Trial Separation

My dear fans of the blog and fellow Lockhorn lovers, let me convey to you may sincerest apologies. As most of you may have noticed, my daily Lockhorn commentary project "Lockhorn vs. Lockhorn" has been on an unexplained hiatus with no new updates since mid April. It has been quite a while. In the last few months I've been a bit busy with the end of law school, studying for and taking the bar exam, and a few other miscellany. As the days piled up I had said to myself that once all my major personal obligations passed I would eventually get around to doing, as I've done in the past, a mass update to get everything caught up. I now find myself a newly minted graduate (i.e. unemployed) with all my exams and tests completed with an excess supply of free time on my hands.

Even with my relatively open schedule though, the prospect of going back and spending hours upon hours updating over 4 months of daily Lockhorn strips (including those monstrous 5 part Sunday sections) totaling well over 200 panels was more than a little overwhelming (I'm pretty sure extended exposure to that much bitterness, anger, and martial dysfunction is fatal). I was actually contemplating the extremely tempting idea of calling it a year and starting fresh in 2011. However, the more I thought about it, the more I began to realize that such an action would be in gross contrast to the Lockhorns' central theme of uncompromising masochistic stubbornness. Leroy and Loretta could swiftly put an end to their eternal domestic hell by getting a divorce or resorting to murder-suicide but it is their classic, spiteful, totally psychotic, devotion to making each other absolutely miserable via the institution of marriage that has sustained the comic for all these decades. Given that, the blog must go on.

Since there is definitely too much material to safely cover in one shot without losing my mind, I'm going to attempt to gradually everything up over the next month or so. I loosely calculated that if I can average about five updates a day I could get it done in a little over a month. Whether I will actually be successful in reaching that goal after going through my 100th or so joke about Loretta's bad driving or Leroy's drinking problems will be no guarantee. But as the Lockhorns manage to continue their failing marriage, I will manage to continue my failing blog about their failing marriage.

All good things must come to an AACK!!

So after thirty-four chocolate craving, shoe obsessing, yo-yo dieting, mother stressing years, it appears that long time comic "Cathy" will be acking off into the sunset. I can't say that it's all that shocking, the writing was on the wall when she married Irving in 2005. For a comic devoted to the daily travails of a miserable, love (and chocolate) starved, single woman getting Cathy to finally marry was the equivalent of Beetle Bailey being dishonorably discharged from the army, or the Lockhorns filing for a divorce, or Garfield being diagnosed with feline AIDS.

As a staple of the newspaper comic section I occasionally read a "Cathy" comic or two growing up and I, like most males and people under 50, had always written off "Cathy" as an unrelatable, unfunny, waste of ad space and printer's ink that had long since lost any relevance; living a lazy, half-assed existence recycling its tired old jokes and tropes while enjoying its comfortable tenure. During my recent Lockhorn archiving experiment (currently on hiatus), my perusing of the daily comics got myself a chance to reevaluate many of the old comics I grew up with, including "Cathy", and after looking at the antics of Cathy through the wizened perspective of an adult I must say it still sucks.

Why anyone would have any interest or empathy for this miserable, annoying, shrill troll of a woman who somehow manages to be both ugly on the outside and inside is a mystery. What's even more perplexing is how "Cathy" has a reputation as some sort of female cultural icon. So what exactly is there in this patently offensive hideous caricature of the modern female that fellow contemporary women can take to heart? Are women deep down all really that superficial/hysterical/whinny and "Cathy" is some common gender relating figure? If you did the old gender switcheroo and instead of Cathy Guisewhite it was her husband who created and wrote "Cathy", I don't think it would have been nearly as successful.

Then again, maybe I'm just unfairly picking on "Cathy" since most comic strips suck. I can't say I'm sad to see it go so this stops short of a eulogy, but for something that has consistently existed everyday for my entire existence to soon be gone forever, at least some attention must be paid. Now all that's left is to speculate about what the big finale would be October 3rd. There definitely isn't enough development time for a baby but I'm thinking maybe she'll get pregnant (as horrifying as the implications are). Although I'd be willing to completely reevaluate my comments on the entire series run if the ending is anything like the insane existential nightmare Garfield strips that ran the week before Halloween in 1989.

