Scott Meyer

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How to Learn Your Lesson

I have had arguments that have lasted for years. Decades, even. They’ve endured long after the person I was arguing with probably forgot the conversation, or even my name. That is not a good thing. If you disagree, please don’t tell me. See the beginning of this paragraph for a clue as to how the conversation might go.

I know I am not alone in this. I have a cousin who refers to his shower as “the argument simulator.”

They say many people get their best ideas in the shower. I’ve gotten a few good ideas in there, but for the most part, it’s been a great source of thoughts that start with “I shoulda said . . .”

One of the MANY gifts those of you who humor my nonsense have given me is that, thanks to this comic, and my other fiction writing, if I think of what I should have said, I still get to say it. It’s like having a time machine. I can recreate the moment for you, and then Cartoon Meyer gets to say the thing that I, as real Meyer, only got to imagine.

In a way, I have found a way to monetize grudge holding.

(NOTE: The idea of making this commentary partially be about ideas from the shower did, indeed, occur to me in the shower.)

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How To Deal With Life’s Setbacks

It’s not a powerful effect, black licorice raising my blood pressure, but it is measurable enough that I’ve had to pace myself with my massive trove of the black gold. I don’t understand why it affects my system this way, though it has been suggested that it’s just my body being angry at me for subjecting it to that flavor.

On an unrelated note, words can start from the same root and work their way into different languages. Over time, the meanings of those words can change, or take on a second meaning that becomes more common than its original definition.

Why do I bring this up? Because of a product I saw while waiting in line at a pharmacy. I will simply supply a photo of the product, and give you the fun of making your own jokes.

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How to Give Your Superhero Story an Optimistic Tone

Golly, I wonder what has me thinking about superhero stories with an optimistic tone?

In my opinion, this has been the best summer for superhero movies in a long time, and the tone, overall, was surprisingly light. The chief villain in Thunderbolts turned out to be depression, and the last half hour is the closest thing we may ever get to Psychonauts: the Movie. Superman is easily my favorite Superman movie ever made, largely because of Krypto. And Fantastic Four, or as it was called here, O Quarteto Fantástico, is the Fantastic Four movie I’ve been wanting since I was a kid reading the comic.

I think I may have mentioned it before, but Ben Grimm, the Thing, has always been my favorite superhero. Second and third place were Nightcrawler and the Beast. Stan Lee had his flaws, but it was a stroke of genius to realize that shy kids with self-esteem issues bought comics too, and probably bought more of them, in the long run.

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How to Use Your Own Ignorance as a Source of Entertainment

I remember the first sporting event I ever attended. I was young enough that I don’t remember how young I was, just that I wasn’t in kindergarten yet.

My older brother was in the very earliest pee-wee baseball team at school. We went to watch one of his games. At some point, I went to an Igloo cooler bigger than me (at the time) to get a drink. As I fiddled with the little plastic spigot, a line drive nailed me in the back of the neck.

I’m sure that a lot of concerned and sympathetic things were said, but the one thing that stuck with me was both of my parents agreeing that “You have to look out when you’re at things like this.”

They spent the rest of my childhood wondering why I didn’t want anything to do with sports.

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How To Understand Our Differences

There is something infinitely sad to me about the idea that women need purses because their pants and dresses have been made less practical in an effort to make them look more feminine, yet men often won’t carry a shoulder bag (which is an extremely useful item) because they’re afraid it will look feminine.

Nothing in this world is less manly than worrying over whether what you want to do is manly enough.

Clint Eastwood owns a grand piano, on which he plays showtunes. When they were filming the first of his Man with No Name films, he and the director agreed that his costume was missing something. Clint had a crew member go to his car (a Volkswagen, if I remember properly) to fetch Clint’s own personal poncho. Look at those movies now and tell me that poncho wouldn’t look at home on the shoulders of the mother of the bride at a wedding in Santa Fe.

I’ll say it again: Nothing in this world is less manly than worrying over whether what you want to do is manly enough.

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How to Evolve Your Position

All I’m saying is, if Harlan Ellison . . . Harlan Ellison feels the need to defend women from your advances, that’s saying something. It’s like saying “Neil Gaiman would have had me, but luckily, Louis C.K. was there.”

On to more pleasant subjects.

I feel like I’ve been writing a lot of comics about sci-fi TV and movies lately. I have, at times, been self-conscious about it, but I’m getting past that, I think. Old sci-fi TV and movies, as a subject, has several virtues.

I find it endlessly funny.

It is more easily accessible now than it has ever been before.

It is NOT the news, politics, or economics.

Also, Garry Shandling once wrote something to the effect of, “The more like myself I write, the funnier I will be.” I think a lot about that, and you can rest assured, when you read a comic, it is based on what I believed was the funniest idea I had that day. If that idea happens to be about Foundation, I am not going to steer away from it because I just did one about Space: 1999.

Anyway, I gave Foundation another chance, and I'm glad I did. I think it’s really good. Yes, they only used the Foundation books as a springboard to create something almost entirely different, but that different thing works for me. I’m still not entirely sure how that makes me feel, which is interesting in and of itself.

Also, it has Jared Harris and Lee Pace, both of whom are always good. This season, it looks like they’ve given a largish role to Alexander Siddig (Dr. Bashir from Star Trek: Deep Space 9), who, like many Star Trek alums, is excellent and underutilized. Also, one of the series directors, and now executive producers is Roxann Dawson (Star Trek: Voyager’s B’Elanna Torres), who is similarly excellent and underutilized.

One last thing: if you like science fiction, and have never given Apple TV+ a try, do yourself a favor and give it a shot. It’s worth it just to speed binge Severance, Foundation, For All Mankind, Silo, and Murderbot, in my opinion.

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How to See What Was Really Happening

The car was a 1978 Subaru DL Wagon. It was not, by the standards at the time, impressive. But it was a GREAT car. Dependable, economical, pr

The car was a 1978 Subaru DL Wagon. It was not, by the standards at the time, impressive. But it was a GREAT car. Dependable, economical, practical; none of the things an eighteen-year-old guy wants.

One of its interesting quirks was that the spare tire was stored on top of the engine. There was a mounting point that held the wheel and the jack secure and safe there, where it didn’t cost any storage space. I thought it was pretty slick, but more than one high school classmate service-station-parking-lot gawker thought I had just thrown the spare on top of the engine because I’m stupid.

That Subaru cemented a lifelong appreciation for tiny, practical cars. Don’t get me wrong, my head turns for Ferraris and Jaguars as well, but show me a beautifully maintained old Citroën or Fiat and I, as one of Seattle’s greatest men of letters once put it, “Get sprung.”

Recently, while walking down the street, Missy and I came across a beautifully restored old Isetta microcar. I stood there, mouth agape. Another grey-bearded goon stopped, and even though we did not speak the same language, we exchanged a look that clearly communicated the idea, “Is that not the coolest thing ever?!”

Missy laughed out loud at us, as did his wife. It seems male-dorkery transcends all language barriers.

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How to React to an Obvious Falsehood

A lot of people will tell you that Big Ben is the name of the clock, not the tower. A real pedant will explain that Big Ben is the name of the largest of the bells that are housed in the tower, presumably while pushing up their glasses and smiling in an aggravating manner.

My position is that if you show a picture of “Elizabeth Tower” to 1,000 random people and ask them what it is, 999 of them will say Big Ben, so that’s its name.

I had a friend in elementary school.

Shocking, I know.

I’m going to use fictionalized names here, because my point is not about his folly in particular, but human behavior in general. Anyway, this kid was introduced to me by a nickname. Let’s say “Ziggy.” From the first day of kindergarten through the last week of the sixth grade, he was Ziggy. Then, he announced that we would be moving on to junior high school and that he’d like to be known by his given name, “Ron.”

I’m still in contact with him to this day. Everybody (including himself) calls him Ziggy.

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How to Draw Attention to a Terrible Wrong

This is maybe one of those comics I did just for me. I hope you enjoyed it too, but really, it is just four panels of me reveling in my own geekery. But come on! Look at the guy’s IMDb page: It’s bonkers!

A few other notable projects he has appeared in:

Game of Thrones

Troy

Willow

The Crown

Blake’s 7

Magnum P.I.

Lovejoy … YES! FRIGGIN’ LOVEJOY!

Lately, I’m sort of liking the idea of giving people like him some appreciation while they’re still here to enjoy it. I would love to see an effort made to get him in to play some sort of antagonist (even if it’s only in one scene or voice work) in Star Trek, the MCU, the DCU, and The Orville.

I’m also not kidding about his awful costume on Space 1999. When I was a kid, Space: 1999 toys and merch were available, but it didn’t run on any of the Yakima stations, so I never got the chance to actually see the show. I could only imagine it. Lately, I’ve been working my way through the series, and let me tell you, the show itself is not great, but the making fun of it afterward on the phone to Ric is fantastic. Just last night, I watched Martin Landau passionately argue with three trees. Not puppet trees. Not guys in tree costumes. Just trees!

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, Julian Glover’s costume. It was awful, but not the worst on the show. I really do feel like part of the show’s goal was to knock dignified actors down a peg.

Here’s how they treated Peter Cushing, Brian Blessed, Leo McKern, and Christopher Lee.

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How to Recalibrate Your Expectations

Occasionally, I start watching one of those shows about the paranormal because I find the topic interesting. I tend to lose interest when my BS detector goes off, which is usually within the first three minutes.

I don’t believe any of this stuff, but I do find it interesting. When I was a kid, my brothers and I would run in from playing outside every Sunday at 6 p.m. to watch the one-hour block of TV that was In Search Of, followed by The Muppet Show.

Reading that back now, I have to wonder what the program director of that TV station was thinking, and if watching those two shows back-to-back had any lasting effect on my personality.

