Monday, August 19, 2013

All kinds of funny


This strip is consistently funny. One of the reasons is it's subversive. Another reason is it's not afraid to make fun of comic strips which have long outlived their expiration date.

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Characters who are a mystery to me, part 1


I never understood Eddie Mekka's character in "Laverne & Shirley." Carmine Ragusa was supposed to be Shirley's boyfriend, yet, he wasn't her boyfriend. He was supposed to be a tough guy but he was also a song and dance man.

Jimmy Cagney was a tough guy who was also a song and dance man, but never in the same movie!

What were the writers thinking? They initially thought Shirley needed a boyfriend, but then almost immediately decided she didn't need a boyfriend. They initially wanted a Fonzie character because, heck Fonzie was the hottest character on TV at the time, but for some reason they gave him song and dance numbers because ... why did they give him song and dance numbers? He was a good singer and dancer, but they always seemed tacked-on in the context of the episode.


(A sidenote: Later, when Penny Marshall directed "A League of Their Own," she cast Mekka as the guy who dances with Madonna when the girls go nightclubbing.)