"I am so surprised you watch that. It just doesn't seem like you."
Yes, I do; and, no it doesn't. Allow me to share my Pop secret with you, kittens.
This gape-jaw surprise, that I watch The Real Housewives of Orange County, amongst other RH franchises, is an alarm I have heard more than once. It's true, it does not fit my modus operandus for TV viewing. My druthers lean toward Arrested Development, TURN, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Versailles, Anne With an 'E', Flaked, The Durrells in Corfu and Absolutely Fabulous. Well, shame be damned, in fact, I do watch RHOC, RHONJ, RHOA and RHOBH. If it pleases the court ... my argument for the defense.
I know Orange County as well as I do a fake Prada bag. I even strayed from my usual genre of 18thC. historical-fiction (Savannah of Williamsburg Series) and penned a bikini-and-martini, contempo novel titled The Darlings of Orange County: a scathing, satirical, love-hate letter to Orange County, currently being adapted to a screenplay. Yours Truly has lived up and down the Orange County coast: Balboa Island, Corona del Mar, Irvine, South Laguna Beach, Dana Point and San Clemente. Summers not spent in Hawai'i were spent on the sand at 52nd in Newport Beach. In college I worked at Disneyland, Neiman-Marcus at Fashion Island and Ruby's Auto Diner in Laguna Beach. Whilst my husband (known to many as The Viking) was in grad school at Chapman University's Dodge School of Film and Media Arts, I worked at Diedrich's Coffee in Dana Point's Ocean Ranch and taught French, Etiquette and Shakespeare at Broderick Montessori School in Dana Point.
Both Mum and Dear Old Dad count Chapman University amongst their alma maters, undergrad and grad school; for a time, Dear Old Dad was a Freshman-psych prof at Chapman. My fave little cousin, Bex Boo, is currently a BioSci major at UCIrvine. Natch, I, also, attended UCi and Chapman.
So, big whoop bully for you, JennyPop. Now, why do you patronize such sub-mental pablum and waste such precious time? (Including writing this post?)
Fair nudge, fair reader. Moving on ...
Here's the crux, the psychological explanation from a shrink's kid ... It's the LOTR-style, epic quests for friendship, oft abysmally failed, these ladies pursue. It's the quest that truly draws me, season over season, city after city. Like Siggy Flicker (my fave Housewife) of The Real Housewives of New Jersey I want everyone to be friends and love each other, cheesy as that reads. Perchance it's projection. I find my friendships, although scant in number, sacrosanct. There are lines one does not cross, rules and ethics inherent and sans exception. When a guy or gal finally crosses my threshold from "that _______ " to "my friend ______", I am loyal to the end. When I say I would take a bullet for them, I mean it. (Although, I likely will not loan my new Charles David over-the-knee boots, my Waterman pen or any of my Von Zipper sunglasses.)
Ergo, I marvel at what these ladies will not only perpetrate, but endure, and still come out of their catty battles as "friends" ... until the next season. What some folks call friendship, fascinates me. (Advisement: Do not get me started on what Zuckerberg and Facebook have done to dilute the word "friend".) In short, The Real Housewives is a Chaucerian cautionary tale draped in Chanel, a Medeival, morality play shrouded in Moschino. It is fabulously, terrifyingly didactic.
Note: This season might proffer a bit more gravity, in Peggy Sulahian. Housewife #100 was born to Armenian parents in Kuwait and has been in the U.S. since the twee age of one. Whilst Lady Fortuna has largely spun her Wheel fortuitously for Peggy - an oceanview home in Crystal Cove, a loving husband and three healthy, beautiful children - the Wheel has had its bad spins. At the age of fifty-one, Peggy's mother passed away from breast cancer. Recently, after finding a lump, Peggy opted for a radical double-mastectomy, to be extra cautious. RHOC S12 finds Peggy on the eve of her reconstructive surgery. From all accounts, like so many other victims and survivors of this dreaded thief in the night, Peggy has a confidence and inner power that poises her perfectly to melée with The Real Housewives. I mean, really. After the early death of a mother, the threat of the C-word and a voluntary, double-mastectomy, what on Earth could Vicki Gunvalson and Kelly Dodd do to this lovely lady? Bring it on, S12.
