NCCCCC: Dopiest Comics Dad

In the second round of the National Corniest Cliché Comic Character Countdown we are looking at the heads of households that are clueless dorks. The cliché comic dad is a clueless loser easily duped by his wife and kids. These guys could have a CBS sitcom based on them. The trick is finding the fine line between satire and stupidity. Homer Simpson is a parody of the typical sitcom dad, but Jim NoLastName from According to Jim is just a tool.

The trick is interpreting intent and execution. Dads that I cut from the short list included Walter Duncan of Zits, Greg Wilkins of Curtis, and My Hero Ted Forth because they all exhibit signs of life underneath the heavy lidded burden of paternity.

And I have to invoke the No Pattersons Rule. They are so polarizing that they would win regardless of category. I've also declared Roger Fox from Foxtrot ineligible since the Sunday-only version barely features him.

Dagwood Bumstead (Blondie)
Dagwood is one of the archetypal comic characters. He is lazy, clueless, and always hungry, but he just doesn’t seem to spend a lot of time being a dad. Mostly he hands money to Chip and answers the phone for his 50’s era teenagers.

Hiram Flagstone (Hi And Lois)
There is no more clueless family than the Flagstones. Hiram (Hi for punnish reasons) is the traditional whiter-than-Wonder breadwinner that comes home to a house of chaos. And like Kevin James in King of Queens, he has a wife way hotter than he deserves.

Ralph Drabble (Drabble)
Deliberately clueless, the Drabble family pater familias is just Homer Simpson just without the lovable doofusness. We laugh at him rather than with him. That is if we laugh at all.

Frank DeGroot (Luann)
Luann’s dad is full of advice. Lots and lots of bad clueless advice. He has a son that has conned him into his own house. His titular daughter is one of the shallowest ditziest teenagers this side of a Zoey 101 marathon. And his shiny forehead just screams impending mid-life crisis.

Darryl MacPherson (Baby Blues)
While he may not be a household name, nobody exhibits the signs of domestic emasculation worse than the dad of Baby Blues. He is constantly changing diapers, wiping noses, or shopping for mini-vans. He is either too sad or too real.

So pick the dad you love to hate or just despise for being such a weenie.

Write-ins and comments welcome.

NCCCCC: Alarming Alcoholic

Welcome to the National Corniest Cliché Comic Character Countdown, where I annually pick some comic chestnuts to run through the wringer. Our first category this year is everybody’s favorite role model, the liquid substance abuser.

Comics like to traffic in stereotypes. They form a great visual shorthand to help set up a joke. And nothing is funnier than a falling down drunk in the funny pages where kids learn to read and adults commiserate their sad existence. Comic strip drunks are keeping things on the down low in today’s MADD invested political correctness. For many of these strips, I couldn’t find recent examples of their signature lush actually hoisting a glass, so in some cases, you’ll have to use your imagination and your alcohol soaked memory.

Hagar The Horrible

Hagar, the least horrible barbarian ever, is a heavy drinker in all senses of the word. He’s even willing to endure spousal abuse in order to be able to drop in for a drink or twelve. In addition to being a horned drunk, he also traffics in the heavy-set nagging wife stereotypes.

General Amos Halftrack

The drunken lecherous leader of Camp Swampy has been through several rounds of court-ordered sensitivity training and is now rarely seen with a martini glass in his hand. Like all good comics writer doppelgangers, he still enjoys golf. Surprise! He also has a heavy-set overly stern wife. Battle-ax spouses must drive comic characters to drink.

Thirsty Thurston

One of the frequent recurring GoogleStorm hits that infrequently hit my blog is for “Hi and Lois drunk neighbor”. It seems Thirsty is rarely referred to by name anymore and even more infrequently seen with his trademark pile of empties under his hammock. He must be doing all his drinking off camera because he still has his advanced rhinophyma.

Andy Capp

Everybody’s favorite wife-beating drunk epitomizes British lower class substance abuse better than an entire season of Eastenders. While he too has lowered the spousal abuse content, he still likes to bend his elbow plenty.

Leroy Lockhorn

Leroy likes to give his buddy across the pond some competition. Nothing says hilarity more than Leroy three sheets to the wind wearing a lampshade and hitting on some hottie half his age and twice his height.

