Back to BC

After yesterday's seriousnessness, I figure we should jump into a little levity. Levitation, if you will. I mean, not the "make R2-D2 float in a swamp" kind of levitation. Only Jedi can do that. Well, and Jedi Knights in training, I suppose, since Luke wasn't really a Jedi yet at that point. I mean frivolity. Don't go making stuff float around. You'll freak out your coworkers.

 

(Oh sweet bejeebus, how much caffeine have you had already??)

 

Um, let's see… sixteen ounces, plus a cup of tea, carry the two….

 

(*bangs head on desk*)

 

Oh pish posh. Don't be so dramatic. My point is that there has been a lot of travesty in the news lately. I opted to speak my mind about one particularly disturbing story, and while I was generally supported in my stance, I did receive a fair share of negative responses decrying my failure to voice my outrage at other social issues in the same breath. To my detractors I say a) don't equate my passion on one particular issue at one particular moment in time with dispassion when it comes to other issues. I chose to speak about this issue in particular at this moment, deal with it; and 2) be thankful I didn't riff about Tom Shady… I mean Brady… I could have just as easily done that. But today, today we talk about something fun. Something silly. Something that should put a smile on your face and if it doesn't you're a cold-hearted, cotton-headed ninny-muggins.

 

(Oh boy….)

 

I am of course referring to the return… of Bloom County.

 

(Opus is back?????)

 

Yes indeedy!!! Opus, Milo, Binkley, the Anxiety Closet, Steve Dallas, you name them. Berkley Breathed has gotten the band back together and has re-launched the iconic comic strip on his Facebook wall. And these characters couldn't have returned at a more opportune time. There is so much death and atrocity in today's world. We needed Bloom County, and all that it represents. We needed that thirty second distraction to take us away from the bombardment of negativity that drops upon us every single day.

 

We need Opus and his naiveté to remind us that maybe, sometimes, life can be simpler, if we simply choose to view it simply. And just as much, we need Milo and his sarcastic cynicism to show us that you really cannot take life too seriously. Lest we forget poor Binkley, whose over-active imagination and irrational anxiety makes us both chuckle and evaluate our own irrationality and fear.    

 

And then, of course, there is the indubitable hilarity that is Steve Dallas. The scotch-drinking, crude, rude, and unapologetically non-politically correct attorney makes an epic return by accidentally posting a video of his nether-regional parts wearing a sombrero to Twitter. This harkens back to one of my favorite Dallas lines of all time, when he gives his a girlfriend a card that reads "Boobs, butt and knees, you're all I sees, be me main squeeze."

 

(*giggle* I remember that.)

 

Who doesn't?? Steve Dallas is so unapologetically bad that you cannot help but shake your head in judgmental disbelief, love him just the same, all the while constantly wondering what kind of trouble he's going to get himself into next.

 

Thus far, in glimpses, we've also been reconnected with Oliver Wendell Jones, Cutter John, and indomitable Bill the Cat; I wait longingly to see them in greater action. I hope that Mr. Breathed also breathes life back into my favorite, foul-mouthed woodland creature, Portnoy, as well as his trusty sidekick Hodge-Podge.  

 

For me, Bloom County was an integral part of my childhood. It was a daily escape into a frivolous world in which I could lose myself, for a short while, laugh, smile and ignore the pressures that plagued my adolescence. I think now, as an adult, I need that kind of escape far more greatly than I ever did then. Like Eddie Money, I wanna back.

 

('cause I'm feelin' so much older, but I can't go back I GODDAMIT!!! Just when I thought you were done with the earworms….)

 

Don't fret. It could have been Two Tickets to Paradise.

 

(Gonna pack my bags and leave tonig…. I curse you with the heat of a thousand suns.)

 

I know. *snicker*

 

Yes, folks, Bloom County is back, when we need it most. That is the gift Berkley Breathed had always bestowed upon us – a beacon of levity in a harsh world too often full of despair. And here we are, at yet another arguably low point in our history, inundated with images of man's depravity… And Bloom County is back. Will it solve our world's problems? Of course it won't. Will it allow us to escape them, even momentarily, and be reminded that we can still find moments of elation and joy? Yer darn tootin'.

 

Sometimes it really is the simple things that make life bearable. For me, in this case, it's something as simple as a silly comic strip that reminds me of happier, and even simpler times. So I am thankful for whatever epiphany Mr. Breathed experienced to drive him back to the literal drawing board. For many years I considered him, and the characters of Bloom County, beloved friends. For years after that, they were beloved, remembered friends. And now here they are, back in my life, making me smile, as if no time has passed at all. That is the gift Berkley Breathed gives to me, to all of us, who flock to his frivolity. We enjoy the new iterations as fondly as we remember the prior, and I say thusly:

 

Pear pimples for hairy fish nuts.

 

(*gigglesnort* I remember that one, too.)

 

I thought you might.

 

 

© 2015 J.J. Goodman. All rights reserved.