Posts Tagged: Calvin And Hobbes

Writing — No Comments
8
Jun 11

How To Stay Young And Virile Well Into Your Seventies

I live my life by a few simple rules. I never drink alcohol or eat meat. I sedulously say please and thank you when withdrawing large amounts of money from my bank account. And I always make sure I use clean needles when injecting myself with steroids. In this way, I aim to live a long and healthy life.

Many people look at my success and want to know what my secret is. It all starts with my daily routine. I’m much like a young Jay Gatsby in that way.

Whether you want to be a successful entrepreneur, plan on participating in the Olympics some day, hope to win the Nobel Prize, or are recently unemployed and have some extra time on your hands, this daily routine will help you to reach your goals:

  • Rise From Bed–6 A.M.
  • Dumbbell Exercise And Parkour–6.15 to 6.30 A.M.
  • Read From The Kabbalah–7.15 to 8 A.M.
  • Study The Practice Of Medicine–8 to 8.30 A.M.
  • Trade Stocks–9 A.M. to 4.30 P.M.
  • Cricket And Other Bat Sports–4.30 to 5 P.M.
  • Practice Sleight Of Hand–5 to 6 P.M.
  • Work On Time Machine And Other Needed Inventions–7 to 9 P.M.
  • Watch Television Until Falling Asleep–10 P.M. to Midnight

This daily routine helped James Franco become a modern day Renaissance Man, and it will help you as well.

Please Note: Do not attempt to perform parkour while carrying dumbbells. If you do, you will die.

Writing — 6 Comments
25
Feb 10

The Most Exquisite Works Of Art Ever Created

Benjamin Franklin coined the phrase “Beauty, like supreme dominion, is but supported by opinion.”* But Franklin was wrong.

According to my friend Science, beauty is a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses. Using a complex algorithm that has been thoroughly supported through experimental research, Science has definitively ranked the most exquisite works of art.

#11 Guernica

Creator: Pablo Picasso

What sets it apart: Picasso’s most famous painting, he applies his Cubist style to the bombing of the Basque village of Guernica. The painting graphically exhibits the atrocities of war. Since its creation, Guernica has become a symbol of peace, and is frequently touted as a monumental anti-war emblem. Every leader should have to sit in front of this painting for an hour before voting their country to war.

#10 Ryoan-Ji Temple

Creator: The Sound Of One Hand Clapping

What sets it apart: The pinnacle of Zen architecture, Ryoan-ji, located to the Northwest of Kyoto, houses the famous Karesansui Garden. Everything about the temple espouses its main theme, “What one has is all one needs.” The key ingredient in true art is artlessness.

#9 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Creator: T. S. Eliot

What sets it apart: If nothing else, the lines:


Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

Eliot elegantly summarizes the paradox of human existence, that an entire lifetime can be contained inside a single moment, yet all our seemingly endless days are not enough to fulfill us. We look forward at our beginning, and look backward at our end, and never make full use of the moment at hand. Maybe we should spend more time in Ryoan-ji

#8 The Iliad

Creator: Homer

What sets it apart: In one, beautiful, elegaic, epic poem, Homer summarizes what war and love and pride mean to an entire culture. In Achilles, the tragic hero, we have literature’s greatest example of the defiant one, who refuses to bow before his king in the face of injustice. But his defiance costs him dearly, and he eventually throws his life away in the name of avenging his slain companion. In so doing, Achilles reveals the greatest secret of The Iliad, that we in fact have the ability to determine our own fate.

#7 Citizen Kane

Creator: Orson Welles

What sets it apart: Sure it revolutionized filmmaking, with its use of deep focus and special effects, but the real importance of Citizen Kane is the inspiration it provided for Charles Montgomery Burns.

#6 Snow Man, 1989

Creator: The Scott Family

What sets it apart: In the aftermath of the great blizzard of ’89, and clearly inspired by Calvin and Hobbes, Walter Scott, his wife Diane, and their children, Richie and Hannah, set about building the greatest snowman of all time. The fact that it melted 3 days later only adds weight to its poignancy.

#5 Hamlet

Creator: William Shakespeare

What sets it apart: Any truly great work of art, from The Epic Of Gilgamesh to Snowman, 1989, centers on one theme, and one theme alone, the futility of human existence. Hamlet, thanks to the perfidy of his Uncle, contemplates suicide. Instead, he decides to expend his life fighting for love and justice. But in the end, does it really matter?

#4 The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha

Creator: Miguel Cervantes

What sets it apart: Don Quixote: madman, idealist, the butt of jokes. But he didn’t care, because he truly understood the human condition, that we create our own reality.

#3 Dogs Playing Poker

Creator: Cassius Coolidge

What sets it apart: Subversive without being demeaning, Dogs Playing Poker points out the animal in all of us. More importantly, the painting symbolizes that working class art has a place in our culture, despite what certain pretentious art critics might say.

#2 Requiem Mass In D Minor

Creator: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

What sets it apart: The Requiem is scored for 2 basset-horns in F, 2 bassoons, 2 trumpets in D, 3 trombones (alto, tenor & bass), timpani (2 drums), violins, viola and basso continuo (cello, double bass, and organ or harpsichord). The vocal forces include soprano, alto, tenor, and bass soloists and an SATB mixed choir.

#1 David

Creator: Michelangelo

What sets it apart: If all the works of art ever created suddenly sprung to life, and they subsequently fought in a gigantic cage match, David would totally win.

*Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Please note that this blog post was published posthumously

Writing — No Comments
17
Feb 10

The Most Important Chinese Inventions

Chinese inventors have historically been given the shaft. People like Guttenburg and Aristotle are given credit for inventions that originated in China centuries earlier.

Of course, in the 21st century, Chinese inventors are enacting their revenge, stealing everything from car designs to medicine and slapping a Chinese brand on it.

The West can cry and complain all it wants, but you know what they say about payback.*

#11 Zoetrope

Date: 180 AD

Why It’s Important: Has been the inspiration for thousands of school boys to draw crude cartoons on the pages of their textbooks.

#10 Coffin

Date: 5000 BC

Why It’s Important: Without coffins, where would vampires sleep?

#9 Tofu

Date: 10th Century AD

Why It’s Important: One word: Tofurkey

#8 Bell

Date: 2000 BC

Why It’s Important: How else would you know where your cows are?

#7 Compass

Date: 1st Century AD

Why It’s Important: Although the Chinese did not realize it might be used in navigation until a millennium later, the compass was an integral part in divination and geomancy ceremonies.

#6 Printing

Date: 650 AD

Why It’s Important: A lot easier for Confucius to get the word out about his righteous kegger when he could print up the fliers rather than hand draw each one.

#5 Alcohol

Date: 7000 BC

Why It’s Important: Confucius would have no need for the printing press otherwise.

#4 Fork

Date: 2000 BC

Why It’s Important: Considering the fork was invented a thousand years before chopsticks, yet nobody in China actually uses the fork, even today, perhaps it wasn’t that important.

#3 Gunpowder

Date: 1044

Why It’s Important: Gunpowder would allow Western Powers to conquer China more than 800 years later. Some might call that ironic.

#2 Paper

Date: 2nd Century BC

Why It’s Important: Directly led to the invention of the spitball one year later.

#1 Flamethrower

Date: 10th Century AD

Why It’s Important: How else can Calvin fight the monsters under his bed?

*It’s a bitch

Writing — 1 Comment
21
Sep 09

First There Was Nothing…Then There Was Calvin


#1 Calvin and Hobbes

See Introduction | #9|#8| #7|#6|#5|#4|#3|#2

Not fair, you cry. It’s not a webcomic. It was a newspaper comic strip, and its creator retired well before the rise of the Internet.

Perhaps, but thanks to UCLICK and Google Reader, I can still read it every day. And whether or not it truly belongs on a list of webcomics, its tremendous influence on the medium cannot be denied. An entire generation of Americans has been shaped by reading Calvin and Hobbes every morning.

As the folks at Progressive Boink expressed it:

I can confidently state that Calvin and Hobbes outclasses the rest of the comic strip world more than anything else has ever outclassed the rest of its medium. Sans this strip, the industry is characterized by guys sitting on rocks making stupid puns, a Family Circus kid misunderstanding the meaning of a word, or an overweight father playing golf while telling jokes such as I LIKE GOLF and GOLF IS HARD. It’s a medium that doesn’t really deserve something as good as Calvin and Hobbes, but it got it anyway, and the newspaper-reading world was made a better place by it.

Hyperbole, yes. But not by much. Calvin and Hobbes was much more than just entertaining. It made us think. Even as children, we recognized ourselves in the two protagonists, whether in their stringent refusal to yield to authority, their inability to escape their own nature, or the way in which they are so misunderstood by the adults around them. They are miniature philosophers, and we will forever owe Bill Watterson a debt for their creation.

Since his retirement, Watterson has become our generation’s Salinger. The longer he resists any kind of compromise or comeback, the more the legend of Calvin and Hobbes grows. He is the Beatles, minus the solo careers, Abraham Lincoln, absent a bullet in the head.

It is incredible to realize that Calvin and Hobbes only ran for a single decade. It is as much a part of my mornings as the New York Times, breakfast cereal, or oxygen.
Be thankful we lived to see it, and feel sad for those who passed their lives in the interminable dark ages that proceeded its advent.

Milan Kundera writes:

Once upon a time I too thought that the future was the only competent judge of our works and actions. Later on I understood that chasing after the future is the worst conformism of all, a craven flattery of the mighty. For the future is always mightier than the present. It will pass judgement on us, of course. And without any competence.

Who can say how the future will judge Calvin and Hobbes. In two hundred years, will our sons and daughters will be reading it alongside Faulkner, Beckett, and Fitzgerald? I can only assert that they should be.

Lyric Of The Day:

He’s a miniature philosopher
He takes notes on all he reads
But that doesn’t satisfy his needs
He’s a desk clerk at the bank and trust
There’s so many contracts and paperwork to do
He gets so busy at the bank and trust
There is no time for Nietzsche or Camus

He’s a miniature philosopher
He writes essays on Voltaire
But if he died no one would care

He doesn’t know why his life turned out this way
No one ever reads his dissertations or allegoric plays
So he comforts himself while searching a rhyme
That the public rarely recognize a genius in their time
(poor little guy)
He’s a miniature philosopher
Though he hasn’t got a friend
He’s sure he’ll be famous in the end

“The Miniature Philosopher”
-Of Montreal

Writing — 1 Comment
18
Sep 09

T-Rex De Le Mancha


#2 Dinosaur Comics

See Introduction | #9|#8| #7|#6|#5|#4|#3

It would be natural to assume that one of the major appeals of the comic as an art form is the illustrations. Dinosaur Comics proves that you are wrong.

You see, in Dinosaur Comics, every strip has identical artwork. Panel 1, T-Rex in three quarters profile, tail extended behind him. Panel 2, close up on T-Rex, mouth agape in seeming excitement. Panel 3, the scene pulls out to reveal T-Rex stomping on a log cabin, with a car parked out front, and a female Dromiceiomimus glancing back at him. Panel 4, T-Rex about to step on a human, with restless Utahraptor standing behind him. Panel 5, T-Rex peering over his shoulder at Utahraptor. Finally, panel 6, T-Rex again alone, standing pigeon-toed.

With every strip visually identical, there is no story. Nothing happens. It is much akin to Calvin and Hobbes riding the sled down the hill. You know there will be a crash every time. The allure lays in the conversation.

And every day, T-Rex and his two friends have a new conversation. They muse on all manner of subject matter, including racism, epistemology, time travel, and space murder.

Over the years, we have learned that T-Rex is an everyman. He is also an overly enthusiastic man-child in love with himself. Most of all, he is a modern day Don Quixote, passionately committed to his vision of the world, and refusing to allow setbacks, society, God, or common sense prevent him from fully effectuating his own reality.

From reading this interview, I gather the author is much like his short-armed creation. Ryan North, I salute you. You have taken the art form of Internet comics to its pinnacle.

And by the way, to carry the comparison to Don Quixote to its logical conclusion: Utahraptor is Sancho Panza, Dromiceiomimus is Dulcinea, the log cabin is Rocinante, and the windmills are God.