The Real Housewives of Orange County S12 premieres on BRAVO, July 10, 2017 @ 9/8c.
@JennyPopCom (Insta and Twitter) #RHOC #RealHousewives #PeggySulahian
It’s ritual. Almost involuntary, like whatever it is my spleen does when I’m not looking. Wake up, turn on news, make espresso, read funnies. I’m still Old School enough to prefer my funnies in the dry, gritty, analog, format of newspaper. Of course, I am no Luddite either and, as is the most convenient today, and cleaner for manicured hands, I take my funnies online via GoComics.com.
The ease and access is beautiful: funnies on my phone, funnies on my tablet, funnies on my laptop. It’s never been easier to chase friends and family around the room urging, “OMG! You have to read this one!”, almost always answered with a patient smile, a single eyebrow-lift and an obligatory, “That’s funny.” Is it? Then laugh.
The traditional comic strip, a linear set of panels delivering a quick, wry joke, une blague, as the French call it and which I find a much funnier word than “joke”, seems to be holding its own nicely in our contempo, digital world. Stretching as far back as the Bayeux Tapestry, I would argue, the linear storytelling model feeds man’s need for a brief, pithy respite of humour (not that the Norman Invasion was all that funny), whether on his way to a clan war in the Scottish highlands, a revolution in Yorktown or a pitch meeting on the Loews Santa Monica patio bar.
First published in a Sunday supplement to William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal in 1897, The Katzenjammer Kids, created by Rudolph Dirks and drawn today by Hy Eisman, remains America’s longest-running comic strip, still appearing in over fifty newspapers and magazines across the globe, distributed by King Features.
Like any commercial art, cartooning is a tough and tight-knit crew. Becoming an internationally syndicated cartoonist is harder than figuring out WTF happened on the final season of LOST. However, if you have tenacity, an innate sense of humour, drawing skills and a cocktail napkin, you might have a shot at the Big Time. Mel Henze had all that and now look at him. Of course, “all that” minus the drawing skills. Even he admits, “As far as the drawing goes, it’s a struggle at times. I need lessons and/or books.”
Mel Henze, a jovial, approachable chap who could sumo wrestle Ron Howard for the title of Mr. Nice Guy, lives the beauteous life on a quiet, wooded beach somewhere in British Columbia. He seems impervious to criticism, indeed values it, and, like any good artist, flays himself mercilessly before others can do the job. He is open to comments and questions and happy to chat with his readers; it is merited to this failing that he fell into my trap and was kind enough to allow me a brief interview about his newest strip, Gentle Creatures. Rumoured to be actually written by a chain-smoking, ex-circus clown, my due diligence has not turned up any hard evidence to this fact and it appears Henze is indeed the real creator and artist. Here’s the story he’s selling. (Caveat emptor.)
A truism since we crawled out of the primordial stew and up onto Canadian beaches, the bunny-dog-stinkbug combo is timeless. In the case of GC, Radish Cheeseweed, his dog Jingles and the snarky Cecil work well together, Radish’s general beef with the universe being the swizzle stick that stirs the Singapore Sling.
Animals-as-people is also an age-old classic. Be it Snoopy, Garfield, The Far Side dinosaurs in cat-lady glasses or Get Fuzzy‘s Bucky and Satchel, anthropomorphized animals make the best friends, and comic characters. I asked Mel why we love them so.
If you follow the philosophical teachings of animators, Seth MacFarlane and Walt Disney have both said that the eyes, especially where animal characters are concerned, are vital to a character’s connection with the audience. Jingles’ eyes are beckoning and innocent; one wants to protect him, mostly from Radish. Academically, Mel knows this, yet is horrified to realize he has failed here, miserably.
