Vonnegut is old cool
I really like the older generation.
I have a lot in common with them. A slight bemusement with technology, dodgy knees, a love of old-fashioned, coronary inducing Sunday dinners.
The thing is, I don’t really have that many older people in my life. My parents are at the youngest end of quite large families, and so my grandparents had passed long before I was old enough to appreciate them.
I did, for a brief period in my life, have some adoptive grandparents. They belonged to my girlfriend at the time. Everyone else would whine about them… boring, interfering… but I never saw that. I was just so happy to have people in my life that had lived one. I don’t see them any more. I guess I could have gone through a long custody battle, but that would have been just odd.
Which takes me to my point. Vonnegut was my media grandfather.
Media relations (not that type of media relations) are people who you are only related to through a desire to fill a gap in your family, and the ability to put reality towards the back of your mind.
I’m aware of the similarities between having a media relation and just being a stalker. It’s a fine line.
Anyway, Vonnegut fitted the criteria for my surrogate relation. He was a gentleman of a certain age, and had lived a life not unlike some of my real grandparents. Furthermore he was witty and always available for advice. A role model, as such.
Sure, he would tell stories that wouldn’t really go anywhere, and he had a tendency to repeat himself in his later years… Go on, Grandpa, tell us again that story about the Asimov joke at the Humanist Association… But that’s exactly what I was after.
The problem is, even media relations are mortal. And now we’re approaching the third anniversary of his death… And I do miss him, terribly. The world is a little less interesting without him in it.
It makes me wonder if it’s time for me to find a new media grandparent…
A fine writer and a fine renderer of assholes.
.-= The Great Joe Bivins´s last blog ..PITCHER: Unpopular and Undead =-.
I’m very much enjoying his drawings, as much as his writing, of late.
I’d certainly have a set of these prints if I had a spare $4K knocking about (I don’t).
[...] * Kurt Vonnegut, humanist Santa. [...]
My media relation is Anatole Broyard, who was actually already dead when I discovered him. But I knew nothing about him- including his lifespan- when I picked up Kafka Was the Rage. It was my favorite book in the world when I was 19. I still pull it out every so often, to revisit him.
I haven’t been able to read his follow up biography, which tracks his fatal illness. I don’t want to watch my friend die.
And here’s a picture of the handsome devil. Yay 70s!
Handsome indeed. There was some “controversy” after his death about whether he hid his African American ancestry because he was light skinned. It seems that it was an open secret during his life.
Love this sketch.
Was also a fan of Vonnegut.
.-= Doc Pop´s last blog ..Unboxing Jeffrey Brown’s “Process” =-.
Thank you.
I believe he gets taught in schools in the US. Some schools. Possibly… I might just be a rumour.
I miss him too. So many people to miss, these days.
I hear you…
There’s a bit in Bill Hick’s stand up routine where he asks why it is that only the good die young. He had a point… And sure, Vonnegut wasn’t a teenager, but he certainly wasn’t an adult either.
You say media relations are mortal, but do they even necessarily have to be real? I can think of a few fictional characters that fit the profile…
Good point!
I should pick a fictional character… like Atticus Finch or Ronald Regan…
Seriously, does anyone have any suggestions for this?
Lol at Ronald Reagan. You already named my fictional choice, though, in Mr. Atticus Finch.
Well as an avid harry potter fan I would have recommended Dumbledore but unfortunately he is gone too!
On s serious note, fictionally i always loved Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the rye ( i seem to be surrounded by death in this post as J.D Salinger passed away!) not for anything spectacular but just the humanity of being of teen and the courage that he had to face life. It may be dated but the fact that the book has influenced so many people is outstanding as it will continue to do so for much longer.
.-= McClackers´s last blog ..New year blues =-.
i was waiting for somebody to mention Holden.
Salinger’s death was unfortunate, but we might get to see some post-mortem books.
Love the drawing, love the post and your concept of “media relation.” It’s like a having a real, imaginary friend. Real person, imagined relationship.
Again. I realise how close that is to the type of relationship stalkers have with the objcet of their attention…
But hey, it’s a good type of stalking, right?
Good kind of stalking indeed.
.-= sitting pugs´s last blog ..Off Topic: Today’s Verse 37 =-.
My media grandfather, Harry Reasoner, died years ago.
After him, I had Peter Jennings, who was my media boyfriend, but he died too.
I just think I’m bad luck.
.-= golfwidow´s last blog ..getting to know you 2010 =-.
