Recent Comments

1. about 2 years ago on Jen Sorensen

   It’s become a tradition to have utter screwups in charge of the USPS. The last guy seriously proposed that the focus be on junk mail: “Junk mail is money mail!” he’s recorded as saying, ignoring the fact that USPS loses money on every piece of junk mail delivered since the cost of processing and delivery has gone up but mailing companies are still paying 1980s rates.

   Like the present bozo, his predecessor firmly believed that you can make a profit by underpricing junk and making it up in volume.

   Frankly, the USPS is no longer the vital service it was for nearly 250 years. Having legions of letter carriers delivering a product that in most cases goes right into the trash is lunacy. And don’t forget every single one of those employees will collect cosy retirement packages. for decades after they stop working

   DeJoy’s latest brainstorm is to improve things by replacing the entire USPS fleet of vehicles with electrics at a cost of tens of billions of dollars. That way they can deliver underpriced, unwanted junk mail to customers much more efficiently.

2. over 2 years ago on FoxTrot Classics

   At the time we lived in New Jersey, providentially within sight of the Empire State and Chrysler buildings where the broadcasters had their antennas (antennae?). Because of that favorable location in 1949 when we got our DuMont console we were able to pull in nine channels, including the first public TV station (channel 13, I believe).

   There were also lots of fly-by-night shows, essentially pilot programs that didn’t make the cut. The most appallingly awful television program I’ve ever seen popped up on the DuMont network, faltered and died. It was called Acrobat Ranch featuring Flying Flo and Tumbling Tim, child actors who used their marginal acrobatic skills to foil the bad guys… or put on a circus act… or maybe operate an audience participation show… or just about any other screwball attempt to attract eyeballs.

   It was set against mismatched scenery left over from western movies, and I believe it had a budget even below Captain Video, another DuMont Television Theater attempt at entertainment, remembered today for its hilariously inappropriate use of everyday objects supposedly from the far future. They used a lot of aluminum foil, apparently the construction material of choice in the 25th century.

   Even as a six-year-old I was appalled by Acrobat Ranch and its wretched production standards. They don’t make shows like that anymore, for which count your blessings.

3. over 2 years ago on FoxTrot Classics

   My brother and I used to stare at a blank wall in the living room waiting for television to be invented. Finally my parents relented and pinned a photo of a test pattern on the wall. Years later we got our first TV. It was a DuMont and only received DuMont network programs which meant we spent a lot of time still watching test patterns. I was grateful for one program carried on the DuMont network: the Ernie Kovacs “visual radio” show, one of the most innovative TV programs ever. It got me through the otherwise sterile era before MAD Magazine came along.

   I owe both media an enormous debt for exposing me to absurdity, a quality I adopted as my own to help me survive Catholic School. MAD got me through high school, bolstered by The Goon Show, a pre-Monty Python British broadcast on UHF, of which DuMont stations carried the audio portion. While the rest of the family suffered through Monsignor Fulton J Sheen’s sermons, I was enthralled with a moment-by-moment account of a penguin race from one end of a dirigible to the other.

4. over 2 years ago on Dark Side of the Horse

   See InTraining’s suggestion.

5. over 2 years ago on Thatababy

   Sharing a sauna with a hippo would have an additional unpleasantness: hippo sweat is red, oily and sticky when it dries. It seems to have an affinity for human skin.

6. almost 3 years ago on FoxTrot Classics

   Children, with their unprejudiced minds are far better at understanding complex topics like human relationships than adults give them credit for. Countries like the Baltics with early sex education produce far healthier adults than prudish yet prurient countries like the US.

7. almost 3 years ago on FoxTrot Classics

   “Don’t kill the job.” The union worker’s mantra.

8. almost 3 years ago on Cul de Sac

   I love Petey’s facial expression in the last panel, like an extra in one of George Romero’s cult classics.

9. almost 3 years ago on Cul de Sac

   … or explosive.

10. almost 3 years ago on Cul de Sac

    Amen! Sometimes when I’m in a shopping line I hear a parent talking to a child as a quasi-adult (treating them like fellow intelligent beings while adapting the vocabulary and sentence structure for better comprehension). I always compliment the parent on the respect they show for their child’s intellect. They’re a rare species, and getting rarer in this era of dumbing-down and bowdlerization of material intended for children.