About Me

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Washington, United States
loves: you win if you guessed "pets" and "museums". Also books, art history, travel, British punk, Korean kimchi, bindis, martinis, and other things TBD. I will always make it very clear if a post is sponsored in any way. Drop me a line at thepetmuseum AT gmail.com !

Saturday, December 27, 2008

that rabbit? with the pancake on its head?

You know those photos somebody will toss into a thread occasionally - "I have no idea what you're talking about so here's a (animal of some sort) with a (food of some variety) on its head?"

I always thought it was cute and random, some wacky tossaway catchphrase, but should have figured out it had a specific source. Catchphrases usually do.

The source's name was Oolong, and he was the original bunny with a pancake on his head. The pet of Japanese photographer Hironori Akutagawa, Oolong showed early on a willingness to park thingies on his noggin while Akutagawa took playful shots. Many, many things. Akutagawa called it "head performance." It was a hit, and continued for the rest of Oolong's quite long life.

Oolong died at the age of eight and a half. Akutagawa has a new bunny now, named Yuebing, that he is training for new head performances. If you'd like to keep up, here's Oolong's and Akutagawa's website (Japanese only, though!). Wikipedia will help you learn some more.

As we go into the New Year I like to think that sometimes we should just stop what we're worrying about what we're doing and check out a bunny with a pancake on his head.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

And now you can figure out where Disapproving Rabbits started... ;-)

parlance said...

Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you!

For some reason I'm feeling low today - hmm, could it be that I'm too old to stay out till 1pm? - and your bunny pictures are wonderfully uplifting. I'm bookmarking them.

Yes, we should take time out to look at bunny pictures. I'll add it to pausing to smell the roses.

The pictures for no logical reason made me think of one of my favorite sites, where I take time out sometimes to listen to the horses singing. It's http://www.clickpix.de/horses.htm