My Favorite Memory of Bil Keane

My Favorite Bil Keane Family Circus cartoon

Though he published nearly 100 books, not a single one of them is available for the Kindle. For more than 50 years, cartoonist Bil Keane wrote the one-panel Family Circus comic strips which appeared in 1,500 newspapers around the world. Some readers complained that its sweet familiarity was out of place in the modern world. But when Bil Keane collided with wise guys, both on Amazon.com and on the web, he ultimately proved that he was a very good sport.

I’d like to share that story today, because Bil Keane died Tuesday, less than a year before his 90th birthday. The L.A. Times remembers that he’d seemed almost proud to be old-fashioned when they interviewed him in 1990, and the cartoonist explained that he wasn’t going just for punchlines. “I don’t just try to be funny. Many of my cartoons are not a belly laugh. I go for nostalgia, the lump in the throat, the tear in the eye, the tug in the heart….”

Keane drew those comic strips — and regularly collected them together into books — starting all the way back in 1961. He based the mother in the cartoon family on his own wife — also named Thelma — and the family’s father’s, of course, was named Bil. Even the children in the strip were modeled after Keane’s own five children, according to the L.A. Times. One of his son’s eventually grew up to be an animator at Walt Disney Studios.

But it was Keane’s daily comic strip that made him famous — so much so that after several decades, it became an easy target for other would-be humorists. For example, just a few years after Amazon.com was launched, Keane’s books began receiving some very strange reviews from Amazon customers who seemed to be taking them just a little too seriously. (“Having already taken his place among the company of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Dostoyevsky, with the publication of Daddy’s Cap Is On Backwards Bil Keane now emerges as the master of them all…”) It was one of the first fake reviews that I ever read on Amazon, and its humor rests on everyone’s familiarity with The Family Circus characters — and the fact that the review is obviously describing the wrong plot. “The turning point of the narrative is the episode where Jeffy sells his soul to Mephistopheles for power and knowledge, yet this can be fully understood only in contrast to the many events that precede and follow it — such as the haunting scene where little Billy carries his father out of the burning city on his shoulders, or the passage where PJ, now the viceroy of Egypt, reveals himself to his brothers as the boy whom they sold into servitude years before…”

Soon dozens of fake reviews sprouted up on several of Keane’s Family Circus collections — and I thought Bil Keane handled it like a true gentleman. When he was reached for a comment by the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, they reported that Keane laughed and said genially that while some of it was in bad taste — some of it was also funny, and “I assume my readers are intelligent enough to know I didn’t do the bad stuff…”

Keane was also apparently friends with cartoonists who drew some of the ‘hipper” cartoons. According to Wikipedia, Keane once even agreed to draw his characters into a special series of Zippy the Pinhead strips, while their dialogue was provided by its creator, Bill Griffith. And while the Pearls Before Swine strip used to mock The Family Circus, in real life, the two cartoonists behind the strips were good friends. In fact two years ago, Bil Keane even wrote the introduction to a Pearls Before Swine collection.

But the amateur satirists — and the internet — weren’t through with Keane yet. By the 1990s, Keane’s characters were also appearing in a rowdy (and wholly unauthorized) “zine”. (Back before the dawn of ebooks and personal sites on the web, self-publishing authors would just photocopy things they’d written and drawn, circulating them through the mail or at live concerts.) One zine-ster decided to photocopy Keane’s newspaper comic strip, but then type in their own raunchier captions. A MacWorld columnist wrote that sometime back in the 1990s, if you posted your e-mail address in one of the internet newsgroups about comic strips, “this would set into motion a complex and mysterious chain of events that would ultimately result in an unmarked envelope with no return address arriving in your mailbox… and inside you’d find a handmade mini-comic entitled The Dysfunctional Family Circus!”

The zine eventually inspired a similar parody web site, which began inviting its readers to type in their own crazy captions for Keane’s Family Circus cartoons. And by 1995, when that site went down, a 25-year-old webmaster in Chicago had decided to keep the new tradition alive. Amazingly, for the next four years, he presided over the “Dysfunctional Family Circus” web site, and more than 2,500 enthusiastic people submitted crazy new captions for Keane’s cozy newspaper comic strip. (Like “I finally did it! All ten commandments in one day..!”) It proved to be very popular, and ultimately the webmaster and his friends picked through nearly half a million “alternate” captions, publishing dozens and dozens of the best ones (along with Keane’s original cartoon).

And then in a surreal moment, The Family Circus‘s lawyer” showed up, threatening legal action if the site wasn’t taken down. The defiant webmaster pondered a “freedom of speech” defense, and even posted more of Keane’s cartoons online, letting his community weave their own reactions into still more new captions for the strip. But this showdown finally ended in the most unexpected way imaginable. One day the webmaster picked up his phone, and discovered he was receiving a call from cartoonist Bil Keane himself.

