|
Price is Right
Creator of the hilarious, nationally syndicated comic strip Rhymes with Orange, Hilary B. Price chats with ChickStars and proves she's just as funny as her doodles.
by Kira Garcia
2000-03-20
In recent years the comics page has become a much more interesting place.
The absurdity of Gary Larson's Far Side strip and the occasionally cynical qualities of Bill Watterson's precocious Calvin and Hobbes have charmed readers with an irreverent kind of humor. Unfortunately, both of these strips are now dearly departed, and I am left scanning the newspaper for something a bit more thought-provoking (or at least weirder) than little
Billy tying his shoes in the Family Circle
or Cathy feeding diet cookies to her little dog.
Fortunately, Hilary Price's strip, Rhymes with Orange, has come to save the day and spice up coffee breaks nationwide, turning mundane slices of everyday life into comic-strip genius. Indulging in a little self-pity? Fill
out her Checklist to Feeling Pathetic:
*Examine your face closely in the mirror.
*Note all flaws.
*Relive embarrassing/awful moments that occurred years ago.
*Choose someone and compare yourself unfavorably to them.
I'm excited to get a chance to meet Hilary over the phone. We make
introductions long distance; she's in Massachusetts, I'm in California.
After trying to munch quietly for a minute, we each apologize for eating on
the phone. A minute later when my cordless begins to make its annoying
"battery low" noise, she warns me, "Your chocolate chip cookie is beeping."
I am happy to know that people who are funny for a living still crack jokes
in their day-to-day lives.
I must commend her on finding a new and interesting use for an English
degree (from Stanford, no less). With so many term papers under her belt, it
makes sense that Rhymes with Orange is based so much on text. As a kid, Hilary says, art was never her strong suit. "I went to a hippy-dippy kind of
high school. I always enjoyed drawing, but I was never very good at it," she
says. The beauty of the comic strip, however, is that artistic genius
doesn't have to look like technical mastery. Rhymes with Orange is charming and messy in a way that matches its humor well. "Loose" is how Hilary describes it, and it's a fitting word for her toothpick-legged,
doodly-haired characters.
It would be obnoxious to describe Rhymes with Orange with an cliched, late '90s kind of word like "Seinfeldesque," so I'll just say that her humor comes from the same everyday situations that Seinfeld often took its inspiration from. Strips like the one showing a pain diagram for broken glass (the graph spikes up in stage three, when you run your hands across the floor to check for shards) must have come from real-life (mis)adventures. "I feel like the minutia, the details of our lives, are great fodder. Things will come up in
conversation, and I'll write it down." One woman's mishap is another's
comic inspiration.
In fact, the source of inspiration for Hilary's current strip came from a
fan's email. "It's about miracles. They used to be about the Red Sea
parting, now it's about wrinkle cream." What a horrible thought! "Don't
worry," she reassures me, "there's also hair care products."
I've got to know how someone who can make jokes about spiritual bankruptcy
can share space on the page with more ordinary comic fare. I'm not expecting
vitriol from Hilary; I knew she was kind-hearted when she denounced the
characters on Seinfeld as "too mean." But I've got to know how she feels about the ideological divide between Rhymes with Orange and its comic contemporaries.
She sighs when I ask her for thoughts on Cathy. "The fears of the character Cathy reflect those of a lot of women. That has given her a lot of
popularity. She does not reflect the fears of my life whatsoever. Her
prevailing neuroses are not at the forefront of the people I hang out with,"
she says.
Instead of diet-food diatribes, Hilary pens strips like "Young Feminists At
Play," in which a line of little girls plays a game of "Simone Says." I
wonder if this stuff is a little obtuse for your average Jane or Joe reading
the paper on the subway? Hilary agrees that yes, strips like "Young
Feminists" are probably a little obscure. "But sometimes it's silly, and
some times it's intellectual. I feel like I have to do what's funny for me,
that's the first litmus test. I feel like the people who get it and enjoy it
will offset the people who don't get it. I'd rather have that than the
lowest common denominator."
What's amazing is that Rhymes with Orange manages to maintain a feminist consciousness that doesn't scare off folks of a different political stripe.
Hilary's voice has that kind of conspiratorial nudge-nudge-wink-wink quality
that puts people at ease. Hilary's housemate, Jen Dieringer, has been a
huge fan since they began living together three years ago. "She makes her
point quite clearly, but it's still funny. It mirrors her personality in
that she cares a lot about political issues, but she's committed to the realm
of cartooning. I think she balances out really well so it doesn't feel like,
weighty issues, weighty issues, every day. "
Hilary's widespread appeal is no small achievement. It takes some finesse to
entertain the zillions of readers who scan the comics for 60 seconds every
day. Best known for its universal appeal, of course, is the work of the
recently departed Charles Schulz, creator of the Peanuts strip. Hilary knows what she's talking about on this subject. She seems to truly appreciate
Schulz's work, while recognizing that "his rules of cartooning are nothing
like my strip."
"I had the opportunity to meet Charles Schulz last September. He talked like
Linus," she says, and it's definitely a compliment. "He's funny—he is all
of his creations. I was reading over some of [his older strips] and they
were just terribly funny. You have to take yourself to a quiet place to
appreciate it."
Hilary may be biased. After all, Schulz let her drive the Zamboni at
his ice rink in Santa Rosa, Calif. "I sent him a copy of the Rhymes
with Orange book, and he wrote me a letter back. He said...well, I'll read it to you...'I am amazed by the brightness of your ideas...I am seriously thinking
about buying you your own Zamboni for Christmas.'" A blessing from the
grandfather of the comics page himself. Somebody buy this lady a Zamboni!
She's got a gift.
Kira Garcia is a recent graduate of Mills College in Oakland, Calif. She loves dance parties, big butts, high heels and her slutty Siamese cat. She aspires to be some sort of mogul.
|
