Calling all tweedy anhedonists

Here's a grimly funny, bleak article about the latest M.L.A. convention.

Spiegelman to leave New Yorker

Well, sort of. He's just not renewing his contract as a staff artist. Big whup, you might say--the interesting thing is the reason he gave. "I find as much fault with David Remnick's New Yorker as I do with American media in general. It's insanely timid."



Couldn't have said it better myself--it's one thing for such a statement to drop from the mouth of a blogger, but it's nice to know that somebody else notices, too. Here's hoping Spiegelman will find a more appropriate venue, wherever that may be.

Milligan, and Microsoft

Friend Diana Lutz forwarded me this link, a song parody lamenting Windows 95. Out-of-date, but I thought it was excellent for its type…



Also, in its rather morbid "If You Aren't Depressed Enough Already, Guess Who Died This Year" roundup in the Magazine, the NY Times had an excellent overview and appreciation of Spike Milligan.

Harry Potter, threat or menace?

A wire story reports that Russian authorities are investigating whether the Harry Potter books incite religious hatred. What humbug--intolerant religions cause religious hatred. (What's Russia for "duh"?)



Hope everybody's Xmas was merry and brite.

Lysistrata lives!

More powerful than any nuclear bomb…



Happy Holidays, everybody. Hope your stockings are full!

Slate blasts ex-Beatles

As some of you know, I'm a huge fan of the Beatles, so after Kate passed this along, I had to post it. Cheeky, unfair, but by gosh, not exactly wrong, either: Slate's David Samuels carves up the post-Beatles output of Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison.

Alternative comics, ick!

This week's Chicago Reader has a 16-page pullout cartoon section; if this is what alternative comics are about these days, count me out. Self-absorbed would be putting it kindly. (At least I limit that side of my personality to a blog! Poor you.) Worse yet, they're boring. Since when were alternative comics BORING?



Let's look back to what started this whole thing: Kurtzman's MAD, Eisner's Spirit, and the first wave of underground comix (ca. 1965-75). What do all these things have in common? They entertain. They want to connect with and please a wide audience. MAD's whole reason for being was to make you laugh; The Spirit was a classic detective comic; and the undergrounds mined that most perennial of topics, sex, in a grubby, gripping way.



Then comes Maus, right? Comics as art form, right? Well, I hate to say it, but it seems that the more respectable comics become, the more boring they get. Maus succeeded because its subject matter was extreme--fascinating and horrific; a weekend spent fighting with your parents is not. (In fact, if you've ever seen one of Spiegelman's early treatments of the material that became Maus, he places it within the context of his relationship with his mother. Not nearly as successful, in my view.) Call me callous, but I don't care about three tumultuous (but not particuarly essential) days in your life; I don't have time for slight whimsy; I don't care about your facile political observations.



In my experience, artists who truly have a talent for storytelling are rare. Just as writers who have a talent for drawing are. And yet there's this bizarre auteur theory present in comics which produces reams of great, interesting art in the service of stories that make you go, "feh."



Everybody who picks up a pen--to write or draw--should ask themselves, "Do I really have anything to say? Has what I want to say been said better, before? Do I really bring anything new to our communication-choked world?"



Of course there's a powerful incentive to say "Yes!" to all of these. And God knows I've pumped out enough less-than-memorable stuff in my own short career. But God, is there no end to all the quiet, head-bound, self-absorbed, slightly depressed, trivia-obsessed comics out there? It's better to tell dirty jokes than be boring, isn't it? Are alternative comics now as bland and conventional as alternative music? If so, what a shame.

Neal Pollack's spoof Best Books of the Year is funny. If you're me. Which I am.

Roundup

Someone's tax dollars at work: What do politicians do at summits? Call hookers, apparently.



The New York Observer has a mildly funny roundup of the year in magazines running. Only click if you know--and care--who people like Bonnie Fuller and John Huey are.

#2 Again!

The book continues to stagger 'em in the UK, lowering the tone of Christmas stockings from London to Land's End, Exeter to Aberdeen. The people at the publishing house are starting to get giddy, so if any of you know anybody there, now's a pretty good time to borrow five pounds with no intention of ever paying it back.



Reviews of "The Two Towers" are coming in. Here's the New York Times. Feel free to opine, blog-mates.

People will write fan-fic about anything...

...quoth Mike Sloan, who found a site with fan-fic about Pong. Here are some of the titles he passed along:

"Boop Boop

The White Mass

Pong: A Ball’s Revolt

Pong: The Great Adventure

The Epic Tale of the Pong Warrior and Little Jimmy

Enter the PONG

Pong: The Legacy

Pong: The Everlasting Legacy

Pong: Where Are They Now?

Game Over"



The range of human creativity is staggering. And frightening.

There's a really cool 17th century Chinese house at the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts, and a really cool website about it, which wasted most of my morning.



