Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Filet O’ Idiocy

Throughout my years of reading comics, I have found there are “haw-haw” strips and there are strips that sort of make you think, smile and move on a bit changed from the experience. This strip is not one of the latter. If I even got one person to pause and wonder if they’re going to get steak the next time they order a Filet O’Fish, then my job will be considered a success. I doubt that’s going to happen. Mainly for two reasons:

1. No one orders Filet O’Fishes from McDonalds anymore
2. The word “FISH” is in the name of the sandwich

But that’s not to say the opposite experience can’t occur.

Robble, robble. What are you talking about, Grimace? There won’t be anything about the McDonald Land Gang here, which was a complete rip off from Sidd and Marty Kroft BTW, but there will be a mildly amusing display of boxes arranged with drawings and words here: www.room19comics.com

Every so often, I bust out a particularly embarrassing moment in my life that I draw and write out and post for the world to see. Mostly, these comic strips are pretty tame and offer a peek into when I was younger and a bit more naïve as to the ways of the world. If you read them, you may even identify with one or two of them.

Not this week. This week, is probably one of the stupidest things that I have ever said to another person in my life. It is so stupid that I transferred idiocy ownership to a innocent character that has never hurt anyone in his life. So let me get this weight off of my chest, there was a time when I thought that filet mignon was a cut of fish. And this wasn’t because I went to a restaurant once and the menu was screwed up and they had filet mignon listed under the fish dishes.

It was because a Filet O’Fish sandwich at McDonalds is a fish sandwich. In my simple, primate mind I thought, “Well if the word ‘filet’ is used in the McDonald’s instance as a moniker for a fish sandwich, then it must be true that the word filet is a universal word meaning fish.”

And it’s not like I had this thought at nine and was told differently, I had this idea up until my 20s. When I would go out to eat with my parents, they would say, “Byron, why don’t you have the filet mignon tonight?” And each time I’d answer, “Because you know that I hate fish. Jesus. How many times do I have to tell you?”

They either thought that I was kidding or weird. But the truth is, not only was I stupid, but I was an asshole about it too. To add insult to injury, I’d probably said the same thing to a girl while on a date or two. And I wondered why I had troubles getting chicks.

That is the background of the story, and maybe it will make your enjoyment of the strip go up. I certainly hope so, because I enjoy writing these commentaries on the comics that I put up. I just hope you enjoy reading them.

As far as the actual artwork, I am going to have to ask for a mulligan on this one. Normally I do the pencils on Saturday morning, but with Jamie, Kim, their kids and Alessandra coming over to watch the Pats (what a disaster that game was, the less said, the better), Aly and I spent most of the morning cleaning, cooking and packing. Instead of Saturday, I did the preliminary pencils on Sunday and I was way to hung over to do much of anything.

And while they aren’t bad renditions of the characters, they’re not as challenging as I like them to be. What I mean is, everything is seen from basically the same angle: dead-straight-on. Last week, I mixed the points of view up a bit, the week before I put in a bit more detail. This was pretty bare-bones stuff. Besides my grogginess, I was hoping that the writing would more or less carry the joke.

Speaking of last week’s strip, “thanks for the words” (obligatory David Cross reference) about the Jeff Foxworthy strip. I went deeper into the philosophy behind the strip in my Blog, and it looks as if a lot of people actually read it … or at least skimmed it. Either way, thanks.

There’s no real navel-gazing entry this week, still doing the packing thing, which sucks a lot. It’s a bigger pain in the ass that I thought it was going to be and next weekend, I will be painting the hell out of the new place, starting on Thursday. This could definitely mean no strip for the first week of February. BTW, why the fuck can’t I spell February correctly? I always spell it like this Feburary.

I was able to take a break from packing last week to meet with John Fine who is one of the senior members of the Boston Braves Historical Association. It was actually my second meeting with him about the web site that I’m doing for the Association. Before the holidays we went over what they wanted and what I should be doing, and Thursday we spent a good hour and a half scanning in old Braves shots. When this site is up (probably around Spring Training), it’s going to be awesome.

The cool thing is that it will be an ever-evolving site and one that I want to be the first a person thinks of when they Google Boston Braves. I really think that we can do some great stuff. Stay tuned.

That reminds me, the last four episodes of “Arrested Development” will be shown in a mini marathon on February 10 from 8-10:00 pm EST. Yup, FOX is doing the right thing … let’s see what else is on that day, Hmmm … no “Family Matters” or “Step by Step”, no “Dukes of Hazard” or “Dallas”. Oh, what’s this, the Opening Ceremonies to the 2006 Winter Olympic, live from Turin, Italy.

COME ON! Thanks for the death sentence, FOX.