Lio by Mark Tatulli for July 07, 2009

For some reason the drawings are fuzzy. I think that’s a pinup picture that Dad hung up. No wonder Lio is confused.

… Marilyn Monroe? Maybe?

Farrah Fawcett

A moment of silence for a TRUE star…

Something didn’t scan right.

Yes, that’s the famous Farrah poster. Dad is thinking fondly of her. So am I. RIP, Farrah!

Yep. Farrah. I miss her.

And now Lio too shall think fondly of her. No telling what his twisted little mind will think of now.

Aw, Dad is making a toast to Farrah (R.I.P).

I thought that was a Farrah Fawcett poster. Yes, RIP.

That’s sweet. A nice tribute.

Probably now that Farrah is dead, Lio will find her more attractive.

that is a Farrah Fawcett. I remember it well. Rest in Peace Farrah.

A wonderful tribute. Rest in Peace Farrah. Thanks Mark.

Yeah, Farrah was cute, but she was no Bea Arthur! Rrrrooowwwwrrr!!!!

If you click on the comic it enlarges it, that’s how I was able to tell it was Farrah. But still horribly fuzzy for some reason.

R.I.P Farrah. Thanks Mark.

I recognized that poster right off, fuzzy or not. Just shows how old I am. & Dad’s private memorial service is priceless. R.I.P., Farrah & Thanks, Mark.

Nice touch - I was feeling sorry for Farrah’s family, her’s and Ed’s passing was greatly overshadowed by the whole MJ circus.

I don’t know what’s up with the quality of today’s strip. Technical error. I’m looking into it now.

MT

Yes, with all the over the top coverage of MJ, it is nice to see Farrah get a little attention.

Mark, if you can get the quality of the strip fixed, we’d all love to see it again one of these days. It’s got to be one of the best comic strips of all time.

I too, wish there was less coverage on MJ, and more on Farrah. Farrah wasn’t perfect, but still a much more positive role model than MJ.

I had to look up who Farrah Fawcett was, and found that the comic was an all too apropos tribute: another sex symbol of a bygone era stored in the celeb attic when the beauty started to fade. sigh

OK, there we go all fixed…just hot refresh and it should look a-OK

Nice Mark. Great Tribute! Hehehe is a nice tribute I think, Lio dad is happy seen it ;)

Thank you. At least someone remembers.

a fitting tribute to farrah. thank you very much mark i don’t know if farrah would have wanted all the media hoopla, she was a more classy person than that

a sad reminder of our fallibility and eventual demise

I think the reason MJ’s death is being so publicized is cause it seems a lot like Elvis’s. It’s nice to see Farrah being noticed a lil more. All i saw the day MJ died was one small blurb about her beside MJ’s big death announcement. I understand that MJ’s was unexpected and all and Farrah was already having health problems but still…

“[A]nother sex symbol of a bygone era stored in the celeb attic when the beauty started to fade.”

James, there was a little more to her than that. Although she could have, Farrah did NOT trade solely on her looks. With her stint in *Extremities” on Broadway and in “The Burning Bed”, she pushed herself into roles that didn’t rely on her glamour to sell the story. (That doesn’t mean she was a GREAT actress, or ever would have been, but she was more than the hair and the smile and the jiggles.)

Well into her illness she was an extraordinarily attractive woman, and her relative invisibility (apart from in the gossip rags, for which alas she DID provide fodder) in later years was not because her looks had faded but simply because time marches on. Farrah was a true icon, but she was an icon of the 1970’s.

For an historical perspective, check out this newspaper article from 1977, headlined “President Calls for Calm Following Nipple Sighting on Farrah Fawcett Poster”: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/63842

I too have cracked a cold one in her memory.

Now I am expecting Lio to Moonwalk to a Thriller beat in another strip. Somehow I expect Thriller would be his idea of the perfect music video. That or Staind!

Good Bye Farrah, Karl, and Gale. All overshadowed by MJ.

Perfect.

There weren’t many males who lived through the seventies who didn’t admire that poster, myself included, and she carried herself more gracefully than many young stars of today.

I really appreciate your tribute to Farrah. She was a real class act - just compare her quiet burial to the circus that is MJ. Her last TV special about her struggle with cancer was a very courageous thing to do.

I ran across that poster in my dad’s garage once. Daddy, who is that? Believe it was gone shortly thereafter.

bigg, maybe he kept it under glass back in the day, for easy cleaning…

What a nice tribute to Farrah- well done, Mark.

Lovely tribute, Mark.

