Fight Flyer with Flyer
I am not sure what to make of today’s For Better or For Worse. First of all, why is John Patterson upset with receiving junk mail? When it comes to irritations of life, junk mail is easily solved by the same method John Patterson uses in the strip, i.e. toss it in the waste bin.
Second of all, what is it that John Patterson could possibly put on his flyer to the junk mail companies that would have any effect? Let’s say, for example, it is a grocery story mailing a list of their weekly sales to all the people who live in the neighbourhood of the grocery store. A letter from John Patterson comes in that says: "Don’t tell me about your sales"? "Don’t send me your mailers"? The person who received such a thing on behalf of the grocery store would consider John Patterson to be a maroon, and would chuck his letter the same place John chucked their flyer.
Perhaps this is the point Elly is trying to make with her “fight flyer with flyer” comment. In other words, she is pointing out the hypocrisy of saying you don’t like something by doing the exact same thing you don’t like. However, the visual imagery does not match this. Elly looks happy this is something John is doing and John appears bemused by Elly’s word play, instead of disturbed by it. Consequently it seems more like Elly is saying, “You give them a flyer, John, and see how they like them apples.”
Since this and every strip goes to Lynn Johnston and her current mental state, I can imagine what the source of her complaint may be. Lynn got rid of her staff, except for Liuba Liamzini who handles the accounting for her business. Now, there is no one to answer Lynn’s mail for her, and she has to do it herself. Lynn is tired of junk mail and must presume the rest of us are too. This strip is her personal flyer to the companies who send junk mail. If any of them still read this strip, they might cut it out and put on a bulletin board at their work. Maybe Lynn hopes they will read her strip and realize the error of their ways and stop sending junk mail.
As for the word play, the last time we saw this it was “Fighting foyer with foyer” in the 5/30/2005 strip. As in that situation, the Pattersons are fighting something that annoys them with an entirely inappropriate response that is even more annoying than the original annoyance. As far as that goes, it is nice to know that Michael Patterson will grow up to be just like his dad.
Second of all, what is it that John Patterson could possibly put on his flyer to the junk mail companies that would have any effect? Let’s say, for example, it is a grocery story mailing a list of their weekly sales to all the people who live in the neighbourhood of the grocery store. A letter from John Patterson comes in that says: "Don’t tell me about your sales"? "Don’t send me your mailers"? The person who received such a thing on behalf of the grocery store would consider John Patterson to be a maroon, and would chuck his letter the same place John chucked their flyer.
Perhaps this is the point Elly is trying to make with her “fight flyer with flyer” comment. In other words, she is pointing out the hypocrisy of saying you don’t like something by doing the exact same thing you don’t like. However, the visual imagery does not match this. Elly looks happy this is something John is doing and John appears bemused by Elly’s word play, instead of disturbed by it. Consequently it seems more like Elly is saying, “You give them a flyer, John, and see how they like them apples.”
Since this and every strip goes to Lynn Johnston and her current mental state, I can imagine what the source of her complaint may be. Lynn got rid of her staff, except for Liuba Liamzini who handles the accounting for her business. Now, there is no one to answer Lynn’s mail for her, and she has to do it herself. Lynn is tired of junk mail and must presume the rest of us are too. This strip is her personal flyer to the companies who send junk mail. If any of them still read this strip, they might cut it out and put on a bulletin board at their work. Maybe Lynn hopes they will read her strip and realize the error of their ways and stop sending junk mail.
As for the word play, the last time we saw this it was “Fighting foyer with foyer” in the 5/30/2005 strip. As in that situation, the Pattersons are fighting something that annoys them with an entirely inappropriate response that is even more annoying than the original annoyance. As far as that goes, it is nice to know that Michael Patterson will grow up to be just like his dad.
posted by howard at 12:34 AM
13 Comments:
howard,
The reason that John is so upset with junk mail that he does something stupid, futile and inappropriate is quite simple. As jjamele said, he's a Patterson using a minor annoyance as an excuse to avoid doing something useful with his time. Think of his fighting flyers with flyers as his way of shaving sheets; eventually, he will have model trains upon which to waste energy meant for more useful purposes.
