"We're emenies on account of we both loves Olive Oyl."

Said Popeye, wondering why Curly wanted him to come over, in an old E.C. Segar comic I was reading today at the Milwaukee Art Museum, which has a big, cool exhibition called "Masters of American Comics."

I'd been looking at comics art for about half an hour, working my way through the Winsor McKay and Lyonel Feininger comics, and got to the Segar stuff, and that line of Popeye's made me laugh out loud. And then I was doubly amused to realize that was the first laughter I'd heard at this huge exhibition of comics. I stayed for another hour, and I think I laughed one or two other times, but I never heard anyone else laugh. It was like a church in there. Is this the effect of museums or did the curators choose the very comics that were least likely to make you laugh? Fantasy and surrealism loomed large. So did serious comics like "Maus." And a lot of the humor was the sort of thing that you appreciate intellectually and don't giggle over. Like:

And with insipid porcine vapidness he lapses into somniverous oblivion.

That's a caption in a "Krazy Kat" comic, as a pig goes to sleep.

"S'turbil" = It's terrible, in Krazy Kat dialect. She also says "Jee-Wizzil." I find all of that amusing, but you'd only laugh out loud at that sort of thing in a social situation, where you were interested in elevating the mood of the people you're with. In the museum setting, everyone's floating along in his own little reverie.



Hmmm.... I see there were no women artists in this exhibition, and there were 15 male artists. I'm surprised, not because I think there is a woman who deserved to be in this group. (Winsor McCay, George Herriman, Lyonel Feininger, E.C. Segar, Frank King, Chester Gould, Milton Caniff, Charles M. Schulz, Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Gary Panter, and Chris Ware.) I'm surprised because I would have thought curators would feel uneasy about a show with that many artists that lacked even one woman. Thanks for not patronizing me.



Anyway, it's an excellent show, well worth the trip to Milwaukee if you're roughly in the area. It will be there until August 13th.

And, in case you don't know, the museum itself is quite the architectural marvel:

"The very serious questions about the scope and legality of the N.S.A. domestic surveillance programs that he helped design, implement and defend..."

Senator Kennedy gave his reason for voting against General Hayden to head the CIA. But Kennedy was one of only 15 Senators who voted no. It's hard to take congressional attacks on the NSA surveillance program seriously when 78 Senators voted for him.

"Get up in the morning, slaving for bread, sir, so that every mouth can be fed. Poor me, the Israelite."

Goodbye to Desmond Dekker. The ska legend's biggest hit was "The Israelites." In 1969:

The Jamaican rhythm of ska had already generated hits in the United States, notably Millie Small's 1964 hit, "My Boy Lollipop." But that song was treated as a novelty. "The Israelites," with its biblical imagery of suffering and redemption, showed the world reggae's combination of danceable rhythm and serious, sometimes spiritual intentions.

Yes, I remember loving that hit and experiencing it as a novelty song (though that doesn't mean that we American kids didn't pick up the spirit of suffering and redemption). Another seeming novelty song that we heard and loved that same summer was "In the Year 2525."

In the year 7510
if God's a-comin' he ought to make it by then
maybe he'll look around himself and say
"guess it's time for the Judgement Day''

In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head
he'll either say "I'm pleased where man has been''
or tear it down and start again...

I remember listening to "The Israelites" and "In the Year 2525" -- both were played on the radio constantly -- and feeling really strange in that really strange year 1969. Two infectiously poppy songs with a painful, religious edge.

Did you know that Paul McCartney named his "Ob-Bla-Di, Ob-Bla-Da" character "Desmond" after Desmond Dekker?

Desmond has a barrow in the market place...
Molly is the singer in a band...
Desmond says to Molly "girl I like your face"
And Molly says this as she takes him by the hand...

The heart surgeon gives his own blood.

Eight hours into surgery, with the blood running out -- a rare blood type -- the surgeon gives his own blood.

"The patient was malnutritioned going into the operation," [Dr. Samuel Weinstein] said. "He was bleeding a lot, his blood wasn't clotting and supplies were running out.