Bil Keane was already 77 years old, and for the next 90 minutes, he engaged the 29-year-old webmaster in a long conversation. The webmaster never revealed what they talked about, but “…as we got further into the conversation, I just realized I couldn’t really go on doing what I’m doing,” he wrote later on his web page. Bil Keane had simply surprised him. “He’s actually a nice guy….”

It seems that Bil Keane’s real-life sweetness had won over the wild webmaster. He voluntarily removed all the Family Circus pictures from his site. Bil Keane even sent him a personal thank-you note — on Family Circus stationery that included the “Billy” character from the comic strip. In the end, the webmaster simply scanned that, and posted it in place of the other 500 strips.

I’ll remember that as the day when a moment of Bil Keane’s genuine warmth somehow magically escaped from his comic strip — and found its way out into the real world.

Bil Keane sends a memo about the Dysfunctional Family Circus

The Wise Guy Who Predicted the Future

Evan Prodromou sends a funny letter to Jeff Bezos about books for dogs and the Kindle

My friend Evan Prodromou’s a funny guy. Nearly ten years ago, Amazon sent him a promotional e-mail that was written in the voice of Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO. (“We’re doing an important test at Amazon.com that we wanted you to know about. Starting today, as a long-term test, you can get Free Super Saver Shipping on orders over $49…”) They even sent it from an e-mail address that made it look like a personal e-mail — JeffB@Amazon.com

So Evan took it on himself to write back!

“Cool! I appreciate your time and effort in personally overseeing this project and making sure I’m kept abreast of the situation. Others may say you’re getting too big for your britches, Jeff, but us here on the ground, where the action is, we know you’re Amazon.com, heart and soul. True blue, baby!”

Today I went back and re-read that e-mail, and I had to laugh, because part of Evan’s e-mail seemed to foreshadow the invention of the Kindle! One of Evan’s suggestions — all the way back in 2002 — was for Amazon to develop “a way to teleport books directly into customers’ laps!” It was his way of teasing Amazon that they should be thinking bigger than just “free super saver shipping”.

    JB> It may be the most important experiment
    JB> we’ve done to date.

Holy crap! The most important experiment to date!!!! Perhaps it’s anti-gravity books? Or CD-in-a-pill? Personal Amazon moon-car?

    JB> Starting today, as a long-term test, you can
    JB> get Free Super Saver Shipping on orders
    JB> over $49. Previously, only orders over $99
    JB> qualified.

WHA…?! That’s the MOST IMPORTANT EXPERIMENT TO DATE? A $50 drop in the qualifying price for free shipping?

I dunno what the hell’s going on there at Amazon.com Laboratories, Jeff, but, DUDE, you’re paying those eggheads TOO MUCH. From any angle you look at it, this is a STUPID experiment…

That’s not how you get to be Time’s Man of the Year two years running, Jeff. C’mon.

I guess I’m just trying to give you some friendly advice, Jeff, since you took the time to write me this personal email. Let me be blunt, Jeff: you are betting on the WRONG HORSE. I can think of like 50 experiments that are better than this experiment. 500! EASY! What about…

* TELEPORTING books directly to customers’ laps?


Okay, there were also some other suggestions (at least a few of which involved pornography). But I feel like this e-mail really preserved a moment in time. It was June of 2002, and just six months after the day Amazon announced their very first profits. Now they were making a big push to expand their sales — starting with lower shipping costs.

But meanwhile, geeks like Evan had just lived the “dotcom boom,” and all the excitement — not just of a sudden explosion in e-commerce, but also of self-publishing personal web sites. If nothing else, this made it easier than ever to tease the CEO of a major corporation. Especially when he sent you his e-mail address!


I mean, the list goes on and on. These are EXPERIMENTS, Jeff. I think what you’re describing is more like a “trial balloon.” And you know what? NO DOT-COM has ever won the Nobel Prize for TRIAL BALLOONS. Look it up, you’ll see I’m right.

    JB> This past January, we launched everyday,
    JB> 365-days-a-year, Free Super Saver Shipping
    JB> on orders over $99, and it’s been
    JB> successful. Customers have adopted it
    JB> in large numbers (it takes 3-5 days longer
    JB> than our standard shipping, but it’s
    JB> free), and its proven economically
    JB> sustainable for us as well.

Blah blah blah. Jeff, it looks like you bought this load of baloney hook, line and sinker. LISTEN TO YOURSELF. Just stop for a second and listen to yourself. Do you believe ANY of this…?

Dude, I know it was with personal feelings that you sent me this email and stuff, and I’m trying to slog through it, but I have to tell you that you’re boring me to tears. You sound like a marketing wonk! You do! Really!

