Up, Up and Away

Jesse: Remember in the opening credits to Webster how he grabbed that big bunch of balloons and started to float off into the sky? He was a pretty small kid huh.

Lisa: oh yeah that's a high up dog, when they jump into the air they are reaching high to catch things in their mouths like a ball or a stick, other times they are just jumping because it feels nice inside their legs or to feel the wind go through their fur is pleasant, if there was ever a dog that i could ride i would ask it to jump into the air because i've always wanted to know how it felt to fly or to ride on the back of a dog in the air other times dogs jump when they are racing because there are hurdles (they are usually graded on this) and the best is when you're there and you see it in person when they jump`

Dog Slog

Jesse: You had to know this one was coming. I’m going to try to be brief : Duane (Dog) Chapman is terrible because he not only makes bounty-hunting seem excruciatingly boring , he single-handedly drains it of any vestigial mystique and makes you realize that it’s not a cool profession for crafty tough guys who’ve gone straight but one for badly-groomed dirtbags whose only marked difference from the criminals they politely collect is their dramatically overstated sense of self importance. The entire show is a disaster. His sons (nay, everyone in his family) has painful hair and his wife is the equivlant of Saraghina from 8 1/2 if that movie had taken place in rural Arkansas instead of Italy.

Lisa: No, I don't like this at all. I have buffalo sauce on my hands and I'm very upset.

Mr. Magoo and his Dog Too

Jesse: On the surface this seems like the stupidest shit imaginable. Mr. Magoo is near-sighted, and guess what? His dog can’t see either. Har har har. But really, approaching the situation from a logical standpoint, what other kind of dog is he going to choose? The fact that Magoo fails to acknowledge his own defective eyes yet chooses a dog with the exact same malady implies that at some level, subconscious or otherwise, Magoo realizes that he can’t see. The old man is operating on an intense level of denial, which elevates the entire series into this really subtly affecting human tragedy. Pair this with the emerging theory that Magoo was a symbol for the silent majority during Vietnam (blind even to the reality of his own blindness, helplessly self-involved even as the world moves invisibly around him, yet with subtly Asian features that suggest a fixed, inherent similarity between the oppressed majorities of two vastly different nations) and maybe its time to critically reevaluate Mr. Magoo as the smartest show to ever air on television.

Lisa: oh gosh

This Old Dog

Jesse: It may be hard to imagine this in an era of photos of yourself riding Splash Mountain and security cameras and waking up on Saturday morning to find your drunk ass tagged in 319 Facebook pictures but there was once a time when a photograph was a rare and special thing. This is why no one smiles in old pictures, they knew they probably only had one chance at this and no one wanted to risk looking goofy. Also they had really bad teeth. So the next time you get back from vacation and spend 16 hours sorting through the thousands of pictures you took think about how overexposed your face is going to be over the course of your lifetime. By the time you have grandchildren they will be so awash in pictures of you brushing your teeth or giving the camera the finger that all the mystery of your youth will be entirely evaporated and they’ll be sick of you long before the age when that usually happens.

ETA 12/10/08 1:27pm:
Jesse: Lisa say something about the dog

Lisa: This dog is very well behaved -- do you know how hard it is to get a dog to sit still like that? -- and he has Big Plans, you can tell by the suitcase and the little girl's hat (in the old days hats were only worn when going on Big Trips or when meeting Important People). After the photo shoot (going on a Big Trip to meet Important People with your Favorite Dog is, of course, the kind of occasion that calls for a photo shoot -- remember, this is the old days), the little girl mounted and dog and, with the suitcase in his mouth, he carried her off into the sunset.

Raise the Woof

Jesse: Tim Allen seems like an ok guy to have a burger with and sure, we can probably all agree that Home Improvement was a pretty pleasant diversion most of the time, but this is just inexcusable. The idea of Tim Allen’s eyes planted inside a computer animated dog or even the idea of Tim Allen’s career as a whole cannot prepare you for the outright horror of this picture. This is supposed to be a children’s movie for god’s sake. Nice work Walt Disney Studios in creating a concept so terrifying that the kids who actually saw this film are probably irreparably scarred in some weird, boring way, so much so that in 30 years psychiatrists will probably have named a syndrome behind it.

Lisa: GOODNESS I NEVER NOTICED THE EYES BEFORE
why did they do that
raise the woof what a pun

Art Woof

Jesse: Shut up Courtney. No matter what Harriet says when she’s nose deep in her eighth mimosa, gushing over your stupid ears while petting you with a pearl-handled poodle comb, you are not a work of art. She’s not even your real mother, you came from a shelter in a weird moment of impassioned guilt where she saw a special on Animal Planet and drove down there all crying with her makeup running down her face and the guy was like “uh” but she slipped him three fifties and here we are. Yes Courtney, a shelter. So get up off that handcrafted 18th century Laurent de Chevalier divan and go stick your nose in some poop like a real dog.

P.S. Nice udders fatso.

Lisa: She's winking, Jesse, which makes me think this dog has an udderstanding (thank you) of irony beyond that of the average hipster. Please be nice.