Not to worry, fair reader. Cecil the stinkbug might have no eyes and Jingles no pupils, but there exist other features cartoon creatures can possess, which draw them happily into our hearts and souls.
Gentle Creatures is not Henze's first cat rodeo, although the initial, now infamous, cocktail napkin submission to GoComics, and subsequent, rough draft-feedback, suggests otherwise.
Hubert and Abby is, in fact, Henze’s first comic strip. Before that, he was drawing single-panel cartoons and was very fortunate, via one his very first panels, to be picked up, and syndicated in the U.S. and internationally, by legendary distributor King Features (Betty & Veronica, Mother Goose & Grimm, Mutts), a unit of Hearst Corporation. Once in the club, Henze was encouraged by editors to “create a comic strip as an alternative to the somewhat flooded panel market.” Henze listened and, “a few iterations later, Hubert and Abby was born”. The lure of the panel still calls like a fat mermaid-siren in the night though, and to quell this lust, Henze occasionally designs greeting cards for Oatmeal Studios.
Henry David Thoreau suggested one write what one knows. One wonders then, like many an artist, is Henze embodied in any of his creations? Is the cranky Radish Cheeseweed an alter ego of sorts? Does Henze/Cheeseweed find daily irritation with what the inimitable writer Hunter S. Thompson called “the inchworms” of the world; or do Canadians love everybody? Might Henze be Jingles, the contented and kindly pup; or is Henze the personification of Cecil, the obdurate stinkbug? It seems Thoreau’s influence made its way into a previous, Hubert and Abby strip. (Makes sense. Most artists living in tents on secluded beaches or in lean-tos in the woods tend to appreciate Thoreau to a fault.)
So, back to the cocktail napkin: readers want to know … is that real? Did a famous, multi-strip, syndicated cartoonist from Canada really submit an idea in this manner? Do we blame Canada? The story goes that the muck-stained napkin was submitted to GoComics editors and the following, visceral response ensued.
“There was something about it that I liked,” claimed Editor Joe. “I’m not sure if it was the kind and peaceful nature of the characters themselves, or the gentle way the interacted. I know it wasn’t the art … I mean, really.”
Was it the cranky rabbit, or did Hubert and Abby help get Henze’s lucky rabbit foot in the door? Moreover, what is the ring on said-napkin? Is it espresso, drip coffee (if so, what brew?), bean soup or maybe even a chocolate martini? Well, kids, in this GoodToBeAGeek exclusive, Mel tells all.
Interesting. Now that we all feel like fools, having Huzzah!ed the little guy and Fie!ed the “mean and unfair syndicate monsters” the world over who wish only to use artists’ hard-fought work for nothing more than fish-wrap, we can step back and read Gentle Creatures for what it really is: a truly funny, giggle-invoking, daily dash of happy.
How does a mere Canadian, any artist for that matter, make it amongst the ranks of Charles Schulz and Bill Watterson? Can-do, I say! I asked Henze and, naturally, he had an answer.
As the convention season in SoCal starts its early rumblings, this SoCal geek girl wondered if Henze and his creatures would feature at either WonderCon or the god of all cons, San Diego Comic-Con? SDCC badges and press passes are harder to garner than a birthday party invitation from Hillary Clinton to Ted Nugent. Yet, if GoComics sponsored a Henze appearance, stinkbugs and cranky rabbits from all over the Southland would file in to get a glimpse. Henze himself is open to it all.
Besides stinkbugs and small mammals, Comic-Con is also crawling with cartoonists and animators of all strains and species. Henze has a bit of golden advice for the funny-page wannabes, as well as an open email box for anyone whom wishes to pick his brain.
