Who will take over ‘The Family Circus?’ Not me

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Regular readers of this blog might know that I’m not the world’s biggest fan of “The Family Circus,” the longtime newspaper comic strip — panel, actually — that presented the adventures of a typical American suburban family haunted by the ghosts of dead grandparents and phantoms called “Not Me” and “Ida Know.”

But today, in the wake of the passing of Bil Keane, creator of the comics page fixture, respect must be paid.

Keane started the cartoon in February 1960, according to the Associated Press obit for the man, who died Tuesday at age 89 at his Arizona home.

Keane was part of a generation of artists, including the creators of “Beetle Bailey” and “Hi and Lois,” who turned the mid-20th century American experience — family life, child-raising, the foibles of work (and in Beetle’s case, the peacetime military) into five-days-a-week chuckles.

As much as I love “Calvin and Hobbes” and “The Far Side,” the creators of those beloved strips couldn’t touch Keane for longevity. Although Keane had in recent years passed the strip along to his son, Jeff — immortalized as Jeffy — Keane cranked out the daily panel for decades.

Somewhere tonight, Barfy and Sam are missing their master, although Jeff Keane can probably be assured that his father will still be hanging around, in spectral form, looking over his shoulder with an amused expression, as long as the panel appears.

‘The Walking Dead’ turns up the drama

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Tonight’s episode of “The Walking Dead” had it all. Illicit sex. The results of illicit sex. Family conflicts. Conversations on how to rebuild society after the end of the world.

And, oh yeah: A zombie.

(And some spoilery stuff, so beware.)

Now a few episodes into its second season, the AMC drama continues to give us some of the scariest, queasiest moments on TV. Tonight the “yuck” moment was an unfortunate attempt to get a zombie out of a well on the remote farm where the survivors of the zombie apocalypse have gathered.

That moment followed the scary bit, as the band of survivors lowers Glenn (Steven Yeun) on a rope down into the well as bait for the zombie.

Why? Well, apparently to avoid contaminating the well with zombie innards. But it doesn’t work out.

Glenn has the best scenes in the episode, acting as zombie bait, reacting to the idea of riding a horse and getting propositioned by the farmer’s daughter during a drug store scavenging trip that reminded me more than a little of “The Stand.”

As last week’s episode demonstrated, the interactions between the humans and humans are always more interesting than those between the humans and zombies. Deputy Shane’s shocking, last-minute act from the previous episode was back-burnered tonight. But I think we can feel a Shane explosion coming, can’t we?

Maybe that explosion will come courtesy of Lori, the wife of hero Rick and former paramour of Shane. Tonight Lori found out she was pregnant. Is Rick or Shane the father? And who can picture reed-thin Sarah Wayne Callies with a belly?

The preview for next week’s installment was nearly as good as tonight’s episode, as it showed us a glimpse of Michael Rooker, back as Merle, the violent racist the group encountered in the first season. When Merle comes back, what happens to his brother, Daryl, who has become a tender-hearted, crossbow-wielding cornerstone of the group?

We’ll know next week.

How early the “Grinch” stole Christmas

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I don’t want to sound too Grinch-like about this, but all the Halloween candy isn’t eaten yet and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” is already on TV.

The 1966 animated adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ story is justifiably a classic. The great Chuck Jones animation. The wonderful narration by Boris Karloff. The singing of Thurl Ravenscroft. Max!

But, really TBS? Showing the Grinch on Nov. 5?

I don’t mind the “Christmas creep” — the early onset of Christmas music, decorations and more — as much as some people. I’m not one of those purists who says there’s no place for Christmas shopping or Santa Claus before Thanksgiving.

But Nov. 5?

If you’re perfectly okay with this but missed tonight’s airing, TBS is reportedly showing the special again on Nov. 13.

Maybe I’ll be ready for it by then.

 

Nostalgia with a cap on it

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I drink a couple of bottles of Diet Pepsi — Diet Coke when necessary — a day, but when I was growing up, pop — as we called it — was a fairly rare thing for us.

Maybe that’s why the memories associated with it — the taste, the smell but also the look of the bottles and various Pepsi accoutrements — are so memorable.

We ate dinner tonight at a local restaurant with lots of nostalgic decorations, the kind of place that Moe from “The Simpsons” described as “a place with a whole lot of crazy crap on the walls.”

