CSotD: Monday Round-up

I’ve  given up on anti-pineapple-and-ham pizza purity, but I laughed at today’s Andertoons (AMS) anyway.

I don’t know if it was the times or the fact that there were a lot of Neapolitans in South Bend, but I came into pizza with very high expectations, and was horrified with what I found when I moved to Colorado, where pizza was created on thin, crispy crusts.

I came up with a theory that pizza gets worse the farther West you go, which is compensated by what happens to Mexican food as you go east.

But the pineapple thing, while based on a fundamental lack of respect for the dish, is more a product of a 1970s trend I refer to as “Kids in the Kitchen,” in which young people were hired by restaurants and turned loose.

The result was not just pineapple on pizza but sauce on everything, and not particularly subtle or well-crafted sauce. The latter seems to have faded, but these days it’s hard to find a pizza place that doesn’t throw the kitchen sink on their pies.

Which have DryWall crusts three-quarters of an inch thick and some kind of extruded, textureless sausage that is apparently frozen, then sliced like cold cuts.

So pineapple isn’t the worst fault, but, unless they grow up in NYC, our grandchildren may never know what it’s like to fold a spicy, greasy slice in half.

 

Meanwhile, Jeff Stahler notes in this Moderately Confused (AMS) that Madison Avenue will have to come up with a generational marketing stereotype for those grandkids to emulate.

And they will. “Baby Boomers” began as an observation that a lot of kids were born in the postwar years, but then it got popcorned out of proportion, with absurd cultural ties that we — the Boomers — simply didn’t share. Older boomers listened to Bill Haley, slightly younger ones liked Frankie Avalon, their younger siblings were into either the Beach Boys or British Invasion.

But sheep flock, and, just as hordes of kids ran off to San Francisco in the late 60s, hordes of current kids will happily find their identity in whatever the marketers tell them is hip.

Addressing Stahler’s content, I will once more express my regret that so many kids have found themselves confined by the pandemic, though I suppose that, just as a generation of Americans grew up in the Depression and a generation of British kids grew up in the Blitz, they’ll figure things out.

 

Though I hope it’s not by absorbing the advice of Gary Varvel (Creators) and allowing a minority of militant anarchists to seek through extortion what they cannot win at the ballot box.

I didn’t know that anybody picked a fight with truckers, but I do know that the vast majority, not just of Canadians but of Canadian truckers, are thrilled to see the Freedom Convoy coming to a halt, despite the bleating of authoritarians from our side of the border.

 

Unfortunately, the phenomenon has spread beyond Canada, and Rod Emmerson expresses the feelings of New Zealanders, whose nation seemed to have a grip on things until the screwballs and nutjobs there were inspired by the experience of lunatics in the US and Canada.

The important thing is not whether they are right or wrong. Of course they’re wrong, unless you are hoping for a Fourth Reich and an end to democracy.

The problem, rather, is that, while one side is giggling over Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “gazpacho” gaffe, she remains the top fundraiser in the GOP and one of their most powerful members.

They like her, and I’d suggest that, while mocking people and calling them stupid can be cathartic, it rarely lures anybody over to your side of the aisle.

People who want to get the fascisti out of power are going to have to take a different approach.

 

Though I’ll admit I do love me a good catharsis, and Tom Tomorrow certainly serves this up with gusto and precision.

As I said earlier of Other Tom’s work, the multi-panel format offers cartoonists an opportunity to drive home their points rather than just make a less complex one-panel observation.

This cartoon may be more cathartic than persuasive — particularly since few rightwingers will even see it — but there is true value in keeping your troops aroused and motivated as the midterm elections approach.

The people of Athens, Tennessee, turned out to oppose their school board’s removal of Maus from the curriculum, and got nowhere, but my guess is that they will be back for the next school board election.

I’ll take it.

 

Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?

I don’t know if this counts as “more pleasant,” but, in this week’s Zits (KFS) story arc about Pierce wearing a kilt, we learned a couple of things we hadn’t known before.

1. Pierce has a very large penis.
2. Sarah has enough experience of penises to judge relative sizes.

I’m old enough to remember when you couldn’t make fart jokes in the paper.

Civilization marches on!

 

Meanwhile, over in Between Friends (KFS), Maeve persuaded her BF not to join her in Paris for a conference, which gives her the freedom to once more completely screw up her love life.

“Once more” is critical here, because just as Dagwood consistently ends up dangling from his gutters, Maeve consistently screws up her love life.

The difference is that we know Dagwood will survive and be back tomorrow good as new. He’s like Wiley Coyote in that he not only survives disaster but shows no bruises or scars.

Maeve is more finely depicted, such that her repeated misadventures do take a toll. We feel no suspense when Dagwood is hanging from his gutters again, but each time Maeve messes things up, it’s like having a real-life friend who just can’t freaking get her act together.

It’s a different generation of comic strips, similar to when TV shows like Dallas and Falcon Crest added continuity to what had, previously, been one-off story lines.

And, yes, I want to see how she screws things up this time, and how many bruises and scars she accumulates in the process.

It could be worse. Check out this poor sod: