GARFIELD AS AN EXISTENTIAL STATEMENT. Annalisa gave Nick a book for Christmas, GARFIELD MINUS GARFIELD, which is based on this website. The site publishes Garfield comics from which Garfield has been removed. Without the cynicism and avowed laziness provided by the cat, we are left with the bleak life of Jon Arbuckle. The creator of Garfield, Jim Davis, writes about GARFIELD WITHOUT GARFIELD: “Essentially, Garfield does the color commentary on Jon’s hapless existence.” It turns out that in the background of GARFIELD, there was as much angst as PEANUTS ever had.
Archive for December, 2008
GARFIELD AS AN EXISTENTIAL STATEMENT.
Wednesday, December 31st, 2008PEANUTS AND THE NEW GENERATION.
Wednesday, December 31st, 2008PEANUTS AND THE NEW GENERATION. The PEANUTS comic strip had a huge impact on my generation. I used to claim that while one could argue about different artists or writers, PEANUTS was one body of work that would survive for centuries. Consequently, I was astonished when our children, Annalisa and Nick, disliked PEANUTS. They couldn’t stand the patient suffering of Charlie Brown. Why did he put up with things? The angst which struck home in the fifties and sixties was out of place a generation later.
ANOTHER YEAR WITHOUT BEING CHARGED BY AN ELEPHANT.
Tuesday, December 30th, 2008ANOTHER YEAR WITHOUT BEING CHARGED BY AN ELEPHANT. This is a time for reviewing the past year. Dick and Chris Weisfelder sent us a holiday letter describing how their vehicle was charged by an enraged mother elephant who, fortunately, changed her mind at the last minute. I tend not to be appreciative enough of the blessings of a quiet life.
PREDICTING BLACK SWANS AT THE BEGINNING OF 2008.
Monday, December 29th, 2008PREDICTING BLACK SWANS AT THE BEGINNING OF 2008. I first posted on Nassim Taleb’s concept of black swans in September 2007 (Shakespeare was the subject of the post). The “Buttonwood” feature in the Economist for December 22, 2007 wrote about black swans and attempted to predict areas where black swans might emerge in 2008. (Buttonwood noted that a prominent Goldman Sachs expert had predicted that the S&P 500 index would end up 2008 at 1675. It was in the 870 range today.) Buttonwood nominated two areas as potential black swans in 2008: commercial property and Eastern Europe. It turned out that the impending disaster was in front of everybody. Buttonwood’s description of the black swan for 2007 also applied to what would happen in 2008: In the December 2007 article, Buttonwood said: “Although many anticipated a fall in American house prices for 2007, for example, few expected the scale of the ramifications for financial markets, as a whole system of structured finance appeared to unravel and the banking system was plunged into crisis. …”
A CHAMPION FAILS TO BREAK THE FRUITCAKE RECORD.
Sunday, December 28th, 2008A CHAMPION FAILS TO BREAK THE FRUITCAKE RECORD. I have posted previously about the champion eater Takeru Kobayashi. The New York Post reports that Kobayashi has failed at an attempt to break the world record for eating fruitcake. The record, held since 2001 by Sonya Thomas (the “Black Widow”), remains at 4 pounds 14.4 ounces in 10 minutes. It turns out that fruitcake is a difficult challenge—“the most difficult food I’ve ever eaten”, said Kobayashi.
LOCATING THE CHAINS.
Saturday, December 27th, 2008LOCATING THE CHAINS. I have always thought that there is an arbitrariness to bringing out the chains at a football game to determine whether the team with the ball has picked up the ten yards necessary for the first down. If the ball is short of a first down, the officials hold the chain with their fingers to make sure that the end of the chain is placed back in the correct spot. But what about the beginning of the series of downs? I always thought it was placed arbitrarily—or by rough guess—and I was watching a game last Sunday (December 21) which illustrated this. Toward the end of the first half, Philadelphia took the ball at its own 20 because of a touchback. After the third down, the ball was spotted just short of the 30 yard line. There was a measurement, and the ball was beyond the end of the chain. The officials and the announcers accepted that this would be a first down, even though as a matter of arithmetic, it couldn’t have been a first down. Either the initial spot of the chains was wrong, the chains weren’t ten yards long or the distance between the 20 yard line and the 30 yard line was not ten yards.
NO LIVES ARE ORDINARY.
Friday, December 26th, 2008NO LIVES ARE ORDINARY. The DVD for 49 UP has an interview by Roger Ebert with Michael Apted, the director of THE UP SERIES, in which Apted quotes the wife of one of the characters in THE UP SERIES. Apted then comments about the series and the children: “These are ordinary lives, ordinary stories, but they are told in such a dignified way, and they elevate the ordinary life to real drama and real dignity.” Apted is a wonderful director, but I disagree strongly with him. Instead, I agree with the woman Apted quoted: “Every life is an act of courage and everybody has a story.” That is what THE UP SERIES demonstrates.
A SUDDEN STROKE OF KINDNESS.
Thursday, December 25th, 2008A SUDDEN STROKE OF KINDNESS. Two years ago at Christmas, I posted on how moved I am by the characters in Dickens who are generous and kind (and for that reason are sometimes dismissed by the critics as mere plot devices) and on how my father told me that I might encounter kindness in a big city at any time. THE UP SERIES is confined by its rules to what actually happens to the children in the course of their lives. Yet there is one “plot twist” in the THE UP SERIES—in the lives of these people that we have been following— that was as dramatic as I ever seen in any movie or play—a stroke of kindness that emerges out of the blue. If it had been Dickens, critics might have dismissed it as a contrivance. But kindness happened. God bless us, every one!
WHO WANTS TO BE A CELEBRITY?
Wednesday, December 24th, 2008WHO WANTS TO BE A CELEBRITY? By the end of 49 UP, the last episode so far in THE UP SERIES, most of the people on the program had expressed openly that being on the program had been painful. It seemed that with maturity, they were more willing to express that discomfort. I draw the conclusion that most people are uncomfortable with the kind of public attention that the average celebrity enjoys—and seeks out.
THE EXTRA CHARACTER IN THE UP SERIES.
Wednesday, December 24th, 2008THE EXTRA CHARACTER IN THE UP SERIES. THE UP SERIES from the beginning, in 1963, was avowedly about the effects of the British class system. (There were only a couple middle-class children and only four girls chosen at the beginning—the women’s movement was apparently not anticipated). And the class system is important throughout. However as the children in THE UP SERIES, get older, they begin, even at 14 and certainly by 21, to resist the framework that the director/narrator is placing on their lives. The director/narrator becomes a character in the story, and one who is attempting to describe their lives in ways they reject.