Bung

The Wizard of Id’s town drunk is everything a dysfunctional wino should be, including it seems, a professional musician.

Remember when voting that “best cliché” means many things to many people. Vote according to your conscious and blame the results on a blackout hangover.


Please be patient with the voting software. Your vote may not register immediately, but it is being counted.

As always, explanations and rationalizations are allowed and expected in the comments.

Update: You may keep voting, but the Dopiest Dad and Perplexing Pet categories are now open as well.

Cliche Comic Character Nominations

Every year about this time I run a series of tournament parodies about the funny pages. Two years ago Gil Thorp stole the crown in the National Crappy Comics Competition™ from top contenders BC and Mary Worth. Last year Bucky Katt ran away with best of show in the National Coolest Comics Character Contest. This year I'm throwing open nominations onto the floor for the National Corniest Cliche Comic Character Countdown or NCCCCC (and yes I do seem to be adding a C every year). The categories that need to be filled in are:

Dopiest Dad
Pick the cartoon father that is the dumbest most clueless foil there is. Think CBS sitcom dad stupid. It's a wide-open field so think hard.

Perplexing Pet
It doesn't matter whether it talks, walks, or humps the furniture, pick the pet that should have been put to sleep years ago.

Alarming Alcoholic
The comics have tried to become more responsible, but let's face, drunks are funny. Or at least they should be.

Kick The Shit Out of This Kid
Annoying isn't always funny. Find the child most deserving of a size 13 enema. If this child were your progeny, he wouldn't make it to middle school.

As always, definitions of "worst", "most" and "is" are left deliberately vague, ambiguous, and contradictory. The only rule is that the character has to be in a currently syndicated comic strip that appears in a major US newspaper and is available online somewhere somehow.

Thanks for the help and we can look forward to a fun-filled week of comics bashing.

Beware The JabbaWockeeZ

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

My son asked me to watch some MTV last night. Normally he is nowhere near the home of sudsy teen drama like The Hills, so I decided to see what became appointment television for him. It was the final episode of the unwieldily named Randy Jackson Presents America's Best Dance Crew, a blatant American Idol rip-off showcasing hip-hop dance teams, or “crews” instead of bad pop singers. My son’s loyalties were with the dorkily named JabbaWockeeZ. My son had never even heard of "Jabberwocky", so I called it up in the Googles and read it out loud to him.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

Every crew seems to have a gimmick and the Jabbas do all their numbers wearing gloves and plastic masks that make them look like kabuki thugz. As if the odd garb and Lewis Carrol/Monty Python inspired name weren’t enough, their final routine was called “The Red Pill” as in The Matrix down the rabbit hole. You can watch their routine here.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

To get into the finals, the all-guy pan-ethnic JabbaWockeeZ had to defeat the all-Asian co-ed group Kaba Modern, which has its roots in a UC-Irvine talent show entry. This group is really good and was the favorite of many. Nevertheless, JabbaWockeeZ went on to defeat the Boston-based Status Quo.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

Who knew that geek culture touchstone like Jabberwocky could burrow so deep into the zeitgeist of the latest MTV Generation. Or maybe is just a cool name that lets them go snicker snack on the competition.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

First Daughter Endorsement

I try not too get to political here at Foma Central. I save all that stuff for my alter ego, Mo MoDo. But a lot of candidate's kids have been making the news lately. So I think it’s fair to come up with the most shallow and superficial possible way to rate the candidates: the entertainment value of their children. Say what you want about Dubya, but his daughters, The Drunken Duo, have been an endless stream of eyebrow raising antics. Between college drinking hijinks and Jen’s upcoming nuptials, the twins have been a lot of fun.

