TINTIN AND I

Serendipity Strikes Again! In one previously abandoned pile I just found a Blog with the above title, which I had started in 2009. As I recall, once I realized Tintin was practically unknown here, I tossed it onto one of several bottomless piles I accumulate with great ease.

Now that it has surfaced, and thanks to Stephen Spielberg Tintin has at last been discovered in the US, I can reboot this abandoned Blog.

Voila:

As it turns out, both Tintin and I turned 80 this year. However, his “birthday” is in January, and I didn’t appear until October, which gave him a head start, and I’ve been trying to catch up ever since. But nevertheless, at this important at this milestone I thought it would be interesting to make some comparisons on how we both have fared during all these years.

Tintin looks in remarkably good shape for someone celebrating his 80^th year.

I’ll take a pass on that.

He has been widely published, sold millions worldwide, and I’ll pass on that too.

As for his travels, however, I/we have more or less kept up with him, except for, perhaps his adventures in the Amazon and the mountains of Tibet. One of his thought bubbles might read: “I wonder how long it will take us to get through this jungle to look for that rare specimen?” While we would have been wondering how this tiny propeller plane flying just over the treetops will ever get us to the film festival in Mamaia, (Romania).

He has had many different companions through the years, and we can certainly match the number and certainly the quality of friends we’ve accumulated, since his are so often really after whatever he is after.

Solving mysteries? Looking for buried treasure in some remote sunken island in the South China Sea is a piece of cake compared to trying to get any official Spanish permit or document authorized, sealed, stamped, both the kind you lick or paste, as well as rubber stamped, signed (although no one can possibly read the official name), and notarized.

Then, when you finally think you’ve got it all together, and find the right window in the right building, not easy mysteries to solve, one of several stone faced clerks tells you you’re missing yet another stamp, which can only be obtained in some office in a non-existent building. Days later, only if you’ve been really clever, you return again with the last stamp in place, and stand in a very long line, only to be told by a new clerk that the other clerk forgot that you also need another signature.

By that time Tintin will have found the lost island, dived for the treasure in his personal submarine, and is now probably counting all his Pieces of 8, with the bubble over his head reading “Well, Snowy that wasn’t so difficult, was it?”

Or let him try to find his way in and out of the Khan Al-Khalili in Cairo, or the Spice Market in Istanbul. Or figure out the menu in Sofia.

Daring-do? I’ll match anything he does, just by crossing the street in Cairo, taking a taxi in Turkey, or a Tuk Tuk in New Delhi.

Regarding Snowy, his very helpful dog, we had a dog briefly, in Barcelona, who was a stray foisted on us by a well meaning friend. But he was so unhappy spending his days with me couped up in an apartment that when I finally took him out for a walk he snarled and tried to bite anyone passing by, and we soon relinquished ownership. So Tintin gets a pass on that.

So now that I consider it, all in all, I think Tintin and I have kept pace with one another, more or less, in each of our 80 years.

However, I, at least, have had the courage to change my hairstyle.

Cima DB PS: The correct Belgian pronunciation of Tintin is Tantan. My preferred pronunciation of Cima is Sima. Oh, well.