Also self-described "Trottermaniac" Simon S. just sent me this spoof poster he made, using elements of the various covers of BT. I thought it was very funny, and since Simon didn't provide a title, I think I'll call it "From His PC to God's Ears."

"Bored of the Rings? Try Barry Trotter..."

There's a great article on Barry Trotter by the Reuters wire service this morning.



Also, a friend of my wife, Ali Davis, does a funny blog about her day job as a clerk at a porn store.

More on aliteracy...

After the Globe and Mail column earlier talking about how people don't read as much as they used to, or ought to, and the guilt which attends that, here's a thoughtful response. The verdict: it's not our minds that are going mushy, but the books themselves.

More on The Hollywood Retorter, if you can stand it

The LA Weekly slams it; I was going to link to it on the National Lampoon web site, but every time I tried to load the page, my browser (IE 5.1 for Mac) crashed, and something tried to download. So beware.



Anyway, maybe now is not the time to make a lot of jokes about the Jewishness of Hollywood, so perhaps the parody's a victim of timing. Better luck next time, guys.

The Greatest (Christmas) Story Ever Told

Check this out, forwarded to me by Randy Mack.

"The Writer's Desk"

Mike Sloan sent me a poem he wrote this morning, which I liked. "It's only a rough draft," the ever-modest Mike writes, but I like it just the same.



"The Writer’s Desk



I sit somewhere with a mug and photographs

And I wear sandals.

On the worst of mornings,

I just scratch my head.



I like a cushion on my chair –

Sometimes A Tale of Two Cities.

I stare at photographs

And am mindful of my dog, who notices everything.



I stay close to my bed

And remain suspicious of language.

I vacuum

And watch movies.



I get telephone calls

And dinner.

I take the glasses off my head

And brush my teeth.



When I was in high school,

I wrote for twenty-four hours.

Today, it’s three

And I’m asleep."



Also: adding to yesterday's post about Doonesbury, Rob Schlaff wrote to say that the entire run of the comic strip is archived at www.doonesbury.com.

The Hollywood Retorter

National Lampoon, in an effort to "rejuvenate its brand," has created a 16-page parody of The Hollywood Reporter and sent it to 4,000 industry people. The joke quoted in this wire story is particularly tired and hacky, but reporters have a sixth sense for doing that--personal experience talking--so hope springs eternal. Has anybody out there seen it?



Here's some free advice, NatLamp, on how to "rejuvenate your brand."

1) Stop saying things like "rejuvenate our brand." The public doesn't care about your strategies, and its inappropriate for a company of your history and mission to sound like AOL/TimeWarner.

2) Stop slapping the NatLamp name on crappy stuff for a quick buck. You've used up the credit "Animal House" and "Vacation" gave you. It's time to do it for real again.

3) Follow MAD's lead and reprint all the good stuff from the past, so that even if the current stuff isn't as good, you'll get reflected glory. A 12 year old doesn't know Kurtzman's dead, and he won't know that Doug Kenney is, either. (Witness Bored of the Rings' success in the UK.) Additionally, resist the urge to edit, add, and otherwise meddle with the old stuff. You won't make it any funnier, but you could make it less funny.

4) Your brand is only as strong as your material. That means that the future of your company depends on excellent comedy, and nothing else; not an IPO, not market positioning, not any of that crap. The best--the only--thing an executive can do to make this happen is hire good people, pay them decently, and give them as much freedom as possible. So go find good young comedy writers--not people lurking around the sitcom demimonde who will work for cheap--put them together in a room with plenty of coffee for a year, and see what happens.



Good luck--I'm pulling for you!

Interesting Interview...

...with Neal Pollack in Bookslut. I like his attitude, but the more passionate--and specific--he gets, the more inconsistent he seems. I won't try to simplify it here; read it yourself if you're interested.

But we try harder...

Barry Trotter and the Shameless Parody continues its merciless romp on the bestseller lists--in this Sunday's London Times, it will be listed at Number TWO! Thank you, England, Scotland, and Wales (and possibly the Channel Islands) for making my mom so happy.



Here's an interesting snippet about fellow Yale Record alum G. B. Trudeau's appearance on UpClose, which I missed unfortunately. I'd like to ask everybody--Doonesbury hasn't been in my newspaper for years, so I don't read it--but is it just as good as ever, or has it slipped?

On being aliterate, and more fun with Japanese Barry...

Here's an interesting, if exhaustive, article in the Toronto Globe and Mail about losing the habit of reading.



And, courtesy of "Trottermaniac" (his word) Simon, here's the hysterical, surreal Babelfish translation of the Japanese edition's home page.



Chicagoans! I'm doing a book-signing at 12:00 pm (note time change) this Wednesday, at Brent Books, 309 West Washington St. Mention this blog and I'll give you a dime.

Here's the cover of the Japanese edition...

Note that broomstick=penis jokes are truly universal.

Jon Schwarz writes: "Did you know that George Bernard Shaw said, 'When a thing is funny, search it for a hidden truth'? That old randy Englishman was right." I have nothing to add except: "When a thing is said by an old randy Englishman, suspect it to be right."

