A Farewell To Foobs

I have seen the future of the Foobiverse and it is not pretty. For one thing, Michael Patterson gets a movie deal. That is not a world I want to live in. Sunday marks the end of For Better Or For Worse as we know it. Kind of.

As predictably as a farewell tour by The Who, Lynn Johnston is retiring again. This has led to a lot of tears as people of all stripes come out of the Foob Closet (not Mike’s secret closet, another one) to pay their respects. One perhaps unsurprising member of the tribe of Foobers is Hank Stuever of the Washington Post. Now, I have taken lots of shots at Hank before, but in his farewell valedictory to the denizens of Milborough appropriately titled "Something For Everyone To Hate", he said something that struck a chord:

As a farewell, Johnston seems to have made an extra effort to drench this week's wedding of characters Elizabeth Patterson and Anthony Caine (if you read it, this is bigger than Luke and Laura) in even more sentimental goo than faithful readers have come to expect.

And so, on that note, let us now honor a particular kind of "For Better or for Worse" devotee: the haters.

These are the many millions who live to despise every last thing about the comic strip, and, as such, have never missed a day. For them, Foob has never been worse -- worse puns, worse sap, even worse life choices. (Which, in a sick way, means "For Better or for Worse" has never been better!)

Yes, Hank is one of us.

A lot has been written about Lynn’s latest gambit to reduce her work load and still keep that sweet syndication money coming in. The flashback gimmick was a complete bust, so the new concept is to mix old and new strips but keep the style consistent. Lynn will be going back in time and restarting the story over. This is easily the worst idea since Jar Jar Binks was cast as comic relief. Rehashing thirty years of comics is something that can only be done with a timeless classic like Peanuts. And Lynn Johnston is no Charles Schultz.

I have a better idea. In Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, there is a beautiful passage where Billy Pilgrim comes unstuck in time and watches a documentary on World War II bombers in reverse. Shrapnel is sucked out of the dead, brought together into bombs, raised into planes, shipped back to factories in the US where they are disassembled and the parts are buried deep into mountains so that they can never hurt anyone again.

So rather than restart the strip, it would make more sense to run it in reverse. Here is what would happen:

• Ellie’s nose would shrink from a swollen potato to a normal sub-Karl Malden size. Her butt would slim, her hair would grow longer and she would again become a semi-hot housewife instead of a wide-eyed hysterical muppet.
  
  
• Liz would break up with Anthony and reunite in succession with Paul, Warren, Eric, and then back to Anthony. Somewhere along the way she would regain her virginity, although exactly when is still pretty fuzzy. Also, these guys would go from being complete and total assholes to decent normal people.
  
  
• Mike would rush into a burning building to try to destroy his manuscript. Failing, he would spend years hidden up in an attic meticulously deleting hundreds of pages of the most insipid prose ever published.
  
  
• As Mike grew younger and the effects of puberty reversed themselves, John’s shriveled testicles would grow back. He would endlessly watch trains roll around the tracks in reverse when he wasn’t shoving teeth back into the mouths of Canuckis with bad oral hygiene.
  
  
• April would transform from a whiny annoying teenager into a whiny annoying toddler and then finally into a whiny annoying gleam in John’s eye.
  
  
• And best of all, Farley would rise from the dead to drag April back into the river only to have her escape as he leaps out of the river and goes back to being a youthful vigorous dog.

Alas, it is not to be so. Instead we are going to get more lame puns, anachronistic women’s lib jokes, and insipid heart-warming clichés. And this time, as history repeats itself as farce, we are at least forewarned for what to expect, for better or for worse.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: Are you going to miss the foobs?

Is Sarah Palin Really America's Hottest Governor?

With John McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate, much focus will be paid to her physical attractiveness. Alaska Magazine named her America’s Sexiest Governor, but Esquire called Baltimore's Martin O'Malley "the best young mayor in America" even before he ran for state office. I am going to show some Maryland pride and insist that our own Governor Muscle Shirt not get neglected. Let's compare the two:

Governor	Martin O’Malley Maryland (D)	Sarah Palin Alaska (R)
Age	45	44
Children	Grace, Tara, William, and Jack	Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper and Trig (not pictured)
Notable Avocation	Irish Folk-Rock Band Leader	High School Basketball Star (#22)
Vice Presidential Hopes	Dashed when Hillary Clinton failed to get nominated.	Dependent on a 72-year-old maverick war hero.

McCain has clearly gone for the game-changing Hail Mary pass with his pick. Palin is an unknown quantity of Quayle-esque proportions. Only time will tell if it is a gambit that will succeed. In the meantime, O'Malley is waiting in the wings to march into the breech if needed.

BlatantCommentWhoring®: Who is your favorite sexy politician?

