Ode To Mark Trail

To kick off what should be an exciting summer of exploring the ancient art of the blog, I am going to hit you all today with a requested "Ode To Mark Trail." This lyrical celebration of one of King Features' finest archaic-looking comic strips was originally performed at the 2000 KU Scholarship Hall spring "Coffee House," which was basically a talent show for kids living in the schol halls.

My dramatic reading of the piece was accompanied by renowned multi-instrumentalist Charlie Rose on banjo. No recordings exist, but if you find some banjo music and read the piece out loud, you'll get the idea. Following the piece are a few links to some other comics-related humor, but for now, please take a deep breath and join me in honoring one of America's finest protectors of wildlife, Sir Marcus Trail:

Ode to Mark Trail

Oh great woodsman
gentle naturalist
fearless ranger of our land
it was many years before my birth
when Jack Elrod first breathed life
into your two-dimensional frame
He created you
But since then you've taken on your own life
a life of putting out forest fires
preserving our national parks
and securing streams for biological experimentation
Eternally 32, your wife's name is Cherry
and you have a dog named Andy
Your adopted son Rusty is the top student
in his bible class
You're a great man, Mr. Trail
The ghost of John Muir smiles down upon your brow
from his perch in the great Sequoia tree
You spend your days hunting, fishing
and pursuing the simple pleasures
Smoky's your teddy bear
and Sam's your favorite uncle
Jesus is just all right with you
In fact, he is more than all right
But all too often, your
woodland paradise is threatened
That, Mr. Trail, is when you
spring into action
If a wealthy rancher has cattle
on damaged soil, you won't
hesitate in telling him to move.
If careless backpackers trample the
fragile tundra,
You'll steer them back on the proper path
Not just any joker can kill deer in your woods
Only a joker with a hunting license
You preserve the dwindling wetlands
and combat the crass commercialism
that creeps into even the most remote forests
You keep America's greatest natural
treasures free from thugs,
gangsters, and sometimes even, goons
I remember one colorful Sunday
you told your readers all about
rare and fragile species of sea turtles
You told us about Stumpy, the
Chinese Box Turtle who spent 8
miserable years cooped up in a tank
with nothing to eat but raw steak meat
We also heard about Kymberly,
the desert tortoise whose
shell barely covered her pathetic little body
She was so undernourished that,
while her body grew, her shell did not
These stories you tell are often heartbreaking
But your efforts to help animals are
nothing short of miraculous
No ruthless corporation or
reckless redneck can slow you down
they might as well reverse
the orbit of the earth
or stop an oncoming truck with
their bare hands.
Decency, thy name is Trail
There will be no drug use in the Appalachians
No public urination in Yellowstone,
No indecent sex in Rocky Mountain National Park
so long as Trail wears his badge
To that, I say thank you, Mr. Trail
Thank you

For more Mark Trail-related humor, try out this guide for Trailheads. For some brilliant critical studies of other Funny Page institutions, visit the Comic Strip Doctor. And for a daily dose of cynical comics commentary, I recommend the Comics Curmudgeon.

Until next time, which I swear will be soon.

Long must you suffer, Cyclops

photo from Patras, Greece circa 2005

It's hard to know what makes for an entertaining blog post, but at least one reader has requested something involving history and myth. Fortunately, I'm an armchair expert on mythological monsters, so I think it's about time I shared another view on the life and times of history's most famous cyclops, Polyphemus.

I recently reread the Polyphemus entry in Edith Hamilton's "Mythology" and found it full of several fascinating anecdotes about Poseidon's one-eyed son. My favorite of these accounts are the ones that portray him as a victim of circumstance, "not terrifying at all, but a poor credulous monster, a most ridiculous monster."

The basic story of the Cylops is that Odysseus and his men land on his island in search of supplies, only to wind up trapped in the monster's cave. After several of them are eaten, Odysseus hatches a plan to get the Cyclops drunk, poke out its eye and sneak out with his men by concealing themselves underneath his sheep.

However, in a new version of events not found in Hamilton's collection (one that perhaps was dreamed up by me during an Aegean ferry ride), the Cyclops is not blinded by Odysseus's men, he just gets drunk and loses his contact lens.

No sooner does he begin looking for his missing lens then Odysseus's men begin playing frisbee with it, skipping it across rock and surf. This really pisses off Poseidon, who like all sons of Cronus, hates being pissed off. In exchange for the attentions of a nymph, he hires Zeus to give his sight-challenged son emergency LASEK surgery with a special phototherapeutic thunderbolt.

