But You’d Buy It, Right?
there’s no other excuse for it.
Mr. Jobs, you had a cosmic run—RIP.
Swampman Stops Smoking
Life, Liberty and the Cheroot of Happiness
(A continuing history of a comic strip for a small universe)
Filed under “we have the leaders we deserve,” these smoke
out the difference between an optimist and a pessimist...
The optimist smiles beatifically, says “this is the best of all
possible worlds”— the pessimist reflects a minute, grimaces
and replies, “yeah, you’re right.”
News flash: “one man, one vote” is history— welcome to “one corporation, all the votes you can buy!”
Wikileaks?—it’s not so much selective memory as selective amnesia...
Filed under “we have the leaders we deserve,” these smoke out the difference between an optimist and a pessimist...
The optimist smiles beatifically, says “this is the best of all
possible worlds”— the pessimist reflects a minute, grimaces
and replies, “yeah, you’re right.”
Wikileaks?—it’s not so much selective memory as selective amnesia...
Id, ego, super-ego — and putzes
(a continuing look back at a comic strip for a small universe)
Stuff constantly goes over our heads that we mistake for routine air traffic
Occasional unforeseen events intrude...
but perseverance and character strength get us through.
Sheen and Shinola
(A continuing history of a comic strip for a small universe)
We interrupt our usual chronology because the strip we printed in the club’s February 2011 newsletter coincided with a breaking news story... namely, the front page of Saturday, January 21st shown at left.
Art allegedly imitates life or vice-versa, but it’s not often life so obviously imitates the funny pages. Take a good look at that photo of Charlie though. Is that honestly a face you'd expect to find anywhere else?
We interrupt our usual chronology because the strip we printed in the club’s February 2011 newsletter coincided with a breaking news story... namely, the front page of Saturday, January 21st shown at left.
Art allegedly imitates life or vice-versa, but it’s not often life so obviously imitates the funny pages. Take a good look at that photo of Charlie though. Is that honestly a face you'd expect to find anywhere else?
Doorks
(Continuing a look back at a comic strip for a small universe)
Somebody painted the Club’s door black a few years ago.
Although it had been red for at least 60 years, somebody didn’t care, didn’t notice, or decided that black was a preferable comedic color.
Suspicion thus falls on an aesthetically impaired amnesiac who wets himself laughing over Poe and Kafka.
The act perhaps arose from a personal depression. Possibly a youthful trauma brought on by a drunken department store Santa or a rogue firetruck. Heavens. Get therapy, give us back the red door.
Black is funereal; the color of tragedy and self-doubt. Black is the choice of petite bourgeois, Huguenots, gentry. These are precisely the posturing, effete nobs the Comedy Club was founded to escape from.
Some misinformed, flatulent toads think that red doesn’t go with brick. Thus, red does not go with red. Those imbeciles may apply to the Blue Hair Troupe, the Anais Nin Lesbian Thesbians or a Frank Campbell embalming course— wherever their penchant for melancholy and dignified pretension calls them— but give us back our red door.
Although it had been red for at least 60 years, somebody didn’t care, didn’t notice, or decided that black was a preferable comedic color.
Suspicion thus falls on an aesthetically impaired amnesiac who wets himself laughing over Poe and Kafka.
Black is funereal; the color of tragedy and self-doubt. Black is the choice of petite bourgeois, Huguenots, gentry. These are precisely the posturing, effete nobs the Comedy Club was founded to escape from.
Why We Can’t Just Get Along
Alternatively, there are resorts of forceful coercion, hostilities or feeble attempts to make rules.
Deconstructing cartoons is stupid and unfunny
...but not as stupid as believing politics will resolve anything.
Guy Talk
(a continuing look back at a comic strip for a small universe)
The club’s Green Room has one of those Oxford Dictionaries the size of a footstool with type so small it comes with a magnifying glass.
Some of the conversations at the club might lead you to believe a few members knew that book practically by heart. It’s a tough house for repartee.
There’s no point in cartooning if you don’t take a shot at the desert island gag...
...but even for this audience, it might be a reach using the word “perspicacity.”
Some of the conversations at the club might lead you to believe a few members knew that book practically by heart. It’s a tough house for repartee.
There’s no point in cartooning if you don’t take a shot at the desert island gag...
...but even for this audience, it might be a reach using the word “perspicacity.”
Goin’ To the Chapel
The club’s a successful model of adapted diversity. What started as an excuse for some Murray Hill swells to ditch their wives and put on plays was a heck of a good formula in the 1880s, but it still needed new blood.