"I sat down and donated a pint of blood, drank some water and ate a Pop-Tart, and went straight back to work.

"The blood went from me to him in a matter of minutes."

That would be stupid in a fiction story. It's so cool in real life.

When your child accidentally kills another child.

An 8-year-old boy in NYC caused the death of an 8 year-old girl. He got into an unattended school bus and released the parking brake. As a parent, you think about how you would feel if your child died, but not so much how you would feel and what you would do if your child killed someone else. You don't picture your child becoming a murderer, but you may not think of how easy it would be for a little child to kill another child by accident. How would you go about being a good parent to your child after that happened?

The ceramicist uses human ashes.

Ash, such as tree ash, is a normal ingredient in the glaze. Why not use human ashes? Have you ever had some ashes -- were you gauche enough to call them cremains? -- and wondered what to do with them? Was it awkward or properly solemn or did you screw it up like the Dude in "The Big Lebowski"? How would you feel about your loved one being reformed into pottery?

Bob Dylan, the old geezer DJ.

Have you been listening to "Theme Time Radio With Bob Dylan"? I have. I dash out to my car and go for an hour-long drive every Wednesday at 9. (The satellite radio's only in the car.) I was driving, listening to "I Drink" -- the theme was drinking -- when a cop pulled me over and gave me a speeding ticket 10 days ago. That was the first speeding ticket I'd ever gotten -- in many decades of driving.

This past Wednesday, Bob turned 65, and I don't think he mentioned it on the show. The theme wasn't birthdays or getting old, it was baseball. He started off the show by singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," not trying to sing it well, just singing it like your grandad might do if he was trying to remind you why it's great to go to a baseball game. In fact, Dylan does the whole show as if he's an old grandad reminding us of the past:

The majority of the music Dylan plays predates his own rise to fame.

"I think it's more akin to the way radio sounded in 1952 than it does in 2006," said Lee Abrams, XM Satellite Radio's chief creative officer.

Dylan's entertaining baseball show also mixed in calls from classic baseball games, like Curt Gowdy announcing Ted Williams' home run in his final at-bat with the Boston Red Sox.

He refreshingly avoids the obvious: Dylan spins Billy Bragg and Wilco's "Joe DiMaggio Done it Again" and not Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson" ("where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio ..."). He plays Buddy Johnson's "Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball" and ignores John Fogerty's overexposed "Centerfield."

He tells jokes that are either old or written to sound like they're old:

"If diamonds are a girl's best friend, why do so many girls get mad when you want to go to the ballpark?" Dylan says during this week's show. "You tell me."

That sort of absurdist humor is what may most surprise listeners. Dylan told mother-in-law jokes a la Henny Youngman during one show ("I just came back from a pleasure trip — took my mother-in-law to the airport"). He discussed — seriously, we think — watching the old country-flavored musical/variety TV series "Hee Haw."

And he does some surprising things in his old geezer persona, like the week when his theme was mothers and he played something by LL Cool J:

Dylan's intro to "Mama Said Knock You Out" became an old white man's rap.

"Here's LL Cool J," he said. "Don't call it a comeback. He's been here for years, rockin' his peers, puttin' 'em in fear, makin' tears rain down like a monsoon, explosions overpowerin' the competition. LL Cool J is towerin'."

And here's how he introduced the mothers theme:

"Going to pay tribute to that bountiful breast we all spring from, mother dearest," he said. "`M's' for the many things she gave me. `O' is for the other things she gave me. `T' is for the things she gave me. `H' is for her things, which she gave me. `E' is for everything she gave me. `R' is for the rest of the things she gave me. Let's talk about mothers."

Do you understand the mystery of why that's so funny?

It's the weekend.

A big holiday weekend. Are you going to be reading any blogs or are you going to be out behaving in the appointed outdoorsy fashion, acknowledging the official beginning of summer? In academia, summer seems to begin on the last day of class, which was somewhere back in April, and weekends only have to do with where traffic and crowds will be. "Do you have plans for the weekend?" I get asked that a lot. If I say "no," will I sound like a loser? If I explain why weekends mean nothing to me, will I seem to be bragging or will it just be boring, like answering the question "How are you?" with details of how things are going for you these days?