Once the Cyclops acquires perfect vision, he does what any enraged monster would do: he bites off the heads of the offending mortals. This would usually be horrible and not-funny, except that in this version of events, the men of the Odyssey all happen to be decked out in anachronistic 1950s black and white striped bathing suits, lending the scene an air of aesthetic comedy.

But as satisfying as it is for a few mouthfuls, snacking on the sailors like so much celery loses it's appeal when Polyphemus realizes no sea nymph will ever love him if he continues to behave so barbarously. The cyclops, in fact, has more class than most poets give him credit for. And if he reacted in blind rage, well, he can't really be blamed.

Such is the life of a lesser deity. Your radiant parents watch your back, but they never invite you out to eat on Olympus. Still, Polyphemus does his best to hold things down on his island, which in many later stories was Sicily.

It is said that after an emotional breakup, Polyphemus recorded an album of love tunes for his neglectful nymph. But because this was before Gods were allowed to own their own record labels, it is thought that only a few bootlegged tapes survived. Perhaps they will one day be discovered and the Cyclops will take his place on top of the singer/songwriter pantheon, but most scholars believe this is unlikely.

Until then, he will neither be loved, nor famous. He will only remain Polyphemus.

When I have Fears that I may cease to be Cool

Elizabethan sonnet by Lucas Wetzel, age 25
"The Kiss" (woodblock print) by Peter Behrens, (1869-1940)

When I have fears that I’ll stop being cool
before my band has played its farewell tour
before I best death in a guitar duel,
and the carefree life loses all allure;
When I take a look at all the cities
and the venues that we’ve left to play,
I fear my stage-presence will desert me
and my star-power will soon fade away;
And when I feel, fair indie-rock mistress!
that I’ll never make out with you again
never brush the cloth of your vintage dress,
or write songs to capture your attention
I think, though my coolness may not last long,
the best love rarely outlives a pop song.

Author's note: In case your memories of English 12 are a bit fuzzy and you're wondering what this poem is referencing, check out the source material from John Keats.

frisbee folklore

These photos from fall and summer are included here as an incentive for you to check out and read the legend of the frisbee poet, a short tale inspired by the Brothers Grimm, Langston Hughes and multiple visits to the disc golf course.

Hex appeal

Editor's note: with the onset of October, this site will be indulging in a large number of Halloween-related posts. Earlier today, I had posted a movie review of a short educational film designed to teach high schoolers about the dangers of heroin, but I decided to go with something less macabre to kick off my favorite month of the Gregorian calendar.

This summer, a friend of mine was supposed to attend what she called a "witch camp" somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Unfortunately, she didn't wind up being able to go. Regardless, the idea of a "witch camp," whatever that is, stuck in my head. If there's a witch camp, than surely there's a fashion camp out there somewhere. I started to wonder what it would be like if a candidate from each camp did an exchange (A witch goes to fashion camp, and vice versa). So far, I have only written an article about the first scenario. However, I would certainly welcome a submission about a beauty queen going to witch camp. I think this drawing works either way.

Witch Goes to Beauty Camp

The first thing the witch did when she got to fashion camp was stick the handle of her broomstick in the beauty fan. When the photographer rushed over to ask what in Hades she thought she was doing, she told him she thought her bangs would look better flat against her forehead.

The photographer, who was already irritated at having to spend valuable time photographing a witch, was about to launch into a tirade when he noticed something peculiar about her. "Oh, my...your black dress is offset perfectly by your green skin," he said, brushing a strand of blue/black hair back from her blemished forehead.

The witch remained nonchalant, remarking simply, "If I must pose, I would prefer to do so au naturel. I want the world to see me, warts and all."

She is known only as Witch, and she is the fashion world's newest sensation. Within days of her arrival at Fashion Camp early last summer, Witch has landed a number of lucrative endorsement deals. Her leap from the pages of Goethe's Faust onto the glossy covers of some of the most high-profile glamour mags in the world has been remarkable, and so far she claims to be enjoying herself.

"A black mass on Walpurgisnacht is not terribly different than the launch party for a designer's new line, aside from the beverages. Personally, I find a lot that is hideous, beautiful, and a lot that is beautiful, hideous. It can be difficult to tell exactly who is posing in the shadows of whom."

The fashion press has seized on the candid crone's remarks, citing her "hex appeal" and crediting her with the invention of "wicked chic." Many glamour specialists say "wicked chic" offers a viable alternative to young women tired of the druggy waif look that has dominated magazines since Kate Moss was a teenager. Also, Witch's arrival on the scene is just in time for fall styles, which rely heavily on cutesy skeletons and other traditional Halloween imagery.

