Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Bootlegs turning out to be the originals

After reading a certain online profile last week and doing some research about Heathcliff the cat, I was surprised to discover that he actually predated Garfield! My world was flipped upside down. Growing up, I had always considered Heathcliff to be the bootleg, grungy version of Garfield, a low-end knockoff (with an amazing intro). Then today, while typing one of my favorite exclamations, "Heavens to Murgatroyd!", I looked up the spelling of it and found out that Snagglepuss predated the Pink Panther! What is going on here? I guess it never made total sense that the most popular necessarily had to be the original, but still...Are there other characters like this that y'all can think of?

Thursday, August 06, 2009

The Masses (are they really thirsty and rejoicing due to this post?)

As a self-styled urban elite who surrounds himself with a similar crowd, the subjects of what "the masses" really like and what they really think about various issues are always coming up. In light of that, I would love to be in the mind of one of these "folks" from Oklahoma and know what it's really like, just for one second. Anything longer might make me nauseous.