So we finally got to see the fire that canonically shuttered literacy for two generations.
In contrast, here’s a normal Wednesday at Ed Crankshaft’s house, which is considered comedy:
And here’s what we saw when Les Moore needed help coming to terms with letting Marianne Winters watch video tapes of his dead wife, even though some of them were benign enough to exhibit publicly.
Continue reading “If The Burnings Were A Movie, You’d Walk Out. Let’s Write A Better One.”
And then came the last days of December. I’m really going to miss this. As most of you probably already know, we’re going to keep SoSF alive on some sort of limited basis (at least for now), and we have a world-class, outrageously obsessive MAJOR EVENT coming up in early 2023 that might rate as the greatest thing in SoSF history (I don’t want to oversell it here, no pressure, but it’s gonna be BIG), but the days of hilarious, scathing and insightful daily FW content are over for me. Within a few months, words and phrases like “pinned-up sleeve”, “band box”, “green pitcher”, “Boy Lisa”, and “Dick Facey” will disappear from my lexicon, and I’ll be poorer for it. 10:30PM eastern time will never be the same. Continue reading “Abyssinia, Batty”
Who the hell names their kid “Story”? Oh…Lisa’s granddaughter is named “Lisa.” How many birthdays is this for her, anyway? Her height, relative to her mother’s, and her Judy Jetson attire suggest she’s a teen, but her reaction to seeing “her” name of the spine of the book is so childlike. Continue reading “Lisa’s “Lisa’s Story” Story”
“Wait, what’s that other book next to it?”
“Oh, that old thing? That’s just “Lisa’s Story”, the culmination of the life’s work of Tom Batiuk, the greatest writer of his generation.”
“Tom Batiuk? Oh yeah, we learned about him in ancient history class. He created such iconic characters as Ed Crankshaft, Phil Holt, and Adeela the Architect, right?”
“That’s right, dear! “Lisa’s Story” was the greatest love story ever told, and once you read it, your perception of what a comic strip can be will be forever changed.”
“Really? Because I always thought comic strips were supposed to be funny.” Continue reading “Nanna, Na Na Nanna, Hey Hey Hey, Good Riddance”
Harley the Custodian to Summer: “What you write about sparks others to build on it to create a science of behavioral-patterned algorithms that will one day allow us to recognize humanity as our nation!”
…and to burn down all the bookstores, apparently. Except for the Village Booksmith, which likely was spared because Lillian operated it as a bootleg enterprise located above a garage, where it escaped the bookstore burners’ notice. And as many of you have noticed, the “Skylar Aero” solar scooter that has transported these two to “the Outskirts” is the weird looking, bulbous spaceship that Phil Holt sketched for Skyler, and that Skyler’s dad had fabricated from a murder weapon into a toy for his son:
Son of Stuck Funky 
