Involvement (or not)

Back in the early-mid-80s, I did an interview with a TV station manager noted for his three-minute editorials on the news, who pointed out that he had a lot more viewers than the station across town that had a weekly, 30-minute public service Sunday morning program called "Involvement."

"Involvement?" he said. "Have you seen the ratings for that show? Involvement in what?"

Good question.

Two strips to get involved with

Staton and Curtis have done a nice job of taking the well-established lunacy of Dick Tracy and turning it into, well, a comic rather than something where you're not sure how seriously you're supposed to take it. If you're going to invent ridiculous villains and cast them into nonsensical plots, it ought to be fun. 

Readers should be able to simply enjoy the idea of a totally silly, and yet engaging, exercise in camp, but I dialed out during all the Moon Maid stuff half a century ago because it seemed like the creators were at least somewhat serious, or wanted readers to take it seriously, or something.

Tracy is at the beginning of a new arc and, if you haven't been watching, you may want to latch on. You are not only permitted, but expected, to laugh.

 

Meanwhile, over at Judge Parker, Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley may have finally swept up the last shards of the bizarrely convoluted, illogical, discursive storyline that Ces inherited when he took over writing the strip last August.

And, boy-oh-boy, you know things have gotten out of hand when, in order to restore rationality to a strip, you bring in the writer of Sally Forth, who has made a very successful second career by writing poetry from the viewpoint of cats and dogs.

I don't expect a continuity strip to be all that well grounded, mind you. I doubt it would be a good idea to render Samuel Pepy's diary in three and four panel daily increments.

Strips have to be a little off-kilter to maintain interest, but off-kilter isn't the same as off-the-rails.

What I mean is this: Back in 1985, a girlfriend and I had a standing date to watch "The Colbys" every week, during which she would hurl insults at Charlton Heston for his wooden, predictable acting -- "Bite your lip, Jason! Bite your lip!" she'd cry, and he'd do it on cue -- plus we were big fans of "Miami Vice" for much the same reason.

But we bailed on "Dynasty" well before the Moldavian Massacre.

You've got to have some standards, dammit.

 

Not so funny in the real world ...

Matt Davies notes that our priorities are not simply off-kilter or even simply off-the-rails, but are utterly bereft of even a fig leaf of feigned decency.

These jackals tell some foolish story about how it's all going to work for everyone's benefit, but you'd have to be a complete idiot to believe them. Which doesn't mean they won't succeed, given our apparently inexhaustible supply of gullible idiots.

And they've got an apparently inexhaustible supply of pliable, loyal robots to rubber stamp whatever policy their leadership proposes.

It's a helluva thing that our only hope of escaping this heartless, legalized murder is to pray that four senators who think the proposal is not cruel enough will stick to their sociopathic principles rather than give in to partisan loyalty.

 

Scratch that "legalized murder."

I should have said, "manslaughter, under the principle of depraved indifference," and saved "legalized murder" for those who, as depicted in John Branch's cartoon, can sway a jury simply by explaining that they are scared of Negroes.

As Trevor Noah points out, we don't even pretend there are any "good ones."

It's one thing to have the system against you, the district attorneys, the police unions, the courts, that's one thing, but when a jury of your peers, your community, sees this evidence and decides that even this is self-defense, that is truly depressing, because what they're basically saying is, in America, it is officially reasonable to be afraid of a person simply just because they are black.

 

Don't blame it all on "rednecks"

I don't often agree with Dana Summers, but I had to laugh over the cognitive dissonance of shopping at organically pure Whole Foods and simultaneously embracing creeping corporate gigantism, not to mention energy inefficiency.

All this organic localvore elitist stuff is beyond my budget anyway. I buy duck eggs and authentic maple syrup locally, but they aren't available otherwise.

I can't afford artisanal lettuce.

 

Which brings us to ...

Under no circumstances should you miss Sophie Goldstein's deadly smart, wonderfully sarcastic takedown of holier-than-thou types whose solutions to societal discord are either hopelessly unworkable or far beyond elitist.

And she centers it on those damn "tiny houses" which ... ah, geez, just go read her destruction of this impractical nonsense.

I'll only add that, when I was young, we dreamed of domes and of communes where everyone worked together and life was idyllic, and it was every bit as optimistic and unworkable, so I'm not claiming we were smarter.

Just sayin' we all need a bucket of cold reality thrown in our faces at some point so that we can get on with life.

Which doesn't mean becoming one more rat in the rat race; forget the stereotypes about hippies selling out and going to Wall Street.

Most "sell outs" had never bought in, beyond growing out their hair and wearing the requisite fatigue jackets as part of a lifelong eagerness to climb aboard any bus that came to town.

For the most part, my friends from the era became teachers and counselors and journalists and community activists, living what appear to be average, normal lives, but with values geared to improving the world.

And there are no barriers keeping their grandchildren from doing the same.

But the first step in "resistance" is to resist utopian copouts.

 

(Hair was only ever a metaphor)

 

Comments

[Ces]

It would be all too easy—and completely wrong—to blame a very convoluted year of Judge Parker on a previous writer. I made several mistakes as I tried to find my feet with the comic. I'm hoping I have learned from my errors and do right by the readers from now on.

[sean martin]

I got a phone call from a friend yesterday asking if I would help him move his son, his wife, their three year old, *and* his mother-in-law to a new home. I dont mind doing things like that — they're all good people, and this move was a major upgrade.

But here's the thing: I get there at 8 this morning to find their apartment in complete chaos. We were only to move the big pieces — the sofa, the bed, the other large/heavy pieces of furniture... except that we couldnt get to them. They had so much *stuff* that they had yet to sort through to figure out what was moving and what was getting tossed.

So we get the son and his family finally moved to the new place, then we have to drive over to the mother-in-law's place, which is likewise in chaos — because as MIL is moving out, her daughter and *her* family are moving *in*: we're shifting things out of rooms only to shift new stuff in.

So now we have the contents of a two bedroom apartment and the contents of a two bedroom house — just the major pieces of furniture, mind you — all now crammed into their brand-new three-bedroom house some twenty miles away. When I left, I looked around and thought, Self, dont ever let your life get this out of control...

[Mike Peterson]

Somewhere is a happy medium. I have a three-room apartment -- livingroom, bedroom, kitchen -- with a walk-in closet and I think that's modest, but, goodness, I still have space for more than a pot and a frying pan and a Kindle plus two changes of clothes.

To be able to live in a tiny house without renting a storage unit, you'd have to be pared down to nothing. I admire mobility but the usual term is "wings and roots," and there aren't a lot of roots in that lifestyle.