CSotD: The Children’s Hour or so
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(Sheldon, 2006)
(Cleats, 2005)
Start with a juxtaposition of strips that kind of had to run when they did because since then, it's the grandparents who know who the Beatles were. The parents are starting to get a little shaky on the topic.
Of course, the good thing is that they waited so long to do the Tron re-make that the target audience had no idea there even had been an original, much less seen it, so they walked into the theater with clear minds and no expectations.
Though you'll note there hasn't been a "Tron Legacy: The Sequel."
One of the authors at this reading conference I'm at is T.A. Barron, the first of whose Merlin series of books is being turned into a Disney movie. I told him what Joe Heller said about the filming of "Catch-22," that, once the check cleared, "I didn't care if they didn't make it at all or if they put the Three Stooges in it," but he said he really does want it to be a good movie.
And – authorial pride aside – he ought to, considering that there are a dozen books in the series and this is a generation that dotes on sequels.
As for Wee Willie Winkler, this is also a generation that doesn't play baseball because you can't get enough kids together in the neighborhood for a game, but that's a rant for another day. Suffice it to say that two or three kids and a soccer ball is a whole lot more fun than two or three kids with a baseball and a bat.
Not that we don't have organized sports, and this very early Cleats remains a favorite, because, for all the strict rules and even laws about helmets and padding and tackling, we do indeed still let children stand in traffic, the busier the street the better.
It is a puzzlement.
We do try to keep them safe otherwise, however, though Baby Blues wondered, back in 1999, if the messages were quite getting through.
And, as this Rhymes With Orange suggests, some messages are futile from the get-go. My kids were allowed to have guns and only played with them sporadically, mostly when kids who weren't allowed to have guns came over and insisted.
And circling back to movies and media, this Boondocks particularly cracked me up because there was a period in the late 80s when my boys had my father taping things off HBO for them — since he had it and they didn't — and, the movies not being of his interest, he wasn't watching them.
The acrid puffs of smoke over our house were particularly dense for a little while there.
Which lets us shift to the field of education without changing strips. The teachers in Boondocks were a delightfully clueless bunch, and this strip hit at about the time New York, where I was living, was adding more translated exams to the Regents, and there were plenty of people on Mrs. Peterson's (no relation) side.
Of course, if you're going to talk education, you come quickly to Frazz, and the original of this strip hangs over my desk.
The great thing about Caulfield is that, with him, education works both ways, and he is as apt to bring the lesson as receive it, particularly when the lesson has more to do with playing the system than the actual curriculum itself.
As the master noted in 1993. This was a strip I had to use with discretion in my work with teachers, making sure I was comforting the afflicted and not putting myself in the crosshairs of the afflictors.
In the topic of rants for another time, the vast majority of the 1,500 teachers at this conference are the type who fight against a system that — designed to or not — turns unique and exquisite crystals into measurable, identical drops of water.
But it is an increasingly futile battle. This is reflected in the vendors, since the ones who help teachers to amazing, imaginative projects in their classrooms are fewer and fewer each year, not because the teachers don't want to do those things but because, at far too many schools, they are no longer permitted the time to do so.
We'll rant that rant at length sometime.
Meanwhile, here's a 2000 David Horsey piece I included in an educational supplement I did for schools about nutrition, back when teachers could still use things in their classrooms that had not been pre-approved by a curriculum committee and which covered topics that were not necessarily going to show up on state tests.
Don't worry. It's like the Beatles: Just something old people go on about.
Had a conversation the other day about kids and comics and someone brought up Zits, my response being that, while a lot of older kids like it, it's primarily about kids and not for them.
This one, however, shows how the cartoon works both ways, because most teens can relate perhaps better than the parents. That third panel is the best part.
This 2005 one, on the other hand, is purely for the adults and continues to make this grandfather laff.
Incidentally, kids are still encouraged to sell things to raise money for school, but they are no longer allowed to go door-to-door in their neighborhoods.
I'm not entirely against that, but I wonder what the odds are of knocking on Hannibal Lecter's door compared to those of getting hit by a car while standing in a busy street?
It's too bad they have to grow up … but don't …
Love this Tom the Dancing Bug from 2000, which bites both ways with a swipe at both foodies and post-adolescent adolescents.
Now here's your moment of childish zen
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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