Among the nostalgic decor was something I’d never seen before: Metal Pepsi bottle carriers.

I don’t have any memory of those and I wonder if they had even been available around here.

I do have vivid memories of the thick paper cartons that six glass bottles of Pepsi, Mountain Dew and other drinks came in. We would get a six-bottle carton of Pepsi on a trip to the grocery store and, a week or so later when we made our next shopping trip, we would buy another.

A big part of that return visit, of course, was returning the empty glass bottles for deposit.

We would save the bottles as they were emptied over the course of a week — remarkable that they lasted that long, but we drank things like milk and water more than pop in those days — and return them to the store in the paper carton. We would show the carton full of bottles at the supermarket office and get the deposit back — a nickel or quarter or whatever it was for the six pack.

I also have vivid memories of the liners of the Pepsi bottle caps. For much of the time that I remember, the bottle cap liners were made of plastic and, at least some of the time, the caps were imprinted with pictures of American presidents. You could collect all the presidents and paste them on some sort of official game card and then … well, I have no idea. I don’t remember ever collecting all the presidents, even though there were only about 17 chief executives to that point.

Kidding.

Before the plastic liners, which the Interwebs tells me were introduced in the 1960s, were cork bottle cap liners. I can’t remember if Pepsi ever conducted games with the cork liners, although I do remember digging them out of the bottle caps for some reason. I remember that because of how easily they fell apart.

I know soft drink companies still do the occasional bottle cap game. But it’s hard to imagine kids today laboring over fragile cap liners, carefully pulling them out of the caps and collecting them for some unimaginable prize.

The Great Newspaper Comics Challenge Part 1

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A couple of days ago I noted that Dick Tracy, in a recent strip, cracked that he didn’t really have time to read newspaper comic strips anymore. Aside from the meta reference there, I found it to be a sad but true commentary on the state of the funny pages.

I haven’t made a daily devotion of newspaper comic strips since the passing of Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side. In the newsroom where I worked, we made a daily ritual of weighing in on The Far Side each day. Who got it? Who didn’t?

So I’m checking out the daily funnies again, hoping something will catch my eye and become a regular thang.

For Better or For Worse: If I hadn’t heard that the strip had virtually stopped production and dipped back into its own history, I might wonder why the family’s kids were little again and there was less drama and tragedy in the strip. So there’s a “been there, read that” feel to the strip now.

Baby Blues and Crankshaft: Strips that mine the dawn and sunset of life for humor, these two are pretty dependably amusing.

Beetle Bailey: Hmmm. Has anyone else noticed this trend? It seems like Sarge can be pretty hard on Beetle.

Blondie: Dagwood makes a joke about food or sports. Blondie makes a joke about shopping. Repeat.

Lockhorns: This couple is always kind of insulting each other. I think this is a bad sign for their marriage.

Pickles: After the cantankerous old guy observes his wife putting on makeup and notes, “My grandpa had a saying … Even an old barn looks good with a fresh coat of paint,” He finds himself out on the stoop. “I just realized why grandpa got locked out of the house so often.” Pretty good.

Dilbert: The strip might be most appealing to office workers, but you’ve got to admire Scott Adams’ diligence in exploring the many facets of idiotic bosses and shiftless workers.

Today’s strip is fine, but my favorite Dilbert — maybe of all time — was a few weeks ago.

Be back in a couple of days with part two.

Hey Dick Tracy: Read this

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The blow, when it came, was like a swift punch to the kidneys: Dick Tracy, the peerless comic strip detective, doesn’t read newspaper comic strips anymore.

My first thought: They’re still publishing Dick Tracy?

My second thought: Maybe ol’ Dick is right.

Let me fill in the backstory: I was perusing the Interwebs today when I saw a link to a story on Examiner.com in which writer Brian Steinberg notes the current Dick Tracy strip, in which the sharp-chinned cop, when asked if he reads comic strips, replies, “Usually don’t have time.”

At first I thought, “Well, the hell with Dick Tracy. If he’d turn in that two-way wrist radio and get an iPad or even an iPhone, maybe he’d keep up with the news a little better.”

Then I thought, well, to be honest, I’m not reading newspaper comic strips every day either.

