Thursday, July 04, 2013

"State sponsored terrorism." No, not what you think!


Why did you ever retire, oh Bill Watterson? :(

And cloister yourself away, pulling a JD Salinger?
Depicting the adventures of a precocious six year old and his tiger best friend and syndicated by the Universal Press Syndicate in 1985, “Calvin and Hobbes” had a solid decade of unprecedented success, running a total of 3,160 strips long, collected into 18 books, and appearing in nearly 2,500 newspapers across the country. For Watterson, who from the very beginning was averse to the attention “Calvin and Hobbes” brought him, the personal triumph of writing a successful comic strip was at times overshadowed by the burdens that came with it. 
“As happy as I was that the strip seemed to be catching on, I was not prepared for the resulting attention,” Watterson wrote in the introduction to “The Complete Calvin and Hobbes,” a 2012 compilation of all his work, weighing in at more than 14 pounds. “Cartoonists are a very low grade of celebrity, but any amount of it is weird. Besides disliking the diminished privacy and the inhibiting quality of feeling watched, I valued my anonymous, boring life. In fact, I didn’t see how I could write honestly without it.”
Of course, Calvin has been a constant obsession of mine, including here in this blog.  Of all my posts on Calvin and Hobbes, here is my favorite.

This being the Fourth of July, odds are pretty good that the 1812 Overture will be played at many places, with, yes, pyrotechnics accompanying them.  Calvin would certainly enjoy that ;)

Happy Fourth y'all!



4 comments:

Ramesh said...

Why did you guys appropriate Tchaikovsky's ode to the defence of Russia ???? The Brits have adopted it too - a traditional ending to the summer open air concerts (but then anything that thumbs the nose at the French will be instantly adopted by the Brits) !

Sriram Khé said...

Yeah, interesting, right?
I suppose music, especially by non-controversial composers like Tchaikovsky, easily blends into the Western culture ... more so when there were no big time "American" composers initially? Maybe???
Yes, I do like that hypothesis on anything anti-French ... remember, we are the people who recently renamed "French Fries" to "Freedom Fries" ;)

Indu said...

Just to remind you French fries were originally from Belgium!! -America is wierd -bother renaming French fries even though they are not actually French ... who cares anyway -french or belgian -America likes to get involved anyway into everyone's business, right?

Sriram Khé said...

Of course, who cares if it is Belgian or Chinese!!!!!
Yes, that came up a lot in the wonderfully entertaining days when the nutcases talked about "freedom fries" ...Life in the US is awesomely entertaining, more than life in India .... nah, Indian politics is a lot more theatrical ;)

Indu, your snarky comment about the US has been noted by the NSA ... ;)