>Rename Golfwidow, ‘Black Widow of media relationships’.
Did you hear the one about the man whose colon was removed, and now he’s not scared of anything because he has no asterisk?
.-= Erika Hammerschmidt´s last blog ..Abby and Norma #643 =-.
You really are on form with the puns! Top work, soldier.
Thanks! ‘Fraid I can’t take credit for it, though… it’s from the Almanac of Words at Play (which I recommend to every punster).
http://www.amazon.com/Almanac-Words-at-Play/dp/B001MVB438/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266884646&sr=8-5
.-= Erika Hammerschmidt´s last blog ..Abby and Norma #645 =-.
I honestly can’t say I relate to this at all. I grew up with out much tv or radio in my younger years.
Firstly it was because I wasn’t allowed to watch tv and the only radio station I was allowed to listen to was an oldies station.
Then it was because I just didn’t give a shit about what I heard or saw thru various forms of media.
Go teenage angst YEAH!
I guess the closest I could get is who I would trust as a reporter. Even then, now I am cynical and realise that they work for an agency which would require them to have a certain p.o.v.
.-= Ben´s last blog ..Frog =-.
You’ve put this thing of Vonnegut drawing assholes as asterisks in my head. There’s this PSA about steroid use that uses the slogan “Don’t be an *” which is much funnier now.
.-= The Great Joe Bivins´s last blog ..I Give You…Acoustafuckit: Part Deux! =-.
I could watch PSAs all day… we used to have some classics in the UK, about playing on railway tracks, and not sniffing solvents… and how to cross the road… lately though they’ve all been about viruses and Nigerian banking scams. The material just isn’t as good.
I’d quite like to see ones about things that make a little but important difference… ‘Tie your shoe laces’, ‘Hair products, the dangers of…’, that sort of thing.
You’ve raised a really good point there, Ben… I mean how many times have people met a ‘celebrity’ in real life only to find them disappointing? Rockstars who are cooler in song than in person, stand up comedians who just aren’ funny…
Never meet your idols… or distant relations…
It’s a good thing I met you first then!
i don’t have any ‘media’ grandparents.
i’m not even sure whom i could nominate.
how old is stephen king?
.-= Seraphine´s last blog ..Fountaingrove Winery: Part 2 =-.
I never thought of Mr Vonnegut as a relative, though perhaps I might have if I had discovered him younger.
He was, however, the only “celebrity” to have ever made me cry on their death. I think he could have had a calming influence on the whole world if he had been around a few more years.
Nevertheless, I believe he has stated somewhere, he has said everything he had to say. I know that he taught me more about how I should try to live than the bible ever did, and that he made me a better person.
I still miss him greatly.
Breakfast of Champions pretty much *is* my Bible. As far as books go. If I have to get sworn in for anything I’m going to see if I can get them to swear me in on a vinyl copy of Dark Side of the Moon.
.-= The Great Joe Bivins´s last blog ..I Give You…Acoustafuckit: Part Deux! =-.
I had some extra time today and decided to read some of the Wikipedia article on Vonnegut. But biographies tend to raise more questions for me than they answer. They dwell on the relevant, and my brain always seems more interested in the tangential.
Like, I wish we knew why his mother committed suicide on Mother’s Day. I hope he wasn’t an unappreciative son. (Maybe he didn’t give her any Mother’s Day presents because she acted like an *.)
.-= Erika Hammerschmidt´s last blog ..Abby and Norma #651 =-.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siikXBLTd8s
Me in action in the last few minutes. At 4:24 I’m getting out of the truck and then it is me in the foreground with the hose making swirly patterns with foam
.-= Ben´s last blog ..A bin for sleeping =-.
the person probably most responsible for the way I’ve grown up, and sort of a surrogate uncle or parent, is Douglas Adams. When i finally got around to reading The Salmon of Doubt i was depressed or days. Thankfully, i can always go back to his books whenever I’m feeling particularly depressed, of could, if i hadn’t lent them out.
Douglas Adams gives some astonishingly good advice… we were talking about him just the other night. A fine choice.
looool very funny, how can do you say?
.-= yooking´s last blog ..Hedefi Bombala =-.
Met Vonnegut once. Fortunately had read everything he had written many times over before then. Love him dearly, may he rest in peace. Every day I work to his ideals, or what I understand them to be from moment to moment.
Theodore Sturgeon as well. I’m avid. Sigh.