Todd Stadler's blog

Billboard editing: massive typo edition

There are lots of billboards in Portland's downtown grid that, while seemingly meant for passing cars, are even more noticeable to pedestrians like myself.

Mainly this is due to the surprisingly large size of such billboards (something you don't notice until you're standing underneath one), and the amount of time they stay in your field of vision when passing them on foot at a few miles an hour. If these billboards are meant to catch the eyes of motorists going 30 down the street, then they have the effect of catching and then bludgeoning the eyes of those of us à pied.

The point being that you have plenty of time to notice more than just the main point of any such billboard you walk by on your way to work.

So it was that when I passed the above March of Dimes billboard, I couldn't but help to chuckle to myself. "Now there's a typo!" I thought.

When I got to work, I called March of Dimes to ask them if they knew about the error, and they said that yes, they'd gotten a few calls, and they'd send someone out to put up a new, corrected billboard ad in a few days.

Fortunately, they got around to fixing the ad yesterday:

Slylock Fox: if I pick on him, does he not bleed?

As I said before, I really enjoy reading the comics, even though I mostly enjoy not enjoying the comics.

While some might ask, "Why not seek out some actually humorous or well-done comics?" since there are probably lots of those online, my response is that there's a reason people prefer shooting fish in a barrel than actually going to the trouble of catching them with a combination of cunning, deception, and physical strength. Or at least I think I'd rather shoot fish in a barrel — never having caught a fish myself — especially if those fish were really old and told the same tired joke six days in a row. If you catch my metaphorical drift.

My point being: Slylock Fox. What's up with that?

Fig. A: Another goofy Slylock Fox for Kids; from Monday, September 11, 2006

On September 11th, Slylock tried to ease a nation's pain with a tale that was particularly baffling, though noticeably not mysterious:

Count Weirdly invited neighbors to view video of his vacation on Scabby Island. Slylock Fox suspects two of the glasses being served contain a carbonated formula invented by Weirdly that causes uncontrollable giggling. How was Slylock able to determine which contained the carbonated formula and which contained plain water?

Oh Slylock, where to start? In countless previous encounters, Slylock has accused Count Weirdly of all sorts of schemes to trick and defraud his cadre of upright (literally!) mammalian friends. Now even if all of those accusations were baseless (and either they were or Slylock's town needs to shore up its revolving-door justice system), you'd think that he'd stop hanging around "the Count".

I mean, you'd think a guy who makes a living as a detective might have noticed a pattern involving Mr. Weirdly and less-than-social behavior, or repeated accusations thereof. But noooooo. "What's that? Vacation videos? Scabby Island? Sure, why not ... I guess it's been a week since I accused you of stealing from anybody, after all! But there won't be any monsters or poisonous snakes, will there? Oh, there will? I guess that's fine — they're more likely to eat Max Mouse than me, anyhow."

So he and his friends, two single moms and their children — exactly who I'd invite to such a place — go, and the moms seem to be enjoying the videos because, hey, when was the last time you knew anyone who traveled to Scabby Island? Clearly, they're thinking, this Count fellow is adventurous, if quirky. And there's something about the moustache/muu-muu combo that's handsome on a man.

Likely getting jealous of all the attention the Count was getting from the ladies, Slylock comes up with the lamest story ever: the count is planning on slipping someone here a Mickey!

"What?!" the ladies exclaim, "Why would our nice Mr. Weirdly do that?"

"Oh, well," stumbled Slylock, caught off guard by their defensive tones. "He, uh ... it ... it makes you giggle uncontrollably."

"After all," thought Slylock, "what else would explain why you ladies are laughing so much at 'Count Freaky's' stupid vacation stories and jokes? ... 'The most popular drink on Scabby Island is Bandade blah blah blah har dee har-har'"

Continuing out loud, Slylock said, "Yeah, the drink makes you giggle ... it's ... um, carbonated."

Hey, quick thinking there, Slylock! Carbonated giggle juice. Real plausible.

By the way, your friend Max Mouse is about to get eaten by a snake, but don't let that stop your very serious investigation into effervescent funny fluids. I mean, clearly it's far more important that you stop any and all laughter than, say, save the life of your friend and constant companion.

Anyhow, having posited the, ahem, mystery, Slylock then displays his exciting deductive powers for the ladies:

The cups with the most straw showing contain the giggle formula. The bubbles in the carbonated liquid attach to the straws and cause them to float.

