CSotD: Comic Relief
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When No Tab Pete announced his big extravaganza, this Far Side was my first reaction. Call it “wishful thinking.” But given the overall reaction to his idea, I’d say he may find both his TV show and himself canceled, though I hope they’re both remembered November 3, because this truly was “saying the quiet part out loud.”
But I’m not in the mood for politics, so never mind. Tragedy tomorrow, comedy tonight.
Besides, I’m getting burned out on horserace coverage. I listen to podcasts in the car and yesterday found myself hitting “next” on several that I normally like but that were talking about polls instead of policies. The guy is right: After a while, the numbers lose all meaning.
It’s not bad to have a sense of where things appear to be heading, but you have to be at least unpatriotic, if not a complete nitwit, to base your vote on who you think is going to win.
Either Herbert has expanded beyond politics or she’s making her funny stuff easier to find, but either way, she’s caught my eye. There are a lot of Nobel Prize cartoons out there, but they have a short shelf life. This one’s a keeper.
She captures an annoyance here, and while I know recipe sites want to keep you aboard longer to increase revenues, I just want to know what spices go into something and how long to keep it in the oven at what temperature.
Which, BTW, pops up in the little AI summary at the top of the search page, so you’d better make your recipe page user-friendly.
You do have to pay the bills, of course. Back when I was planning to be J.D. Salinger, I went through an internal argument over whether it was better to write on my time and make pizza on work time so as not to something or other. I forget what the clash was supposed to be, but when I started writing for money, I found it didn’t interfere with the creative stuff and sometimes it even paid better than making pizzas.
There is the issue of maintaining your karma, mind you. I remember writing brochure copy for a condo in Estes Park, based on descriptions. When we finally saw the place at its opening, the artist and I were scared to light cigarettes for fear a stray ash would send the firetrap up like a ping-pong ball. We might have booked a trip to Hell with that.
Anyway, if I recall the story correctly, when Mort Walker was spinning off Hi & Lois from Beetle Bailey, he brought in Dik Browne, who had been doing candy wrappers or ads for them. Drawing a popular cartoon is a more rewarding way to pay your bills than marketing candy bars.
Joseph Heller — the writer, not the cartoonist — nailed it half a century ago:
As it happens, Mike Nichols turned it into a pretty good movie, but, then again, I wouldn’t expect the original creator to like whatever happened to it anyway.
But paying your bills is a good thing. As another successful artist said, “Swallow your pride. You will not die, it’s not poison.”
First Dog has the advantage of living in Tasmania, where there’s a lot of really interesting nature, but worldwide reader reaction shows a lot of places where nature will come live with you, if you’re not careful.
I had a raccoon and her babies in my chimney once, and another time, I walked out into the living room at O-Dark-Hundred and realized I’d left the ceiling fan on, and then woke up a little more and remembered that I don’t have a ceiling fan. Until you turn the lights on, a pair of bats circling the room do a pretty good ceiling-fan imitation.
In both cases, they were persuaded to leave without incident. Nature around here is pretty harmless, as long as you keep your garbage secured, your birdfeeders empty and your car doors locked.
Juxtaposition of the Day
A pair of Apollo XIII references over at King Features yesterday. Edison and his pals are in an extended sequence that has popped them into several works of classic fiction and now more or less into a real event. It’s given the strip a rebirth of vitality and I hope the concept keeps going.
Meanwhile, Carpe Diem made a quick joke based on that famous misquote, and I suppose if nearly everyone in the world can get it wrong, you might as well play with it for laughs.
OTOH, if you’ve ever known any pilots, you know they’d say “We’ve had a problem” rather than “We have a problem.” It’s kind of related to their saying that any landing you can walk away from was a good landing. There had been a problem, but now that they know about it, it just needs some sort of adjustment.
They were confident in making a good landing, because otherwise you wouldn’t go up there.
Speaking of extended storylines, Crabgrass is off on another, and it’s a doozy. Kevin is determined to pull a great prank at school and has assembled a team that includes Maxine, a bully who, as seen today, claims to be eager to help and Kevin seems eager to trust. This potential disaster is concurrent with Kevin’s mom dating the boys’ principal, just in case things don’t go quite wrong enough.
I’m a reader, not a watcher, and transcripts get read but videos don’t get watched, especially ones that are only someone’s big fat face in the camera talking. If I’m going to watch it, it has to feature a bear destroying the interior of somebody’s car.
I just deleted my bookmark for a fairly well-established cartoonist (no names) who has made himself irrelevant by deciding to have AI “assist” his work, which was kind of sketchy and scratchy but had a lot of soul. He’s transformed it into much more polished work that would be appropriate if having soul didn’t matter, but that’s the specific factor that bland, sterile AI slop can’t be trained to duplicate.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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