Tag Archives: Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers

The Other No Exit

When retiring his comic strip Bloom County, Berke Breathed remarked “a good comic strip is as eternal as a ripe melon.” Personally, I think that’s bullshit, and reflects more on Breathed’s motivation, or lack thereof. A good comic strip lasts a lifetime. We still pass around clippings of The Far Side and Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, decades after they were printed. A cartoonist who can’t perpetuate over changing times has inked themselves into a corner. Or dried the well.

If a comic strip is still hilarious long past its sell-by date, it is a successful comic strip. That is the acid test.

Before you ask, the “flip book” of Dan Quayle eating a Twinkie actually works. Quite well.

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Inherent Vice

So one of my favorite directors made an adaptation of a novel by my favorite writer. That’s a big deal.

In fact, it’s a huge deal. There was a time when I and friends who also read Thomas Pynchon thought that Mason & Dixon, his masterpiece from 1997, was his final effort. Then we figured the swan song was his sublime Against The Day, from 2006. Inherent Vice came along in 2009, and we finally realized that we were witness to a thriving, percolating phase in the lifetime of a literary master.

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Director Paul Thomas Anderson read Inherent Vice in 2009 and rightly deduced that it would be the most filmable of Pynchon’s oeuvre. Oh, how I long for a Terry Gilliam adaptation of Mason & Dixon, with a big budget and perfect casting, but this does just fine for the time being. Besides, now it’s on record that audience interest in Pynchon adaptations exists. Maybe someday we’ll get Against The Day, or, since I’m really blue-skying here, Gravity’s Rainbow*. It’s now in the realm of possibility. Continue reading

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Filed under Girls of BIUL, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Thousand Listen Club