Lychees and Leeches

At one point, following a rather unpleasant incident during my recently completed epic sojourn to the East -er West?- a shaft of sunlight broke through the Himalayan mist to bless me with a moment of SHEER LITERARY GENIUS. Thus illuminated both physically and psychically, I turned to my dear companion Alex and said "If I was going to write a blog post about my trip to India, I would call it "Lychees and Leeches." He congratulated me on the brilliance of my poetic mind and we continued on our sweaty way. Now, this title would probably be more apt for a per-blog in which I wrote about my "life-experiences", or some crap like that. Don't worry, I will not be regaling you with tales of natural wonder and cultural exchange, I just couldn't resist the word play. Instead, I shall bless you with a description of the 'mix to be found in the English language newspapers available in Calcutta. There are two of them, both purchased daily from the newspaper-wallah (little cultural info dudes: that's the guy who sells newspapers) who hawks his wares outside Alex's home. They were obtained largely for the purpose of doing the crossword in a swell, air-conditioned breakfast joint called the Calcutta Tea Table, which served real coffee, if you asked for it extra strong. You could also glean maybe a tiny little bit of national news, definitely see about what your fave cricket star was up to, and also learn right-quick that Paris Hilton was taking two hits and passing backstage at Coachella. As was my anthropological duty, I read the 'mix.

First off, there's the Calcutta Times.

Disturbingly, the 'mix are laid-out differently on different days. Sometimes they're all up in one corner! Sometimes they're all in one column along the edge of the page! How's a strategic 'mix reader supposed to maintain her reading habits? (Note: I am not actually a strategic 'mix reader, I read L2R T2B like a normal person. But I know this issue is an important for some of us.) Anyways, here's what they've got, top to bottom on a column day:

GARFIELD - Good choice! A bit behind the current storyline, it's that one about the senile petsitter when Jon and Liz are on a date.

BEAU PEEP - This strip is of British origin, and concerns the travails of a filthy chef and his really bizarrely dressed customer. From what I gleaned over reading about four strips, it just consists of the cook saying wierd things to the customer. I was kind of into it. Actually, never mind, I just looked at the website and it turns out there are way more characters than I thought and I lost interest. Apparently that wierd guy is the title charactar, and he's some sort of military man? I can't find an image of the one strip that I really appreciated, but it goes like this: The cook says to Beau Peep, "You know what I REALLY hate about flying?"/ "That bit where you link arms and do funny kicks"/(No dialogue)/"No, hang on - that's line dancing."

BETWEEN FRIENDS - According to the internet, "Best friends Maeve, Kim and Susan all came of age in the 1970's during the height of the feminist movement. Now, in their forties, these three contemporary, modern women lean on and support each other as they deal with office politics, career issues, love, motherhood and relationships. "Between Friends" takes a humorous and contemporary look at the lives of these three women in all their angst-driven, stress-filled, caffeinated glory. " That shit was boring, and, upon learning more about it, offensive. It's doesn't reach Cathy levels of apalling-ness or anything, because it doesn't have nearly as many exclamation marks for one, and the art actually looks kinda like a sloppier FBorFW. But still...here is a sample:


Retch!

THE WIZARD OF ID - Johnny Hart R.I.P., but I don't care much for this one.

ANIMAL CRACKERS - This strip is infuriating because it totes rips off the artistic stylings of Sherman's Lagoon, and I would catch it out of the corner of my eye believing I was soon to be blessed with a hilarious sharkism, only to have my hopes dashed upon the rocks of crappiness. I guess it sometimes tries to send an important message about environmentalism, which I should hypothetically be down with, but it's hard guys, it really is:



I should note that this strip, as its title might imply, actually concerns a variety of animal species, not just fish. None or them are interesting.

ARCHIES - I don't know if the actual Archie comic books are important to America's comics heritage or whatever, but this strip is basically what would happen is Dennis the Menace and Blondie had a baby (conceptually, not the actual characters you perv), and that baby had a lamer version of Blondie's artistic stylings, and a just as annoying version of D the M's "rascally-ness."

(CLASSIC) PEANUTS - Obv choice in my opinion, no problems here.

RIPLEY'S BELIEVE IT OR NOT - Panel format, not actually a comic, so much as a some funny facts about wierd stuff accompanied by an illustration in the realist style. For example: Joshua Mueller of Lakewood, Wash owns 400 pairs of sneakers!!! He wears a different pair every day of the year!!!. I enjoyed this "comic," but the print was so tiny that it hurt my eyes.

HEALTH CAPSULE - Also panel format, also not exactly a comic. I say, "wierd." And you?



A warning: "Health capsule gives helpful information. It is not intended to be of a diagnostic nature." Also I think the art annoys me.


Um, I've only covered 90% of the daily 'mix in 1 of 2 newspapers I read on the sub-con, but I have to go to work now, and considering it's been like, 2 weeks since this blog has gotten any attention, I'm gonna publish. There is a final panel in the Times which I believe deserves some attention for sure, look for a hate-fueled post IN THE FUTURE.

Shaped Like a Melon

It has recently come to my attention that short, fat, round characters in the'Mix are a consistent source of humor, and after this realization I felt the need to share briefly with my illustrious companions on the Road of Cosmic Hilarity.



