Make ‘Em Laugh

Books

Steve Martin has a wistful piece in the October 29 New Yorker looking back at the origins of his career in comedy. It progresses through his first employment at Knott’s Berry Farm through the “avant-garde” excitement of the 1960s, complete with stops to lose his virginity, date Dalton Trumbo’s daughter (setting up the article’s hardest-hitting joke), and develop his theory of humor. It is infused throughout with the presence of a young man who was older than his age, and an older man struggling with the passage of time.

Only the abstract is available online, but comedy fans should try to track down the piece in print.

Read Classic Comics Online

Comics

It’s always bittersweet when you hold an idea for a long time and then see that someone else has acted on it before you had the chance. In the case of the Comic Strip Library, however, it’s a bit of a relief, seeing as it was probably a lot of work! The web site, hosted by Zachary Chavez, features full scans of classic U.S. comic strips that have entered the public domain, namely Winsor MCay’s gorgeous Little Nemo In Slumberland and George Herriman’s oddball Krazy Kat. (Later Krazy Kat strips can also be found at Peter Campbell’s Coconinio County.)

All are worth a read, but there are also plenty of other classic comics in the public domain that can’t be found on the web…maybe there’s room for me yet!

The American Idea

Well Worth Reading

In the Atlantic’s 150th anniversary issue, they asked a variety of authors, inventors, intellectuals and cultural figures to comment on “the future of the American Idea and the greatest challenges to it.” The responses are interesting to read, even as many of the respondents struggle to define the American Idea, much less predict its future.

John Updike, George Will, Google Founder and CEO Eric Schmidt, Edward O. Wilson, Nancy Pelosi, Greil Marcus, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Robert Pinsky, Sam Harris, Frank Gehry, Judith Martin and many others participated. Many of the reactions align the state of the American Idea with our country’s current direction, rendering it bleak, while others are more hopeful. Some are creepy (Tim LaHaye, the author of the Left Behind screeds), some are shallow (Arizona governor Janet Napolitano, whose piece could be a tourist brochure), and some are outright pricks (Tom Wolfe, whose patronizing essay makes me relieved I never bothered to pick up I Am Charlotte Simmons).

Continue reading The American Idea →

Grease Is Good

Well Worth Reading

Fast Company magazine has an amazing article about Johnathan Goodwin, a Wichita mechanic who’s able to modify cars to provide drastically more running time on dramatically less fuel (or biodiesel).

As the article reports, “The numbers are simple: With a $5,000 bolt-on kit he co-engineered–the poor man’s version of a Goodwin conversion–he can immediately transform any diesel vehicle to burn 50% less fuel and produce 80% fewer emissions.”

Continue reading Grease Is Good →

Ha Ha, Charade You Are!

Well Worth Reading

Chris Colin has a damning article at SFGate.com documenting the workplace harassment faced by Kurdish-American mechanic Hamid Sayadi after September 11th. Sayadi, who was granted amnesty in the United States in 1977 after fleeing Iraq, alleges he was called a terrorist, had his tires slashed and had his lunch box inspected by his superior (for fear of a bomb being inside); he’d worked for his employer, New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., since 1990. The last straw? Being strip-searched by security when he attended a company-sponsored “Mission Accomplished” party after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

I doubt this is an isolated incident; I can’t imagine the barrage of hostility people of Middle Eastern descent have had to endure over the past six years. Of course, American ignorance isn’t a finely wielded tool–my best friend, who is of Indian descent, has been called “a Palestinian terrorist” and “Osama Bin Laden” by thoughtless pigs on the street. If this is the new America we’ve chosen, let me offer a thought for our updated national anthem: a series of oinks and squeals.