७ नोव्हेंबर, २०१९

"Recently I heard a woman say her department is full of freaks, they don’t like her, and she doesn’t have a life, but that sounded more like a whine than an epiphany."

"I’m no sociologist so I don’t know if this era is less interesting. You’d think people would be as tormented by sex, self-fulfillment, and relationships (and babies) as ever, but I’m not hearing it on any movie lines I’ve been on lately. Maybe I should ask the NSA."

Said Stan Mack in a 2013 interview on the blog Jeremiah's Vanishing New York. Stan Mack drew the fantastic cartoon "Stan Mack's Real Life Funnies" that ran in The Village Voice from 1974 to 1995. The words in the cartoons were all things Mack claims to have heard people say around New York City. I, myself, had long loved the absurdity of the partial conversations you'd overhear as you walked around or half-minded your own business in a restaurant or shop. Here's an example showing part of one week's Stan Mack cartoon:



If you like that, you can order a collection of the funnies — remember when we called the comics "the funnies"? — here (at Amazon).

In the quote that begins in the post title, Mack is comparing the words he used to overhear with the words he overhears today, which, unlike then, include a lot of talking into cell phones. In fact, the reason I was looking up Stan Mack this morning is because I read (on Facebook) this post by Annie Gottlieb:
Really, the things you hear on the street. People on their cellphones seem to assume they’re in a soundproof phone booth, and people just conversing seem to have been made unselfconscious or oblivious by phone culture to being either intrusively loud, or private and overheard. You hear some funny things.

(a woman on her cellphone, crossing the street, indignantly: ) “I don’t want ANY bacteria.” (Apparently no one has yet broken the news about the microbiome.)

(Young man to his girlfriend, walking along holding hands, conversationally) “You know how some people jerk off just to jerk off?” (as opposed to?)

(today) “Hydroglyphics”
ADDED: Did people become less self-conscious because of cellphones? It's very hard to compare what you're hearing now with what you heard back then. Stan Mack is kind of an authority on the subject, and the difference he cites is in the interestingness. If what people are saying these days is less interesting, it could be that people are more private, less prone to revealing themselves when they can be overheard. But it could be that the eavesdropper has changed, and not just because we've all gotten older. We're different because we're listening to phone talkers, not to people who are with other people and talking in the flesh. People talking into a phone irritate us a lot more, so we're more judgmental. We think they're intruding on us. When we listen to people who are together in real life — as in "Real Life Funnies" — we feel that we are intruding on them. Our transgression makes things inherently more interesting.

३० टिप्पण्या:

Darrell म्हणाले...

I jerk off for prostate and general health. Human bodies take care of breeders--even if they aren't actually breeding.

Jaq म्हणाले...

They other day I overheard two old guys talking:

“So now I got these pills and I got nobody to test them with to see if they work”
“Masturbate! Just like everybody else in the world!"

Jaq म्हणाले...

There is a certain, if you don’t use it you lose it motivation.

rehajm म्हणाले...

...but I’m not hearing it on any movie lines I’ve been on lately.

The type fo person that stands in line for a movie these days is different. They used to be people waiting to see Scorsese, now they're waiting to see Spider man: Far From Home

First Tenor म्हणाले...

Try riding a New Jersey Transit train - the loud talking extends to credit card numbers, ATM pins, logins and passwords and client legal discussions. In true New Jersey style, everyone else joins in on the call!

Robert Cook म्हणाले...

I always loved Stan Mack. Mark Alan Stamaty (MacDoodle Street and Washingtoon) was also superb.

virgil xenophon म्हणाले...

Ever visited the blog Overheard in New York? Pure GOLD!

tim maguire म्हणाले...

$205.99 at Amazon.ca

Sorry, I'm interested, but not that interested.

Mid-Life Lawyer म्हणाले...

I'm by myself a lot. I travel alone for work but I also go to movies by myself, dine, have coffee, shop, etc. alone almost all the time. You hear a lot more that way. It's very entertaining. I'm in coffee shops often and I don't hear many people talking loud on cellphones in coffee shops, these days. It seems like there was more of that 10 years ago. Coffee shop people seem to be less obnoxious, generally, than regular people. Having said that, there is nothing more obnoxious than a loud cell phone talker when you are in a coffee shop and they hardly have anything interesting or funny to say. Obnoxious people aren't that entertaining.

Lucien म्हणाले...

Hydroglyphics are a watered down version of Egyptian writing, right?

अनामित म्हणाले...

The woman in the right panel appears to be eating a fried chicken drumstick. How racist.

mockturtle म्हणाले...

The cartoon on the upper left has significance for me regarding my sister's wedding. She admitted minutes before the ceremony that she didn't want to marry him. I said, "It's not too late to call it off!" She said, "But Mother has gone to all this trouble". I even offered to jump up and object when the minister says, "If anyone here knows of any reason why these two should not married let him speak now or forever hold his peace." She declined and the marriage didn't last even two weeks. But she's since been happily married for 45 years.

rcocean म्हणाले...

People on the phone talking intrude on us. Right On. I find it super annoying to be in a check out line or restaurant line and have the person behind me yakking on the phone right in my ear (or back when they are short). Even worse, they're usually engaging in moronic discussions like what's on the menu or whether they bought the right brand of spaghetti. But what really gets me is the the arrogance of it all. Everyone else doesn't exist, its just them and their friends on the other end of the cellphone.

The most vivid overhead conversational phrase: "If she marries him, she'll have the same amount of money twenty years from now". Participants: Two well dressed middle-aged ladies.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent म्हणाले...

Middle-aged women seem to make up the majority of overloud cellphone talkers. I get that it’s a bid for attention, but the attention is purely negative. I guess that’s good enough for some folks.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent म्हणाले...

