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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 13th, 2004 at 8:00 am and is filed under Cartoons, Cartoons that are Actually Good, Gorjus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
those indie rock folks look like the sibblings you don’t have.
haw!
as for those dance directions…jesus that’s hard to follow!
What an awesome spread. The fact that you did this on Columbus Day is genius.
congrats on the swearing in. wish i coulda been there.
I loved the complexity of this comic, especially the variety of textures in both the drawing and the borrowed dance instruction visual.
The multiple conotations of the title (Lindy’s famous flight, Columbus, etc.) are cool, too. But I wonder if
Death Cab is really ripe for dancing?
Thank-you guys so much for these comments. I did want a commentary on Columbus and our continuing “celebration” of him and his “achievement;” why do we not celebrate modern-day triumphs in the same fashion? While Columbus wandered across the ocean after several others had years (perhaps centuries before) to “find” a place with people on it, Lindbergh did something that no one had ever done before. Did the communists actually conquer us in some small fashion? For we no longer have our Sgt. Yorks or—hell, name one “hero” of the first Gulf War or the Unending Upending of Iraq. All we reference are the communal “heroism” of our collective “troops;” cf. hideous, contradictory, and bizarre “Army of One” slogan.
Of course the second text section was inspired by our incredibly fun “dance controversy” a few months back, spearheaded by Sally & Bulb & myself. After I revisited the discussion, and especially in light of Mssr. Derrida’s death, I realized we weren’t actually talking about the dance itself, but who “owned” it, or what it “really” was. Shorty Snowden, after all, was most likely doing the “breakaway” that day in 1920.
I’m sure this has also been commented on before, but do you out there in Catoptric-land feel there is a corrolation between the death of social dancing and the rise of sexual activity? Case in point: were the sweaty intimacy and flashy moves of rock’n’roll-era Lindy Hop rendered moot by actual widespread sexual relations?
In other words, did we stop dancing because we started doing it all the time?
Thanks again for the incredibly insightful, intelligent, and kind comments. And yes, jp!, that is my extended imaginary nerd-rock family in the last panel! I am the besuited-bored one.
Last aside: has anyone read Roth’s latest ponderosa, which I allude to in the first text-piece, with President Lindy the fascist?
Funny I was going to ask about anyone reading Roth?
Famous old movie quote re: dance and sexuality—“Dancing is a vertical expression of a horizontal desire”.
I realize this formulation limits the Kama Sutric possibiltiies, but it makes its point pithily.
The first guy is worried that listening to GBV might be “out.”
I want to know more about this “doing it all the time”. Does this mean that I can’t dance because I can’t do it? Or is it I can’t do it because I can’t dance? I’m damned! I’m no good to anyone vertically, or horizontally…
I was hoping that drinking Michalob (I can’t spell) in the bottle would be “in”, but they’ve wussied out the bottle style.
I also believe that more holidays should be tied into TBS doing “Oh My Godzilla!” weekends. That’s the way to celebrate heros…
more sex dance stuff from Elvis Costello
Mystery Dance
Romeo was restless, he was ready to kill.
He jumped out the window cause he couldn’t sit still.
Juliet was waiting with a safety net.
He said “Don’t bury me cause I’m not dead yet”.
Why don’t you tell me ‘bout the mystery dance.
I wanna know about the mystery dance.
Why don’t you show me,
‘cause I’ve tried and I’ve tried,
and I’m still mystified.
I can’t do it anymore and I’m not satisfied.
I can’t do it anymore and I’m not satisfied.
Well I remember when the lights went out
and I was tryin’ to make it look like it was never in doubt.
She thought that I knew, and I thought that she knew,
so both of us were willing, but we didn’t know how to do it.
chorus
Well I was down under the covers in the middle of the night,
tryin’ to discover my left foot from my right.
You can see those pictures in any magazine.
But what’s the use of looking when you don’t know what they mean.
And speaking of famous war heroes of a bygone age, let’s not forget Audie Murphy, who lied about his age to get into WW2, then went on to star in movies about his own heroism in WW2.
The only individuals I can think of who’ve been embraced as heroes from our most recent conflicts: a) Todd Beamer, the “Let’s Roll” guy, though he seems only to really have caught on among the evangelical set and Neil Young, and b) Jessica Lynch, and we know how that turned out… Oh, and c) there was Scott O’Grady, the pilot who got shot down and then had an Owen Wilson movie loosely based on him (I think it was “I Spy”). Oh wait, and the football player guy. But none have undergone a full zeitgestisization yet.
So, my theories about where all the Yorks and Murphy’s have gone, one charitable and one mean-spirited: 1) We haven’t seized on a “hero” from Iraq/Afghanistan because of our own deeply divided sense of how right, justifiable, and honorable those conflicts are. We don’t really have a Vietnam hero (and who would want the job given the way Max Cleland and Kerry have been treated?), and 2) Bush’s desire to be the hero of 9/11 and Iraq (even though they have nothing to do with each other) leaves little room for spotlighting the actual heroism of soldiers on the ground, who, after all, might say something mildly negative, or simply accurate, about the war; all the focus has to be on W and his strong, resolute leadership.
Lovin’ the cartoon, though if you post one celebrating Henry Ford I may take it back.
Dr. HR
Dr. HR
Um…upon re-reading, that sounded weirdly like I was criticizing Audie Murphy for fighting in WW2. I wasn’t.
Dr. HR
“zeitgestisization” – now my favorite new word! (Rad comment, Herc!)