Corobamanation

I missed Barack's big speech because I was busy getting hugged by Martha Davis (more on that in future post) but I did catch the balloon drop (or confetti fire, as an outdoor venue makes dropping balloons problematic). It sure seems like it was a big to-do.

Several years ago when I was doing my 30-minute sprint through the Louvre, I twice passed this painting by Jacques-Louis David titled "Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon I and Coronation of the Empress Josephine".

(Click on picture for a REALLY big version)

Upon closer inspection, it seems that the central figure looks familiar:



And a few people are finding the stage at Invesco Field a little like a Greek temple. I was thinking a more modern Vegas-style version:



All we need are dancing fountains out front choreographed to "Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I'm Yours)". Or "Hail To The Chief".

West Coast Lighthouse Hunting

When my Cape Cod vacation ended, I thought the lighthouse hunting season was over for me. But as fate would have it, I found myself on the left coast for business. After two days of meetings, my wife flew in for two days of touristing. For one of these we decided to cruise the Pacific Coast Highway. And there I picked up the scent of some lighthouses.

	Our first stop was in Half Moon Bay where I found a tourist map that showed that just a little bit further north was the Point Montara light. While my plan was to head south, I just couldn't resist the temptation. This guy is a tricky devil because there is only a single sign for it and it is just ahead of Montara proper. Miss it, like we did, and it is eight miles through a particularly windy and treacherous part of the PCH called the Devil’s Slide. After gawking at some surfers, grabbing a Real Authentic Taco, and buying some long-sleeved California summer beachwear we flipped around and found it coming back. The cute squatty lighthouse sits on a outcropping with a hostel on the property. The hostel had all sorts of funny rules including no staying more than an hour, but that was plenty of time to go all around this pint-sized point of light. The grounds also have a cute MASH-style signboard with all the distances to far away exotic places.
	Thinking we were done, we headed south towards Santa Cruz but them we saw Pigeon Point lighthouse in the distance. We had to stop and count our blessings at our good fortune. Pigeon Point bills itself as the tallest operating lighthouse on the west coast, and I have no reason to dispute that. It is a tall stately building that like an elderly dowager is showing it’s noble age. It badly needs some structural as well as cosmetic work done and a local charity is raising funds. The light is also next to a hostel. This one had hung out a “no vacancy” sign. Who knew sleeping under the protective gaze of a Type 1 Fresnel lens was so popular?
	With late afternoon drawing on, we finally made it to Santa Cruz. Their boardwalk reminded me a lot of Coney Island which I had visited just recently. One sad part of empty nest touring is that I now longer had my coaster riding buddy with me. I had to ride The Giant Dipper by myself. From the crest of the first hill, I spied yet another lighthouse in the distance. Having a few extra tickets, we rode the skylift back from the far end of the boardwalk and tracked this distant light. The Santa Cruz Breakwater lighthouse sits on a long spit of land jutting out into Monterey Bay. It was a tricky shot, but with a high-powered lens and some serendipitous stopping of the skyride, I got this one in the bag.

I really had no intention of lighthouse hunting while over in Cali, but then I had no idea that I would stumble into such a target rich environment. Now that I have the bug, I can’t help but begin stalking my next prey.

Dorm Rat

Dorm rooms haven’t changed much in the twenty-five years since I went to Tech. In fact, they are the same exact dorms. All the new dorms built for the 1996 Olympics are on other parts of campus. My son’s dorm is one of the campus's old WPA era projects that may have been updated once or twice since FDR was president, not that they look it.

Let’s take a look at what a modern dorm has or needs.

1. Loft bed with linens. These dorm rooms are too small for all the furniture to fit. At about 14 feet by 10 feet, it is barely bigger than the room he had all to himself at home. Loft beds are the only way to fit everything in. All summer my wife lurked BigBoxOfSheets for all sorts of linens and towels and accessories. What you don’t see under this very stylish bedspread is the bedbug proof mattress cover that hermetically seals in all the bugs, mites, and cooties that may have been left behind by the previous resident.
   
   
2. Three drawer dresser. This sub-Ikea dresser is meant to hold all the clothes that a modern college student needs. For my son that means several pairs of jeans, carpenter pants, and lots and lots of black ironic tee-shirts.
   
   
3. Study Desk. As if this will ever get used. The drawers are stuffed with enough office supplies bought by my wife to last the entire four (or more) years. We got scissors, a stapler, printer paper, folders, binders, pens, pencils, and whatever else was in the back-to-school aisle of BigBoxOfOfficeSupplies.
   
   
4. Flat Screen Television. We grabbed this off-brand 720p HDTV from BigBoxOfElectronics under the rationalization that he needed a larger screen than his laptop for the heavy detail number crunching that an engineering student has to do. While it seems to be a luxury, it cost less than the VCR I bought to tape Live Aid with (and that isn't even adjusting for inflation).
   
