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Mary Worth for the Comics Curmudgeon
Here's a Mary Worth alteration I indulged in when I should have been doing more important things today.
I've been enjoying the Comics Curmudgeon off and on for years, but more regularly lately. Here's a Mary Worth alteration I indulged in when I should have been doing more important things today.
After the Substitute Curmudgeon posted the Mary Worth cartoon for 2011 March 8 (click this link and scroll down the page a little), Curmudgeon Commenter Terryfic replied, noting (ahem!) some art problems. This led me to my version of the cartoon. (Original credits to the writer, artist, syndicate, their spouses and mothers.) Now, the second panel makes more sense in other ways, like how the girl went from happy to haggard due to her week of Dad's relentless hassling.
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Hollywood goes to the Oscars 2011
I don't care who won what awards, but this morning I couldn't resist hitting a link to the worst-dressed ladies at the Oscars...!
I come to HillBuzz for the politics, not for Boystown buzz. Yet here I am on the Oscar thread! Hunh!
Likewise I go to the blog of a great guy, writer Mark Evanier, for his many marvelous entertainment industry (especially animation and comics) insider tales and related links, and not so much for his unfortunate misguided liberal beliefs and links to the like.
Mark writes of the Oscars that he's "baffled by those who moan it's 3+ hours of rich, successful people stroking one another. Well, yeah. Those who have this complaint are unclear on the concept." HA!
Save for a very few of their actual products, I have a pretty much total disinterest in all Hollywood matters (other than Mark Evanier stories). Likewise I have only amused and distant interest in what's called fashion. I don't care who won what awards, but this morning I couldn't resist hitting a link to the worst-dressed ladies at the Oscars! Old "flannel-shirt blue-jeans straight guy no queer eye could help" as my tastes might be, even I am appalled by these fabric catastrophes. (One MORE good indication why one should never seriously consider the political opinions of most Hollywoodens.) I am practically FORCED to do that 
Jack Benny "Well!" pose and simper, DARLING! WHO let you out of the house in THAT?
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Digital Asteroid Clobbers Olde Media World
I sure hope folks like our pal JJ here (and me) can figure out how to make a living in this dead-trees-free world.
When it comes to public TVs, I have most enjoyed Mexican-language soap operas in a good Mexican restaurant. Cerveza helps.
For some time now, we have had no antenna, no cable TV, no satellite TV. (I listen to the radio in the car sometimes.) We're the Nielsens' worst nightmare. When we are at someone's home where the TV is on, or in public with TVs blaring (or at least glaring), we realize how removed from the broadcast culture we have become. "You know that commercial...?" No. "Have you seen that show...?" Probably not. They now have a channel just for that?
It's not that we don't like some of the shows and even good commercials (the world's greatest short-attention-span theater until YouTube). We see many of both, new and vintage, but not what MadAve or NBCBS or FOXWB wants us to see RIGHT NOW. No pushcasts. Not even talking news heads.
We get news, comics, TV, movies, even ads, and lots more videos and audios besides, all on-line. We see and hear and read what we want when we want, and watch TV without commercial interruptions. (Although, in truth, we've been doing this since we could first tape-delay and fast-forward, but you'd still see the commercials fly by.)
So, sometimes I just can't look away in restaurants. Ha ha! Funny commercial. (Others are inured to it; I'll look it up on YouTube.) But mostly, I'm astonished at the unbelievably tasteless, violent, frenetic, madness-inducing sensory assault (also the stuff that's not the news or sports k'chng). Worse, the realization that for most folks, this dreck, at home or elsewhere, is their normal mental background radiation.
Peripherally, relatedly, I sure hope folks like our pal JJ here (and me) can figure out how to make a living in this dead-trees-free world. Will newspapers and-or syndicates and-or whatever morph effectively? As strong as my surprise at the assault of broadcast TV is my surprise when I pick up print newspapers, full of 'news' I read at least yesterday, and especially I'm more horrified each time I encounter the squinty, colorless nightmare of forced choices that is the newspaper comics page!
On-line, space constraints of print become merely bandwidth questions, insignificant in this video-bandwidth age.
