Hard to believe

 It was 30 years ago this last New Years Eve that this wonderful strip came to an end:

As they say, time does fly.  True to form, Watterson has never attempted any big comeback.  By all accounts, he took the tremendous fortune he received from the strip and retired into a quiet life and pursing what projects interest him. 

In its day, Calvin and Hobbes emerged as the comic strip that everyone was reading.  From the blue collar to the Ivy League. It had come about in that golden age of comics in the 1980s.  You still had the politically charged Doonesbury.  And the grand dame of all comic strips, Peanuts, still dominated the top front page of the comics section.   Also came Bloom County, an edgy and surreal comic strip that wasn't afraid to offend everyone.  At the same time, you saw debut that strange unreal world of the Far Side.  But among them all C&H skyrocketed to the top of the class. 

The good news is that Watterson did what so few ever seem to know to do - he got out while on top.  Oh, looking back you could see the cracks.  You could tell he was losing his edge, becoming more preachy, and beginning to betray some of the rules he had laid out for the strip early on.  But that was only toward the end.  There was still enough good that when he finally closed up shop, he was still near the top of his game.  And that's never bad. 

Just because

A little dose of laughter courtesy of Steve Martin and his many talents on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour: 

And yes, a reminder that he didn't always have that plume of white hair.  Martin is one of those cases of how, when you're young, time seems to be somewhat telescoped.  His mega hit album A Wild and Crazy Guy came out in 1978 when I was in elementary school.  A year after Star Wars, and the height of Star Wars Mania (yes, that came a full year after its release), Martin seemed to be everywhere.  His novelty song King Tut caught the King Tut wave that was all the rage back then, with the Treasures of Tutankhamun  museum exhibit tour in the late 70s. A year later he would star in his own vehicle movie The Jerk, and only solidify that feeling for me and my peers that he had been everywhere forever.   

Looking back, I realize how brief his time in the national spotlight was.  Oh, he would go on and make a zillion movies of varying quality and redefine himself and become, nowadays, that elderly gentlemen of entertainment. But Martin as center of attention in the world of pop culture was only a couple years. But to youngsters at the time like me, where time seems to go at a different pace, it felt in the late 70s as though he had always been the biggest thing since the dawn of time. 

An ugly fact

So the media has exploded about news that the very elderly Mel Brooks put his stamp on a sequel to the 1987 movie Spaceballs.  Here's what I have to say.  I'm sorry to the Brooks fans out there, but when that movie came out, I knew nobody who saw it that liked it.  They just didn't.  The general consensus was that whatever magic Brooks had in the 70s with such classics as Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, or even History of the World, Part I, was long gone.

The common narrative was that the out of left field comedy Airplane! had out-Mel Brooksed Mel Brooks.  It was everything Brooks had done, but on steroids.  And from that point on, Brooks just didn't know how to top it. When he tried, such as with Spaceballs, or Robin Hood, Men in Tights, it came off like a screenplay written and produced by adolescents and fifth graders.  Lots of heavy handed and contrived jokes, one dimensional humor, with no real wit, meaningful homage, or even clever commentary.  For instance, with Young Frankenstein, you can almost see the love that Wilder had for the original source material (for he was a major creative force in the movie).  With Spaceballs, you felt they simply watched Star Wars and then said 'put a joke here.'  

This is what my sons often call 'the movie that nobody wanted.'  Oh, they'll make huge noise about it.  The media today often acts in the role of marketers and promoters for various artists and products and productions.  My guess is this will be something like Wicked or Taylor Swift or Lebron James, that will receive 100% media backing and hoisting and advertising over the next couple years.  And given a global audience in the billions, it will no doubt make some good money.

But don't be fooled.  As I hear the original called a classic or a smash hit or beloved, we were the audience the original was aimed at, and I knew nobody who thought much of it.  And that included mixed reviews at best from the critics.  Not that there weren't funny parts. We all quoted 'They've gone to plaid!' a million times.  Of course everyone loved John Candy's 'I'm a Mog, half man, half dog!  I'm my own best friend.'  But save for one friend who felt the various bits did outweigh the blah of the whole, we were far more taken by the movie The Princess Bride released the same year. 

A sign of the times

2025 University of Maryland commencement speaker

Now, I'm fine with Kermit.  Grew up with him.  Before the dark days, The Muppet Show was a cultural watering hole in which everyone at school talked about last night's guests and mimicked the old geezers in the balcony box.  But Kermit?  And I know, that's Henson's alma mater.  Nonetheless, Kermit? 

Remember when this is what was considered a newsworthy commencement speech back in the day:

Solzhenitsyn's legendary 1978 Harvard commencement speech

Even high schools tried.  I recall one of our graduations (not mine, but a grade or two ahead) featured a young, starting out state politician named John Kasich.  Even in a small, rural high school, that's what we shot for.  But Kermit?  Oh, and flash - it's not Kermit.  It's a puppeteer and performer who delivered, and possibly wrote, the message.  Just saying since the news coverage this morning failed to point out that most obvious fact. 

Lowering standards, lowering expectations, discarding historically grounded values and common sense has been a goal of our ruling institutions for generations.  The result?  I think it speaks for itself. 

BTW, to show I'm not anti-Muppet, a little song from my kiddo days.  I've liked it since I first heard it on an old Sesame Street record I was given to cheer me up when we moved to a new home.  It wasn't Kermit, but it's a reminder that pop culture has it's place, as long as it stays in its place: