Our most recent contest was a tough call.
From Anon:
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.
Olip responds:
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.
That doesn’t seem so funny!
Jonathan left a comment that I don’t fully understand:
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.
Dmitri sez:
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.
But that’s really more of an argument for Judas, who was elsewhere in the bracket and was vanquished in round 1 by Steve Stigler.
If the best case for the Brute is actually a better argument than someone who’s already lost . . . Remember how Daniel Davies said, “Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance”? There’s something similar going on here. So we’ll have to go with Leona. And, next round, the alleged tax cheat will face . . .
Today’s matchup
Zimmerman or Geisel, who’s it gonna be? The Bard of Hibbing or the Sage of Springfield? Mr. Jones or the Flit? Robert can sing and write; Theodor can write and draw. I took a look at the wikipedia page and it said that Seuss was friends with Art Buchwald. That’s cool! Now I’m wish Art Buchwald was in this competition. Ideally he’d be facing off against Eddie Murphy. Or maybe Ann Landers, who also appeared in the Washington Post back in the day.
I was about to ditch Dylan because of the risk he’d just mail his seminar in. Then I read the Nobel speech he mailed in, at https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2016/dylan/speech/
I want his real words, even remote, rather than the ones Geisel invents.
Yes, Dylan’s Nobel Price speech was quite excellent. I think he had concert dates that precluded him from attending the ceremonies but it would have been great if he would have been there with his band and jammed for the awards dinner.
I’m reading his most recent book, “The Philosophy of the Modern Song” which is equally as good. People tend to only think of Dylan as a song writer and performer but he goes far beyond that. Personally, I think this is a no brainer despite my fondness for Dr. Seuss. My vote goes to Bobby D.
Years ago I picked up a copy of “Dr Seuss Goes to War”. I’d like to hear more about Suess’s political cartoons (and maybe why some of them were anti-Japanese characatures).
>That doesn’t seem so funny!
I should have qualified that with “was funny to 10 year-old me!”
It’s in the Twelve Tasks of Asterix film anyway. Here’s the scene:
https://images.app.goo.gl/kBC79ShXx5Vj1DrH8
Don’t know what is worth but Lucky Wilbury puts Zimmerman ahead of Geisel in number of alt-identities. He might tell us stories about his Baptist minister dad, who was called “a cad and a bounder” by some people.
Let’s hear from Geisel. Zimmy got his shot at the Nobel’s, and a good shot it was. I’d like to hear about the cartoonist’s ideas of Japanese people and why there were no cartoons about German people. Vonnegut said that the only German he ever wanted to kill was his uncle Peter; surely Geisel must have had mockable people in his family.
I vote for Bob Dylan, as long as he sets a Dr. Seuss text to music and performs it during his lecture. It may be as close as I get to Enlightenment.