Wednesday, September 7th, 2011
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Horrorthon Posts
Little Cat (pictured above, chilling on my couch about two months ago), my beloved companion of 16 years, is going to meet his maker very soon. I was caught by surprise by his sudden medical crisis which began last week (just a few days before I left for my annual family trip to Auburn, Indiana and points west) when I realized that his increasingly odd behavior was attributable to his vision failing. He’s so, well, feline that it took me days to realize that he couldn’t see and that’s why he was refusing to make his usual jumps etc. I brought him to the vet who explained that this was the symptom of underlying, more serious problems. As I drove around the Midwest I was constantly getting dire blood-test results by phone (which was every bit as much fun as it sounds) and I had to arrange for my neighbors and friends to get him into the hospital in my absence. I returned to New York Monday, knowing I would be retrieving the cat in a few days, and I just found out that newer test results confirm that his thyroid and kidney problems are not responding to treatment and that (therefore) this is pretty much the end of the road. He’s “comfortable” (not in pain) and he’s still energetic, eating, pooping etc. So I’m bringing him home for a few days (“to say goodbye,” as the vet put it) and then it’s just a matter of days or maybe weeks before he’s got an appointment with a needle. I always knew this was coming, of course, but its still horrible as all cat and dog people understand. I had him since he was a kitten the size of a styrofoam cup and he’s been a good friend through more than a third of my life and an absolute prince amongst cats.
Wednesday, August 31st, 2011
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Horrorthon Posts
So here’s the thing. There are differences of opinion about origin stories; about silver age comic books; about certain comic book artists and movie directors; about cynical franchise trends. These differences of opinion occasionally surface here on Horrorthon. But I submit to you: Amazing Fantasy # 15, August 1962, 12 cents. The Amazing Spider-Man. It’s only twelve pages long. And Steve Ditko can’t draw; he is to a picture what Lou Reed is to a song. But it’s pure magic and the immediate reactions it got (in measurable sales terms) showed that Marvel was on to something. The Amazing Spider-Man, a story in twelve pages that I think you could hang on a gallery wall:
http://www.jordanorlando.com/ns/amazingfantasy15
Tuesday, August 9th, 2011
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Horrorthon Posts
[I wrote most of this as a comment on the caption contest results below (“Bitter? Oh, a tad…”) but I wanted to elaborate even more.]
This material is not funny. Worse, it’s what you might call “aggressively un-funny” because it works by means of a perversion of the basic mechanics of humor and sympathy and recognition; the formal structures of “jokes” are mis-applied, so humor is impossible.
A “circus” is a grotesquely-exaggerated physical arena for vaudvillian showmanship, mostly for kids. If a family is like a “circus” (stupid pun noted) that means that it’s a controlled environment for certain kinds of disorder and mayhem, for purposes of amusement. When something is called a “circus” that’s because it’s not working the right way; its functionality is impaired by its disorder.
But the family in the strip is well-ordered and regimented. I see no problems beyond the stupid kids coming up with “amusing” ways to describe their own trivial bad behavior. To compare this environment to a “circus” is to force me to view the kids’ malapropisms or mess-making as being somehow comparable to clowns or trapeze artists or other performers whose controlled exaggerations of real behavior are deliberate.
In other words, the mildly unruly nuclear family is not like a “circus” and viewing it that way does such damage both to the concept of circuses (which are like Roman arenas for kids) and families (which are endlessly fascinating and grueling yet profoundly rewarding controlled systems).
In other words the entire Art Linkletter “Kids Say the Darndest Things” mechanism is broken and was basically scuttled and rebuilt by Charles Schultz (and, later, Bill Waterson), which was a vitally necessary cultural evolution. The “shock of recognition” replaces the trivial, circus-like shock of extremes; the humor takes a quantum leap forward and becomes interesting and relevant. “Family Circus” deliberately ignores that breakthrough and reduces the children to punch-line machines whose idiocy and limited perception is supposed to work like, essentially, clown humor (which is by definition the lowest form of humor since it’s devoid of legitimate satire or wit).
If you see your family as “a circus” then you’re working very hard to view it the wrong way. I understand this is supposed to be “funny” but it can’t be funny for these reasons, and, not being funny, it’s got nothing left but its untoward implicit comparisons where children are like show animals and disciplinary teaching moments are like bad vaudeville. And that’s why I hate Family Circus. (Also, the guy can’t draw.)
