CSotD: Go Read Something Else
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I recently shelled out good money for a very disappointing book, but I'm not going to say which one, only that it falls within the category I wish publishers would use for that non-fiction edumacational stuff: "Graphic Lecture."
It's not like just that particular one was boring.
I keep getting fooled into buying "graphic novels" that don't tell stories, and it's like being invited to something that happens at noon but doesn't include lunch. Maybe it's my fault, but one does assume, after all.
Perhaps I'd like these things more if I had liked school more, but I didn't and I don't, and your mileage may vary.
However, as a college senior, I had a TV that functioned as an alarm clock and it was our sad fate that, at the time we needed to get up, the TV show leading into CBS Morning News was still on.
And was Sunrise Semester. Given that she was in her first trimester, Then-Wife's response was probably not his fault, but the guy didn't do much for me, either.
Here's a sample, and please enjoy the entire half hour, or, perhaps, sample as much as you can take.
He happens to be lecturing about a book I have read two or three times and like very much, but when I studied it in college, it was in a seminar with 15 students and a professor who presented his theories and then argued and defended and occasionally conceded a point.
My department was entirely based on seminars, which may be why I finished school at all. I know there were professors in other departments who lectured, and some of them were brilliant, I've heard.
But in my junior year, we got a visiting professor in who lectured rather than discussing, and he was so boring that I quit going.
About two weeks before the end of the semester, two of my classmates ran into me in the snack bar and said our department head had asked the group to find out if I was planning to show up for the final.
I said, "I don't have him for anything" and they began laughing uproariously.
Turned out Professor Gasbag had been sent back to Princeton mid-semester and our head had taken over the class.
Historic Note: Nixon's invasion of Cambodia was, overall, a very bad thing, but it was not without one redeeming circumstance which is that the Student Strike got me out of a tight spot.
Today, I am no longer in school and nobody grades me on my ability to tolerate and transcend boredom.
All writers should engrave on their hearts the words of Barney Kilgore, the legendary managing editor of the Wall Street Journal:
The easiest thing for a reader to do is to stop reading.
Here are some not-boring things for you to read:
I meant to post Saturday's Dick Tracy yesterday, but here it is now and here's the start of something that looks like a lot of fun:
Staton and Curtis just wrapped a rather long story that got a little drawn out and I suspect being confined to a seven-day format — and bringing in a guest artist — will be restorative to them, and I'm sure fun for us. I don't know how long they plan to keep this up, but I'm in.
And, by the way, if you haven't been reading Tracy since they took over the gig, you've missed some good stuff. The days of reading it purely for the cheesy-campy nonsense are well over and this crew combines a bit of action with a wink to the audience that has transformed the strip.
Whatever cheesy-campy nonsense you find there now is entirely deliberate.
Speaking of which
And Boulet explores and thereby destroys a particularly cheesy, over-used, nonsensical movie cliche in excruciatingly funny detail.
Though if you ever want to take a mysterious, menacing scene set in a parking garage seriously again, you might want to skip this.
Lecture me this
There are times when Existential Comics is too smart for the house, but I don't think you need to have been a philosophy major to enjoy this one, particularly since the entire concept of a "social contract" appears to be up for debate and human decency does not have a veto-proof majority.
The ridiculous-but-logical arguments here demonstrate how you keep a lecture interesting, though the fact that it's only 18 panels and not a whole freaking book certainly helps.
(In honor of Thomas Hobbes, I propose we re-write that joke about an intellectual being someone who can hear the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger.)
And other heroes
Ann Telnaes adds a few illustrations to a Washington Post piece in which readers nominate 22 Americans who deserve monuments to replace those of the Confederacy.
Like a lot of crowd-sourced lists, there are some clinkers in the group, but some good ones as well. I don't see very many people in our history rivaling the heads on Rushmore for overall vision and impact, anyway, though you could swap out one Roosevelt for the other.
Still, it's a good conversation starter, even if that conversation is only in your own head.
And in honor of the season:
Retail explains Black Friday. How did we get ourselves trapped into this?
I stopped by the used bread store bakery outlet yesterday and noted that they are closed not just on Thanksgiving but the day after as well.
Good for them. You want to Make America Great Again? Go back to the days when families and communities mattered.
Ed Hall isn't the only cartoonist to suggest that Trump will end the traditional pardoning of the Thanksgiving turkey, but the elephant's head on the wall and the horrified children are a nice touch.
Brutal, Luckovich.
Not saying I didn't laff, mind you.
Here's a moment of zen for creators of graphic lectures
… and all of us had our minds set for an exciting graphic novel …
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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