My work cell is also full of freaks. At first I put it down to bad karma as it seems to be something that has dogged me throughout my working life, regardless of where I was. Slowly I’ve come to the realization that there’s just a shitload of fucked-up people, mostly harmless, out there, and my paternal and sympathetic nature disarms them and encourages them to be more open about their weirdness. Last week, I had one co-worker confide to me that he was taking Halloween off because he didn’t want to be in the building for the brief period that the staff’s children are allowed to trick-or-treat the offices. I’ve become so used to this kind of thing that I no longer bother asking why.

Howard म्हणाले...

More guarded on phone because Deep State Big Brother is listening to every syllables

Robert Cook म्हणाले...

"$205.99 at Amazon.ca

"Sorry, I'm interested, but not that interested."


Really? It's that much? I have a copy on my bookshelf. Maybe I can hold onto it add to my retirement fund by selling it at the right time!

Bill Peschel म्हणाले...

Tim Maguire: Try Abebooks. The first one is from Comic World in Toronto, so they might cut you a deal:

https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&cm_sp=SearchF-_-home-_-Results&kn=&an=&tn=stan+mack%27s+real+life+funnies&isbn=

I love Mack's book. He talked about his process in it, which involved a lot of listening and a lot of pruning and cutting and sorta rewriting. Since it's humor, I'll give him a pass. No one except the most pedantic expect humor memoirists to be 100% accurate.

Kelly म्हणाले...

While grocery shopping I followed a woman around who was talking loudly on her cell phone. I wanted closure to the saga of why her brother was in jail and who was going to come up with the bail money.

Black woman seem to be the biggest perpetrators of talking loudly on cellphones, even while using the toilet. Once at a rest area the loud talker came out of the stall after doing her business and I saw she was on FaceTime.

Bilwick म्हणाले...

I used to like Stan Mack's Real Life Funnies when I lived in NYC and they were a regular feature of the Village Voice. If any of you were in NYC back then, you may remember the bosomy clerk at the Strand Bookstore who used to wear extremely low cut dresses, with her boobs hanging half out. She never seemed to do much except talk to her fellow staffers and exhibit her cleavage. After I moved away I heard she appeared on more than one occasion in Real Life Funnies. I'm sorry I missed that.

Maillard Reactionary म्हणाले...

Real Life Funnies really aren't, to me at least.

Maybe they are for people that think that real life happens in New York City.

Caligula म्हणाले...

It's hard to think of any one thing that has degraded public spaces as much as cellphones. Unless it's ubiquitous and intrusive foreground music in stores (and public transit, but not yet in public streets).

By now it's become difficult to remember what public spaces were like without cellphones, and increasingly difficult to imagine anything that might restore these spaces.

Of course, cellphones are massively useful devices. But like everything, they come at a non-zero cost.

Real American म्हणाले...

The first big difference is now everyone has a phone in public, which was not the case in the past so we have more opportunity to overhear those types of conversations. Secondly, given the ubiquity of phones, people are so used to it that they no longer feel it a big deal and they're much more comfortable using phones in public. Third, people are simply less concerned with privacy than they used to be.

Lastly, phones have gotten smarter but people have gotten dumber, at least when they are on their phones. Phone zombies simply no longer pay much attention to their surroundings. it's all about the phone.

StephenFearby म्हणाले...

According to this September 2019 NY Post Story:

Cartoonist Stan Mack is selling his West Village co-op

'Cartoonist Stan Mack and his writer/editor [new] wife Susan Champlin have just listed their West Village home for $1.72 million.

Mack, who’s owned this unit for some 30 years, is best known for his “Stan Mack’s Real Life Funnies” series that appeared in the Village Voice for more than two decades....'

https://nypost.com/2019/09/18/cartoonist-stan-mack-is-selling-his-west-village-co-op/

In case anyone's interested, it's still for sale:

708 Greenwich Street #6A
West Village, NYC / $1,725,000

https://www.halstead.com/sale/ny/manhattan/west-village/708-greenwich-street/coop/19857497

Since Mack was born in 1936, that makes him long in the tooth. I hope he's still in good health and doesn't need to live in an assisted living facility out in the boonies.

He is my all-time favorite cartoonist.

I wish he had overheard some of the dialog between me and my smart, beautiful and talented (but very kooky) artist girlfriend when she was trying to recruit me into joining an Indonesian spiritual cult that observed Islamic holidays.

Finally decided to dump me when she realized that I represented a near and present danger to her belief in the cult.

n.n म्हणाले...

The normalization of selfie-shness.

Bilwick म्हणाले...

A lot of it seems a generational and/or cultural thing. One used to go to public libraries for peace and quiet but I notice many people now come to the library expecting to be able to talk on their cell phones or watch videos without using earphones. These people seem to be mostly Black and/or young.

Night Owl म्हणाले...

An actual overheard line from a conversation between two women on a bus in New York City about 30 years ago: "I'm happy to be getting married... Just not to him!"

Sammy Finkelman म्हणाले...

Usually when people talk on street (in person, and they still do) they're walking, so you only hear a sentence or two or three unless you make an effort to overhear.

Or if thay are standing still, you're walking.

As for different content, maybe people lead different lives.

Sammy Finkelman म्हणाले...

I see people with cellphones out in public, but they are usually silent, and looking at he screen. (and somehow manipulating it without even a mouse)

Lurker21 म्हणाले...

I dug up Mark Alan Stamaty's Washingtoon, another Village Voice cartoon from the era. It seemed like it would be relevant to what's going on in Washington now. Some strips were. They related to the difficulty of finding any reality behind all the partisan spin. Unfortunately, most of the strips were dated: Sandinistas, nuclear freeze, Star Wars, heavily anti-Reagan. Some of the strips are worth looking up, but I can understand why Stamaty has been forgotten.