Ice Dancing. I truly don’t understand why this is a sport when ballroom dancing, which is essentially dressage for bipeds, isn’t. Besides, Torville and Dean’s routine at the Sarajevo Olympics in 1984 is the reason why I still can’t listen to Ravel’s Bolero any more.
You never know where an idea will come from. This one came from a book of transcripts from Melvyn Bragg’s BBC Radio 4 programme ‘In Our Time’. If you don’t know the show, it’s essentially Melvyn and a hand picked panel of experts shut in a small room with a microphone dissecting a different randonly chosen academic subject for 45 minutes live on a Thursday morning. One show might be about string theory, the next about the fall of Constantinople, the next about Mary Shelley, and then one about the Dreyfus affair. This show was about the origins of life, and Richard Corfield (I’ve spelled his name incorrectly in the strip) mentioned this fact about cat litter in it. You can listen to the show here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p004y29f. And then you can go through the archive – there’s over 500 shows there dating back to the first edition in 1998.
This came from a facebook conversation with Cynthia Sonier, who produces the strip Sooky Rottweiler (available on Tapas at https://tapas.io/series/SookyHeadsetChronicles and https://tapas.io/series/A-Christmas-Mittaines). She had a panel which showed her reactionary silver tabby Mittaines sitting on the toilet. And I remembered that my first cat, Sunday, did that for real. Not only that, when she was outdoors she would pee while sitting over drains, just like Jones is doing in this strip.
Passive dreaming is like passive smoking – dreams that are experienced second-hand. I get this a lot – only Linda is dreaming she’s back nursing in the burns unit in Covenant Hospital in Lubbock. It’s truly weird to be woken up by someone who is talking in a commanding voice about the drips she’s setting up for the latest patient to come in. Or she’ll be explaining in a gentle but no-nonsense manner to the family of a burn victim what they can expect to happen for the next few months. Or once, memorably, she was trying to push a buffalo into a wardrobe.
Inspired by listening to the series of ‘Oh No Ross and Carrie’ podcasts on the growth of flat-earthery. You can listen to them at http://ohnopodcast.com/
I’ve returned from the US this Christmas, refreshed and ready to start the new year, and with a script book full of ideas that have been written up till the end of April.
Last year proved to be as ridiculous as I expected, but towards the end of the year there has been a slow acceptance of reality by the people that caused Brexit and Trump to happen, and we’re now busy limiting the damage as much as possible.
As far as Smith is concerned, next year will see a few changes. Comics Sherpa may be returned to its former glory by GoComics or it might not. They keep saying they have great plans for the future but there doesn’t seem to be any urgency in pushing them through, so it looks like Tapas.io is going to be Smith’s main portal for the forseeable future. The reruns of Smith on Tapas will catch up with the new strips on ComicsSherpa on Sunday April 22nd, and from that date onwards Smith will be posted on both platforms, plus this blog, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, whether GoComics is ready or not.
Have a happy new year everyone. See you in 2018!
Merry Christmas everyone!
‘The lights going on and off’ was the Turner Prize winning artwork back in 2001. It won the rtist Martin Creed £20,000 and consisted of some lights, First they went on. Then they went off.
I’ve added a cat. Turner prize jury, you know where to post the cheque.
This year’s cat and Christmas tree strip is a bit different.