That foyer strip really pissed me off- the Kelpfroths were absolutely right in complaining that the Pattersons were cluttering the foyer with kid's toys. That Mike thought it was a reasonable solution to run a tape down the middle was breathtakingly selfish and stupid- it doesn't change the fact that the foyer is supposed to be uncluttered, and it clearly didn't matter one damn that the Kelpfroths still had to look at the Patterson's junk in the foyer. Worst of all, Lovey was so in love with Mike and Dee that she let them get away with this behavior (and everything else, for that matter.)
Livingamongmorons
That Mike thought it was a reasonable solution to run a tape down the middle was breathtakingly selfish and stupid- it doesn't change the fact that the foyer is supposed to be uncluttered, and it clearly didn't matter one damn that the Kelpfroths still had to look at the Patterson's junk in the foyer.
It never seemed to occur to them that the Kelpfroths had the right to object to their behavior or to their own opinions. Winnie clearly suffered from migraines and Mel didn't want to trip over the junk the upstairs neighbors thoughtlessly and dangerously left lying around. The fact that Lovey was in love with idiots who didn't insist that she get her barn of a building up to code tells me she was a perfect match to her firetrap: a subpar landlady is the ideal owner of a third-rate building.
(Of course, what really bugs me is that that Dee and Mike turned Mira's offer to live in a decent building down flat. Getting Dee away from Elly seems to me to be an act of mercy and compassion.)
Well yes, it was beyond ridiculous that Dee, who in her monthly letters was always dreaming about a quiet little house near the woods, so quickly rejected the idea of living in a nicer place simply because it was her mom's idea. So the Pattersons, who could easily afford something much better, insisted on living in squalor and making life miserable for their poor neighbors. And we were supposed to buy the Kelpfroths as villains. Weird.
DreadedCandiru2,
…he's a Patterson using a minor annoyance as an excuse to avoid doing something useful with his time. Think of his fighting flyers with flyers as his way of shaving sheets; eventually, he will have model trains upon which to waste energy meant for more useful purposes.
Ironically, the real John Patterson, Dr. Rod Johnston did useful things with his time. Instead of just doing model trains, he actually established a model train building business of sorts. And he worked with the local community college, and did dentistry for South American countries, and worked to renovate the waterfront of his community, etc. He is obviously not John Patterson. As always, every character in this strip is Lynn Johnston.
Livingamongmorons,
That Mike thought it was a reasonable solution to run a tape down the middle was breathtakingly selfish and stupid-
It was like something Laverne and Shirley or Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble or The Brady Bunch or King Solomon would do (with a dispute over a baby). In each case, the point is not the dispute, but how breathtakingly selfish and stupid the characters are, and how they come to realize it. In the strip I linked, if the next strip had been Mira Sobinski ripping up the tape and apologizing to the Kelpfroths for her idiot son-in-law (preferably in front of Mike), or Lovey Salzman saying, “Mike. I tripped over the tape. I know you are having problems, but don’t go meshuginna” then I could tolerate the story better. As it turned out, Lynn Johnston was the real person being breathtakingly stupid to think such an idea would ever work, and the tape magically disappeared and was never mentioned again.
Well yes, it was beyond ridiculous that Dee, who in her monthly letters was always dreaming about a quiet little house near the woods, so quickly rejected the idea of living in a nicer place simply because it was her mom's idea.
The nice thing about Lynn Johnston, is the more she tried to make certain characters into villains, the more she succeeded in getting me to empathize with them. The backfire on plotting worked best when Lynn Johnston decided she needed to make Mira Sobinski into a villain during Liz’s wedding. It had the side effect of showing Deanna working with her mother to make dresses for the wedding, and handling the kids before the wedding. Mira may have been handing those kids chocolate (evil), but she was actually with her daughter and her family. Elly, on the other hand, didn’t even talk to her daughter on her wedding day, until Liz forced her to tell her why Grandpa Jim wasn’t there. So, who’s the daughter getting along with her mother?
There was no way Lynn was going to portray that side of her husband in this strip- doing so would totally show up Elly and make her feel even more worthless than she clearly did.
From the way she DID portray John, I have to think that Lynn was extremely resentful of her husband's willingness to walk the walk instead of being satisfied to talk the talk- like everyone in the strip does.
