We lost another American original recently with the death of Chuck Jones. Jones was the inspired maniac who for over 60 years gave us characters like Sylvester and Tweety, Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote, and of course, the eternal smart-aleck, Bugs Bunny.

Working from a corner of the Warner Brothers studio so dilapidated it was referred to by its denizens as "Termite Terrace", Jones and his loony crew created a series of animated short films for Warner Brothers that loosed glorious anarchy upon the silver screen and, later, upon the Saturday mornings of millions of impressionable young minds like that of your Humble Columnist. Most of us never looked at the world quite the same way again.

Despite the fact that many of the old Warner cartoons were created in the 30’s and 40’s, the characters created at Termite Terrace have kept their appeal to this day. I think part of the reason is that, for the most part, they stayed away from trying to be topical. I say "for the most part" because some of the WWII-era ‘toons do send the characters to lampoon the Nazis and the Japanese. But the rest of the time, they stuck with characters and emotions to which we can all relate.

For example, anyone who has ever suffered the pain of unrequited love can’t help but have some admiration for the clueless French skunk Pepe Le Pew, whose bounding romantic optimism rendered him blind to the fact that the intended recipient of his affection not only wasn’t attracted to him, she wasn’t even the right species. But Pepe kept coming right back with his Maurice Chevalier accent, his unbearable stench, and his battle cry of "Vive L’amour!" Nowadays, of course, Pepe would have a restraining order slapped on him so fast it’d make your head spin. Ahh, For the innocence of the days when stalking was funny.

Anyone who’s ever been stymied by technology gone inexplicably wrong should hold a special place in their heart for Wile E. Coyote, whose pursuit of the obnoxious Roadrunner was thwarted by the usually catastrophic failure of the devices he either jury-rigged himself or acquired from the Acme company. Take, for example, the famous catapult episode. Wile E. decided to nail the Roadrunner with a medieval style catapult. When he stood in front of the catapult and pulled the lanyard to fire it, it slammed the rock down on him. He stood behind it to fire-- and the rock slid off the throwing arm and landed on him. He stood to the side--and the catapult rolled over and smashed him. Finally, he got under the catapult--and the wheels fell off, dropping the whole assembly onto him. Every time I see the episode, I keep looking for the Microsoft logo on the side of the catapult. Anything that crashed that many times had to have Bill Gates’ fingerprints all over it.

Those weren’t the only characters to which we can all relate: on some days, I’m sure we’ve all felt like Yosemite Sam with his anger-management problems, Porky Pig groping for the right word, or that eternal also-ran, Daffy Duck.

The quintessential Chuck Jones hero was, of course, Bugs Bunny. Bugs’ subterranean wanderings often led him into bizarre situations, mostly because he could never remember to make the left turn at Albuquerque. Bugs survived any number of hazards: the relentless Elmer Fudd, insane Confederate generals who didn’t know the war was over, dragons…on one occasion, he was even called upon to save the Earth from destruction by Marvin the Martian (who wanted to blow the planet up because it was blocking his view of Venus.) Bugs, however, did more than survive. In the Jones universe, survival was pretty much a foregone conclusion, given that a character could take a shotgun blast to the head at close range and suffer no more than their features spinning around on their head and their faces turning black. Bugs, however, not only survived, he prevailed, and he did so with a wisecrack, a raised eyebrow, and not a hare out of place (given some of the puns made in Bugs Bunny titles, I can be forgiven that one, I think.) Bugs was cool. Bugs was unflappable. Bugs was Han Solo, Indiana Jones, and Rick from Casablanca rolled into one and stuffed into the body of a giant rabbit. Jones confessed in an interview that Bugs was the person he always wanted to be, but he probably ended up being more like Daffy.

Chuck Jones died February 23d of congestive heart failure. He will be missed.

COPYRIGHT 2002 BY JERRY D. RHOADES, JR.