What We Have Here, Is a Failure to Realize You’re Old
The nature of the mid-life crisis is that someone suddenly realizes that they are old, and tries to act young. I had 2 best friends in my younger days and their fathers both reacted to mid-life crises in different ways. Number #1 was they both got divorced. One dad starting riding a motorcycle and wearing black leather jackets. He was a college English professor with a grey beard and the effect was some startling. The other dad made a play for my friend’s girlfriend and much to my astonishment was successful and he married her. My friend sometimes speaks with pride at the accomplishments of his step-mom and I still find it freaky, even though my friend is well past the point of thinking such things. I guess he’s just happy his dad is married to someone he likes as a person. I don’t know.
What we see with John Patterson today is pretty clear evidence of his ongoing midlife crisis. John ogles women, he ogles his daughter, he has seen “dangerous information” on the internet, he likes to drive cool cars (for the sake of argument, let’s pretend that Crevasse station wagon actually is a cool car), and now he wants to pal around with his daughter’s boyfriend and her band mate, Duncan. His monthly letters have gone on incessantly about his desire to be considered cool and not old. John is 57 years old this year, and he is a grandfather twice over, so you would think he is beyond all that. He clearly is not. If anything, he is getting worse. This year in the letters, he has been moaning and groaning about how he lost his best friend, April. So, this thing with Gerald and Duncan may be part of his effort to get back into April’s life, indirectly through her boyfriend. So, he gets a little overzealous and speeds to show off to these boys. It’s perfectly understandable considering John appears to be one of those men that never actually gets out of his midlife crisis. It seems like a fairly realistic thing to me, since as I stated before, I have known men like this. But as for character building, what is does is show that John Patterson has an obsession with youth that is keeping him away from making friends his own age and also from being considered a reliable person. These ideas are bolstered by John paying so much attention to Gordon Mayes and Anthony Caine, who are also persons who were friends of his children and not friends of his own.
I had been making fun of John for his obsession with his children’s friends, but this week really put things in perspective. His obsession is dangerously out of control. Now, whether or not Elly will address his problem with anything other than lecture or unhinging her mouth for more full-throated screaming or throwing things at John is yet to be seen, if in fact it is going to be seen. We have gotten indications that the strip ends next year with John’s retirement and move to that little shack with the big yard down the road from where he lives now, so maybe he will grow up. Let’s hope that Lynn Johnston does something with it and doesn’t gloss over it with a series of bad puns.
On April’s Real Blog today, it was just me and the_berserker posting as Duncan today. Who would have thought a day without aprilp_katje? I think it must be a first. the_berserker posting as Duncan requested a character reference from Michael Patterson and my initial thought was to just have Michael make the character reference about himself. But then I thought, we have done that so many time with egotistical Mike. So, I took a different turn and decided to describe the full and rich life of Duncan via the monthly letters. Duncan in the letters is a much better friend to April than Duncan of the strip. I was surprised at how often the letters described something that Duncan did for April. I was also surprised at how often Duncan saved April from doing something stupid, described in April’s own monthly letters. So, I wrote up this whole long thing about Duncan, and the humour was derived from how often April got slammed. It was fun to focus on just one character like that.
What we see with John Patterson today is pretty clear evidence of his ongoing midlife crisis. John ogles women, he ogles his daughter, he has seen “dangerous information” on the internet, he likes to drive cool cars (for the sake of argument, let’s pretend that Crevasse station wagon actually is a cool car), and now he wants to pal around with his daughter’s boyfriend and her band mate, Duncan. His monthly letters have gone on incessantly about his desire to be considered cool and not old. John is 57 years old this year, and he is a grandfather twice over, so you would think he is beyond all that. He clearly is not. If anything, he is getting worse. This year in the letters, he has been moaning and groaning about how he lost his best friend, April. So, this thing with Gerald and Duncan may be part of his effort to get back into April’s life, indirectly through her boyfriend. So, he gets a little overzealous and speeds to show off to these boys. It’s perfectly understandable considering John appears to be one of those men that never actually gets out of his midlife crisis. It seems like a fairly realistic thing to me, since as I stated before, I have known men like this. But as for character building, what is does is show that John Patterson has an obsession with youth that is keeping him away from making friends his own age and also from being considered a reliable person. These ideas are bolstered by John paying so much attention to Gordon Mayes and Anthony Caine, who are also persons who were friends of his children and not friends of his own.
I had been making fun of John for his obsession with his children’s friends, but this week really put things in perspective. His obsession is dangerously out of control. Now, whether or not Elly will address his problem with anything other than lecture or unhinging her mouth for more full-throated screaming or throwing things at John is yet to be seen, if in fact it is going to be seen. We have gotten indications that the strip ends next year with John’s retirement and move to that little shack with the big yard down the road from where he lives now, so maybe he will grow up. Let’s hope that Lynn Johnston does something with it and doesn’t gloss over it with a series of bad puns.
On April’s Real Blog today, it was just me and the_berserker posting as Duncan today. Who would have thought a day without aprilp_katje? I think it must be a first. the_berserker posting as Duncan requested a character reference from Michael Patterson and my initial thought was to just have Michael make the character reference about himself. But then I thought, we have done that so many time with egotistical Mike. So, I took a different turn and decided to describe the full and rich life of Duncan via the monthly letters. Duncan in the letters is a much better friend to April than Duncan of the strip. I was surprised at how often the letters described something that Duncan did for April. I was also surprised at how often Duncan saved April from doing something stupid, described in April’s own monthly letters. So, I wrote up this whole long thing about Duncan, and the humour was derived from how often April got slammed. It was fun to focus on just one character like that.
posted by howard at 1:15 AM
6 Comments:
Sorry about my absence yesterday, explained here.
John really does seem unhinged in the current arc!
You don't need to apologize. I know the importance of a night out, when you have a small child in the house. How did you like "The Da Vinci Code"? The local Arizona reviewer raved over it.
I enjoyed it, but I haven't read the book, so I didn't have expectations about it based on that. Speaking of books, I picked up Bone, though I noticed later that it's volume II, so I guess I'll look for volume I another time. My husband may end up reading it before I do, since I've started something else.
BTW, I posted my attempt at a Clowesian April Patterson in the "Etc." thread at the meta. :)
aprilp_katje,
I loved your Clowesian April Patterson. I did not know you were so artistic.
There is a full volume, whole story Bone running about, but you may be ruled by the purchasing whims of your local library. There were about 56 issues of it published monthly. I don't know how many issues made up a single volume. Typically it's 4-6 issues, so there may be several volumes.
As for The Da Vinci Code, I have read the book and was not particularly enamoured of it, so if the movie is better, then that may be a good thing.
Thanks for the compliment about the drawing. Coincidentally, I spent the first two years of college at the same art school Clowes went to, though I transferred to a university and switched from art to film. That's one of the reasons I was curious about Art School Confidential, as I have some intimate knowledge of the school he used as his model for the one in the film. :)
Art and film? aprilp_katje. You have an interesting background. I would also be interested in your take on Art School Confidential when you finally get a chance to see it.
Tonight, we saw Over the Hedge, which was actually a nice kid's film. Not super great, but pretty good. My kids liked it a lot. I can recommend it to you.
Post a Comment
<< Home