Short takes and acquired perspectives

 

Chan Lowe knocks one over the fence.

I've got nothing to add, except to applaud not only the political hit but the subtlety of the Capt. Renaud reference. Not that it quite fits the overused "I'm shocked! Shocked!" quote itself, but he picked up on the bland indifference to morals and consistency that makes the moment so memorable.

Unfortunately, it's going to take some Watergate moment to turn this ship around, because, without an overwhelming surge of public outrage, there's no way the foxes are going to vote to put a lock on the henhouse. And, as Matt Wuerker notes, the foxes have a pretty good grip on that henhouse.

 

Insider notes

Stay strong, Lemont. Really, it's "Stay strong, Darrin." 

There's a reason one of the main categories at jumptheshark.com was "They did it."

And one of the nice things about Candorville is the very low level of sexual tension between Susan and Lemont. It's certainly there, more on her side than his, but it's kept on a very low flame, more of a pilot light than anything else.

I once read an interview where Dick Van Dyke said that he thought one reason Rob and Laura Petrie were such a charismatic couple was because he and Mary Tyler Moore had slight crushes on each other.

I still love the Dick Van Dyke Show. I have never made it very far into Cleopatra.

I'm not saying that's why, but moderation in all things, folks.

 

We're none of us getting younger

 Forty years? Wow. I'm gonna come back to this topic next week sometime. Meanwhile, the old Tank was, as Bill Hinds suggests, different, and, looking at the first strips, it took awhile for the character to settle in. 

But his Ted Baxter years were a delight, particularly, coming as they did, at a kind of intersection between the time that TV stations in metro areas began scooping up ex-jocks to read the sports and the time when a generation of jocks grew up who had actually prepped themselves a bit for that potential retirement gig.

I saw LaDanian Tomlinson on ESPN the other night and The New Guy needs to work off a couple of rough edges, but he did a pretty nice job. Despite looking like the world's biggest 13-year-old. 

(Bear in mind, by the way, that Tank appeared five years before ESPN went on the air. Or on the cable. Or whatever it went on. The trend was there to be spoofed before it reached Bristol-worthy proportions.)

 

Speaking of being able to remember 40 years ago ...

Yes, I do have the "Wait, did that really happen?" dreams described in today's Non Sequitur.

What I find particularly "How did you pick up on that?" about this strip is not the overall concept, which is amusing enough to have made it anyway, but the way Wiley depicts the guy in the final panel.

I often have those realistic dreams, and without being entirely erotic, they very often contain a romantic element, including my consciousness in the dream that this sort of thing doesn't happen to me as often as it once did, and that it didn't happen very often then either.

But in those dreams, I'd say I'm probably in my early 40s, a good 20 years younger than I am now. Which is consistent with my waking fantasies, because I do not have waking fantasies of 20-something lovers and futile wishes that I were that age again. 

First of all, seeing young girls in boots and wool skirts touches off more nostalgia than lechery for me. I don't think of them so much as of the last time that fashion came around, back when I was their age. Which reminds me of old friends and lovers and soft-focus good times, which I take with more equanimity now than I did a few decades back.

I don't know if that is a function of "age" or of "perspective," but I don't want to be that young again, nor would I want to be involved with anyone who is.

So my inappropriate thoughts tend to be more complex: "If only I were 20 years younger and she was 15 years older ..." and then I stop thinking of the girl and start trying to do the math and it all just kind of ...

... Anyway, I like the fact that he seems to gain a little age and a lot of karmic weight in that last panel.

Man, don't we all.

 

 

Comments

[Mary in Ohio]

Yes. Yes, we do.