Recent Comments

1. 5 days ago on Tom the Dancing Bug

   I wonder what the folks in the real Chagrin Falls (Ohio) think about their town’s name being used in this strip, which doesn’t always seem very complimentary toward the fictional residents.

   Is Ruben trying to kid Calvin and Hobbes cartoonist Bill Watterson, who grew up there? (When my parents lived there for several years, I thought the place had a certain charm, but I never thought it would draw the attention of a cartoonist in this way.)

2. 10 days ago on Calvin and Hobbes

   Calvin was ahead of his time. The kids in the current Nancy strip actually have a robotics club at school (although it hasn’t been featured for a while).

3. 11 days ago on Richard's Poor Almanac

   If you live in the DC area (as Richard did and I do), you eventually run into the “High and Mighty” — it’s almost impossible not to.

   Several years ago, I saw Wilt Chamberlain cross M Street NW and go into the building where I worked, which also contained the studios of National Public Radio, where he was being interviewed.

   Another time, I was walking down the street with my wife, who noticed a familiar-looking woman staring at me as she approached us, accompanied by an elderly man. It was Cokie Roberts, who probably recognized me from the building where we both worked; the older man was fellow journalist Daniel Schorr.

   Yet another time, I went to meet my wife for lunch and, seeing her waiting for me across the street in front of a hotel, noticed Jim Nabors walking right past her. My wife didn’t notice him at all, even though he was only a few feet from her. (Jim was in town because his friend Carol Burnett was receiving a Kennedy Center Honor.)

   I was once in a DC bookstore, browsing during my lunch hour, when Tony Curtis approached me with his hand out, clearly intending to shake my hand. At the last moment, the woman with him steered him in another direction. Turns out that he was there for a book-signing, which I wasn’t aware of at first.

   I, too, saw Sam Donaldson, in a restaurant where my family was celebrating my brother’s graduation from dental school.

   I could probably go on, but my anecdotes obviously aren’t as amusing as Richard’s, in part because mine aren’t accompanied by the humorous illustrations…

4. 19 days ago on Richard's Poor Almanac

   The book of the same name is also excellent. Richard Thompson was one of the greatest cartoonists, of his or any other generation.

5. 20 days ago on Richard's Poor Almanac

   Me, too. I have a framed piece of sheet music on my wall for the song “Barney Google” by Billy Rose and Con Conrad, copyrighted 1923. It has a great full-color DeBeck drawing of Barney riding Spark Plug.

6. 21 days ago on The Knight Life

   Keith has this right. At least once a week when I’m out on the road, I think, “That driver shouldn’t be allowed to drive.”

   I’m not talking about minor infractions, which I’m mostly willing to overlook. I mean the kind of stuff that Keith portrays here — completely stupid things that no driver should ever do, that only don’t kill someone by sheer luck.

7. 29 days ago on Prickly City

   Political bubbles “always do” burst … except when they don’t.

   In 2008, I attended an outdoor Obama rally with 30,000 people — in October! That “bubble” never burst (so I guess it wasn’t a bubble after all).

   It remains to be seen how things go for Kamala, but so far, the trend is in her favor.

8. about 1 month ago on Annie

   From the Writers Almanac:

   “… The New York Daily News debuted the comic strip “Little Orphan Annie” on this day in 1924. It was canceled in 2010 after a run of nearly 86 years. The street-smart redhead inspired a radio show, a Broadway musical, three film adaptations, mass-marketed books, and merchandise that included everything from lunchboxes to curly wigs. Although only a fraction of this happened before the strip’s creator, Harold Gray, died in 1968, it was enough to make him a millionaire.

   “Gray’s wealth drew criticism during the Great Depression, when he used the strip to voice his populist political beliefs: namely, that the poor ought to pull themselves up by the bootstraps without government intervention or assistance. This is how his character Daddy Warbucks, the tuxedoed war profiteer, had succeeded, transforming his modest machine shop into a World War I munitions factory. Gray expressed his distaste for FDR and his New Deal in the strip’s storylines, prompting one left-leaning writer to label it “Hooverism in the funnies.” The public didn’t seem to care — in 1937, “Little Orphan Annie” was the most popular comic in the country.”

9. about 1 month ago on Cul de Sac

   Definitely one of Thompson’s best.

10. about 1 month ago on Crankshaft

    You’ve made a good point about how reading a newspaper online is a different experience from reading the hard copy. I’d disagree, however, that online is superior in every way, but that’s just my opinion.

    Until a year ago, I got the Washington Post and the NY Times delivered to me every morning. I enjoyed reading the paper versions each morning, especially during my long commuter train rides, when I was still going to the office each day.

    But last summer, the newspapers decided to quit offering home delivery via their joint carrier, replacing it with either mail delivery or a much cheaper online subscription. I went with mail for the Post and online for the Times.

    Reading the two papers now are two very different experiences.

    I like that the online Times provides up-to-the-minute news. But some stories are updated so often, as is their priority on the “front page,” that I feel like I’m never really getting a “final” version of many stories. Maybe that’s a better reflection of the real world, but I find the feeling of a story never being finished a bit less satisfying. It’s also sometimes hard to later find the updated version of a story because the placement of the story online changes so often.

    The hard copy of the Post does, of course, preserve the “curated” aspect of the presentation, in that you get one version of the story, placed in a certain position in the paper based on its importance and subject matter. I like that. On the other hand, I sometimes notice outdated aspects of the stories, and I definitely don’t like having to wait for our mail delivery in the afternoon to read what’s supposed to be a morning paper.

    So neither way of delivering the paper is ideal. I really wish that I could go back to having the hard copies being delivered and waiting for me first thing in the morning. But I guess that ship has sailed…

    Anyway, I could relate to this comic strip more than any other in a long time.