A Fool and his Comic

Ever heard of the comic strip Big Nate? It's written and illustrated by a Portland, Maine native named Lincoln Peirce. According to his Wikipedia page, he's "an American cartoon [sic]." I'd edit the Wiki page to say "cartoonist," but how do I know he's not a cartoon? I've never met the guy. Hell, I wanted to write "[sic]" after his last name, too, but apparently it's actually spelled "Peirce," not "Pierce." All I'm saying is, my Spidey Sense is outta whack on this one.

I don't know how widely Big Nate is syndicated in newspapers but as part of the GoComics stable, I'm guessing it's seen by quite a few people. When I occasionally flip through the criminally misnamed "funny pages," Big Nate is a beacon of mild entertainment, one of a scant few such dim lights in the cold, black, humorless night that is today's newspaper comics section. That is to say, I don't love it, but I'm not physically repulsed by it either. Sometimes I feel something like a smile approaching when I read it.

Not June 19th, though.


Look familiar? It should, assuming you're familiar with one of history's greatest works of literature: Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes. (I understand if you never return after clicking that last link, as a C&H search engine is a transmogrifier that converts spare time into spent time.)


I don't know if the Big Nate strip is a less funny rip-off, a less funny accident, or a less funny homage. But without some clearer nods to its source material (for example, if Peirce's strip had appeared on the anniversary of the C&H strip's original publication date), I'm ruling out homage. It's possible Peirce was channeling Calvin and Hobbes accidentally, not realizing where his oh-so-clever inspiration was coming from, which happens to the best of us (even The Beatles; I'll let my dad elaborate on that one). I hope that's the case.

Either way, this reminded me a lot of my last post about sampling. Sure, everything's stolen, and I bet someone will point out a comedian from the '50s from whom Bill Watterson stole this bit (as a matter of fact, judging by the search engine, Watterson recycled his original strip with slightly enhanced colors four years later...is it stealing if you steal from yourself? As John Fogerty of CCR knows, yes, sometimes; once again, I defer to my dad on this explanation). But it's much less palatable when no personal spin is added, especially when these are two artists using the same exact medium. And it's worse when no explicit credit is given. Cite your sources, Peirce, if that is how your name is really spelled.

Edit, July 3, 2011: Whoops. In the second sentence, I originally called the creator of Big Nate "Leonard Peirce," but his name's actually Lincoln Peirce. I guess the "fool" in the title is me, too! Also, someone has since edited Peirce's Wikipedia page to reflect his job as a cartoonist rather than a cartoon. Looks like I'm making a difference in the world.

The Murky World of Sampling

Even if you're not a fan of rap and hip-hop, you surely know about "sampling," when an artist incorporates pieces of existing music into a new song. I like sampling when it's used to good effect, whether a sample is a fragment tweaked beyond recognition to create new sounds or a huge chunk of intact music with new lyrics added on top.

What I don't like as much about sampling is that it's so expensive to do legally and that it's so often done with little acknowledgment to the original music and, more importantly, the original artist. I think music sampling should be more like the citation of literary works: free, but with strict requirements about giving credit where credit is due.

Artists not backed by the world's top labels can't afford to sample if they want to sell their music. Making sampling free would level the playing field. Then if the original works and artists were cited more clearly and openly, they could greatly benefit from the increased exposure due to these contemporary borrowers. This is a half-cocked theory that I've had for years and in a way musicians are probably already supposed to do the latter part by listing samples in the liner notes. But who has liner notes when listening to internet radio or buying digitally? Anyway, my point is not to expound on the theory at length right this moment.

What I'm leading up to is this: listening to classic funk is always an eye-opening experience. I love it for its own sake, but it's even more fun to stumble across sounds I recognize from the more recent past. Funk is a seemingly limitless source of cool sounds and hip-hop never hesitates to return to that well. As with fashion, everything old becomes new again, sometimes with very little alteration, since younger generations don't remember the contributions of the older.

A Pandora station I've been listening to lately, which jumps around from classic funk to disco to modern techno, has recently played three songs I recognized as being sampled in famous hip-hop songs. One of them came up while I wrote this post, in fact: The Isley Brothers' "Between the Sheets," which I already knew was the "inspiration" for Notorious B.I.G.'s "Big Poppa." This is somewhat obvious because the sample is a largely intact piece of music from a very famous band.

But the other two sampled songs were never big hits, or at least not lasting hits, they seem to have avoided any resurgence in popularity despite their inclusion in two massive modern hits (is 1997 still considered modern? The movie franchise is technically still alive, so let's just call it modern). Below I've listed two more sets of youtube video links. The first link of each set is the original song, the second is the modern one that sampled from it. If you're under 30, you probably won't need the second links to guess the modern songs, but you've probably never heard of the originals either:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2XhhuM9GZo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7CePeRW6eM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol0ZyaGG5H4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UjsXo9l6I8

Seriously, Jay-Z's "Empire Falls" is New York's anthem, and I hadn't even realized the most famous hook from it is taken note-for-note from a song called "Love on a Two Way Street." I love what Jay-Z and crew did with one epic piece of music from an otherwise boring song, but don't obscure the source. And "Forget Me Nots"...well, you have to give Will Smith credit for turning that into a catchy pop smash by changing the lyrics and adding a standard drum beat. But he should have given Patrice Rushen credit for providing the foundation for his music. Then we could have decided to ignore her on our own terms, rather than on his.

