Calvin and Hobbes
I've been trying to remember when was the first time I saw a comic strip of Calvin and Hobbes, but I can't pinpoint it. Maybe was around the Xmas my sister gave my dad one of Bill Waterson's books, but somehow I think it was before that.
Anyway, over the weekend I saw that the whole collection is up for sale: three huge books going for around two hundred bucks. It would be awesome to have it on my coffee table, but first I'll have to get me a coffee table. But as tempting as it sounds, I'd rather get those two Franklin and go snow skiing -the best stuff in life is not what you get in a store, but the one that is kept in your mind and that can be brought up whenever and wherever you want, like the memoirs of a day skiing in the snow.
Or like the memoirs I have from summer 1991, down in Louisville Kentucky.
That summer was the last leg of my exchange student year in the US, spent in a miserable farm in Eastern Kentucky. In those previous eleven months I had the chance to attend high school with a whole bunch of highlanders that didn't know how a shower looked like; feed the sheeps and goats in the farm three times a day every fucking day; clean the dog poo of the 56 dogs around me; kill one rat in my first week upon arrival and an squirrel with a .22 later that winter; date my first blonde hair girlfriend; and have to interact with every possible animal known to a city boy like me including my little brother Donny.
Louisville was a that time like a trip to the International Space Station would be today: a blast! Even though Louisville is perhaps smaller than CLT, the thing is that I was there with some of those highlanders in some school organized trip, and that spelled nothing more than non-stop drinking and other guilty pleasures. I remember that I went shopping one day [I use to enjoy shopping back in those days] and among other stuff I got me two books of Calvin and Hobbes. I was planning in giving one to my dad and the other one to my younger sister, who was too young to protest at that time and therefore I'll end up keeping both books for me. That night back in the hotel while waiting for around ten boxes of pizza with the highlanders and sipping some beers, I started readings the cartoons and suddenly it hit me.
I started laughing and couldn't stop! I laughed so much and so hard that it became painful and the highlanders thought that I was having some sort of strange South American seizure, or whatever strange illness people over in South America carry with them -or wherever South America is! I laughed and laughed and even though I put the book away, every time I'd remember those pages I'd have another "seizure".
This last Sunday when I saw the C&H book, it was open right on the page that made me laugh so much so many years ago! [are there coincidences in this life?]. And it made me smile again; both remembering my time in KY when it first happen, and by just reading that little sequence that I know by heart today, as I've read it so many times over the years: Calvin and Hobbes after getting in some sort of trouble are sent to play in the garage, but the car is in there and they don't have much space. So they decide to push the car out a little bit so that they can have more room. . . and they end up ditching the car. Fucking hilarious! Just writing about it gets a laugh out of me.
Anyway the thing is that that cartoon is so fucking well done and smart, that I've even had complete discussions about what really happens in C&H world. The main point, of course, is whether Hobbes is real or not; whether he's a real "person" and becomes a teddy tiger only when other people is around, or if is the other way around. My answer is always that of course he's just a fucking teddy tiger, don't look any further, and I even point out that there's plenty of evidence to sustain that claim.
But the truth of the matter is that deep inside me I know that is not true.
Anyway, over the weekend I saw that the whole collection is up for sale: three huge books going for around two hundred bucks. It would be awesome to have it on my coffee table, but first I'll have to get me a coffee table. But as tempting as it sounds, I'd rather get those two Franklin and go snow skiing -the best stuff in life is not what you get in a store, but the one that is kept in your mind and that can be brought up whenever and wherever you want, like the memoirs of a day skiing in the snow.Or like the memoirs I have from summer 1991, down in Louisville Kentucky.
That summer was the last leg of my exchange student year in the US, spent in a miserable farm in Eastern Kentucky. In those previous eleven months I had the chance to attend high school with a whole bunch of highlanders that didn't know how a shower looked like; feed the sheeps and goats in the farm three times a day every fucking day; clean the dog poo of the 56 dogs around me; kill one rat in my first week upon arrival and an squirrel with a .22 later that winter; date my first blonde hair girlfriend; and have to interact with every possible animal known to a city boy like me including my little brother Donny.
Louisville was a that time like a trip to the International Space Station would be today: a blast! Even though Louisville is perhaps smaller than CLT, the thing is that I was there with some of those highlanders in some school organized trip, and that spelled nothing more than non-stop drinking and other guilty pleasures. I remember that I went shopping one day [I use to enjoy shopping back in those days] and among other stuff I got me two books of Calvin and Hobbes. I was planning in giving one to my dad and the other one to my younger sister, who was too young to protest at that time and therefore I'll end up keeping both books for me. That night back in the hotel while waiting for around ten boxes of pizza with the highlanders and sipping some beers, I started readings the cartoons and suddenly it hit me.
I started laughing and couldn't stop! I laughed so much and so hard that it became painful and the highlanders thought that I was having some sort of strange South American seizure, or whatever strange illness people over in South America carry with them -or wherever South America is! I laughed and laughed and even though I put the book away, every time I'd remember those pages I'd have another "seizure".
This last Sunday when I saw the C&H book, it was open right on the page that made me laugh so much so many years ago! [are there coincidences in this life?]. And it made me smile again; both remembering my time in KY when it first happen, and by just reading that little sequence that I know by heart today, as I've read it so many times over the years: Calvin and Hobbes after getting in some sort of trouble are sent to play in the garage, but the car is in there and they don't have much space. So they decide to push the car out a little bit so that they can have more room. . . and they end up ditching the car. Fucking hilarious! Just writing about it gets a laugh out of me.
Anyway the thing is that that cartoon is so fucking well done and smart, that I've even had complete discussions about what really happens in C&H world. The main point, of course, is whether Hobbes is real or not; whether he's a real "person" and becomes a teddy tiger only when other people is around, or if is the other way around. My answer is always that of course he's just a fucking teddy tiger, don't look any further, and I even point out that there's plenty of evidence to sustain that claim.
But the truth of the matter is that deep inside me I know that is not true.
Jean-Francois was drunk at 10:14 PM
2 Comments:
i looooove calvin and hobbes! i brought an old copy of "it's a magical world" to my classroom and i have to make a list of who wants to see it next because they love it.
re, kentucky. did you choose to study there or did they just send you there? i studied physics with a guy from ecuador who had done a year in kentucky as well and he told the same story of the racist country bumpkins he had encountered.
it kind of makes me sad that they'd send international students to places of such ignorance!
I couldn't choose my destination, that was plain old "luck".
And the town was SO fucking small that the local newspaper interviewed me and ran the article in the front page! That gives you an idea the kind of hole in the wall I end up in.
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