Regular readers of this blog might have noticed that I’ve mentioned Steve Roper and Mike Nomad, a long-gone adventure strip along the lines of Dick Tracy, as well as classics like Calvin and Hobbes and the inexplicably popular Family Circus.

But since Calvin hurtled off this plane of existence on his sled, I haven’t spent a lot of time with the funnies.

That’s a shame too. I work for a newspaper and read it, in print and online, every day. But I haven’t paid as much attention to the comics since the heyday of not only Calvin but the Far Side.

So when I realized that I was no better than Dick Tracy in my inattention to newspaper comic strips, I decided to rectify the situation.

Beginning tomorrow, I’m going to take a few minutes and check out the comics, both in print and online. I’m going to find some new favorites. Maybe I’ll catch up on Funky Winkerbean. Are those crazy kids still in high school?

I’ll let you know how the comic strip reading is going.

I can’t promise I’ll read Dick Tracy every day, however, That guy’s attitude is just annoying.

 

The romance of radio

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The radio was my best friend growing up.

That’s only a mild exaggeration. As a kid growing up on a farm, I didn’t have neighbor kids my age close by. So I spent a lot of time exploring the fringes of my family’s 20-acre farm, the nooks and crannies of our hundred-year-old barn, the nuances of 1960s comic books and the inside of my head.

And the wonderful words and music that came pouring out of my radio.

The other day I was explaining to someone how world-changing a shift the change from AM to FM radio was. I had grown up listening to a local AM radio station, WERK, that featured such personalities as Bill Shirk, David Letterman, Bruce Munson, Tom Cochrun and Gary Demaree. The WERK station and transmitter were not far from where I grew up — along the banks of Buck Creek in southern Delaware County — so it felt like my radio station in a way.

WERK was on the radio on the school bus, if we were lucky and the driver was in a good mood. I still remember one morning when a group of us on the bus were terrified and tantalized when a WERK announcer reported, in mock seriousness, that a Loch Ness-style sea serpent had been spotted in Buck Creek.

Not that I didn’t love the allure, the romance, of far-away stations.

As I drifted off to sleep each night, Chicago’s WLS was my lullaby. I loved imagining the studio of the big-city station, where giants like Larry Lujack worked. I thrilled to imagine the booth where records were spun and the spot where the jocks broadcast and announcers recorded commercials.

Magic.

I’m not alone in being fascinated with the allure — mysterious and personal at the same time — of radio. Remember that scene in the 1973 George Lucas movie “American Graffiti” when a character seeks out real-life DJ Wolfman Jack, finding him holed up in a little building in the California desert, sending his voice out into the night?

There’s not as much magic in radio these days. Maybe it’s because I know how radio, like other businesses, works now. It’s a little like learning how movies are made, or how small TV studios are.

And nothing could hope to equal the memory of lying in bed, small radio on the bedside table, listening to the hypnotic words of a DJ. The guy spinning records was hundreds of miles away — or maybe just a little further south along the banks of Buck Creek — and thousands of people were hearing his voice.

But he was talking to me.

iPhoneography: Fall is here

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Yes, yes, I know that fall officially arrived more than a month ago, and we’ve had enough cool temperatures in Indiana to warrant switching on the furnace.

But there’s something about November that really reinforces the idea: It’s fall.

With Halloween over and the holiday season rushing toward us like an oncoming train, maybe there’s time to take a breath and contemplate the change of seasons.

These photos were taken with my iPhone in my neighborhood in recent days.

This green leaf — hanging precariously on a gate above a pile of leaves waiting to be raked — sums up how I feel about fall sometimes. I see it coming but I hate to give in because of what follows.

Most have given in already.

Fall’s colors are beautiful.

Just a few months ago, this little ditch was teaming with wildlife. This morning it’s frosty.

A nice spot for watching the change of seasons.

Enjoy fall!

Halloween horror: ‘Walking Dead’ rocks, ‘Simpsons’ sucks

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Here we are, on the eve of Halloween, and various movie channels are having marathons, ranging from the classics on TCM to later, lesser “Halloween” movies on AMC.

Into the mix comes the latest episode of “The Walking Dead” on AMC and the latest installment of “Treehouse of Horror” on “The Simpsons” on Fox.

First, let’s make short work of “The Simpsons.”