Lol, that was a great article, fritzoid! The Onion ftw!

Very well done indeed, Mark.

Thanks.

Furienna, from your vantage point in Europe perhaps you can be forgiven for thinking that people’s problems with MJ were based on “ignorance and prejudice.” Had you been closer, you might have a different perspective.

Lovely tribute, Mark!

When we were young’uns – but a bit older than Lio – Gimmickgenius had the poster, but I had the hair!

A very touching and very much needed tribute to Ms. Fawcett, bravo!

Regarding MJ being a good or a bad role model, I imagine the following years will clarify that. IMHO, i think he was a great entertainer, but far from a good role model. Even if you look at his life in the most positive way possible, one would still have to admit that he was a very bizarre, troubled, and disturbed soul. Hopefully he now has the peace he never had in life.

RIP Farrah and Michael (and Ed, and Gale, and Steve, and Bea)

Kinda nice. I like it.

Oh yea! Legs all the way to heaven. Farrah’s nice too.

Keep it up Mark, the Tribune will let you back in on Sunday’s.

Way to go, Mark! Thanks for saluting a lady who had beauty, brains, acting chops, and heart.

bigg, that’s whay I used the words “back in the day” in my post. Throughout however many years he had it displayed, perhaps Pop kept the poster framed under glass. As long as it was securely rolled when removed from its frame, the poster could have stayed in fine condition during its subsequent residence in the attic, even after 25 (or so) years.

All of MY old posters (I never had the one shown here; it was mostly Muppets) disintegrated through folding instead of rolling, and using pins rather than tape.

Love it, Mark. Although I didn’t have the famous poster (being female), I used to pretend I was one of Charlie’s Angels. She was a wonderful woman.

@ Tigger. I know what you meant by “Fallen Angel” but to some, that’s the wrong image. She’s no Lucifer or Satan. She’s a real angel. But I know you meant it in a kind way.

I had a Farrah hair-do once. Alas, not the long legs.

I remember her because of the good she’s done, and that she fought so hard against a painful disease.

MJ’s death was sensational and untimely (as was Farrah’s, truth be told). I have sorrow in his case for the young boy that was lost amid stardom and a cruel upbringing.

May both Rest in Peace.

I think I’ve still got my Farrah Fawcett poster somewhere rolled up in a tube.

As for MJ, I liked his music and especially his videos but he still became a chump manipulated by his managers and his self image.

What! His dad doesn’t have “Charlie’s Angels: The Complete First Season” DVDs? And Lio hasn’t even seen “Logan’s Run”? Talk about an already deprived childhood! P.S. This should somehow have been a Sunday strip. Then all of us guys could have ogled at the bright red color of Ms. Fawcett’s dress.

Mark Tatulli should do a tribute to Michael Jackson (or Billy Mays!)

Furienna, I meant that, as a European, you were perhaps insulated from aspects of MJ’s neverending dog-and-pony (and chimpanzee and giraffe and…) show that were inescapable from a U.S. perspective. Was the coverage of his personal life invasive? Yes it was. But the revelations received FROM that coverage, whether they were any of our “business” or not, painted a horrifying picture of the man.

Was it a case of prejudice, of wanting a Black man to fail? Hardly. MJ was a man who was so contempuous of his own innate identity, racial and otherwise, that he subjected himself to surgical procedures to completely obliterate any trace of the handsome African-American man that he could have been. Whether the root problem was biological or psychological/emotional, he was a “man” who never matured into a healthy adult; he was stunted and twisted in his development, like a pine tree trying to grow in the middle of a desert. He locked himself behind the walls of an amusement park, and surrounded himself with toys and exotic pets and (ahem) “playmates”. That he felt he couldn’t appear in public without a surgical mask was NOT because he was so uniquely “sensitive” or “put upon”, but because he was never able to accept the realities of the world outside his fantasyland. He was a basket case, and it was only his immense wealth that bought him public quasi-acceptance as an “eccentric.”

Regardless of the information that came out during the civil suit and the trial, Lisa Marie has given indications that, behind closed doors, MJ was incapable of relating to another human being on any sort of adult level. Once the tell-all books start appearing (the first of which is probably already on the presses), I expect we’ll learn that what we HAVEN’T yet heard outstrips what has only been WHISPERED so far, in terms of weirdness.

So yes, if you want to hate your very face and body to a level only dreamt of by the anorexic, if you want to spend every moment insulated from life and the world and adult responsibility, if you want never to progress emotionally from a perpetual childishness, then MJ is a fitting role model.

Lovely!

lios mom?