for 23 September 1999. Updated every WEEKDAY.
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Hit & Run Hey Sucksters, Thanks for the link back to Tattoo Jew. It's helping our hit rate immensely. Great column. Speaking of parody (here comes a plug), have you seen It Could Have Been a Wonderful Life? I also enjoyed your piece on the man who portrays Franklin. I live with a deconstructionist historian who is constantly pissing me off via her continual critiques of Franklin's sexual politics, which seems to me to be missing the point of the man by a very wide margin. Anyway, it's good to read about someone with some genuine reverence for a people's hero. Thanks. All the best, Ray Staar <tattoo@tattoojew.com> Your live-in deconstructionist is constantly critiquing Ben Franklin's sexual politics? There's a citizen who's not afraid to grapple with the important issues of our day. Yr pal, BarTel  I know it's not likely you'll be doing another Hit and Run on a founding-father impersonator anytime soon, but if you do, give this jackass a try: http://www.th-jefferson.org/. He has a weekly television show (The Thomas Jefferson Hour, produced here in Reno) in which he "assumes the persona" of our slave-schtupping prez and answers questions about "his" life, modern-day politics, and how civilization is in decline because kids aren't reading Thackeray and don't appreciate a third-rate university professor dressed up in a bad wig. It's painfully bad, but I guess if Jefferson really was an insufferably arrogant prick he's doing a good job. Once I saw him at a local supermarket arguing with a cashier over the price of grapes. I'm still not sure if he was being Thomas Jefferson at the time. He also claims on his Web site that he does impersonations of Robert Oppenheimer. Your column's usually not as boring as work, so I read it almost every day. Keep on sucking. Ben Shefftz <shefftzb@ally.com> The best part of Clay Jenkinson's site is when he boasts, "He was the chief 'talking head' in Ken Burns' documentary on Thomas Jefferson." We'd love to see his impersonation of Chief Talking Head, the legendary Indian leader. If he really does stay in character as Jefferson, he deserves a Congressional Medal of Valor. We're still steamed that Nick Nolte and Ken White Shadow Howard didn't make hard-core Jefferson portrayals their permanent careers. Sucksters The person who pulls your latte at Starbucks is called a barista. The person who takes your money is a cashier. They keep the clerks in the basement and nobody gets mad at them but their bosses. <VSolomon@ milbank.com> I thought the barista was the Starbucks employee who wears a powdered wig and says, "You shall be taken from this chamber to a place of execution and hanged by the neck until dead!" You learn something new every day! Yr pal, BarTel The Announcement Subject: An honest politician If there were more speeches like this one in politics — on the local, state, or national level — I might be convinced to go out and vote for the first time in my 35 years. Of course, I'd have to register first, but this is San Francisco, and I'm sure it's just a matter of paying someone enough money. Mind you, I'm still not certain why anyone would sleep with a politician. I have yet to see an attractive one other than Governor Ventura. Bill Bailey <arkouda@doxos.com> You think Jesse "The Belly" Ventura is attractive? Interesting. But I'm glad you're behind me and my candidacy, er, so to speak. See you at Hef's grotto, come the weekend after Election Day 2000? James I saw your site — excellent. How about putting my icon for the favorites icon in IE? It will also show on the address line when people see your site. When you see it you will know the reason. Help stop the suffering. If you want to see how it appears in the address line, go to this URL: http://fbox.vt.edu:10021/org/ NORML/. All you have to do is put the favicon.ico file in your Web page directory. Thanks. A legally prescribed marijuana patient in Virginia, Jim <jim@ rileynet.com> Help stop the suffering? Amen to that. How about the suffering I go through when I see a movie like The Matrix or The Sixth Sense and I'm not under the influence of marijuana, legally prescribed or otherwise?! Now that's suffering! See you on the campaign trail. Best, James Filler What kind of a wrap was the Joey character eating in the first page of Suck on 8 September 1999? The one that could be seen in panels one through three, that wrap or burrito-like object he's holding there in those panels? Is it a burrito or one of those past-tense wraps? I actually think I invented the wrap back in 1988. No, really. I used to wrap all kinds of sandwiches and call them burritos — the falafel burrito, the Greek burrito with feta cheese, the pesto and chicken burrito. But everyone at the time thought I was particularly revolting and just avoiding eating with utensils. An idea as falsely representing possible profits as the content-driven Web site could have been mine if I were only understood in those heady (and big-haired) days. Now in 1999 it's common to see cartoon characters eating such wraps — although perhaps it's just some super-giant Frisco spring roll we can't get on the East Coast. And also, if all you're doing is writing, why do you get a vacation? I worked with an NT admin who took his laptop and cordless modem to the beach and continued working from there. We know because he took his round ball camera thingy there too. Didn't you just go on vacation and jot down things in your notebook or stock up on Mom quotes? If so, does that mean that Thanksgiving is your busiest workday of the year? Oh god, I shouldn't have brought up Thanksgiving, floating like a dangerous warning buoy in the midst of treacherous fall seas. Is Suck having a Thanksgiving dinner this year? Maybe you should — a chance for the people too filled with self-respect to subject themselves to parental disappointment. It's September and already my stomach is beginning to hurt. Why the hell did you have Joey eating a goddamn wrap anyhow? Don Smith <dsmith@qrc.com> You'll have to ask Terry what kind of thing Joey was eating, since I didn't specify what Joey should be eating for lunch when I sent him that strip. But I do suspect that's a hair he's picking out of it. As far as Thanksgiving goes, it sounds like you should really be focusing on actually being thankful this year. I'd do the same, but it would ruin Filler. Still an ungrateful jerk, Polly Hey Polly, What is wrong with all of these people writing and dogging you out? See, to me, we're on the same team. Everyone else sucks except for us. All of these people writing in and bitching about a free once-a-week dose of vituperative wit need to get whatever is jammed up their asses surgically removed. I mean, I understand it for what it is ... the rantings of a bitter, sarcastic woman — and coming from me, that's a compliment! Post some mail that compliments you on your fine, "quick-like-cat" wit. If you don't have any, I'll be happy to hack something out for you at the cost of US$4.50 per letter. Let me know. Soon. I need to put this English degree to work somehow. Eternally, bitterly yours, Gregg Headrick <gregg@poochie.org> If you write something that other people don't think is funny, for some reason they feel compelled to point it out to you. Considering how few things are funny in the world, you'd think unfunny crap would be met with indifference — but no. Luckily, my parents' awful 15-year marriage and subsequent divorce taught me to thrive in hostile environments. Unlike, say, Kurt Cobain, whose parents' crappy relationship led him to develop a very sad outlook and an unnatural dependence on antacids, heroin, and big guns, the caustic words tossed around my household merely fertilized the tender seeds of thought in my young mind. Granted, there was a long stretch where I thought my dad's name was "son of a bitch." Ah, but I'm treading on well-trampled soil now. Dysfunction is well-nigh hilarious, isn't it? I've got to stop drinking this Creepy Time herbal tea. Polly Hit & Run Ke aloha no from Maui! So what's new? Almost 20 years ago, my brother, a specialist in catastrophe analysis, took his kids to a New England county fair, where they were going to ride the spinning chairs. While watching them load up, he noticed one of the welds on the ride was broken. Checking further, he found that all of them were broken. When he told this story to our mother, she said, "Tom, you didn't let them go on the ride, did you?" He replied, "I did a quick analysis and decided the ride wasn't likely to fail on the next run, so I let them go." And they all came back. I doubt whether that ride was ever inspected by anybody but my brother. Harry Eagar <heagar@aloha.net> Harry, God looks after drunks and little children. Yr pal, BarTel |
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