CSotD: If you have to ask …
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Zits brings to mind a fellow who, back in the 60s and 70s, used to advertise a book called "How to Pick Up Girls" in the back of various magazines. We used to make fun of it, but, then again, it's not like it went away. Somebody was buying it.
Leave aside for the moment the suspicion that most lists in supermarket checkout line magazines are invented sitting around conference tables and have no roots in reality. It still comes down to "If you have to ask, you ain't never gonna get it," and, in this case, there's a double-entendre at work there.
In fact, I wrote a satiric piece for the college paper sophomore year that purported to tell how to score with girls but which was, typical of collegiate humor, a compendium of stupid moves, ranging from the yawn-and-stretch arm around the shoulders and on to less subtle foolishness.
I got some chuckles and compliments from girls who had been subjected to various of the smooth moves, but then ran into a girl who could barely contain her mirth because she had had a very bad blind date in which she noted that the guy kept taking a piece of paper out of his pocket and surreptiously checking it …
As a writer, it was a lesson that you can't make a satire so blatant that somebody won't miss the humor, that you cannot overestimate the capacity for cluelessness.
It left unanswered the question of whether the fellow who wrote "How to Pick Up Girls" was laughing all the way to the bank or honestly felt he had discovered a foolproof method.
One of the things that puts Zits above the average teen/parent conflict strip is that Jeremy is only clueless in spurts, which makes today's strip even funnier, because he and Pierce have attractive, popular girlfriends, so that the quest for cool moves is entirely unnecessary and therefore even more foolish.
It reminds me of the final season of "Leave It To Beaver," in which the show revolved around Wally and his buddies in their senior year in high school, such that they were old enough to get into interesting trouble but still young enough that their dumb moves were credible.
If they were any older, you'd have no sympathy for them; if they were any younger, their issues wouldn't be as funny.
When I interviewed Scott and Borgman years ago, one thing they told me was that they get a lot of feedback that indicates that clippings of the cartoon are left by parents for kids and by kids for parents, depending on who comes out on the short end in a particular episode.
This was before Jeremy and Sara were quite so much of a thing. Makes me wonder if there might be a whole other constellation of who clips which strips for whom going on at this stage.
As others see us
Gary Clement of the National Post took a trip south of the border for the national conventions, and the series of travelogues that resulted make for interesting reading.
Canadian observers generally are close enough not to be astonished by what they see down here, but have just enough distance to provide an interesting outsider viewpoint. Clement's sojourn among the savages provides some amusing and interesting insights.
You'll find navigation pretty easy if you simply hit the titles at the bottom of each installment.
And bear in mind Trudeau pere's famous statement, "Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt."
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