Tue, August 26, 2003

It may not seem like it to the untrained eye, but I've been working hard lately to keep this site fresh and funny and frequently updated. It's all part of a push to expand my readership in the hopes that it can grow to the size that maybe someday I can initiate an advice column feature and there will be enough readers that someone will actually write in from time to time.

One thing I'll need is advertising. Getting the word out. It turns out the good people at Google have a fairly impressive little cheapo ad program that I will have to buy into when the time is right. I also have a few other brilliant but low-cost marketing ideas up my sleeve to drive clicks toward the site. Good! Step two is making the site more friendly to newcomers. At present, the whole thing is set up for the regulars. If you know what the site's about and where everything is, you're set; otherwise, it is probably a little daunting.

So, I'm focusing on a redesign of the home page that devotes less space to "pretty" and more space to "information." Like what the site is, what some recent columns were, that kind of thing. As it is now, the home page is just a stepping stone to the newest column, and it has a honkin' big graphic download to boot. Not exactly throwing the doors wide open. Like I said, I'm on it.

But guess what? Now there's another reason to change my home page. It looks like I ripped it off from Cat Power. Cat Power (Chan Marshall in real life) is a recording artist who I don't really know that well, but I've seen her on Letterman and she sort of has a Sarah McLachlan/Nora Jones thing happening (in that she sits at a piano, or did on Dave's show) but she's a little less catchy and kind of morose. Nothing in the performance I saw on the Late Show made me stand up and cheer, but I like the name Cat Power because it sounds like some sort of feline-derived alternative energy source, or like your pussycat chewed through the extension cord.

I swear, my homepage was up at least six weeks before the album came out and over eight months before I actually saw the cover, but Cat Power's latest album "You Are Free" features a photograph that is eerily similar to the one on my home page, which isn't anything too cosmic until you consider that it also says "You Are Free" on it, while my home page says "you are home." Yowza! As Rava would say, there are no big coincidences and small coincidences, there are just... coincidences. But, hey. That's one big coincidence! (Take a look at the photos to see it. It'll freak you out.) Maybe the way to draw attention to the site is by suing Matador records in a high-profile trial.

Between the phrase "Cat Power" and the crazy spike in gas prices in LA this week, it reminds me of the "Bloom County" where grandpa gets a little excited at the pump when he realizes how cheap gas is. Somewhere, there's a line like "Toss the milk, Edna! The cat drinks unleaded from now on!" Man, I miss that strip. Just for that, bonus ratings, on the house!

My Top Five Comic Strips Ever

Bloom County

This was just a damned-excellent strip. Berke Breathed's delivery and timing (if you can have "timing" in a printed strip) were spot-on, his characters quirky and lovable, and his situations perfectly absurd. I miss this strip like crazy. "Over the Hedge" (soon to be a major motion picture) has a similar tone to it, but really nothing compares.

Calvin and Hobbes

Also spectacular. The family dynamic was just perfect. My dad was just like Calvin's dad. Everything was about building character and you often got the sense he was barely putting up with you, but it all came from love. And he was a total smartass. (There was one Sunday strip where Dad had Calvin convinced that the world was actually black and white before the 1950s, and that the sun was about the size of a quarter and was laid to rest each night in the Arizona desert. This was just like something my dad would say.) Plus, the episodes in Calvin's imagination, with the time machine and the transmogrifier, are just the sort of thing we all need. They remind me of Harold and the Purple Crayon, one of my favorite books ever, and the sort of askew "what if?" aspect is one of the things that I also appreciate so much about Futurama.

Pogo

Pogo is brilliant! Folksy wisdom mixed with silly characters and smart humor (often political, in thinly veiled doses). Plus just a dash of sentiment. I can't really go into all the great moments from Pogo that mean a lot to me, there are just too many. I've often said that the genius of Everybody Loves Raymond is in its long scenes, and Pogo had exactly the same strength. Absurd plots would spill out over pages and pages, but they still meant something. And the characters were so engaging and relatable. (Grundoon, Pogo, and Churchy LaFemme are but a few of the large, cheeky ensemble.) Disney was truly the second-best Walt in toondom.

Doonesbury

I don't read Doonesbury that often, but I really like Trudeau's ability to cut right to the bone of a frustrating political issue. The fact that it's all done in such a breezy, upbeat style makes it even better. If not for this, Dateline would have made me lose all respect for Jane Pauley.

Dilbert

It's supposed to be about the office, but what's great about Dilbert is that we can relate to the types of people he works with even if we don't have an Office Space workplace ourselves. The spartan style of the strip leaves out everything but the funny, and Dogbert is pure Machiavellian glee.

***

Still want more? Check out the Athletic Reporter this week. While ARCC Joe Mulder is on his honeymoon, the 'Porter is accepting contributions from Joe's pals and I managed to be one of them. Take a look at my column and marvel at how I managed to write a truly hysterical sports article without knowing anything about sports!

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