Over the years since, bluebloods, blue collars and the occasional brigand joined forces on and off stage, and ever have categories of bachelors, newly-married, “daddy-track” and indeterminate old farts been in evidence. There was a spate of guys tying the knot in the oughties; this strip commemorated a future president’s pre-nup festivities:
Over the years since, bluebloods, blue collars and the occasional brigand joined forces on and off stage, and ever have categories of bachelors, newly-married, “daddy-track” and indeterminate old farts been in evidence. There was a spate of guys tying the knot in the oughties; this strip commemorated a future president’s pre-nup festivities:
Really Should Get Out More
’01 through ’03 saw little over a dozen strips, this one a product of renting too many VCR movies, which features the final appearance of a little dog that was lost in his divorce:
TV was escalating its proof of the old Mencken saw about never going broke underestimating the intelligence of the the American public...
...and commentary about club goings on tried to evoke sentiments of guilt
...and the ilk of unedited candor our departed little friend was famous for...
...but always, always there was golf’s dark passion...
to unambiguously remind men of good will why life is beautifully futile...
Cartooning Truth to Power
(Continuing a reverse-chronological look back at a cartoon strip for a small universe)
A few strips fiddled with the idea that club presidents actually had
power and needed lampooning. One erstwhile commander in chief
politicked mightily for something nobody much remembers anymore, but this strip had such a lousy caricature of him nobody had a clue
what the cartoonist was going on about...
...another president much more realistically undertook the office with the stated objective to be the club’s Millard Fillmore. Parenthetically, something weird’s going on with the number of fingers on the characters.
A club dedicated to entertainment and performance had only one guaranteed source of amusement...
...and in general terms, the club also had one rule of engagement—if you really want something done, you’ve got to do it yourself—only then you’ll find out why the last guys screwed it up so badly...
If power really wanted truth spoken to it, the powerful would read cartoons avidly. This is an untested political theory.
power and needed lampooning. One erstwhile commander in chief
politicked mightily for something nobody much remembers anymore, but this strip had such a lousy caricature of him nobody had a clue
what the cartoonist was going on about......another president much more realistically undertook the office with the stated objective to be the club’s Millard Fillmore. Parenthetically, something weird’s going on with the number of fingers on the characters.
A club dedicated to entertainment and performance had only one guaranteed source of amusement...
...and in general terms, the club also had one rule of engagement—if you really want something done, you’ve got to do it yourself—only then you’ll find out why the last guys screwed it up so badly...
If power really wanted truth spoken to it, the powerful would read cartoons avidly. This is an untested political theory.
Cheese Diversions
(Continuing a look back at a comic strip for a small universe)
It was the winter of ’99-2000.
The club was feeling the loss of its two great lights and still carrying on, festooning, garlanding and tippling as Christmas and New Year’s approached.
It seemed a little raw to have the strip feature our departed friends, so a couple of other resident curmudgeons made an appearance for a short series that got its start from some larky Green Room banter during those well-lubricated millennial holidays. Ol’ Chardie was getting ready for his 70th birthday party. And he really did have a cheesewheel the size of an SUV tire.
This was a rare instance where actual names were used (protecting the innocent presupposes there are innocents)—and in the strip below the cartoonist digressed even more than usual in drawing style to invoke some club caricatures for the spoof. The guy who concocted the idea of the Weremouse is betrayed below by gratuitously bad dialog
...But the weremouse gag segued ultimately back to our prime protagonists... and inevitably golf...
...strictly speaking, we kind of left Chardie in the wilderness, but he loved being a weremouse for awhile.
The club was feeling the loss of its two great lights and still carrying on, festooning, garlanding and tippling as Christmas and New Year’s approached.
It seemed a little raw to have the strip feature our departed friends, so a couple of other resident curmudgeons made an appearance for a short series that got its start from some larky Green Room banter during those well-lubricated millennial holidays. Ol’ Chardie was getting ready for his 70th birthday party. And he really did have a cheesewheel the size of an SUV tire.
...But the weremouse gag segued ultimately back to our prime protagonists... and inevitably golf...
...strictly speaking, we kind of left Chardie in the wilderness, but he loved being a weremouse for awhile.
Back in the 90s
old in the 1990s, and with “Comedy” in its name, it was begging for a
comic strip. Two guys were conspicuous lead character choices.
They were and were not amused.
Smoking was pretty commonplace in 1998 when this strip happened:
...while the smoking thing was beginning to look so last century...
The strip ran in the club newsletter, and paralleled a show running at the time, “Terra Nova.’
...but golf was a competing passionate preoccupation
...that insistently recurred — golf being golf...
Dubious Mentalism
I’m an Eisenhower era child grown up to see Ike’s prophesies of the Military Industrial Complex in full bloom and hence know we’re pretty much doomed, but what the heck.
I watch enough History channel to realize we’ve been doomed before and gotten past it.
The thing to do is get busy making your own brand of brainwash, and gargle with it daily.
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