Category: Uncategorized

I hadn’t seen a movie in months, then saw two movies in the past two days; both with my kids.  I went to see  Get Smart with my 11 year old daughter and her friend, and then Iron Man (what a great movie!) with my 8 year old son.

SPOILER ALERT!
I’m about to reveal pivotal plot points to both movies.  If you haven’t seen these movies and are sensitive to these things (I know I am), avert your eyes!

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There.  Did I do that right?  I’m new to blogging.  Maybe I should add some more stars.
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Okay.

In both cases the kids came out of the movie talking about the big surprise double agent — the guy you thought was the friend of the hero, but turned out to be a villain who’d been double-crossing him.

They were shocked when I said that I knew he was a villain from the start of the movie.  (Yes, I can impress children with my keen intellect!)  But I thought it was funny that I knew about about the villain for the same reason in both movies.

In Get Smart, The Rock is too big a movie star to sign on to a movie where he’s merely one of the protagonist’s friends.  He has to have a juicier role, so he must be the  mole.  (The kids suspected The Chief.  Silly kids, don’t you know that The Chief was a regular character in the 1965 TV series, and thus can’t be a villain?!)

And in Iron Man, Jeff Bridges isn’t going sign up just to be the C.O.O. for Robert Downey Jr.’s company.  You know he’ll be chewing up some scenery in Act 3.

Ah, the burdens of being a big, sophisticated adult…

is of course Scaliariffic.

Via an alert reader:

SETON HALL LAW REPORT: DEPT. OF DEFENSE DATA REVEALS NO RELEASED GUANTÁNAMO DETAINEE EVER
ATTACKED ANY AMERICANS
 Dept of Defense’s own data rebuts Justice Scalia’s claim that
30 former GTMO detainees ‘returned to the battlefield’

In his dissent to the majority opinion in Boumediene v. Bush, in arguing that GTMO prisoners should not have the right to habeas corpus petitions to challenge their incarceration, Justice Scalia cited the fact that 30 detainees released by the military had returned to the "battlefield."   Amazingly, he used this as support for his contention that the military and Executive Branch would be much better at figuring out which prisoners are guilty, and which are innocent, than the federal courts.

Turns out the source of that Fun Fact, the Department of Defense, had retracted it, and has no idea what happened to the released detainees.  What a surprise.

Interesting, though, that by Scalia, J.’s logic, if the military releases a prisoner and it turns out he really was innocent, it shows that the military system works, so the federal courts should leave it alone.  And if the military releases a prisoner and it turns out he was guilty, returning to the "battlefield," it demonstrates that even the military can’t get it right — so how the hell could the federal courts?!

So each detainee released by the military, rightly or wrongly, is more evidence that the federal courts shouldn’t get involved.   If President Bush really wants to prove that the federal courts have no business deciding the fate of the GTMO prisoners, he should release them all.  QED.

Tom Tomorrow has a post on his blog ridiculing the New York Times’ Week In Review’s recent printing of a Jay Leno joke in its "Laugh Lines":

Gay marriage now legal here in California. In fact, you
hear who got married today in San Francisco? Rice and Roni. Yeah,
finally got married.

It’s true that the Week In Review at one time ran long-form political comics like This Modern World, Ted Rall and Tom the Dancing Bug with regularity.  In the last few years that space has been devoted solely to single-panel gag political cartoons, and Laugh Lines, which reprints jokes from late-night comedians’ monologues.

The relative merits of alternative, long-form political comics vs. the traditional gag editorial cartoon can be debated.  But despite Tom Tomorrow’s and my obvious biases, I think it’s beyond doubt that this Laugh Lines thing is a total embarrassment to everyone involved.  And I’m a huge admirer of all these comedians.

These jokes are written for the voice of the comedian, and are meant to be casually spoken, laughed at as part of the general atmosphere of jocularity created by the host, and then quickly forgotten as he moves on to the next item.  To see them laying flat on the page is a disservice to the talented people who wrote them for a very specific purpose, and it’s a disaster to the reader.

Believe me, if one of these late-night hosts had a spot where he read even the funniest political comics on the air, they would get as many laughs as these "laugh lines" get.

Yes, there are some monologue jokes that can survive the translation to print.  But it seems as though the editors at the Week In Review don’t even try to cull these out.  Rather, it seems like they record the monologues and choose the throwaway jokes that would look just about worst in harsh black and white print.

When I look at the New York Times reprinting talk show jokes, I sort of cringe in embarrassment.  Yes, the media is slowly and inexorably moving from a world of printed matter to a world dominated by video.  But to so inartfully glom onto another form’s material in order to find "hip" humor just reeks of desperation.

Some of the responses to my call for examples of Obama/McCain-style Hip Black Guys vs. Cranky Old White Guys:

Spike Lee vs. Clint Eastwood (the WWII "negro" actors controversy)
This definitely fits the model, but it was an insignificant story at the time I was writing the comic, and has developed only into a slightly more than insignificant story.

Black thug vs. Dirty Harry (Do you feel lucky, punk?)
Was that thug really "hip"?  And how would I fit Obama into that role?

Eddie Murphy vs. Nick Nolte (48 Hours)
How did I miss this one?  I even looked up Eddie Murphy’s filmography while trolling for examples for the strip.  Of course Nolte wasn’t exactly old at the time of this movie, but I’d have forgiven that for the same reason I let that slide for Simon in the American Idol panel — because the crankiness factor is off the charts.

Sidney Poitier vs. Spencer Tracy (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner)
I considered this, but I had never seen the movie, and it seemed too boring to research.

Gary Coleman vs. Mr. Drummond (an actor vs. a character, from Diff’rent Strokes)
The black guy not hip, the white guy not cranky, but would have been very funny.  And how about Webster vs. Alex Karras (a character vs. an actor)?

Just saw this article on webcomics, in which Tom the Dancing Bug is reviewed, along with some other cartoonists whose work I admire, particularly Josh Neufeld and Tim Kreider.

The other night, I was flipping around the channels late, late at night and came upon one of those televangelist "paid programming" shows.  This televangelist, Paula White, said:  "Are you feeling weighted down in life?  You have too many other people’s burdens, weights, on your back.  Remember Galatians says, bear your own burdens."  While she spoke, a two sentence quotation was flashed on the screen, citing Galatians, but too quickly to be read carefully.

This may have caught my attention because this concept sounded more New Age, modern self-help, than biblical.  So on a whim, I backed up the DVR to read the supporting quotation.  It actually read:

"Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.  For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.  Galatians 6:2-3"

Now, I’m no biblical scholar, and I’m not sure what that second sentence is getting at, but I’m pretty sure the first sentence is saying the exact opposite of what she said.

This week’s comic:
Trust the man with the scissors.

We’ve seen this played out many times before…

What examples of hip black guys vs. cranky old white guys did I miss?  E-mail me, and I’ll post responses next week.