I don’t care about how this revelation will be perceived by my readership, but I will confess that I was a huge fan of the Paramount Popeye cartoons growing up. It was Popeye who introduced me to the glories of spinach. It was Popeye who suggested to me that, even without spinach, it was okay to be a bit of a quirky bumbler. Of course, I was never really a fan of corncob pipes. But before Hemingway and Henry Miller, at the impressionable age of five, Popeye was my rather strange model for manhood. While it is true that there was only one instance where Popeye acted as a bullfighter (and required spinach to put the bull in his place), the point is that he didn’t have to put up any false machismo to work himself up. Really, it was the pesky Bluto figure who caused Popeye to eat his spinach. And Bluto, as we all know, was an extenuating circumstance.

In any event, none of this detracts from this fabulous news, uncovered by Something Old, Something New that the Popeye cartoons have been procured by Warner — i.e., the studio that put out those impressive Golden Collection DVD sets for its Looney Tunes that have had this grown adult reverting back to a five year old to nurse off occasional hangovers. No less a treatment, it seems, will be reserved for Popeye, as Warner is reportedly starting “work immediately on preservation and restoration activities.” Well, blow me down!