Pump It!

In today’s For Better or For Worse, the basic point was that Grandpa Jim managed to communicate to Michael Patterson he was excited (or pumped) about Michael’s impending success. The essential flaw of the strip was that Grandpa Jim felt the need to go to the picture book and point to a car and a gas station to get this idea across, when he could have more easily pointed to himself for “me” and put two fingers in the air for “too”. Lynn Johnston wanted to show Grandpa Jim supported Michael and she wanted to show Grandpa Jim using the picture book and she wanted to make a wordplay joke. This is what happens when the author focuses on the devices of the story rather than the story itself. I see it all the time in Hollywood movies, where there are clear “Wouldn’t it be neat if…” times which are not followed by someone saying, “Yes, but it doesn’t serve the story because…” times. In order to accomplish what Lynn Johnston wanted to accomplish, she needed to have a more complex message being passed by Grandpa Jim than a simple affirmation of his support; but not so complex it could not be told by a picture in a book.

For example, Jim could point to a picture of an airplane and then a picture of a TV anchor, and Mike could get the message Jim is concerned about him having to travel and do interviews to support his best seller. Then Mike could make a pun saying, “Don’t worry, grandpa. My career as an author may be ‘taking off’ but I still live in Milborough.” That’s pretty weak, but it would serve Lynn’s desires better and still make sense. As it is, Grandpa Jim went through a lot of effort to communicate something, which would been done more easily with hand gestures.

The early morning posts in April’s Real Blog had Zapata and Zenobia (I presume aprilp_katje) discussing their upcoming lunchtime discussion with Jeremy Jones. I ended up playing off the term “pumped” with a sexual connotation and included susannamoodie’s Zandra Larson in the mix of it. One of my wife’s favourite songs right now is The Black-Eyed Peas “Pump It” which, if you can understand the verses (which is difficult considering the rappers have the usual problem rappers have of very poor enunciation), has the dual meaning of “pump up the volume of the song” and “their success in ‘pumping’ girls they meet in nightclubs’”. I decided to also key off the strip phrase “I’ve been talking way too fast” to show the girls are leaving Jeremy in the dust with a series of double-entendres involving pumps, gas stations, and filling gas tanks. I also had to drop in the April lines on drumming with Gerald from her February monthly letter and its clearly intended double meanings.

Then webmistress Stephanie Doleweerd updated the website descriptions of Constable Paul Wright and Susan Dokis and it allowed me to introduce another Paul letter and the Ojibway for the verb form of pump. Overall, it was a good day for ARB posting for me, anyway. Tomorrow, I am off with the kids to the Renaissance Faire, to fulfill our deep-seated desires to be white and nerdy.

Tomorrow's strip: Surprisingly Mike is gone and we are back to the Grandpa Jim / Iris interaction. I thought I would get to do one more Mike overnight post, but I guess not.