Po-Mo-phobia

I had an odd night, last night.  I went to a 'talk' given by the writer of the Drunken Bakers, Barney Farmer.  That's a Viz strip, for the classicists among you who are unfamiliar with it.  You really should get yourself  up to speed with it, however, if we're ever going to be friends.  Here's a handy cook's tour of the oeuvre for you.

I say 'talk', but that's taking heroic liberties with the generally accepted meaning of the term.  Barney Farmer was drunk, not legless - not by any manor of means - but drunk.  Artist Mark Lecky lobbed a few topics at him and Farmer just started riffing.  It sounds horrific written down like this - a wretched cross between a 60s 'happening' and free-jazz.  In reality it was wildly entertaining and very, very funny.  As with most good comic writers, Farmer is fluent.  And his fluency is aided when he gets out of his own way.  Too much self-awareness would be ruinous for him - hence, the drink.

My companion and I left before the end.  I was enjoying it, but the bar ran out of beer and I started to feel a bit ill at ease with the atmosphere.  There's a danger with work like Farmer's in that it attracts the wrong sort, people who like being associated with things, dark things that their parents would fear and dislike.  The excessive drinking attracts the same sort.  It suits their post-college dalliances with nihilism.  These are dalliances for the most part.  The bourgeois self-preservation gene kicks in after about 30 months and they sober-up, get promoted and buy property.  Working class people don't dally with drink and drugs because there's no safety net for them.  Who's going to bail you out if you screw up?  Your parents?  Forget that.  They haven't the money or the wherewithal any more than you do.  Consequently, intoxication is either kept on a short leash or it becomes one's vocation.  You learn to live with it and still earn, knowing that it'll be with you forever.

The DBs is very bleak; it's funny too, but the humour comes more from the framing device than from the work itself.  The fact that someone has taken to the time and trouble to set this down and get it published in a comic is hilariously inappropriate.  None of the strips goes anywhere either.  They're just exercises in voyeurism.