Gunfire in the Capitol Office Building.

CNN reports.

UPDATE: Apparently, it was jackhammers.

When the rugged individualist goes where only rugged individualists go...

He's got a problem when he needs help. The only people around are the kind of people who would be in a place like that.

What's that?

I go out to pick up the newspaper and I'm all... What?! Did somebody come into my yard last night just to throw up in my garden?



Oh, it's slime mold. Dog Vomit Fungus! Remember? I mentioned it here once, you know, that day when I deliberately vomit-blogged. But I've never seen it in my yard before, even though I have seen -- and photoblogged -- some pretty impressive fungus, fungus that makes you think not of vomiting, but of one of those other bodily activities.

"The 50 greatest conservative rock songs."

John J. Miller at the National Review has a list. I was surprised to see "Gloria" at number six, and I was starting to think over the lyrics and come up with a theory. Like to tell ya about my baby/You know she comes around/She about five feet four/A-from her head to the ground... Nothing was clicking. Is it the interest in correct spelling? G-L-O-R-I-A. Then I saw it was "Gloria" by U2, a completely different composition. Gloria...in te domine/Gloria...exultate/Oh Lord, if I had anything/Anything at all/I'd give it to you... Quite different. In Van Morrison's song, Gloria was giving it all to him.

Anyway, what does Miller count as conservative:

The lyrics must convey a conservative idea or sentiment, such as skepticism of government or support for traditional values.

Skepticism of government? Surely, that's grasping at a lot of stuff that wasn't meant as conservative. But what the hell? Conservatives can enjoy it. Most mentions of the government in rock songs are skeptical of it. Can you even think of any pro-government rock songs? I mean where it's not sarcasm or the voice of a character you're not supposed to believe.

Well, go read the list. I think in a lot of cases the song leaves room to argue whether the message is actually conservative. Rock song lyrics can be blunt and plain -- when they are about sex, like Van Morrison's "Gloria" -- but they're usually fuzzy and ambiguous when they get to political and social topics -- especially if they're any good. That makes the more of a Rorschach test.

Miller's quite keen on the notion that The Kinks are conservative. (I should say konservative.) I think what he likes to read as conservative is really an artist's aversion to politics -- you know, that thing artists do: standing at a distance, observing, alternating between bemusement and critiquing human character.

Art Spiegelman on the Muhammad -- and other -- cartoons.

I want to write something about Art Spiegelman's piece in the June issue Harper's Magazine, and it's frustrating not to be able to link to it. I hate to think I've reached the point where I feel that it's not worth reading things I can't link to. Remember that Kevin Kelly piece from a couple week's ago about how, in the future, everything would need to be on line to matter? I feel myself falling into that future. If Art Spiegelman wrote an article in Harper's that I can't link to, is that like Art Spiegelman thinking his own private thoughts or muttering to himself when he's walking alone on a deserted beach?

But I did go over to Borders and pick up a paper copy of the magazine, which was worth doing not so much because it reprints the notorious Muhammad cartoons from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, but because of the luscious reprints of some cartoons from the 19th and early 20th centuries. These old cartoons are brilliantly drawn and politically vicious. What is the point of beginning the article with these images? Spiegelman writes:

Cartoon language is mostly limited to deploying a handful of recognizable visual symbols and clichés. It makes use of the discredited pseudoscientific principles of physiognomy to portray character through a few physical attributes and facial expressions. It takes skill to use such clichés in ways that expand or subvert this impoverished vocabulary. Cartoonists like Honoré Daumier, Art Young, and George Grosz were masters of insult and were rewarded for their transgressions: Daumier was imprisoned for ridiculing Louis-Phillippe; Art Young, the Socialist editor of The Masses, was tried for treason as a result of his anti-World War I cartoons; and George Grosz was tried variously for slander, blasphemy, and obscenity before fleeing Germany as the Nazis rose to power.

Spiegelman goes on to criticize the Muhammad cartoons: most of them are not well drawn, they lack a discernable message, and -- in his view -- they fail to "speak truth to power." Cartoons are important: why aren't they better? Quite aside from the issue of stirring up religious fundamentalists by depicting Muhammad, there's the problem of decline in cartooning, an argument you pick up almost instantly upon looking at the old cartoons Spiegelman has chosen.

Hard-hitting cartoons have mostly been replaced by topical laffs in gag-cartoon format or by decorative "Op-Ed" style illustrations whose meanings are often drowned in ambiguous surrealism.

"Rancorous visual satire" is in short supply these days. Spiegelman wants more of it. I agree.

"Interns? No Bloggers Need Apply."

That's not a very good headline for this NYT article. The article is not about the complete rejection of blogging interns, but about how young people who are at ease with blogging need to learn that the organization is unlikely to accept it if you use your inside information for blog material.

Haven't writers always exploited the knowledge they've gained from access to things other people don't know about? It's the way of the writer, isn't it? The difference with blogging is that you publish your writing instantly, using information you just came across. That's what gets you fired. And it's not just about the workplace. Writers also exploit their personal relationships and use the secret info they get from having friends and lovers. Blogging's got to be riskier here as well, because you don't have the time lag and the elaborate processing of the material.

Eat chocolate.

It makes you smart, so you're smart to eat it.

"The governor thinks that abstinence should be an important part of the message that kids hear from adults as part of their classes."

The governor is up for reelection.

IN THE COMMENTS: Why so many comments? There's a lot of discussion of abstinence education, and I'd just like to say that you should not assume from my post that I don't support abstinence education. I do. Here's my old post on the subject from last November:

[A] bill requiring a stronger abstinence message is about to pass the legislature here. (What the governor will do is another matter.)

The bill ... would require school districts that offer sex education programs to "present abstinence from sexual activity as the preferred choice of behavior" for unmarried students....

The current state law simply lists more than a dozen topics that districts "may include" in their sex education instruction but does not stress one as more important than others. The word "abstinence" does not appear, although "discouragement of adolescent sexual activity" is one of the topics districts can choose to include.

Should the legislature be requiring all the schools in the state to push abstinence as "the preferred choice of behavior"? The culture varies from place to place around the state, so I don't like a statewide requirement that goes this far, even though I think it's important for young people to hear a strong presentation of the case for abstinence. Shouldn't local school districts decide this one rather than posturing state legislators?

So, there's a distinction between the importance of teaching young people about abstinence and the political posturing that is going on. I don't blame Governor Doyle here though. He didn't start this one. He was set up.

"At 1 year old, he was putting his own DVDs in, skipping scenes."

Your child is a genius. Be sure to tell everyone. I'm sure they won't take your statements the wrong way.

Murder defendant tries to strangle his lawyer...

... in court, in front of the judge.

Cue the lawyer jokes. In a shameless bid for leniency....

Divorce degrades your daughter's looks.

Studies show. But a bad intact marriage makes her even uglier. Or can we solve the whole problem with the right hormone injections?

"Top Chef" -- there's another finale tonight, kids.

Stephen smartly says he wants to work with Tiffani, while all three of the other eliminees -- Miguel, Leanne, and Dave -- say they want Harold. Harold chooses Leanne outright, then leaves Dave and Miguel to draw knifes to see who gets him. Miguel does. So Tiffani gets Dave, the guy who disrespected her so severely last week.

Oh, Tiffani has an uphill battle. And Dave and Stephen show up late and drunk. They undercut her throughout the day, down to the point where they say to the judges that they think Harold should win. Tiffani's dinner doubles each dish, so that she makes 10 things instead of just 5. Harold makes only the 5. He plays it safe, the judges say again and again.

But they give the Top Chef award to Harold. I liked Harold all along. But in the last few weeks, the edge of the antagonism toward Tiffani has hurt me. I was rooting for Tiffani. At one point, somebody said that in the end of the day it is not a popularity contest. But, in the end of the day, it was.