The most amusing comment in the battle of kid favorites Chvátil and Cleary came from Oncodoc:
My vote is for Cleary. It takes a truly innovative mind to make up a name like Klickitat Street!
Klickitat Street is, famously, a real street in Portland Oregon. I learned this when reading Cleary’s autobiography, which I recommend to all of you. I’m just sad that she didn’t have the energy to write a third volume, as volume 2 ends just when she starts going as an author.
So, sorry, Vladimir! On the plus side, since you won’t be flying to New York to give a seminar, you can spend more time at the office working on a worthy successor to Code Names.
You know that saying, Nobody on their deathbed has ever said, “I wish I had spent more time at the office”? That may be true—but we often want other people to spend more time at the office. I wanted Cleary to write more books, I want Chvátil to write more games, etc. I mean, sure, it’s great if they can play with the grandchildren or whatever, but from my perspective I’d like some productivity out of them!
Today’s matchup
#2 traitor of all time vs. an unseeded alleged tax cheat. It’s kind of amazing that Helmsley even made it to the second round, as she sounds kinda boring. Brutus is more of my kind of guy, as long as he can make it through the metal detector at the airport. But it all depends on the arguments youall can muster. . . .
Apart from killing the tyrant Julius Caesar what has Brutus ever done for us?
What’s good about killing Julius Caesar? Among many other accomplishments, his salad is still popular to this day.
At first, I was excited at the prospect of a seminar from the wife of the actor who played George Jefferson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Hemsley), but then I realized that we’re actually considering hearing from the Queen of Mean. “Only little people pay taxes”? Et tu, Leona? If I wanted to listen to a seminar by an arrogant, condescending, mean spirited shrew, I’d head next door to the Bioinformatics Department.
I can’t say much about Leona, but Brutus is easily one of the most boring characters in the Asteroid comic books. Given how funny and how fun those books are, it’s an extraordinary accomplishment, but whether this makes us want to have him as a speaker or not I’ll leave as an exercise to the reader.
Ops! Autocorrect. Not Asteroid, Asterix.
Although there is that funny moment in one of the Asterix films where he is idly playing with a knife, and then in the next scene is seen with a bandaged finger. Maybe that’s in the comic too.
I want to watch Brutus trying to cash in on our appetite for historical revisionism. These days all of the bad guys are now good — Thomas Cromwell, Judas, Andrew Jackson. “Lots of good people on both sides.” I just think it would be amusing to see him on a rehabilitation tour. Him too, you know?
The Ohio State loss to Michigan should have eliminated Brutus as a competitor. But then I realized there was another Brutus! Yes, the twin brother of Bluto. (Twin brother you say? Faux copyright infringement you say? Read here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluto)
I don’t think we have nearly enough seminars given by cartoon characters. (Admittedly, I have been to seminars where describing the speaker as either colorful or two-dimensional would be pushing it.) Anyway, should Brutus face off against Li Wenwen in the finals I propose remaking the seminar into an arm-wrestling contest.