Random Thought

Al Gore is off eating something and making Oscar kiss the little Nobel Guy on his medal.

ALSO: Happy Monday, my little freakies! Missed you ova the weekend!

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: I’m dedicating this link especially to you–Berkeley Breathed channeling FCS (and where the hell is he???) while explaining how he’s going to off Opus, for which I don’t think I’m prepared to forgive him: http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2008/10/18/opus/index.html

@flippin eck: The very, absolute last comic strip characters destined to become true household words across America were invented 23 years ago: Calvin & Hobbes. There are and will be no more new ones.

That said, Opus? But hey, I haven’t read newspapers for ten years, so I missed the rebirth. Last I knew, he found Mom in Antarctica.

Achewood.

@nojo: I’ve been following Opus sporadically since they started posting it weekly on Salon. It’s…not great. It’s nowhere near Bloom County, and not even up to Outland standards. Breathed had such a deft touch and lightness with the satire of BC, and since then the strips have just gotten broader, darker, more crass, and almost psychedelic. It’s like he used to draw them on weed and now draws them on acid. He should’ve left Opus in Antarctica years ago.

@nojo: “Without Reservations” is a daily one-panel Indian cartoon appearing in The Santa Fe New Mexican. It’s something that my family members rush to show each other almost every day. Here’s link to the stuff by the cartoonist, who is from Santo Domingo Pueblo:

http://www.reznetnews.org/user/ricardo

Be sure to check the one called “Insurance.”

@nojo: 23 years ago? Wow, how I loved C&H as a kid. My coworker who sits across from me isn’t even 23 yet.

Not sure I’ve nailed the standing graphic yet, but I’ll keep trying until something works…

@homofascist:

I’m confused.
John Calvin (1509-1564)
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

23 years ago? It’s comical I tell you.

@homofascist: I used to have a spaceship Calvin as my desktop image, but in recent years it’s been Gir.

@redmanlaw: Harsh. I like harsh.

@nojo: “doomdoomdoomdoom . . . “

@redmanlaw: I neeeeeeeed tacos!

@flippin eck: @flippin eck: I think Breathed started going darker after his near-fatal car accident- which was back at the tail end of Bloom County I believe. The silliness and much of the wordplay fell away, and as it entered the Outland phase it started to become more of a screed. He should have followed Tom Lehrs example and let go when the world stopped seeming funny. But I’ll always love Milo, Bill, Cutter John, Portnoy, all of them- and of course particularly Opus. They were my first pundits, after all- a kind of editorial training wheels. I miss them.

Calvin and Hobbs was amazing too, and not just because it showed me that you could have a love relationship between two members of the same sex. Nothing like either of those strips around now… kinda sad.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again:
Gaaaaak!

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: Satire training wheels is exactly how I would describe my experience with Bloom County. How could I not grow up to be a Stinquer after reading as a young ‘un about Fundamentally Oral Bill and his crusade against penguin lust or Mary Kaye’s fatwa against Opus for describing women who wear too much make-up as “ungodly”?

@homofascist: 1995 was a dark year for comics, as it was the same year both Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side ended.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: Sparky is my comic penguin of choice. I have a Sparky drawn in a This Modern World book and autographed by Dan Perkins himself from an appearance at a Eugene bookstore. My other author drawing in a book is by Dave Whitlock in “The L.L. Bean Guide to Flyfishing for Bass.”

Calvin and Hobbes is 23 years old. Holy shit! Where has the time gone?

@ManchuCandidate:

PBhhhhtttt!

@redmanlaw:

Now THAT is some twisted genus there…Tom Tomorrow RULES.

@Jamie Sommers:

I dunno, but if you find it ask it if it has my abs.

@redmanlaw: I think that’s worth a left-column link. Maybe that’ll remind me to read it more often — something that got left behind with newsprint.

@Jamie Sommers: Son of RML is 12 and has read all the Calvin and Hobbes books.

“I love saying ‘smock’ – “smock smock smock smock.” Our line for when a painting project comes up.

@nojo: A fishing report?

@redmanlaw: My wife’s introduction to American pop culture (besides punk rock) was C&H, so I bought her a couple of the anthologies as a gift when she was naturalized. My 8 y.o. discovered them last year and read them all, and continues to follow the strip re-run in the daily fish paper.

Of course, he also likes Garfield.

@flippin eck: Mad Magazine was satire training wheels for me. Loves me some Don Martin!

@redmanlaw: I like the Fist Bump cartoon.

@SanFranLefty: terrorists.

@redmanlaw: Sparky was my nickname, for a time, but then I got even more bitter. I love his shades.

@homofascist: You feel old? You liked it as a KID? Puhleeze, child. You still have your looks, at least.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: The reason I didn’t like Opus is because there was no Milo.

@nojo: Invader Zim??!?? Jr prefers Gaz.

@SanFranLefty: He’s coming out with a book in 09 , I heard.

@nojo: Tricked the boy into saying “I need tacos” tonight.

@nabisco: Spy v Spy, up to and including the Mountain Dew commercials. Agreed that Don Martin was the master.

@flippin eck: Hear, hear. To lose both Calvin and Hobbs and The Far Side at the same time rendered the comics page just so much paper to be recycled without even looking at it first.

@redmanlaw: Yessss! “Smock, smock, smock, smock” is possibly my very most favorite C&H moment.

OBL video for after the election I reckon. Would set the agenda for the next four years of the war on civil rights. Unless of course OBL endorses Ron Paul for his insular foreign policy.

A post election video will probably be worse for the Unicorn (Goes outside turns around three times, spits and curses) Especially if it isn’t “Death To the Infidel Great Satan!”

Anything less would be seen as “Ah ha!! You American fools! You voted in my specially trained secret Muslim terrorist sleeper agent!”

beeesco, reds,
MAD MAG! my friends were still reading archie, when i went from mad to SPY way too young. turned a young impressionable mind into a stinquer.