As Radish Cheeseweed’s recent hospital stay proved, no one is indispensable. Kermit the Frog and Tom Cruise, I have on good authority, are on permanent standby, just in case Cheeseweed meets an untimely end; and keeping it all in The Muppets family, Pepe the King Prawn could serve well as a Cecil stand-in. Jingles, for this reader’s worth, is absolutely indispensable. Jingles has quickly moved up my ranks to join prestigious company with Fox Trot‘s Jason and Quincy, Get Fuzzy‘s Satchel and Peanuts‘ Sally Brown. Jingles makes a sweet first-impression. Moreover, it is rumoured Jingles fancies a parasol on sunny days, much like Yours Truly. Who doesn’t love a wee dog with a pink parasol? Will Henze play God with his characters? Probably.
Henze’s strip makes me scroll to the bottom of my personalized GoComicsPro page each morning. I am excited to learn what hay is being made in the dew-dappled meadow amidst the burbling, gurgling creek which runs through the smallish hills. (Note, GC is not at the bottom of my page as a ranking judgment; but simply because it is one of the newest I’ve added.) Calvin and Hobbes and Peanuts top my list, of course. Gentle Creatures sits nicely snuggled in between Sarah’s Scribbles and Wizard of Id.
Gentle Creatures is exactly what a comic strip should be. Comic strips should make you guffaw, laugh out loud embarrassingly in public, leaving those around you at Starbucks to wonder if you’re actually reading something funny, or if they should have 9-1-1 at the ready. The funnies should make you excited to open the new strip every day. They should make you get up from your seat and force everyone else in the house to read it, too, whilst you stand there, dorky smile plastered on your face, waiting in giddy anticipation and watching their face for signs of the coming laugh, the same creeping smile and chortle the strip elicited from you. Often, this is not the case and we must retreat to our davenports (That’s what they call it in Canada, right?), tails between our legs and resume reading our beloved and misunderstood, under-appreciated comics with quieter chuckles and titters. (That’s a funny word, too. Right, Jingles?) Gentle Creatures accomplishes this, indeed.
Find Gentle Creatures at GoComics.com, a division of Universal Uclick, an Andrews-McMeel Universal company. Email Mel Henze at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.! To boot, a very special thank you to @Gene Willis @GoComics for the introduction and, especially to Mel Henze for his time, his humour, his art and, most of all, my panel!
See you in the Sunday funnies, kids!
Follow @JennyPopCom #GentleCreatures #comics
Literature nerds and history dorks have superheroes, too: Edgar Allan Poe, William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Anne Rice, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Ken Burns, The Brontë Sisters, Thomas Jefferson, David McCullough, Miss Savannah Squirrel (of course!) and a whole league of historians and novelists. The standout heroine for the geek girly-girl strain of this genre? Miss Jane Austen, indeed!
As one of this strain, not to mention a long-time member in good standing of the comic genre, I can affirmatively state Miss Austen is our Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman and Scully all wrapped beautifully under a tidy, feathered, grosgrain-trimmed, Regency bonnet. (Yes, Scully is not only a comic book heroine but also has her own action figure; I own both.) Wherein this modern age, sometimes, some feel like a fish out of water, Miss Austen gives us everything we need to cope: literature, vocabulary, historical detail, rigid manners, meticulous décor and blissfully asyndetic conversation. Austen is the It Girl of Britain's Regency era and, where softer, quieter geeks are concerned, she and her characters are models of grace, gentility and marmoreal skin in what is a surely a more tarnished, gauche, crude and frumpy world. Jane's superpower? A soft voice and an extensive vocabulary. One must lean in close to hear her pithy, social banter. You must lean into her; therein lies the power. Where there is power, there is also the threat of downfall. Her silver bullets and Kryptonite? 140 characters and scatalogical humour.
If Austen and her characters (Elizabeth Bennet, Emma Woodhouse, Catherine Morland, Mr. Darcy) form a high society of superheroes, Snooki and her double-digit IQ, vulgar ilk are their nemeses. With the whip of a bonnet sash, a quick flick of an embroidered, Irish handbag and the lightning-fast scribe of a handwritten thank you note, Miss Jane and her Society could rid the culture of Jersey June bugs, Real Housewives, Kardashians and Hooters. Taste always trumps tacky.
