Letters to the Editor
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I heart Opus!!!
I first discovered "Outland" when I was in high school and got so pissed when it was cancelled! This was around the same time all the good ones were going: "Far Side", "Calvin and Hobbs"; after that, the only good one left in my paper was "Foxtrot", and now it's gone too! What is the deal?!!! I'm so glad he brought the character back but I don't get it in my paper. Thank Salon I can get it here!
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Mars Needs Moms
Thank you, thank you, thank you, and did I say thank you?
Berkeley Breathed may your tribe increase. Have studied the
deep doo-doo we are in, and the only way out that I can see
is SATIRE. We live in desperate times.
Ann W
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Salon!
I couldn't be happier about this and it may be the tipping point to force me into a premium membership. This is great.
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Berk
Actually, it's an innocuous term that just means an idiot. There are rumors about some earlier derivation from rhyming slang, but that is not relevant to recent usage over the past few decades.
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Opus in Salon
O frabjous day! Caloo! Callay!
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I feel so weird (not the first time)
but wasn't there a sunday comic of Bloom County where Opus got out of trouble by claiming that he wasn't actually a penguin, but was instead some sort of Great Auk?
I've had this image in my mind for almost a couple of decades now-am I in fact totally insane?
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Wow
like wow.
like someone else naming their kid after someone they admire, I was going to name my fantasy organic burger chain after him.
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'Berk' Meaning
It's been my understanding from watching EASTENDERSfor decades, and BBC AMERICA, and reading Alan Moore and Grant Morrison comix that a 'Berk' is a clueless Titled British person; from "Burke's Peerage"...
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Well....
Drop me Jesus, through goal post of life! Sing it again, chillin!
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Oops! Opus made me...
Let me rephrase that!
Drop KICK me Jesus, through goal post of life! Sing it again, chillin.
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Ah Hell!
Drop KICK me Jesus, through THE goal post of life! Whew!
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ack!
Bill the Cat for President, 2008!
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"Berk" definition
Someone has suggested that it means merely "an idiot". Alas, if only. It means an idiot precisely the same way that "a cunt" does. And that's specifically its English slang usage... mostly southern England, working class. Confirmed by no less than my old friend--rest his godless soul-- Douglas Adams, an expert on foul English phrases.
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He's Right...
...it's rhyming slang. Berkeley Hunt. Ahem. Work it out yourself.
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Berk is rhyming slang...
from Berkley Hunt.... let's leave it at that.
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Thank You Berkley Breathed!
"Loose tails" was one of the first books I ever read, and I have loved Opus ever since. Growing up as a kid that didn't fit in, Opus was my inspiration, and he got me through some tough times. For years I had been hoping you would write "Mars needs Women", because I nearly died laughing the first time I saw that strip with the space suited alien flying his flag with that slogan written on it, after he had landed his tiny flip top saucer in front a bemused Opus and completely oblivious Oliver (it's been a while so I might have gotten the characters wrong). "Mars Needs Moms" is not quite the same message, but it's equally as powerful.
Thanks for the decades of great laughs, and I am glad that you have come to Salon. I knew you would end up gracing Salon's Sunday edition with Opus eventually, because Opus and Salon just fit together too well. I look forward to sharing the new chapters of Opus with my kids.
PS I think it's time the kids in Opus grew up. I always figured Milo would marry Ronald Ann, and I looked forward to seeing Binkley go bald, get a miniature dog that he would call "Rambo", and having a daughter he named Dolly Parton that would insult him on a regular basis (interestingly that is almost exactly how my life developed).
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Satire?
The fucking -- excuse me -- celebrities have invaded our turf and don't plan to leave. Everyone -- and I mean everyone -- who has a household name is lined up and booked on the "Today" show to promote their children's book.
I can't tell whether this is satire or not.
I mean, Berkeley Breathed is not exactly a traditional children's picture book author. If he had submitted these manuscripts without the huge success of Bloom County in the background I strongly doubt they'd have been published. Robert McCloskey didn't make his name in some other genre before he wrote Make Way for Ducklings. The back flap for Mars Needs Moms includes the "young and old alike" language that is a telltale sign of an adult author invading the children's book turf.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. It does upset midlist authors who fear that their ability to get published is being injured by the presence of celebrity authors and adult authors producing works "for all ages" that are shelved with children's books. But it doesn't seem to me that these books compete with traditional picture books. I imagine they are purchased at Sam's Club more often than at The Tattered Cover, or even B&N.
But you can't have it both ways. You can't remark that publishers figured out that what they should do is put adult content into heavily illustrated books with few words, thereby expanding their marketplace (a la Van Allsberg), creating an environment for your own work, and then complain when publishers figure out that if the name on the cover is Princess Fergy or Julie Andrews, that they can sell more books.
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Rhetoric overused
How typical: he uses the rhetoric of PC "police" to mock those who question the status quo of motherhood. If he had done a children's book in which he only presented Jews as greedy or blacks as lazy, I doubt he'd be so pleased with himself in presenting a played-out stereotype while claiming he's a victim of the so-called "police" (as if criticism is now the equivalent of oppression).
There's a problem with this image of a mother whose sole existence is to serve her children (and husband) because it's dehumanizing, and it *does* condemn those women who not only have careers but also stay-at-home moms that dare to take care of themselves once in a while as somehow immoral.
Actual political correctness is the cowering of objective truth to cultural convention. Since opinion is not fact, the term PC cannot apply here. If anything, the idea of a mother who not only has a career but--gasp--values herself as an individual is a notion that is met with hysterical shrieks of, "Bad mother!" as if was a crime against the state.