And in so explaining, pretty much blows any chance he might have had with these ladies. Because, seriously, who — if asked to discern which of two cups contains water and which has a carbonated liquid — gives a response about straws?

A few awkward seconds after Slylock presented his hypothesis, the pig (?) boy next to him laughed derisively and said, "Hey, brainiac, I can tell if it's carbonated even if there are no straws — don't you think the bubbles give it away, genius?"

Fig. B: A computer-enhanced image showing yet another fake tail/tale from Slylock

And then there was uncontrollable giggling from everyone except Slylock. And this time, he couldn't blame it on the soda.

Oh, and by the way, Slylock? Everyone knows that's not your real tail. It's clearly pinned to your cape. Women are not impressed by caudal toupees. Especially those worn by attention-seeking fibbers that aren't very observant.

I can't take it anymore: the Sunday comics edition

I like the comics. After a teeth-grinding hour or so of reading the rest of the paper (including the letters to the editor, or "blogs for old people"), there's nothing quite like several pages of crude or crudely-shrunk panels of clichéd jokes about raising children and golf.

Oops. That last sentence there betrayed my thesis. Fine, I don't really like-like the comics.

About the only one I truly enjoy with any regularity in the Oregonian is Get Fuzzy, and even that one tends to elicit far more laughs in its first panels than in the last ones. And I can't tell if Doonesbury is often funny, or merely a respite from the dumber political ideas that prevail in the rest of the paper, creating an anti-anger that is similar to, if not exactly, humor.

And yet, I read the comics as if I liked them, because in spite of how annoying they are, um ... I have too much free time? They fulfill in me a need to feel superior to others? They create multiple conversation starters for dinnertime talk? They help me connect to a simpler, bygone era, when most of the comics' creators were actually alive?

Look, the point is that this past Sunday was the last straw for me as a comics reader. Not that I'm going to stop reading the comics — heavens, no! But it got to the point that my emotions had welled up so much that, well, I had to blog about it. And faithful readers of this blog know how much inertia had to be overcome for it to come to that.

And now, several paragraphs of opening filler later, I present my comics catharsis.

Fig. A: A portion of Slylock Fox for Kids from Sunday, September 3rd, 2006

Since the comics-displaying crappiness of the newspaper is rivalled only by the Web, I'll type out the text of this, the "mystery" portion of Sunday's Slylock:

A witness called Slylock Fox to report she observed Terry Turtle steal a hotel card key. Terry says that is nonsense, and that this is his hotel room. What evidence did Slylock observe that led him to suspect the turtle is lying?

If you want to puzzle this out yourself, take a moment to do so now, because rather than forcing you to hang from your ceiling and squint to read the upside-down solution, I will type it out here:

There's a toothbrush in the bathroom. Since turtles don't have teeth, it would appear this is not Terry's room. Faced with the evidence, the turtle admitted he is the burglar.

Oh. Of course, how stupid of me. The toothbrush ... now that I see it, it's a dead giveaway. I mean, seriously, turtles have no more need for a toothbrush than, say, mice do for a curiously femmy matching purple shorts/bowler hat set. Oh, wait.

I mean, I can understand how a comic strip writer can (and often does) get tired of his own strip's conceit. Perhaps lacking knowledge of the setting his characters supposedly inhabit or maybe just short on creativity, he finds himself making jokes about things he does know about (i.e., golf) or other topical subjects.

So it is that Garfield is not so much a strip about a cat as a short, cat-shaped observer of a man named Jon. And the serfs in the Wizard of Id crack wise about tax brackets. And the cavemen in B.C. read reference books that mention Vaudeville. Because nothing says "topical" like a Vaudeville joke. And it's well worth junking the whole prehistoric concept if the humor's that good. I mean, if there's one thing more inherently funny than cavemen, it's Vaudeville. And anachronisms. Especially if they involve Vaudeville.

Ahem. My point being that most strips only bother to be visually constrained by their concept, while their plot lines or "jokes" are about whatever the writer darn well feels like writing about. And Slylock Fox is no different. Which is why it's so annoying that Bob Weber, Jr. here chooses to suddenly and strictly enforce the rules of reality in this "mystery" bit.

