See you in the funny papers

Back when I was growing up during the 1960s and 1970s, the Chicago Tribune published the dullest, most out-of-sync comics in the world. I took everything that I read, saw on television or heard on the radio very literally as a child, and wondered why I never came across any raucous boarding houses or little girls with no eyeballs living by their wits in the street.

I read the funnies religiously every Sunday in the Trib. Aside from Dennis the Menace and Peanuts, the other strips were throwbacks to World War I. None of them really made sense in a modern world- context, and they make even less sense today.

For example, Dagwood and Blondie are still wearing the same style of clothing they wore 75 years ago, when rich, young playboy Dagwood first met flapper Blondie in some seedy New York nightclub, and was disinherited by his millionaire father after marrying the trashy, slutty Blondie.

Dagwood and Blondie are still trying to make ends meet in their tacky house on Dagwood's weekly salary of $48, and getting hassled by the Man, Mr. Dithers. Yet today, a contemporary boom-box or computer will appear out of nowhere in the strip. Do we really need to see this? Any attempt to bring Blondie and Dagwood into the 21st century still can't compensate for their same tired shtick from the Great Depression. These two should have been retired 30 years ago, when Chic Young attempted to modernize the strip by having Blondie appear in tight pants, only to have her go back to her 1930s fashions after a public outcry. They sucked during the 1970s and they still suck today.

For a long time I thought Little Orphan Annie was blind because she didn't have any eyeballs. I thought her dog, Sandy, was a seeing-eye dog, guiding his young mistress through all sorts of harrowing perils. And why the hell didn't Daddy Warbucks keep better track of Annie if he was supposed to be her guardian? Somebody call DCFS!

Another comic that I read regularly was Rick O'Shay. Rick O'Shay was the blond, freckle-faced U.S. marshal of Conniption, Montana. The strip was beautifully drawn, set against breathtaking vistas of the Montana Rockies. Each strip was set exactly 100 years before the date it actually appeared. I used to get horny over Rick O'Shay's friend Hipshot Percussion, the sociopath gunslinger. There was always an element of danger about Hipshot, like he was going to snap any minute. Some dude was always riding into Conniption to call Hipshot out for a gun duel. Stan Lynde, the comic's creator, always managed to avoid any overt violence in the strip, which was a disappointment to me, because I wanted to see Hipshot kill Rick O'Shay.

Dick Tracy also made me horny as a child. He was the first male that I was ever attracted to. I was totally ga-ga over the square-jawed, inscrutable detective in the yellow raincoat and fedora. In 1960, WGN aired a series of five-minute, poorly produced, animated shorts of Dick Tracy, on a program hosted by Ray "Sgt Pettibone" Rayner and his sidekick, talking-canine puppet Tracer, who did double duty as Beauregard Burnside III on "Garfield Goose." Dick Tracy never did any actual police work in these animated shorts, but instead assigned cases to a staff of ethically questionable detectives that pushed the envelope of racial stereotypes, such as Joe Jitsu and Go-Go Gomez. The animated cartoons followed the same violent course set by the comic strip, as the junior detectives pursued actual villains from past strips who had either been killed by Tracy or were otherwise serving sentences on Death Row. Dick Tracy motivated me to learn how to read, and his 2-way wrist radio fascinated the hell out of me, which has since been replaced by a wrist computer. I eventually grew out of my Dick Tracy fixation, especially after Junior, the 9-year-old street urchin whom Tracy adopted and saved from a life of poverty, grew up and married Sparkle Plenty, daughter of B.O. Plenty and Gravel Gertie.

Moon Mullins was also outdated by the time I discovered him in the Sunday comics. Supposedly, Emmy Schmaltz's boarding house was set in Chicago, where Moon, a ne'r do well prizefighter rented a room. Moon, short for "Moonshine," was first introduced in 1923 at the height of the Prohibition Era, to attract new readers who made their own illegal bathtub gin, I presume. Moon was usually shown laying around Emmy's boarding house drinking and betting on the ponies. Moon's little brother, Kayo, was introduced a few years later, who was Moon's "mini me" wearing the same bowler hat. Kayo slept in one of Moon's dresser drawers, which I found very interesting. Besides, Emmy, the ugliest woman in the comics, there was Lord Plushbottom, or "Plushie" as Moon called him. Plushie introduced whole a new level of "fish out of water" humor to the strip's low-class ruffians, as well as plenty of big bottom jokes. Emmy eventually married Plushie, becoming Lady Plushbottom, and the strip often included gags about their married life, which was hideous. Other characters included Lady Plushbottom's black cook, Mamie, and Mamie's incredibly lazy husband, Willie. Both of these characters were quietly dropped from the strip during the 1950s, as even then their racial stereotypes pushed the boundaries of good taste. If Willie were around today, I'm sure he and Moon would be smoking crack behind Lady Plushbottom's backyard outhouse.