"There's something supernaturally sensuous about the way Witch walks down the catwalk with her black cat beside her," said Cleo Hirschberg, an editor for Fazshion Magazine. "Never in all of my days as a fashion correspondent have I seen such an enchanting combination of awkwardness and aplomb."

Miss Witch herself appears rather nonplussed by all the hoopla surrounding her sudden iconic status. "I'm going to live as long as Methuselah, so it's all very much the same to me. I'll still be zipping around on my broom when Louie Vuitton's great-grandkids are six feet under."

The witch's unnatural beauty and candor have won her a place at the top of the fashion world, but there have also been uncomfortable moments. "At one of the press parties, a bigwig designer proposed a toast to her," reporter Hirchberg recalls. "He asked her what her poison was, and everyone just gasped when she answered 'frog's wine.' They all laughed, though, when Witch explained that Frog's Wine is just an old sailer's term for gin."

the sorrows of the soda-pop expatriate

These are difficult days for the Soda-pop Expatriate. After many years abroad, he has returned to America with a diminished view of the way his favorite beverage is perceived around the world. The Yankee-friendly exuberance of the 1950s has finally fizzled out, and Coca-Cola is no longer politically popular. In fact, it has served as a scapegoat for many greater health and societal ills around the world. Obese New Delhians credit cola with their ungainly gains in girth. Rural Guatemalans blame the products for a spike in Diabetes cases. Many European universities have launched a boycott on Coke products on their campuses, determined to throw off the yoke of what they refer to as "carbonated imperialism."

At home as well, there are soda woes aplenty. Mr. Pibb has been stripped of his manhood, and is now referred to as Pibb Xtra (it's the extra that gets him every time). Mello Yello, the tired hippie, is not so much mellow as she is jaundiced. Elementary schools are considering removing pop machines from cafeterias in favor of less-fattening options. Across the country, thousands of health fanatics underdose on Cola every day.

Finally, the Soda-pop Expatriate's personal life is not what it used to be. Rather than spend his afternoons cruising down small highways at 120 km-per-hour with the windows open and a 44oz fountain drink in his hand, he instead drinks several paper cups of third-rate coffee each morning within the air-conditioned sterility of an office tower. Thanks to recent weight gains, holes in his teeth and several unsightly stains on his Siberian bearskin rug, even the Soda-Pop Expatriate is doing his best to kick the habit.

But it isn't easy. In the same way recovering addict musicians quit playing certain kinds of music because they associate it with drugs, the repatriated Soda-pop Expatriate is not quite sure what other concessions will need to be made in order to make a clean break. Naturally, some compromises are in order. So far, he has decided only to drink Coke on lunar holidays, on trips to the beach and whenever he goes out to eat Mexican food. And at lunch. Still, many emotional and physiological attachments to high-fructose corn syrup-flavored carbonated beverages remain.

Recently, he wrote this speech on the occasion of his one-night anniversary of not drinking any soda. It is addressed to the Soda Goddess, and is included exclusively here for your reading enjoyment.


Goodbye, Cola
by the Soda-pop Expatriate

Oh, opaque liquid

Your syrupy presence in my stomach
was always a comforting discomfort

Years ago, I went on Paul Revere's midnight bike ride for cola

searching for
the blinking beacon
of vending machines
stacked on top of each another

1 if by land
2 if by sea
3 if by air
4 if by dream

Now I will try to live without your carbonation
And I must admit, I feel lighter now
without your bubbles in my system

Lighter, but somehow less tied
to this gas-station covered landscape

where the endless soda
fountains of youth
spill over and
over and over

All I never needed to know I learned from...

It's Never o'clock in Kansas City, and somewhere Midtown's most enigmatic graffiti artist is leaving his mark on the neighborhood.

His name is Neverino, and no one knows where he comes from. I first saw the name "Neverino" painted on a square of sidewalk near my apartment, and I found it funny enough to invent a backstory. Neverino, I surmised, was a little boy of either Hispanic or Italian descent who was struck and killed by the "Little Bastard" (the same Porsche 550 Spyder James Dean was driving when he died) at the bus stop on 43rd & Main. Now the listless spirit of the boy roams on, unable to communicate with the waking world except through spraypaint and paintmarkers.