After being a zealous fan of the show for its first 10 seasons or so — we just re-watched “Mr. Plow” on DVD the other week — I fell out of love with “The Simpsons.” A dozen years ago, the show seemed to lose most of its creative edge. Maybe you really can’t do 500 episodes of a TV series and expect it to continue to be good. Duh.

Tonight’s “Treehouse of Horror,” the show’s annual Halloween special, had a couple of funny moments but overall was pretty lame. Judging by tonight’s episode, the show has traded pointed, harsh humor and wonderful characters for cheap and crude laughs. When a joke revolves around the similarity of the words tentacles and testicles, you know the show is spinning its wheels.

On the other hand, “The Walking Dead” continues to feature some of the most gripping — as in gripping the arms of my chair — suspense on TV.

As the survivors of a zombie apocalypse take refuge on a remote farm, where their injured are treated by the kindly resident veterinarian, tensions external and internal build. Watching Shane, the conflicted deputy, make a stomach-rolling choice tonight made me wonder where the producers are going with the character.

The show is, of course, all about characters and choices. Tonight’s episode saw some discussion of a point that I’ve been expecting for a while now: What if your reaction to the end of the world was not to fight to survive, but to opt out?

If characters are considering putting themselves out of their misery on “The Walking Dead,” might it be too much to hope that Fox would consider euthanasia for “The Simpsons?”

Again, duh. After wrangling over salaries, the talented vocal actors on the show recently signed for two more seasons. There’s simply too much money to be made for Fox to consider leaving any on the table.

‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Graduation Day’

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At the close of “Graduation Day,” the final episode of the third season of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” the character Oz, the laconic werewolf, observes that their band of monster slayers had survived. No, not another epic battle with a demon. They had survived high school.

The 1999 episode — which aired months after it was originally supposed to because some panicked TV executives thought the plot was uncomfortably similar to the just-happened Columbine school massacre — marked a high-water point for the series.

In our household, we’ve made it a habit of re-watching episodes of “Buffy,” which aired for seven seasons and pre-dated the recent “Twilight”-inspired vampire craze. (And topped it in every way except for notoriety. But I digress.) Before the series was available on DVD, we watched old VHS tapes from original airings.

So, in a Halloween frame of mind, we were thinking tonight about what to watch and decided on “Graduation Day.”

If you’ve never seen “Buffy” — maybe you were put off by the deliberately ironic title, or the earlier but vastly inferior movie — you really should. As created by Joss Whedon, the series is about a typical California teenager, worried about school, friends and dating.

Buffy Summers, quite reluctantly, finds herself proclaimed as “the chosen one,” the one-girl-in-a-generation selected to battle vampires and other demons. In a tradition dating back thousands of years, as the show eventually explained, the slayer — endowed with near-superhuman power and a knack for killing vampires — is all that stands between us and the creatures lurking out there in the darkness.

Surrounding herself with a core group of friends — Xander, whose love for Buffy was unrequited, Willow, the nerd-girl pal who grew into one of the most complex characters on TV, Cordelia, the vain rich girl, and Giles, the school librarian who turned out to be a member of the Watchers Council, the group that oversees the slayers.

By the third season, Buffy (played with appealing vulnerability by Sarah Michelle Gellar) had saved the world more than a few times as she balanced the demands of school, her increasingly concerned mom and her relationship with Angel, the vampire with a soul who fought on the side of right. As played by David Boreanaz, Angel went on to star in his own spin-off series.

With graduation in the wings, Buffy’s life was complicated by the appearance of Faith (Eliza Dushku), a slayer with few of the moral complexities and doubts that plagued Buffy. By the end of the season, Faith had changed from ally to enemy and was helping the plans of the town’s mayor (the priceless Harry Groener) in his plan to transform into a huge, snake-like demon.

And eat all the newly-minted graduates.

The episode was funny and poignant and, as the series always did, defied expectations. Faith and the mayor had the kind of complex, caring relationship that the villains of most series would not. Angel took advantage of Buffy — even if it was against his will — alienating her friends.

Maybe “Graduation Day” wasn’t the scariest choice for pre-Halloween viewing. Like most “Buffy” episodes, the show was less about vampires and demons and more about the everyday horrors we all face: alienation, loss and heartache.