Nudnik on a Shoestring

"Nudnik on a shoestring" is the 9th episode of the series produced. In this episode, Nudnik goes to the department store to buy some shoelaces, but, like many of his typical escapades, doesn't go according as planned.

## Summary

The episode begins with the shot panning into the overhang of a clock repair shop. The ringing of the clock on the building wakes him up suddenly, and he promptly turns it off, as if it were an alarm clock. He looks at himself in the reflection of a streetlamp and puts on his bandana, flattening it out with water from a watering can, and he's ready to start his day, all he needs to do now his tie is shoes, which is where his problems in this episode begin. He gets up and attempts to tie his shoes, but accidentally ties them to the overhang, hanging him upside down from it, and in an attempt to untie them he accidentally gets his fingers stuck to his laces. A man with farming equipment including a rake walks by, and unbeknownst to him, the rake catches Nudnik's pants and sends him bouncing across the other overhangs until he lands on the sidewalk in front of a department store.

Like the narration states, his problem was simple enough, all he needed was a new pair of shoelaces. Conveniently enough, the department store has a special on shoelaces, so Nudnik decides to head on in and get some, but his first obstacle entering the building at all. The door opens with a button, but every time Nudnik presses it, he just can't seem to make it in the building before the door closes, so instead, after being flung off the door, he hides in a woman's bag as she walks into the department store and gets in that way. He notices an information booth and shows the woman in the booth his shoelace in hopes he could be directed to the shoelaces, but a line starts and moves quicker than he could anticipate, so after being shoved to the back of the line he tries again, but to no avail, so he exits the line and sighs.

After being trampled by a crowd of people, he lands on an escalator and gets his scarf stuck, and attempts to walk down and get it unstuck. He gets on a nearby clothing cart in hopes perhaps pulling it would get it unstuck, but this ends up launching him back down the escalator, freeing him, but his scarf ended up being bent to how the escalator moved. Thankfully with an electric heater nearby, he warmed up his shoe to use as an iron to flatten out his scarf, and he was successful, but gets his shoe stuck on a floor tile, so being as resourceful as he is, he uses a nearby electric can opener to get it off and puts the remaining tile back in its place.

Now Nudnik just needed to get what he initially came there for, shoelaces. Seeing as he was too short to reach them, he uses a nearby rolling ladder to try and get them, but instead it takes Nudnik for a ride throughout the store, and this causes all sorts of mayhem, just a chain reaction of events, from accidentally landing in a women's changing room, to accidentally starting a lawnmower when he meant to open a door. After uncontrollably taking a trip on the lawnmower throughout the store, he manages to take it apart, but the spinning blade propels him through the ceiling and back down again, lands in a gift box being prepared to ship out and gets put on a cart with other gift boxes. He manages to roll off the cart and get himself out of the box, and to his surprise, the ribbons from the box made for some really elegant shoelaces. Delighted at his new shoelaces, he kicks away the leftover box, unintentionally striking the other boxes on the cart, and the episode ends as Nudnik runs off into the distance being chased by the tumbling giftboxes down the road.

## Characters

* Nudnik
* Crowd of people
* The fat woman
* Salesmen
* A random woman
* A random man
* Lady at the info booth
* Department store employee

## Trivia

* This episode is one of the only ones to have narration by Gene Deitch, other than I Remember Nudnik, as when dialogue was becoming more popular in film, it was requested by Paramount for Gene to add in narration.
* This episode has an zoom effect in one scene where Nudnik is on the ladder, but interestingly enough the quality is lowered in this scene too, and it's unknown why this is.
* In the Yaramaz Nudnik DVD with this episode, there's foreign dialogue put over the gibberish of the people in line. What they're saying in this dub is unknown for now.
* In the beginning of the episode, the clock on the building points to 5:05, meaning Nudnik woke up late in the afternoon, and considering most of the episodes start with Nudnik waking up in the daytime shows he's a late sleeper in general.