   Behind the dresser is a cable outlet that funnels over a hundred channels including ESPN, CNN, four HBOs, and nearly a dozen foreign language stations that I couldn’t even recognize. This is the biggest shock and change in dorm life that I have to wrap my head around. If I had that many entertainment choices when I was in college, I'm not sure I would have ever made it to class.
   
   
5. Printer/Scanner. Something nobody had when I was in college. I had the old electric Smith-Carona that fit under the bed. Students now have more firepower on their desk than a Kinkos used to have.
   
   
6. DVD. When I bought the big screen TV and surround system for my living room I had a leftover DVD player that I had bought for forty bucks a couple of years ago. Rather than toss it out, we’ve handed it down.
   
   
7. Lamp. This one I will give my wife credit for. She found a five bulb lamp that has flexible heads so that the kid can illuminate the desk, the room, and the bed all from one central location. We even fitted it with compact fluorescents so that all that wattage doesn't turn the room into a sauna.
   




8. Wardrobe. The dorm room has no closet, so all the big and bulky items have to fit in here. The left side is for hanging clothes which includes all the clothes he is unlikely to wear since they aren’t jeans or black ironic tee-shirts. The other side has shelves so that includes all his toiletries and personal items. On the bottom shelf is a tool set from BigBoxOfLumber that has enough weaponry in it for him to build a room within his room.
   
   
9. Bookshelf. While my son was at band orientation, we ran out and picked up the items too big to haul from home. The bookcase came unassembled from BigBoxWithRedCircleOnIt. Took me about an hour to get it all put together and in place. Not seen in the picture is the several hundred dollars worth of textbooks that don’t even fill up the bottom shelf.
   
   
10. Refrigerator. The dorm doesn’t allow anything bigger than 5 cubic feet. After doing comparison shopping at all the BigBoxes around town, we settled on this hundred dollar 3.2 cubic foot one that would seem capable of holding all the beer a college student should ever need.
    
    
11. Storage Box. This was left behind as the empty holder of all the other junk we hauled down. Perhaps it will fill up with something else. Perhaps not.
    
    
12. DVD Collection. My son took his pick of the family movies that he decided he wanted. Included in the list is Catch Me If You Can, The Matrix, Ferris Buehler’s Day Off, Accepted, School Of Rock, and Flight Of The Conchords. And I haven’t even watched all the episodes of Conchords.
    
    
13. Water Jug. For marching band practice. It gets hot in the Georgia sun.
    
    
14. Family Picture. To remind him what his parents look like.
    
    
15. Movie Poster. You have to have a little wall flair for decoration. I prefer not to read too much into the selection of this particular movie.
    
    
16. Big Comfie Chair. I expect this to be the second most used piece of furniture in the room.
    
    
17. Proud Dad. What can I say?

What is missing from my days as a dorm rat is the big honkin' stereo. Those have been replaced by iPods with micro-speakers.

BlatantCommentWhoring: What else does a dorm need?

Where Is Yellojkt Now?

A few months ago, I went on a mystery business trip and posted some pictures to give clues about what my super-secret location was. Well, I'm on a business trip again and let's see if anyone can figure it out.

Clue 1:

My bosses, bless their stingy little souls negotiated a corporate rate for a boutique hotel in a pretty toney little town. The architecture reflects the heritage of the area even if the hotel restaurant serves fancy Greek food.

Clue 2:

Every morning on the way to the local country style breakfast place, we have to pass the local Bugatti/Aston Martin dealership. We would press our nose into the window and drool, over this one in particular. One guy told us that it cost $2.4 million dollars, while an Italian passerby told us they only go for one million euros. Isn't that the same thing?

Clue3:

I went hiking one morning on the local walking/biking trail that runs along the town's eponymous creek. I turned around when I got to the signs warning of mountain lions. These big cats are so ubiquitous that the local high school has the same mascot as the High School Musical gang.

Hopefully these are enough clues to pique your curiosity and send you Googling. Leave guesses, serious, sublime, and ridiculous in the comments.

Rooms With A View

I love theater, especially the big brash Broadway musicals, but I also like seeing smaller productions. I recently went to see a two person show called Rooms: A Rock Romance. Set in proto-punk Scotland and New York, an ambitious singer meets a reclusive guitarist and the join up to take the music world by storm. But other things happen along the way. The show is part Once, part They're Singing Our Song, and just a dollop of A Star Is Born.

It's those other things that make up the quick-paced (eighty minutes with no intermission) show. The tongue-in-cheek punk rock numbers are hilarious and spot-on.

The show is being presented at MetroStage, a big warehouse looking space at the edge of Alexandria. Any further north and it would be part of the power plant. The space itself is just perfect for intimate shows like this. I was surprised that the Saturday matinee we saw (if 5 pm can be called a matinee) wasn't fuller, because the show has been getting great reviews.