My Brief Stint as an Examiner

For those of you who show up expecting a Big Bird fix, I apologize for the interruption, but this isn't strictly a Big Bird blog (yet), so settle down. When I get another picture in my email or when I figure out how my parents' scanner works so I can scan the latest (hand-drawn) picture, regular muppet service will resume. In the meantime, either read this regrettably long, semi-serious rant or get to work drawing me pictures. Can you do any less?

Begin rant.

Recently I started writing for examiner.com, an employer that is constantly bombarding job sites like monster.com. They're always looking for both national and local writers covering topics as broad as "Young Adult Pop Culture" and as specific as "The Beatles" -- though my dad might argue that "The Beatles" is just as broad a topic, so let's say there are topics as specific as..."Handbags." (Seriously. Who are these people?)

I didn't know if I was enough of an expert in any subject to qualify, but I finally bit when I saw a call for a local "Food and Drink" examiner. I figured, Hey, I eat food and drink drinks. I also figured, Hey, I'm already cooking and blogging about cooking pretty regularly. I went on to figure, Hey, the Portland area's not a bad one for covering local food and drink. Finally, I figured, Hey, if I could continue doing what I was doing but get some slight professional cred along with some slight monetary compensation, so much the better.

I'm good with figures.

I was kind of excited, and for my first official article I fleshed out my application's sample piece about LeRoux Kitchen's Baker's Thursday event. I saved it for the editorial team to review it, which is allegedly what they do with each article before it goes live. My article passed muster, it went live, and I was officially a published Examiner. I posted a link to my piece on LeRoux's Facebook page so they could see the positive review. Slight professional cred attained! Cool.

Examiner.com wants you to write at least two or three pieces a week, so a few days later I put together a little recipe for a Chocolate Peanut Butter Bourbon Milkshake. Stasia and I had recently made it, it was good and simple, and I even had a couple pictures I could run with the article. I saved it for the editorial team to review it. I waited.

And I never heard back.

If that were the only problem, I would have made an effort. It would probably be simple enough to contact someone at examiner.com, figure out what went wrong, sort it out, maybe alter or scrap the article if for some reason it didn't follow their rules or they didn't like it. But I had already been feeling uneasy about examiner.com. Here are the other major problems I have with that make me prefer to let the matter drop rather than pursue a working relationship with the site:

Examiner.com purports to pay based on factors such as page views, session length, and so on. That's not uncommon these days; in fact, it's very similar to Google Adsense's model, as far as I know. Here's the rub: nowhere will they tell you the formula for payment. Not even when you're "hired" and get your whole introductory spiel, which is mostly a few editorial rules and tips on how to navigate the site. So I'm just supposed to trust that I'll get my fair share of whatever advertising dollars they collect?

The only concrete figure given is $50: the amount of money you'll receive for each additional person you refer to examiner.com who gets accepted as a writer for the site. I know there are employers, such as summer camps, that thrive on word of mouth. But this feels less like a summer camp and more like a pyramid scheme. Keep drawing writers to the site, pound the Search Engine Optimization pavement, keep hitting the top of search engine lists, fill the site with obtrusive and aggravating advertising, toss a few cents around here and there, and profit at others' expense (okay, profit has to come at others' expense, but usually "others" are the consumers, not the workers).

These are the glaring issues, and there seems to be a lot more seething just beneath the surface, enough that my gut tells me to get out sooner rather than later. Google "examiner.com scam?" for yourself if you'd really like to know more, including the frighteningly conservative politics of the billionaire owner of Examiner.com, Philip Anschutz. When I didn't hear anything about my second article, it was the final push needed to convince me to sever my ties to examiner.com and stick to personal blogging for now. (Technically I didn't "sever" ties yet, so this is kind of like when I hated my coaches in college and "quit" track by never showing up again my senior year, or when I hated the Pope and "quit" the Catholic Church by never showing up again after being confirmed, Christmas mass notwithstanding. Actually quitting is harder than it sounds.)

My sister's working on her homepage and very generously offered me a sub-site, so maybe I'll take her up on that. I might not know her secret formula for paying me either, but I prefer her frighteningly liberal politics any day.

Where's Munich?

As with Miller-McCune, I had never before heard of The Ecologist, "the world's leading environmental affairs magazine" according to its About Us section. Via And Dutch I just came across The Ecologist's list of "Top 10...Euro cities to cycle".

I skimmed the list, awaiting glowing praise for Munich along the lines of "flat city perfect for those of all skill levels and bike types; wide, well-kept bike paths between the street and the sidewalk on nearly every street; gorgeous scenery whether you're headed to the local bar or cruising along the river Isar on your way to a monastery or out-of-the-way Biergarten; safe, flourishing bike culture overall."

I don't see Munich. Where's Munich? Wait a second, don't tell me...