I liked this story so much that I began to believe it, even inventing a cutesy, Spanish-sounding voice for Neverino that I often used while talking on the telephone. Soon, however, I began to realize that Neverino was a bigger phenomenon than I had imagined. I started to see variations on the Neverino name on signs and buildings around the neighborhood. A giant "Never" appeared on the back of a Broadway st. billboard. One Sunday, I even noticed that my mailbox had been tagged by a certain "Mr. Neverino." Almost overnight, Never was everywhere.

It was almost scary, the way Never always seemed to be just a few steps behind or ahead of my own urban adventures. In a parking lot down the street from the prostitute-frequented QuikTrip on Troost, I discovered a pair of Toys'R'Us truck trailers, only to see that Neverino had left his mark. Just two days after I took a photo-snapping tour of the Mission Mall ruins, I drove by to see that Never and his associates had written their names on the eastern face of the building. This act in particular demonstrated a boldness that astounded even me. Not only had he canvassed Kansas City, Missouri -- the long arm of Neverino could also reach into Kansas.

I thought and thought about a time that our paths might have crossed, but couldn't seem to come up with one. If I had seen Neverino, I hadn't known it. Still, I can't help but feel like I've gotten to know him at least a little bit through his artwork. A few of the things I've learned about Never:

• He has a playful sense of humor. Next to the giraffe on the aforementioned truck trailer, he wrote: "Neverino: I'm a Toys'R'Us kid."

• He is a night owl. On a giant, bubbly series of purple-and-green tags on the back of the Berbiglia liquor store, he wrote "It's 4 in the morning and it feels like spring."

• He is well-versed in history. Another tag near the liquor store reads "the home of the Nevercaneezer," a reference to Nebuchadnezzar, the ruler of Babylon who built the hanging gardens in 600 B.C. as an ersatz tropical paradise for his homesick wife, Amyitis.

• He is physically daring. Even a phantom would have difficulty scaling the heights Never must reach to complete his tags.

Because these observations shed little light on Neverino's personal life, it may be more worthwhile to take a look at the linguistic impact Neverino's marker has made on the community. Under Neverino's semantic makeover of Midtown, The Kansas City Star becomes The Never, and the Pitch changes from a weekly to a (you guessed it) never. 43rd & Bell becomes 43rd & Never. A nearby sign reads "Do Not Never Enter" and a simple red stop sign becomes a bright octagon of motivation. Local business hours either never end or never begin.

A first-time visitor to this ethnically diverse region of Kansas City might easily look around and declare himself in never-never land. Not surprisingly, the local police force is not amused. One afternoon, while snapping one of the very photographs displayed here, I noticed that I was being observed by a member of the KCPD. Though he eyed me dubiously, I think even he could tell that I was but a documentarian; a humble custodian of Never's legend and not its elusive author.

Just when I was reverting back to my original beliefs that Neverino was a specter invisible to the human eye, I heard a report on my police scanner that two officers had cornered a young male with a spraypaint can at the side of the Seville Best Western, just a block away. I dropped my harmonica and hard lemonade and raced to the scene as fast as my legs could carry me. From behind a dumpster I saw the officers closing in on the shadowy figure (Neverino, I presumed). The officers brandished their nightsticks, and one of them shouted, "Everything will be a lot easier if you just drop that spraypaint!" With a sudden hiss, a great purple cloud engulfed the three of them, causing the officers to lose sight of their suspect and start coughing. When they finally succeeded in waving the cloud away, the culprit had vanished, leaving his one-word response on the wall:


I know it may be a bit hard to believe, and believe me, I wish I was joking. I thought the superstitious phase of my life was over, that my days of peddling ghost stories had ended with my last weeks at summer camp. But I'm afraid Neverino has extended my belief in these matters indefinitely. Should I ever be in danger of losing my faith in the spraypaint-supernatural, I'm sure a fresh tag from Never will be there to make sure I never do.

Hello, tortoise

A story of magical animals and staying up late

PART 1
The other night, I heard the squall of the stray tabby cat that hangs out around my back staircase. That is nothing new, but this time I heard something different in the cat's voice that caused me to step out back and see what was the matter.

To my surprise, a multicolored tortoise was perched on the back deck, with the orange kitty circling it cautiously. The tortoise's shell was giving off lights of many colors, which I assumed was just the reflection from the flashlight I always carry with me in the late evening hours.

Being a kind and hospitable soul, I held the door open slightly, allowing the tortoise to make its way inside. My visiting friend Andrew Giessel, a Harvard man, came to get a closer view of the specimen, and we took turns examining it and turning it around gently in the palm of our hands.

It was a fascinating creature!

