Willie is not unlike Ralph Kramden, in that he is a fool in the classic sense and thus, no matter how ridiculous his antics, you can’t help identifying with him.
And the classic fool often speaks truth, as in today’s Willie & Ethel, because much of what we know about the CIA, we know from Tom Clancy, who never served in the military or worked in government.
Stephen Crane never saw battle, either, but he wrote “Red Badge of Courage” and it has rung true with vets.
Clancy’s legacy is a little more complex because I think his fans among those who have been there are less impressed with how well he captures their world than with how much more exciting and sexy he makes it all seem.
I watched Amazon’s “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan,” which is “Tom Clancy’s” because of the trademark not because it’s based on one of his books.
It’s all about branding: They borrowed the name “Jack Ryan,” and, while it’s really well put together and entertaining, the tough talk, fortuitous timing and astonishing coincidences are also appropriately farcical.
Though compared to most Marvel films, it comes across like Merchant Ivory.
And if Joe Martin may have streamed the Amazon series before drawing that cartoon, I’m convinced that Adam Huber stumbled across “the Most Stuf Oreos” before drawing this one.
Note that they refer to it as “the Most Stuf” and “creme” because, whatever the hell it is, it’s not cream and, while it’s hip to spell it “stuf” instead of “stuff,” they have to spell “most” correctly or face a lawsuit from Yasiin Bey.
I’ve ranted recently enough about how bacon went from health hazard to national treasure that I won’t go on about “stuf” except that Oreo’s sudden flurry of bizarre flavors and eccentric configurations, like Lucky Charm’s producing boxes of all marshmallow and no cereal, are indicators of something something something.
Including the idea that there are people who write breathlessly overwrought reviews of this sort of wretched excess.
And spell it “crème.” Go look.
And to continue our exploration of the Worst and the Dimmest, Tom the Dancing Bug has a particularly delightful Super-Fun-Pax Comix collection, not for the comix themselves but for the clickbait garbage on the side.
It may have been a while since you got an email from a Nigerian prince, but, if you check your spam folder, you’ll see they’re still coming, only modern filtering identifies and trashes them.
The crap on Facebook still gets through, mostly because of “like farmers” who post those “Share This If You’ve Ever Seen A Spoon” and “This Crippled Child Probably Won’t Get Any Likes.”
You can only curate your friends’ list so much, and defriending your sweet but perpetually baffled aunt seems harsh.
However, I have to wonder at publishers who undermine the work of their news staff by pairing it with the semi-porn clickbait and outright scams that Bolling mocks, in large part because Bolling doesn’t exaggerate.
Okay, I don’t wonder too much, because I’ve sat in meetings with these Luddite nitwits who count clicks with no regard for quality and who have their assistants print out emails so they can read them.
And speaking of nitwits in high places, over in Retail, Stuart has discovered that Val and Coop got married, the fact that they’ve been dating for a very long time having escaped his eagle eye. (The sequence starts here)
Judging from the dialogue so far, Grumbels doesn’t have an actual nepotism rule, though having a stuffy old git like Stuart in a command position covers many of the same bases.
I don’t know that very many companies still have actual nepotism rules, but it’s one of those issues that good judgment should cover. It’s always risky to date someone you can’t avoid if things go south, and it’s never a good thing to date within your chain of command.
I worked one place where my boss was married to her boss who was the best-friend of his boss. It made it a little pointless to carry a problem up the chain in hope of an appeal and I finally solved it with a lateral switch to a different department.
Other places, it’s been irrelevant, mostly in places where common sense was part of the corporate culture.
If Grumbels’ had a corporate culture of common sense, Norm Feuti wouldn’t have a comic strip. We’ll see how this plays out.
I’ve seen how this Pros and Cons plays out. A couple got married, moved into a new place, went on honeymoon and came back to an empty apartment.
Turns out the property management hadn’t changed the locks, which should have made for a slam-dunk negligence case, except that the groom decided to represent himself in court because it was such a simple case.
Until the apartment owner’s attorney carved him up and got him to lose his temper, and his case.
I’ve sat in the witness chair and I’ve sat in the jury box and I know better than to ever sit in the attorney’s place.
I’d sooner remove my own appendix.
And if you thought Pros and Cons was more true than funny, what do you think of this Loose Parts?
One of the most encouraging stories of the past year was the response when a would-be missionary was killed by a primitive tribe that wanted to stay that way. Not only did the government take no action against the tribe, but the late missionary got little sympathy from the public.
In fact, I think I’ll juxtapose it with this Pajama Diaries, because I tried to do hurricane relief once for a hard-hit Caribbean nation, and found that people were sending in junk that was more damaged than anything that had been through the storm.
Meanwhile, I can pretty much guarantee that, if you head into some hither-to untouched jungle village in six months, you’ll find all the kids wearing LA Rams Super Bowl Champion shirts.
If they’re still there at all.
We still have a fax machine at work, and last year started getting the occasional Nigerian-prince-scam fax. A charming upgrade from the usual “cheap cruise vacations!” junk faxes.
I like how the radio show announcer on The Adventures of Philip Marlowe always says, “From the pen of Raymond Chandler, his most popular creation…” which seems to imply that Chandler had anything to do with the radio show beyond the character’s name, interior monolog, and vague feelings of sorrow. (They did adapt RED WIND well enough, I thought, to give them their due.)
Re Oreos: I think they have to spell it “stuf” because some court somewhere determined that the white junk doesn’t actually rise to the level of being actual stuff. Standards!
(“Currently there are 1 Comment.” Ha! That one never gets old!)
Actually, Marla only let slip that Cooper got married. As far as I know, Stuart doesn’t realize Val is the bride.
Waiting for the shoe to drop. (To go with the rice?)
Ooh, right you are, Bradley. Not that I wasn’t already loving this story arc …
My understanding is that the “stuff” in Oreos is buttercream, except they use vegetable shortening instead of butter. In the good old days, they used lard.