unreal! i was at a bar when this clip aired and there was a collective “WHOA!” from all the patrons after the hair pulling bit.
god bless title ix.
“this is a hand drawn shirt I was commissioned to make for Keith G. its Juelz Santana of Dipset wearing a Dead Kennedys t shirt.”
seriously, get updates from will laren’s flickr account. makes me laugh every time.
Grizzly Bear - Ready, Able
family circuses
Tonight I went to see cartoonists Matt Groening and Lynda Barry talk about their friendship and work. I was initially drawn to the event by Groening, but Barry really stole the show. The most touching moment for me was when she explained why her all-time favorite cartoon is The Family Circus. There was a collective titter when she announced this— I mean, it’s the ultra vanilla Family Circus, and she’s supposed to be a big advocate for alternative comics, right?
To explain, she first talked about how she was always told that when you encounter a truly beautiful work of art, it would make you cry. She joked that she hoped she would burst into tears in front of a great work of art and a handsome man, “so he’d see how beautiful and sensitive I was and then we’d make out.” She tried to force this in front of a Botticellli in Italy, but she could only squeak out one tear on the wrong side of her face, and the guy on the other side of her “wasn’t even that cute.”
Recently she was at a comic convention, and she was introduced to Jeff Keane, who now draws The Family Circus in his late father’s stead. When she was in front of him, she burst into tears. She said she was just sobbing uncontrollably, to the point where it freaked Keane out. Barry tried to go away for a moment and compose herself, but when she met him again, the same thing happened.
“I wasn’t crying because I met the guy who draws The Family Circus,” she explained. “I was crying because I had completed the circle.” She talked about how she had a rough childhood, and how the house she lived in was always painfully crazy and hectic. For her, The Family Circus was a safe, calm place amidst chaos. “I cried because I had finally come into the circle, and it was all because I drew a picture. Drawing a picture got me to that place.”
Secretly, The Family Circus has always been one of my favorite cartoons, too. It also reminds me of being a kid, but for much happier reasons. It always makes me think of my grandma’s basement, where I’d sit on the cool floor for hours during visits in the summer. She must have had at least 5 or 6 book collections of the comic, and I would sit and read them while Tommy James and the Shondells’ “Mony Mony” played on the jukebox (or “Who Stole the Kishka?” after the summer that my sister unintentionally put a ton of polka records on the jukebox). I loved those trips to Michigan, and particularly, that one space, so much.
I’ve been thinking about my wonderful family a lot lately. As I’m writing this, I’m looking at my roommate’s special strawberry plate. Let me backtrack. I brought out some of my silverware the other day (yes, I am still unpacking), which includes a fork that has a big figure 8/infinity sign as its stem. John thought it was the coolest thing, and I was like “Oh, but that’s not even the Fork of Royalty!” So then I had to explain that the Fork of Royalty was a mismatched fork in our family’s silverware collection that has a crown engraved at the bottom of the stem. My siblings and I always really liked getting the Fork of Royalty at dinner; my father did not, as he is a bit anal retentive and likes having matching silverware. I thought that this would sound totally bizarre to John, but he knew exactly what I was talking about. “In our family it was the strawberry plate. We only had one, and we would always fight over it. Don’t tell my brother, but I actually have it here.” And sure enough, we have one plate in the apartment with faded strawberries bordering the rim of the plate.
It might seem silly to talk about a cartoon strip and a fork, but I always welcome these little, unexpected reminders of my circle, my circus.
must be guy fawkes day cuz my netflix queue is BLOWIN UP
