Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 2, 1992 TAG: 9112310324
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Joel Achenbach
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
FOR PLUTO, IT'S ALWAYS A DOG'S LIFE
Q: Why can Goofy drive, talk, wear clothes and act like a human, while Pluto, the other Disney dog, can't?A: We ask this question in full awareness that our readers much prefer questions about physics and chemistry, such as, "Why are electrons so nifty?" and "Why does a muon act like a quark except when it's feeling like a Z-boson?"
But we're fresh out of those mind-benders at the moment.
Pluto can't do the things Goofy can do because Pluto is Mickey Mouse's pet dog. Thus Pluto is a lower order of cartoon figure. Rather than being a humanized animal, he is the pet of a humanized animal, and therefore his abilities must be limited, relative to his master, Mickey, and his master's pals, Donald Duck and Goofy.
Jennie Hendrickson of the Disney archives in Burbank, Calif., says Pluto first appeared, unnamed, in "The Chain Gang" in 1930, then was Rover for a brief spell before becoming Pluto in "The Moose Hunt" in 1931. He has spoken occasionally, but basically has been an inarticulate quadruped limited to miming jokes.
Q: Why do car speedometers go up to 120 miles per hour even though such speeds are incredibly illegal?
A: When we buy a car, we always look for one with a speedometer that stops right at 55. With a frightening-looking red zone going all the way up to 65. Just in case we might want to open 'er up and clean 'er out on a rural Interstate.
The real question is: Why does the new Ford Taurus SHO speedometer go up to 140? Isn't that overkill? (Not to mention overdrive.)
"We are only indicating the top performance level of a vehicle," says Nick Sharkey, a Ford spokesman. "Although we don't want people to drive the Taurus SHO at 140, it does show them that when they get in difficult driving conditions, it does have quicker pickup than cars with a slower driving range."
In other words, let's say you're in a school zone and you need to pass a stopped school bus before . . . oh, never mind.
The truth, of course, is that the 140 on the speedometer is a "selling point." Some people feel better about themselves at high speeds. Maybe they should just put a flashing red light on the dashboard saying, "You Are a Major Hunk-O-Burnin'-Love" or something reassuring like that.
The mailbag:
Michael H. of Silver Spring, Md., asks: Why is the copyright date of a film rendered in Roman numerals?
This, he points out, is a truly obnoxious tradition. At 2 in the morning, watching those night-owl movies on TV, it seems urgent to know when a movie was made, but the copyright flashes on the screen for only .2 seconds and it says "XXLMMLXKGOOBERXXVVIIIII" or something like that. Why can't it just say "1937"?
The answer is . . . because the movie people don't want you to know what year the thing was made. That, at least, is the best guess of David L. Parker, a curator at the Library of Congress film division.
"The idea is that an old picture isn't as relevant," he says. "That's been given for years as the reason."
Back in the early days of film, there wasn't any magic in the concept of "old movies." Some films were made but not released for a couple of years. The Roman numerals were just obfuscation.
Even today, we see this practice in national magazines. Go to the newsstand in December and you can't buy the December issue of any magazine - they're all dated January or February, to improve the shelf life.
Joel Achenbach writes for the Style section of The Washington Post.