18.4.04
Weekended
Among other things,
-(via Atrios) the Rev. Sun Myung Moon (owner of the Washington Times and other publications and head of the Unification Church) has way, WAY too much power. See, I KNEW Rangel was on the crazy train when he endorsed Wes Clark...
-it was really, really beautiful this weekend. No link, just sayin'.
-the O's swept the Blue Jays in Toronto with their 3,4 and 5 pitchers to take sole possession of first place in the AL East, the best division in baseball.
-good article by Achenbach in the WaPo magazine on the C&O Canal, something very near and dear to my heart.
-actually, today is your lucky day, as you get a double-dip of Joel, with a great article on a not-enough-commented-upon topic (and one, come to think of it, that is also near and dear to my heart): this administration's butchering of the English language.
-a weak weekend for comics, save for a funny-enough Sunday "Boondocks" and Saturday's "Get Fuzzy." Sunday's "Get Fuzzy" wasn't bad, either. Conley and McGruder seem to be in a similar place right now - obviously clever, but constrained by the scope of their strips. However, from where I'm standing there appear to be two differences between them - and neither is that "Boondocks" is an edgy political strip. Well, a little.
Conley and McGruder seem to be on opposite trajectories right now. It's hard to overstate just how funny McGruder was, and so quickly, and how funny he can still be. But he's really fallen off, and Conley has really been getting a lot better.
Conley is stuck in the "Garfield" single-guy-with-a-cat-and-dog format for now, but is doing things that Jim Davis never did, and it's my guess that he's going to shape up the format of the strip a good deal in the near future to allow for expansion.
McGruder is also stuck, but his is a prison of his own making. In a strip format that has borrowed the best elements of "Peanuts", "Bloom County" and "Doonesbury", McGruder somehow has managed to pigeonhole himself - the never-ending "Riley's-a-thug" jokes, the Whitney-Bobby jokes, the BET jokes, the "Most Embarrassing Black Person Awards" (done especially poorly this year, basically a week-long sulk by McGruder on not wanting to do them again). Yes, we get it, black people have a different set of cultural signifiers than white people. The same joke still gets old after the 20th telling, though.
I do give him credit for realizing some time back that he needed to expand the strip, and attempting to do so by adding Cesar - but that addition has in the last year come at the almost total deletion of Jazmine and Cindy, making the strip nearly entirely male. When Cindy does appear, she is a caricature of whites-aping-black-culture, and not the cute neighbor girl Huey can't bring himself to realize he likes, and neither exists as the counterbalance to let Huey know how ridiculous he is sometimes.
I think I can understand - McGruder is being dropped for bullshit "controversies", and digging his heels in further - but in the process he/Huey is losing his sense of humour. Unfortunate.
So, here's hoping McGruder straightens out and Conley continues developing.
-This is from last weekend, but still worth a read if you didn't get the chance: Dean bitch-smacks Nader.
-I read Shopgirl, by, yes, THAT Steve Martin. Very good. Funny, clearly, and then in the in next (or sometimes the same) sentence he'll make a terrifyingly astute observation about the shitty parts of human nature.
There are other things I could talk about but won't.
-(via Atrios) the Rev. Sun Myung Moon (owner of the Washington Times and other publications and head of the Unification Church) has way, WAY too much power. See, I KNEW Rangel was on the crazy train when he endorsed Wes Clark...
-it was really, really beautiful this weekend. No link, just sayin'.
-the O's swept the Blue Jays in Toronto with their 3,4 and 5 pitchers to take sole possession of first place in the AL East, the best division in baseball.
-good article by Achenbach in the WaPo magazine on the C&O Canal, something very near and dear to my heart.
-actually, today is your lucky day, as you get a double-dip of Joel, with a great article on a not-enough-commented-upon topic (and one, come to think of it, that is also near and dear to my heart): this administration's butchering of the English language.
-a weak weekend for comics, save for a funny-enough Sunday "Boondocks" and Saturday's "Get Fuzzy." Sunday's "Get Fuzzy" wasn't bad, either. Conley and McGruder seem to be in a similar place right now - obviously clever, but constrained by the scope of their strips. However, from where I'm standing there appear to be two differences between them - and neither is that "Boondocks" is an edgy political strip. Well, a little.
Conley and McGruder seem to be on opposite trajectories right now. It's hard to overstate just how funny McGruder was, and so quickly, and how funny he can still be. But he's really fallen off, and Conley has really been getting a lot better.
Conley is stuck in the "Garfield" single-guy-with-a-cat-and-dog format for now, but is doing things that Jim Davis never did, and it's my guess that he's going to shape up the format of the strip a good deal in the near future to allow for expansion.
McGruder is also stuck, but his is a prison of his own making. In a strip format that has borrowed the best elements of "Peanuts", "Bloom County" and "Doonesbury", McGruder somehow has managed to pigeonhole himself - the never-ending "Riley's-a-thug" jokes, the Whitney-Bobby jokes, the BET jokes, the "Most Embarrassing Black Person Awards" (done especially poorly this year, basically a week-long sulk by McGruder on not wanting to do them again). Yes, we get it, black people have a different set of cultural signifiers than white people. The same joke still gets old after the 20th telling, though.
I do give him credit for realizing some time back that he needed to expand the strip, and attempting to do so by adding Cesar - but that addition has in the last year come at the almost total deletion of Jazmine and Cindy, making the strip nearly entirely male. When Cindy does appear, she is a caricature of whites-aping-black-culture, and not the cute neighbor girl Huey can't bring himself to realize he likes, and neither exists as the counterbalance to let Huey know how ridiculous he is sometimes.
I think I can understand - McGruder is being dropped for bullshit "controversies", and digging his heels in further - but in the process he/Huey is losing his sense of humour. Unfortunate.
So, here's hoping McGruder straightens out and Conley continues developing.
-This is from last weekend, but still worth a read if you didn't get the chance: Dean bitch-smacks Nader.
-I read Shopgirl, by, yes, THAT Steve Martin. Very good. Funny, clearly, and then in the in next (or sometimes the same) sentence he'll make a terrifyingly astute observation about the shitty parts of human nature.
There are other things I could talk about but won't.
perma-linky posted by jkd : 19:55