LONDON?

And no Munich? You can't be serious.

I've only lived in a few European cities and I've only visited half of the ones on this list, but four months of living in and one month of biking in London is enough for me to guarantee you it doesn't belong on this list, even less so when Munich didn't make the cut. London has a dearth of bike lanes (aside from "suggested" ones that run in the street), the ballyhooed Boris Bikes rental system is still in its infancy (it might have opened for the general public by now...), and the bike "superhighways" are about 20% complete.

Even if you've never been to London, tell me what feeling you get from reading the first few lines of its description:

Why it’s great: Cycling in London used to be pretty dreadful thanks to an unfortunate combination of rain and aggressive drivers but since the first two Barclays Cycle Superhighways launched last summer, things have become a little easier.

So in a section about why it's "great," London is hailed as having made the leap from "pretty dreadful" to..."a little easier"? Thanks for the tip, Ecologist! I can't wait to be ground into the rain-slicked pavement by aggressive drivers!

As a matter of fact, based on The Ecologist's descriptions alone, you get the sense that some of these cities are not like the others, some of these cities just don't belong. Here are some delightful excerpts from the section on Paris: "many hazards...infamously crazy drivers...vehicular terrors are best avoided...." Wow, 1 Euro for an unlimited day pass of 30 minute journeys sounds steeper if my Paris life expectancy is only 5 minutes. If I die, do they pro-rate the fee? No? Merde.

If you don't like Munich, fine, don't put it on your "Top ten favorite Euro Cities" list, but it deserves to be on a list of top Euro-cycle Cities. Otherwise maybe the list should have been called "Top 10...Euro Cities we think are neat to go sightseeing in, like that one with that big Tower and the one where they drive on the wrong side, and maybe you should try it on a bike if you can find one, 'cause we hear some people are doin' that these days, and maybe they're a little cheaper and more ubiquitous than they used to be, and we're an eco-magazine so, hey, green!"

But I guess it'd be hard to sneak that one by your editor.

Slugging and Sleeping

I don't know why I haven't heard of Miller-McCune before, but it seems like a fantastic magazine/site. The surprisingly long article on Slugging held my attention to the last. Over the past few years living in Europe I discovered the joys of ridesharing, aka carpooling, and have lamented its absence in the USA. Everyone here has a car; no one seems to want to share his car with strangers. We don't like nor trust strangers here. I'm a trustworthy, semi-likable stranger without a car, people! Stop shutting me out.

Quite different from the typically longer-distance sharing that happens in Europe, it turns out DC and San Francisco are a couple of places that have had a strange ridesharing system for over 30 years. Irked by traffic jams and HOV lanes, it is workers in and around these two major cities that have casually organized a better way. Talk about an awful name, though, "slugging." Here's the suggested origin story:

When LeBlanc moved to the area in the mid-1990s, slugging was already entrenched. It was born alongside the I-395 HOV in the 1970s. According to the slugs’ creation story, drivers quickly realized they could get people in their cars and qualify for the new lanes by poaching waiting passengers from bus stops. Bitter bus drivers are credited with coining the term “slug,” originally a derogatory reference that has been amiably reappropriated.

"Slug" doesn't sound like it refers to anything specific about the practice, and I have a hard time believing bus drivers would use such a tame insult...am I missing some historical connotation there? I'll have to ask my family and friends in DC if they've heard of this system, which sounds really cool but also so specific to the surrounding layout and circumstances that it would be impossible to try to export it. But these are the cases that give hope that even Americans can change their travel habits if under enough time or cost pressure.

After spending an inordinate amount of time reading this fascinating piece, I was drawn to A Day in the Life of a Sleepy Student, which will please Stasia, who is incensed at the early start of a high schooler's day (seriously: ask her). I haven't made it all the way through yet, since the screen is starting to make my eyes burn and I need to get the word out here before I burrow squintingly back into my mole-hole for the evening, but I like what I've read so far and I'll certainly be exploring the Miller-McCune site in more depth soon.

The articles are massive, which is sometimes a turn-off when I'm reading something on a computer (see: eyes burning), but they're interesting, well-written, and most importantly they aren't spread out across 5 or 10 pages but rather contained on a single, very tall page. Web sites aren't subject to the space restrictions of the printed page, but sites like The Washington Post and Slate insist on making me load multiple pages for each piece I try to read, which is possibly a way of suggesting more length/depth than actually exists and is certainly a way of maximizing page views (Slate even goes so far as to automatically refresh its pages every minute or so in its quest to inflate its numbers).

Slideshows and multiple-page articles are infuriating and unnecessary and should go the way of AOL's cd-mailing bombardment and other relics of an age when "the Internet" and its benefits were completely misunderstood. Make the piece as long as it takes, utilizing the magic of the web, and let me use my handy scroll wheel to read it without interruptions. I'm more likely to finish it, revisit it, and discuss it if I can easily search and access the entire piece this way. You can slap ads up and down both sides of the page, I don't care; just don't ruin my reading experience or I won't keep reading. Though it could do without the awkward, hyphenated name, Miller-McCune seems to understand what it takes to captivate a reader.