for 29 May 1998. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Sleepsons

Subject: Who you lookin' at?

Suck, of all pubs, shouldn't
go 'round crying about the
derivative nature of media.

To finger-wag Groening,
especially, is perverse;
finger yourself instead!
Groening, recall, is the font
from which Suck sucked the
whole "fin de siècle
dating" deal almost verbatim
(and it was as funny as a
drunken weasel in heat the
second time around as well).

And "Ersatz?" Come on ...

Plus Groening, along with his
writers/actors, is
responsible for more laughs
(post-bong-hit and otherwise)
than you can waggle a penis
at.

So go fuck with John Tesh or
something.

Yours in non-gratitude,

Steve McNally
<:steve.mcnally@prodigy.net>:

We're not wallowing in our
crocodile tears, Steve. We're
soaking in 'em. Way ahead of
you on the Groening thing,
Steve-O. Go to
http://www.thefinger.com,
click on the "thumb" icon,
and voilà! An article
titled "Sucking Our Own."
(It's not clear whether you
are positing "drunken weasels
in heat" as the be-all and
end-all of yuks, but sounds
like a better show than most
of what appears in prime
time.)

(Been writing as Ersatz in
Suck since spring of '95,
since February '92 in my zine
of the same name, so the
querulousness comes a bit
late. Been faking it for
years.)

And John Tesh? Talk about
easy targets. Ya want Yanni
jokes, try the Times Op-Ed
page. Anyway, Tesh is a lousy
lay.

Thanks fer readin',

Ersatz

That there is nothing new
under the sun was old news
even when it was written. The
human life span remains
unchanged (one birth, one
death; see Neil Gaiman's
Death for further
discussion), and we are still
born astride the grave. Why
else was I kept up too late
last night watching PBS
showing the adventure stories
of that 400-year-old
deadwhitemale Willy S.?

But I actually wanted to call
your attention to David
Drake's novel The Voyage. Mr.
Drake is an interesting man:
He saw combat (as an
observer!) with an armored
unit in 'Nam, came back to
the world to get a law degree
and a minor nervous
breakdown, reads classical
Greek and Latin, and writes
science fiction. In The
Voyage, he chose to retell
the voyage of Jason and the
Argonauts.

This is, of course, an old
story; Homer makes reference
to it. However, the version
best known today is that of
Apollonius of Rhodes in the
third century BCE. (I've
cribbed this; I don't read
classical languages.) Drake
finds Apollonius' version
unworkable, for an odd
reason: Apollonius wrote in a
time of general peace, but
Jason's story is set in a
time of random violence.
(Recall that Odysseus is
asked, in his travels, if he
is a trader or a pirate, with
no sarcasm: Both were
considered typical
occupations at the time.)
Drake prefers to tell the
story in another tone, with
another subtext: Put armed
men in harm's way, and they
will do whatever it takes to
live. You probably won't like
the results. An important
lesson, especially in a time
that assumes "surgical
strikes" and "limited
interventions." And a damn
fine novel, one I recommend.

In other words, one writer
has taken over another's plot
almost completely, but to
tell a totally different
story.

Have I wasted your time this
long all for The Simpsons? Of
course not. Merely a reminder
that even if the plots don't
change, the stories do.

Alan Kornheiser,
The Doctor Is IN

There may be nothing new
under the sun, but a new Alan
Kornheiser letter is a thing
of beauty. How y'been
keeping?

Willy S. - because he
(re)writes the best plays?
(Did you ever see The Madness
of King George? Well-acted,
well-made movie, a cut way
above the usual. But toward
the end, there's a scene
where Nigel Hawthorne is
sitting in the garden
recuperating from his
crazy-attack, and he starts
reading out loud from Lear.
It's a dangerous thing for a
director to do: within a few
lines I was starting to
think, yeah this is a decent
movie, but why am I here when
I could be home reading the
Bard?)

Homer makes reference to it
... Homer Simpson?!? (Oops,
sorry 'bout dat.)

The Voyage sounds good, I may
even pick it up. I actually
have no particular truck with
reworking old stories, so
long as it's done well. I've
got one for you by Borges,
which is short enough to
retype here in toto:

THE PLOT
To make his horror complete,
Caesar, pressed to the foot
of a statue by the impatient
daggers of his friends,
discovers among the blades
and faces the face of Marcus
Junius Brutus, his
protégé,
perhaps his son, and ceasing
to defend himself he
exclaims, "You too, my son!"
Shakespeare and Quevedo
revive the pathetic cry.
Destiny takes pleasure in
repetition, variants,
symmetries: Nineteen
centuries later, in the south
of the province of Buenos
Aires, a gaucho is attacked
by other gauchos. As he
falls, he recognizes an
adopted son of his and says
to him with gentle reproof
and slow surprise (these
words must be heard, not
read), "Pero che!" He is
being killed, and he does not
know he is dying so that a
scene may be repeated.

(Shit, I wish I'd remembered
that "repetition, variants,
symmetries" line before I
wrote the piece....)

Thanks (as always) fer
readin',

Ersatz

Nothing Lasts Forever

Unfortunately, today's Suck
was funnier than the last
Seinfeld.

Ted
<ted@light.on.ca>

I agree - and it wasn't even
a particularly funny Suck.

Huck

Have you actually ever been
on the Kramer reality tour?
For that matter, has anyone
ever been on it? What will
happen to it now? Will it go
the way of Vaughn
What'shisname who had made
such a fine living doing JFK
impersonations until suddenly
they weren't funny? Or Robin
Williams' Mork, which became
less funny (so he says) when
the real aliens came? Or will
it, and he, go on as Jerry
carries on in syndication,
never aging, never changing,
never growing up; a marriage
clearly made in heaven?

Alan Kornheiser
<ASKORNHEISER@prodigy.net>

I saw somewhere that Kenny
Kramer says the end of the
show has led to a boom in his
tour business, but I imagine
that's a temporary
phenomenon. As the "real"
Kramer, his value as an
entertainment entity was
based solely on the fake
Kramer's existence - and now
that Michael Richards is just
Michael Richards, simply
being Kenny Kramer has no
meaning or value anymore.

Huck

<briankay@UDel.Edu>

Rich or not, he's still the
Gilligan of the '90s. Lucky
for him, The Love Boat's
sailing again.

Huck