Oddly, all the current candidates have had girls. So what does our future hold for First Daughters? Let’s take a look:

Chelsea Clinton	Chelsea Clinton has grown from a rather awkward duckling into a graceful if rather mute swan. As a twenty-eight-year-old college grad, she is trying to help out with the family business which is convincing the American public that her parents deserve one more shot at balancing budgets while parading their personal peccadilloes in public. Oops, I promised not to get too political. Chelsea has gotten a lot of press for not answering questions about the Monica Lewinsky scandal. And can you blame her? It’s not right to make any kid imagine their parents’ sex lives in detail, no matter what their age. Give her a break. Still, Chelsea has grown up too responsible and respectable to be any fun. Unless she starts dating a member of an emo band and gets some serious ink done, her salad days are long past. Sorry Chelsea, we have to take a pass.
Malia Ann and Natasha Obama	We haven’t had any genuine kiddy kids in the White House since the Camelot days of JFK, Jr. hiding under his daddy’s desk. Barack has two absolutely adorable moppets, Malia Ann and Sasha. These kids are photo-ops just begging to happen. First day of school, Easter egg rolls, family Christmas cards. The possibilities are endless. I just feel bad putting kids this young in the spotlight. The mainstream press tends to be pretty respectful of underage political progeny, but whisper campaigns occur. Who knows what sort of mischief these precocious politico spawn can get into on the playground? We don’t need gossip columns full of tales of lost lunch money and gym class pranks. And do we really want a White House full of puberty driven middle school drama as they get a little older? Let's let these tykes get a few years under their belts before the spotlight gets turned on.
Meghan McCain	John McCain has a whole passel of offspring from two marriages to keep track of. He adopted two kids as part of the package deal with his first wife. Their kid together is now in her 40s. With his second wife, he has two sons serving their country, a novel concept for a politician nowadays. He also has an adopted Bangladeshi daughter that arguably cost him the nomination eight years ago. But it is the oldest daughter of the second parcel that we are concerned with today. Twenty-three-year-old Meghan McCain has been the subject of several press profiles, including most recently the Washington Post. She is vivacious, blonde and involved. It’s as if Reese Witherspoon were cast in the part. And best of all, she’s a blogger. She and gal pals Heather Brand and Shannon Bae ride the campaign bus and blog all the behind the scenes action. Meghan gets knocked for keeping the blog a little too upbeat and superficial. Ipod playlists are more likely to be featured than policy papers. But can you blame her? It’s a tough line to walk between being fun and being a laughingstock. And Meghan pulls off that balancing act perfectly.

So the official Foma* endorsement goes to McCain because I could really use four years of easy-on-the-eyes Meghan making weekly appearances in "The Reliable Source" and Wonkette. The only knock is that, like Chelsea, she’s just a little too long in the tooth to be really salacious, but we have to work with what we have.

Maybe we can get either Michael Lohan or Lynn Spears to run for president. Now that would be real fun.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: How old if ever does a First Child need to be before the press can take off the kid gloves?

Dog Breed Quiz

You know that I've just been too busy to post because this is my emergency break glass blog quiz meme:



When my son was just a toddler, the next door neighbor had a pair of border collies (and folks, never get them in less than a pair). These dogs would watch my son through the chain link fence and run point. One would watch him while the other followed him. It was amazing to watch. These were also the only dogs I have ever seen actually trained to retrieve the morning paper. Not only did they live a cliche, they reveled in it.

So if I'm a smart dedicated border collie, I'm proud.

The Right Rice

One of the only-funny-if-you’re-there running gags in the yellojkt household is that whenever I make a pot of rice I say really loud, “Ooops, we’re out of rice!” It’s funny because we never are and heads would roll if we were. As much as I prefer pasta and potatoes as a starch, I am consistently outvoted in favor of rice for most meals. If the large Tupperware style tub in the pantry runs low, I just top it off from the twenty-five pound bag in the hall closet.

However, the other day that bag was empty and all the rice we had on hand was in the cupboard. Saturday, since we were in Northern Virginia (for the Vonnegut play) anyways, I decided it was a good time for a trip through Eden Center, the center of the greater DC area Vietnamese community. An entire strip mall development except for the K-Mart anchor has been completely turned over to Vietnamese run business: restaurants, jewelers, travel agents, video stores, nail salon suppliers, and so on. All the stores have mostly Vienamese signs in the windows and cater to first and second generation immigrants.

Our destination is usually a small grocery store that stocks Asian specialties. Here they carry about five different brands of rice. The brand we get is Double Golden Fish®, or as we call it, The One With Two Goldfish On It. It is Thai jasmine rice, which after years of experimentation is the type and style we have settled on. About every six months we have to find ourselves in either Falls Church or Wheaton, the two places we have found that stock this particular brand. Once I bought a brand with a big elephant on it from the massive Korean grocery store in Security Square Mall, but even though it was jasmine rice, it wasn’t the right rice.

