Rob's Recommendations: Pearls Before Swine

I was going to share a funny Pearls Before Swine comic with a student yesterday when he said, "Pearls Before Swine? What's that?"

What?! You haven't heard of Pearls Before Swine?! That's one of the problems with newspapers not being as popular as they used to be - people can't discover wonderful content on the comics page like Pearls. (Okay, other than Pearls and Dilbert, there's not a ton of wonderful content anymore, to be honest.) Given that this was a high school student, he may never have actually read a comics page before. Sigh. 

Anyway, I did blog about Pearls Before Swine before, but I realized it has been 14 years since my last post about it, so perhaps you haven't gone back to read up on my entire life since 2008. Pearls Before Swine is maybe my all-time favorite comic strip. Here's a description from Wikipedia:

Pearls Before Swine (also known as Pearls) is an American comic strip written and illustrated by Stephan Pastis. The series began on December 31, 2001. It chronicles the daily lives of an ensemble cast of suburban anthropomorphic animals: Pig, Rat, Zebra, Goat, and a fraternity of crocodiles, as well as a number of supporting characters, one of whom is Pastis himself. Each character represents an aspect of Pastis's personality and worldview. The daily and Sunday comic strip is distributed by Andrews McMeel Syndication (by United Feature Syndicate until 2011).

The strip's style is notable for its black comedy, simplistic artwork, self-deprecating fourth wall meta-humor, social commentary, mockery of itself or other comic strips, and occasional elaborate stories leading to a pun.

Here are a couple more of my favorites strips over the years. This will give you a sense of the humor:

And finally, one of my favorites, for obvious reasons:

There are a number of Pearls collections available. I have a few that I am happy to lend you if you live near me, otherwise you can check them out from the library, or better yet, buy them and read them! Or give them to someone as a gift (hint, hint), as long as they have a twisted sense of humor. You can also read the daily strip at HERE or subscribe on that site to daily emails or Facebook posts.  

Go check it out. My rating: A+

Rob's Recommendations: What About Bob?

A few years ago I used a clip from the movie "What About Bob?" in a sermon illustration. Several from my congregation whom I would have expected to be familiar with this classic comedy were sadly unaware of it's existence. Filled with wonderfully memorable quotes, it's my favorite comedy of all time, with the most genuine, organic, heartfelt laughs of any movie I know.

Sure, there are other great comedies. I absolutely adore "Groundhog Day", "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure", "The Three Amigos", "The Princess Bride", and "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". But if I had to pick just one, it's this one. Bill Murray creates a wonderfully quirky character who plays perfectly off of Richard Dreyfus' uptight psychologist, Dr. Leo Marvin. The movie builds and builds into a terrific conclusion. 

If you haven't seen this classic from the early 90s, treat yourself, track down a copy and enjoy!

Saucony's Shoes for Cherons

Saucony just came our with a new colorway for some of their shoes. My first thought was that they were perfect gift for that special Cheron in your life.

 

You Won't Believe What I Heard...

I like April Fools Day. Not for the stupid little gotcha jokes, for the dumb obvious ones, but for the elaborate, funny parodies that many companies put together. I already came across an announcement about a Star Trek "demastered" edition that will be released by Paramount on VHS, which got me for a moment until I remembered what day it was. T-Mobile also has a great video out talking about a rebrand with "New Magenta", introduced by designer Hue Palette. 

There's a difference between clever and entertaining and just plain dumb, which are usually the overly obvious ones. Subtlety is key to a good joke. (I momentarily convinced someone yesterday that this year, today was going to be March 32 due to something with the time change.) 

There are a couple challenges with April Fools Day nowadays, however. First, so much of our society has no sense of humor anymore. Many don't appreciate parody or satire. You know who you are. You've probably said to yourself or someone else, "I hate April Fools."

The second, of course, is that many of the headlines we see everyday are ones we might expect to be featured as an April Fools parody. Unfortunately, what used to be considered outrageous and impossible is now commonplace. 

It does force you to be discerning when you read the news today. But that's probably a good thing that we should be doing everyday, anyway.

Too Cold for FPU

We had to postpone our FPU class last night due to the extremely cold temperatures and wind chills. It was only about 40-45 below with wind chills, so I don't know what the big deal was - hey, we're Minnesotans, right? It's supposed to be unbearably frigid this time of year! (I guess Wisconsin transplants/Cheesehead/Packer fans are just more hearty!)

I was watching the news this morning and they had some reporter in Chicago complaining because it was Zero degrees this morning. Zero! That's shorts weather, right?

In all seriousness, I was glad to be inside last night and glad others didn't have to be out in this weather. So, in the spirit of financial planning I thought I'd share the Dilbert comic from this morning. Not sure if I can legally show the graphic on my blog, so here's the link. Enjoy!

Bill Gates Last Day

I thought this was completely hysterical. Enjoy.

Why Bloggers Really Blog

Pearls Before Swine is one of the few comics that I find consistently funny - though it often has very dark humor. (The others I love are Dilbert and Foxtrot, which is now weekly instead of daily.) To subscribe via a daily e-mail go here. Collections of all these are available from the library via an inter-library loan (or you can buy them, which I am often too broke/cheap to do!)