DreadedCandiru2-
You know that Lynn was surrounded by lickspittles because nobody in that room pointed out how stupid and juvenile and Brady Bunch/ I Love Lucy Dumb the Tape Down the Foyer idea was. If Lynn had just ONE person working for her not terrified of getting on her bad side, that one person would have urged Lynn to reject this.
Livingamongmorons,
From the way she DID portray John, I have to think that Lynn was extremely resentful of her husband's willingness to walk the walk instead of being satisfied to talk the talk- like everyone in the strip does.
Given how she portrayed shoot-from-the-hip Mira as a crazy-ass loose cannon meddler who wanted to ruin everyone's Egg McMuffin, I'd say Lynn has it in for people who are honest enough to say what they want and act on their ideals; she'd rather ring her hands, bow her head and say that she'd like to help but......
You know that Lynn was surrounded by lickspittles because nobody in that room pointed out how stupid and juvenile and Brady Bunch/ I Love Lucy Dumb the Tape Down the Foyer idea was. If Lynn had just ONE person working for her not terrified of getting on her bad side, that one person would have urged Lynn to reject this.
And promptly been fired for not seeing how great Mike's solution was; Lynn, although superficially charming, seems to be a mean-spirited child. The ludicrous idea works great if you're a bratty teeny-bopper who has a poster of Sharp Pain (or whatever it is they call Ashley Tisdale) from High School Musical on her wall; if you're an adult, you'd have to be beamed to the slave colony on Terra Belleview.
Livingamongmorons,
From the way she DID portray John, I have to think that Lynn was extremely resentful of her husband's willingness to walk the walk instead of being satisfied to talk the talk- like everyone in the strip does.
I would have to agree. Even on the website, the only part of Rod Johnston’s life which was shown was the medical trips to South America, and that was only because Lynn wanted to indicate the importance of her own role in those trips as supply hander-outer. If Lynn was proud of her husband, it would have been mentioned and included in the strip. Why not make Dr. John Patterson look better? I think it would have helped the strip for him to not be such a complete buffoon.
If Lynn had just ONE person working for her not terrified of getting on her bad side, that one person would have urged Lynn to reject this.
It may not be a person working for Lynn, but someone has given her feedback on the strip. That tape down the foyer never reappeared after its initial appearance. Another example I can think of was when Grandpa Jim had his stroke, and Dr. Elly gave her diagnosis for his recovery, which was completely off the mark for the effects of stroke. The next time Grandpa Jim and the stroke came up, you could tell that Lynn had done a little research on strokes. In both cases, someone Lynn respected had to tell her she was wrong, and she needed to fix it.
DreadedCandiru2,
And promptly been fired for not seeing how great Mike's solution was; Lynn, although superficially charming, seems to be a mean-spirited child.
As we have discussed before, my impression is that the people who worked for Lynn, prior to this last year when she let the all go except Liuba, liked working for her a lot. As near as I can tell from things people from Corbeil have written to me on this blog, the people who had the most problem with Lynn were those persons who continued to have some kind of relationship with her ex-husband. It’s nice to think of Lynn as a tyrant who ruled her employees with an iron fist, and who were too frightened to question her creative judgment; but I have seen no evidence of this.
howard,
It’s nice to think of Lynn as a tyrant who ruled her employees with an iron fist, and who were too frightened to question her creative judgment; but I have seen no evidence of this.
That's true; she's a great boss with nice employees whose opinion she probably respects; too bad for her that they all watched the same lousy sitcoms growing up, ain't it?
They can't see that the line on the foyer is stupid any more than she can because it worked for all their favorite sitcom characters. She doesn't go out of her way to attract like-minded people, it just happens.
dreadedcandiru2,
She doesn't go out of her way to attract like-minded people, it just happens.
There was a Canadore College alumni article which talked about Lynn and her hiring practices. Almost everyone who worked for her was a Canadore graduate, and often recruited people for Lynn among their friends at Canadore. They live in Corbeil and get to work a decent job for a woman who is considered to be a national treasure. If she puts something stupid in her comic strip, why should they care? It is us fans of the strip and its characters who get upset. For all we know, someone on her staff told Lynn the tape was stupid, and Lynn never used it again. I don't know.
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