When Prussian gymnast and bodybuilder Joseph Pilates developed a mind-body method of strength training with a spring-based apparatus in the early 20th century -- one that would become popular with ballet dancers and eventually enter the mainstream fitness world -- he never could have known that many decades later, a U.S. federal court would declare that his very last name was a generic term, and that anyone could use the word 'Pilates,' whether or not they joined the Pilates Method Alliance professional organization. Heck, they could even have a talking dog mispronounce his name in a comic strip as a way of making a cheap pun, if they wanted to. It's a funny, funny world sometimes, even if you wouldn't know that from the punchline.
Curtis, 8/6/24
Oh, you don’t think Curtis is cyber-savvy? Well, have you ever seen anyone post on a social media … in trinary numbers before?
Gasoline Alley, 8/6/24
“Anonymous,” huh? Wait a minute…
OH MY GOD
Gil Thorp, 8/6/24
Hey guys, you wanna see a guy hitting a golf ball? Today’s Gil Thorp is for you, my friends!
Bizarro, 8/6/24
What if an ape … wanted to have a job? Really makes you think, huh?
Dennis the Menace and Hagar the Horrible, 8/5/24
Ha ha, bagpipes, amiright folks? It’s, uh, it’s honestly pretty slim pickings in the comics today so that’s what I got. I was thinking recently (ok, fine, it was when I was watching the incredible Weird Al biopic Weird) that accordions get a bad rap, like for decades they were the butt of jokes and the epitome of dorky music when in fact accordion music can be really cool and interesting! Am I willing to go out on a limb and say the same about bagpipes? Maybe not, they are pretty screechy and annoying if not done right, but they can be good too sometimes, I dunno. Anyway, mostly I’m interested in geography here, with Hagar the Horrible accurately depicting the Scots as one of the primary victims of Viking depredation and inaccurately depicting the bagpipes as sonic weapons, and Dennis the Menace depicting the cute little historic downtown of Dennis’s suburb (?) where fun civic events like the Bagpipes Festival happen, or maybe that’s just Margaret’s uncle wandering around imposing his musical and sartorial tastes on everyone without their consent, who can say.
Marvin, 8/4/24
We all find ways to justify our worst life decisions to ourselves. Like, just for example, imagine you’ve spent 20 years of your life reading and writing about the comic strip Marvin, despite the fact that you obviously profoundly dislike it. You can try to defend yourself by being smug that you’re now intimately acquainted with the Marvin lore, that you’ve kept track of information like the fact that Marvin has a cousin named Ming Ming who was adopted from China, even if the strip creators themselves seem to have forgotten. But then a few weeks later you get blindsided by the revelation that “Megan,” who I’ve always filed away in my mind as one of the random other babies Marvin goes to pre-school with, is also his cousin? And Ming Ming’s sister? I am reeling, and humbled. Has this always been the case, or did they retcon this just to spite me personally?
Hi and Lois, 8/4/24
Two things I love about Lois’s Paris fantasy is that (a) she’s imagining going during the Olympics and assumes the city will be more or less empty and (b) she has 100% left her entire family behind in America, possibly not even telling them where she was going.