A trip to Eden Center also means getting some bánh mì and bubble tea at Song Que. Song Que is the small deli/sandwich shop associated with the over-rated What White People Like Huong Que restaurant (Viet Royale next door is less pretentious, cheaper, and more "authentic"). Even the minor charms of Song Que have gotten out to the general public and it is always packed, often by people that don't quite know what to order.

Bánh mì are small baguette sandwiches that have a choice of Vietnamese style meats topped with condiments such as pickled carrots, cilantro, and jalapeños for less than three bucks. The bubble teas, which come in exotic flavors such as durian and jackfruit, cost more than the sandwiches.

My wife always adds in some soups to go and gets some brightly colored gelatinous sticky sweet desserts for herself. Loaded up, we made our back to Ellicott City knowing that for the next several months my cries of “We’re out of rice” will cause sympathetic cry-wolf smiles instead of cries of concern.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: Triple choice (pick one or all): What staple do you buy in bulk? What brand of food are devotedly loyal to? What is your favorite ethnic specialty?

Wanda June Lives

One of the duties of being a fan in the fan-atical sense is the need to be aware of every detail of the object of your obsession. Most people (at least people I consider worth conversing with) can name two or three Kurt Vonnegut novels and perhaps have read more than high school English staple “Harrison Bergeron”. I have read all his novels, essay collections, short stories, and Playboy interviews (I can truthfully say I own the July 1973 issue for the articles). When it comes to Vonnegut, I have to have it all.

Thus, when I learned that a local theater production company was putting on his obscure play Happy Birthday, Wanda June, I had to have a ticket. My wife, knowing where to fight her battles, agreed to go and since kids under 18 were free, we made it a family event. I got a few puzzled looks from them when the GPS led us to a middle school parking lot. It seems that The American Century Theater Company operates out of the Gunston Arts Center in Arlington which is one wing of Gunston Middle Shool. Despite the unusual location, the theater portion of the building consists of two professional caliber black-box style stages.

I had seen the film version back in high school when it played the art house film circuit at the Tampa Theater. That movie is just one in a long string of lackluster Vonnegut film adaptations and part of the problem is that its theatrical roots didn't "open up" well on film.

The entire play takes place (except for a few vignettes set in a particularly Vonnegutian version of Heaven) in the apartment of presumably widowed Penelope Ryan. Penelope is a modern take on Ulysses’ wife holding off suitors while waiting for her hero’s return. Vonnegut’s take, as you might guess, is less than Homeric.

In addition to being inspired by the Greek epic, the play is also a very sly dissection of Hemingway-esque machismo. The “hero” Harold Ryan, played with suitable swagger by Bill Aitken, is a trophy hunting Spanish Civil War veteran that has been lost in the Amazon jungle for eight years with Nagasaki bombardier Looseleaf Harper, played by Joe Cronin. He returns home to a reception much different from what he was expecting.

All of the cast is delightful, but the real standout of this production is Kari Ginsburg as the conflicted Penelope. She brings a lot of sexiness and intelligence to a role where it would be easy to play Penelope Pitstop rather than Penelope of Ithaca. And she looks really good in a leopard print mini-skirt.

I am always amazed by the depth of talent in local productions. The set, costumes, and acting are all first rate. Even the minor parts are amusing and very well cast. Our matinee show was only half full which is a shame for such a razor sharp production.

The Artistic Director’s Notes makes it clear that most novelists that attempt playwriting are usually less than successful, and Vonnegut is no exception. That raises the question of why to restage a nearly (and perhaps deservedly so) forgotten footnote to a bigger career. The play has a lot of that acid-tipped Vonnegut wit, and even though it was written over thirty-five years ago, the show still resonates with themes of war, peace, love, and sex. If you can get past the go-go boots and mostly unironic peace signs, there is as much truth in the play today as there was then. Perhaps more so. And that is the mark of genius, especially when such timeless universality appears even in his lesser works.

The show plays one more week and Wednesday night is “pay what you can night”. More information can be found at the official website.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: What does it take to get you to live theater?

Photo credit: Ian Armstrong