carom billiards game four-ball. However, a faulty table leg dooms the game to one Rube Goldbergian solution after another, with balls eventually falling down the toilet and exploding in the fireplace.

Casper - Cartoon Billiards8. Casper. It’s hard to believe the Friendly Ghost could hold a cue stick, never mind make three balls in the same shot, but apparently that’s what this affable phantasm is capable of, according to this 1958 comic book. The jury is still out whether being able to float through a table is a true advantage. He did scratch, after all.

 

Woody Woodpecker - Cartoon Billiards7. Woody Woodpecker. The anthropomorphic avian with the annoying laugh is a long-time pool player, based on the 2002 “Cue the Pool Shark” episode of The New Woody Woodpecker Show. Facing off against his nemesis Buzz Buzzard, Woody manages to outplay the cheater with a series of gravity-defying trick shots.

 

Rainbow Fish - Cartoon Billiards6. Rainbow Fish. In the 2000 “Pool Shark” episode of Rainbow Fish, Chomper’s cousin Slick is visiting Neptune’s Bay, where he likes to hang at Wanda’s Café, which has a new pool table. The piscine pool player dazzles initially, causing Rainbow to swear his allegiance as a personal assistant and blow off his other friends. But, apparently his game is more cheating than skills, causing one to question the real upside of playing with flippers.

Marvel-DC - Cartoon Billiards5. Captain America. DC and Marvel collide in the pool hall, as America’s #1 Freedom Fighter temporarily puts down his shield and picks up his cue stick. Unfortunately, he might have been a little too distracted by Rogue in her thigh-highs, as he ends up knocking over the Man of Steel’s drink. Major pool faux pas…but then judging by Cap’s stance and grip, billiards was never really his game.

Tom & Jerry - Cartoon Billiards4. Tom & Jerry. Viewers of Tom & Jerry will recall that these two animals can really brawl. In the 1950 episode “Cue Ball Cat,” the battle takes place in a pool hall. Over the course of seven minutes, Tom torments Jerry with a variety of billiards shots that leave him spinning, reeling, running, chalked, and even imprinted (temporarily, of course) with an 8-ball on the backside.  Jerry, never one to back down from the big kitty, fights back, batting billiards balls into Tom’s eyes, shooting the bridge like an arrow into Tom’s mouth, and fooling Tom into swallowing seven balls.

Fred Flintstone - Cartoon Billiards3. Fred Flintstone. “Twinkletoes” may be well-known for his bowling and golf games, but the famous caveman of bedrock also had a real talent for pool, even with slightly crooked sticks and uneven billiards balls. Flintstone showed off his skills in the 1960 Flintstones episode, “At the Races,” as he and his BFF Barney Rubble hatch a get-rich-quick scheme that involves owning a pool hall.

Death Billiards2. Death Billiards. For real high-stakes billiards, check out the “death match” between the young and old man in the 2013 anime film Death Billiards. These two have been brought to a bar to compete in a game of billiards and to “play as if their lives depended on it.”  While it’s unclear who actually wins the game, let’s just say one should never play pool with balls that are adorned with images of body parts.

 

Donald in Mathmagic Land1. Donald Duck. Even if his game is not great, Donald ultimately develops the best attitude about billiards, learning to appreciate the games for its mathematical beauty in the 1957 featurette Donald in Mathmagic Land.   With the Spirit providing the educational commentary on the diamond system and an unidentified Roman Yanez providing the incredible three-cushion billiards visuals, this duck is well on his way to becoming a shark.

So, there’s my Top 10 list. Just don’t let that Wascally Wabbit know he didn’t make the cut. I hear once he puts down the carrot and picks up the cue stick, he’s quite the pro. See a character missing? Let me know who would be on your Top 10.

Donald in Mathmagic Land

In October 1957, the Soviet Union kicked off the Space Race with the launch of Sputnik.  In the United States, instant humiliation was immediately followed by a wave of national panic, and then a wide range of federal initiatives, ranging from investments in defense to investments in science, technology, and mathematics education.

Donald in Mathmagic LandOne new piece of legislation, The National Defense Education Act, provided (among other things) a windfall for producers of educational films.  And according to historian Martin F. Norden, no company was better prepared to benefit from that windfall than Disney Studios, which had “already positioned itself as a significant educational force in the fields of education, science, nature and technology years before the Sputnik launch.”[1]  Less than two years later, Disney Studios, with support from the US government, released its 27-minute educational featurette Donald in Mathmagic Land.  This film, subsequently nominated for an Academy Award (Best Documentary – Short Subjects), was widely made available to schools and became one of the most popular educational films ever made.  It can be watched here.

As Walt Disney once explained, Donald in Mathmagic Land was created to “excite public interest in this very important subject [of mathematics].” The film features Donald Duck roaming a Wonderland-esque world of mathematics.  During his journey, in which he follows the voice of the faceless Spirit, he is told that he’ll find “mathematics in the darnedest places.”  This peregrination takes Donald from ancient Greece and a meeting with Pythagoras to the Notre Dame Cathedral, where he learns about the golden rectangle.

But, it is when the Spirit tells him that “practically all games are played on geometric areas,” that Donald sees the application of mathematics to baseball, basketball, hopscotch, and ultimately, to a game that involves “two perfect squares, three perfect spheres, and a lot of diamonds…in other words, billiards” — three-cushion billiards, to be precise. (The billiards sequence runs from 16:49 – 22:15 in the clip above.)

