Comic for Thursday, September 14th, 2006

Posted: 12:01 am, Thursday, September 14th

Well, I couldn't very well have them pllay softball all summer without ever throwing it out to Peanuts, could I? And, yes, I know Charlie Brown typically loses his shirt while he's getting Charlie Brown-ed with a liner, but this is a family strip. Which I guess is not actually true, but I didn't really think there was a reason for Lissa to lose her top.

I talk about the Comics Curmudgeon from time to time, but it never seems like I really concentrate on his site as much as I probably should. The dude's writing it top notch and nothing in the funnies page escapes his all-encompassing eye. Honestly, he pays more attention to the comics than some syndicate editors do, and probably more than Johnny Hart does. Anyway, yesterday he had a great riff on Pluggers, a strip featuring anthropomorphized animals going through the motions as (what used to be known as) middle-class, blue-collar Americans. Much like the current state of (what used to be known as) the middle class, the strip is deathly depressing.

Harper's had a nice travelogue about the train on their site the other day. The train, and this may shock you, does not come off well in this travelogue. I must actually say that 2.0 and I took the same train service up as far as Albany a few weeks back and it was not only flawless service, but a beautifully scenic ride. The major complaint - and major reason why I replaced the car that died in the hours preceding Reggie Ho's wedding - is that, for the two of us to go just up to Albany (so, one-way tickets) on an inconsequential weekend in late August, it cost $110 and my parents had to drive forty minutes to get us. So that's over two hundred bucks for a summer weekend. I'm pretty certain rates would go up come Thanksgiving or Christmas. I'd love to be able to save a chunk of the Earth and make Al Gore happy, but Amtrak has to help me out here a bit. If driving is a fraction of the cost as taking the train, I kind of have to go with the economic situation over the environmental right now. It's just the way it is.

I don't have cable, as I've mentioned repeatedly, and 2.0 and I were out walking on Monday evening, trying to get a good view of the WTC memorial lights shining into the night sky, so I missed any news program commemorating 9/11, or any fictionalization of the events leading up to the worst day of many of our lives. And on Tuesday we were out with some friends all night, so last night was the first chance I had to catch up with some of the highlights from the cable shows. My God, is Olbermann good at what he does. Also good at his job? Jon Stewart. I'm sure both of these guys will sleep more restfully tonight knowing that I approve of their workmanship.

bullfrog

And Ann Richard, the Texas governor who once declared that President George H.W. Bush was born with a silver spoon in his mouth has passed away at the age of seventy-three.

I have heard that it took planners of the memorial for the Oklahoma City Bombing site a little more than five years to get beyond the political quabbles to actually build the memorial. I suspect the World Trade Center memorial will take much longer, possibly up to a decade more.

Keith would probably sleep better if you'd buy his new book, Worst Person in the World.

Hi, you have nice site! This i found in internet Jennifer Lopez Games Cheat. thanks!

"Internet Jennifer Lopez Game Cheat?"

Non lo so. At least I have nice site.

I did not realize Lissa painted her toenails for softball. Maybe my slowpitch skills will increase if i follow suit.

Dude, part of playing good is *looking* good. You want to look your best while getting Charlie Brown-ed out there.

How silly of me. Its so obvious now.

I would be Lissa is the type of girl who gets bi-weekly pedicures. so her nails always look good, no matter WHY her shoes are coming off.

Bow-chikka-bow-bow.

Ah, the "J LO game cheat" phrase reminds me of an old newsgroup running joke. One newsgroup I frequent once had a spammer post up a "Free Fish Link 1033!" post. The newsgroup members had no idea what "Free Fish Links" could mean, whether it would be frozen or otherwise (and this was before the famous Animaniacs line, "Yes! Mrs. Pauls Fishsticks are even better dead!" by a faux Orson Wells.). It became a running gag that lasts to this day, I believe.

The second longest running gag in that newsgroup is the "Rachel and Rain are getting married" thread. But that actually involved two posters who finally met off-line. And subsequently did get married. Ah, the internet, finding strange ways towards romance and advertising since 1975.

scott weiland was at ND???? http://thewade.blogs.com/my_weblog/2006/09/weilands_weeken.html

Yeah, playing Senior Bar.

Which is actually the second mention of Weiland I've run into so far today. Janet Jackson evidently has a new video out or something, and stereogum put up a picture of her famous Rolling Stone cover from way back in '93. You know the one.

http://img.search.com/f/f4/300px-Janetonthecoverofrollingstone.jpg

The interesting thing, since pictures of Janet Jackson topless or near-topless are so friggin' commonplace today that they can't nearly be classified as interesting, is the list of bands on the cover of that issue - check it out, Bjork, Radiohead, Nirvana, STP, the Chili Peppers, even Buffalo Tom has carved out a cult following to this day. And then there's Snow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fki7agpULSY

WOW.

And to think fourteen years ago, I thought the most weird of the Jackson clan was LaToya Jackson.

I recognized the Peanuts shout-out before reading the blog. Somebody give me a cookie, right?

That's probably the first time I've ever recognized a reference to another comic within a comic. Does this happen often? Are there famous examples? Is this in the same family as the "4th dimension" previously cited in this space?

I throw it out there because it might be fun to read about. Of course, you're under no obligation to accept my research assignments.

Fourth wall, MJL. I'm not sure if this counts - I mean, this is probably the first thing that really qualifies as something that could never happen in real life, happening in the strip (I guess there was an anime-ish sequence with fire behind Jen one time last year), but generally breaking the fourth wall involves the characters acknowledging that they're inside a strip.

References to strips inside other strips? I guess it's not uncommon - Bloom County did it a lot back in the day, usually taking the piss out of tripe like Garfield. After Charles Schulz died, there was one day where just about every comic strip ran a Peanuts homage of one sort or another, but even aside from that, Fox Trot's Jason has taken over writing for other strips from time to time - everything ends badly, like Hagar the Horrible literally pillaging a town or something... Um, the Far Side no doubt spoofed a strip a few times. Bill Watterson's fantasy scapes were all influenced by the backgrounds in Krazy Kat, a comic that ran back in the forties or so.

Darby Conley (Get Fuzzy) and Stephen Patsis (Pearls Before Swine) do it all the time. One recent run had Conley accidentally receiving Patsis' week of strips and Bucky and Satchel were "taped" over Pig and Rat but saying whatever Pig and Rat were written to say. Apparently Conley has helped Patsis with his drawing skills. They both commonly will draw themselves into their strips. Pig and Rat also often times criticize Patsis, thus breaking the Fourth Wall.

Come on - Lissa would clearly have a sports bra on. And what's with the Hideki Nomo delivery?

I remember that week, that was pretty funny.

Well, it's softball, so the delivery has to be underhand, and I was drawing this one in the library, so I didn't have our trusty bedroom mirror to help me figure out the wind-up pose. Also, I can't pitch fast-pitch, so I was kind of just trying to remember what the lady pitching in the softball game I watched on Sunday looked like. I think this is fairly close. Her right leg should probably be extended forward at the point of delivery that she's in, but I'm willing to give it to myself.

One thing I noticed was that I kept having her glove switch hands for some reason. Actually caught that one in the (very shoddy) editorial process.

Fourth Dimension, Fourth Wall. I would've gotten there eventually.