While we all know that short, fat and round is cute, it wasn't necessarily clear to me that this equates with funny. I know feel strongly that it does. Let's observe yesterday's Dilbert:







Dilbert has been consistently monotonal for the past umpteen years, and I have a feeling I'm one of the only Chron readers who bothers to open up the Business section and read this 'Mic (another reason I thought I would address this today). But here, Scott Adams has tapped into one of the great veins of cute imagery, and produced... Humor! Dogbert in a suit is incontrovertably funny. Look at his fat little body! No neck! No neck is hilarious!

We've seen great animated characters displaying these traits (see Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro for perhaps the most shining example of the round-fat-cute phenomenon) for many years, but this seems to be shading over now into the Treasured Pages. Lord, I even enjoyed Lio the other day when it included a funny little monster with a squat body and just his eyes poking out. Lio! I hate that comic, and all it took was for Marc Tatulli to draw a rotund beastie, and here I am chuckling all over the floor (as opposed to chucking all over the floor, my typical reaction).

This leads me to another thought: perhaps this is the reason I enjoy Garfield so much. He's fundamentally a funny little fat-round dude. Perhaps this brand of humor has been lurking amongst us for decades, and I just never realized it. Though as the PSin'A has already addressed, there's nothing fucking funny about a weird coffee shop gag, 15 years too late. I hope whatever intern got to run wild with that one has been shipped over to Blondie and reduced to drawing the make-up lines on her cheeks for the rest of his life.

So I'll be on the road for a month or so, and this might be my last post before then. I'll leave you all in the capable hands of MG69, RStBK666, the PSin'A and the rest of the colorful characters here at RDaCw/T. Hopefully I'll have some bizarre and culturally untranslatable French 'Mix upon my return.

The Not-So-Golden Oldies

just a few minutes ago i realized i hadn't read FBFW since last sunday's blissfully text-heavy present to moms and future moms everywhere. having not much to do on the remainder of this friday workday, i decided to grab the old cyberboard and hang ten all the way on down to 'Mix Beach. what greeted me there was a "Classic Peanuts" strip.

as much as i want to discuss FBFW, i'm going to eschew another extolling of Lynn's unflinching ballsiness with this Grandpa Jim's Shitty Life arc (seriously, is she reading this blog?? they addressed his bathroom issues just days after i cracked wise about them) to discuss the phenomenon of "Classic" comics.

now I grew up in a Boston Globe household, so Peanuts was confined for me to two realms only: the televised realm and the realm of the Boston Herald. the tv specials and the strip were like night and day, as i remember it. TV gave you more snoopy and woodstalk than you could shake a stick at, while in print Peanuts was a shakily-drawn Moebius 'strip' (get it) of the same fucking gags over and over again: a baffling reflecting pool of that type of humor from the 60's that seems to be intended as childlike but is actually for adults to wax nostalgic about childhood to. Who liked this comic enough to actually subscribe to this Garfield-free, magazine-shaped newspaper? Not anyone I wanted to know, that was for sure.

Don't get me wrong. I gained an appreciation for Schultz a few years ago, roughly around the time the ads for the Christmas special started to make me emotional. To me as a child, though, Peanuts was just confusing and off-putting, much like the existance of the Boston Herald itself. I held both in the same wary gaze i saved in my early youth for sweet cereals, war toys, commericals, and maraschino cherries--- unconscious, near-moral judgement of inanimate things and the people that were allowed to experience them, instilled in me accidentally by my parents' strict routine of PBS and health food. my status at the time as a staunch Garfield loyalist probably didn't help, either; I'm sure the whole cat/dog thing only exacerbated matters and stressed a feeling of opposition that wasn't really there.

my point is-- I guess I have a pretty pronounced issue with 'classic comics,' but man does it make me feel complicated things. as someone who has often thought that he would be a passable 'micsman, it's discouraging to know that it is practically impossible to make a living as such and see spots on the page that might give an unproven talent a real shot, be instead reserved by the work of a dead man (and work already available elsewhere in published form, no less). that combined with my practically prenatal distaste for Peanuts perverts the very aim of "classic" strips to its opposite end when I am the reader, making the familiar irritating and worn-out rather than reliable and nostalgic.

but that brings me to the other side of the coin: the fact that i recognize the phenomenon of "Classics," Peanuts or otherwise, as valuable to the 'mix at large. for one, it daily (but subtly) acknowledges the hard truth that, in the 'mix, all are not created equal. some are just better than others, and i think that's something that this world of Brevities, Lios and -- I'll say it -- Pearls Before Swines should remember before they go getting too comfortable. For that matter, so does it give your Conleys, Johnstons and Borgmans something to strive for. And although my comics-reading is done almost totally online these days, I hold the memory and experience of reading them on the page quite dearly. I recognize the love that a person can have for a particular strip, and the bereavement that its sudden absence can make you feel (I can, to this day, feel the bitter sting of US Acres' unceremonious replacement by Fox Trot one cold January morn-- "First day on the job and they're already treating me like dirt," indeed). Especially for more ocd-tendencied 'mixers such as myself and 'MD420, a beloved strip's replacement fundamentally alters the rhythm of the whole experience, and rarely for the better.

Shit, now I don't even know what to think. Sorry for the long post, I guess this is a bigger topic than I thought.