Lyric Of The Day:

Dinosaurs lived a long time ago
They were terrible lizards don’t you know
Some ate plants and some ate meat
Some ate fish and some ate beasts
One was called Diplodocus
One was bigger than your school bus
One was called a Triceratops
Three horns to stop anything that hops
Now can’t you just see yourself walking along
Leading your pet Trachadon
Or feeding your Brontosaurus Rex
Or scratching your Diplodocus’ neck
Or riding on a Stegosaurus’ back
Or swimming in Brachiscaurus’ track
Oh what a time and oh what a fun
Playing tag with your Ignanondon
And if we had Dinosaurus now
Could they get along with a horse and a cow
Well I wish they hadn’t become extinct
Dinosaurus would be nice pets and friends
To have around to run outside
And play with every day don’t you think

“Dinosaur Song”
-Johnny Cash

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1
Sep 09

Marmaduke Would Look Quite Dapper In That Top Hat


# 7 Wondermark

See Introduction | #9 |#8

The magic of webcomics stems from the freedom inherent in the medium. Unlike traditional comic strips, which are beset with strict guidelines for format and structure, as Bill Watterson famously struggled against, comics on the internet are free to evolve in any direction they wish. The variety of webcomics are stunning.

Take for example A Softer World, which takes a strip of three usually related photos and grafts a poem over them with seemingly unrelated text. Or how about Untitled Gif. I cannot even begin to explain what it is about, but I still enjoy reading it.

Imagine how great Marmaduke would be if Brad Anderson had been free to explore his full artistic vision. It might have turned out something like Wondermark.

In Wondermark, you have illustrations that look like artwork from turn of the century (the 20th, not the 21st) magazines or street fliers, with absurd story lines created. The style is stunning, and the immediate response upon first viewing it is to wonder how the artist does it. Does he painstakingly draw each one? Is their some kind of computer wizardry involved?

Apparently, the creator, David Malki ! (so astonishing, he has an exclamation point in his name) scans in the drawings from 19th century woodcuts and engravings. He then uses them as the basis for the strip. But to fully appreciate the time and labor involved, read his description of the process.

The final product is the seventh best webcomic in the universe. My favorites include In which Jody is burning some trash, In which it’s Hot, and In which we went Too Far.

Wondermark is unique in that it excels in terms of both story and visuals. Not a combination you find very often in the world of webcomics. It makes me wonder why Malki with an exclamation point is not earning a real living as a graphic designer or advertiser. His parents must be very disappointed.

Lyric Of The Day:

Looking back on when i
Was a little nappy headed boy
Then my only worry
Was for christmas what would be my toy
Even though we sometimes
Would not get a thing
We were happy with the
Joy the day would bring

Sneaking out the back door
To hang out with those hoodlum friends of mine
Greeted at the back door
With boy thought I told you not to go outside,
Tryin your best to bring the
Water to your eyes
Thinkin it might stop her
From woopin your behind

I wish those days could come back once more
Why did those days ev-er have to go
I wish those days could come back once more
Why did those days ev-er have to go
Cause I love them so

“I Wish”
-Stevie Wonder

Writing — No Comments
28
Aug 09

Dinosaurs Are Notoriously Bad At Making Decisions


#8 Cat And Girl

See Introduction | #9

It’s been genetically proven that every new webcomic since 1995 is a direct descendent of Calvin and Hobbes. But not one is a more direct descendent than Cat and Girl.

You have a girl of undetermined age, accompanied by a cat of dubious reality. Together they muse on life, society and philosophy. The strip is even populated by the occasional dinosaur.

In the beginning (circa 1999), the strip tilted more towards Calvin’s imaginary world view, fighting monsters that jump out of paintings, or facing off against invaders from outer space.

But over the years, Girl has become a speed bump in the fast lane of society, worried, alarmed or disgusted by what the masses would term progress. Nearly every strip now is a rumination on life and the human condition. Cat breezes through, seemingly unconcerned with the world at large, determined to enjoy his own personal kingdom. He does his best to bring Girl joy and solace.

Cat tries to entice Girl into having more fun. Cat tries to comfort Girl when she realizes they are not part of the elite. He helps her choose between creation and destruction. And he consoles her when she wants to give up.

Life for Cat and Girl is usually not easy. Cat takes it all in with aplomb, unfazed. Girl accepts it with a bittersweet resignation. Together, they suggest two extreme ways to go about living life. For the rest of us, we are somewhere in between.

Lyric Of The Day:

Hello cowgirl in the sand
Is this place
at your command
Can I stay here
for a while
Can I see your
sweet sweet smile
Old enough now
to change your name
When so many love you
is it the same?
It’s the woman in you
that makes you want
to play this game.

“Cowgirl in the Sand”
-Neil Young

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