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Re: “The Pixies to Fans: "Fuck You, Fuck You, Fuck You, Give Us All Your Money"”
The Pixies have done this before; I saw them on their first reunion tour (or, years ago on the first leg of the current, endless reunion tour) and they were selling CD copies of the show you just saw...you paid in advance and it came in the mail later. (I know because I bought one--sorry, Mike!)
Also, I saw them on "Conan" last week, and I thought they sounded really flat and lifeless. It seems obvious that at this point they're just playing for the money (and thus the live recordings thing); that's fine, I guess, if the fans still want to see them, but the cynicism of it all is grating.
Re: “Is Stephen King on the General Mills Payroll?”
@orchst: thanks for the context. (I'm admittedly far from a King scholar...I read "The Mist"....) Agreed: seven is too many! And I too thought it was strange for The New Yorker to publish him, but apparently he's had quite a few pieces in there, albeit over a long period of time.
@susanne: literally?
Re: “Is Stephen King on the General Mills Payroll?”
Yeah, I understand that argument, but still....seven!?! And, honestly, the story made me want a bag of Bugles...the woman eating them, you'll remember, is alive and well by story's end!
Re: “The Whitest Neighborhood in New York City”
@jan: I never called Breezy Point a "Republican stronghold"; I said its parade was "Republican-friendly" and that its political sensibilities were "deeply conservative". Either could be possible even if a plurality of voters were registered Democrats. (Being a Dem doesn't automatically mean you're a gay Communist, a la Obama.) Where'd you get that statistic from, anyway?
Re: “A Home Video Halloween”
Yeah, I guess from a hindsight perspective, the ending of the first film is confusing.
Cop: We didn't find any boy.
Girl: Then he's still out there!
I think it's because they didn't intend to do a sequel, let alone bring Jason back as the murderer. Anyway, it doesn't really matter. I'm perfectly willing to grant slashers a lot of leeway with stuff like this, because plotting consistency between entries isn't really what I watch them for!
Re: “What Happened to the Funny Pages?”
Ah, the NY Daily News (the epitome of a comics section for me) has stopped carrying Peanuts, which I figured was probably a national trend--because, agreed, like Seinfeld it shouldn't be around forever--but maybe I'm wrong.
But, yeah, the comics that have continued after their creators have expired is a symptom, I think, of publishers' unwillingness to surrender a proven success, which might be a unique problem to comics. Well, and reuniting classic rock bands.
Re: “What Happened to the Funny Pages?”
@Thad: I think "Maus" and "Watchmen" are fair examples; they mark the ascent of comics are serious forms of fiction, which loosely coincides (temporally) with the advent of the decline in comic strips. Anyway, they were the only totemic examples I could think of off-hand!
The fear of offending is a good point. Maybe we can think about mainstream comics as CBS: it may get the most ratings, but no serious fan of television has any interest in its dreadfully bland shows...
@idly_by: the point is that these are the strips readily available, at least to me. I could hunt down alternative comics (you're right, Ruben Bolling is hilarious) but once upon a time, you wouldn't have had to hunt down Bolling--he would have been right there next to Trudeau.
Maybe it isn't graphic novels that killed the comic strip star; maybe it's an industry, like Hollywood, increasingly afraid to bet any of its money on something that isn't one form or another of a tried-and-profitable property.
(Or, it's a little bit of both?)
