Tom The Dancing Bug Blog

David's Situation

Check out this clip from a recently abandoned project from the genii that are David Cross and Bob Odenkirk.

Attention Washington Post Readers

At the start of this year, The Washington Post canceled "Tom the Dancing Bug," and I know from published web reports and the many emails I continue to receive that readers are unhappy with the decision.  I've been very grateful for your support.

I was alerted to the fact that Michael Cavna, of the Post, has set up a non-binding poll for the replacement of "Opus" (which will terminate next month), and you can vote HERE.  I hope those of you who have already contacted the Post and myself complaining about "Tom the Dancing Bug's" cancellation will take this one extra step that actually has a chance of getting the strip reinstated.

Thanks.

P.S.  I heard that Arlo and Janis pal around with terrorists!

Didn't John McCain Ever See "The Verdict"?

I'm going by memory here, but I recall in the movie "The Verdict" (Paul Newman plays a downtrodden lawyer suing a hospital), someone says something like, "Never ask a witness a question that you don't know the answer to."  Of course at the end of the movie, the opposing lawyer (a smug James Mason) is thrown off base and makes the fatal mistake of asking a witness a question to which he doesn't know the answer, and the witness' shocking reply wins the case for Newman's character.

But the expression on Mason's face couldn't match McCain's in last night's debate, when McCain gets a response from Obama to a question to which McCain didn't know the answer (or didn't know that Obama had an answer).  Check it out, and watch McCain's face (courtesy Talking Points Memo):

Apocalypse Chow

This week's comic:  Lucky Ducky

The Baron Has Arrived!

By the way, thanks to all who came to the SPX panel a couple of weekends ago.  The panel was fun and interesting (my conclusion:  Obama is not funny), but the real highlight for me was seeing all the "alternative" weekly cartoonists who came for the "Outside Looking In" alternative-political theme of the event -- I'm probably forgetting some, but it was great to hang with Ted Rall, Mikhaela Reid, Masheka Wood, August Pollack, Keith Knight, Stephanie McMillan, Jen Sorenesen, Tom Tomorrow, Lloyd Dangle, and Derf. 

Speaking of Derf, he's got an excellent new graphic novel out, Punk Rock and Trailer Parks.  I knew him as a friend and as a funny three-panel weekly cartoonist long before I saw any of his longer narrative pieces, and I was shocked at how good he is at them.  Anyway, this new book centers around a great comic character, Otto "the Baron" Pizcok, the coolest giant nerd in all of 1979 Akron:

I also got a new book by Derf's buddy Michael San Giacomo, which I haven't had a chance to read yet, but looks cool.  It's Tales of the Starlight Drive-In:  31 stories, illustrated by 23 artists (including Derf), all centered around the 50 year history of the Starlight Drive-In theater.

Inside the Brilliant Mind of Sarah Palin

The Troopergate report reminded me of a blog post I read about the Sarah Palin's interview with Sean Hannity (I don't remember where I read this, so I can't attribute it).  If you saw this, you weren't surprised by the report's conclusion; in the interview, Palin inadvertently admits that she's guilty!  (There ya go again, Sean, with yer "Gotcha" Journalism!)

Hannity asks Palin about the investigation, which was looking into whether Palin's dismissal of Alaska's Commissioner of the Department of Public Safety was improperly motivated by his refusal to fire her ex-brother-in-law, which she was allegedly pressuring him to do.

Palin asserts that she asked the Commissioner to transfer to another position simply because she had "an obligation to make sure we had the right people in the right places at the right time in the cabinet to best serve Alaskans."  He refused the tranfer and left the service.  She says:

It had nothing to do with a former brother-in-law, a state trooper who happened to have been married to one of my sisters until about three years ago.

Hannity then says that there was "talk" about this brother-in-law having tasered a 10 or 11 year old boy.  Palin responds:

He did. This trooper Tasered my nephew. And he Tasered — well, that was — it’s all on the record. It’s all there. His threats against the first family, the threat against my dad. All that is in the record. And if the opposition researchers are choosing to forget that side of the story, they’re not doing their job.

See, right there she forgot that her story is that the brother-in-law has nothing to do with the firing, and states that his behavior is an essential part of the story.  She apparently switched to a defense of:  the brother-in-law was such a bad guy I was justified in pressuring the Commissioner to fire him.

She was "tricked" into blowing her whole story and revealing her true motivation by the most friendly, sycophantic interrogator imaginable, Sean Hannity.  This is the person John McCain thinks is ready for games of brinkmanship with the likes of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran

Pliocene Park, Part 4 of 4

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
and here is the conclusion:

Bloomin' Onions! Funny!

This week's comic.

I've been asked...

Who is that guy on the right side of the blog's screen, below the link to "Tom the Dancing Bug on Salon" and above "Subscribe to this blog's feed"? He's wearing a purple shirt and a bemused smile.

It's not me, and I have no idea who he is, or why he's there. Seriously. I've asked the blog's administrator.

In the meantime, please enjoy the photo. He seems like a nice guy.

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UPDATE: Turns out the photo is of John McPherson, creator of the comic "Close to Home." I still have no idea why his picture is there, but he is a nice guy.

UPDATE UPDATE: The picture has been changed to a drawing of Garfield standing in front of a wacky building. Fascinating.

Who Watches the Watchmen Screening?

So last night, I attended a screening of various scenes from the upcoming "Watchmen" movie, including a talk with director Zack Snyder and the artist of the original comic book, Dave Gibbons.

I came to the Watchmen comic very late -- I read it for the first time only a couple of years ago -- but I of course loved it instantly.  So I was very interested in how they could turn that rich, complex, sophisticated, downbeat, political, epic comic book into a superhero movie.

And after seeing these scenes, I'm convinced the answer is:  very, very faithfully, and very, very well.  It seems that it was the success of director Snyder's "300" that gave him the clout to reject the studio's re-imagining of Watchmen as a War on Terror shoot-'em-up, and go back to the source material.  Based on what I saw, it's hard to imagine a fan of the comic book being angry or disappointed that the movie strayed from the comic.  It captures the tone and feel of the comic (often panel for panel) perfectly, yet translates it cinematically in a visually witty way.  (The fight scenes I saw -- The Comedian vs. Shadowy Assailant, and Nite Owl and Silk Spectre vs. Prison Rioters -- seem to have gone on longer than the comic would indicate, but come on... did you see "300"?  You've got to give Snyder that.)

To keep the film down to a watchable length, Snyder said he had to cut or modify certain sequences and characters, but he seems to have made up for that by making allusions to what there isn't time to explicitly include.  Every frame just about burst with references and snippets that even Gibbons said he catches only after multiple viewings.

After listening to Gibbons speak on stage, and talking to him afterwards, to say he's enthusiastic about this film is an understatement.  He made the excellent point that movie audiences may be ready for a deconstruction of the superhero genre in a way that they weren't only a few years ago, when they weren't quite as familiar with the conventions of the form.  I also think there are political connections that can be made between "Watchmen"'s mid-1980s world and our post-9/11, financial apocalyptic time that will be very interesting.

This movie looked beautiful, unbelievably well-crafted, and every bit as exciting and provocative as the comic.

And who knows -- maybe with the success of "Watchmen," Warner Bros. will make another movie adaptation of a comic that originally appeared in the mid-1980s.  (Stay tuned, folks!)

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Update:  Much more info about the screening here.