spatch | (no subject)

The AP is reporting that Jeanne Kirkpatrick, the first woman U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has died at 80.

And my first reaction, swear to God, was "Bill The Cat must be crushed."

Sure, I've previously eulogized Caspar Weinberger with Opus' tender ode, but this kinda just hammers the point home to me. I can now face facts and admit that everything I know about US foreign policy in the 1980s I learned from Berke Breathed.

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From:

giantfightbot.livejournal.com

I had the exact same thought. POOR BILL.

Perhaps I will sing a song about "Dats What Is My Iacocca" to cheer myself up.

Ah, Bloom County. I used to live kitty-corner from the house in Iowa City that Breathed used as the model for the gang's boarding house. It was thankfully unscarred in the tornado earlier this year, but not all buildings on College Street were so lucky.

From:

spatch

Didn't that 'model home' eventually become one of UIowa's real party houses? I know a few places were truly notorious and probably responsible for 75% the gossip on ISCA, and I dimly remember one of them being "the house that was the inspiration for the Bloom County house."

Then again, every college up and down the Northeast Corridor claimed one of its fraternities was the "real" inspiration for Animal House (Hint: It was the Dartmouth chapter of Alpha Delta Phi) so I can see how folklore could spread and encompass new stories and reputations.

From:

giantfightbot.livejournal.com

Hrm. I don't remember it being all that much of a party house, but all the ones I knew were further out of town. It might have been--I didn't goof around in college as much as I should have and so I was out of the loop.

There's also a famous strip in Bushnell's Turtle where Breathed talked about Iowa City. It's a bit dated now (the store Things Things Things is no more, alas) but the water still tastes like Spic N' Span, or at least it did when I was last there.