If being a bit of a prude is not quite a punishable crime today, it is unquestionably dorky and out of vogue. Jane Austen assuages the modern prude with emergency rations of taste, etiquette and elegance when necessary. She gives us pale, graceful necks sans tan lines, delicate drop earrings, amusing chapeaux, bone china and witty repartee. Jane gives us Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet and Keira Knightley sipping English breakfast tea and shading their pearlescent bosoms from the harsh, Yorkshire sun with the prettiest of Battenberg lace parasols. It is like The Real Housewives of Atlanta and Honey Boo Boo never slithered under the garage door and into our house.
Jane leaves her admirers gleefully free of red Solo cups, texting, Twitter, fast food, zombies (with the exception of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith), Facebook, reality TV, Vegas, cell phones, Pandora, 24-hour news, TMZ, gaming, CGI, toe rings, Pirates of the Caribbean V, sailor language, Breaking Bad and stupidly oversized iPads held aloft to Tweet pictures taken at the seashore. To be sure, I enjoy some of the above, minus Facebook, zombies and fast food. Whilst I do have a strong prudish streak, I am not a true prude. In fact, I may be the only one to defend Miley Cyrus' plushie sex twerking at the VMAs and, if you've read my latest novel, The Darlings of Orange County, you know full well I have a twerky side. Still, like spiced rum, Nutter Butters and plushie twerking, everything has its time, place and limits. They do not compose healthy, daily sustenance. Where there is overload, there is overkill and often not enough mouthwash in the world. Is not Miss Austen a lovely diversion, an occasional antiseptic, if you will?
Jane's world can be a balm, but it can also be a gilded trap: Austenland. Thus, the case for Jane Hayes, a thirty-something Austen addict played convincingly by freshly-scrubbed, natural beauty Keri Russell (Felicity, Running Wilde, Wonder Woman). Austenland is a scrumptious, directorial debut for Jerusha Hess (Napoleon Dynamite) and a brilliantly cheery romantic-comedy based on the novel of the same name by authoress Shannon Hale (Rapunzel's Revenge, Princess Academy).
If audience engagement is any marker, Austenland is running for the roses. Like New Orleans, Disneyland or the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale, if you are not having a great time, you might be a zombie. Replete with, yes, mostly older women en seul, most everyone guffawed, tittered, giggled and ahhhed throughout all posh ninety-seven minutes. The few men I did see had the relaxed look that comes with watching a non-taxing film in comfy, recliner theater seats with their feet up and their Birkenstocks left on the floor. (Decidedly very non-Austen.) To be sure, the men I did see were also accompanied by their ladies. My own Mr. Darcy knew we had to see Austenland after viewing the trailer at a recent showing of Blue Jasmine. "Well, we have to!" he insisted with a chuckle. "That is so you!"
Spot on, in fact! From Jane Hayes' flashbacks, taking her own tea cup and saucer to a cafe, to her life-sized, cardboard cutout of Mr. Darcy (mine was Johnny Depp), to theme dressing at the airport, Austenland has happy, quiet, dork handwritten all over it.
The casting is polished to perfection: not a bruised apple in the barrel. Jennifer Coolidge (Best in Show, Legally Blonde, 2 Broke Girls) steals the show. Her tacky-but-sweet American with cash is sheer precision. An oversized Barbie in Regency hot-pink, her character of Miss Elizabeth Charming is an absolute hoot. 'Er 'orrible, overdone, Eliza Doolittle accent is as amusing as her hats (which I actually covet) and her enthusiasm for the total-immersion English holiday is contagious, making me very pleased with myself that I wore a Regency-inspired, empire-waist, Japanese mini-dress and pewter drop earrings for the occasion.
