There seems to be a lot of mermaids showing up on the social media sites I frequent. That’s because of the efforts of my pal Tom Bancroft who started the #mermay hashtag a few years ago encouraging artists to post mermaid art each day in the month of May.
Now, while The Little Mermaid was the film that first influenced me to consider animation as a serious career choice, I am not actually a fan of mermaids. They creep me out. Half woman? Half fish? Yikes! I’ll take my women with legs thank-you-very-much. So, you haven’t seen me posting mermaids left and right here on the ol’ blog, or on Twitter, or Instagram, or Facebook.
However, I DO like puns, and the other day while perusing the latest batch of mermaids from everyone, a pun came to mind inspired by my all-time favorite comedy movie It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (which itself was full of puns). Made in 1963, it featured many of the nation’s best comic actors, and had cameos of the rest of them. It was truly epic. One of the featured players was Ethel Merman who played a loudmouthed brassy mother-in-law to the beleaguered Milton Berle.
So, here is my one entry for #mermay, Ethel Mermaid as she would have appeared in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Seaworld.
