Beetle Bailey and the Duck-Bear Monkeys

What the heck are these things? What?

They looks like Duck-Bears. One does not expect Audubon-level accuracy in Beetle Bailey - or even Mark-Trail-level, for that matter - but these appear to have been drawn by a ten-year old. It makes you suspect that no one actually draws Beetle Bailey any more, but simply assembles the strip out of pre-existing character templates. When the writer sent this one to the shop, they looked in the files for MONKEYS and panicked, because there weren't any pre-existing monkey templates.

LONG LONG TIMES AGO The Evolution of the Star Wars logo. Started out blah, got horrible, then ended up with the style that seems so obvious now.

In related news: Mark Hamill is picking cigarette butts out of public ashtrays. And he's doing okay for himself, as far as I know. Well, add that to the "10 Frugal Habits of People Who Manage to Afford to Live in Malibu," I guess.

ART This fellow wants to print out the Internet for an art project. Actually, he wants you to print out as much as you want, then send to him. In Mexico. Says the Yahoo story:

As a witting archivist, i.e. I make a point of finding ephemeral material and doing something with it, I have to disagree: figuring out what to do with information is more meaningful than generating more? I am tempted to agree but have no idea what he's talking about.

What will he do with the stuff once the exhibit's over? Recycle it.

Without reading the article, I'm going to take a wild stab and say "their endless sense of self-importance, entitlement, and conviction that the popular culture of their dorm room years was the most singular contribution to Western Civilization since the Renaissance." At least among the people who emerged from the demographic to fill the academies and media companies, and thus shaped the subsequent cultural narratives. And now I'll read the article and see if I'm right.

Nope. Not according to the author, anyway. The article ticks off the differences between the Jazz Age youth - because "Gatsby" is still in theaters - and the Boomers. Then the comments pile on everyone. Nevermind.

NEW INTERNET CRAZE On the odd chance you haven't heard this yet, well, here it is; it will be beaten to death in a week or two. The mocking parody videos have already begun. It's . . . well.

Of course, she has a book:

At least she didn't experience someone else's inner horse. In the old west they'd hang you for that. Metaphysical rustling is still rustling. (via the Daily Beast.)

ART BoingBoing has an interesting piece about Hard Case Crime, which makes paperback books that look like paperback books used to look.

I had no idea. I would never have watched anything based on the "The Colorado Kid," anyway. It was the most inconclusive work since a Neolithic cave artist pressed his red-painted right hand on the stone and decided not to do the left one. The core mystery was okay; the presentation - two old newspaper coots acting like cliched newspaper coots talkin' about the story, ayuh, to an intern - took away from the suspense, but it was one of King's minor works that galloped along, and you trusted the author to bring you home at the end. He didn't. He didn't solve the mystery. Which would seem to be something that made people suspicious of the rest of the offerings from the publishing house, but they've done okay. The next King book will not be an ebook. Paperback only. Why? Out of respect for the forms of the past.

Even though I've gone the digital route, I agree. If it really wants to remind people of 1973, though, they could reprise something that was the most revolutionary thing in paperbacks since, well, paperbacks, and was met with such revulsion they stopped doing it out of shame.

A cigarette ad. In the middle of the book.

It was stiff, too - no matter how you opened the book, it fought you, because it wanted to flip to the TRUE ad. We hated these things like we hated the way Marvel reduced the stories by one page by splitting a double-truck so one page was distributed on the top half and the bottom half was ads. (Buy a poster that will teach you karate! Buy a glue-on Van dyke beard! Comics bought and sold, send for a mimeographed list offered by some guy in New Jersey, $1.00) Ads in a book was a line no one had thought to cross.