In case anybody runs it down, Japanese tentacle porn apparently has a long history. The link goes to a rather wry catalog description of an item from the 1760s being auctioned. They're as smart as housecats, you know.

Le Show is 20...

...and here's an interesting profile of Harry Shearer.

A spousal request...

"Put this link on your blog: http://www.fox.com/firefly/watchit/



I will point out that it's in your best interests to keep Firefly on the air because it's one of the only things standing between you and a wife who has no choice but to watch "24" every week. Don't fancy a lifetime of Tuesdays filled with puerile plotting, ridiculous dialogue and stagant character development? You know what to do."



I almost didn't open the email because, as Kate admitted, the subject line "Do your wife a favor..." sounds like a penis-enlargement spam. And those just bring up bad memories...I was young, it was Mexico, and "Boogie Nights" made a career in porno so damn attractive...

Japanese translation...

Friend-of-a-friend Mary Jacobi writes, after translating that Japanese web-review of Barry Trotter and the Whatever-They're-Calling-It-In-Japan: "Oh the people in Japan like it a lot, some of them read it on the bus, others read it tateyomi (standing and reading in bkstore) Japan's national pastime, and they all said that it was omoshiroi (funny, interesting) and they laughed (warai) a lot!" Of course I'm very pleased--I have always considered myself a humble soldier in the service of omoshiroi.

Morning Roundup

An interesting article on Bill Maher's new book. He says all the right things, but I still wouldn't want him to marry my sister…As a producer of American entertainment, I am pleased with the results of a poll documenting the world's attitudes toward America…Good books often don't sell, says a new report; goes on to say that Pope is often Catholic…Finally, I pass along this casual by Ed Park on the new movie "Adaptation."

Zen post

The annual winner of the Bad Sex in Fiction award has been announced. The author, Wendy Perriam, told Reuters, "I'm stunned, because this is a book about bunions, panic attacks, and abuses in old people's homes...about three of the most unsexy topics you can imagine."

Great news from Britain!

Editor Simon tells me that ol' Barry will be listed at #3 this Sunday in the London Times list. You could cut the flabbergastion here with a knife!



Also: Potter fans will be interested by this article detailing the problems facing the movie series. I found it rather depressing.

There's a new Strong Bad email. Also, magazine junkies might enjoy Peter Carlson's review of two magazine articles about magazines here.

Anybody with a ghoulish turn of mind should check out this interesting "solution" to the infamous Black Dahlia murder case. The evidence is convincing--it would be more so if it wasn't cloaked in pseudo-Chandler gobbeldy-gook--but as with Jack the Ripper, so much time has passed that any solution is encased in quotes. (Until the LAPD comes clean about it?) Why doesn't somebody do the JFK assassination up right, web-wise? You'd think with all the researchers…Anyway, there are some gory images here, so be warned...

A Song From Jon's Mom

Jody Schwarz, the irrepressible mother of my writing partner Jon Schwarz, sent me this witty ditty, which I pass along.



(Sung to the tune of "If You're Happy And You Know It Clap Your Hands")



If we cannot find Osama, bomb Iraq.

If the markets hurt your Mama, bomb Iraq.

If the terrorists are Saudi

And the bank takes back your Audi

And the TV shows are bawdy,

Bomb Iraq.



If the corporate scandals growin', bomb Iraq.

And your ties to them are showin', bomb Iraq.

If the smoking gun ain't smokin'

We don't care, and we're not jokin'.

That Saddam will soon be croakin',

Bomb Iraq.



Even if we have no allies, bomb Iraq.

From the sand dunes to the valleys, bomb Iraq.

So to hell with the inspections;

Let's look tough for the elections,

Close your mind and take directions,

Bomb Iraq.



While the globe is slowly warming, bomb Iraq.

Yay! the clouds of war are storming, bomb Iraq.

If the ozone hole is growing,

Some things we prefer not knowing.

(Though our ignorance is showing),

Bomb Iraq.



So here's one for dear old daddy, bomb Iraq,

From his favorite little laddy, bomb Iraq.

Saying no would look like treason.

It's the Hussein hunting season.

Even if we have no reason,

Bomb Iraq.

Attention! All Japanese language speakers!

I have discovered a site that apparently has reviewed my book, but since I don't speak Japanese, have no idea what the reviewer says. Could some kind person out there help me? A quick synopsis would be sufficient...

Jon pointed me to this new Sandy Frazier piece in The New Yorker. More a flavor on the tongue than a straight humor piece, but still excellent in its way. He's an interesting, interesting writer.

Barry breaks through!

My UK publisher has just informed me that we've broken 100,000 copies over there! And mark my words: as long as the flabbergasting success continues, so will the human sacrifices. Don't prattle to me of your petty morality!



If you're a veteran of a college newspaper--as both my wife and I am--you might enjoy this opinion on the state of the art.