Another pre-World War I comic was Gasoline Alley. Gasoline Alley was the first strip where the characters aged progressively. Much of the action took place around a local gas station owned by Walt Wallet, a confirmed bachelor, who found an abandoned baby on his doorstep that he named Skeezix, cowboy parlance for "motherless calf." Walt adopted Skeezix and eventually married, producing more children. The strip is still running today, though in what papers I couldn't tell you, probably Crawford, Texas. There is a Gasoline Alley website where you can still read the daily strip. A lot of the main characters have died, and Walt, who is now in his second-century and not long for this world, is being cared for by a politically-correct, African-American caregiver. During the 1990s, Walt's wife, Phyllis, passed away which was covered in weeks of gut-wrenching daily strips about her funeral and Walt's lonely, physical decline. Skeezix has since retired from the gas station business, which is now being run by his daughter Clovia's fat-ass husband, Slim. Much of the humor in today's strip revovles around Slim polishing off two or three Quiznos subs on his way home from work. The gas station has also been transformed into a min-mart, that sells beef jerky and corn nuts, and has a Cappiccino machine offering three different kinds of artificially flavored coffee. The Gasoline Alley mini-mart is the perfect setting for a mass murder shooting rampage.

By far the worse comic strip ever that I can remember growing up is Dondi. Dondi was an Italian war orphan who happened upon an Italian farmhouse occupied by U.S. soldiers at the lingering end of World War II. No one could figure out who Dondi's parents were, so he just stayed with the "Joes," shining their boots, and handwashing their dirty socks and underwear. Dondi never aged but still managed to remember details of World War II with amazing clarity, even in 1969. Dondi debuted in 1955, and much of the early strip focused on Dondi's acclimation to American society. Eventually, his origins as an adopted World War II war orphan were de-emphasized, and Dondi became just another small-town kid having adventures with the Explorers Club, comprised of his three idiot friends Eddy, the stupid one; Baldy, the scrappy one whose bangs covered his eyes; and bespectacled, bookish Web. Dondi also had a small dog named Queenie, which gives you some idea of the kind of fag Dondi really was. I could also never figure out the pronounciation of Dondi's mother's name, Katje. Was the "j" silent or did it have a soft "g" sound?

Dondi was dark and depressing, especially during his annual summer adventure with his adopted grandmother, "Grandma McGowan," a rich, society lady who took a shining to the dark-eyed lad, and would lose him places like Rio de Janeiro, forcing Dondi to sleep in rat-infested alleys. Hasbro created a Dondi board game, and a film version of Dondi starring David Janssen and six-year-old David Kory in the title role, is often credited as "the worst movie ever made." During the 1970s, almost 30 years after World War II ended, a serviceman named Jim Dante showed up claiming to be Dondi's biological father, and for several weeks, a bitter custody battle ensued. Finally, Dondi was put out of his misery in the early 1980s, after Katje returned to work and was sexually harassed by her boss, causing Dondi and Ted to come and save Katje from being raped by her lecherous boss during a business trip.

I don't read the comics anymore, with the exception of "The Family Circus." Somehow, I can't start my day without coming up with a incredibly dirty punchline to replace the cute, Christian Family-values gag, like "Billy's fisting Dolly again," or Jeffy asking his grandmother, "Are you wet yet, Grandma?" I still can't get over the uproar caused when Mommy changed her hairstyle to a short, Dorothy Hamill coif in the early 1990s. I can think of a million more bad comic strips, like "Nancy," whose spiky burrhead is still featured today, "The Wizard of Id," and "Li'l Abner," which I never understood.

The comics today are as bad as the ones I grew up with. Remembering their plot lines compared to what I know now about pedophiles, sociopaths and addiction, they're just too depressing, reopening old fears of childhood abandonment, which is probably why I read them.

Have a lutefisk

As the Midwest lights up like a whorehouse on a Saturday night, with garish displays of holiday lights and inflatable Santas crammed on to front lawns the size of postage stamps, I am reminded of the Scandinavian Christmases that my family used to celebrate when I was a child.