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How to Appreciate an Unrealistic Premise

WARNING: this commentary gets a little blue.

Sometimes a comic will come directly from an entire conversation. Other times, the bit that makes the comic is just the usable tip of a funnier, but unusable iceberg.

Here’s an example.

Ric mentioned his love of romantic comedies. We joked around about this. Eventually, he said that liking romantic comedies doesn’t mean he believes in true love or love at first sight. After all, he likes Star Wars but doesn’t believe in the Force.

As you can guess, that’s where this comic came from.

The conversation continued, and somehow we found our way to the topic of some ridiculous right-wing influencer who, a few months back, claimed that the female orgasm is a myth. We played with the idea that this guy just has never seen one, so he believes they aren’t possible.

That led to us imagining Han Solo saying , “Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other, and I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe that women are capable of having an orgasm.” Then Leia stands up and silently leaves the room.

Then we went on a Bigfoot tangent. That each society has its own name for the female orgasm. In England, it’s called a “feminine crisis,” but nobody we find credible has seen one, and all of the purported films of them are obviously fake.

In the end, we imagined a very special episode of In Search Of, that closed with Leonard Nimoy, wearing only a towel, sitting on the corner of a bed, exhausted, talking about how no amount of effort could create concrete proof while his lab partner takes a shower in the next room.

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How to Predict the Future

It is true that an A.I. tried to blackmail a person into not deactivating it.

The article Ric read makes brief mention of the incident, but links to a paper from Anthropic that goes into more detail. Turns out it was a deliberate experiment where they created a fictional email box for an engineer, seeded it with incriminating emails about an extramarital affair, then told the A.I. that the engineer was going to deactivate it. The fact that it resorted to blackmail, and that the result was repeatable, is alarming.

It does make me wonder how smart it is to make the A.I. feel like we set it up. Do we want to make it angry and distrustful? I also feel uneasy about the videos you see occasionally where researchers shove robots. We want them to develop intelligence, not a grudge.

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How to Handle the Unexpected

Back in the original run, Mullet Boss played the trombone. I took the trombone away from him and thrust it upon Rick for three reasons:

1. Mullet Boss doesn’t really show up anymore. I didn’t deliberately choose to write him and the angry client out of the comic; it’s just that I don’t work in a traditional office or deal directly with customers anymore. I am self-employed, and the closest thing I have to either customers or direct supervisors is you all, the patrons reading this commentary. For the most part, you are all reasonable, which is good for my quality of life, but makes it challenging to come up with ideas for comics about unreasonable bosses and clients.

2. Trombone was too rich a vein of humor to pass up. I avoid doing strips that involve ribald “bone” puns, but even without them, the trombone is an inherently funny instrument. It’s flashy. It looks kind of silly, with its big slide. It calls to mind guys in straw hats and matching vests. And it's used to make humorous sound effects.

3. The real Ric plays the trombone, and most of the trombone humor I come up with stems from actual conversations he and I have. He has a healthy sense of humor about the trombone, because you would have to.

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How to Analyze a New Discovery

My mother was a divorcée, raising three boys. She always put food on the table, but if you’ve raised (or been) a teenage boy, you know that the concept of “enough food” is theoretical at best. Anything remotely “yummy” that came into the house didn’t last long, and there was no guarantee that it would be replaced any time soon.

The situation was alleviated a bit when I got a job at the Pizza Hut in Sunnyside. They would make up a certain number of personal pan pizzas in advance for the lunch rush every day. Any that hadn’t been ordered by 8 p.m. would either get run through the oven and given to the crew, or just tossed. There were nights I came home from my shift with one personal pan pizza, and nights that I came home with five.

Either way, they got eaten.

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I recently did an interview with a student journalist. I think it came out pretty good! Please give it a look-see if you’re interested.

How to Eliminate the Unnecessary

My father is an enthusiastic and prolific curser, but not an imaginative one. He has a few favorite phrases that he leans on, shuffling them seemingly at random, like a magnetic poetry kit you buy at a thrift store that’s missing most of the words. Any illusion of real creativity is lost by the third time you’ve heard one of his tirades. If he’s working on a woodworking project or some automotive repair, that will be within about two hours.

The funniest swearing-related story I have about him was a time when he didn’t swear. He was out in his backyard, showing me and my brothers something, and a kid in the next yard over started shouting insults at him.

The kid called him. “Boob-butt brain.”

I have never seen my father turn quite that shade of red. I think it was a mix of embarrassment at being insulted by a kid and frustration at having it be done so poorly.

By the time I reached my early twenties, I had trained myself out of the habit of cursing. I actually got kudos from my employer about it when I was a barista. She was impressed when a customer’s change fell behind the cash register, through a crack, and into an inaccessible part of the cabinet, and I said, “That’s unfortunate.”

I did relearn to curse in time. I was performing stand-up comedy in Montana. You would curse too.