CSotD: Humor break … mostly
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(Frazz)
(Warped)
I often kind of pray each morning for some funny stuff that's more compelling than the political stuff. There are times it's like pulling for a horse who was way in the back of the pack on the backstretch, but I'm old enough to remember Silky Sullivan, so wotthehell.
Perhaps I should have said "wotthe#@*&" because our Juxtaposition of the Day is on the topic of Grawlix, one of several words that Beetle Bailey creator Mort Walker apparently invented for his "Lexicon of Comicana," a classic resource for … well, for people who need names for things, but it does help cartoonists talk about the various accepted symbols of their craft.
And like a lot of truly arcane oddities, it's fascinating for more casual fans.
Meanwhile, Frazz and Warped are timely because the topic of offending readers has come to the fore with the publication, and subsequent renunciation of a political cartoon about the Las Vegas shootings.
I want to avoid politics today, but this is a chance to underline a particular issue of mine, which is that editors are promoted for their ability to apply grammatical rules and stylistic commandments, with the result that often — I haven't done a survey so I can't say "generally" — while they can be witty in conversation, they are utterly deaf to metaphors and meaning when it comes to comics.
Before I worked in newsrooms, I would see an editorial cartoon that seemed at odds with the tenor of the paper in which it appeared, and I'd assume that they felt some ethical compulsion to present the other side of the issue.
Once I began to work with editors on a more constant basis than simply mailing in my work, however, I came to find that they honestly didn't get cartoons.
They knew that a bear meant Russia and a bulldog meant Britain and all that mechanical stuff, but they couldn't grok the medium; they didn't feel how the parts fit together.
I'm sympathetic: I don't get modern dance, which looks to me like a bunch of barefoot people leppin' about in leotards. But a lot of people obviously get pleasure from watching it, and so I accept that, for me, it's some sort of perceptual blind spot.
So if I had a job in which modern dance figured, I would farm that portion out to someone who got it, which seems so obvious to me that I can't understand editors who don't hunt up someone in the building who digs cartoons.
As for the cartoon in question — which is not currently visible on the cartoonist's archive — I will say only that I would not have selected it.
But, if I had, I would not then turn around and disclaim it, because apologizing for your decision is nothing less than a declaration of your own incompetence.
After all, this goes well beyond "regretting the error" over spelling a name wrong or scrambling a statistic.
You made a statement of opinion on behalf of your paper. Stand by it, or stand down.
To bring this back from politics, the fact that editors are graphically tone-deaf impacts humorous comics as well.
One of the basic differences between web comics and syndicated comics is that a web cartoon needs to please a lot of people, while a syndicated comic only has to be sold to an editor.
And editors are cloth-eared nincompoops which is why some terrific-but-unconventional work — Cul de Sac being a prime example — won't get through to them, but if a comic with standard gags and standard graphics is laid on their desk, they recognize it as "good."
Now, where the &#@$* was I?
Oh right: Humor.
Betty has been planning a European vacation and a young co-worker recently saved her a lot of time by doing a search, though not without a slight margin of error.
Which is funny enough but also reminds me of a college friend who took her sophomore year abroad in Austria. For spring break, she went to Greece and was in the bar of her hotel when, against all odds, she ran into a former classmate who had dropped out freshman year.
His parents had been killed in an auto accident (that's not the funny part) and left him a considerable fortune, so he was now living on a boat in the Mediterranean and into the bar he walks and she cries out his name and hugs him and he says, "What are you doing here?"
And she says, "I'm on spring break!" to which he says, "No, I mean, what are you doing here?"
And she says, "This is my hotel" to which he says, "This is a bordello."
He found her a more conventional hotel, since she didn't react to his revelation the way Betty did to hers.
And I got a particular laff out of Bliss today, because I have a hound, so I'm exempt from this late-night ritual.
In fact, last night as I was setting up the coffee pot and shutting down the house, I stopped to think if the dog had been out, and remembered that, yes, he'd gone out around 4:30 that afternoon, so he was good until morning.
And, in fact, it just went 7 AM as I'm writing this and he's zoned out on the couch and won't ask to go out for another hour and a half.
When my boys were little, I had sheepdogs, and the boys and the dogs would run around the yard all day. It was a very good pairing.
The kids are grown and gone, and so now I have a hound. We sit on the couch and watch football.
Each to his own, of course, but research pays off: I've never accidentally checked into a bordello, either.
Okay, once. But that's another story.
Finally:
When a radio interviewer of this level interviews a cartoonist of this level,
you should go have a listen.
And try not to think of this:
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