P.S. While google image searching for a decent sized picture of Cathy, I came across this horrifying "Cathy" parody that someone created for their blog. It is beyond "Not Safe For Work" it's more closer to "Not Safe For Human Eyes". Click at your own peril, but remember you can never unsee it.

So Keep Your Love Lockhorns

As we approach the first full week of the New Year, I'm sure many a resolutions are starting to feel the strain if not already collapsed all together. In my years as a serial resolution maker, I've had some that didn't even make it past "Dick Clark's Rockin' New Years Eve." While I've found that most promises I make with myself are inherently doomed since I have no problems disappointing myself, I still on occasion attempt a small personal challenge here and there just for the novelty in seeing how long I can keep it up. It's sort of like playing an old 80s retro arcade game like Pac-Man or Donkey Kong; there's really no end to it (outside of the game's programming collapsing upon itself), you just see how long you can maintain.

It is in that bold, kamikaze-like spirit of New Years' Resolution making that I decided to go through with my long considered plan to create a blog that tracks the daily fights and squabbles of my my all time favorite comic strip, "The Lockhorns". You can keep the eternal melancholy of "Peanuts", the office jokes of "Dilbert", the lasagna fueled antics of "Garfield", the unrelenting meddling of "Mary Worth", the edgy racial politics of the "Boondocks"; for my money the "Lockhorns" never fail to deliver. Sure it's the same 10 or so jokes about unhappy married life and the difference between men and women, but you are guaranteed to always get the joke in every panel and its guaranteed to be at least an acknowledgable joke in the traditional sense. Despite my enjoyment of "The Lockhorns'" unique, classic brand of comedy; I don't think I've ever really looked at the loveless dynamics of this miserable marriage. So for the rest of the year I will, hopefully, give a daily play-by-play look at the eternal struggle that is the Lockhorns' marriage and give a tally of who's actually coming out ahead in this unholiest of unions.

So if you're looking for the kind of laughs that can only result from watching the petty, daily arguments of two ugly charactures of American domestic married life, one panel at a time, then look no further than "Lockhorn vs. Lockhorn" during your daily journeys through the blogosphere.

Of course, half the fun is wondering how long I'll be able to keep a daily journal up before my procrastination overwhelms me.

Gettin' Ziggy Wit It!

Some of you may recall that bizarre month or so period in May when I became semi obsessed with trying to comprehend the nonsensical awfulness of Ziggy comics. Fortunately I had all but given up on attempting to decipher their surreal, confusing, and often times, depressing attempts at "humor" before my head exploded; leaving behind a tentatively implied promise that I would Zig no more forever. Without the maddening task of trying understand the sad adventures of that deformed, half man I slowly started sleeping regularly again and my intense frustration headaches had all but ceased. I was well on my way back to pre-Ziggy normalcy.

Alas, in this cold, imperfect world we live in, the cruel arbitrary wheel of fortuna constantly brings us up and down. Just the other week, while killing time in class randomly going across the online comics for the first time in weeks, I was violently dragged back to the nightmarish one paneled madness that was Ziggy:

Aside from how completely humorless and trite this feeble attempt at "contemporary" comedy is, it's even more awful when you recall back to the comic from my last Ziggy entry:

Almost four months and it's nearly the same panel! You know what the really sad thing is? The recent one is actually a vast improvement when compared to the original. After looking up exactly what a push-poll was, it sort of made sense (at least more sense then a shell screaming "virus alert")!

Of course I'm not well versed enough in the decades upon decades of Ziggy lore (nor would I care to) so maybe this whole "talking or listening to out of context messages at the beach from a shell" thing is actually a long running Ziggy conceit like the doctor's office or the complaints department. If that's the case and this minimal amount of all around effort and quality is all that is required to produce a nationally syndicated comic for nearly 40 years, then hats off to you cartoonist Tom Wilson, you have found one of the greatest jobs in the world.

Here's a freebie you can use for next week on the house:

Never Say Ziggy Again

I know I had previously promised no more posts about Ziggy, but sometimes it's better to try to seek catharsis by sharing your inner pain and turmoil. It's in that spirit that I present this, the latest defeat in the ongoing series of failures that is the life of Ziggy:

I mean at this point, are they even trying anymore?