And that’s not the Jeff Bezos I know! That’s not the Jeff Bezos who solicits my personal opinion on things. The Jeff Bezos *I* know is a VISIONARY. He’s the ONE-EYED MAN, baby! He doesn’t get caught up in this mincy-prancy N-months M-dollars hoohaw. That’s for the LITTLE PEOPLE. That’s for the functionaries and the sawdust people.

I mean, the Jeff Bezos I know, he’d be in a meeting with some balding weirdo beancounters with green visors and arm-bands, who are droning on and on to him about the niggling details of this so-called experiment, and he’d be pretending to listen to them, and then he’d stand up and say,

“BOOKS FOR DOGS!”

And the little people, they’d get all agitated and confused, because they don’t understand VISION, Jeff, you have to show it to them, but Jeff Bezos, he’d continue,

“Books for dogs! There are what, 380 million dogs in America today? Maybe 8-9 billion worldwide? North American pet-product sales — what is it, $4 trillion per annum? We need a piece of that pie! And what better way than to sell BOOKS for DOGS to READ! YOU, STANLEY! Yes, you! Run with this idea! You’ve got my full authority to make it happen — community canine literacy programs, drool-proof paper, get some celebrity dog writers like Rin Tin Tin and Benji. THE WORKS. Report to me in three weeks! And I want an Amazon.com product next to every dog bowl in this country when you get back!”


“See, that’s the kind of thing Jeff Bezos does,” Evan concluded. And it’s fun to imagine whether the real Jeff Bezos ever actually read Evan’s reply. If he did, he was probably laughing hysterically. But I also wonder if that’s the reason Amazon eventually stopped sending out e-mails that seemed “personally” written by Jeff Bezos. To avoid the earnestly mocking responses from people like Evan who actually wrote back….


Dude, listen: I’m here for you. I’ll continue to buy books from Amazon.com, and if this “experiment” doesn’t work out, you’re welcome to come stay at my place for a few weeks till you get back on your feet.

Also, listen: it was a good idea for you to run this concept past me before announcing it to the general public. I hope I’ve convinced you to really give it long hard look-over. At the very least, consider some way to work in lasers to the equation. Some science stuff, you know…?

    JB> Sincerely,

    JB> Jeff Bezos Founder & CEO Amazon.com

Hey, so, I hope you don’t mind if I just call you “Jeff”, OK? You can call me “Evan” or even “Ev” or “The Evster” or whatever. Just feel free…

Stick with me, man! We’ll go far.

Sincerely,

~ESP


It’s been almost ten years, and I had to find out what happened. Evan was always equal parts enterpreneur and computer programmer, and he eventually co-founded a popular travel web site called WikiTravel. Later he founded identi.ca, an open-source site for status updates (like Twitter), and became the lead developer at StatusNet, which promotes open and standardized status updates which can be easily distributed across different microblogging communities.

But all these years later, I still felt like I had to ask Evan about his crazy 2002 e-mail — because after all, Amazon did implement one of his suggestions. With a Kindle, it now really is possible to teleport an e-book directly into customers’ laps. So what does he think now about the visionary thinking of Jeff Bezos? I asked Evan, and he answered with a single sentence.

“I’m still waiting for Books for Dogs.”

The Onion mocks the Kindle

Last week The Onion made a funny, fake announcement about the president of Amazon. “‘The Kindle Is Easier To Read In Bright Sunlight,’ Amazon CEO Shouts At Customers In Apple Store.” It’s a nod to Amazon’s war with the iPad, but the fake headline got a real rise from Twitter’s assortment of geeks, Apple fans, and Kindle lovers. The headline appeared on The Onion’s Twitter feed, which has over 2.4 million followers — and by Monday, over 100 people had “re-tweeted” the message to their own followers on Twitter.

But I discovered it wasn’t the first time the humor site had joked about the Kindle. When Amazon released the Kindle 2, The Onion was there with a quick list of its new features.

– A lot fewer dangling wires
– …is not just a hollow box with a clear plastic window that you insert books into…”

And in January, at the Consumer Electronics Show, they’d also joked that for nostalgic users, the Kindle now “signals a logging crew to cut down 10 trees for every book purchased with the device.”

But it’s hard to tell whether they’re making fun of Amazon’s digital reader, or if they’re secretly fans of the Kindle. For example, in July their “American Voices” segment showed the heads of three people, responding to the news that ebook sales were [almost] surpassing sales of printed books. One of them announced that he wasn’t surprised by the popularity of ebooks, because “…if you’re reading a hardcover book, strangers try to start conversations with you. If you’re reading off a Kindle, people just stare at your awesome Kindle.” And the same fake people were also there in March, ready to react to the news that Amazon had temporarily pulled all the books from Macmillan publishing house.

“Publishing house? I thought Stephen Coonts just typed all the books right into Amazon!”

