Lifeless Lettering

Since Garry Trudeau returned from his break a couple of weeks ago it sure looks to me like Doonesbury has computer lettering. I really dislike computer lettering for comics. A quick online check shows others also noticing the change, but nothing definitive.

This is how the lettering looked in one of the Sunday strips that was reprinted in May…

Doonesbury before lettering change

…and this is a panel from today’s Doonesbury.

Doonesbury with computer font?

I’d say there’s no doubt that the switch has been made to computer lettering. Yuck!

After Charles Schulz’s right hand started to shake, he held it steady with his left hand when inking and lettering Peanuts. In fifty years he took no sabbaticals and there were no reprinted strips. I’m not saying all cartoonists should be held to such a standard, but Schulz certainly set the standard.

Lights in the Sky, TV in the Mirror

The fireworks show in Boston last night was like a 1964 Beatles concert — short and loud. It was a big 20-minute display, which seemed like the right length. We were watching from the Cambridge side of the Charles River, on Memorial Drive in front of M.I.T. The blimp belongs to Hood, one of the bigger dairies in the Boston area. For a minute it looked like the blimp was flying into the fireworks, but as you can see it was a safe distance away.

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Another interesting sight awaited us at the hotel, down the road near Harvard, where the bathroom mirror had a built-in LCD TV.

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Boston Bound

Happy 4th of July! (Although I suspect that if I were living here in Massachusetts during Colonial times I perhaps would have been a Loyalist.)

We’re going to watch the big fireworks show in Boston tonight, and because it starts so late, 10:30, we’ll be staying in town overnight. So there won’t be anything new here until tomorrow night.

Peanuts in Providence

We live not too far from Providence, RI, where the Providence Journal has added Peanuts to its comics page lineup. I used to feel that longtime cartoonists should retire and make way for new talent, but later I decided that the merit of a strip, whether new or old, should be the only determining factor.

It appears the managing editor didn’t intend that notice to be published immediately, because it’s dated Sunday. WordPress has an option to schedule the publishing of posts. I haven’t used it often, but I’ve been thinking about coming up with a series of posts on a single subject and scheduling them to appear automatically as sort of a weekly feature.

And out in Minnesota, one of the “150 Minnesota moments we’d just as soon forget” is the St. Paul Dispatch and Pioneer Press dropping Schulz’s first comic strip, Li’l Folks.

The Charles M. Schulz Museum has an excellent collection of the Li’l Folks panels called Charles M. Schulz : Li’l Beginnings. At that link you’ll find it under the Biographical section of books.

MORE MUSIC… More Music… more music

More songs I’d like to point out. Like The Clash song, these will be testosterone tracks.

I’ve featured David Bowie doing “The Man Who Sold The World,” and Nirvana did a cover version, so I’ll include it, even though it isn’t a particular favorite. If Kurt Cobain were alive, I’d tell him there’s nothing chic about heroin use, let alone addiction, especially when you’re found with your brains splattered everywhere. But I would also tell him that I consider “Smells Like Teen Spirit” to be a quintessential Rock track.

[Ah, well, it seems that Universal Music doesn’t want these videos embedded, so guess what? I won’t use them. Bye-bye, Nirvana.]

One of my top three favorite albums ever is Green Day’s American Idiot. All at once it can be considered derivative, calculated, and manipulative, yet sincere, original and compelling. American Idiot is a brilliant accomplishment, standing on the shoulders of the giants who came and went before, and one out of every three times you ask I will tell you it’s my all-time #1 pick. The 20 seconds that start at 4:35 in “Jesus of Suburbia” distill everything that the Sex Pistols and The Clash were all about.

Eric’s Anime Pick — Emma

As promised, here’s more anime. Emma, A Victorian Romance, a 24-part series, isn’t Jane Austen, but it’s not giant robot battles, either.

We’ve watched only the first episode of Emma, but the series looks like a good selection for Eric’s girl cousins. I’ve spliced together a couple of scenes. See? No giant battling robots! 😉

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