The other night I was at Keystone, sitting in a "day lodge" (whatever that's supposed to mean -- more like a bar or pub), changing out of my ski boots. A band was playing; quite a number of patrons were paying attention.

Suddenly the band broke into a tune which sounded familliar: Whimsical, choppy, yet vaguely classical: a number of riffs on the guitar, doubled by the bass, then counterpointed by a backbeat from the drum. Eventually, I placed it.

It was the Loony Toons theme song.

Sounded good done on electric guitars and drum kit, actually. The band clearly had some serious talent, as they wove between that theme and a number of other recycled commerical favorites. Probably should have noted the band's name (credit -- and publiclity -- where due, and all), but had no intention of blogging about it at the time.

This morning, it struck me as somewhat ironic, somewhat tragic: Here's a set of cartoons which are so deeply ingrained in our culture that they show up in Seinfeld scripts (Eliane, to Jerry, at the Opera: "It is so sad, all your knowledge of high culture comes from bugs bunny cartoons") and barrooms... cartoons so popular that the characters are still conscripted to shill for vitamins, shoes, and theme parks. (Bugs bunny has even been used in false memory research.)

And yet, like some lost, ancient technology nothing of significance has been produced since the early 1960s. The true classics often date from long before that (the 1930s through 1950s), and will probably remain timeless due to the paucity of contemporary refererences they contained.

So we've apparently lost the ability to produce Bugs Bunny cartoons.

Sure, we can animate the cels at record pace in South Korea, with computer-generated backgrounds that Tex Avery would have drooled over. But it's the content that has been lost: the scripts were a product and reflection of a bygone culture, a culture of polite baseball game attendence, of sport hunting, a culture where even the cartoonists were familliar with Wagner, Robinson Carusoe, and the Scarlett Pimpernel -- and these were also symbols which would also be readily recognized by their audiences.

Today, the closest thing we'll find is The Simpsons, where a "timeless reference" is a guest cameo by 70s icons Paul and Linda McCartney, lecturing Lisa (and the audience) about the evils of eating meat. And perhaps a few Halloween references to Poe's "The Raven" -- interspersed with definite PG-13 gore. And this is what the same company thinks is the heir apparent to the thone. Ecch.

I'm sorry, but it's just not the same.

I'm definitely showing my age here.

Which is, strangely, only the mid-30s.