Those Non-Sequiturs and Funky Winkerbeans that make one turn one's newspaper (or computer monitor) sideways could (could but aren't) run in the right direction. Sundays need never cut the top tier. (Back to work on that extra strip a week, JJ. :)
Intentional color or not, at the artist's preference. (Thinking of the Fox Trot guy griping about coloring Coke cans in the dailies.) [CITATION NEEDED]
On and on.
The guy at Questionable Content says he makes a living off QC now, but I don't know what his living standards are. (If like his characters, minimal Bohemian--heh.)
In a comment responding to the current comics syndicate takeover, I just read that XKCD gets more hits per day than all the syndicated strips combined.
The web is a growing world-wide market which can reduce greatly the costs of getting from artist to audience, and cut the overhead of middlemen (but not eliminate -- few creators are good self-marketers, right, JJ?). Old media looks for secondary marketing, like the comics page. Old media looks for maximizing unit costs and cramming folks into the theater the first weekend, but more people will pay a dollar at the RedBox than will blow twenty on a new DVD. New media can be more direct, and while webvertising (ironically) will surely continue to be some support, I deem that new media can best survive by reducing direct consumer cost to seeming pittance and maximizing that "world wide" sales part. I can't say whether, much less how, this will work, but it seem t'me digital plus web hasn't just changed the game; it has clobbered the gameboard like an asteroid! Adapt or dino.
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Tom Lehrer performs Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, 1998
Lehrer, and similar subversive forces, were an early part of the undermining of society and the collapse of patriotism, family and morality in the 1960s.
On his NewsFromMe blog, Mark Evanier posts Tom Lehrer, performing Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, from 1998!
Murdering pigeons. Randy (but prepared!) scouts. Your friendly neighborhood dope peddler. All in good, winking satirical fun? Hardly! Lehrer, and similar subversive forces like the Three Stooges, Charles Addams, Don Martin, and Allan Sherman (now that you mention him), were an early part of the undermining of society and the collapse of patriotism, family and morality in the 1960s. There's no other explanation for my older brother's macabre frog torture chamber amusement park!
Naturally, I passed along the important cultural touchstone of Tom Lehrer songs when my kids (now all grown) were young and impressionable, but until now, I realize, they had never had the privilege of seeing him perform. Truly deserving of a non-Valley Girl "Awesome!" One of my longest- and most deeply-held beliefs is that in this mortal coil one (at least this one) can never have enough of Tom Lehrer. (No doubt helped to encourage those of us who so believe that he didn't overexpose himself. Great to see Daniel (Harry Potter) Radcliffe on The Graham Norton Show enthusing about Lehrer before a cappella'ing "The Elements," but it was so strange to see everybody else's crickets reaction at the mention of Master Lehrer.) Such a treat to see him perform again, as impressive as ever (or my memory betrays me, increasingly a possibility), undiminished in wit, keyboard skill, masterful vocal control, and that get away with murder boyish charm! Which, at nearly sixty I can appreciate somehow the same as and yet qualitatively more than when I was twelve, watching TW3.
Not that one could tell, but Lehrer has always been a major inspiration for my own sometimes-humorous lyrical efforts (e.g. Risk) as well as my attempts to make nice sounds instead of noises result from my hammerings at the piano.
Re-reading the above, I thought to check Wikipedia re the American version of TW3... The cast..! I had no idea! Do vids of TW3 survive? They are occasionally requested on the Internests but I've never seen any posts. That Wikipedia link led me to the Tom Lehrer page, where the Rhino releases (OH?!?) are mentioned and so... I should ask more from the Googlyweb, the one force in the universe more knowledgeable than (if not as reliable as) Mark E. ;)
But! Busy (and chronically disorganized) lives mean sometimes we think of things like that and don't get a round tuit, even with all the convenience of googleynet. Which is why your passing along this link is such a welcome service. Mark, thanks a million -- thanks those astronomical numbers only governments can pile up!
Addendum: Searching Mark's site turned up a young Tom Lehrer, poisoning pigeons.
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