In May, they even offered opinions about Amazon’s foray into the market for college textbooks. “It does make sense for students to keep all the books they’re not going to read in one device, rather than lugging a big heavy bag around.”

But interestingly, you can now buy entire ebooks with humor from The Onion. For $9.99, you can buy Homeland Insecurity: The Onion Complete News Archives, Volume 17. (“This collection features the entire archive from November 2004 to December 2005…”) In print it came out to a whopping 320 pages, but the ebook edition was just released in May — and judging by one review, now its fake news headlines are even more timely. (“Cost of Living Now Outweighs Benefits… Bankrupt U.S. Sold to China.”)

And just last month The Onion released an ebook by their columnist, Jean Teasdale. It’s called A Book of Jean’s Own!: All New Wit, Wisdom, and Wackiness from The Onion’s Beloved Humor Columnist, and it’s a tongue-in-cheek newspaper column that’s apparently written by a cheerful yet secretly unhappy housewife.

I’ve been enjoying The Onion’s skewed take on the news for over 15 years, but I have to admit that they finally got me. Reading through their fake news stories, I discovered their announcement of a new “U2 Edition” of the Kindle, which ships pre-loaded with all of the favorite books by the rock band U2. For half a second, I wondered if Amazon really had released a special Kindle edition, and I actually spent a few minutes frantically searching for it in Amazon’s Kindle store.

Zing!

And remember, you can also subscribe to The Onion on the Kindle for just $1.99.

LOLCats arrive on the Kindle

LOLcats on the Kindle

Here’s something I never thought I’d see on the Kindle. The Lolcats!

Wait, wait, it gets better. You’ve probably already seen their crazy misspelled thoughts, spread across cat pictures capturing funny scenes and expressions. (The most famous one was a bright-eyed grey cat, smiling expectantly as he asks: “I can has cheezburger?”)* But in February of 2010, one webmaster took it to extremes, using the re-captioned cat pictures for a translation of a very unexpected book: the Bible.

“In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez an da Erfs n stuffs….”

The book’s description on Amazon explains that “from the biblical languages of Greek and Hebrew to Latin and the King’s English, the Bible has been translated into over 2000 languages. ADD ONE MORE…” Yes, the whole bible has been re-written in cat-speak, so its first book isn’t called Genesis, it’s called “Ceiling Cat Maek Awl teh Stuffz.” And Amazon’s description of the book gives you a sample of the other inspirational wisdom that waits inside…


    GIV US DIS DAY OUR DALEE CHEEZBURGER.

    AND FURGIV US FOR MAKIN YU A COOKIE, BUT EATEDING IT.

    AND WE FURGIV WEN CATS STEEL OUR COOKIEZ.

In a comment on the ebook’s Amazon page, its author explains that thousands of people helped with the translation project as a collective effort. Martin Grodin saw himself as more of an editor for the project, and the painstaking editing for each misspelled cat-translation of the Bible stories “made me realize that it is, in fact, hilarious.” At times it’s like reading an insane version of Finnegan’s Wake, since you’re decoding the misspelled cat words using half-remembered biblical stories. And there’s more text than pictures — though sometimes its broken up by a long line of kitten paw prints.

There are pictures in the book, though I had to read all the way to Genesis 2:19 until I found the second one — a picture of two cats resting to indicate Eve’s arrival in the Garden of Eden. (“Oh hai! yu can has frend. She liek yu but missin sometings.”) The text is also available on a web site, but I thought they also did a nice job of formatting it for the Kindle. There’s 176 pages of craziness, and though the book costs $9.32, there’s still fun to be had even if you only order the book’s free sample.

Because even the book’s table of contents is still pretty funny.

Teh Plague ov Owchie-Blisturs
“Leev Egypt, Nao!”
Crossin’ teh Reed Sea
Jonah an teh Big Fishie
Wawter into Booze…
Happy Cat Walks on Wawter
Parable ov teh Niec Samaritan Dood
Teh Last Cheezburg Feest
Happy Cat rises from teh Deds
Awl Fings Brite an Purtyful

Yes, Jesus in the LOLcat bible becomes “Happy Cat”. And as an amusing bit of related trivia, Amazon’s Kindle store doesn’t seem to have any free editions of the real bible (without LOLcats). If you wanted to download a free bible to your Kindle, you could still get one from Project Gutenberg.

But then you wouldn’t get any funny pictures of cats!

UPDATE: It turns out there is now a free version of the (real) Bible available in Amazon’s Kindle store.

And Click here to order LOLcat Bible: In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez an da Erfs n stuffs

P.S. This book is not to be confused with “I CAN HAZ BYTECODE,” a “collection of funny and occasionally thought provoking tweets based on my work experience as a Super Senior Software Engineer at a Silicon Valley startup!”