Some predictions for future Ziggy panels:

• Ziggy looks in a pot on the stove and it says "Do you want to save changes?"
• Ziggy smells a daffodil and it says "Sleep Mode!"
• Ziggy opens a mail box and it says "Limited Connectivity!"
  
• Ziggy gets a fortune cookie and it reads "Reboot!"
  
• Ziggy throws coins in a fountain and it says "Enter Password!"
  
• Ziggy opens a trash can it says "Defragmentation!"
  
• Ziggy bites a hot dog and it says "404 Error!"
• Ziggy opens a books and it says "Not a valid WIN32 Application!"
  

Taken in context with the previous techno-savvy comic panel, I suspect Ziggy's years of crippling depression has caused him to lose his mind or it's possibly terminal brain cancer. In either case I'm sure there'll be some additional classic incidents at the doctor's office.

I've got to really stop reading the comics

With any luck this will be my last "Ziggy" related post. I realize now that if I keep reading them it will only cause further harm to myself and others. It's sort of like looking at the sun, a brief glance here and there is fine, but you're not suppose to stare directly at it. Every daily panel I read just seems to out "Ziggy" itself in terms of sadness and confusion. If I don't quit now I'll just end up writing blog entry after blog entry detailing my increasing bewilderment and frustration with the comic. My obsession would completely spiral out of control until I eventually suffer a massive fatal aneurysm.

I mean how is any rational individual suppose to experience anything other then puzzlement and stupefaction (let alone "humor") from the following panel?!?:

Why is the toilet talking to Ziggy? What does it mean that he has an email? Why am I reading this?

Much like after watching the movie Hackers, the most obvious fact to draw from this is that the creator has absolutely no idea how computers or the internet works. Adding a "new fangled" sounding phrase like "E-mail" apparently is half the joke; a joke which would have been declared old ten years ago. I then reluctantly, against my better judgment, thought about the possible other half of the joke. Is it saying that because Ziggy just took a dump and it's a high tech Japanese toilet? Maybe Ziggy just dropped his Blueberry in the can? Maybe it's a commentary on the inherent melancholy of the simultaneous combination of ubiquitous mediated communication and the widespread alienation of the modern age? Or maybe it's not the toilet that's talking but, disturbingly, the poop?

These are the questions that need no answers.

Ah Ziggy. Will you ever win?

On occasions where I find myself aimlessly wondering around the internet (which in law school is almost every waking moment) I sometimes end up checking out the daily comics. I'm not sure what went wrong but I remember comics being a lot funnier when I was younger. I suspect I must have changed because comics certainly haven't seemed to. "Garfield" still hates Mondays and loves lasagna, "Dilbert" still works in a early 90s office, and "B.C." is still in B.C. It's like whatever time a comic started it is forever stuck in that era. Sure every once in a while "Beetle Bailey" will mention the internet or the son in "Momma" will joke about high gas prices in a misguided attempt that appearing current, but for the most part they're like mini windows into the past. While it doesn't bode well for humor (at least intentional humor) most of the time, I guess good or bad there's something to be said about maintaining that level of constancy, day in and day out.

One comic that has maintained a paramount level of consistency, in lack of humor, is everybody's favorite bald, pantless, depressive: "Ziggy". I don't understand what the appeal is. Every daily panel is a different terribly depressing scene from his appalling life. He's hideously deformed, friendless, and everywhere he goes; whether it's the therapists office, a police station, or a restaurant, people are basically shitting on him. Maybe the whole point of it is that we're suppose to get some sense of schadenfreude out of it? I guess its easier to laugh at this funny looking muppet-like thing then a said eyed human-like figure.

However, the one Ziggy I came across a few days ago is just about the saddest thing I've ever seen.

I mean there's poor Ziggy, as lonely as ever, sadly drinking wine by himself at some restaurant trying to get soused enough to forget his miserable life ever so briefly; and like with every other event in Ziggy's life no one else seems to care. The man cannot control himself enough to stop crying at the restaurant and the waiter is completely oblivious to that which further compounds Ziggy's misery. I mean this is just down right tragic.

I'd say that eventually the writers will reach the point where they'll one day flat out give Ziggy terminal bone cancer and chronicle all the misfortunes that befall him as he begins an agonizing stretch of ineffective chemotherapy; but they probably won't because that would be a perversely better fate than living another 40 years of being Ziggy.