Though Donald initially believe billiards to be a game of luck, he learns quickly from the Spirit that it is a game of skill in which “you have to know all the angles…it’s a game that takes precise calculation.” As the Spirit talks, a real (as opposed to animated), unidentified billiards player makes one gorgeous three-cushion shot after another.  (The unidentified player, in fact, is Roman Yanez, the owner of a Los Angeles billiards hall in the 1950s and a periodic tournament player, who got 10th place in the 1964 U.S. National 3-Cushion Championship.)

The Spirit explains that the player is using “the diamond system as a mathematical guide.”  He then elaborates on the “simple” math used in which the player subtracts the “cue position” from the “natural angle for the hit” to determine the appropriate numbered diamond at which to aim.  It’s interesting to hear the Spirit attempt to simplify the diamond system, and wildly humorous to watch Donald Duck attempt to internalize it.

The particular version he is describing – the five-corner system – is far less common now, except perhaps in three-cushion billiards.  Ironically, the diamonds have become an ongoing source of debate.  Some world-class players don’t use the diamonds at all, some use them to check their instinct and some swear by the diamonds for special situations.  For example, WPBA professional (and star of the movie 9-Ball) Jennifer Baretta says, “For people who play three-cushion billiards these systems are absolutely essential, but they also apply on any table where the width (short rail) is half the length (long rail).”[2]

While Donald in Mathmagic Land may not have had a lasting impact on the adoption of the diamond system in billiards, it clearly has had a lasting impact on billiards players, many of whom remember it fondly from growing up.  There are an endless number of tender-hearted comments about the film online, but I particularly love the tribute below from John Sciatta’s blog:

The part that I loved, the part I looked forward to each year was when Donald would use math to explain three-cushion billiards. This part was brilliant. This part was fascinating. This part made total and absolute and perfect sense. I would watch this scene each year and be like, “Yes! You’re right, Donald! The diamond system…But then a strange phenomenon would happen; the movie would end, and with the diamond system dancing in your head, it would all start to get jumbled. And no matter HOW MANY times I watched it, I could never keep the diamond system straight. I felt like the guy from Memento… I rented it prior to going out and actually playing pool and it still didn’t stick. I swear, watching the DD in MM Land billiards scenes is like trying to solve one of the great mysteries of our day.

[1]       “A Journey Through the Wonderland of Mathematics: Donald in Mathmagic Land,” by Martin F. Norden.  Printed in Learning from Mickey, Donald, and Walt: Essays on Disneys’ Edutainment Films, ed. A. Bowdoin Van Riper.

[2]      http://www.pooldawg.com/article/pooldawg-library/diamonds-are-a-girl-s-best-friend

“Cue Ball Cat” – Tom and Jerry

Today, October 28, is International Animation Day, an event observed in more than 50 countries across every continent to celebrate animation.  What better way to honor this special day than to blog about the Tom and Jerry billiards short film “Cue Ball Cat,” released in November 1950 by MGM Studios.

Tom & Jerry - Cue Ball CatIn this particular one-reel, seven-minute cartoon, shown in its entirety below, Tom is in an after-hours pool hall, practicing his bank shots, and taking some feline liberties to ensure the balls go in the pocket.   He soon discovers that Jerry is sleeping in one of the pockets.  Since a pool hall is no place for a mouse, Tom proceeds to torment Jerry with a variety of shots that leave him spinning, reeling, running, chalked, and even imprinted (temporarily, of course) with an 8-ball on the backside.  Jerry, never one to back down from the big kitty, fights back, batting billiards balls into Tom’s eyes, shooting the bridge like an arrow into Tom’s mouth, sending Tom crashing into a drink machine, fooling Tom into swallowing seven balls, and in general, adhering to the violent formula of sight gags and ensuing mayhem that made Tom and Jerry one of the most successful cartoons ever, including winning seven Academy Awards.

As one reviewer noted in the blog The Acme Factory, “The best Tom and Jerry cartoons are the ones that really stay away from any kind of story and just feature the cat and mouse beating the tar out of each other…Such is the case with “Cue Ball Cat”…Both Tom and Jerry take their knocks in this one, an equally painful competition which is always nice to see.”

“Cue Ball Cat” would not be the last time these two nemeses scuffled in a pool hall.  Fifteen years later, in the 1965 cartoon “Of Feline Bondage,” Tom and Jerry again briefly engaged in a billiards brawl, though that episode exits the pool hall once Jerry’s fairy godmother intervenes.

Interestingly, the pool table has been the setting for farcical violent animation through the history of billiards short animated films.  In the 1915 stop-animation short film Pool Sharks, W.C Fields and his billiards rival get into a fight over a woman that leads to balls flying and goldfish bowls breaking.   At the other end of the timeline, in 2004, Stan Prokopenko created A Game of Pool, a 3D-animated short film about a rack of billiard balls that split into two teams – solids and stripes – and proceed to “battle” by knocking one another into pockets, with the last ball standing facing off against the 8-ball.

Guess it proves that just because one’s not on the gridiron, on the racetrack, or in the ring, it doesn’t mean the sport can’t be bellicose.  Just look at billiards, after all.