The show has an off-off-Broadway history and I kept wondering how it would do in a bigger venue. I'd hate to see the great rapport between the actors get lost in a bigger place or see the show padded out to a longer playing time. The size and pace of this fast, furious, funny musical is just perfect.

It plays a few more weeks in DC and then moves onto Rochester in upstate New York with the same cast and band, so it's definitely a room worth a view.

A Brief History of Comics Snarking

Comics led me to blogging and I still blog about comics on occasion, but I try to leave the heavy lifting to the professionals and the field seems to be exploding. As a public service I have prepared a historical guide to the various venues.

Rec.arts.comics.strips
Anything on the internet can be tracked back to Usenet groups. Usenet are the original threaded discussion forums. And like most things that predate the web itself, it is random and unmoderated. Topics are selected by posters and off-topic digressions can be as frequent as not. Still active, the quality of the experience depends on the quality of the newsgroup viewer you use. I find the threaded responses and continuous quoted text annoying and repetitive.

Funny Papers
This Baltimore City Paper column was written by alt-weekly legend Tom Scocca (currently writing for the New York Observer from China) and BCP talentless fixture Joe McLeod. This online feature ran from March 2001 until February of 2004. The format was a weekly summary of the comics in the Baltimore Sun. Each strip got a one paragraph (sometimes more, sometimes less) commentary tending towards the mean and vicious. There were some good running gags. It would run a Beetle versus Otto count in an attempt to discern who the real star of the strip was. It also graded each week’s run of For Better or For Worse with a Siskel/Ebertish “For better.” or “For worse.” Abandoned when Scocca moved on to the Big Apple, the lasting legacy of this proto-blog is that Scocca prefers to sit on the seemingly untrademarkable “We Read The Comics So You Don’t Have To” just to spite competitors.

Comics Curmudgeon
The Golden Age of Comic Snarking began on July 11, 2004 to little notice when Josh Fruhlinger (coincidentally also of Baltimore) started his blog which has become the centerpiece of all comics commentary. I’m of course a little biased since I have been a long time commenter there. I have no memory of when I started commenting, but I made Comment Of The Week back in May of 2005 before records were kept with this snark about LuAnn’s dating prospects in Apartment 3G:

It’s not like Luann is going roadside anytime soon. Hot chaste blonde in New York City. I’m sure Mr Just Out Of Teaching College and Living Around The Corner From Avenue Q is dying to hook up with this mess of backstory.

Over the years, the blog has focused more and more on the soap opera strips that provide so much inadvertent humor as opposed to the 'funny' strips that often aren't. Josh is now the go-to guy when a reporter needs an 'expert' to comment about some development in the comics world. More importantly, his fiercely devoted commenters have become an emergent phenomenon with their own subculture and customs which is always the mark of success for a Web 2.0 type of site.

Big Al’s Comic Blog
Lots of other blogs have come and gone trying to break into the daily strip niche. Big Al’s was one of the better contenders starting in November of 2004 and running for nearly two years before tossing in the towel.

Comics I Don’t Understand
Started as a side feature of Bill Bickel’s true crime website, CIDW has a simple premise: Readers are asked to explain the obscure joke trapped in specific strips. The original format had monthly postings with the best of the submitted answers published the following month. One particularly great feature was the Arlo Page where the jokes sometimes stretched the family-friendly nature of the comics page. Bickel claims the name does not refer to frequently boundary pushing Smuttiest Strip In Print® Arlo and Janis, but methinks he doth protest too much.

CIDW was relaunched as traditional stand-alone daily blog in January 2008. (Update: See the comments for a better timeline straight from the horses mouth. In the reworking, all the older material seems to have vanished which is a shame because it destroys a lot of the historical context of the blog.

Comic Riffs
As the dead tree old media companies flail their way to obsolescence, they try to learn the Web 2.0 tricks and have started professional blogs on every imaginable topic. The Washington Post recently rolled out with little fanfare a blog devoted to analyzing the daily comic strips. Where did they ever come up with that concept? Written by Michael Cavna, the blog started on July 13 this year. In addition to a daily commentary about selected strips, he also interviews cartoonists and does BlatantCommentWhoring stunts such as caption contests and reader surveys.

As an employee of the Washington Post, he restricts himself to strips published in that paper. And as a guy with a boss to answer to, he has already had a few run-ins with syndicates not happy with his occasionally less than flattering comments. It’ll be interesting to see how the tone of this blog develops.

In the waning days of the daily newspapers, as comics get shrunk and dropped almost daily, it’s fascinating to watch ordinary readers rally around this often ignored art form. And as the paid professionals move in on the turf plowed by web pioneers like Josh, we need to see if the sense of community and irreverent attitude of the blogosphere can be captured by corporate poachers.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: How many blogs about comic strips can the internet support?