Comments on: Disconcerting Realization of the Day

By: Matthew

Matthew — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 07:03:19 +0000

Todd, didn’t Superman do all this spinning the planet backwards stuff just so he could stay young? I could never maintain any interest in the unbelievable doings of that comic. It seemed to ask for much too strong a suspension of disbelief.

By: Todd

Todd — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 06:48:42 +0000

I got over this “so-and-so’s older than fictional character” thing when I realized I was older than Superman.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 06:40:42 +0000

Oh, P.S.: I agree that McCartney should stop dyeing his hair. It’s time for hair & face to live in peace.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 06:39:21 +0000

I enjoy all these remakrs about the aging of fictional charavers. We’ve lost focus on the strip, however. (1) it’s not funny, but, then again, when was any FUNKY or CRANKSHAFT funny. (B) Paul McCartney gave “Yesterday” the working title of “Scrambled eggs”, because he wanted to rmember the tune & the rhythm & because the tune came to him as he woke. (III) “Yesterday” is a SONG. Crankshaft is renaming PEOPLE. It ain’t quite the same.

By: DanV

DanV — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 04:37:59 +0000

Oddly, Crankshaft’s daughter Pam and her husband and children have aged quite a bit in the past few years, while Crankshaft has remained about the same.

By: arvy

arvy — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 03:45:29 +0000

Jay, you are correct - I forgot about Ryan.

You think Blofeld was from Sicily? Inconceivable!

Then again, there is this famous line: “You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The first is never enter a land war in Asia. The second, only slightly less well known is this: No astronaut would enter the capsule carrying his air conditioner!”

By: Mark in Boston

Mark in Boston — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 20:29:13 +0000

Conan Doyle hated the character of Sherlock Holmes and licensed him to anyone who wanted him. William Gillette wrote the first Sherlock Holmes stage play (complete with deerstalker cap, calabash pipe, magnifying glass and “elementary, my dear fellow”) in 1899. Gillette said to Doyle, “I hope you don’t mind if I marry him off at the end.” Doyle said “I don’t mind if you kill him.”

So Sherlock Holmes fell in love and got married in 1899 — but of course not in the Conan Doyle canon. Gillette’s play was also notable for special effects: it was lit by electricity and had the first-ever “blackout” scene, going from fully-lit to pitch dark in an instant.

By: Elyrest

Elyrest — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 16:06:56 +0000

chuckers (22) - Ah, but we weren’t just talking about literature here. That should have been obvious by the James Bond reference.

Charlene (24) - “Experts” usually put Holmes’s birth in 1854 which would make him 33 in his first work (1887) and 73 in his last (1927). That would mean that he could easily be middle-aged in films. Basil Rathbone was 47 when he began playing Holmes, Jeremy Brett was 51 and even Robert Downey, Jr., who people think of being a young Holmes, is 45.

By: Charlene

Charlene — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 13:24:36 +0000

The movies are also why we think of the two of them as old. Sherlock Holmes was about 27 in the first story, Watson about 31.

By: George P

George P — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 10:25:47 +0000

The Simpsons has handled the passage of time while the characters remain the same age by dragging the flashbacks along with them.

Yes, the Sherlock Holmes thing in the movies was just setting the films in the present. In the thirties Moriarty was a gangster. In the forties he was working with the Nazis.