I think the best way to describe them is the opening scene of Ingmar Bergman’s “Fanny and Alexander,” when the Ekdahl family gathers in an unnamed Swedish village to celebrate Christmas Eve in 1905. I know that Ingmar Bergman’s films are dark and dreary and Swedish, with prevailing themes of father-God struggles, but as soon as Bergman’s characters start breaking out the hardtack, I’m laughing myself silly. I grew up on the high-fiber goodness of hardtack, or what you civilians call Wasa bread. My grandparents ate it all the time, usually smothered with herring or a stick of butter. Maybe Bergman meant his films to be comedies and only Swedes get the yoke?

In the movie, Fanny and Alexander are eagerly awaiting the arrival of their philandering, larger-than-life, adventurer uncle, Gustav. The kids in the family fall upon Uncle Gustav who takes them into another room after a traditional Scandinavian Christmas supper of hardtack and lutefish, and performs a parlor trick by farting gas on to a candle flame that explodes like a blow torch. The kids make him do it over and over, until Uncle Gustav’s wife walks in and makes him stop. Then the adults in the movie get drunk on glug and the family joins hands, dancing from room to room accompanied by jolly accordion music. The rest of the film goes downhill from here, with only occasional comic relief provided by more eating of hardtack.

That’s pretty much my early childhood Christmases in a nutshell. As a second generation Swedish-American, I am the recipient of many hackneyed Scandinavian holiday customs passed down to me by my Swedish grandparents.

Our house always smelled like a Port-o-Pottie at Taste of Chicago around the holidays as my relatives consumed large amounts of lutefisk, a cod fish fermented in lye. Another holiday custom of the Swedes is to make Santa Clause into most horrible, hideous monster imaginable. This was no genial, Clay-mation Santa like on “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” During my years as a believer, Santa angrily rang our doorbell on Christmas Eve and dumped our presents in the snow; prodded me awake out of a deep sleep by standing over my bed; or burst into a room scaring the shit of us until you didn’t even want to go near the motherfucker, let alone dance around the Christmas tree with him while some old Swede played “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” on the accordion.

When my niece was three, my sister-in-law and I took to her to breakfast with Santa on a Viking ship held in the basement of the Swedish-American Museum in Andersonville. The kids were happily playing beneath the bows of the Viking ship, until Santa stuck his head through a porthole and started screaming at them. My niece became hysterical, and I was overcome with having scary Santa flashbacks. My sister-in-law, who grew up believing that Santa lived in the toy department at Marshall Field’s, was unaware of the Santa-is-a-serial killer Scandinavian tradition. We took her upstairs and tried to calm her down, but she refused to return to the party and socialize with Santa. She did make me go back downstairs and get the free gift that Santa was passing out.

In Sweden, Santa is actually a pagan pixie that lives in a meteor crater in the Lapland called “Jul Tomte.” There are hundreds of “tomte gubins” as my mother used to call them, living near villages throughout Sweden, hiding underground or deep in the forests. Jul Tomte is the enthroned pixie, sort of like Prince Charles. On Christmas Eve, Jul Tomte and/or his helpers arrive in towns riding on goats or the “Jul bock” delivering baskets of presents and other goodies. They knock on doors of houses and ask, “Finns det några snälla barn här?" or “Are there any good children living here?”

The tomtems love porridge and tobacco. That’s pretty much what they sustain on. They have wars with the trolls which they always lose, because a thousand tomtems ran through the weeds, chased by one Norwegian. The trolls kill them but the tomtems keep replenishing themselves, because they are a fertile people, and clean.

In the Lapp, Christmas Eve is the scariest night of the year because of Stallo, the furry evil twin brother of the Jul Tomte. Stallo, which means “metal man,” is often dressed as an ancient astronaut or robot, harkening back to the metal armor worn by the Vikings. Stallo delights in genital mutilation of his innocent victims. He will poke his staff up the skirts of young girls. On Christmas Eve, he rides around on a sleigh pulled by lemmings – Jesus’ punishment to the idolatrous Swedes – looking for something to drink. He will sink his stake into the ground near a fresh water supply and if he doesn’t find water, he’ll bash in the head of a child and drink its blood.

