Elgan speaks
...and her words thunder across the land

Crumb

Sunday, Jun. 25, 2006
11:40 p.m.
It was such a beautiful evening, following upon the heels of another gorgeous day, that Hubby said we should drive into town, park somewhere, and go for a walk; so we did that, parked at the feed store lot, and wandered over to the video store where we couldn't decide on a film to rent. He likes one kind of movie, I like another. So we got Crumb, a documentary about R0bert Crumb, the guy who drew "Keep on Trucking" and "Fritz the Cat" cartoons. I remember them from the early 70's, but I never knew anything about the cartoonist.

The DVD box said it was funny. It wasn't really. The film makers interviewed Robert and his two brothers, Charles and Max, and their mother actually made it onto celluloid for a bit. A very fucked-up family. The father was a violent, domineering tyrant, the mother was a wuss, the boys were all wimpish artistic types and the father was totally disappointed in them. There were two sisters as well, but they declined to be interviewed for the film. The older brother, Charles, had been on anti-depressants and tranquilizers for about 20 years and actually committed suicide a year after the filming. The younger brother, Max, is some kind of ascetic Buddhist who sits on a bed of nails every day for a couple of hours, also a very gifted oil painter. The cartoonist himself is admittedly a misogynist. It shows up in his portrayal of women as sexual objects.

Having watched it, I can see how parents have such incredible power when it comes to fucking up their children's lives. The older brother had never had a girlfriend, never had sex, never left the house, and had already attempted suicide several times previously. All the brothers were very articulate, intellectual types, but so incredibly unhappy. Only Robert, who had become rich and famous and hence attractive to women, even had a slightly normal relationship with the world at large. Very sad.

Anyway, there must have been something else I was going to talk about, like my having surprised the raccoon again last night while he went after whatever fun stuff was in the composter. He was so incredibly cute with his furry ears and little black mask. I tied the lid of the composter onto it with string through the aeration slits, and I'm hoping that discourages him. Not that I want to be mean to the local fauna, I just don't want him in my composter.

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