Sunday Short Takes

Arlo & Janis touches off a low-level rant, because I care more about this phenomenon on radio than I do on TV, possibly because I don't watch a lot of TV.

I appreciate that, in the Olden Days segment, he had the woman come in from the next room, because, if you were right there, phones on TV mostly sounded like phones on TV.

It was doorbells on TV that sounded just like live doorbells, and then only to the dog, poor soul.

The difference now is a combination of overall improved sound reproduction, plus use of the same technology making phone sounds on TV and on phones.

As said, however, it's harmless enough in the livingroom. It's when you're tooling down the highway and it comes on the radio that it fools you into quickly reaching for things you're not supposed to use while you're driving, and it's usually just them adding in sounds to make them seem as if they're on the street when they're really in the studio or to sound hip when they're really not.

And, as Jimmy Johnson suggests, those damn random computer noises are worse because you can't figure out what they even mean, much less where they're coming from.

Still, I'm only mildly annoyed because they have a high bar to beat to really piss me off:

I had my brand-new, just-released "Let It Bleed" cassette cranked up for the first time and was in the middle of the Cross-Westchester Expressway in heavy traffic.

Damn horn on "Country Honk" almost put me into the guard rails.

 

Today's Cornered got a laff from this free-range-lancer because it echoes so much of current business practices.

We call you "free range" but that only means you are on the factory floor and can wander out onto the porch if you want to, but you still eat the same feed as when you were caged, so there's no difference in your eggs except that we triple the price because they're "free range."

Which people may want to pay because walking around is sure better than being caged, but, then again, you'll still be headed off to Campbell's Soup the moment your most productive days have passed. Which is a time-based guesstimate, because we don't track your specific output.

So you could be the best hen ever hatched, but you'll end up as chicken noodle soup the same as the slackers and goof-offs.

Like I said, the parallels are there to be laughed at or wept over,  your choice.

By the way, "pasture raised" is where the difference in egg-quality kicks in, though only theoretically, since a single June bug appearing in the midst of 500 chickens isn't going to be shared and wouldn't impact things a whole lot if it were.

Eggs are one place where farmers' markets and roadside stands are far and away better than the store, because the quality of the eggs is dramatically better and farmer eggs are often a buck less per dozen than "pasture raised" eggs.

The farmers' market here is half a block from my apartment, but I can no longer get duck eggs because something got into her flock -- perhaps a fox or a mink, but something more voracious than a skunk or raccoon, and it took her guinea hen, too -- and she can't let the dogs out to watch at night because the people who rent the little house on the property step outside to smoke or to make phone calls and she doesn't want "a biting incident."

Which means I can't get duck eggs but is emblematic of why I'm not inclined to pay $4 a dozen at the store: Grocery store eggs don't come with stories.

 

Pros & Cons made me laugh because you'll certainly hear both aphorisms, and not just from different parents but from the same one.

This is a good case of tying the gag to the right character because, while, of course, the psychologist is the right person to hear this conversation, Stan is the right character to be telling it, because he's the one who has the most ghastly conflicts in his personality. 

One of the marks of a good strip is that the gags only work with the right combination of characters. If your characters are interchangeable, you might as well not bother doing a strip with a recurring cast.

 

And speaking of distinctive characters and good storytelling, Doc and Raider are off on a road trip that began recently enough for you to catch up and follow along. There's no forecasting length on these stories, but this one -- eight pages in -- has already been well worth the trip. This panel is from the starting point. 

 

And this panel is also from a starting point, posted by Jim Keefe in memory of cartooning legend Steve Ditko, who recently died at 90.

Michael Cavna has an excellent piece about Ditko's passing, but, while he inspired a generation of artists, his impact on readers was equally massive.

I was 12 years old when Spiderman launched and explaining what that was like is very similar to trying to explain what happened a generation later when that first Imperial Star Destroyer loomed overhead.

You had to be there.

Clark Kent was a popular high school athlete who had to hold back because he was so talented. He pretended to be shy and socially inept, but that was also an act.

Peter Parker genuinely was a brilliant, insecure schlub.

Ask yourself who's more likely to have his nose in a comic book?

To imagine being Superman, you first had to imagine being Clark.

Hell, we didn't have to imagine being Peter Parker. We already were Peter Parker. Damn near every 12-year-old in the world is Peter Parker.

Now everybody exploits that concept, but it sure was new back then and it shook the universe as much as any Star Destroyer.

Here's the rest of that first issue on Keefe's page.

 

Now here's your salute to teenage social ineptitude: 

Comments

[phred]

Your Country Honk story reminds me... A few years ago (well, more then 30 years ago and how did that happen?) I was listening to Hildegard von Bingen's 12th century smash hit Ordo Virtutum. I was wearing headphones because the speakers were in another room. There comes a point where the devil goes into one of his rants. He sounded as if he were right behind me in the room shouting directly in my ear (which he was, kind of). It was at that point that I decided that I would never listen to that CD while driving.

As for eggs, we get eggs and milk at our local farmers' market. Both are absurdly expensive (five dollars for half a gallon of milk if you buy three; five dollars per dozen eggs), but it's really, really good milk that doesn't overwhelm my tea and if you let it sit in the refrigerator long enough the cream rises to the top.

Some things are worth paying extra for, especially if you can remember the peanut-butter-on-day-old-four-for-a-dollar-loaves-of-bread-paid-for-with-food-stamps-sandwiches.

[Brian Fies]

Whenever a company adds a siren sound effect to their radio ad, I make a mental note to never buy whatever they're selling.

I get farm-fresh eggs the same way I taste good wine: I don't have hens or a wine cellar, I have friends who have hens and wine cellars. They don't mind sharing the good stuff. One guy has 30 hens and can't give away eggs fast enough. You're entirely right about the superior quality of fresh homegrown eggs; they look and taste like an entirely different food product.

Funny, I've tried to explain the impact of that opening Star Wars shot to young 'uns, including mine, but there really is no way to recapture the first blush of Something You've Never Seen Before--especially if it's been done to death since. Within 10 seconds I went from "Holy shit!" to total investment in whatever story they wanted to tell. That rarely happens. You hadda be there.

[Lori in Portland]

Ditto on the impact that Star Wars made. Over the years, I've bored countless young friends with how jaw-dropping, mind blowing, amazing the opening scene was. Yep, you had to be there. I feel quite lucky.

[Kip W]

A friend once said he'd seen Gary Lewis & The Playboys do this song on TV, and during a break in the vocals, Gary (as it was told to me) "talked goofy, just like his old man."

Always wished I'd seen it.

[Kip W]

Thanks to not having money, we had better milk and eggs than most people I knew. Dad would trade piano lessons for milk (and sometimes eggs) from dairy farmers, so we had whole milk, and even cream. We had a churn, too, until I dropped it and broke the gallon jar part of it (which didn't fit any other gallon jar we ever saw, even though we kept the other part around for a couple of decades in hope).

On my first day of second grade, the class was in the process of making bread, which would be cooked in a scale-model oven someone had. I mentioned the churn and brought some cream in the next day, which everyone took turns churning until it was fresh butter.