CSotD: Which Reminds Me …
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A lot of comics have pinged memories lately, but we’ll start with an unpleasant one, because Merthiolate and Mercurochrome were indeed the go-to antiseptics for small cuts and scrapes back in the day, and here’s more than you need to know about them.
They were a good reason not to go crying to your mother if you got hurt, because they hurt worse than anything you’d already done to yourself, but my mother switched to Bactine, which was promoted as not stinging. The school nurse didn’t, however, perhaps believing that, if it didn’t sting, it wasn’t doing the job.
Well, if that were the case, Merthiolate sure did a great job.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Still on today’s topic of memories, Dan Thompson pulls out an old pair of ancient characters for these puns.
Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls became a standard kid toy starting in 1918, and they seem to have stuck around since, though not necessarily in the original indestructible rag-doll form, which made them seem like something your grandmother might have made for you. My own grandmother had a collection of the books, which had belonged to my father, who was born in 1921, or maybe his little sister, but either way, I think Dan is playing to an elderly crowd with this one.
The Jolly Green Giant is more likely to ring a bell with a somewhat younger crowd, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen him yo-ho-hoing on TV commercials, and the Kingsmen’s song about him came out in 1965, which was not yesterday.
At least he had the sense to get into frozen vegetables, because the canned shelf in the grocery stores is getting awfully short. Del Monte has gone belly up and California farmers are chopping down 420,000 peach trees for lack of a market.
Disney is trying live-action reboots and, as Rabbits notes, not doing so well, though the animated versions of Moana and the Little Mermaid did just fine with current young folks.
Which reminds me of a story my grandfather told of going to Leadville, Colorado, in 1937 to scout the molybdenum mines on behalf of Bethlehem Steel. He came out of his hotel one Sunday to find the streets of tiny Leadville crowded with families, and discovered they had come from out of the mountains because Snow White was opening at the local theater.
If you make it that well, they will come.
I blame Fleischer Studio’s 1939 Gulliver cartoon for the fact that nobody seems to realize that the Lilliput section of the novel is only a tiny part of the whole, and that it is not a children’s story. I got a copy when I was 11 or 12 and found 1726-style English impenetrable, though I got far enough to know how he saved the Queen from a fire in the castle. However, it wasn’t until college that I tackled the remaining 80% or so of the book and discovered Jonathan Swift’s talent for satire.
In 1996, Whoopi Goldberg and her main squeeze of the moment, Ted Danson, adapted the whole thing into a miniseries that won all sorts of awards, which proved that none of the voters had read the book either, the biggest laugh being that they changed the leader of the wise horses, the Houyhnhnms, from a stallion to a mare, a politically correct change that might have worked had they not already shot the scenes, because a long shot of a horse doesn’t leave a lot of confusion about its gender.
However, I have some affection for the attempt, because it provided my column with one of my favorite headlines ever:
And speaking of children’s literature …
Gauld’s reference to In Search of Lost Time reminded me that, while I was an avid reader as a kid, I was no rival of my then-wife, who, as a kid, read her family’s entire encyclopedia, front to back, and went on to major in journalism, doing two internships at the Colorado Springs Sun and being a campus stringer for Mademoiselle.
When I went back to finish my degree, she got a job as editorial assistant to a book publisher that was so undemanding that she’d read at her desk between tasks. She got through all seven volumes of Proust’s bildungsroman and then read War and Peace.
All while paying our bills. What a gal!
Rosen’s cartoon reminded me of a moment in our marriage about a decade later, when she was public information director for a liberal arts college that hosted a world-famous choreographer each summer for a modern dance series that drew in other choreographers and young dancers from across the nation.
I really enjoy classical ballet, but people leppin’ about barefoot in leotards is like a lecture in a language you don’t speak: I understand something profound is probably happening, but I haven’t a clue what it is. Still, as a faculty spouse, I had to be supportive, so we had an agreement that I would go to one of the grand events and be visible.
She chose one and I went and shook hands with the right people and settled in to watch a half-dozen 20-ish girls in brown leotards, who were supposed to be deer, jumping around, and then the stag — a guest choreographer in his mid-50s — came on, and you knew he was a stag because he was also in brown leotards but was wearing a pair of those antlers you put on your dog at Christmas. And they all started leppin’ about and it started to rain. I’m not joking. Water sprinkled down all over the stage, and they leapt about in that and then the sun came out and they lept a bit more and we all applauded.
Like Herb, I had danced my way into this mess, but, fortunately, even the people who understood and liked modern dance found this particular example ridiculous, so I earned bonus points for having survived the experience.
One More Memory
This was a dynamite blues/rock band when I was a teen. After their founder died, some of the other members formed a rocker that wasn’t really as good but had some popular hits.
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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