Jeff Lint

July 3, 2005 10:42 AM

Don't teach braille in my town again, McFadden - Martin Amis was an early fan of Jeff Lint's "The Caterer", a Pearl Comic of the mid-seventies. Steve Aylett talks about his biography of the man here, and Justin Taylor says how much he enjoyed it.
posted by TimothyMason (7 comments total)

Anyone writing in the English language ought to read Steve Aylett at least once. He's an utter genius.
posted by RokkitNite at 10:55 AM on July 3, 2005

Best. Comic. Ever.
posted by jcterminal at 11:10 AM on July 3, 2005

After being turned on to Harry Stephen Keeler I was so ready to believe this was true. Of course, I also wanted to believe that Robert Spridgeon was real...
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 12:18 PM on July 3, 2005

As a life-long Rocky and Bullwinkle fan, I was particularly fascinated by the accout of the making of his animated TV show "Catty and the Major", particularly after reading in a biography of Jay Ward of "The Lint Incident", in which, after a "Catty" episode was delivered from the Mexican anmation studio instead of "Hoppity Hooper", the usually painfully shy Ward not only personally delivered the film to Lint's Chatsworth studio (now the home of XXXXVideo) but also attempted to impale him with a wooden indian.

But the most incredible revelation of the whole book was discovering that he indeed had supplimented his income as a substitute teacher, and that the "Mr. Linter" who filled in for my seventh grade English teacher while she was having her third child and her appendix out was indeed Jeff Lint! I had always had my suspicions, after a memorable exchange between him and D student Clay Davis whom he asked "What do you do when the abyss gazes into you?" to which the inattentive Davis responded "Bill it." To think that there is a corporate lawyer out there (the last I heard, Davis was on retainer to Haliburton) who could have sued Lint over his most famous quote AND DIDN'T.

But then, I just dug up my 7th grade English papers (I occasionally pull out old term papers and use them in my TV criticisms for MSNBC.com) and realized that my essay "Try and Try to Justify the Lunch Lady" had the exact same storyline as "Caterer #6". I gotta contact Clay Davis.

And of course there's the revelation that Jorn Berger's public obsession with James Joyce was a cover for his true devotion to Jeff Lint.
posted by wendell at 2:04 PM on July 3, 2005

Berger s/b Barger. But you get the joke.
posted by wendell at 2:05 PM on July 3, 2005

The effect that Lint had on US television is seriously understated by Mr Aylett. For example:

"... Allen's original notion was to produce a series called Time Travel with Hitler, in which Der Fuhrer moves to New Jersey and rounds up a bunch of American scientists to help him build a time tunnel. Though this concept apparently tested well, cooler heads prevailed. Allen acted on the suggestion that he 'lose the Nazi' and The Time Tunnel was born."

(from The Internet Review of Science Fiction, registration required)

It doesn't take much imagination to see the barely hidden influence of Lint there.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 2:23 PM on July 3, 2005

Sweet thousands stretch in praise of my chin.
Stick with me.
Stick with me.
Stick with me.
Stick with me.
posted by jenovus at 12:43 AM on July 4, 2005