Lady Amelia Heartwright, played fetchingly by Georgia King, is a fellow Austenland traveller, filling out the triad of ladies on literary holiday. She is a whimsical, living doll reminiscent of silent-era actresses known as much for their pouty lips, porcelain skin and large eyes as their comedic timing and X-CU expressions. Hopping hither and thither like an exquisite, mischievous rabbit, King keeps the laughter cavorting across the vast estate lawns. Keri Russell plays the lead role as Jane Hayes/Miss Jane Erstwhile with a delicate realism any Austen dork knows all too well: social awkwardness, happy oblivion and a nearly overbearing obsessiveness that only the best of friends and spouses will ever understand or tolerate.
In Austenland, run with the icy business head of Mrs. Wattlesbrook, played deftly by Jane Seymour, the men serve as either eye candy or hired soul mates. Ironically, it takes a dose of holiday fiction for Miss Erstwhile to realize that her blanket assessment, "apparently the only good men are fictional", is wrong ... or is it? For it is in Austenland where Jane finds her Mr. Darcy ... or is it? Maybe it is only once she is free of the Austen spell ... or does the Austen spell indeed prove the very magic she needs? A torrential English rain, a soaked, lovely damsel-in-distress, an impossibly handsome Mr. Henry Nobley (played by the utterly smoldering JJ Feild, known to some as the tragically-fated, beautiful gentleman-officer, Major John André of AMC's TURN: Washington's Spies) on a grey horse and a linen dress ripped by said-Mr. Nobley, exposing a bit of fine, Regency leg, certainly never hurts the start of a romance.
I haven't clapped aloud in a theater in quite a while. Many moons ago, I did so at the end of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, the first of the POTC franchise. Similar to POTCI, Austenland not only provides fun storylines and sympathetic characters, but enough visual stimuli to ensure at least a second viewing: costuming, set design, colours, location, landscape, architectural detail and all the fine points one would only notice when they are omitted. Emerging from POTC I in 2003, my own Mr. Darcy excitedly said, "Now that is what going to the movies should be like! Wow! That was awesome!" He said the same thing as we emerged from Austenland last week. "Maybe it's because I know you and Lesli so well," referring to my fellow historical-dorkette, "but that was hilarious!"
True, perchance because he could see my cohort and me in so many situations, he laughed as hard as most of the women in the theater, their laughter also betraying intimate understanding. By the laws of comedy, good writing and production values though, this film is just Plain Jane good stuff for anyone! Certainly, as comedy is relative, knowing the characters adds another layer of humour. I do know these people; it does add another layer.
Many will roll their eyes. "Sounds more superficial than superhero. Where's the superheroine in all this twaddle? What is so powerful about being prudish, posh and persnickety?" The power lies not in the aesthetics of Austenland or any other pretty mis-en-scène; the power lies in the cheerful confidence it takes bring bits of this old-fashioned life, including the quickly disappearing art of social conversation, to our modern one. The power lies in being true to one's inclinations, no matter how unpopular. Take a look around, desperately casual, blasé and mouthy is all the rage; quiet, modest and polished is not. Being a geek girl, I am told ad nauseam, means not taking guff from anyone. As far as I can see, ass-kicking can come via Knives Chao, Power Girl and Lara Croft as easily as it can via Elizabeth Bennet, Laura Ingalls and Anne Shirley.
Power can carry a parasol through a gauntlet of terrifying, sniggering, beach teens; power can use far too many words to share a simple link; power can spend years writing about a colonial squirrel, knowing most will only laugh about it while a mere handful will read the tales; and, power can take an hour to sip her tequila shot like it is a Royal Doulton cup of Darjeeling, despite friendly taunts and peer pressure to chug. Some of us do not chug, ever.
Being true to oneself is today's real superpower. If only I had a pearl drop earring for every time someone asked me with a poorly hidden smirk, "Why are you so dressed up?", "You're not seriously wearing that?" or "I can't deal with your emails. Too many big words.", well, I would have even more pearl drop earrings than I already do. Geeks come in all shapes and sizes. If your shade of pale is lavender-hued, you use a soft voice, too many big words and carry an analog copy of Pride and Prejudice, own it.
Psst ... when you see Austenland, stay put for the end-credits. It all gets a little hot in here!