According to a Lapp legend, three brothers decided to play games instead of going to church on Christmas Eve. They wanted to have some fun by gutting a reindeer, but as none were to be found, the youngest brother volunteered instead. After the boy was slaughtered and disemboweled, and the sparkling white snow splattered with blood, the two remaining brothers began to cook his flesh.

Smelling the savory aroma of roasting human flesh, Stallo leaped into action, killing one boy instantly. The other brother tried to escape. He hid in a locked chest but Stallo blew red-hot embers through the keyhole, burning the child alive.

The old Swedes enjoyed hazing us at Christmas, just as they were hazed by their own parents and grandparents growing up in smelly houses in Sweden, hearing magical Christmas tales of genital mutilation. The rest of the year, we just played bunko and drank coffee – even the 4-year-olds.

All we are saying ...

So I was driving around this afternoon, doing nothing as usual and listening to Christmas songs on WLIT. WLIT’s 24-hour Christmas play-list has taken on decidedly more religious tone this year. I get sick of listening to Amy Grant belting “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” and really don’t know why I listen to this 24-hour station of saccharine horseshit every holiday season.

I was wondering why WLIT wasn’t playing John Lennon’s “Happy Christmas (War Is Over)” this year when it suddenly came on the radio. If I recall correctly, seemed like the ‘LITE played Lennon’s 1971 anti-war holiday anthem every three seconds last year, which usually prompted me to call one of my friends on my cell phone and do my famous Yoko Ono imitation – which isn’t hard to do because all you have to do is sing really badly – and belt the chorus “A Velly Melly Cwistmas” on their office voice mail. (If you’re thinking that I have way too much time on my hands, you’re right.)

I pumped up the volume and rolled down the windows and was happily warbling “War is over, if you want it” to other confused drivers. Then suddenly it dawned on me: today is the 25th anniversary of John Lennon’s death.

What an incredible ass-fuck that was 25 years ago. I remember my friend Karol calling me around 10:30 in the evening to tell me that Howard Cosell had just announced during "Monday Night Football" that John Lennon had been shot. I immediately turned on WXRT in Chicago and Johnny Mraz was breaking the terrible news that Lennon had just died. I was 23 years old and devastated. I had just graduated from college and was living at home in a chaotic, highly dysfunctional household with an alcoholic brother and crazy parents, with no job and no real prospects, wishing I was back in Iowa City so I could get drunk and mourn with other like-minded freaks.

My father was enraged when the phone started ringing late at night with friends calling and crying. John Lennon was a huge hero of mine since I was seven and watched the Beatles’ debut on Ed Sullivan along with the rest of the country. My life inextricably changed at that moment and I was never the same. I shared Lennon’s dark humor as a teenager even before I read in the Hunter Davies’ Beatle biography about how Lennon once drew a cartoon of Jesus on the cross with a pair of bedroom slippers sitting at the bottom while in art school. I was like, “Man, this guy is just like me,” as I was starting a Patty Hearst Fan Club for my high school friends, or drawing cartoons of people with really large lips and teeth. When I was in college, I once called the door man at the Dakota in New York who told me that John and Yoko never went out.

The next morning I was angry, and am still angry to this day. I think anyone who gets killed by a gun in this country – Jack and Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., some poor schmuck just doing his job at 7-Eleven, the students at Columbine, some innocent 9-year-old playing in her front yard on the West Side of Chicago, John Lennon – dies in vain, and will continue to die in vain because this country is just fucking hopeless when it comes to guns or anything else that’s intelligent or makes sense.

We always kill the peacemakers because it seems no one can stand a society that actually puts the interests of people first, before money, oil and corporate conglomerates. Just when things start to get better, something comes along to fuck it up.

“Happy Christmas (War is Over)” is just as relevant today as it was in 1971. Yeah, it’s queer and idealistic, but at least Lennon tried to change hearts and minds, even if it the results were embarrassing. In 2005 they’re still singing “Give Peace A Chance” at anti-war demonstrations and his anti-war songs will continue to outlive us all. I mean, try singing “Silly Love Songs” when you’re shutting down Lake Shore Drive and the police are running toward you in riot gear.

We could sure use John Lennon today. I can just picture him at 65, sitting on a panel on Bill Maher’s “Real Time,” making us wet our pants with hilarious cracks about George Bush and organizing the global village into something livable for us all.

So here’s to John Lennon. Hard to believe it has been 25 years since he’s been gone because it seems like two days. (And sorry about that stupid Broadway musical that Yoko produced about your life.)