I suppose it's "educational" to know that "turtles don't have teeth," but unless my herpetology thesis advisor misled me, it would also be educational to note that turtles also:

• Do not walk upright or bipedally, nor do their legs end in shoe-shaped blobs
• Do not have fingers, much less opposable thumbs
• Do not talk, and probably have no realistic concept of language, much less with animals from the class Mammalia
• Have minimal need for fashion accessories such as hats and neckties, especially as the latter are impossible to tie without opposable thumbs (see above)
• Have minimal need for a hotel room as they are quite capable of and prefer living outdoors; hotel rooms, in contrast, present many difficulties for turtles, such as the need to open doors, especially and notably if they require the use of a card key
• Wouldn't know what to do with stolen goods if they could pick them up, which notably they can't

In short, even though I lied about having a herpetology doctorate, I clearly know more than Bob Weber, Jr. does about turtles.

Furthermore, I know this: Terry Turtle is being framed. Of course that's not his toothbrush, because this isn't his room. But, as outlined above, he lacks not only a motive, but also the means to commit this crime.

Waaah, I hear you protest in your ignorant way, Terry Turtle admitted he is the burglar, so case closed. Burglary, he wrote!

Puh-leeze. As I already noted, turtles cannot talk and certainly cannot communicate such high-level concepts as guilt and misappropriation of private property. At best, Slylock might have given the appearance of caring about justice with a tortuous statement like, "Terry Turtle, I charge you with burglary; speak now if you are not actually the burglar ... so you admit you are? ... My work here is done. Max, take the, er, evidence down to the ... crime-fighting, you know ... lab ... place."

In short, while Slylock Fox is obviously not a real detective (or else he might have done enough research to realize that modern detectives do not dress in luridly monochromatic getups from the late 1800s), I can do enough sleuthing to suggest who might be behind the burglary: Slylock Fox himself!

Think about it. Does Slylock have a need for expensive goods? He's using a mobile phone in the picture. And that fancy ring that Max Mouse is gazing at lustily? There's your motive right there!

And Slylock's story? Bob Weber, Jr. might have bought it, but not me. An unnamed "witness" sees a turtle steal a hotel key card and calls whom? The hotel manager? The police? No. Conveniently, he calls Slylock, who then heads straight to the hotel room to apprehend the would-be burglar, whom Max probably had set on his back so he could not escape until Slylock arrived. Strangely, Slylock, just like the alleged "witness", didn't feel the need to work with the hotel management or the police in doing his work. He felt he could "handle it on his own", without the "authorities getting in the way." Even more strangely, Slylock somehow made his way into the room, although all rooms with key cards have doors that automatically close and lock. And clearly, the hotel manager didn't give him an extra key, since Slylock didn't bother to talk to him.

So there you have it, kids. Bob Weber, Jr. not only bungled the case, helping to frame an innocent victim along the way, but he also emphasized his un-American ideas about vigilante justice and the naivete of due process. Oh, and he forgot to evenly apply the rules of logic, much as I've clearly forgotten what it was that upset me about this strip in the first place.

In short, my point is this: no way are you going to learn how to draw a roller skater in defiance of her own center of gravity by looking at the Slylock Fox segment on "How to draw a rollerblader". If I could draw that first panel properly, I wouldn't need you to teach me how to draw, Bob! Please stop hurting the children!

All that said, my next comic strip critique is refreshingly short.

Fig. B: A portion of Hägar the Horrible from Sunday, September 3rd, 2006

I've spared you the hilarious "punchline", but, um, does Chris Browne know what "port wine" is? Because who orders a salad and roast beef with port? Bleah.

I'm sorry, Chris, but just because you had a bad experience at a restaurant and want to channel your anger into a thinly veiled complaint of a comic strip, doesn't mean you get to gloss over details like this.

If you want to vent your frustration with something in a ham-fisted, poorly-thought-out way, the proper venue for that is a blog.

The fall of the Roman Empire: an alternative

I realize that there's a lot of debate regarding the reasons why Rome fell — social changes, moral decay, and so on.

But I have a much simpler suggestion: Roman candles. Have you ever tried to read by those things? I mean, seriously? You can only read one or two words every few seconds, and by the time you've finished a sentence, something in your room is usually on fire.

Okay, I don't know how that correlates directly to the fall of the empire, but anything that contributes to an increasingly illiterate, homeless society has to be bad.