Arlo and Janis turns 20
today. Today’s strip features a flashback to the very first strip of
July 29, 1985 (wow, I was 10). Compared to 75 year old Blondie, Janis
is a veritable spring chicken.
For anyone who isn’t familiar with the strip, time seems to have been
moving at about 1/3 real time. The couple’s son Gene (no [...]
For years now I have been trying to acclimate Rachel to the
pleasures of bitter melon. Well, perhaps “pleasures” is not quite the
word. In any event, I am now finally vindicated with the kickoff of Bitter Melon Week,
a combination food festival – performance art event taking place in
Boston’s South End. Asian and Gringo restaurants alike are [...]
Ray Billingsley describes
himself as “trying to influence his young readers in positive
ways,” but I’m struggling to see how. By egregiously abusing the quotation
mark
to connote disapproval of such modern-day terms as “rap” and “knack,”
Billingsley perpetuates the misleadingly non-misleading use of
quotation marks on handpainted store signs (”Special Sale!”) that
should have died away with the invention of the [...]
In a bold move to show courage in the face of terrorism, Governor Romney has accepted the harrowing mission of riding one stop on the T:
Elevated public transit security remains in place after the terrorist bombings
in London two weeks ago, and some downtown T stations have additional security
forces this morning after another scare in London, [...]
Well, we have it… Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
A little anti-climatic, really — Rachel’s employer’s bookstore was
allowed to distribute books to “employees,” and I think they
interpreted the concept a tad broadly, so she had the book in her hands
by 5pm tonight. Anyway, while the Globe’s Sidekick stupidly recommended
picking up the book at the Harvard [...]
Well, in the Boston Globe comics showdown, Pardon My Planet is off to a bad start this week. Today’s strip doesn’t even make any sense (I checked with Rachel; she doesn’t get it either):
OK, so what’s going on here? Is the waiter screwing up a gift
for the nice ’80s girl, or trying to shame the [...]
It’s not just Big Bird Haters
who think that PBS and NPR are a haven for lunatic liberals. In
the past few years I (and I’m speaking as a lunatic liberal here) have
found WBUR’s On Point
notably partisan. Tom Ashbrook relies far too heavily on prompting his
guests, “How about that?” to keep the conversation going without
betraying any knowledge [...]
Perhaps it’s just a coincidence of timing, but for the past few days the Globe’s new addition, Prickly City,
has given Mallard Fillmore’s daily screed the full stereo effect. Now,
going through the strip’s archives I’ll grant that PC might actually be
funny. So far, though, it feels like more dead weight added to the
burden already imposed by [...]
Is the Boston Globe finally giving comics the space they deserve, or
sending them off to a newspaper ghetto? Today’s Globe featured Sidekick,
“a new section that is your guide to a better day.” The comics now fill
5 pages of the new section as opposed to the old 2. True, the pages are
the smaller tabloid format, but [...]
Responding to apparently voluminous emails from readers, the dull
duck confirmed that the blatantly obvious send-up of his strip
appearing in Jon Stewart’s America is, in fact, a satire. The duck then threw in a more audience-appropriate joke about Dan Rather.