PART 2
While making what he assumed would be one-sided small talk with the animal, which did not appear to be native to Jackson County, Missouri, Giessel discovered that the shimmering lights on the tortoise's shell were arranging to form messages. Astounding! The tortoise told us her name was Cassiopeia, and that she could see 30 minutes into the future.

Then I realized: of course! This was the magical tortoise from "Neverending Story" author Michael Ende's classic book, Momo. Unlike Cassandra, the similarly named ancient Grecian times who was doomed to see the future but never be believed, Cassiopeia the Tortoise's suggestions were always heeded by Momo in her quest to save the hour-lilies from the nefarious Men in Grey.

PART 3
The three of us stayed up until early in the morning, talking about all kinds of things. We talked about Camillo Golgi's discovery that staining nervous cells with silver ions can allow humans to see neurons, a fascinating process called the "black reaction" that scientests don't fully understand even today. We talked about balancing creative endeavors with full-time employment, and the importance of bringing good ideas to life rather than letting them stagnate and disappear in the back catalogs of the brain. We talked about Jose Gonzales, and how strange it is that a Scandinavian musician would have such a Mexican-sounding last name.

In fact, Giessel and I got so carried away in our conversation that we didn't even notice our friend had disappeared until we heard mysteriously melodic tones from inside the apartment. Turns out the tortoise was a wicked hand with the Fender Rhodes, and an especially big fan of Ramsey Lewis. Who knew!

AFTERMATH:

We listened to the tortoise play tunes on the softly amplified piano, drinking several of the fine microbrews I keep in the icebox for such occasions. At one point, during an especially soulful number, I asked Cassiopiea "What's the secret, tortoise?" Instantly, the words "More Haste, Less Speed" appeared on its shell. We took this as an endorsement of its tasteful but not show-offy playing style, as a variation of the old Chelonian "slow and steady" mantra, and as a suggestion that "it's not the fastest way from point A to point B that you should take, it's the best way."

We sat on the floor and listened until the songs and lights from the tortoise drew us into a sleeplike trance. When we awoke, we realized that Cassiopiea was but an inanimate garden ornament I had purchased the day before at Midwest Surplus in North Lawrence for $7.99, and that this wishful account was really just another delusional blog post sleepwritten at the late hour of 3:26 AM.

The book, however, is real, and much more imaginative and spiritually rewarding than just about any story out there. Those more interested in Momo can check out the Wikipedia article about her, and even read the entire text in English on this Russian site, although buying a used copy of the book and sharing it with others is much more fun.

A Short History of Mario Linkofsky and the Nintendo Power Poets

Mario Linkofsky (christened Philip Greenhorn) formed the one-man poetry collective, the Nintendo Power Poets, after he underwent a profound hypnosis prompted by the opening strains of the Legend of Zelda musical theme. He probably would have lived out a normative video-game playing childhood had his father not confiscated the family NES after witnessing the alarming behavioral impact the games had upon his children.

"Father was convinced Nintendo was invented by the Japanese to control our minds," Linkosfky later wrote in a letter to his sister. "He was wrong, of course. But only that it was my soul, not my mind, that I surrendered."

Linkofsky's first literary efforts consisted of an album of folk songs protesting the totalitarian regime of Gannondorf, but audiences at coffeeshops and talent shows dismissed him as a novelty act. It wasn't until Linkofsky set aside the lute and turned all the way to verse before he received any recognition.

His first and only success came in a chapbook he called, "Hyrulian Sonnets," which were essentially Homeric Hymns addressed to Zelda in the form of Italian sonnets. Among the most popular was the 1999 poem, "You rule, Hyrule."

I wonder today with a youthful pain
What lay beyond the purple waterfall
The allure of lost landscapes, monsters and all
No lyrical tribute can contain

Let me go back to Hyrule once again
Where warp whistles whisk me away with their call
To lost lakes, sylvan glades and dungeon halls
All the fair lands under Zelda's reign

Oh pixilated princess, I will save you
I'll set sail in a raft across the ocean
On a quest for Triforce; a search for truth
I'll swing my sword and swig healing potion
climb Death Mountain just to enjoy the view
while relishing my Hyrulian youth

Unfortunately for the Power Poets and the entire Nintendo Lit subculture, Linkofsky's later efforts were less evocative, with a series of tone-poems entitled "Odes to Dodongo" bordering on the embarrassing. By the publication of his only 2002 novella, "A Wrong Turn on Rainbow Road," his unabashed glorification of Don Flamingo as masculine idyll had besmirched his reputation, and he died rupeeless in a Parisian prison under the name Sebastian Melmouth.